'That's your bed,' whispered Bannard, pointing jocularly.
So far Maybury had removed only his shoes. He could have done without Bannard staring at him and without Bannard's affable grin.
'Or perhaps you'd rather we did something before settling down?' whispered Bannard.
'No, thank you,' replied Maybury. 'It's been a long day.' He was trying to keep his voice reasonably low, but he absolutely refused to whisper.
'To be sure it has,' said Bannard, rising to much the volume that Maybury had employed. 'Night-night then. The best thing is to get to sleep quickly.' His tone was similar to that which seemed habitual with Falkner.
Bannard climbed agilely into his own bed, and lay on his back peering at Maybury over the sheets.
'Hang your suit in the cupboard,' said Bannard, who had already done likewise. 'There's room.'
'Thank you,' said Maybury. 'Where do I find the pyjamas?'
'Top drawer,' said Bannard. 'Help yourself. They're all alike.'
And, indeed, the drawer proved to be virtually filled with apparently identical suits of pyjamas.
'It's between seasons,' said Bannard. 'Neither proper summer, nor proper winter.'
'Many thanks for the loan,' said Maybury, though the pyjamas were considerably too small for him.
'The bathroom's in there,' said Bannard.
When Maybury returned, he opened the door of the cupboard. It was a big cupboard and it was almost filled by a long line of (presumably) Bannard's suits.
'There's room,' said Bannard once more. 'Find yourself an empty hanger. Make yourself at home.'
While balancing his trousers on the hanger and suspending it from the rail, Maybury again became aware of the injury to his leg. He had hustled so rapidly into Bannard's pyjamas that, for better or for worse, he had not even looked at the scar.
'What's the matter?' asked Bannard on the instant. 'Hurt yourself, have you?'
'It was a damned cat scratched me, ' replied Maybury, without thinking very much.
But this time he decided to look. With some difficulty and some pain, he rolled up the tight pyjama leg. It was a quite nasty gash and there was much dried blood. He realized that he had not even thought about washing the wound. In so far as he had been worrying about anything habitual, he had been worrying about Angela.
'Don't show it to me,' squeaked out Bannard, forgetting not to make a noise. All the same, he was sitting up in bed and staring as if his eyes would pop. 'It's bad for me to see things like that. I'm upset by them.'
'Don't worry,' said Maybury. 'I'm sure it's not as serious as it looks.' In fact, he was far from sure; and he was aware also that it had not been quite what Bannard was concerned about.
'I don't want to know anything about it,' said Bannard.
Maybury made no reply but simply rolled down the pyjama leg. About his injury too there was plainly nothing to be done. Even a request for Vaseline might lead to hysterics. Maybury tried to concentrate upon the reflection that if nothing worse had followed from the gash by now, then nothing worse might ever follow.
Bannard, however, was still sitting up in bed. He was looking pale. 'I come here to forget things like that,' he said. 'We all do.' His voice was shaking.
'Shall I turn the light out?' enquired Maybury. 'As I'm the one who's still up?'
'I don't usually do that ' said Bannard, reclining once more, none the less. 'It can make things unnecessarily difficult But there's you to be considered too.'
'It's your room,' said Maybury, hesitating.
'All right,' said Bannard. 'If you wish. Turn it out. Tonight anyway.' Maybury did his injured leg no good when stumbling back to his bed. All the same, he managed to arrive there.
'I'm only here for one night,' he said more to the darkness than to Bannard. 'You'll be on your own again tomorrow. '
Bannard made no reply, and, indeed, it seemed to Maybury as if he were no longer there, that Bannard was not an organism that could function in the dark. Maybury refrained from raising any question of drawing back a curtain (the curtains were as long and heavy as elsewhere), or of letting in a little night air. Things, he felt, were better left more or less as they were.
It was completely dark. It was completely silent. It was far too hot.
Maybury wondered what the time was. He had lost all touch. Unfortunately, his watch lacked a luminous dial.
He doubted whether he would ever sleep, but the night had to be endured somehow. For Angela it must be even harder — far harder. At the best, he had never seen himself as a first-class husband, able to provide a superfluity, eager to be protective. Things would become quite impossible, if he were to lose a leg. But, with modern medicine, that might be avoidable, even at the worst: he should be able to continue struggling on for some time yet.
As stealthily as possible he insinuated himself from between the burning blankets and sheets on to the surface of the bed. He lay there like a dying fish, trying not to make another movement of any kind.
He became almost cataleptic with inner exertion. It was not a promising recipe for slumber. In the end, he thought he could detect Bannard's breathing, far, far away. So Bannard was still there. Fantasy and reality are different things. No one could tell whether Bannard slept or waked, but it had in any case become a quite important aim not to resume general conversation with Bannard. Half a lifetime passed.
There could be no doubt, now, that Bannard was both still in the room and also awake. Perceptibly, he was on the move. Maybury's body contracted with speculation as to whether Bannard in the total blackness was making towards his corner. Maybury felt that he was only half his normal size.
Bannard edged and groped interminably. Of course Maybury had been unfair to him in extinguishing the light, and the present anxiety was doubtless no more than the price to be paid.
Bannard himself seemed certainly to be entering into the spirit of the situation: possibly he had not turned the light on because he could not reach the switch; but there seemed more to it than that. Bannard could be thought of as committed to a positive effort in the direction of silence, in order that Maybury, the guest for a night, should not be disturbed. Maybury could hardly hear him moving at all, though perhaps it was a gamble whether this was consideration or menace. Maybury would hardly have been surprised if the next event had been hands on his throat.
But, in fact, the next event was Bannard reaching the door and opening it, with vast delicacy and slowness. It was a considerable anticlimax, and not palpably outside the order of nature, but Maybury did not feel fully reassured as he rigidly watched the column of dim light from the passage slowly widen and then slowly narrow until it vanished with the faint click of the handle. Plainly there was little to worry about, after all, but Maybury had probably reached that level of anxiety where almost any new event merely causes new stress. Soon, moreover, there would be the stress of Bannard's return. May-bury half realized that he was in a grotesque condition to be so upset, when Bannard was, in fact, showing him all possible consideration. Once more he reflected that poor Angela's plight was far worse.
Thinking about Angela's plight, and how sweet, at the bottom of everything, she really was, Maybury felt more wakeful than ever, as he awaited Bannard's return, surely imminent, surely. Sleep was impossible until Bannard had returned.
But still Bannard did not return. Maybury began to wonder whether something had gone wrong with his own time faculty, such as it was; something, that is, of medical significance. That whole evening and night, from soon after his commitment to the recommended route, he had been in doubt about his place in the universe, about what people called the state of his nerves. Here was evidence that he had good reason for anxiety.
Then, from somewhere within the house, came a shattering, ear-piercing scream, and then another, and another. It was impossible to tell whether the din came from near or far; still less whether it was female or male. Maybury had not known that the human organism could make so loud a noise, even in the bitterest distress. It was shattering to listen to; especially in the enclosed, hot, total darkness. And this was nothing momentary: the screaming went on and on, a paroxysm, until Maybury had to clutch at himself not to scream in response.
He fell off the bed and floundered about for the heavy curtains. Some light on the scene there must be; if possible, some new air in the room. He found the curtains within a moment, and dragged back first one, and then the other.
