死亡约会03

Chapter 3

When Sarah had left the lounge, Dr Gerard sat where he was for some minutes. Then he strolled tothe table, picked up the latest number of Le Matin and strolled with it to a chair a few yards awayfrom the Boynton family. His curiosity was aroused.

He had at first been amused by the English girl’s interest in this American family, shrewdlydiagnosing that it was inspired by interest in one particular member of the family. But nowsomething out of the ordinary about this family party awakened¹ in him the deeper, more impartialinterest of the scientist. He sensed that there was something here of definite psychological interest.

Very discreetly², under the cover of his paper, he took stock of them. First the boy in whom thatattractive English girl took such a decided³ interest. Yes, thought Gerard, definitely the type toappeal to her temperamentally. Sarah King had strength—she possessed⁴ well-balanced nerves,cool wits and a resolute⁵ will. Dr Gerard judged the young man to be sensitive, perceptive⁶, diffidentand intensely suggestible. He noted⁷ with a physician’s eye the obvious fact that the boy was at themoment in a state of high nervous tension. Dr Gerard wondered why. He was puzzled. Whyshould a young man whose physical health was obviously good, who was abroad ostensiblyenjoying himself, be in such a condition that nervous breakdown⁸ was imminent⁹?

The doctor turned his attention to the other members of the party. The girl with the chestnut¹⁰ hairwas obviously Raymond’s sister. They were of the same racial type, small-boned, well-shaped,aristocratic looking. They had the same slender well-formed hands, the same clean line of jaw¹¹, andthe same poise¹² of the head on a long, slender neck. And the girl, too, was nervous…She madeslight involuntary nervous movements, her eyes were deeply shadowed underneath¹³ and overbright. Her voice, when she spoke¹⁴, was too quick and a shade breathless. She was watchful—alert—unable to relax.

‘And she is afraid, too,’ decided Dr Gerard. ‘Yes, she is afraid!’

He overheard scraps¹⁵ of conversation—a very ordinary normal conversation.

‘We might go to Solomon’s Stables?’ ‘Would that be too much for Mother?’ ‘The Wailing¹⁶ Wallin the morning?’ ‘The Temple, of course—the Mosque¹⁷ of Omar they call it—I wonder why?’

‘Because it’s been made into a Moslem¹⁸ mosque, of course, Lennox.’

Ordinary commonplace tourist’s talk. And yet, somehow, Dr Gerard felt a queer conviction thatthese overheard scraps of dialogue were all singularly unreal. They were a mask—a cover forsomething that surged and eddied¹⁹ underneath—something too deep and formless for words…Again he shot a covert²⁰ glance from behind the shelter of Le Matin.

Lennox? That was the elder brother. The same family likeness²¹ could be traced, but there was adifference. Lennox was not so highly strung; he was, Gerard decided, of a less nervoustemperament. But about him, too, there seemed something odd. There was no sign of musculartension about him as there was about the other two. He sat relaxed, limp. Puzzling, searchingamong memories of patients he had seen sitting like that in hospital wards²², Gerard thought:

‘He is exhausted²³—yes, exhausted with suffering. That look in the eyes—the look you see in awounded dog or a sick horse—dumb bestial²⁴ endurance…It is odd, that…Physically there seemsnothing wrong with him…Yet there is no doubt that lately he has been through much suffering—mental suffering—now he no longer suffers—he endures dumbly—waiting, I think, for the blow tofall…What blow? Am I fancying all this? No, the man is waiting for something, for the end tocome. So cancer patients lie and wait, thankful that an anodyne²⁵ dulls the pain a little…’

Lennox Boynton got up and retrieved²⁶ a ball of wool that the old lady had dropped.

‘Here you are, Mother.’

‘Thank you.’

What was she knitting, this monumental impassive old woman? Something thick and coarse.

Gerard thought: ‘Mittens for inhabitants of a workhouse!’ And smiled at his own fantasy.

He turned his attention to the youngest member of the party—the girl with the golden-red hair.

She was, perhaps, nineteen. Her skin had the exquisite²⁷ clearness that often goes with red hair.

Although over thin, it was a beautiful face. She was sitting smiling to herself—smiling into space.

There was something a little curious about that smile. It was so far removed from the SolomonHotel, from Jerusalem…It reminded Dr Gerard of something…Presently it came to him in a flash.

It was the strange unearthly smile that lifts the lips of the Maidens²⁸ in the Acropolis at Athens—something remote and lovely and a little inhuman…The magic of the smile, her exquisite stillnessgave him a little pang²⁹.

And then with a shock, Dr Gerard noticed her hands. They were concealed³⁰ from the groupround her by the table, but he could see them clearly from where he sat. In the shelter of her lapthey were picking—picking—tearing a delicate handkerchief into tiny shreds³¹.

It gave him a horrible shock. The aloof remote smile—the still body—and the busy destructivehands…

 

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