Helmuth carried out his threat, and the result was pretty bloody. He came in to me about eleven o’clock. There was the sort of scene which it has now become redundant to record. I called him by a string of unprintable names and he retorted with variations on the theme that I was a stiff-necked little ‘whatnot’, whom he was determined to bring to heel.
The fun started half-an-hour after he had left me. As there was no hell-broth candle on this occasion, and the fire had practically died out, I had no immediate warning before the attack. Something suddenly scurried across the back of my neck and bit me on the ear.
I shook my head violently, clapped a hand to the place, then quickly hauled myself up into a sitting position. Nothing more happened for a while; but I don’t mind admitting that as I sat there in the darkness I had no mean fit of the jitters.
I could not help visualising swarms of the little brutes coming at me from every direction, as they had the night before, but this time every one of them having a nip like a pair of tweezers and intending to make their supper off me.
Thank God, it did not turn out to be as bad as all that, and the period of nerve-racking anticipation was really the worst part of the business. But the realisation was quite bad enough. Helmuth’s pet family of ‘little brothers’ turned out to consist of about a score of small, active and persistent horrors, as far as I could judge—although it was impossible to estimate with any certainty how many there were of them making darts at me in the darkness.
I think being in the dark made the bites seem more painful, as this morning there is not very much to show for them; but at the time each hurt like the cut of a small, sharp knife, and the shock of it coming without warning added to its intensity. It brought to my mind what I had read of a Chinese torture called ‘the death of a thousand cuts’ and, although of course I wasn’t, I could not help believing that I must be bleeding in dozens of places from the bites on my face, arms, neck, hands and the upper part of my body.
How long the ordeal went on I don’t quite know; but it must have been well over three-quarters-of-an-hour with a fresh bite about every minute. For the whole of that time I was jerking myself about and slapping at my unseen enemies; so when at last the biting ceased I was sweating like a pig and thoroughly exhausted.
For a time I remained sitting tense and vigilant, waiting for the next bite to come; but when a considerable interval had elapsed without one I gradually relaxed, and began to wonder if Helmuth would soon appear to gloat over his blood-soaked victim. But he didn’t, and some time later, still propped up against my pillows, I dropped off to sleep.
One good thing, at least, has come out of this last bedevilment. Sally found two more corpses in my bed this morning; and although there was no blood to show, my skin was red and slightly puffy where I had been bitten.
I twitted her, a little unfairly perhaps, on not having believed my prediction that I should be the victim of another ‘nightmare’; but she took the matter seriously, and expressed contrition at having given me a raspberry instead of the benefit of the doubt.
At the moment, while I sit here writing this on the terrace, she is conducting a grand spider-hunt in my room, and is dusting insect powder into the crevices of the wainscoting behind my bed. That will not stop the spiders, if Helmuth decides to send them again, as they come from all over the place; but, now that she is so concerned about it, he may abandon this form of tormenting me from fear that she will start agitating to have me moved again.
She said this morning that proper sleep was an essential to my recovery, and that if we couldn’t get rid of the spiders she would have to speak to Helmuth about it. Moreover, she volunteered of her own accord to come in late tonight to see that I was all right.
I reminded her that she was dining with Helmuth, and suggested, with what I fear must have been rather a forced laugh, that she might find his books and his conversation so interesting that she would forget all about me.
To that I got the tart reply that a few hours’ relaxation had never yet made her forget her professional duties.
Let’s hope that tonight does not prove an exception. It would be a great triumph for me if she came in while a spider-attack was in full progress, as I think that if I then told her the truth she might believe it. But will she come at all? She certainly won’t if Helmuth gets really busy on her.
I have spent a miserable afternoon. Not on account of any further threat from Helmuth, or my own situation—which, God knows, is desperate enough—but worrying about Sally.
I feel sure she has no idea what she may be letting herself in for tonight, and it would be futile to try to tell her. She would only put it down to a recurrence of the abnormal condition in which I am supposed to have sex on the brain, and I should risk disrupting to no purpose the excellent relations that now exist between us.
Sally has been here over a fortnight, and a cripple is naturally far more dependent than any other type of invalid on his nurse, so I have already spent many pleasant idle hours in her company. In fact, I have really seen much more of her than I did of any of the girls that I met casually, and ran around with for two or three months, while I was in the R.A.F.
I have come to like her enormously; and I am beginning to wonder if my intense repugnance to the thought of Helmuth getting hold of her is not partly inspired by jealousy. I have never been jealous of anyone before; the Weylands training eliminated that emotion in my make-up during my adolescence, and I thought it had done so for good; but now I am by no means certain.
Knowing Helmuth’s attitude to women as I do, the thought of her spending a whole evening with him makes me squirm. I simply cannot bear the thought of his filling her up with drink, then pawing her about. Of course, she may not let him; but his personal magnetism is extraordinarily strong, and if he thinks she is likely to prove difficult he is quite capable of slipping something into her drink.
The terrible frustration that I am feeling, from being unable to protect her, can hardly be entirely attributed to a normal sense of chivalry; so I suppose there is no escaping the fact that jealousy must enter into it. If so it is a most hideous emotion; and, since jealousy of this type is a by-product of love, it brings me face to face with the question—can I possibly be in love with Sally?
As I have never been in love, I honestly don’t know. I have always thought of love in this sense as an extra-intense form of physical desire, and Sally has not so far had any profound effect upon my passions. She has a lovely figure, and, although she is not beautiful in the accepted sense, her face is so expressive that it gives her an attraction all her own. There is, too, a rich warmth in her voice, and she is altogether a very cuddlesome person; but I certainly would not jump off Westminster Bridge for the privilege of sleeping with her. On the other hand I think I would jump off Westminster Bridge if by so doing I could prevent what is likely to happen tonight. Which strikes me as very queer.