“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.
“I’ll come in. I like messing about doing these jobs.”