Restless Earth/Chapter 20

On the following afternoon, when Patricia alighted from the express at Palmerston North for the purpose of “stretching her legs” upon the station platform, she was in her blackest mood.

She hated everybody and everything. She glared angrily at the men who eyed her with admiration and the women who stopped to appraise her smart travelling costume. She remonstrated sharply with those who jostled her. She was furiously impatient at the few minutes’ wait in the train schedule, although she had neither definite plans nor desire for her journey’s end. She detested Palmerston North, sight unseen.

It was with the greatest effort that she refrained from cutting the woman who bore down upon her from the crowd with an excited cry of recognition.

“Pat! Pat Weybourn! What on earth are you doing down this way? How is the world?”

Patricia forced a smile and held out an unwilling hand.

“Why, if it isn’t little Buzzy!” she exclaimed with spurious heartiness. “So this is where you buried yourself!”

​Peggy Tennyson, late member of the Live Wire Quartette, in which joyous body she had earned her nickname of Buzzy by buzzing harmoniously whenever she forgot the words of the songs—which was more often than not—fairly beamed with delight at this unexpected reunion with a fellow songster.

Buzzy Tennyson was not “little.” She was almost massive. “Amazonic” was the term she applied to herself. She was a nurse, and admirably fitted for her vocation. She was reputed to stand no nonsense from anybody. Her pointed demand to know the cause of Patricia’s restraint—which became obvious after the first greeting—was typical of her.

“Have you married a millionaire of something, Pat? Don’t you want to know the old crowd now?”

“Don’t be silly, Buzzy,” protested Patricia, pressing the big woman’s hand. “Of course, I’m delighted to see you, old thing.”

“Well, for God’s sake, act like it!” cried the exuberant Buzzy. “Come and have a cup of tea, for old time’s sake.”

“I can’t, Buzzy. I’m sorry. I’m travelling on the express.”

“Wellington?”

“Yes.”

“Got an appointment in Wellington?”

“Not exactly———”

“Anyone waiting for you?”

“N—no———”

“Anyone expecting you?”

“No.”

“Then you’ve got plenty of time for a cup of tea. Where’s your luggage?”

“But, Buzzy———”

“Where is it?”

“I’ve checked it through.”

“Have you? We’ll soon fix that. Where are your checks?”

“Don’t be silly, Buzzy———”

​“You should know better than to argue with me, Pat,” chided Buzzy, reaching out and securing the other’s purse. “Are they in here?”

Patricia snatched the purse angrily.

“Please, Buzzy! Leave me alone!”

Buzzy Tennyson frowned in her best professional manner. She held her head upon one side and looked critically at her friend; then, with a dexterous movement, she produced a clinical thermometer.

“Open the mouth, please,” she requested severely. “We must see about that temperature. We can’t allow unruly temperaments here.”

Patricia tried hard to be angry, and failed.

“But—I can’t afford to stay over, Buzzy.”

“You can’t afford not to—unless you wish to complete your journey on a stretcher, my girl!” threatened Buzzy. “The idea! We meet again after three hundred and seventeen years, and you cannot afford to stay over! Give me those checks at once! The town is full of refugees just now, so I guess one more will make little difference.”

“Refugee is the correct term,” agreed Patricia, handing over the checks without further protest.

Buzzy Tennyson glanced at her sharply, took the checks and hurried away.

She returned within a remarkably short space of time, earrying a heavy suitcase in each hand. She was flushed and smiling.

“Would you believe it?” she asked, with a laugh. “The Railway Department dared to argue with me. Me! Buzzy Tennyson! I had to show ’em. It’s going to take ’em an hour or two to sort the mess in the luggage-van. These things were right at the bottom. The handle’s come adrift on this one, but we can fix that. Your other stuff is in the left-luggage office. Come on!”

She led the way to the street. Patricia followed meekly.

“We’ll dive into the tea first,” said Buzzy as they headed for the Square. “Then we’ll cackle about this ​and that. We’ll go to Ross’s. They have a proper respect for my appetite.”

They walked in silence to Ross’s, where Buzzy mounted the stairs to the tea-room two at a time. The suitcases worried her not at all, even though she carried the one with the damaged handle with two fingers thrust beneath the flap of the lid.

“You should have been a man, Buzzy,” said Patricia, when they were seated at a table overlooking the street.

Buzzy pointed a large and theatening finger at Patricia.

“If you’re going to be so frightfully original in your remarks during your stay with us, Miss Weybourn, there’s going to be another earthquake,” she replied with assumed ferocity. “What are you going to have? The usual?”

Patricia nodded.

“I’ll be good,” she promised.

