'Spanish fly is it, poor dear?" he said. And then having considered the implications for a moment he said 'In all likelihood she got it from Anigoni,' - an apothecary notorious for the adulteration of his wares ? 'but even so I dread to think of those men roaming Valletta like a herd of hungry bulls. I very distinctly perceive the effects in myself; and no doubt they will presently increase.'
Laura Fielding came in at last. It was not clearing away alone that had kept her, for now she had a blue sash on, making her slim waist look even slimmer, and she had rearranged her hair; but she was obviously nervous as she sat down next to Stephen, much more so than when there had been a courtyard full of guests. She said brightly 'Why, you have drunk nothing: I will pour you a glass of wine while you finish these,' - advancing the pinax with its red rounds.
'A glass of wine with all my heart,' said Stephen, 'but if I may I will eat one of those capital little marchpane cakes with it.'
'I can refuse you nothing,' she said, 'and will fetch them at once.'
'And while you are up, would you pass by the piece of chalk, now?' called Stephen after her - the piece of chalk with which Laura reminded herself of her day's appointments. He too was nervous: what little experience he had had of women in the course of his career had, upon the whole, been discouraging; he knew he must tread very carefully, yet he was by no means sure just how he should direct his steps.
'There,' she said, coming back. 'Marchpane and the piece of chalk.' She put took the decanter and said 'We shall have to share the glass; it is the only clean one left. Do you dislike drinking with me?'
'I do not,' he said, and they sat there without speaking for some minutes, nibbling cakes and silently passing the wine-glass to and fro: a friendly, companionable pause in spite of the tensions on either side. 'Listen,' he said at last, 'was it as a medical man that you wished to consult me?'
'Yes,' she said. 'That is to say no. I will tell you . . . but first let me say how sorry, oh so sorry, I am I played so badly.' In some detail she told him how the first blunder had led to others, how she had begun to have to think, and how fatal thought was to her fingers. 'Is there anything I can do to make you forgive me?' she asked, laying her hand upon his knee and blushing.
'Sure, my dear, I forgive you with all my heart.'
'Then you must give me a kiss.'
He gave her a kiss, a genuinely abstracted peck, for his mind was elsewhere: he knew very well that although he had fortified himself by regarding her as a patient he was near his limit; and what brought him nearer to unchastity was his hatred of behaving like a scrub, for the insult of his apparent indifference was growing more blatant every minute. Nevertheless he reached across and took the piece of chalk, saying 'Will I tell you about my bell, so?'
'Oh yes!' she cried. 'I am longing to hear about your bell.'
'This, you must understand, is the bell seen sideways,' he said, drawing on the lamplit floor. 'Its height is eight feet; the window at the top is a yard across, as near as no matter; the width here, where the bench runs across, is a little better than four feet six; and the whole contains fifty-nine cubic feet of air!'
'Fifty-nine cubic feet?' said Laura Fielding: she had had a very long, very hard day, and a more attentive ear might have caught a note of despair under the bright, intelligent interest.
'Fifty-nine cubic feet to begin with, of course,' said Stephen, drawing two dwarfish figures on the bench and adding in parenthesis 'There sat the worthy Captain Dundas, and there sat I- elbow-room galore, as you see. But naturally as the bell sank, as it was lowered away a couple of fathoms, the water rose, compressing the air, so that we felt a certain pringling in our ears. When it reached the bench we raised our feet, thus,' - setting his own on the sofa - 'and plucked the cord, the signal for the barrel.' He drew the barrel with its two bung-holes and its leather hose travelling down guide-lines to the lower edge of the bell, explaining that it was not quite to scale. 'Down it came, the good barrel, compressing its own air as it came, do you see? We seized the hose, and the moment we raised it above the surface - the surface of the water in the barrel, you understand - the compressed air rushed into the bell with inconceivable force and the water sank from the bench to the lower rim! And so the barrels came down one after another and so the dear bell sank, the light growing a little dim, but not too dim to read or write, oh no. We had lead slabs to write on with an iron stylus, which we sent up with a string; and to let out the vitiated air, so that it was always fresh, there was a little cock at the top. Will I draw you my little cock?'
Eventually he brought the bell to the bottom, and making a last effort she said 'The bottom of the sea, Mother of God: and what did you find there?'
'Worms!' he cried.'Such worms. Marine worms in great abundance... It was there that I made an inconsiderate step into the fetid mud of ages, yet it scarcely disturbed any but the nearest. These were of the plumed kind known as . . .'
At the beginning of his account of the Maltese annelids he noticed that her bosom was heaving. He knew very well that it was not heaving for him but he did not realize that grief was the cause until he reached the bizarre mating habits of Polychaeta rubra, when to his intense embarrassment and distress he saw tears coursing down her cheeks. His exposition faltered; their eyes met; she gave him a painfully artificial smile and then her chin trembled and she broke into passionate weeping at last.
He took her hand, saying meaningless comforting words: for an instant she was on the point of snatching it away but then she clung hard and between her sobs she said 'Must I go down on my knees? How can you be so hard? Cannot I make you love me?'
He did not answer until she was calmer, and then said 'Of course you cannot. How can you be so simple, my dear? Surely you must know that these things are reciprocal or they are nothing. It is not possible that you should be enamoured of my person. You may have kindly feelings for me - I hope so, indeed - but as for love or desire or anything of a stronger nature, sure there is not a breath of it in you.'
'Oh but there is, there is! And I will prove it.'
'Listen,' he said firmly, patting her knee with an authoritative hand, 'I am a medical man, and I know for a fact that you are quite unmoved.'
'How can you tell?' she cried, blushing violently.
'Never mind. It is a fact; and I can measure the degree of your indifference by the strength of my own desire. Believe me, believe me, I do most ardently wish to enjoy the last favours, to possess you, as people so absurdly say; but not on those terms.'
'Not at all?' she asked, and when he shook his head she wept even more bitterly; but still she clung to his hand as if it were her only anchor. She made no coherent reply when he said 'It is clear that you wish me to do something of a particular nature. For a woman of your kind to propose such a sacrifice it must be unusually important and certainly most confidential. Will you tell me now what it is?'
All he could gather from her disconnected words was that she could not - she dared not - it was too dangerous - there was nothing to tell.
He was sitting in a somewhat cramped position in the corner of the sofa, with his stockinged foot tucked under him and Mrs Fielding pressed against his side, trembling convulsively from time to time. His crooked knee was cruelly uncomfortable and he longed to reach out for the glass of wine; but he felt that the crisis might well come in the next few minutes and he continued to wonder aloud what the nature of the service might be. His words about medical certificates, supplies, the release of impressed men and so on were meant to provide little more than a comforting thorough-bass or continue: his mind was much more taken up with gauging his patient's state of mind and body, because quite apart from Jack's remark and the absence of the picture he was almost sure that he had the solution. Her sobbing stopped; she sniffed, breathing easier but by no means quite evenly. 'Would it be to do with your husband, my dear?' he asked.