Kissing Kin (18 page)

“Yes,” said Jenny with the new meekness happiness brought, understanding that she was not yet to consider herself engaged. “Only—sometimes people get killed learning to fly, and—”

“Not me. For me it will be pie. You’ll see. Once I get this arm fixed up—” he stirred restlessly. “Once I get past that Medical Board, with this arm—”

“Which reminds me,” said Jenny. “Time you went to sleep.” She rose and set their glasses on the table, and returned to straighten the bedclothes. As she bent over him he lay quietly awaiting her kiss, and she gave it with no further demand, and smoothed back the straight dark hair. “Good night,” she whispered, and he smiled at her and his eyes closed.

She sat down beside the bed, and picked up the volume of Jules Verne and held it open in her lap, dreaming. Gerald had been sponged from the slate.

Sir Quentin announced modestly after the operation that it had been entirely successful and that the arm would not suffer any permanent damage. Pressed for details, he estimated the convalescent period as six weeks—maybe more, maybe less—Medical Board within two months, anyway.

Jenny wrote to Adrian Carteret and when his reply came she counted up on her fingers. Application for transfer to the Air Force by March first—some delay, anything up to thirty days,
spent at some Canadian Army depot in England on light duty, with a summons to London for interviews at Adastron House—another Medical Board—orders to report to ground school, and about six weeks there—flying school by mid-May—two months more—a few days terminal leave—and back to France by early August. Not long. Not long enough for the war to end before he returned to it. But longer than a lot of people could look forward to, nowadays, for love …

He mended slowly, with a great deal of weakness and
exhaustion
to overcome. His own helplessness exasperated and terrified him, for he had never known illness before. Except for his innate courtesy and obedience, he was not a good patient, for it was inconceivable to him that he could not do things for himself, that he could not even sit up in bed except for short intervals at the beginning. He watched the weather wistfully through his window-panes, and a mild sunny day would set him fretting to be outside, and when he was promised a wheeled-chair outing in the garden as soon as he was strong enough he looked at first incredulous and then chagrined. “Can’t I
walk?”
he asked childishly, and found when he tried it that he couldn’t, not with any degree of certainty, because his legs were made of cotton-wool and gave under him.

When he was out of danger and there was no more need for night duty he saw more of Jenny as day nurse. She could no longer devote herself exclusively to him and now had the care of two shattered Flying Corps men who had been put into the other beds in Raymond’s room. One of them could not see, and the other, horribly burned, cared very little about anything any more. Jenny tended them tirelessly, and they stayed alive, and that was about all.

Compared to them, Raymond was soon almost robust, and he was content to wait his turn, lying very still while his eyes followed her and he thought what it would be not to be able to see her, to have to wait in darkness for the sound of her step and the touch of her hand. So long as I can see her, he would think, looking his most stolid because he was ashamed of his
own thoughts, Just to watch her ought to be enough for
anybody
like me. And then at last Jenny would get round to him, and they would smile contentedly at each other, for there was never any embarrassment between them at the things his
weakness
required her to do for him, only the simplest gratitude and patience on his part and cheerful efficiency on hers.

She brought him books and flowers and little titbits of her own, to enliven his long, tedious days, for although he never complained of it she felt in him more than in any other man she had ever served the sense of captivity, and the male humiliation at being bedridden and confined. Sometimes she could sit a little while by his bed and talk, their fingers clasped on the counterpane. It was an intimacy of glance and laughter and speech neither of them had ever known with anyone else.

Raymond brought with him into a hospital cot the essential dignity and unselfconsciousness of a woods creature—Jenny possessed the same quality as the result of generations of breeding and gracious living. Both were innocent of the
pretences
and inferiorities and little doubts of the so-called middle class, the bourgeoisie, the in-betweens. Jenny from the furthest citadel of society, Raymond from beyond the pale, recognized in each other a kindred simplicity and integrity, spoke the same spiritual language, smiled the same friendly, confident smile into each other’s eyes. There were no barriers between them to be broken down. They both began at the same place—an utter inner honesty which entertained no misgivings and felt the need of no apologies or self-defences. Both expected to be taken at their face value, and took each other so. Neither gave any sort of masquerade performance for anyone’s benefit, or their own. Both were accustomed to the liking and approval of their own world. Both possessed the essence of self-respect, which means an effortless composure.

