It was the shell which stopped Stanley. He stared at the big shining shell with those frozen eyes.
Joe clapped the snout of the shell affectionately.
“She’s a beauty, eh? I call her Katie!”
Mr. Stanley did not speak but the dark light played and played beneath the film upon his eyes.
“I wish we were making the big stuff,” Joe remarked. “There’s a hell of a lot of money in big stuff too. Oh well, come on in the office now. I’ve got Morgan and Dobbie there and we’re going to talk to them.”
But Mr. Stanley did not come on, he could not get past the shell. He stared and stared at the shell. It was a shell like this which had blown him up. His soul shrank and shuddered before that shell.
“Come on, man,” Joe said impatiently. “Don’t you know they’re waiting on you?”
“I want to go home.” His voice sounded very odd and he began to drag himself backwards stiffly from the shell.
Christ, thought Joe, he’s at it again. He took Stanley’s arm to help him past the shell. But Stanley could not get past the shell. The skin of his forehead twitched, and in his eyes the buried agony of fear came leaping, leaping underneath the film. He gasped:
“Let me go. I want to go home.”
“You’re all right, Stanley,” Joe said. “Take it easy, now, you’re all right. It won’t bite you, it isn’t even filled. Be sensible, Stanley, man.”
But Stanley could not be sensible. All Stanley’s splendid sense had got blown out of Stanley by a shell like this in France. Stanley’s whole face was twitching now, a rapid twitching, and the fear behind his eyes was horrible to see.
“I’ve got to go home.” Hardly able to say it now. Under the dead cold face worked an unbelievable agony and excitement.
Joe gave a groan of resignation.
“All right, then, you’ll go home, Stanley. Don’t make a song about it.” Joe didn’t want a scene at the works, good God, not when everything had gone off so well. Still holding Stanley’s arm Joe walked Stanley very nicely down the shop. Joe’s smile indicated that everything was perfectly in order. Mr. Stanley was not quite fit yet, just out of hospital you see, oh yes, just that!
The car drove off to Hilltop with Stanley sitting upright on the back seat, and Joe, with a last friendly, reassuring smile, returned to his own office. He shut himself in his office and lit a cigar. He smoked the cigar thoughtfully. It was a good cigar, but Joe did not think about the cigar. He thought about Stanley.
There was no doubt about it, Stanley was washed out. The minute he had clapped eyes on Stanley at the station he had seen it; this shell-shock was a bigger thing than he had ever imagined. Stanley was going to be months and months before he got back to normal. If he ever did get back. In the meantime Joe would have to take Millington’s in hand more than ever. And that was hardly fair on Joe unless Joe got a little more out of Millington’s than he had been getting. Hardly fair. Joe carefully inspected the glowing end of his cigar, calculating shrewdly. About two thousand a year he was pulling down at the moment, all in, as Jim Mawson would have put it. But that was nothing, nothing at all. There was the future to think about. And God, what a chance this was to consolidate his future, to get in, big, oh, bigger than ever. Joe sighed ever so gently. There would have to be some sort of readjustment… that was the word… in Millington’s. Yes, that was it, that was the exact idea.
Moistening his lips Joe reached for the telephone. He rang up Jim Mawson. Never before had he been so glad to know Mawson, to feel sure of his co-operation. A clever fellow Jim, who knew exactly how to set about a thing and steer just the right side of trouble.
“Hello, Jim, that you, ole man?” Joe took pains to put the case justly to Mawson. And sympathetically, too. “It would break your heart to see the poor fellow, Jim. He’s perfectly sensible and all that, as sane as you and me, but it’s his nerves. Shell-shock, you understand. Yes, certainly, shell-shock, that’s right, Jim, you’ve got me.”
A pause while Mawson’s voice came back over the wire. Then Joe said:
“To-morrow night at your house then, Jim. Certainly, I know there’s no hurry. Certainly I know Snagg, I met him at Bostock’s, didn’t he handle that contract case? Yes, certainly, oh, what the hell, Jim, what do you think I am… now listen, oh, all right, not on the ’phone… certainly… how’s the wife?… that’s grand, Jim, that certainly is grand, all right, ole man, so long for the meantime.”
Joe hung up the receiver; but only for a minute. His big hand reached out again, he rang Laura at Hilltop, his voice quiet, sympathetic, reasonable:
“I must talk to you, Laura, honestly I must. Ah, what’s the use going on that way, Laura. Surely I know how you feel about it, I don’t blame you, but we’re only human, aren’t we, and we’ve got to make the best of it. Yes, yes, call me anything you like, I daresay I deserve it, but for God’s sake let’s get things straight. I’ve got to see you, there’s no getting away from it. What! All right, all right, Laura, I can’t force you to meet me, if you won’t come, you won’t… but I’ll be at the flat all evening in case you should change your mind….” He continued talking for a couple of minutes before he realised that she had hung up at the other end. Then he smirked, replaced the receiver and fell joyously upon his work.
That night he went without his usual dinner at the County and got home by six o’clock. Whistling, he built up the fire, helped himself to whisky and a cold mutton pie, then washed and brushed himself, slipped on his new checked dressing-gown and sat down to read the paper and wait.
From time to time his eyes strayed towards the clock. Occasionally the sound of a car in the crescent outside made him straighten expectantly in his chair. As the hand of the clock moved round, a frown began to mar the smooth handsomeness of his brow, but at nine o’clock the sharp ring of the door bell sent him eagerly to his feet.
Laura entered with a kind of nervous violence. She wore a raincoat and an old brown hat that fitted closely on her head. There were splashes on her shoes; he had the feeling that she had walked all the way from Hilltop. She was very pale.
“I came, you see,” she declared with bitter hostility, her hands thrust in her raincoat pockets, her whole figure braced. “Now what have you got to say?”
He did not attempt even to approach her. He kept his eyes on the floor.
“I’m glad you came, Laura.”
“Well?” she queried in that same suppressed voice. “You’d better say it quickly. I can’t wait long.”
“Sit down,” he said in a brotherly voice. “We can’t talk like this. You’re tired, you look absolutely all in.” Tactfully he turned away and began to stir the fire into a fresh blaze. She watched him with a cold irony, then with a sigh of fatigue she let herself sink into a chair. She said bitterly:
“I haven’t had a minute’s peace since I left this wretched room.”
“I know.” He sat back in his own chair, chastened, staring into the fire. “But we couldn’t foresee this, Laura, how could we?”
“Every time I look at him,” a sob rose in her throat. “Every minute of the day. He can’t bear me now. You’ve seen that, haven’t you? He seems to hate to have me near him. He’s got to go to Bournemouth, to a rest home there. He actually asked me not to come with him. It serves me right, it serves me right. O God, how I loathe and detest myself.”