They ate, saying little and eyeing éach other with a natural curiosity.

When they had finished eating, Buzzy produced a cigarette case and proffered it to Patricia.

“Have a gasper, Pat,” she invited, “then lean back, or forward, and tell me all about yourself. Hide nothing from your aunt Buzzy. First, how goes the glad-rag business?”

Patricia accepted a cigarette and lit it carefully at Buzzy’s lighter before she answered.

“I’ve got the sack, Buzzy. I’m wandering at large upon the face of the earth; and I’m fed up with everything.”

Buzzy lit a cigarette for herself, squinting speculatively through the manly clouds of smoke which she blew.

“What is it?” she asked calmly. “Shortage in the cash? Or an overplus of shieks?”

Patricia sneered at the ash-tray and addressed the empty tea-pot.

​“It’s pure madness!” she answered in a low tone. “Madness! I—I———Oh, why need we speak of it? It’s over now—finished! I’m just a fool trying to run away from myself! Just a fool!”

She lifted her head abruptly and gazed out of the window.

Buzzy noted that her lips were trembling and her eyes filling with tears. She gazed at the tea-pot in her turn.

“That’s rotten,” she admitted. “As Omar Khayyam remarked in 1874, ‘That’s decidedly umpty-do!’”

“Oh, it’s right that you should laugh, Buzzy———”

“I’m not laughing, my dear. You know that. I’m just mighty sorry for you, and darned glad I dropped on you this afternoon. You can tell me about it, or you needn’t; but I’m the tonic you need, Pat; and you’re going to get enough of me to set you on your feet again.”

The big woman folded her arms upon the table and leaned forward, the cigarette drooping from a corner of her lips.

“I’ve made a diagnosis of your case, Miss Weybourn,” she continued. “You are suffering with a bad attack of love.”

Patricia turned her head sharply. Her eyes narrowed.

“So, I’m talked about here, too?” she asked angrily. “I’m a high-light in a national scandal?”

“Now you’re being conceited, my dear. Nobody but little Buzzy has ever heard of you down here. Even I had given you up for dead, and often have I tried to cry myself to sleep because of it. No, my dear. I’m just being clever, that’s all. Remember how we used to prophesy that you would fall in love so violently that you would hurt yourself? And how you used to wager your immortal soul that you wouldn’t—that you couldn’t fall in love, because love was a myth, or some such?”

“That was youthful foolishness———”

​“On your part, not on ours. You were beautiful, but we were wise. And now you’ve been and gone and done it! But why did you have to fall in love with another woman’s husband?”

Patricia flushed and half rose from her chair.

“I think I would show a little belated wisdom if I caught the next train,” she said shortly, gathering up her gloves and purse.

“Sit down!” commanded Buzzy softly. “I’ve always been able to understand that two and two are four, Pat; and when you talk of ‘a national scandal’—well, there you are. Diagnosis is easy. The symptoms are marked. The temperature is erratic. Oh, sit down!”

Patricia sank into her seat again. She looked into the keen, sympathetic eyes of her friend, then placed an elbow upon the table and covered her eyes with her hand.

“Oh, Buzzy,” she murmured brokenly, “I’m so unhappy I want to die!”

Buzzy reached out and patted the unoccupied hand.

“Where is the sense in breaking your heart because the other woman is holding him, my dear?” she asked softly. “You’re not a hardened husband-snatcher. All the old hands know that———”

“The other woman is dead.”

Buzzy stared and sat immobile for a moment.

“Dead?”

“She—and their child—killed in Napier—where I have driven them.”

Buzzy Tennyson leaned back in her chair slowly, her gaze, infinitely tender, fixed upon Patricia’s bowed head. She was silent for many seconds, then she sighed, removed her cigarette from her lips and tapped the ash into the ash-tray.

“Ain’t it Hell?” she asked the circumambience softly.

Patricia looked up after a lengthy silence, and searched for a handkerchief.

​“Well?” she asked, with something of defiance in her voice.

Buzzy looked at her with a pitying smile.

“I’m on your side, Pat,” she answered simply. “You play the game, old thing———”

“But I haven’t played it, Buzzy!” cried Patricia. beating her clenched hands upon the table softly, passionately. “I haven’t played it! Oh, I've been—rotten, Buzzy! Rotten!”

“I don’t quite see that———”

“The other woman was my friend. Is that playing the game? I tried to play it, Buzzy; before God, I did! But, I couldn’t! I couldn’t! At first—yes; but later———! Oh, why didn’t I have the sense to stay away?”

