Five

TELL YARIMJAH

I don’t mind admitting that my first impression on seeing Mrs. Leidner was one of downrightsurprise. One gets into the way of imagining a person when one hears them talked about. I’d got itfirmly into my head that Mrs.?Leidner was a dark, discontented kind of woman. The nervy kind,all on edge. And then, too, I’d expected her to be—well, to put it frankly—a bit vulgar.

She wasn’t a bit like what I’d imagined her! To begin with, she was very fair. She wasn’t aSwede, like her husband, but she might have been as far as looks went. She had that blondeScandinavian fairness that you don’t very often see. She wasn’t a young woman. Midway betweenthirty and forty, I should say. Her face was rather haggard, and there was some grey hair mingledwith the fairness. Her eyes, though, were lovely. They were the only eyes I’ve ever come acrossthat you might truly describe as violet. They were very large, and there were faint shadowsunderneath them. She was very thin and fragile-looking, and if I say that she had an air of intenseweariness and was at the same time very much alive, it sounds like nonsense—but that’s thefeeling I got. I felt, too, that she was a lady through and through. And that means something—even nowadays.

She put out her hand and smiled. Her voice was low and soft with an American drawl in it.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, nurse. Will you have some tea? Or would you like to go to yourroom first?”

I said I’d have tea, and she introduced me to the people sitting round the table.

“This is Miss?Johnson—and Mr.?Reiter. Mrs.?Mercado. Mr.?Emmott. Father Lavigny. Myhusband will be in presently. Sit down here between Father Lavigny and Miss?Johnson.”

I did as I was bid and Miss?Johnson began talking to me, asking about my journey and so on.

I liked her. She reminded me of a matron I’d had in my probationer days whom we had alladmired and worked hard for.

She was getting on for fifty, I should judge, and rather mannish in appearance, with iron-greyhair cropped short. She had an abrupt¹, pleasant voice, rather deep in tone. She had an ugly ruggedface with an almost laughably turned-up nose which she was in the habit of rubbing irritably² whenanything troubled or perplexed³ her. She wore a tweed coat and skirt made rather like a man’s. Shetold me presently that she was a native of Yorkshire.

Father Lavigny I found just a bit alarming. He was a tall man with a great black beard andpince-nez. I had heard Mrs.?Kelsey say that there was a French monk⁴ there, and I now saw thatFather Lavigny was wearing a monk’s robe of some white woollen material. It surprised merather, because I always understood that monks⁵ went into monasteries⁶ and didn’t come out again.

Mrs.?Leidner talked to him mostly in French, but he spoke⁷ to me in quite fair English. Inoticed that he had shrewd, observant eyes which darted⁸ about from face to face.

Opposite me were the other three. Mr.?Reiter was a stout⁹, fair young man with glasses. Hishair was rather long and curly, and he had very round blue eyes. I should think he must have beena lovely baby, but he wasn’t much to look at now! In fact he was just a little like a pig. The otheryoung man had very short hair cropped close to his head. He had a long, rather humorous face andvery good teeth, and he looked very attractive when he smiled. He said very little, though, justnodded if spoken to or answered in monosyllables. He, like Mr.?Reiter, was an American. The lastperson was Mrs.?Mercado, and I couldn’t have a good look at her because whenever I glanced inher direction I always found her staring at me with a kind of hungry stare that was a bitdisconcerting to say the least of it. You might have thought a hospital nurse was a strange animalthe way she was looking at me. No manners at all!

She was quite young—not more than about twenty-five—and sort of dark and slinky-looking,if you know what I mean. Quite nice-looking in a kind of way, but rather as though she might havewhat my mother used to call “a touch of the tar-brush.” She had on a very vivid pullover and hernails matched it in colour. She had a thin bird-like eager face with big eyes and rather a tight,suspicious mouth.

The tea was very good—a nice strong blend—not like the weak China stuff that Mrs.?Kelseyalways had and that had been a sore trial to me.

There was toast and jam and a plate of rock buns and a cutting cake. Mr.?Emmott was verypolite passing me things. Quiet as he was he always seemed to notice when my plate was empty.

Presently Mr.?Coleman bustled¹⁰ in and took the place beyond Miss?Johnson. There didn’tseem to be anything the matter with his nerves. He talked away nineteen to the dozen.

Mrs.?Leidner sighed once and cast a wearied look in his direction but it didn’t have anyeffect. Nor did the fact that Mrs.?Mercado, to whom he was addressing most of his conversation,was far too busy watching me to do more than make perfunctory replies.

Just as we were finishing, Dr.?Leidner and Mr.?Mercado came in from the dig.

Dr.?Leidner greeted me in his nice kind manner. I saw his eyes go quickly and anxiously tohis wife’s face and he seemed to be relieved by what he saw there. Then he sat down at the otherend of the table, and Mr.?Mercado sat down in the vacant place by Mrs.?Leidner. He was a tall,thin, melancholy¹¹ man, a good deal older than his wife, with a sallow complexion¹² and a queer, soft,shapeless-looking beard. I was glad when he came in, for his wife stopped staring at me andtransferred her attention to him, watching him with a kind of anxious impatience¹³ that I foundrather odd. He himself stirred his tea dreamily and said nothing at all. A piece of cake lay untastedon his plate.

There was still one vacant place, and presently the door opened and a man came in.

The moment I saw Richard Carey I felt he was one of the handsomest men I’d seen for a longtime—and yet I doubt if that were really so. To say a man is handsome and at the same time to sayhe looks like a death’s head sounds a rank contradiction, and yet it was true. His head gave theeffect of having the skin stretched unusually tight over the bones—but they were beautiful bones.

The lean line of jaw¹⁴ and temple and forehead was so sharply outlined that he reminded me of abronze statue. Out of this lean brown face looked two of the brightest and most intensely blue eyesI have ever seen. He stood about six foot and was, I should imagine, a little under forty years ofage.

Dr.?Leidner said: “This is Mr.?Carey, our architect, nurse.”

He murmured something in a pleasant, inaudible English voice and sat down byMrs.?Mercado.

Mrs.?Leidner said: “I’m afraid the tea is a little cold, Mr.?Carey.”

He said: “Oh, that’s quite all right, Mrs.?Leidner. My fault for being late. I wanted to finishplotting those walls.”

Mrs.?Mercado said, “Jam, Mr.?Carey?”

Mr.?Reiter pushed forward the toast.

And I remembered Major Pennyman saying: “I can explain best what I mean by saying thatthey all passed the butter to each other a shade too politely.”

Yes, there was something a little odd about it. .?.?.

A shade formal. .?.?.

You’d have said it was a party of strangers—not people who had known each other—some ofthem—for quite a number of years.

 

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