I can’t say why, but this news made me feel rather better, so I lit a cigarette. It tasted exactly as if it had been made of the green weed which grows on stagnant horse-ponds. I felt much worse again at once, and was quite sure my temperature was going up. But I could not have the mournful satisfaction of knowing that this was true, because the thermometer was broken. And my finger continued to bleed. The blood was very bright red—probably arterial. Yet, whatever was happening, it seemed impossible that things were as desperate as I thought them, and I made the excellent determination to do something.
‘Will it disturb you if I play the piano?’ I asked Helen.
‘Not the least.’
I attempted to play the ‘Etudes Symphoniques,’ beginning with the last variation, by reason of the sky-scraping spirits of it. I don’t think I played any correct notes at all, and Helen (again to annoy me) made the noise which tiresome people make to show that a wrong note gets on their highly sensitive nerves. It consists of a whistling intake of the breath. Though I had only played a dozen bars, the white notes in the treble were spotted with blood, as if I was a Jew and the piano was the lintel of the door on Passover night. It was absurd to go on playing on a blood-boltered piano, even if I could play the right notes, which I could not. So again, with the laudable idea of doing something, I staggered upstairs, brought down a moistened towel, and proceeded to clean the keys. I struck notes from time to time, and Helen kept on wincing.
‘Is that necessary?’ she asked at length.
‘Yes, because I have bled over the piano. Besides, I’m cleaning it with the soft pedal down.’
The door was flung open, and the Awful Thing appeared.
‘Dinner,’ she said, and left the door open.
We went downstairs. ‘Dinner’ in Raikes’ indisposition was huddled on to the table. There were pieces of moist fish under one cover. There was a ginger pudding under another. There were large potatoes under a third; and under the fourth a rich and red beef-steak. Then despair descended on me.
‘Is the cook ill, too?’ I asked of the Awful Thing.