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His wife was troubled about him, for when, after fifteen years of married life, a man becomes moody and strange and sits and stares at the fire and does not always hear what is said to him, a woman begins to ask herself questions.

The Silvers had no children. They had lived in the same cottage in Paradise Row ever since they had been married, a red brick cottage with a green door and railings, and Tom Silver had always kept the little front garden full of flowers. At the back of Paradise Row ran a branch of the River Bourne, and the strips of ground belonging to the cottages ended in the green of old pollarded willows. The Silvers had in their piece of garden a magnificent old pear tree, all white in the spring, and flaming red and gold in the autumn. Blackbirds loved this tree, and on spring mornings early a cock would usually be singing in it.

But Mary Silver was troubled.

For Tom had always been a man of calculable moods and habits, and for years she had had the feeling that she knew all about him that there was to know, but now she was not so sure.

“Hear the bird, mother?”

This spring he had not called her attention to the blackbird in the pear tree, nor had he boasted gently about the size of the polyanthus flowers in the patch of front garden. She had seen him standing quite still with his foot on the garden fork, staring at the soil, but not as though he saw anything singular in the soil. He stared at the fire in just the same way.

Mary would say to herself: “Now, what’s wrong with my Tom?”

For a deep and sure affection united them, and like many childless people they had grown into and through each other. Silver was a driver-mechanic, and had worked for a dozen years at “Green’s Garage,” in Malton. Old Green thought a lot of him, this silent Tom Silver, blond and fresh-coloured, with blue eyes that were apt to go dreamy, a man who did not like to be talked to when he was at work, and who resented interference. If a sick engine needed a physician, Silver was the man for it. His big, strong, dexterous hands were loving and patient.

For the job was his, and a mere money-getting world is slow to realize how much the job is part of the worker’s soul. Tom Silver found his secret joy in it, his justification, little strange ecstasies of self-expression. Something clicked to beneath his skilful fingers, or a stammering engine became sweet and alive.

Always he had come back to Mary with a kind of contentment in his eyes.

“Tea ready, mother?”

He had had the air of a man who had completed something, exorcised some little devil of disharmony. The job was good.

But this spring his eyes had changed. They had a sort of sadness, a perplexity. He did not look at the familiar things about the cottage and garden as he had been accustomed to look at them. He was silent, preoccupied.

Mary was troubled. She knew her man, and that Tom did not go off round the corner. She had never known him to get silly about a girl, and to come back to her looking sheepishly and deceitfully cheerful. He did not drink; he was not interested in “horses.” He had no worries, save the worries that attach themselves inevitably to the life of a man who works for a weekly wage.

Was it their lack of children?

Now between Mary and Tom there had always been a simple and intimate confidence. They had nothing to conceal from each other. They were simple people uttering simple words, and giving expression to their natural feelings. They had become necessary to each other in a way that is not understood by those whose mating has been solely and transiently of the flesh.

Mary asked her question.

“What’s worrying you, Tom?”

He had slipped his feet into his slippers, and was lighting his pipe while she mended the fire. He held the match to the tobacco, and his hand was steady. He neither resented nor shirked her question; he answered it.

“Blessed if I know, mother.”

Which was strange, so strange that she stood holding the poker and looking down at him with a puzzled intentness.

“How can that be?”

His blue eyes raised themselves to her dark ones.

“Sounds silly. Yes, I guess it does. But it isn’t exactly worry, mother, it’s a sort of feeling.”

“A sort of feeling?”

“Yes—that’s all I can call it.”

She stirred the fire, and her face was thoughtful. She was wise as to the ordinary problems of a working woman’s life: the rent, the bills, the fear of sickness, a dread of strikes.

“Nothing wrong at the shop?”

“Nothing.”

“No one’s been hurting your feelings?”

He smiled. He patted her back.

“No; I’ve no grouse on. It’s a decent shop, and I count a bit with the boss. I’m on the job all the time.”

She said, gravely and softly:

“I’ve never known you like this before.”

