New Grub Street (66 page)

Again an interval of unconsciousness, brought to an end by that
aching in his side. He breathed very quickly; could not help doing
so. He had never felt so ill as this, never. Was it not near
morning?

Then he dreamt. He was at Patras, was stepping into a boat to be
rowed out to the steamer which would bear him away from Greece. A
magnificent night, though at the end of December; a sky of deep
blue, thick set with stars. No sound but the steady splash of the
oars, or perhaps a voice from one of the many vessels that lay
anchored in the harbour, each showing its lantern-gleams. The water
was as deep a blue as the sky, and sparkled with reflected
radiance.

And now he stood on deck in the light of early morning.
Southward lay the Ionian Islands; he looked for Ithaca, and grieved
that it had been passed in the hours of darkness. But the nearest
point of the main shore was a rocky promontory; it reminded him
that in these waters was fought the battle of Actium.

The glory vanished. He lay once more a sick man in a hired
chamber, longing for the dull English dawn.

At eight o'clock came the doctor. He would allow only a word or
two to be uttered, and his visit was brief. Reardon was chiefly
anxious to have news of the child, but for this he would have to
wait.

At ten Amy entered the bedroom. Reardon could not raise himself,
but he stretched out his hand and took hers, and gazed eagerly at
her. She must have been weeping, he felt sure of that, and there
was an expression on her face such as he had never seen there.

'How is Willie?'

'Better, dear; much better.'

He still searched her face.

'Ought you to leave him?'

'Hush! You mustn't speak.'

Tears broke from her eyes, and Reardon had the conviction that
the child was dead.

'The truth, Amy!'

She threw herself on her knees by the bedside, and pressed her
wet cheek against his hand.

'I am come to nurse you, dear husband,' she said a moment after,
standing up again and kissing his forehead. 'I have only you
now.'

His heart sank, and for a moment so great a terror was upon him
that he closed his eyes and seemed to pass into utter darkness. But
those last words of hers repeated themselves in his mind, and at
length they brought a deep solace. Poor little Willie had been the
cause of the first coldness between him and Amy; her love for him
had given place to a mother's love for the child. Now it would be
as in the first days of their marriage; they would again be all in
all to each other.

'You oughtn't to have come, feeling so ill,' she said to him.
'You should have let me know, dear.'

He smiled and kissed her hand.

'And you kept the truth from me last night, in kindness.'

She checked herself, knowing that agitation must be harmful to
him. She had hoped to conceal the child's death, but the effort was
too much for her overstrung nerves. And indeed it was only possible
for her to remain an hour or two by this sick-bed, for she was
exhausted by her night of watching, and the sudden agony with which
it had concluded. Shortly after Amy's departure, a professional
nurse came to attend upon what the doctor had privately
characterised as a very grave case.

By the evening its gravity was in no respect diminished. The
sufferer had ceased to cough and to make restless movements, and
had become lethargic; later, he spoke deliriously, or rather
muttered, for his words were seldom intelligible. Amy had returned
to the room at four o'clock, and remained till far into the night;
she was physically exhausted, and could do little but sit in a
chair by the bedside and shed silent tears, or gaze at vacancy in
the woe of her sudden desolation. Telegrams had been exchanged with
her mother, who was to arrive in Brighton to-morrow morning; the
child's funeral would probably be on the third day from this.

When she rose to go away for the night, leaving the nurse in
attendance, Reardon seemed to lie in a state of unconsciousness,
but just as she was turning from the bed, he opened his eyes and
pronounced her name.

'I am here, Edwin,' she answered, bending over him.

'Will you let Biffen know?' he said in low but very clear
tones.

'That you are ill dear? I will write at once, or telegraph, if
you like. What is his address?'

He had closed his eyes again, and there came no reply. Amy
repeated her question twice; she was turning from him in
hopelessness when his voice became audible.

'I can't remember his new address. I know it, but I can't
remember.'

She had to leave him thus.

The next day his breathing was so harassed that he had to be
raised against pillows. But throughout the hours of daylight his
mind was clear, and from time to time he whispered words of
tenderness in reply to Amy's look. He never willingly relinquished
her hand, and repeatedly he pressed it against his cheek or lips.
Vainly he still endeavoured to recall his friend's address.

'Couldn't Mr Carter discover it for you?' Amy asked.

'Perhaps. You might try.'

She would have suggested applying to Jasper Milvain, but that
name must not be mentioned. Whelpdale, also, would perchance know
where Biffen lived, but Whelpdale's address he had also
forgotten.

At night there were long periods of delirium; not mere confused
muttering, but continuous talk which the listeners could follow
perfectly.

For the most part the sufferer's mind was occupied with revival
of the distress he had undergone whilst making those last efforts
to write something worthy of himself. Amy's heart was wrung as she
heard him living through that time of supreme misery—misery which
she might have done so much to alleviate, had not selfish fears and
irritated pride caused her to draw further and further from him.
Hers was the kind of penitence which is forced by sheer stress of
circumstances on a nature which resents any form of humiliation;
she could not abandon herself to unreserved grief for what she had
done or omitted, and the sense of this defect made a great part of
her affliction. When her husband lay in mute lethargy, she thought
only of her dead child, and mourned the loss; but his delirious
utterances constrained her to break from that bittersweet
preoccupation, to confuse her mourning with self-reproach and with
fears.

Though unconsciously, he was addressing her: 'I can do no more,
Amy. My brain seems to be worn out; I can't compose, I can't even
think. Look! I have been sitting here for hours, and I have done
only that little bit, half a dozen lines. Such poor stuff too! I
should burn it, only I can't afford. I must do my regular quantity
every day, no matter what it is.'

The nurse, who was present when he talked in this way, looked to
Amy for an explanation.

