“So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through.
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two....”
And why should he murmur them to the tune of ‘Wenceslaus’?... Was he delirious?
Gaisford had seen nothing amiss. If it were but possible to carry off the interview without shewing him anything... After all, Ivy and Gaymer had not betrayed themselves. “I will marry you and no one else.” With lips not yet still from her betrayal of him, she had made a show of composure. And Gaymer, forsworn and a walking lie, explained coolly that he had brought some flowers and could not get round before. They would probably have been no less composed if they knew that he was in the passage, listening to every word. Did they know? Did they fancy that he had come in with the doctor?
Did they care?
He could not begin to think about it all until his brain was fit to work. Gaymer had lied, Ivy had betrayed him; there was room here for anger, jealousy... He had lost her, when she alone had come to make life worth living, when she was the prize and symbol of his victory over fate; room here for shaking his fists at Heaven and cursing God. To curse God and die... But God was quite equal to keeping him alive. Room here for thinking of the future and going stark mad. But these were all parts of a whole too big for him to envisage yet; that at least he could see....
It was curious that force of habit should set him methodically folding his clothes and winding his watch... Before committing suicide a man nearly always shaved himself, without pausing to wonder whether it was not rather wasted labour....
He put on a dressing-gown and lay on his bed. It was curious that he and Ivy should be destined to spend this night of all nights within twenty yards of each other. Curious world... Barbara had once said something about the fun that God was having with her... Curious how the light seemed to burn through the back of the eyes into the brain. Curious that one lacked the energy to stretch a hand to the switch....