4
As I got into the car, I was first frightened and then touched to find Barbara sitting half-hidden in her corner.
“I’m afraid he’s very bad,” she whispered. “It’s not a stroke this time; but something’s broken inside him and he’s had terrible hæmorrhages. If he has another . . . I’m so sorry, George.”
“It was good of you to come.”
In the darkness I heard a sigh; and Barbara laid her hand on mine:
“We’ve always been good friends, even if we have made rather a mess of our lives.” . . .
I could not hear what she said after that, for I had been caught unprepared by Sonia and was realizing now for the first time that it was a toss-up whether I saw Bertrand alive. My uncle was a man of almost fifty when I was born. For ten years I was frightened out of my wits by his huge stature and bellowing voice; for another ten I was humiliated by his brutal jests and blasting disparagement; then, as a young man, I rose in exasperation and trounced him till he roared with delight at my beating. From that unlikely beginning sprang a friendship in which Bertrand played the part of father, elder brother, political mentor and fellow-conspirator in my most impressionable years.
“I . . simply can’t imagine life without Bertrand,” I told Barbara.
“If you want me . . .”, she whispered.
Did even she know how the sentence would have ended? I was stunned by the thought of losing Bertrand; I clutched at any one who would take his place, clutching literally with both my hands about Barbara’s wrists. And she, for the first time in my acquaintance, was frightened.
“Does this mean . . .?,” I began.
“I won’t come into his room, of course,” she continued, in a superb recovery. “If you want me to fetch some one for a second opinion . . .”
“Does this mean that we’re going to make a new start?,” I persisted.
“I’ll do all I can . . .”
Though it was Bertrand’s imminent death that broke my self-control, I forgot him and forgot that we were driving to his death-bed:
“The only good you can do is to tell me this ghastly farce is played out! Two years!”
“We all make mistakes,” she answered with composure, though she had winced at that word “farce”. “I can’t help you much. In these two years I’ve grown used to doing without love. I’ve lost everything, thrown everything away.” The silence that followed seemed to daunt her; and I felt my hand being pressed. “You know as well as I do all you’ve done for me. I’ll be your wife, I’ll bear you children if I can; but I can’t give you a love I don’t feel.”
As though I had stepped aside, I saw myself lurching forward to demand satisfaction for the unuttered reproaches and contemptuous suspicions that had masqueraded so long as patience.
“Did you ever feel it?,” I heard myself asking. “Have you ever loved any one? You’ve been curious about many people; but it’s always been in your head and not in your heart.”
“I don’t let myself off!,” she moaned.
“I wonder! You have tragic scenes; but, when other people are broken, you survive. If your heart had been brought into the play . . .”
I broke off in stark horror. Never before had we held such language; and we were almost within earshot of Bertrand. Barbara was dumbfoundered at first; then she rallied and threw herself into the duel as though I were at last giving her an opportunity of which she had been unfairly deprived ever since our marriage.
“I never pretended to be in love with you,” she taunted me.
“You’ve never been in love with any one. If you’d ever known the meaning of the word, you wouldn’t have married me on those terms.”
Barbara turned away and covered her face with her hands.
“That’s the way Eric said good-bye to me!,” she gasped. “George, I asked you to divorce me two years ago.”
“And I wanted to make sure, for your sake. Well, let’s face reality for once! Imagine me to be dead.” . . .
With another unexpected turn, Barbara clung to me convulsively and laid her hand over my mouth:
“Don’t talk of death!,” she whispered. “I’m so frightened of it! And it’s very near at hand now. I’ve been ill so often, I’ve had to fight it so often. My dear, my dear, if I ever heard you were ill, it would bring back all my love: I’d nurse you; I’d shew you I could sacrifice myself. Never say that again!,” she cried hysterically.
My fit of bitterness passed as quickly as it had come; and I tried to apologize. Then it returned; and I asked myself whether this talk of “sacrifice” meant more than that Barbara was living, as ever, in a world of emotional romance. Then the car stopped; and I stumbled up the steps of my uncle’s house.
In the hall Violet Loring told me there had been no further hæmorrhages. Only a few more hours of life could be expected, however; and this Bertrand realized.
“I didn’t bother you before,” he began in his normal voice, “because I didn’t know whether I was going to live or die. I’m going to die, it seems; and I can tell you, George, it’s the most interesting experience I’ve ever had.”
His grim chuckles rumbled till the vast Victorian brass-bed creaked. Involuntarily Violet shivered; but I felt that the last and least service I could do was to make my mood chime with my uncle’s.
“I’m glad I’m in time to thank you, Bertrand,” I said. “You’ve been my best friend ever since we first set up house here together, nearly twenty years ago.”
Though I knew the room of old, I was struck for the first time by the uncouth masculinity of a vanished era.
“Odd business,” he grunted. “I always dropped a generation. I’m your great-uncle; but I always put you in your father’s place. You’ve kept me young. . . . And now this is the end, the moment we wait for all our lives. The heart’s weak, thank goodness, so I shan’t make a fight; but I swear to you I expect to wake up again to-morrow morning! I’m not afraid of going out, but I can’t believe it. That’s why people persist in fabricating a future life. I’ll tell you one thing, George, that’ll comfort you: death’s only a terrible thing if it comes before you’re ready, and you’re only ready when you’re worn out. That was the terrible part of the war.” The leonine head turned with an effort that left him breathless. “Violet my dear, I bow humbly at the thought of boys like Jim who were killed before they had time to find the grasshopper a burden. I can’t believe I shan’t wake up to-morrow, but I don’t want to . . . here or anywhere. A silly old woman of a parson came here yesterday. . . . It cost me a hæmorrhage to get rid of him. Good God, I’ve outgrown that phase! Life eternal. . . . I’m much more interested in the brief life that is our portion here. I’ve had nigh on a century of it; and I know less about it than I did when I was born.”
He paused as the nurse came in to say that O’Rane was waiting downstairs.
“Good of the boy,” he murmured. “Ask him to come up.” Then his eyes shone with their last gleam of mischief:
“ ‘Never seen death yet, Dickie? . . . Well, now is your time to learn!’ ”