OUT OF THE NIGHT
That evening as he sat in his wife's bedroom--the perfunctory sitting,
lasting usually about a quarter of an hour--the thought took complete
possession of him. What if he went out to the Soudan? Other fellows
were going; they could never have too many. Men dropped off there faster
than their places could be filled. And if he died, as other fellows died?
Well, death was the supreme Artist's god from the machine, the simplest
solution of all tragic difficulties.
A gentle elegiac mood stole over him. He looked on at his own death; he
saw the grave dug hastily in the hot sand; he heard the roll of the Dead
March, and the rattling of the rifles. In all probability these details
would be omitted, but they helped to glorify the dream. He was a mourner
at his own funeral, indifferent to all around him, yet voluptuously
moved. So violently did the hero and the sentimentalist unite in that
strange composite being that was Nevill Tyson.
He drew his chair a little nearer to her bed. "Molly--supposing I wanted
to go abroad again some of these days, would you very much mind?"
There was a slight quivering of the limbs under the bedclothes, but Mrs.
Nevill Tyson said nothing.
"You see, going back to Thorneytoft is out of the question for you and
me. I think we made the place a bit too hot to hold us. And you hate it,
don't you?"
She murmured some assent.
"And if I stick here doing nothing I shan't be able to stand things much
longer; I feel as if I should go off my head. I oughtn't to be doing
nothing, a great hulking fellow like me."
"No, no; it would never do. But why must you go--abroad? Aren't there
things--"
He felt that his only chance was to throw himself as it were naked on her
sympathy. "I must go--sooner or later. I can't settle--never could.
Traveling is in my blood and in my brain. I'm home-sick, Molly--home-sick
for foreign countries, that's all. I shall come back again. You don't
think I want to leave you, surely?"
He looked into her eyes; there was no reproach there, only melancholy
intelligence. She knew the things that are impossible.
"No. I think you'd rather stay with me--if you could. When shall you go?"
He turned aside. "I don't know. I mayn't go at all. I don't want to talk
about it any more."
It was hopeless to talk about it.
He had found his men, fifty brave fellows in all, ordered his outfit and
booked his passage, before he could make up his mind to break the news to
her, for there was the risk of breaking her heart too.
And now it wanted but two days before his departure.
Coming out of the War Office he met Stanistreet. They walked together as
far as Charing Cross.
"Yes," said Tyson, "the thing's done now. I'm off to the Soudan with
fifty other fellows--glorious devils--and we mean fighting this time.
It's the old field, you see, and the old enemy."
"When do you sail?"
"Wednesday--midnight. See me off?"
"Yes. It's the least I can do."
"Thanks, Stanny." He made a cut at the air with his walking-stick. "Don't
you wish you'd half my luck? You poor devils never get a chance. By Jove!
if I'd only stuck to _mine_!"
They parted. Not a word of his wife.
Stanistreet looked back over his shoulder as Tyson crossed Trafalgar
Square with the bold swinging step of a free man. He was still cutting
the air.
The packing was the worst of it. It had to be done in silence and a
guilty secrecy, for Molly was in bed again, suffering from a sort of
nervous relapse. Up to the last day Tyson was wretched, haunted by the
fear of some unforeseen calamity that might still happen and destroy his
plans. By way of guarding against it he had stuck the Steamship Company's
labels on all his luggage long ago. That seemed to make his decision
irrevocable whatever happened. But he would not be safe till he felt
water under him.
At the last minute Molly took a feverish turn, and was on no account to
be agitated. If he must go it would be better not to say Good-bye. Oh,
much better.
He went into her room. She was drowsy. Her small forehead was furrowed
with much thinking; there was a deep flush on her cheek, and her breath
came and went like sighing. He stooped over her and whispered
"Goodnight," the same as any other night. No, not quite the same, for
Molly started and trembled. He had kissed not her hands only, but her
mouth and her face.
His ship sailed at midnight, and he sailed with it. She had not stood in
his way, the little thing. When, indeed, had she ever hindered him?
