Grief slows all the processes of time. To Anthony it might have been
weeks that he had been alone with silence in Kitty’s empty room, and yet
it was only two hours before Henry, calling to inquire for Kitty, became
aware of what had taken place.
Henry was aghast to discover that nothing had been done. He had not been
telephoned for. Anthony, though a doctor, had ignored the urgencies of
death.
Peckham, who had made tea twice, but never even knocked at Kitty’s door,
had received no instructions. Anthony remained for two hours,
“apparently,” as Henry said to himself, “brooding.”
Henry always considered time spent upon thought as “brooding,” unless it
was accompanied by paper, a writing-table, and ink; then it became
thinking.
When Anthony came down-stairs, Henry was surprised to observe no outward
change in him. He bore none of the marks of grief, and he was uninclined
to speak in a hushed voice.
Henry came forward with an outstretched hand.
“My dear fellow,” he said in a low tone, “I am shocked and distressed
beyond words.”
Of course Henry was not distressed beyond words. Words did very nicely
for him. He was, as a matter of fact, intensely relieved.
Providence had acted, as it could only occasionally be relied upon to
act, with considerable tact and promptitude.
Perhaps the promptitude was a little overdone; six weeks later,
considering the date of the marriage, would have been less startling and
no less convenient. But Henry was prepared to overlook this slight lapse
of taste on the part of the higher powers in view of the fact that they
had carried out his main intention. They had got rid of Kitty.
Henry was not, however, in the least prepared for Anthony’s saying in an
offhand tone:
“Yes, I suppose it was the best possible thing, really,” quite as if he
were answering Henry’s thoughts and not his words. Henry was sorry for
Kitty, he had been charmed by her, and he was readily sorry for those
who were capable of charming him; but the fact remained that Kitty was
not respectable and that all Ardens married respectable women. Now that
Kitty was dead, he thought it would have been better taste on Anthony’s
part not to refer to her disabilities. To admit death as a solution was,
Henry felt, a direct slur upon Kitty.
“Let’s have something to eat,” Anthony unexpectedly suggested. “Peckham,
have you got some tea hot for us?”
“Yes, sir,” said Peckham, fluttering, but justified. “It’s in the
dining-room now, sir, and an egg, if you could face it.”
“I’ll eat anything you’ve got,” said Anthony with conviction. He did not
even have to be tempted.
Henry felt a little bitterly how much more devastating grief would have
been to him. He had had his lunch two hours earlier, and he did not want
tea now; though Kitty had only been his sister-in-law.
“I thought, perhaps,” he said gravely, “I might be of use to you, my
dear fellow. There are certain things—”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Anthony, who was standing to eat his food in
a thoroughly uncomfortable, restless way by the door. “There are heaps
of things—telegrams, undertakers, the registrar. I’d be awfully obliged
if you’d do them for me. Hilton Laurence said he’d look in and help
later. I want to go out for a walk.”
“People will expect to hear from you direct,” suggested Henry, who did
not think that widowers should go for walks before the funeral.
“Sign my name, do anything you like,” said Anthony, hastily. “She hadn’t
any wishes. Will you see Costrelle for me? Don’t interrupt his bridge;
he plays between five and seven-thirty.”
“On an occasion like this—” said Henry, severely. He was going to give
up his own bridge.
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Anthony, hurriedly; “but Costrelle doesn’t
think in occasions; he won’t like being interrupted. It’s awfully good
of you, my dear old chap, to do these things for me. I think—I think I
must get out.”
“There will be certain questions which you alone can decide,” said
Henry. “When shall I expect you back?”
Anthony looked for the first time as if he was a little changed. He
fumbled perceptibly for an answer.
“I don’t know what time it is now,” he said jerkily, and without waiting
for Henry to tell him he walked out into the hall, shutting the door
after him.
The day had grown unexpectedly mild and sunny. Anthony walked listlessly
and without any definite direction. He wanted to get to some open space
where people would cease to pour past him like part of a great
procession. He found himself at last by the river. The light lay faint
and thin over its gray waters, gleaming with a pale, transparent silver
upon the distant towers of Westminster. The huddled, low waterside
houses looked full of the stubborn comfort and unconsciousness of
England. Westminster brooded high and bright above a flock of little,
ugly dwelling-places. There was no background to the ancient river but
the smoke from factory chimneys and the low, dim sky.
Anthony was not aware of his grief, but he was aware of a great desire,
a compulsion of his inner being, to get away from all pity and
arrangements. He wanted to place between himself and Kitty’s death a
host of less immediate objects.
The towers of Westminster rested him, the rocking motion of the motor
buses, passing like broad-sided ships down the stream of the open
thoroughfares, lulled him. The slow pressure of the river upon its
unhurrying journey to the sea placed a merciful image between his
thoughts and Kitty.
Time stood still. The hours hung on Anthony heavily with the weight of
years.
As he leaned over the bridge and watched the long, slow ripples pass his
thoughts unnumbered, he felt eternity. The sun sank into the misty west;
there was a faint deepening of color and light along the Embankment.