He answered her just as simply:

“Maybe I’m a blooming fool. It’s news to me, mother, but I don’t get the feel I did from handling tools.”

“You’re fed up?”

“No; not exactly that. It’s as though something funny was working inside me and couldn’t get out.”

Now this might have seemed a strange confession for a working-man to make, and a woman less wise than Mary Silver might have been sceptical, but Tom was not the sort of man who boiled over like some fussy little kettle. There was something funny and restless inside him, and what exactly—was it? He could not give it a name, and an unnamed thing casts a shadow.

“Is it something you want and haven’t got, Tom?”

“I don’t know, old girl.”

“Is it because I haven’t given you children?”

He looked up suddenly at that. He reached out and drew her against him.

“No; nothing that touches you, mother. I know what I’ve got. It’s just a sort of restlessness. Don’t you worry.”

But Mary did worry, though she worried in secret; for she had a feeling that her man was not happy, and when he was not happy, no blackbird sang for her in the pear tree. But what was the matter with him? He had a good job; he was respected. When anything difficult had to be done at the garage Tom Silver was turned loose upon it. That sort of pride mattered to a man like Tom; and yet, as she watched him, it seemed to her that the pride had gone out of him. He was less taut about the shoulders. A vague listlessness possessed him.

She lay awake at night, worrying. She even wondered whether Tom was ill, and whether this moodiness was a symptom, the first shadow of some insidious, creeping sickness. She lay and listened to his breathing, but Tom slept as he had always slept.

Tom Silver knew one thing, he had lost the joy of his hands. He could not say how or why. The strange inwardness of the change was beyond him—that steel should have become dead metal, and an engine a mere machine. The wrench and the drill and the pliers, the reamer, the hack-saw and the hammer did not leap lovingly into his hands. There were days when he was short of temper. He would curse, and in cursing begin to fume and to fumble. Something was out of gear between Tom Silver and his craft.

Then, one evening, looking at the faces of the pansies in his garden, he remembered.

“Funny little devils! They’re alive, just like people.”

Yes; he remembered. His discontent had dated from that day when there had been a smash in the London road in front of him, and he had gone to help and had found himself helpless. A woman was screaming. She lay there by the kerb, all bloody. And he had stood and stared. The job had beaten him.

He went into the cottage. His eyes had a strange look. He spoke to Mary, who was putting fresh buttonholes into a shirt.

“I’ve got it, mother.”

“What, my dear?” For there were times when she called him “my dear” like a child.

“It isn’t steel; it’s flesh.”

She waited upon this strange saying.

“A machine’s a dead thing. I haven’t got the hands for a thing that’s alive.”

He went on to tell her about the smash in the London road. He had been in charge of a private car for the day, driving two ladies up to town; they were going to a theatre. His blue eyes seemed to be looking at the things he described; his big hands rested on his knees.

“It gave me a sort of shock, mother. I was shaky for the rest of the drive. I think it’s been on my mind, made me sort of discontented.”

“But it wasn’t your job, Tom. You can’t blame yourself.”

His blue eyes stared.

“Well, that’s so. But somehow—I seemed to feel that it was the sort of job I wanted to be able to tackle. It wasn’t that I was afraid of it. I didn’t just know how to tackle it.”

“It’s a doctor’s job, my dear.”

“In a manner of speaking—yes, old girl. When a machine goes wrong, it’s been my job to help to put it right. But a body’s more than a machine. I’m always seeing that poor lady lying screaming in the road, and me as helpless as one of those rich young boobs who hog it in high-powered cars and can’t do more than lift the bonnet flap when something goes wrong.”

She nodded her head at him.

“You want to get to know?”

“That’s it, mother.”

Knowing him as she did Mary was not surprised when little red books appeared in the cottage, and her man sat at night studying them. She consented. Tom had always been a man for teaching himself things. He was thorough—through and through. He would spread out diagrams on the kitchen table, and go to the trouble of making large copies of them in blue and red chalk. He hung these diagrams on the bedroom door, and stood and studied them when he was dressing in the morning.

