New Year's night. She was lying awake in her white cell.
She hated Maurice Jourdain. His wearily searching eyes made her restless.
His man's voice made her restless with its questions. "Do you know what
it will be like--afterwards?" "Do you really want me?"
She didn't want him. But she wanted Somebody. Somebody. Somebody. He had
left her with this ungovernable want.
Somebody. If you lay very still and shut your eyes he would come to you.
You would see him. You knew what he was like. He had Jimmy's body and
Jimmy's face, and Mark's ways. He had the soul of Shelley and the mind of
Spinoza and Immanuel Kant.
They talked to each other. Her reverie ran first into long, fascinating
conversations about Space and Time and the Thing-in-itself, and the
Transcendental Ego. He could tell you whether you were right or wrong;
whether Substance and the Thing-in-itself were the same thing or
different.
"Die--If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek." He wrote that.
He wrote all Shelley's poems except the bad ones. He wrote Swinburne's
_Atalanta in Calydon_. He could understand your wanting to know what the
Thing-in-itself was. If by dying to-morrow, to-night, this minute, you
could know what it was, you would be glad to die. Wouldn't you?
The world was built up in Space and Time. Time and Space were forms of
thought--ways of thinking. If there was thinking there would be a
thinker. Supposing--supposing the Transcendental Ego was the
Thing-in-itself?
That was _his_ idea. She was content to let him have the best ones. You
could keep him going for quite a long time that way before you got tired.
The nicest way of all, though, was not to be yourself, but to be him; to
live his exciting, adventurous, dangerous life. Then you could raise an
army and free Ireland from the English, and Armenia from the Turks. You
could go away to beautiful golden cities, melting in sunshine. You could
sail in the China Sea; you could get into Central Africa among savage
people with queer, bloody gods. You could find out all sorts of things.
You were he, and at the same time you were yourself, going about with
him. You loved him with a passionate, self-immolating love. There wasn't
room for both of you on the raft, you sat cramped up, huddled together.
Not enough hard tack. While he was sleeping you slipped off. A shark got
you. It had a face like Dr. Charles. The lunatic was running after him
like mad, with a revolver. You ran like mad. Morfe Bridge. When he raised
his arm you jerked it up and the revolver went off into the air. The fire
was between his bed and the door. It curled and broke along the floor
like surf. You waded through it. You picked him up and carried him out as
Sister Dora carried the corpses with the small-pox. A screw loose
somewhere. A tap turned on. Your mind dribbled imbecilities.