When Sarah had left the lounge,Dr Gerard sat where he was for some
minutes.Then he strolled to the table,picked up the latest number of Le Matin
and strolled with it to a chair a few yards away from the Boynton family.His
curiosity was aroused.
He had at first been amused by the English girl's interest in this American
family,shrewdly diagnosing that it was inspired by interest in one particular
member of the family.But now something out of the ordinary about this family
party awakened in him the deeper,more impartial interest of the scientist.He
sensed that there was something here of definite psychological interest.
Very discreetly,under the cover of his paper,he took stock of them.First the
boy in whom that attractive English girl took such a decided
interest.Yes,thought Gerard,definitely the type to appeal to her
temperamentally.Sarah King had strength -she possessed well-balanced nerves,cool
wits and a resolute will.Dr Gerard judged the young man to be
sensitive,perceptive,diffident and intensely suggestible.He noted with a
physician's eye the obvious fact that the boy was at the moment in a state of
high nervous tension,Dr Gerard wondered why.He was puzzled.Why should a young
man whose physical health was obviously good,who was abroad ostensibly enjoying
himself,be in such a condition that nervous breakdown was imminent?
The doctor turned his attention to the other members of the party.The girl
with the chestnut hair was 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 jaw,and the same poise of the
head on a long,slender neck.And the girl,too,was nervous......She made slight
involuntary nervous movements,her eyes were deeply shadowed underneath and over
bright.Her voice,when she spoke,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 scraps of conversation -a very ordinary normal conversation.
"We might go to Solomon's Stables?""Would that be too much for Mother?""The
Wailing Wall in the morning?""The Temple,of course -the Mosque of Omar they call
it -I wonder why?""Because it's been made into a Moslem mosque,of
course,Lennox."
Ordinary commonplace tourist's talk.And yet,somehow,Dr Gerard felt a queer
conviction that these overheard scraps of dialogue were all singularly
unreal.They were a mask -a cover for something too deep and formless for
words......Again he shot a covert glance from behind the shelter of Le Matin.
Lennox?That was the elder brother.The same family likeness could be
traced,but there was a difference.Lennox was not so highly strung;he was.Gerard
decided,of a less nervous temperament.But about him,too,there seemed something
odd.There was no sign of muscular tension about him as there was about the other
two.He sat relaxed,limp.Puzzling,searching among memories of patients he had
seen sitting like that in hospital wards,Gerard thought:
"He is exhausted -yes,exhausted with suffering.That look in the eyes -the
look you see in a wounded dog or a sick horse -dumb bestial endurance......It is
odd,that......Physically there seems nothing 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 to
fall......What blow?Am I fancying all this?No,the man is waiting for
something,for the end to come.So cancer patients lie and wait,thankful that an
anodyne dulls the pain a little......"
Lennox Boynton got up and retrieved 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 exquisite
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 Solomon
Hotel,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 Maidens in the Acropolis at Athens -something remote and lovely and a little
inhuman......The magic of the smile,her exquisite stillness gave him a little
pang.
And then with a shock,Dr Gerard noticed her hands.They were concealed from
the group round her by the table,but he could see them clearly from where he
sat.In the shelter of her lap they were picking -picking -tearing a delicate
handkerchief into tiny shreds.
It gave him a horrible shock.The aloof remote smile -the still body -and the
busy destructive hands......
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