Next month I go to Russia. For what purpose? I know not. To hear some music, and learn a smattering of the language; to write newspaper articles (“Impressions of an Unprejudiced and Unofficial Wanderer”), to pick up a few acquaintances, to forget you; to contract, perchance, some disease and die of it.... At all events, to Russia I go. Farewell.
J. F.
2
That night she woke from a deep sleep and knew that Martin was dead: not an object of horror tossed about decaying by the waves; not a thing alive somewhere in some nightmare form, appalled at its own death, watching, accusing, reproaching, desiring, reading the secrets of her heart; not a Martin going on obliviously in another, beatific life—but a dead man whose end had chanced upon him swiftly and mercifully, whose bones were in their grave beside his father’s, quietly mingling with the earth he loved. Martin had not died out of spite, or because her crookedness and Roddy’s had somehow wrought upon him like an evil charm and driven him to be drowned. He had been in high spirits, full of interest in which she had never played a part and so could never spoil; and in the midst of his enjoyment he had died. Drowning was a good death, so people said. Now neither happiness nor unhappiness was possible to him any more: that was all death meant. He had loved her, and now she was nothing to him; he was insensible to her remorse and her regrets. She dared at last to sink in that deep well of sorrow; but its waters were pure now, and in the end she drew herself from them refreshed.
To-morrow she would be able to write to Martin’s mother.
3
She wrote, briefly; and when she had finished, the paper was spotted here and there with irrepressible hot tears; but they were for Martin’s mother. She would never shed any more for Martin now.
She dried her eyes and wrote to Julian.
My dear,
I was extraordinarily glad to get your letter. I thought I had lost you as well as everybody else. You have done something for me, Julian: the thing I thought no one and nothing could do. You have made my imagination stop shrieking like a fiend in hell about Martin. It’s not only what you so wisely say about a young man’s death: it’s the knowing that he was found again, and buried in the earth as he wanted to be: that he isn’t a derelict, our beloved Martin, in the unfriendly sea. It has all stopped being monstrous to me; it is a natural grief and now I can bear to live again. He was in love with me and I was unkind to him and longed too late to tell him I never meant to be. That was the trouble. But it is all over now.