Towards midnight Mrs. Wilcox and the servants were startled from
their sleep by hearing Mrs. Nevill Tyson calling "Nevill, Nevill!" They
hurried to her room; her bed was empty; the clothes were all rumpled
back as if flung off suddenly. They looked into the charred, dismantled
drawing-room, she was not there; but the door of communication, always
kept shut at night, was ajar. She must have gone through into the
dining-room. They found her there, stretched across the couch,
unconscious. The cord that had held Nevill's sword to the nail above was
lying on the floor where she had found it. She had divined his destiny.
The next day she was slightly delirious. The doctors and nurses came and
went softly, and Mrs. Wilcox brooded over the sick-room like a vast hope.
They listened now and then. She was talking about the baby, the baby that
died two years ago.
"It's very strange," said Mrs. Wilcox, "she never took much notice of the
little thing when it was alive."
The doctor said nothing to that; but he asked whether her father had
not died of consumption. He certainly had; but nobody had ever been
afraid for Molly; her lungs were always particularly strong. Yes, but the
lungs were not always attacked. Tuberculosis, like other things, follows
the line of least resistance. Her brain could never have been very
strong.--"Her brain was as strong as yours or mine, sir. You don't know;
she has had a miserable life."--Ah, any shock or strong excitement, or
any great drain on the system, was enough to bring on brain fever.
In other words, what could you expect after so much agony, so much
thinking, and the striving of that life within her life, the hope that
would have renewed the world for her--the fruit of three days and three
nights of happiness? It was a grave case, but--oh yes, while there was
life there was hope.
So they talked. But she was far away from them, lost in her dream. And in
her dream the dead child and the unborn child were one.
By night the tumult in her brain was raging like a fire. She had bad
dreams. They were full of noises. First, the hiss of a thin voice singing
from a great distance an insistent, intolerable song; then the roar of
hell, and the hissing of a thousand snakes of flame. And now a crowd of
evil faces pressed on her; they sprang up quick out of the darkness,
and then they left her alone. She was outside in the streets. It was
twilight, a dreadful twilight; and perhaps it was only a dream, for it is
always twilight in dreams. She was all in white, in her night-gown, and
it was open at the neck too. She clutched at it to hide--what was it she
wanted to hide? She had forgotten--forgotten.
But that was nothing, only a dream, and she was awake now. It was light;
it was broad daylight. Then why was she out here, in the street, in her
night-gown? She must hide herself--anywhere--down that dark alley, quick!
No, not there--there was a bundle--a dead baby.
No, no, she knew all about it now; there was a fire, and she had got up
out of her bed to save some one--to save--"Nevill! Nevill!" She must run
or she would be late. Ah, the crowd again, and those faces--all looking
at her and wondering. They were running too, they were hunting her down,
the brutes, driving her before them with pitchforks. The shame of it, the
shame of it! Who was singing that hideous song? It was about her, What
had she done? She had done nothing--nothing. She was bearing the sins of
all women, the sins of the whole world. It was swords now--sharp burning
swords, and they hurt her back--her head--Nevill!
The dream changed. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was wandering about somewhere alone,
always alone; she was walking over sand, hot like the floor of a furnace,
on and on, a terribly long way, towards something black that lay on the
very edge of the world and was now a cloud, and now a cloak, and now a
dead man.
Two people were talking about her now, and there was no sense in what
they said.
"Is there _no_ hope?" said one.
"None," said the other, "none."
There was a sound of some one crying; it seemed to last a long time, but
it was so faint she could scarcely hear it.
"It is just as well. She would have died in child-birth, or lost her
reason."
The crying sounded very far away.
It ceased. The sand drifted and fell from under her feet; she was sinking
into a whirlpool, sucked down by a great spinning darkness and by an icy
wind. She threw up her arms above her head like a dreamer awaking from
sleep. She had done with fevers and with dreams.
The doctor pushed back the soft fringe of down from her forehead. "Look,"
he said, "it is like the forehead of a child."