She turned off the electric light and shut her eyes and lay thinking. The
violent motion of the express prolonged itself in a ghostly vibration,
rocking the bed. In still space, unshaken by this tremor, she could see
the other rooms, the quiet, beautiful rooms.
I wonder how Mamma and Dorsy are getting on.... I'm not going to think
about Mamma. It isn't fair to Richard. I shan't think about anybody but
Richard for this fortnight. One evening of it's gone already. It might
have lasted quite another hour if he hadn't got up and gone away so
suddenly. What a fool I was to let him think I was tired.
There will be thirteen evenings more. Thirteen. You can stretch time out
by doing a lot of things in it; doing something different every hour.
When you're with Richard every minute's different from the last, and he
brings you the next all bright and new.
Heaven would be like that. Imagine an eternity of heaven; being with
Richard for ever and ever. But nobody ever did imagine an eternity of
heaven. People only talk about it because they can't imagine it. What
they mean is that if they had one minute of it they would remember that
for ever and ever.
* * * * *
This is Richard's life. This is what I'd have taken from him if I'd let
him marry me.
I daren't even think what it would have been like if I'd tried to mix up
Mamma and Richard in the same house.... And poor little Mamma in a
strange place with nothing about it that she could remember, going up and
down in it, trying to get at me, and looking reproachful and disapproving
all the time. She'd have to be shut in her own rooms because Richard
wouldn't have her in his. Sitting up waiting to be read aloud to and
played halma with when Richard wanted me. Saying the same things over and
over again. Sighing.
Richard would go off his head if he heard Mamma sigh.
He wants to be by himself the whole time, "working like blazes." He likes
to feel that the very servants are battened down in the basement so that
he doesn't know they're there. He couldn't stand Tiedeman and Peters if
they weren't doing the same thing. Tiedeman working like blazes in the
flat above him and Peters working like blazes in the flat below.
Richard slept in this room last night. He will sleep in it again when I'm
gone.
She switched the light on to look at it for another second: the
privet-white panelled cabin, the small wine-coloured chest of drawers,
the small golden-brown wardrobe, shining.
My hat's in that wardrobe, lying on Richard's waistcoat, fast asleep.
If Tiedeman's flat's up there, that's Richard walking up and down over my
head.... If it rains there'll be a row on the skylight and he won't
sleep. He isn't sleeping now.