'But it's unusual for him to be out now.'
'Would you like me to go out and see?'
'Well--if you wouldn't mind. I'd go, but--' She did not want to make the
physical effort.
Bertie put on an old overcoat and took a lantern. He went out from the
side door. He shrank from the wet and roaring night. Such weather had a
nervous effect on him: too much moisture everywhere made him feel almost
imbecile. Unwilling, he went through it all. A dog barked violently at
him. He peered in all the buildings. At last, as he opened the upper door
of a sort of intermediate barn, he heard a grinding noise, and looking
in, holding up his lantern, saw Maurice, in his shirt-sleeves, standing
listening, holding the handle of a turnip-pulper. He had been pulping
sweet roots, a pile of which lay dimly heaped in a corner behind him.
'That you, Wernham?' said Maurice, listening.
'No, it's me,' said Bertie.
A large, half-wild grey cat was rubbing at Maurice's leg. The blind
man stooped to rub its sides. Bertie watched the scene, then
unconsciously entered and shut the door behind him, He was in a high sort
of barn-place, from which, right and left, ran off the corridors in front
of the stalled cattle. He watched the slow, stooping motion of the other
man, as he caressed the great cat.
Maurice straightened himself.
'You came to look for me?' he said.
'Isabel was a little uneasy,' said Bertie.
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