He was teaching himself the anatomy of the human body as he had taught himself the anatomy of cars. He could have talked to Mary about the brachial and the femoral arteries, and what you might be able to do when a fellow got his throat cut on the jagged glass of a broken windscreen, but he was not a talkative person. Bandages appeared in the cottage, and at night his wife would humour him and pull off her shoe, and allow him to make use of her leg. She would sit and sew and watch his serious, absorbed face, and his deliberate and dexterous fingers.

One day he came back with the strangest of purchases, an awkward looking object in a sack. Using the backyard as an operating theatre he extracted the object from the sack. He explained the affair to Mary.

“I had to drive old Mr. Morriaty over to that sale at Milford. He said to me: ‘Tom, I shall be here most of the day. You had better amuse yourself, somehow.’ I had a look over the house, and there was this doll shoved away in a job lot. I had a brain wave, mother, and I bought it.”

He exhibited his purchase, a battered lay-model such as is used by artists. Its articulated limbs could be set in any position, and to Tom Silver it would serve as a model of the human figure.

“I can work on it, mother; practise putting up fractures.”

Tom’s dummy was put to live in the tool-shed at the end of the garden, and on summer evenings Tom would get busy on “Cuthbert,” as he called the creature. He applied splints and bandages to fractured legs and thighs and arms, and Cuthbert was a model patient. He never struggled or made a fuss.

Mary bore with her man’s obsession. She could not see that it was going to have any practical bearing on life, or that Tom would be able to exercise his new craft in the world of reality. But he was absorbed in it; it seemed to have cured his restlessness. He had ceased to sit and stare.

Now, Malton was a rapidly growing town. It had shed its village smock. Houses were springing up everywhere, and new building estates eating into the green fields and causing the death of old trees. Motor cars multiplied. And Malton and its responsible citizens began to visualize the expanding needs of the community.

Malton had its cottage hospital and its local fire brigade, its district nurses, and its various clubs, but its hospital was proving itself inadequate. Also, Malton had taken to itself a bright and brisk new doctor, “Young Smith,” as Malton called him. Young Smith was a very live person, and a very capable surgeon. He began to be felt in the place.

One morning Mr. Green came down to the workshop where Tom was fitting new pistons in an engine.

“Heard the news, Tom?”

Tom had heard some news.

“The town’s to have a motor-ambulance, and they have asked me to run it.”

Tom straightened his long back. His eyes had grown dreamy.

“Going to do it, sir?”

“Well, yes; but it isn’t the job for any ordinary chap. Dr. Smith’s been talking to me. Naturally the man who drives the ambulance has got to know how to handle a case.”

Tom nodded.

“Obviously. It’s not an amateur job. I could take it on.”

Old Green stared at him.

“You may be a damned fine mechanic, Tom, but what do you know about first aid?”

“I’ve been studying. I guess I’m as good as any St. John’s Ambulance man, any day. I’m not gassing.”

Mr. Green knew that Tom Silver did not gas, but his curiosity was piqued.

“You’ve been studying? What for?”

Tom wiped his hands on a wad of cotton waste.

“Just felt I had to, that’s all. I’ve seen one bad smash, and it got me cold. No more use than a bloody kid. After that I felt I’d learn something in case I saw another.”

Mr. Green—who was a shrewd old John Bull of a man, and who knew just what a fellow like Silver was worth—grunted and looked thoughtful.

“Well, you’d better go up and see Dr. Smith. He’s one of those thorough chaps. He doesn’t take things on tick.”

Tom knocked off work a little earlier than usual, and when Mary heard him coming in the back door she glanced at the clock and wondered why her man was half an hour before his time, but when she saw Tom’s face she knew that something had happened, and something that he found good. Also, she allowed him the pleasure of giving her a surprise, because if a man has no one to whom he can say: “Well, what do you think of that!” life is no better than an old clothes shop.