Zen
da
went very well with him, the fights and the love story as well, and roused his interest in the art of fencing, which was new to him. Jenny said that Archie belonged to a club in London and had once
been some sort of amateur champion and
could tell him more about it than she could. Lots of people learned sword-play still as a kind of hobby, she explained. It was a good way to keep fit if you had to be shut up in Town. Raymond could see that, and Archie went way up in his estimation. He was frankly disappointed in the renunciatory ending of the story and was inclined to argue with it, not so much because the lovers were parted as that it offended his practical side. “They didn’t do the country any good, keeping a man like that alive to rule it,” he said, intent and scowling. “The other guy would have done it better, and everybody would have been happy. The real king wouldn’t last, he was no good, anyway.”

“Would you have had them kill the king when he was helpless?” she asked, watching him.

“He wasn’t worth all that trouble they took to save him,” he maintained obstinately. “Not from any point of view. He was no good to the country, and he was no good to his wife.”

“Would
you
have killed him, if you’d been in Rudolph’s place?”

Their eyes held. His were heavy-lidded and without light, his lips were full and suddenly rather coarse-looking—a
terrifying
face, Jenny thought suddenly at the back of her mind—his anger would be a dreadful thing, there’s a brute in him—and something in her own expression must have flinched, for he looked away from her, down at their clasped hands.

“It’s only a story, isn’t it,” he said.

“Raymond—how does it feel to kill a man? I mean, right after you do it.”

“You mean Germans?” he asked, his eyes on their hands.

“Well—yes, of course. I don’t suppose you’ve ever killed anyone else, have you?”

He shook his head slightly—a small, bored movement. His fine fingers, bleached clean with weeks of hospital tending, moved gently on hers, caressing each separate knuckle absently. Deep lines ran down either side of his mouth, his heavy brows were drawn—a brutal face, thought Jenny, spellbound, without
a trace of the smiling, almost diffident man she had come to look for in him.

“I had two buddies before Calvert Scott,” he said at last. “And he’s the luckiest of the three. You can’t see your own friends get what I’ve seen—let alone the thousands you don’t see—and not do what you can about it. And for me, that’s kill Germans, wherever I find ’em. And I make sure they stay dead too.” His eyes came up suddenly to her face. She had never seen, in his own worst hours, such naked pain as she saw there now. She sat looking back at him silently, into his eyes, and all the time his fingers were warm and kind and slow on hers. “If you don’t make sure of them they’ll like as not shoot the stretcher-men,” he said.

“Seeing the wounds we get here, I—sometimes feel as though I’d like to kill a few Germans myself,” she said faintly.

His smile broke, he even laughed quietly at her, his head pressed back into the pillow, his face was suddenly
transfigured
and young again, her hand was enfolded and crushed close in his.

“You with that chin sticking out!” he said affectionately. “Any German I ever saw would turn right round and run like hell! Wouldn’ he!” His glance brushed her lips, and lingered there.

Jenny lay awake that night thinking about the other
Raymond
she had seen, lost in his grief and pity for his own dead comrades and the primitive need to avenge them. Startling as the glimpse had been, it touched something fundamental in her own nature which had had no opportunity to respond to the light, understated talk which was all that the men she had known hitherto permitted themselves regarding the war. A leashed but still savage force had surged through the quiet air of the hospital room when he spoke—something that had not yet been entirely bred out of the New World. Jenny heard it like a rush of wings, with a quickening of her blood. And she lay with her slim hands clasped over her breast and surrendered again to the tingling awareness that she had delivered herself
over, without reservation, to this ruthless, tender, unpredictable stranger from nowhere.

Sir Quentin made his rounds again next morning, and at the end of the day when Jenny was on her way to the room with a tea-tray in her hands she met him coming out. Quick anxiety showed in her face, for the other two men in the room were not his cases and a second visit could only have been on
Raymond’s
account. She paused with the heavy tray, looking up at him, and asked if everything was all right.

