Robin Linnet

by E. F. Benson

She was alone again that evening, for her husband had to get back to town, sitting in the white room where she had seen the last of Robin, and the inevitable reaction from that first splendid spring of her spirit to accept what had happened, and not to grudge the gift he had made of himself, came upon her like some wind that withers.

Robin was dead, and she knew now that it was his unconscious inspiration entirely that had caused her to devote herself to the hospital which, together with the thought of him, had filled her life for the last months with the zest of unselfish and loving living. Apart from that, the only other cause of her taking it up was her inability to divert herself with her old amusements.

Now the light that had inspired her had gone, and her life here, which, when the light shone on it had seemed so real and solid, was nothing more than a shell of ash ready to crumble at a touch. Probably, for mere decency’s sake, she would continue at her work, especially since she had already proved her inability to amuse herself otherwise; but for the future it would be but a filling of the hours that passed more quickly if she was busy. She thought of the New Year’s party: she thought of Jaye: she thought of the incessant works and rewards that filled her day; but in this black flood of reaction that passed over her they signified no more than a flock of dispersed dreams.

Long ago she had foreseen that Robin’s death would leave her with nothing that was worth the trouble of living for, and her foresight was fulfilled. But it had underestimated the quality of the loneliness, the outer darkness of it. Perhaps she was vaguely, carelessly glad that she had been of some use to Jaye, that she had comforted her husband to-day with the high courage that had now utterly evaporated, leaving only the black sediment of despair; but she was glad only with such a remembrance as she might have had in having assisted a fly to escape from the web of a spider. It was easy to help it: it meant nothing. For her it was midnight with no star, nor any dawn to follow: a timeless, eternal midnight. In the course of years the moment would come that she would cease to be conscious of the midnight, and that was all she could look forward to.

The darkness descended and closed round her. Perhaps she was wrong about the nothingness from which she came, and the nothingness into which she would go. Perhaps some ingenious artificer had designed all this, and how must he laugh to see the hearts into which he had put the capability of suffering, ache and rebel at his contrivances. Some day he would get tired of his sport, and throw away the play-thing that had diverted the tedium of eternity; but for the time it must amuse him to give his puppets the power of loving, so that he might listen to their squealings when he took away what he had encouraged them to love. No decent mother would let her child get fond of a toy with the intention of taking it away, but the artificer of the world laughed at the mother’s misplaced compassion.

Suddenly Helen felt herself pulled up by a rein external to herself. She was imagining things that her reason, at the least, was incapable of believing. She had allowed herself to do that out of sheer bitterness of heart; but it led to a conclusion that was unthinkable in its horror. She shook herself free from what must be a dream, and woke again to the lesser midnight of the nothingness from which she had come, and the nothingness which before many years would softly close round her again.

It was here she had knelt, saying good-bye to Robin, wishing him “good luck with his honour,” and here that he had said that he and she had never loved each other so much as to-day. Then he had gone out of that door without looking back, telling her that he would not do so. Step by step, minute by minute, she went through again the hours he had spent here then.

Up till the last moment they had said to each other nothing that mattered; the day had been spent as if there had been a hundred other such days to follow. And yet through the idle talk and the laughter and the nonsense had come to him, even as to her, the clear knowledge that they had never loved each other so much. Then he had gone out of the door without looking back, and she, blind fool, had let him go. Why had she not gone up with him to London, and had a few more hours of him? She would gladly give all that remained to her now if he would only stand for one second by the door again, and look back at her, a little dim-eyed, and with mouth that quivered, so that she could see him once more with her mortal eyes, and hear him speak to her just one word. A minute of the world that once held Robin was surely worth more than anything in the world which held him no longer....

It was a surprise to herself when, without warning, the sobs gathered in her throat, and she gave herself up to an abandonment of desperate tears. Not since she had known that Robin was dead had she even wanted to cry. While Grote was with her, all she had desired was to give him of her courage, and when he had gone, the fatigue of that braced effort or the withdrawal from it of the love that had wanted it, had caused the reaction which denied all that she had held on to then, and all that had previously inspired her. But now she had none for whom she must be strong, and her heart was sick with its own bitterness.

She had tried everything: she had been eager for her own happiness, and had failed; she had been busy for others; she had been brave for others; she had been bitter, and she had loved. Now, watering her desolation, and her bitterness and her love alike, came her tears. Like a moving thunder-shower they passed over her own desolation, her own bitterness, her own bravery, but over the field where her love rose in springing crop, like the blades of winter wheat, they lingered and poured themselves out, salt no longer, but with an amazing sweetness. She had no self-pity left in her, no compassion for her own sorrow: these would have made a saltness in her weeping, but none was there. She wept at first for the sorrow of her bereaved love, the natural salt tears; but what was it that made the sweetness, if it was not the joy of finding that love was still alive?