Part 30 (2/2)

”What should I do with myself now?” I questioned, standing idly in the hot, dusty London street. It was too early for me to go to bed, and I knew the pater would have turned in before I got back. I sauntered down two streets, and then drove to the Club. In the card-room I found d.i.c.k and two other fellows, one of whom was a stranger to me. As I made the convenient fourth, we played a rubber at whist. After this it seemed generally voted that the weather was too fatiguing for the strain of whist, and an adjournment was made to an open window, chairs, and drinks. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, and I sat listening fitfully to the other men's gossip. Sometimes a sentence came to me; at one moment I was listening without hearing, the next I was hearing without listening. At last the phrase struck me--”Yes; dying horribly, like a rat of phosphorus.”

I looked across to the man sitting opposite me. He was a young fellow, and I had gathered from to-night's conversation that he was studying medicine.

”Who is that?” I asked, with a sort of idle curiosity.

”Oh, only a fellow in the hospital,” he answered with a cigarette between his teeth. ”A paying patient. D. T., you know. I saw him last night in the ward. Shan't see him there to-morrow night, I expect,” he added with a laugh, bringing down his rocking, tiled chair on its four legs, and determining at last to light the cigarette.

”You wanted to see the death, I thought,” remarked d.i.c.k.

”I did; but, hang it, the fellow's been dying so long, my curiosity's worn out. However, I may come in for the show to-morrow morning if I am down at the hospital in time.”

There was rather a cold silence after this remark, which made the young fellow look up and then add, hastily.--

”He's such an awful coward, you know, one can't feel much sympathy for him. 'Oh, it's so hard to die,' he goes on, 'at twenty-three! Can nothing save me? It seems so hard at twenty-three!' Well, I suppose no one does like going out, but still if a fellow knows he's got to”--

He paused. No one spoke for the minute, and then he went on,--

”Brought it on himself, too; I never saw a fellow so thoroughly knocked out! And now he does nothing but whine over it--'Oh, I'd do so differently if I had my time over again!' I said to him last night, 'Now, look here, Johnson, why don't you try and console yourself with thinking you enjoyed life at the time?'”

”Did you say Johnson?” I asked. ”What is his Christian name?”

”Howard,” he answered.

The two other men started, and looked at me. The speaker glanced at them, and then added hastily to me,--

”Do you know him?”

”Slightly,” I answered, coldly.

He coloured.

”I am sorry if I”--

”Not at all,” I said. ”All that concerns him is quite a matter of indifference to me.”

There was a pause, and then, by tacit mutual consent, the topic was not renewed. The men spoke of other things, and I sat in silence.

So Howard had killed himself--was dying in this way, like a poisoned rat. It was, as I had said, a matter of indifference to me. I did not feel one pulse of sorrow or regret. It is strange how completely and entirely these emotions of love, affection, friends.h.i.+p, hate expire, and leave no trace of their past existence.

I hear and read much of ”lingering memories,” ”clinging remembrance,”

but for me the tender track of a past affection does not exist. He had, as I had told him, cut out our friends.h.i.+p by the roots, and I heard now of his approaching death as that of an absolute stranger.

I wondered idly where was that softening influence, and on what sort of natures did it act, that is supposed to survive all dead attachments, all broken friends.h.i.+ps. Certainly, according to tradition, it seemed as if I ought now to feel some sort of emotion at hearing the fate of a man who had once held so large a share of my affections.

There ought to have been some touch of sentimental sadness in my thoughts, some recollections of first days together, and so on. But there was none. By that night's work he had made himself as nothing to me henceforward.

I wondered in a desultory way whether the sudden complete annihilation of an emotion in the human heart in this way showed the hardness of the heart, or the magnitude of the offence, or the poor quality of the emotion itself; and then I was roused by d.i.c.k's voice saying Good-night to the other fellows, and he and I were left by the window alone.

<script>