Laura Gunning was writing a letter to Tanqueray to congratulate him on
his book and to explain why she had not come to his birthday party. It
was simply impossible to get off now. Papa, she said, couldn't be left
for five minutes, not even with the morning paper.
It was frightfully hard work getting all this into any intelligible form
of words; getting it down at all was difficult. For the last hour she
had been sitting there, starting and trembling at each rustle of the
paper. Mr. Gunning could not settle down to reading now. He turned his
paper over and over again in the vain search for distraction; he divided
it into parts and became entangled in them; now he would cast them from
him and trample them under his feet; and now they would be flapping
about his head; he would be covered and utterly concealed in newspaper.
It was a perpetual wind of newspaper, now high, now low; small, creeping
sounds that rose to a crescendo; rushing, ripping, shrieking sounds of
agitated newspaper, lacerating Laura's nerves, and murderous to the
rhythm of her prose.
Tears fell from Laura's eyes as she wrote; they dropped, disfiguring her
letter. Her head ached. It was always aching now. And when she tried to
write she felt as if she were weaving string out of the grey matter of
her brain, with the thread breaking all the time.
At four o'clock she rose wearily and began to get tea ready. Nina was
coming to tea that afternoon. It was something to look forward to,
something that would stave off the pressure and the pain.
Her tether had stretched; it had given her inches; but this was the end
of it. She did not see, herself, now, any more than Nina or Jane or
Tanqueray saw, how she was to go on. She did not know how, for
instance, she was to face the terrible question of finance. For the last
six months she had not written any paragraphs. Even if Papa had not made
it impossible for her to write them, her head and all the ideas in it
were giving out. She had lost her job. She was living precariously on
translation, which could be done, she maintained, when you hadn't any
head at all. She would get twenty pounds for it, and there would be
forty, perhaps, for the book which she had been sitting up to write. She
did not know where the money for next year was coming from; and there
were the doctor and the chemist now to pay for poor Papa.
The doctor and the chemist had not cured him of his dreams. The dreams
were incessant, and they were more horrid than they had ever been. She
hadn't slept for fear of the opening of the door, and the sound of the
slow feet shuffling to her bedside, and the face that took on more and
more the likeness of the horrors that he dreamed.
The dreams, she had gathered, were a very bad sign. She had been told
that she must be on the look-out; she must not leave him. She knew what
that meant. Her fear might take shape any day or any night.
Last night she had moved her bed into his room.
The doctor had looked grave when she told him what she had done. There
should be, he said, an attendant for the night. To be on the look-out
night and day were too much for any woman. She should husband her
strength, for she would want it. She was in for a very long strain. For
the old man's bodily health was marvellous. He might last like that for
another ten years, and, with care, for longer.
Nina had been drawn apart into the inner room to receive this account of
Mr. Gunning. She was shocked by the change she found in her little
friend. The Kiddy was very thin. Her pretty, slender neck was wasted,
and her childlike wrists were flattened to the bone. A sallow tint was
staining her whiteness. Her hair no longer waved in its low curves; it
fell flat and limp from the parting. Her eyes, strained, fixed in their
fear, showed a rim of white. Her mouth was set tight in defiance of her
fear. Nina noticed that there was a faint, sagging mark on either side
of it.
"Kiddy," she said, "how _will_ you----?"
"I don't know. My brain's all woolly and it won't think."
Laura closed her eyes; a way she had when she faced terror.
"Nina, it was horrible yesterday. I caught myself wishing----Oh no, I
don't; I didn't; I couldn't; it was something else, not me. It couldn't
have been me, could it?"
"No, Kiddy, of course it couldn't."
"I don't know. I feel sometimes as if I could be awful. Yesterday, I did
a cruel thing to him. I took his newspaper away from him."
She stared, agonized, as if her words were being wrenched from her with
each turn of a rack.
"I hid it. And he cried, Nina, he cried."
Her sad eyes fastened on Nina's; they clung, straining at the hope they
saw in Nina's pity.
"I can't think how I did it. I couldn't stand it, you know--the
rustling."
"Kiddy," said Nina, "you're going to pieces."
Laura shook her head. "Oh no. If I could have peace; if I could only
have peace, for three days."
"You must have it. You must go away."
"How can I go and leave him?"
"Tank's wife would come."
"Three days." It seemed as if she were considering it, as if her mind,
drowning, snatched at that straw.
She let it go. "No. It's no use going away. It would make no
difference."
She turned her face from Nina. "In some ways," she said, "it's a good
thing I've got Papa to think of."
Nina was silent. She knew what Laura meant.