Part 66 (2/2)

After the doctor had gone Andrew came in, warm and rosy from his bath.

He had had a glorious day on the beach with Wullie; he scrambled into Jean's arms to be carried to bed, because they had forgotten his slippers and his feet were cold.

”Night, night, mummy,” he said. ”Inve morning I shan't wake you up, 'cos I'm going to see the boats come in at five! An' Jean's putting oatcake in my pocket--like a man--!”

He went off, laughing. After he was in bed, she heard him singing for a long time until his voice droned away to drowsiness.

She lay silent and motionless. Aunt Janet came in. She took up the hypodermic syringe impa.s.sively. Marcella shook her head.

”No. I want to think to-night. Louis's coming on Monday. I've to think of some way of not letting him know how ill I am, because of his work,”

she said. ”But will you put pencil and paper where I can get it?”

”You'll not be writing letters to-night, Marcella?” said Aunt Janet.

”No. I'm going to make my will,” she laughed. ”I've only Louis and Andrew to leave--”

Her aunt kissed her and turned away. Through the open window came the soft roar of the sea. It was very still to-night; the moon shone across it, but that she could not see: she had seen it so often that it was there in her imagination. On Ben Grief the shadows lay inky in the silver light. She looked at the syringe, and then at the tabloids, and sighed a little; the pain was a thing tearing and burning; several times she tried to begin to write and had to lie back with closed eyes floating away on a sea of horror. Several times her hand quivered towards the tabloids and came back to the pencil. The shadows seemed to jostle each other about the room. Kraill's eyes shone out of them for an instant, blue and impelling. She got a grip on herself and wrote, a word at a time, making each letter with proud precision:

DEAR PROFESSOR KRAILL,

I am sending you a letter I had from my husband to-day. Have you forgotten us, and that wonderful thing you did out in the Bush? You told me then that you liked to interfere in other people's business, but that they didn't always take the interfering nicely. I want you to know what your interfering has meant to us.

You will gather from Louis's letter what you meant to him. It is more difficult to explain what you meant to me. Can you understand if I say you've been a constant goad to me? It would have been easier for me if I had never seen you, because you have been the censor of my spirit ever since. After you went away I was blazing with misery. I hadn't got so far as you, you see. I was pa.s.sionately wis.h.i.+ng that I'd known you when you were more on my level. And I saw that you had had a vision of me that was very much better than I shall ever be now. As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, there are three Marcellas--the one Marcella herself knows, the one the people round about know, and the one G.o.d knows. That was the one you saw for a minute and, not to disappoint you, I've had to live up to it. It hasn't been easy. As you will see from his letter, even Louis doesn't need me now. And as for my boy--I know now, that though beasts claw at his life and colds and hungers and desolations come to him, they cannot put out the s.h.i.+ne of him. But for me it has been very lonely. I wanted to be the thing of soft corners and seduction that you were sickened of. I had to rip myself to bits and make myself the rather rarefied sort of thing you demanded. I didn't dare not to be brave, because you were so much enthroned in my life that every thought was a deliberate homage to you. I might have got considerably happy, and found many thrills out of thinking about you softly, imagining kisses, adventures, perhaps. Many women would, and I'm sure many men. I couldn't do that because it would have made you less s.h.i.+ning, though more dear in my mind. And when I tell you that almost ever since you went away I have been very ill, much of the time in horrible pain, you will see that you gave me something to live up to when you said you needed my courage.

There's a fight going on all the time between my spirit and my body.

Sometimes, when the pain has been appalling, I have thought I would write to you and ask you to release me from being brave. But I did not want to seem to you a tortured thing--Sometimes, too, I have deliberately pushed the morphia on one side and stuck it out. It was one way of getting my own back on this bundle of nerves and sensations that has played such havoc with me and that, as you scornfully told me, has once or twice cheapened me to an unworthy pleasure--'like a queen going on the streets.' I've been d.a.m.ned, d.a.m.ned, by this overlords.h.i.+p of the body. Now I'm going to get rid of it, and even now I don't want to! I know now I am dying, and there is morphia here under my hand. But I'll be d.a.m.ned in pain rather than be beaten by it! I won't die a cow's death, as the old Nors.e.m.e.n used to call it! I'll fight every inch of the way.--But I wish Aunt Janet would come in and jab the needle in me, forcibly. That would be quite honourable, wouldn't it?

The candle began to flicker and, turning, she saw that it was spending its last dying flame. It was impossible to write. She lay still, watching the glimmering dark square of the window. She could not see another candle there. All she could see was the little phial of tabloids. But she lay back and let the pain fasten on her. The blazing needles that were piercing her, the blazing hammers that were battering her, gathered in fury and for a few merciful hours she lost consciousness.

When she wakened again the pain had completely gone and the first faint cool light was struggling through the mists on Ben Grief. She groped about the counterpane and found her pencil, and went on writing. This time the letters were not so proudly neat. Many of them were shaky and spindlelegged and she knew it.

The candle went out, then. Some hours have pa.s.sed, and with them the pain. A very beautiful thing has come to me;--the peace that pa.s.seth all understanding until you've lost your body. I understand now, very well. Our lives are just G.o.d's pathway, and we get in His way and have to be hurt before He can get along us. I was, unconsciously, His pathway to Louis until you came along--and you were a smoother pathway than I.

His feet have blazed along my life now, burning out all the roughnesses--crus.h.i.+ng me down. It's been a heavy weight to carry--the burden of salvation. It is such a heavy weight that one can't carry anything else. I tried to carry myself, and prides and hungers and love for you. All of them had to be blazed out.--No--not the love. That could not go. That and the courage will go on; pity perhaps will go, for only our bodies are pitiful. But the love is deathless. G.o.d's banner over me was love. I think I've read that somewhere His footmarks over my life were love. I've not read that. I had to find it out--slowly, hungrily, painfully, strivingly, because I've always been such a fool. But just this minute I've seen that I've been G.o.d's Fool--and G.o.d is Love.

The sun came up behind the pines on Ben Grief, golden and silver in the April morning. Very faintly came the voices of the fishermen; in the next room she heard small, busy sounds; two faint falls made her smile.

Andrew had mechanically put on his shoes, thought better of it and kicked them off again. She heard him creep along the landing to her door and listen. When she tried to call him to come and kiss her she found that her voice had died. She heard him say, quietly:

”Mummy's fast asleep,” and smiled again as she felt that he was running through the unbarred door shrieking and laughing in the delight of the soft air, the dancing sea, the kindly sun. She knew that he had not washed his face, and worried a little about it, and then smiled again.

His voice grew fainter. She tried to lift her hand to fold her letter.

It felt as though it were miles away from her, and too heavy to move.

”Why, I'm dying now,” she thought, and was surprised to find it such an ordinary, unvolitional thing to do. It was very good to do something unvolitional, very restful.--Little snappings sounded in her ears, and distant cras.h.i.+ngs and thunders as of a storm perceived by a deaf man who can see and understand without hearing.

She thought very clearly of Death for a moment, and then of G.o.d. She had often thought of Death and of G.o.d, and was surprised to find that she had been wrong about both.

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