He knew that evening that Kitty was horribly frightened from the fact
that she was horribly careful. She did not once press for assurances or
demonstrations of love. She foresaw all his needs, even his need of
silence. Delicately assiduous, she pulled his chair near the lamp for
him, lit his cigar, cut the pages of his review, even brought a
footstool for his feet, saying, when he protested, "You are tired,
darling; you must let me wait on you."
"And won't you read, or sew,--or do something, dear?" he asked, as she
drew her low chair near his.
"I only want to sit here quietly, and look at your dear face," she said.
And she sat there, quietly, not moving, not speaking, only mutely,
gently, fiercely watching him. Holland felt his hand tremble as he
turned the pages.
A full hour passed so. Accurately, punctually, he turned the pages; he
had not understood one page; and he had not once looked up.
It was almost a sense of nightmare that grew upon him, as if he were
going to sit there for ever, hearing the clock tick, hearing Kitty
breathe, knowing that he was watched. Fear, pity, and repulsion filled
his soul.
He longed at last to hear her voice. He did not dare to hear his own;
something in it would have broken and revealed him to her; but if she
would but speak the nightmare might pass. And, with the longing,
furtively, involuntarily, he glanced round at her.
Her eyes were on him, fixed, shining. How horrible;--how ridiculous.
Their gaze smote upon his heart and shattered something,--the nightmare,
or the repulsion. An hysterical sob and laugh rose in his throat. He
dropped the review, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his head
in his hands, and the tears ran down his face.
She was there, of course, poor creature, there, close, holding him,
moaning, weeping with him. He could do nothing but yield to her arms,
feel his head pillowed on her breast, and mingle his tears with hers;
but horribly, ridiculously, he knew that laughter as well as weeping
shook him.
And he heard her saying "Oh, my darling--my darling--is it because you
must leave me?"--and heard himself answering "Yes, because I must leave
you."
"You love me--so much--so much----"
"So much," he echoed.
And, her voice rising to a cry, he knew how dead, as if sounded from the
cavern, his echo had been: "You are not dying! Not now!" And it was
again only the echo he could give her: "Not now," it came. Why not now?
Why could it not be, mercifully now? When in heaven's name was he going
to die?
A strong suspicion rose in him and seemed to pulse into life with the
strong beat of his heart. How strong a beat it was; how faint and far
any whispers of the old ill. What if he were not going to die? What if
he were to go on loving Kitty for a lifetime?
And at that the mere hysterics conquered the tears; he burst out
laughing. There, on Kitty's breast, he laughed and laughed, helpless,
cruel and ridiculous.
Terrified, she tried to still him. When he lifted his face he saw that
hers was ashen, set to meet the tragedy of imminent parting. Did she
think it the death rattle?
He flung his head back from her kisses, flung himself back from her
arms. Still laughing the convulsive laugh he got up and pushed away the
chair.
"I'm tired--I'm so tired, Kitty," he said.
She sat, her hands fallen in her lap, staring at him.
"You are tired, too," he went on; "it's been a tiring day, hasn't
it?--we have been through a lot, haven't we, poor Kitty? Poor Kitty:--do
go to bed now. Will you go to bed, and leave me here to rest a little?"
"Nicholas, are you mad--what has happened to you?" she murmured,
spellbound, not daring to move.
"Why, I'm ill, you know; I'm very ill. I'm not mad--I'm only so
abominably tired. You mustn't ask questions; I can't stand it,--I can't
stand it----" And, leaning his arms on the back of the chair, resting
his face on them, with tears of sheer fatigue, tears untouched by
laughter--"I'm so tired. I want to be alone," he sobbed.
The abominable moments that followed were more full of shame for him
than any he had even known:--of shame, and of relief. He had torn his
way, with his words, out of the nest; he had fallen to the ground. He
was ashamed and horrified, yet--oh, the joy, the deep joy of being on
the ground, out in the cold, fresh world, out of the nest.
At last he heard her speak, slowly, softly, with difficulty, as though
she were afraid of angering him. "Shall I go away, Nicholas?"
His face was still hidden. "Yes, do go to bed," he answered.
"I can do nothing for you?"
"Nothing, dear."
"You are not dying?"
"No; I'm not feeling in the least ill."
"You would--send for me--if you were dying?"
"Dear Kitty,--of course."
"And----" she had risen, not daring to draw near, he knew that the
trembling voice came through tears:--"And, you love me? you love me a
little?"
"Dear Kitty--of course I love you."
It was over. She was gone. She had not asked for his good-night kiss. It
was like a sword between them.
He drew a long breath, lifting his head.
Alone. There was ecstasy in the thought.
He walked out into the garden and looked up at the stars as he walked.
There had been no stars in the nest.
He didn't think of death. There had been too much thinking of death;
that was one of the things he was tired of. Still less did he want to
think of Kitty or of himself.
He looked at the stars and thought of them, but not in any manner
emotional or poetical; he thought of astronomical facts, dry, sound,
delightful facts: he looked at the darkened trees and dim flowers and
thought of botany: the earth he trod on was full of scientific interest;
the Pierrots, the fairies and the angels--yes, the angels too--were
vanished. He hungered for impersonal interests and information.
Kitty would, indeed, have thought him mad; after the calming walk he
came in, lit a cigar and sat for hours studying.
Before Kitty was up next morning he was on his way back to London to see
the great specialist.
It was a long visit he paid, an astonishing visit, though the
astonishment, really, was not his; life had seemed deeply to have
promised something when he had ceased to think of death--when he had
ceased to want death, even. That strong beating of his heart had been a
mute forestalling. The astonishment was the good, great doctor's, and it
was reiterated with an emphasis that showed something of wounded
professional pride beneath it. It was, indeed, humiliating to have made
such a complete mistake, to have seen only one significance in symptoms
that, to far-sightedness clairvoyant enough, should have hinted, at all
events, at another, and, as a result, to have doomed to speedy death a
man now obviously as far from dying as oneself: "I can't forgive myself
for robbing you of a month of life," the doctor said. "A month with
death at the end of it can't be called a month of life."
"Very much of life," said Holland. "So much so that I hardly know yet
whether I am glad or sorry that you were mistaken."
He indeed hardly did know. All the way down in the train he was thinking
intently of the new complicated life that had been given back to him,
and of what he should do with it. At moments the thought seemed to
overwhelm him, to draw him into gulfs deeper than death's had been.
All through that month life had meant the moment only. The vistas and
horizons seemed now to open and flash and make him dizzy. How could he
take up again the burden of far ends and tangled purposes? The dust of
coming conflicts seemed to rise to his nostrils. Life was perilous and
appalling in its fluctuating immensity.
But, with all the disillusion and irony of his new experience, with all
the unwholesome languor that had unstrung his will, some deeper wisdom,
also, had been given him. He could turn from the nightmare vision that
saw time as eternity.
The walk in the night had brought a message. He could not say it, nor
see it clearly, but the sense of its presence was like the coolness and
freshness of wings fanning away fevers and nightmare. Somewhere there it
hovered, the significance of the message, somewhere in those allied yet
contrasted thoughts of eternity and time.
There had been his mistake, his and Kitty's, the mistake that had meant
irony and lassitude and corruption. To heap all time into the moment, to
make a false eternity of it, was to arrest something, to stop blood from
flowing, thought from growing, was to create a nightmare distortion, a
monstrous, ballooned travesty of the eternity that, in moving life,
could never be more, could never be less, than the ideal life sought
unceasingly.
As for Paradise, what more grotesque illusion than to see it with walls
around it, what more piteous dream than to feel it narrowed to a nest?