Tourmaline Read Online Free PDF Page B

grinned at her, diffident. Mary told me she had never seen him so pleased with himself.
    It was about half-past ten when I came again, to inquire after the patient. Mary had been in the kitchen, and followed me into the little room where he lay, guarded once more by Deborah from her rickety chair. He had been anointed a second time with Mary’s concoction, more thickly, and now looked less like a dancer than a clown. I asked whether he had been conscious.
    ‘He spoke to Byrnie,’ Mary said. ‘Or raved. But he hasn’t been conscious, no.’
    ‘He’s much better, though,’ Deborah said. ‘His skin’s damp.’ And she touched his pathetic white-washed forehead, very lightly, as if touching him meant something, and looked at us.
    I suppose no one had spoken in that room for an hour or two: that may explain it. At any rate, we were suddenly startled by a very tired, but otherwise normal and even pleasant male voice, which said, from behind Deborah’s leaning body: ‘Am I blind?’
    Deborah moved back. There he lay, just as before. But he had spoken, evidently.
    It was slightly uncanny. At length, as neither woman had answered, I moved to the foot of the bed, and looked up the length of him to his poor tragi-comic face, and asked: ‘Are you awake?’
    ‘Awake,’ he said, his speech slurred a little by his great cumbersome lips, and sounding very weary and hesitant. But he went on, moving his head uneasily. ‘Can’t see, though. Eyes shut.’
    ‘You’ve been badly burnt,’ I told him. ‘Your eyelids have swelled. But I think you can open them, if you try.’ I hated the cold commonsense of my voice, even while I was speaking.
    He took me at my word, however, screwing up his pale mask with the effort, and giving himself a certain amount of pain, it appeared. And he did succeed. Suddenly the heavy lids were halfway open, and he was looking towards me.
    A strange effect, almost miraculous, to see a mask come alive; an event like birth or metamorphosis, very solemn, and slightly flavoured with the taste of tears. There he was: a life for Tourmaline, a life that we had saved. He was ours. And his eyes were very vivid, very blue, like the sudden kingfisher-flash down by the creek, at the end of the garden, at home, when I was young.
    I asked: ‘Can you see me?’ An old man going soft at the heart had best keep to the bare necessities of speech. ‘You’re not blind, are you?’
    ‘No,’ he said, after staring at me for a time. He turned his head a little and studied Mary and Deborah. Then he lowered his gaze again.
    ‘Does your head ache?’ Deborah asked him.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, moving, restlessly. ‘Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. I don’t——’ But he seemed to forget whatever it was he meant to say.
    Meanwhile Mary came with a glass of water, and raised him, and held it to his mouth. He drank quickly and greedily. While she was filling the glass again, he said: ‘That water—ah—bad water.’
    ‘There’s salt in it,’ she said, giving him more. ‘You need salt in your body, so Rocky says. You’ll probably not be well for a few days yet.’
    All the while he gasped and swallowed. ‘Bad water,’ he said, when the glass was empty. ‘Not just salt.’ Nevertheless, he went on to drink two more glasses of it, before lying back, panting, on the pillows.
    ‘Where is this?’ he asked, later.
    ‘This is Tourmaline,’ Deborah said.
    ‘Tourmaline.’ He made a curious sound, like a laugh. ‘I didn’t think—ever——’
    ‘Were you coming here?’ she asked him.
    Ah, yes—maybe. I didn’t think——’ He opened his eyes again and looked at me, down at the foot of the bed.
    ‘I am the Law,’ I said. ‘Would you like to tell us who you are?’
    He shifted his shoulders, uncomfortably, watching me all this time. At last: ‘I’m not——’ he said; and then, sighing: ‘I’m—ah—diviner.’
    ‘Diviner,’ Deborah said, wondering.
    ‘Dowser. Water. You know?’ And his voice