V
Anne's cat Nicky was dying.
Jerrold struggled with his sleep, pushing it back and back before him, trying to remember.
There was something; something that had hung over him the night before.
He had been afraid to wake and find it there. Something—.
Now he remembered.
Nicky was dying and Anne was unhappy. That was what it was; that was what he had hated to wake to, Anne's unhappiness and the little cat.
There was nothing else. Nothing wrong with Daddy—only indigestion. He had had it before.
The room was still dark, but the leaded squares of the window lattices barred a sky pale with dawn. In her room across the passage Anne would be sitting up with Nicky. He remembered now that he had to get up early to make her some tea.
He lit a candle and went to her door to see if she were still awake. Her voice answered his gentle tapping, "Who's there?"
"Me. Jerrold. May I come in?"
"Yes. But don't bring the light in. He's sleeping."
He put out the candle and made his way to her. Against the window panes he could see the outline of her body sitting upright in a chair. She glimmered there in her white wrapper and he made out something black stretched straight and still in her lap. He sat down in the window-seat and watched.
The room was mysterious, full of dusk air that thinned as the dawn stirred in it palpably, waking first Anne's white bed, a strip of white cornice and a sheet of watery looking-glass. Nicky's saucer of milk gleamed white on the dark floor at Anne's feet. The pale ceiling lightened; and with a sliding shimmer of polished curves the furniture rose up from the walls. Presently it stood clear, wine-coloured, shining in the strange, pure light.
And in the strange, pure light he saw Anne, in her white wrapper with the great rope of her black hair, plaited, hanging down her back. The little black cat lay in her white lap, supported by her arm.
She smiled at Jerrold strangely. She spoke and her voice was low and strange.
"He's asleep, Jerry. He kept on looking at me and mewing. Then he tried to climb into my lap and couldn't. And I took him up and he was quiet then. I think he was pleased that I took him … I've given him the morphia pill and I don't think he's in pain. He'll die in his sleep."
"Yes. He'll die in his sleep."
He hardly knew what he was saying. He was looking at Anne, and it was as if now, at last, he saw her for the first time. This, this was what he wanted, this mysterious, strangely smiling Anne, this white Anne with the great plaited rope of black hair, who belonged to the night and the dawn.
"I'm going to get you some tea," he said.
He went down to the kitchen where everything had been left ready for him over-night. He lit the gas-ring and made the tea and brought it to her with cake and bread and butter on a little tray. He set it down beside her on the window-seat. But Anne could neither eat nor drink. She cried out to him.
"Oh, Jerry, look at him. Do you think he's dying now?"
He knelt down and looked. Nicky's eyes were two slits of glaze between half-shut lids. His fur stood up on his bulging, frowning forehead. His little, flat cat's face was drawn to a point with a look of helpless innocence and anguish. His rose-leaf tongue showed between his teeth as he panted.
"Yes. I'm awfully afraid he's dying."
They waited half an hour, an hour. They never knew how long. Once he said to her, "Would you rather I went or stayed?" And she said, "Stayed, if you don't mind."
Through the open window, from the fields of charlock warm in the risen sun, the faint, smooth scent came to them.
Then Nicky began to cough with a queer quacking sound. Jerrold went to her, upsetting the saucer as he came.
"It's his milk," she said. "He couldn't drink it." And with that she burst into tears.
"Oh, Anne, don't cry. Don't cry, Anne darling."
He put his arm round her. He laid his hand on her hair and stroked it. He stooped suddenly and kissed her face; gently, quietly, because of the dead thing in her lap.
It was as if he had kissed her for the first time.
For one instant she had her arm round his neck and clung to him, hiding her face on his shoulder. Then suddenly she loosed herself and stood up before him, holding out the body of the little cat.
"Take him away, please, Jerry, so that I don't see him."
He took him away.
All day the sense of kissing her remained with him, and all night, with the scent of her hair, the sweet rose-scent of her flesh, the touch of her smooth rose-leaf skin. That was Anne, that strangeness, that beauty of the clear, cold dawn, that scent, that warm sweet smoothness, that clinging of passionate arms. And he had kissed her gently, quietly, as you kiss a child, as you kiss a young, small animal.
He wanted to kiss her close, pressing down on her mouth, deep into her sweet flesh; to hold her body tight, tight, crushed in his arms. If it hadn't been for Nicky that was the way he would have kissed her.
To-morrow, to-morrow, he would kiss Anne that way.