'My husband is an author,' Amy answered. 'Not long ago he was
obliged to write when he was ill and ought to have been
resting.'

'I always thought it must be hard work writing books,' said the
nurse with a shake of her head.

'You don't understand me,' the voice pursued, dreadful as a
voice always is when speaking independently of the will. 'You think
I am only a poor creature, because I can do nothing better than
this. If only I had money enough to rest for a year or two, you
should see. Just because I have no money I must sink to this
degradation. And I am losing you as well; you don't love me!'

He began to moan in anguish.

But a happy change presently came over his dreaming. He fell
into animated description of his experiences in Greece and Italy,
and after talking for a long time, he turned his head and said in a
perfectly natural tone:

'Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?'

She believed he spoke consciously, and replied:

'You must take me with you, Edwin.'

He paid no attention to this remark, but went on with the same
deceptive accent.

'He deserves a holiday after nearly getting burnt to death to
save his novel. Imagine the old fellow plunging headlong into the
flames to rescue his manuscript! Don't say that authors can't be
heroic!'

And he laughed gaily.

Another morning broke. It was possible, said the doctors (a
second had been summoned), that a crisis which drew near might
bring the favourable turn; but Amy formed her own opinion from the
way in which the nurse expressed herself. She felt sure that the
gravest fears were entertained. Before noon Reardon awoke from what
had seemed natural sleep—save for the rapid breathing—and of a
sudden recollected the number of the house in Cleveland Street at
which Biffen was now living. He uttered it without explanation. Amy
at once conjectured his meaning, and as soon as her surmise was
confirmed she despatched a telegram to her husband's friend.

That evening, as Amy was on the point of returning to the
sick-room after having dined at her friend's house, it was
announced that a gentleman named Biffen wished to see her. She
found him in the dining-room, and, even amid her distress, it was a
satisfaction to her that he presented a far more conventional
appearance than in the old days. All the garments he wore, even his
hat, gloves, and boots, were new; a surprising state of things,
explained by the fact of his commercial brother having sent him a
present of ten pounds, a practical expression of sympathy with him
in his recent calamity. Biffen could not speak; he looked with
alarm at Amy's pallid face. In a few words she told him of
Reardon's condition.

'I feared this,' he replied under his breath. 'He was ill when I
saw him off at London Bridge. But Willie is better, I trust?'

Amy tried to answer, but tears filled her eyes and her head
drooped. Harold was overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and
dread held him motionless.

They conversed brokenly for a few minutes, then left the house,
Biffen carrying the hand-bag with which he had travelled hither.
When they reached the hotel he waited apart until it was
ascertained whether he could enter the sick-room. Amy rejoined him
and said with a faint smile:

'He is conscious, and was very glad to hear that you had come.
But don't let him try to speak much.'

The change that had come over his friend's countenance was to
Harold, of course, far more gravely impressive than to those who
had watched at the bedside. In the drawn features, large sunken
eyes, thin and discoloured lips, it seemed to him that he read too
surely the presage of doom. After holding the shrunken hand for a
moment he was convulsed with an agonising sob, and had to turn
away.

Amy saw that her husband wished to speak to her; she bent over
him.

'Ask him to stay, dear. Give him a room in the hotel.'

'I will.'

Biffen sat down by the bedside, and remained for half an hour.
His friend inquired whether he had yet heard about the novel; the
answer was a shake of the head. When he rose, Reardon signed to him
to bend down, and whispered:

'It doesn't matter what happens; she is mine again.'

The next day was very cold, but a blue sky gleamed over land and
sea. The drives and promenades were thronged with people in
exuberant health and spirits. Biffen regarded this spectacle with
resentful scorn; at another time it would have moved him merely to
mirth, but not even the sound of the breakers when he had wandered
as far as possible from human contact could help him to think with
resignation of the injustice which triumphs so flagrantly in the
destinies of men. Towards Amy he had no shadow of unkindness; the
sight of her in tears had impressed him as profoundly, in another
way, as that of his friend's wasted features. She and Reardon were
again one, and his love for them both was stronger than any emotion
of tenderness he had ever known.

In the afternoon he again sat by the bedside. Every symptom of
the sufferer's condition pointed to an approaching end: a face that
had grown cadaverous, livid lips, breath drawn in hurrying gasps.
Harold despaired of another look of recognition. But as he sat with
his forehead resting on his hand Amy touched him; Reardon had
turned his face in their direction, and with a conscious gaze.

'I shall never go with you to Greece,' he said distinctly.

There was silence again. Biffen did not move his eyes from the
deathly mask; in a minute or two he saw a smile soften its
lineaments, and Reardon again spoke:

'How often you and I have quoted it!—"We are such stuff as
dreams are made on, and our—"'

The remaining words were indistinguishable, and, as if the
effort of utterance had exhausted him, his eyes closed, and he sank
into lethargy.

When he came down from his bedroom on the following morning,
Biffen was informed that his friend had died between two and three
o'clock. At the same time he received a note in which Amy requested
him to come and see her late in the afternoon. He spent the day in
a long walk along the eastward cliffs; again the sun shone
brilliantly, and the sea was flecked with foam upon its changing
green and azure. It seemed to him that he had never before known
solitude, even through all the years of his lonely and sad
existence.

At sunset he obeyed Amy's summons. He found her calm, but with
the signs of long weeping.

'At the last moment,' she said, 'he was able to speak to me, and
you were mentioned. He wished you to have all that he has left in
his room at Islington. When I come back to London, will you take me
there and let me see the room just as when he lived in it? Let the
people in the house know what has happened, and that I am
responsible for whatever will be owing.'

Her resolve to behave composedly gave way as soon as Harold's
broken voice had replied. Hysterical sobbing made further speech
from her impossible, and Biffen, after holding her hand reverently
for a moment, left her alone.