Part 109 (2/2)

A month or two ago he had stubbornly refused an invitation to dine with Whelpdale and other acquaintances--you remember what the occasion was--and since then the prosperous young man had not crossed his path.

'I've something to tell you,' said the a.s.sailer, taking hold of his arm. 'I'm in a tremendous state of mind, and want someone to share my delight. You can walk a short way, I hope? Not too busy with some new book?'

Biffen gave no answer, but went whither he was led.

'You are writing a new book, I suppose? Don't be discouraged, old fellow. ”Mr Bailey” will have his day yet; I know men who consider it an undoubted work of genius. What's the next to deal with?'

'I haven't decided yet,' replied Harold, merely to avoid argument. He spoke so seldom that the sound of his own voice was strange to him.

'Thinking over it, I suppose, in your usual solid way. Don't be hurried.

But I must tell you of this affair of mine. You know Dora Milvain? I have asked her to marry me, and, by the Powers! she has given me an encouraging answer. Not an actual yes, but encouraging! She's away in the Channel Islands, and I wrote--'

He talked on for a quarter of an hour. Then, with a sudden movement, the listener freed himself.

'I can't go any farther,' he said hoa.r.s.ely. 'Good-bye!'

Whelpdale was disconcerted.

'I have been boring you. That's a confounded fault of mine; I know it.'

Biffen had waved his hand, and was gone.

A week or two more would see him at the end of his money. He had no lessons now, and could not write; from his novel nothing was to be expected. He might apply again to his brother, but such dependence was unjust and unworthy. And why should he struggle to preserve a life which had no prospect but of misery?

It was in the hours following his encounter with Whelpdale that he first knew the actual desire of death, the simple longing for extinction. One must go far in suffering before the innate will-to-live is thus truly overcome; weariness of bodily anguish may induce this perversion of the instincts; less often, that despair of suppressed emotion which had fallen upon Harold. Through the night he kept his thoughts fixed on death in its aspect of repose, of eternal oblivion. And herein he had found solace.

The next night it was the same. Moving about among common needs and occupations, he knew not a moment's cessation of heart-ache, but when he lay down in the darkness a hopeful summons whispered to him. Night, which had been the worst season of his pain, had now grown friendly; it came as an antic.i.p.ation of the sleep that is everlasting.

A few more days, and he was possessed by a calm of spirit such as he had never known. His resolve was taken, not in a moment of supreme conflict, but as the result of a subtle process by which his imagination had become in love with death. Turning from contemplation of life's one rapture, he looked with the same intensity of desire to a state that had neither fear nor hope.

One afternoon he went to the Museum Reading-room, and was busy for a few minutes in consultation of a volume which he took from the shelves of medical literature. On his way homeward he entered two or three chemists' shops. Something of which he had need could be procured only in very small quant.i.ties; but repet.i.tion of his demand in different places supplied him sufficiently. When he reached his room, he emptied the contents of sundry little bottles into one larger, and put this in his pocket. Then he wrote rather a long letter, addressed to his brother at Liverpool.

It had been a beautiful day, and there wanted still a couple of hours before the warm, golden sunlight would disappear. Harold stood and looked round his room. As always, it presented a neat, orderly aspect, but his eye caught sight of a volume which stood upside down, and this fault--particularly hateful to a bookish man--he rectified. He put his blotting-pad square on the table, closed the lid of the inkstand, arranged his pens. Then he took his hat and stick, locked the door behind him, and went downstairs. At the foot he spoke to his landlady, and told her that he should not return that night. As soon as possible after leaving the house he posted his letter.

His direction was westward; walking at a steady, purposeful pace, with cheery countenance and eyes that gave sign of pleasure as often as they turned to the sun-smitten clouds, he struck across Kensington Gardens, and then on towards Fulham, where he crossed the Thames to Putney. The sun was just setting; he paused a few moments on the bridge, watching the river with a quiet smile, and enjoying the splendour of the sky.

Up Putney Hill he walked slowly; when he reached the top it was growing dark, but an unwonted effect in the atmosphere caused him to turn and look to the east. An exclamation escaped his lips, for there before him was the new-risen moon, a perfect globe, vast and red. He gazed at it for a long time.

When the daylight had entirely pa.s.sed, he went forward on to the heath, and rambled, as if idly, to a secluded part, where trees and bushes made a deep shadow under the full moon. It was still quite warm, and scarcely a breath of air moved among the reddening leaves.

Sure at length that he was remote from all observation, he pressed into a little copse, and there reclined on the gra.s.s, leaning against the stem of a tree. The moon was now hidden from him, but by looking upward he could see its light upon a long, faint cloud, and the blue of the placid sky. His mood was one of ineffable peace. Only thoughts of beautiful things came into his mind; he had reverted to an earlier period of life, when as yet no mission of literary realism had been imposed upon him, and when his pa.s.sions were still soothed by natural hope. The memory of his friend Reardon was strongly present with him, but of Amy he thought only as of that star which had just come into his vision above the edge of dark foliage--beautiful, but infinitely remote.

Recalling Reardon's voice, it brought to him those last words whispered by his dying companion. He remembered them now:

We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI. JASPER'S DELICATE CASE

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