"Yes; that's it. And that explains a thing you must have been asking yourself, why I didn't write to tell you when I knew what was the matter with me. I couldn't. For among other things, which I will tell you of, I had the absolute conviction that you wouldn't come, and wouldn't want to be bothered. That's a decent specimen of the pleasures of the dark night."
He turned a little in bed.
"But I wouldn't have been spared the dark night for all the treasures of heaven," he said. "Out of His infinite Love Christ Jesus let me know something of what He felt when He said, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' I remember once we talked about it, and it is summed up in the sense of utter darkness and utter loneliness. My mind reasoned it all out, and came to the absolute conclusion that there was nothing: there was neither love anywhere nor God anywhere, nor honour, nor decency. Had I been physically capable of it, there was no pleasure, carnal and devilish, that I would not have plucked at. At least, I think I should, but perhaps that would not have seemed worth while. I didn't, anyhow, because I was in continual pain. But all that I believed, all the amazing happiness that I had enjoyed from such knowledge of God as I had attained to, was completely taken from me. I could remember it dimly, as in some nonsensical dream. My mind, I thought, must have been drugged into some hysterical sentimental mood; but now, clearly and lucidly it saw how fantastic its imagination had been. I went deeper and deeper into the horror of great darkness, and I suppose that it was just that (namely, that my spirit knew that existence without God was horror) which was my means of rescue. I still clung blindly and without hope to something that my whole mind denied. It was precisely in the same way that I telegraphed to you to come in March if you could. My mind knew for certain that you didn't care, but I did that.
"It was just about then that I had forty-eight hours of the worst pain I had ever known. The morphia had no effect, and I lay here in a sweat of agony. But in the middle of it the dark night lifted off my soul and it was morning. I can't give you any idea of that, for it happened from outside me, just as dawn comes over the hills. And even while my physical anguish was at its worst, I lay here in a content as deep as that which I have now, with you sitting by me, and that delicious sense of physical lassitude which comes when you are resting after a hard day.
"Next day the pain began to get better, and two days afterwards it was gone. It has never come back since. I am glad of that, for it is quite beastly. But what matters more is that the dark night is gone. And that can't come back, because I know that the dawn that came to me after it was the dawn of the everlasting day."
He paused a moment.
"And that's all," he said.
He grew drowsy after this, and presently his nurse, a nun from a convent in the mainland, settled him for the night. Seraphina came from the kitchen after I had dined, and wept a little, and told me how Francis, "il santo signorino," saw her every day, and took no less interest than before in her affairs and the little everyday things. Pasqualino was at the war, and the new boy who waited at dinner was a fat-head, as no doubt I had noticed, and Caterina (if so be I remembered about Caterina and Pasqualino and the baby) was in good service, and the baby throve amazingly. Provisions were dear; you had to take a foolish card with you when you wanted sugar, but the vegetables were coming on well, and we should not do so badly. The Signorino liked to hear all the news, and, if God willed, he would have no more pain; but she wished he would eat more, and then perhaps he would get his strength back, and cheat the undertaker after all. There was a cousin of hers who had done just that; he was dying, they all said, and then, Dio! all of a sudden he got better from the moment Seraphina had cooked him a great beefsteak for his dinner.
To those who have loved the lovely and the jolly things of this beautiful world, the day of little things is never over, and next morning, at Francis's request, I went down to the bathing-beach with orders not to mind if the water was chilly, but swim out to the rock of the cache and bring the tin box home. From his window he could not see the garden itself, but only the pine-tree, but would it not be possible to fix a looking-glass on the slant in the window-sill, so that from his bed he could see as well as smell the freesias and the narcissus and the wall-flowers? The success of this made him want to see more, and now that the weather was warm, there surely could not be any harm in transplanting him, bed and all, on to the paved platform at the end of the pergola, and letting him spend the rest of his days and nights in the garden. With a few sheets of canvas, to be let down at night, and could we not engineer a room for him there? He often used to sleep out there before. The question was referred to the nurse and met with her approval and that of the doctor; so that afternoon we made everything ready, and by tea-time had carried him out on his mattress with the aid of Seraphina and the fat-head, to his great contentment. This out-of-door bedroom was screened from the north by the house, and between the pillars of the pergola to east and south and west the nimble fingers of Seraphina had rigged up curtains of canvas that could be drawn or withdrawn according to the weather, while overhead was the matting underneath which we dined in the summer. The electric light was handy to his bed, and on the table by it was a bell with which he could summon the nurse, who slept in the bedroom overlooking the pergola. His bedside books stood there also: "Alice in Wonderland," a New Testament, "Emma," and a few more. The stone-pine whispered to the left of his bed, and the wind that stirred there blew in the wonderful fragrance of the spring-flowering garden.