He assumed a casualness.

“Can you put on tea, mother?”

“The kettle’s just on the boil.”

“Then I’ll have a little shaving-water.”

She allowed him his mystery. But what was the great occasion which demanded that Tom should shave himself a second time in one day? In any other man she would have postulated woman. She heard him rummaging about upstairs, and when he came down to her he was wearing a clean collar and shirt and his dark blue Sunday suit. His eyes had a deep, challenging smile.

She looked him over.

“Well, what’s on, my lad?”

“Going up to see Dr. Smith.”

“That’s the new doctor. Is he wanting a chauffeur?”

“No; it’s like this, mother. The town’s getting a motor-ambulance. Our people are going to run it. I told the boss I was for the job.”

“Whole time?”

“No; part time job. But Dr. Smith’s hot stuff. Naturally they don’t want a chap on the car who can’t handle a case.”

Mary poured out his tea.

“I’m glad, Tom,” she said. “I know it’s what you’ve been hankering after. I’m glad.”

So Tom Silver went up to see Dr. Smith, who was a brisk, stout fellow with the cut of a naval man, and Dr. Smith looked at Silver and liked him. He liked him very well.

Dr. Smith had a bright eye and a mischievous tongue. As a student he had been a slogging boxer, and even now he liked to give a man a punch and see how he reacted.

He questioned Tom.

“Look here, supposing you found a chap in the road with his throat cut, broken glass, and bleeding like hell, what would you do?”

Tom stood like a man on parade.

“Put my fingers to the wound, sir, and try to get hold of the bleeding point.”

“You would. And supposing you found a fellow lying beside the road, after an accident, what would you do first?”

“Look at him, sir.”

“Look at him?”

“See if I could spot anything before messing him about.”

Dr. Smith laughed.

“Who taught you that?”

“Well, when an engine has chucked up, sir; you have a look round before getting out a spanner. Besides, I’m not raw to the job.”

Dr. Smith’s glance said: “You’ll do. You’ll do damned well.”

And Tom Silver went back to his wife and sat by the fire with her and looked happy.

Tom Silver was very proud of the new ambulance. It had a cream-coloured body, black wings, and a red cross on the side panels, and he cherished it as a man cherishes his first car. But more so, for this ambulance symbolized to Silver his passion to serve; and, in serving, to express that something in himself which makes man imagine God. This was no mere handling of cold steel, but a task into which compassion entered, and in helping the sick and the injured the soul of Tom Silver was satisfied.

There were other men who did not understand this. They said: “Old Tom’s got a nerve. No sort of bloody mess seems to put the wind up him. He’s a hard nut.”

But Tom Silver was anything but hard; he was gentle. His urge to help was so strong that he did not flinch or hesitate. And as his confidence grew his pride in his job grew with it. He knew that he could help those who were helpless.

One winter morning, when the wet pavements had been iced by a sudden frost, someone slipped and broke a leg. It happened just outside the post-office, and at an hour when all the doctors were out on their rounds. Tom was sent for, and with a police constable to help him he set the broken leg, and carried the patient off in the ambulance.

Dr. Smith, intercepted somewhere on his round by a telephone message, drove down to the hospital, and seeing Silver afterwards, asked him a question.

“Was that your job, Tom?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Silver went pink under his brown skin, and that flush remained with him all the morning. He carried the warmth of it back to Mary at the dinner hour, and it helped to add savour to Irish stew.

“That sort of thing makes a job seem worth while, mother.”

And Mary knew that her man was finding life good.

Meanwhile Malton grew and flourished amazingly; and its citizens, confronted with the inadequacy of a ten-bed cottage hospital, decided that Malton must step into the line of progress. Dr. Smith blew hither and thither like a stout breeze. Money was promised, fêtes organized, beds endowed. And so it came about that a new hospital was planned and put into being, and Tom Silver watched it grow. He had given his guinea; but he felt that there was more of him than twenty-one shillings in that handsome, red brick building.

