For a little while he felt the relief it would be to have done with it all—a merciful span of time that was gone as soon as it was come—then a great horror of loneliness, and a sense that the sands of his life had run out, came over him. He leant his face against the frame of the gun cabinet, feeling sick and cold. He could not live without her!
A great wave of pity for her carried him a little beyond that thought. Her eyes with the shrinking look in them were always before him. At whatever cost he would not crown the disgrace of his manhood by forcing himself upon her! The instinctive revolt within him against brutality of any sort, which was at once the strength and the weakness of his character, forbade that. To that instinct he must be true! He clung to it with the despairing clutch of a man who had lost other things which he had thought secure. He would go away! He would see her once again, that very day, as a matter of form—he did not confess to any hope—just as a matter of form. He was, in fact, unable, even then, to despair. He went to the sideboard, drank some wine, and ate some fruit—he could not get anything solid down—and went about his preparations mechanically. The thought came into his mind that, since he was going away, he must see his wife. He poured out the rest of the wine, drank it, and lit a cigarette. If it had to be done, it might as well be done at once. He sat down, and smoked the cigarette steadily through, with a sense of effacing his emotions. When he had finished it he got up and knocked at her door.
There was no answer. He opened it gently and went in.
CHAPTER XIII
In the room there was a faint, sweet, sickly smell of flowers and of drugs, the scent that pervades the rooms of invalids. The sun was still blazing outside, and through the drawn Venetian blinds three long streaks of warm light forced their way, and fell across the white figure lying on the couch. Bars of golden air, breathing with innumerable tiny sparks of dust—they seemed in the hushed room to be the only living things. Even the flowers drooped, like beings that had given up their souls to the woman with the ashen yellow face, whose breathing scarcely stirred the white swansdown ruffle thrown across her chest. Over the bullfinch’s cage was drawn a grey silk covering that quivered faintly at the opening of the door. The oaken furniture seemed to shrink dark and ill-defined into the corners of the room.
It was so still there that Giles paused, and his heart gave a queer thump. He shut the door noiselessly, and bent his head, looking into his wife’s face. His tall, thin figure had a great dignity in the dim light.
She was not dead, as he had thought, she was asleep. On the little table by the couch were the book she had been reading—Tolstoi’s “The Kingdom of God is within You”—three roses, a medicine glass, and bottle. Giles’s eyes fastened on the roses; by some twist of fate they were Jocelyn’s favourites, the sunset-coloured Riviera roses. A bar of light fell across two of them, so that they gleamed and glowed at him; the third was in shadow, the colour drained from its petals by the blight of the grey room. It seemed to him as an omen, and he shivered. He took the rose, and turned its face to the sunlight. His wife sighed huskily in her sleep.
Giles stepped back, he thought she would wake, but she did not. He listened to her breathing, it was faint and strained; and but for the faint, irregular monotony of it she might have been dead. She was very far from death, as it seemed to him, with the insistent pain of Jocelyn’s suffering, and the lurking shadow of possible shame ever present to his mind.
A faint sound of voices rose in the outer corridor, and footsteps creaked coming down the passage towards the door. Giles stepped behind a screen, which sheltered the couch from a French window opening on the garden. His nerves were so jarred and unstrung that he recoiled from the idea of meeting any one, and having to talk in his wife’s presence. The clasp of the window was not fastened; it was slightly ajar. He waited, prepared to step out if any one came.
The door was opened softly, and he heard a whispered conversation in French.