“Quiet, my dear!” urged Buzzy, conscious of the curious glances directed at them by the other occupants of the room. “Don’t say any more about it. The damage is done———”

“Grace—little Grace Harley—she was the other woman, Buzzy,” continued Patricia unheeding, her words flowing in an impetuous torrent. “You remember her, Buzzy?”

“Harley? Harley? No—the name isn’t familiar———”

“Little Grace Devine, Buzzy! Married to Harley, the author. I met her again in New Plymouth—she invited me to her home—and then———”

Patricia made a fatalistic gesture, and became silent, pulling on her gloves with nervous jerks. Buzzy was silent for so long that Patricia needed all her courage to look up at her.

The big woman was frowning at the tea-pot in curious concentration. Her lips were pursed; her wide-spread fingers gently drummed upon the table; her whole rigid attitude was expressive of intense mental activity induced by an emotional shock.

“James Harley?” she asked suddenly, directing her frown at Patricia as she barked the question. “The fellow who writes such awful mush?”

​Patricia nodded. She did not resent the reference to “mush.” She held a similar opinion of the quality of Harley’s work.

“Huh!” Buzzy grunted, as she rose to her feet with a business-like air. “I can understand Grace, but not Pat Weybourn. Come along!”

Patricia obeyed the curt command with a meekness entirely foreign to her. Despite the brusqueness of Buzzy, the big woman’s attitude seemed less condemnatory than she had dared to hope. She followed Buzzy with a curious sensation of dependence. She felt that, if she lost Buzzy now, she herself would be lost indeed.

“I’m just a fool, Buzzy,” she repeated, apologetically, as she followed the other down the stairs.

“Aren’t we all?” growled Buzzy. “You come with me, Pat, and prove it.”

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, Patricia walking half a pace behind her friend who carried the suitcases and seemed unconscious of their weight or any indignity attaching to the task.

Buzzy paused at the corner of Rangitikei Street.

“Look at them, Pat,” she said, in a low tone. “You don’t need to ask which are refugees. See the way they stand around looking at nothing! Poor devils!”

No need to ask, indeed.

At every street corner stood a group of lost people, people who gazed indifferently at the sky and at the traffic. Lost people occupied every seat in the Square gardens and wandered upon the paths and pavements. The city was crowded with them. Every train and car from the earthquake area increased their numbers. People with nothing to do. Men, women and children. Strangers, driven from their homes by the authorities who feared pestilence in the stricken towns. Strangers, living upon their individual perplexities, oblivious to the beauties of ​the city which harboured them; dazed with shock; unable to think clearly of yesterday or to-morrow.

“Where do they all sleep?” asked Patricia, momentarily aroused from the contemplation of her troubles.

“Heaven only knows. I have two families in tents on my back lawn, and four women who live in the kitchen. A lot of ’em don’t sleep at all, I’ll bet. Too scared. Come along!”

Some ten minutes later they halted at the gate of a large house in a residential quarter.

“Here we are!” said Buzzy, as she kicked the gate open and entered the grounds, which were neatly laid out in lawns and flower-beds. “This is where we live and have our being.”

Patricia hesitated long enough to read “WANA. Sister Tennyson,” upon the brass plate attached to the gate.

“Sister?” she asked, as she followed Buzzy.

“Very much so,” Buzzy assured her, as they mounted the steps and entered the building, the door of which was ajar. “My own private venture, Pat. I simply sailed through my exams, and then stung father for the wherewithal to start out on my own. I’d had enough of being ordered around by little bits of women whom I could have lifted in one hand. I felt an ass, trotting around like a young elephant at the command of squirrels. It was either this, or marriage. I explained that to father. A young doctor was very sweet on me then, but he was such a little fellow that I was afraid to sit on his knee lest I injured him. Dad bought me this place to save the little fellow’s life. Why is it little men run after big women, and vice versa?”

“You’ll have to excuse the crush,” she continued, not pausing for a reply, as she thrust open a white-enamelled door with her knee and revealed a comfortable cubicle of a bedroom into which an extra bed had been squeezed. “This is the camp. I’ve been crowded out of my usual quarters by the mob. This ​is the best we can do at the moment. You don’t mind being in a room with me?”

“I’ll be thankful to have you with me, Buzzy,” answered Patricia gratefully. “I may take a fit, or something.”

“Not room enough to have a fit while I’m in here, old thing,” said Buzzy, as she threw the suit-cases on one of the beds. “Take a seat while I get into my overalls.”

Patricia sat on the bed indicated and removed her gloves thoughtfully.

“I feel that I’m going to be in the way, Buzzy, under the circumstances———”

“Then feel something else,” interrupted Buzzy from the folds of the dress which she was drawing over her head. “I want you here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Haven’t seen you in years, for one thing. For another thing, I want your assistance.”