It was to be so, for it had been decided by the committee that the new hospital should have a motor-ambulance, and a driver permanently attached to it, and Tom Silver was offered the post.

Old Green was inclined to growl about it. He did not want to part with his prize mechanic. He tackled Tom.

“I’ll make it worth your while to stay on.”

Tom looked embarrassed.

“It’s very good of you, sir, but I’ve got to go. It isn’t that I’m not well satisfied here.”

“You’ll be dropping good money, and the chance of a share. I’ll give you a day to think it over.”

Tom went home and put it to his wife.

“I shall be dropping fifteen bob a week, mother.”

“Well, drop them, my dear.”

He crossed over to where she was sitting and kissed her.

“You always were a great little woman. My heart’s in the job.”

Two more years passed, and Tom Silver was very much a person. He had a local reputation. Other men said: “There goes old Tom in his bloody old bus.” But it was said kindly, for Tom and his sanguinary vehicle were realities in the life of Malton and the neighbourhood. He was something of an autocrat: no one else was allowed to touch his ambulance; the blankets had to be just so, and the stretchers spotless. When Tom had to collect a case from a cottage he was addressed as “Mr. Silver,” and there is no doubt that Tom was considered to be as much a public institution as the local police inspector, or the clerk to the Urban District Council.

Well-to-do cases sometimes offered Tom Silver tips. He accepted tips; he passed them on to Mary, so that there should be less chance of her missing those fifteen shillings.

One foggy day in November, about two o clock in the afternoon, the ambulance was rung for. The hospital porter who took the message, dashed out to warn Tom.

Station bus had a smash on Tipsy Hill.—Urgent.

Tom knew those station buses, clattering, ramshackle, go-as-you-please crates of glass and tin that careered up and down to and from Malton station. Often he had cursed those buses and their drivers, but the strangest thing of all was that he did not remember that Mary was going over to Telford market to shop, and that she had taken one of those buses to the station. He just forgot, or his job and its urgency left a blind spot in his mind. He had his ambulance out and on the road in less than a minute after the porter had warned him.

He got to the place before the doctors. In the fog he saw a row of fir trees, and one of those tin-pot buses with its silly wheels in the air half in and half out of a clump of furze, and round it a little group of people. He sprang down; he elbowed through.

“Anybody hurt?”

Someone stared him in the face. And then he heard a voice, a little, moaning voice: “I want my Tom. Will someone fetch my Tom.”

Silver saw her lying there on the grass; two men were kneeling, and one of them was fumbling with a handkerchief. The handkerchief was all red, so were the man’s hands, and he had the flurried, helpless air of a fellow who was frightened.

“She’s bleeding like—— I can’t—— Where are the doctors?”

Silver was down on his knees. He had edged the other man aside.

“It’s all right, mother; I’m here.”

But within him there was terror, such fear as he had never known. He remembered afterwards that his hands had felt paralysed until the warm blood had touched them, and they had seemed to become alive. They were him: the man, Tom Silver. Afterwards, his lower lip showed red where he had bitten it.

The doctor came. It was Smith.

“What, Tom? Good lord, man! It’s——”

Silver’s teeth showed in a kind of smile.

“All right, sir; I’ve got my fingers in it. Artery—broken glass.”

“Good. Can you hang on?”

“What do you think.”

“Right, you stick to it while we lift.”

That night Tom Silver was sitting in front of the fire in the hospital porter’s room. He had been home once to the cottage in Paradise Row to fetch some things for his wife, and to feed the cat, but he had not wanted to stay there. The cottage was too empty and strange. So he sat and waited and wondered; and the hospital seemed a silent place, and this silence was like a door that presently would open.

It did open. A face looked in—the waggish, kindly, mischievous face of Dr. Smith.

“All right, Tom. She’ll do.”

That was all. He closed the door, and Tom sat and stared at the fire. He thought: “Seems strange somehow how things happen. Just as though they were meant to happen. Maybe God means ’em to happen.”