“I seem to remember,” he said, “the last time I saw you—you were going away, or something. You told me I ought to do something great; and I told you—or, anyway, I thought to myself—that there was plenty of time for that. I’d always had a sort of feeling that I could do something great whenever I chose to try. Well—yes, you did go away, of course; I remember perfectly—and I missed you extremely. And some one told me I looked ill; and I went to my doctor, and he sent me to a big swell, and he said I’d only got about a year to live. So then I began to think.”
Her fingers tightened on the unresponsive hand.
“And I thought: Here I’ve been thirty years in this world. I’ve the experience of twenty-eight and a half—I suppose the first little bit doesn’t count. If I’d had time, I meant to write another book, just to show exactly what a man feels when he knows he’s only got a year to live, and nothing done—nothing done.”
“I won’t believe it,” she said. “You don’t look ill; you’re as lean as a greyhound, but——”
“It may come any day now,” he went on quietly; “but I’ve done something. The book—it is great. They all say so; and I know it, too. But at first! Just think of gasping out your breath, and feeling that all the things you had seen and known and felt were wasted—lost—going out with you, and that you were going out like the flame of a candle, taking everything you might have done with you.”
“The book is great,” she said; “you have done something.”
“Yes. But for those two days I stayed in my rooms in St James’s Street, and I thought, and thought, and thought, and there was no one to care where I went or what I did, except a girl who was fond of me when she was little, and she had gone away and wasn’t fond of me any more. Oh, Sybil—I feel like a lunatic—I mean you, of course; but you never cared. And I went to a house agent’s and got the house unfurnished, and I bought the furniture—there’s nothing much except what you’ve seen, and a bed and a bath, and some pots and kettles; and I’ve lived alone in that house, and I’ve written that book, with Death sitting beside me, jogging my elbow every time I stopped writing, and saying, ‘Hurry up; I’m waiting here for you, and I shall have to take you away, and you’ll have done nothing, nothing, nothing.’”
“But you’ve done the book,” said Sybil again. The larch and the garden beyond were misty to her eyes. She set her teeth. He must be comforted. Her own agony—that could be dealt with later.
“I’ve ridden myself with the curb,” he said. “I thought it all out—proper food, proper sleep, proper exercise. I wouldn’t play the fool with the last chance; and I pulled it off. I wrote the book in four months; and every night, when I went to sleep, I wondered whether I should ever wake to go on with the book. But I did wake, and then I used to leap up and thank God, and set to work; and I’ve done it. The book will live—every one says it will. I shan’t have lived for nothing.”
“Rupert,” she said, “dear Rupert!”