Buzzy donned her uniform, avoiding Patricia’s surprised eyes.

“Tell you the truth, Pat, I was a little undecided about how to treat your case until you mentioned the other woman having been killed in Napier. Then the idea came to me, and I almost fell over backwards.”

Patricia sensed the effort with which the other affected an easy manner.

“What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.

“You are not going to ask me to help you nurse people—people from over there?”

“There is nothing you need get excited about, my dear. Nothing—er—gory, or anything like that———”

“But, I’ve never done nursing of any kind———”

“You want work, Pat,” declared Buzzy, turning to face her guest as she fastened her skirt with difficulty. “Work which will take you out of yourself. As far as I can gather, you are simply wandering about the country looking for a place in which to die. Well, you’re not going to die. You’re going to ​live—and be glad to live. You’re going to know what it feels like to ease the pain of others—to forget yourself in service for others. You’re going to realise how much you don’t amount to in this wicked world; and your aunty Buzzy is going to teach you.”

Patricia laughed mirthlessly.

“I don’t mind helping you, Buzzy, if you’re rushed with business,” she replied, rising, “but I have no desire to help myself———”

Buzzy made an indescribable noise. She was struggling to fasten her stiff uniform collar.

“Shut up!” she snapped. “And come and fasten this damn thing!”

Patricia fastened the collar obediently, her spirits rising involuntarily in the breezy contact with the exuberant Buzzy.

“If I make a mess of things, Buzzy———”

“You won’t have a chance, old thing. I don’t want you to run about with bandages and things like that. I merely want you to try to quiet a patient who disturbs all the others. She stays quiet while someone talks to her, but I’m terribly short-handed with this Napier rush. The staff hasn’t time to sit around, I can tell you.”

“What am I to say to her? I’ve never———”

“It will come to you naturally. Don’t worry about that. Take off your hat, and I’ll show you where she is.”

Buzzy’s was an overmastering personality. Patricia offered no more objections. She removed her hat, threw it upon the bed carelessly, and followed the big woman from the room.

They went upstairs and along a corridor off which opened small rooms. They passed two nurses hurrying about their duties. Buzzy nodded to them curtly. They seemed not to notice Patricia. The place reeked of antiseptics, and muffled cries and groans of pain were heard on either hand.

“Crowded out with cases from Hastings and Napier,” explained Buzzy. “Some of them pretty bad.”

​She paused outside a door at the end of the corridor.

“She’s in here.”

Patricia listened to the montonous murmur from behind the closed door, and failed to understand how such a gentle sound could disturb all the other patients. She was about to remark upon it when Buzzy opened the door softly.

“Go and talk to her.”

Patricia hesitated for a moment, then entered the room diffidently. Buzzy watched her approach the bed, then stop as though she had collided with an invisible wall. Patricia reeled back a pace. Her face blanched as her eyes widened with something akin to fear. Her hands clutched at her breast.

The murmur continued, the bandages which swathed the face of the sufferer upon the bed moving very slightly as the head rolled unceasingly from side to side.

Patricia stared and listened for fully a minute, then she turned slowly and faced Buzzy, who was watching her critically.

“Who is it?” she asked in a horrified whisper. “Who is it?”

Buzzy shook her head.

Patricia turned again to the patient. She approached the bed fearfully. She stopped and listened intently.

“Jimmy . . where are you, Jimmy? . . . Jimmy . . . Pat, give him back to me . . . Jimmy . . .”

A weary, hopeless repetition. Over and over again. . . . “Jimmy.”

Patricia sprang upright and wheeled swiftly. Her eyes were starting from her white face. She trembled with painful excitement.

“It’s Grace!” she cried, reeling towards Buzzy. “It’s Grace Harley!”

She clutched at Buzzy’s arms for support.

“That accounts for the ‘G.H.’ on her clothes,” observed Buzzy with professional calm. “After this ​I’m going to believe some of the things I read in detective stories. It came to me———”

“But she was reported dead!”

“So were a lot more people who are walking about to-day, my dear. Pull yourself together.”

Patricia’s head fell forward. Buzzy took her in her arms.

“I know it’s an awful shock, Pat,—but—play the game, old thing. Play the game!”

“Oh, Buzzy! Is she badly hurt?”

Buzzy swallowed hard. She had much ado to preserve her professional calm at this moment.

“Pretty bad,” she answered gently. “Blinded, and disfigured for life.”

She felt Patricia shudder and go limp in her arms.

“Come, old thing,” she murmured encouragingly. “I’m depending on you.”

Patricia did not hear her. She had fainted for the first time in her life.

***