“I just looked in to tell that Red Indian of yours that he can go out in a chair tomorrow if this rain ever stops,” he said. “Face lit up like a Christmas tree. Thought he was going to hug me. What’s the matter with you?”

Jenny was blinking at him.

“What you called him. Has he been talking to you about Germans?”

“No. Why? Does he scalp ’em?”

“You weren’t serious, were you?” she persisted, too preoccupied to smile.

“About his being part Indian?” Sir Quentin looked at her more closely in the dim corridor, her slight body bent back under the weight of the tray, her anxious eyes scrutinizing him. “No, I wasn’t, really. But I could well believe it, couldn’t you?”

“I never thought about it,” said Jenny.

“Just a dash of Indian,” said Sir Quentin casually. “A lot of them have, and don’t even know it. Americans. Especially if they come from the West.” He added a few directions about the proposed outing, said a cheery Good night, and waved her on with the tray.

Jenny entered the room looking a little dazed, and found Raymond taking an excessive interest in the weather, though the sky outside his window was leaden and unpromising. She gave the blind flyer his tea, and found that the other man, as usual, preferred only to be let alone, and came finally to
Raymond,
whose eyes were bright and expectant. He noticed at once
that she had something on her mind, and became watchful and silent himself. Finally he said, very low, “Is something wrong?”

Jenny said No, of course not, and saw that he was not
satisfied.
Something in his deep, unselfconscious reserve and her own British training still made personal questions impossible to her. And then quite unexpectedly he gave her an opening.

“Sir Quentin was very pleased with you,” she was saying to reassure him. “He’s a dear old thing, isn’t he.”

“He’s swell,” said Raymond simply. “I never felt about anybody the way I feel about him, except for my own father, and he’s dead. Sir Quentin makes me feel like a kid again.”

“You ought to tell him so. He’d be very touched.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Raymond said instantly, backing into his shell.

“Darling—where did you grow up?” she asked with some diffidence. “I can show you Overcreech some day soon, when you’re better—my life is all here, where you can see it. But you never tell me anything about yourself.”

“What is it you want to know about me? You only have to ask.” But his face became guarded and withdrawn.

“Well—I’d just like to know where you grew up,” she repeated rather breathlessly.

“In a place called Indian Landing, on Lake Champlain,” he said explicitly. “I bet you don’t even know what state that’s in.”

Jenny confessed that she didn’t.

“It’s in New York State. Did you ever hear of Fort
Ticonderoga
?”

Jenny thought she had, vaguely, and Raymond grinned at her with affection.

“We took it away from the British once,” he said. “I admit they got it back, later on, and ruined it for us. It’s ours now, though, what there is left of it!”

“Oh, was that in the War of American Independence?” asked Jenny intelligently, and he laughed.

“Is that what you call it over here? Never mind, dear, we’re on your team now, aren’t we.”

She realized that he had answered her query about himself in words of one syllable and then turned it aside, so that she knew very little more than she had in the beginning. And while she was reflecting on this, he asked abruptly, “What else did you want to know?”

“About your father,” she experimented.

“He died just before I joined up in 1915. My aunt kept house for us—Aunt Emma—she lives there in the house still, and she brought me up. Anything you don’t like about that job you’ll have to take up with her, I guess.”

“I think it was a very good job,” Jenny said promptly, and he was visibly pleased.

As the silence fell between them he was trying once more to see Jenny at Indian Landing, sitting on the front porch in the summer evenings in one of the shabby rocking-chairs with faded cushions—or lying in the ugly, comfortable hammock that always hung there—Jenny with an apron tied round her waist helping Aunt Em can peaches—Jenny across the table from him at supper under the hanging lamp made of marbled green glass with gold bead fringe—Jenny in his old room among his boyhood treasures which he never showed to anybody…. No. No, it wouldn’t ever do. She didn’t realize. He could imagine from what he had seen of Farthingale what the house called Overcreech would be like (if it wasn’t like the Hall itself) but there was no way for Jenny to imagine Indian Landing….