The Relentless City

by E. F. Benson

Charlie Brancepeth was sitting in a wooden summer-house on the lawn of his mother's house at Brighton. It was set upon a pivot in the centre of its floor, so that it could be turned with little effort to any point of the compass, so as to face the sun and avoid the wind. In it—so much, at any rate, he practised of the treatment which he had compared to the fattening of a Strasburg goose—he passed the whole day, only sleeping indoors. But this he did because it seemed to him a very rational and sensible mode of life, soothing to the nerves, and producing in him a certain outdoor stagnation of the brain. He did not want to think; he wanted merely to be as quiet and drowsed as he could, and not to live very long; for, since Sybil's final rejection of him, the taste had gone out of life—temporarily it might be only—but while that was still very new and bitter within him had come this fresh blow, the discovery that he was suffering from tubercular disease of the lungs. For some months before he had suspected this; then, soon after the departure of Sybil and Bertie for America, he had had an attack of influenza from which he did not rally well; he had a daily rise of temperature, a daily intolerable lassitude, and his doctor, seeking for the cause of this, had found it. Then, following his advice, he tried a cure on the east coast of England, in which he had to get up at the sound of a bell and proceed out of doors, there to remain all day till a bell summoned him and the other patients in again. At frequent intervals he had to eat large quantities of fattening food; at other hours he had to walk quietly along a road. Work of all sorts, even more than an hour or two's reading, was discouraged, and the days had been to him a succession of nightmares, all presenting the same dull hopelessness. So, after a fortnight of it, he decided to persevere with it no more, and, if he had to die, to die. He had talked the thing out once with his mother, and had promised to go to Davos for the winter, if it was recommended to him, and in the interval to lead a mode of life that was rational for his case without being unbearable. They both agreed finally to dwell on the subject as little as possible in their thoughts, and dismiss it altogether from their conversation.

Just now she was away for a day or two, and he was alone as he waited for Sybil's arrival. That he was alone he had felt himself bound to tell her, but he felt certain that she would come all the same. And though he waited for her in a sort of anguish of expectation, he felt that life, for the first time since the Sunday at Haworth at the end of July, was interesting. What she would say to him, how he would take it, even the vaguest predication of their intercourse, was beyond him to guess. Indeed, it was scarcely worth while, he thought, trying to conjecture what it would be. For Love and Death were near to him, august guests.

The shelter was lit by an electric light, and he had just turned this on when he heard the wheels of her cab drive up. He went in through the garden-door to meet her, his heart beating wildly, found her in the moment of arrival, and advanced to her with outstretched hands.

'Ah, this is charming of you,' he said; 'I am delighted to see you!'

But she had involuntarily paused a moment as she saw him, for, though his disease had made no violent inroads on him, yet the whole manner of his face, his walk, his appearance, was changed. His eyes were always large, they now perhaps looked ever so little larger; his face was always thin, it was perhaps a shade thinner; he always stooped, he stooped perhaps a little more. But, even as one can look at a portrait and say 'I see no point on which it is not like, yet it really has no resemblance to the man,' so, though Charlie was changed so little, yet he was not like him with whom she had walked on the hot Sunday afternoon of July last. Then it was summer, now it was autumn; and, instead of the broad brightness of sun, a little bitter wind stirred among the trees. For the flame of life there was substituted the shadow of death, intangible, indescribable, untranslatable into definite thought, but unmistakable.

But her pause was only momentary; the quick, practical part of her nature leaped instinctively to the surface to do its duty. She was here, if possible, to help, and she came quickly forward to meet him.

'My dear Charlie,' she said, 'it is good to see you again.'

She took both his hands in hers.

'You bad boy,' she said, 'to get ill. Judy told me. It was not her fault; I made her.'

'I meant to tell you myself,' said he; 'but it does not matter. Now, that is enough of that subject; my mother and I never talk of it—we hardly ever think of it. Now, will you take off your things?'