Five white swans rose on massive wings high above Battersea Bridge; they
slipped dazzlingly across a path of light into the darkening sky, taking
the day with them.
Twilight slipped gray and blue in long lanes between the shadowy houses;
the lights at the street corners had misty haloes round them, like a
cloud-encircled, opal moon.
Anthony became aware of an overwhelming physical fatigue; it was so
intense that, despite the chill of the falling night, he sank with
relief on to one of the benches. It was empty, for it was too early for
the prowlers of the night to seek their rest there, and too late for the
belated children playing their last games.
Anthony could no longer see the river, but he was aware of it moving
quietly beside him in the dark. It seemed to help his mind to turn
slowly and without pain back to the thought of Kitty. He reflected what
a wonderful and easy chance his life would afford a cynic for laughter.
Only a few years ago his career had been so shapely and definite a fact.
He knew what he meant to do, and he had the means and the ability with
which to do it. He was as sure of his surgical powers and his unshakable
nerve as of the continuity of bread upon his table. He had no bad
habits, no overmastering temptations. His life was a clear and steadfast
plan, and in due time, with substantial success behind him and ripened
ambition for the future, he meant to seek and find a fitting mate.
He laughed out suddenly into the dark. He was not that sane man now,
with his iron-like securities. He had lost the rapier-like decision of
the unbroken. His mind saw many issues, his will flickered at a choice
of opportunities, a long day’s work unstrung him like a delicate girl.
His memory was uncertain, his clean slate was written across with
undecipherable, lost activities. He was not sure of anything at all.
And his love, that reserved and whole-hearted quality on which Anthony
meant to found a home, had been called out and wasted on a light woman,
happily dead. Destiny had applauded him for his equipment and then
destroyed it.
And yet he was aware, sitting there in the dark and cold, with his
weaknesses and his great grief, that he would not for anything in the
world be the old Anthony, secure and hidebound, moving with blind
assurance among infinite things. The old Anthony had been a master of
material facts; he had not been a servant of reality. Broken and twisted
and sore, unsure of his aims, diffident of his remaining powers, Anthony
knew that there was nothing in him that reserved itself for its own
purposes.
He could meet all that came with his naked new possession. The old
Anthony had given his faculties only to his work; he himself remained
aloof, fastidious, and unused. He had been imprisoned in a fortress of
privilege.
An unseen hand had plucked him out of it, and plunged him into a
fettered, dreadful intimacy with miserable human beings, so that he
should learn the reality of pain. Pain had taught Anthony his own
insignificance and broken a little of his isolation away from him.
Anthony had given more of himself than he knew to his fellow-prisoners,
but he had not given all. His sympathies were touched and widened, but
his heart remained intact. He could still blame men for their
weaknesses.
He thought of his return to England, and how its beauty and serenity had
rebuilt him. But he was not the same again; there was more that was
accessible in him, or he would never have known Kitty.
She would have been to him either what she intended to be, a few weeks’
amusement, or perhaps merely a fresh peg upon which to hang his measured
morality. It would have been so easy for the old Anthony to have
dispensed with Kitty. But his new responsiveness to pain had saved him
from this ignoble security. Her need had called to him, and his whole
being had rushed out to answer it.
Kitty had taken from him one by one his old immunities. She had shaken
him with a passion so vivid that he saw his code as a little thing, and
she had roused in him a tenderness that was stronger than any
self-control. She had not done these things of a set purpose; she had no
purposes. She was one of the instruments of life.
She could not give him the completeness of love because love’s
completeness had been defaced in her, but out of the shattered gifts and
images of their hours together she had left him one changeless memory:
Kitty had never blamed or judged a human soul.
From her father to the vicar’s wife she absolved them all. All women
were her natural enemies before their faces, but behind their backs she
was their indignant advocate. She could even stand up for the
self-righteous with a whimsical admiration. Anthony remembered with a
pang of shame how easily and quickly she had let him off his own
rigidities.
He had felt his rigidity was his strength. Even now he was aware of the
loss of it, with a certain sense of formidable exposure; but he was no
longer afraid of the exposure.
He did not want to get out of anything until he had taken with him the
comradeship of what was in it.
Kitty’s little, narrow life was like the foam of a wave. It had been
lived for pleasure; and, miscarried by the wind, had broken itself
against the iron rocks of life.
Anthony’s wider being was like the force and purpose of the waters
beneath; but for a moment the powerless foam had lit it onward and
enlightened its purposes.
Kitty had not changed the direction of Anthony’s life, but she had
changed the angle of his vision. She had told him that she was only an
atom of dust dancing in a sunbeam, and that when the light went, there
would be nothing left of her but dust. It seemed to Anthony that it was
the dust that had gone, and left him with the memory of light.
A cold, wet wind rose from the river, cutting against his weariness. He
shivered, rose, and set his face toward home.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.
[The end of _A Servant of Reality_ by Phyllis Bottome]