“So tight he kept his lips compressed,Scarce any blood came through.You looked twice ere you saw his breastWas all but shot in two....”
“So tight he kept his lips compressed,Scarce any blood came through.You looked twice ere you saw his breastWas all but shot in two....”
“So tight he kept his lips compressed,Scarce any blood came through.You looked twice ere you saw his breastWas all but shot in two....”
“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 shavedhimself, 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....
Eric was still staring at the ceiling when Gaisford came in. The doctor’s moment of ill-temper had passed; and this was a pity, because he would be less preoccupied and more observant.
“Well, my son, and what’s the matter with you?,” he asked.
“I’ve become so extraordinarily limp.” The voice was slow but firm. “The longer I stayed at Lashmar, the limper I got. I wasn’t trying to work, but I couldn’t even walk a couple of miles. It occurred to me that a tonic, perhaps....”
The doctor grunted and fitted the ends of a stethoscope into his ears. The ritual which followed was very familiar to Eric; chest and back, long breath, ordinary breathing, holding the breath, tapping... The stethoscope darted to and fro, as though it were playing a game with some elusive noise inside him; it finished with the heart and began chasing the lungs into improbable corners under the collar-bone and shoulder-blades, dodging back to the heart when it was least expected.
“Lie down. A deep breath,” said Gaisford.
This lying-down portended something serious; or perhaps the doctor was not yet sure. They were always so uncommunicative; you might have a tolerably wide experienceof these examinations and yet not know what they were trying to find.
“Anything the matter?,” Eric asked, as the stethoscope was detached and pocketed.
“You’ve not much flesh on you,” said the doctor, feeling his ribs. “Are you eating properly?”
“The usual amount. But you know I neverdidrun to fat.”
“Do you perspire much?”
“Like a pig. I gave my poor mother quite a shock when she came in one morning and found me as if I’d just come out of the mill-stream. I save pounds on Turkish baths.”
Gaisford nodded and put a number of questions which Eric seemed to answer adequately. They did not appear to lead anywhere, but some of them were new to his experience. At the end, the stethoscope was produced again.
“Anything the matter?,” Eric repeated, for the doctor was frowning. The examination, too, was unusually long.
“Well, yes. It’s what I’ve feared ever since I’ve known you. We’ve caught it in time, but you’ll have to be rather careful. There are four of you, aren’t there? What are your brothers and sisters like? You can put on that dressing-gown; I don’t want you to catch cold.”
Eric weighed the question as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. God was enjoying himself....
“Let’s come back to that,” he suggested. “What is it? Heart?”
“That’s been a bit tired for years.”
“Lungs, then?... I see. Well, I’m not a child, Gaisford. How long do you give me? Six months? A year?”
The doctor changed his spectacles and tipped Eric’s clothes from an arm-chair. He could be exasperatingly slow when he liked; and he always liked to be slow, when his patients shewed signs of becoming unnerved.
“Forty, if you do what I tell you,” he announced atlength. “If you don’t, you’ll get rapidly worse. By the way, it’s chiefly in books that a doctor says you’ve three weeks and two days to live; science isn’t quite so exact as that, and doctors aren’t such damned fools... No! I’ll tell you. This might have come at any time, because you’ve been on the delicate side ever since I’ve known you. Now you’re a little bit touched. It’s a bore, but it’s nothing to be frightened about. I shan’t let you live in this country, of course, and I shall cut down your work; but that doesn’t matter, because you’re indecently rich for your age. And I can give you a choice of places to live in—California, South Africa, the Riviera—”
“This is in confidence, of course,” Eric interrupted. “You’re not telling my people—or Ivy... or any one?”
“No. But I’ll tellyouthat, if you try to marry that child in your present state, you’ll deserve to be pulled limb from limb.”
“I don’t propose to.”
“If you’ll wait a couple of years....”
Eric was troubled to keep his brain, now suddenly alert, back to the doctor’s deliberate pace. The immediate future was clear....
“How soon am I to start?,” he asked.
“Get out of London as soon as possible.”
“And—about Ivy. When will she be well enough to be told?”
“I should tell her at once—to-morrow. She’ll seesomething’sup; she wanted to know to-night why you’d suddenly come back without warning... I find that as a rule it’s best to tell people the truth, however much of a shock it may be. We’re all of us equal to a certain number of shocks; and it seldom becomes less of a shock by postponing it and wrapping it in lies.”
“I’ll tell her to-morrow,” said Eric. “Do you want to do anything more with me?”
“I’m afraid there’s no doubt of it.”
“Then I may as well turn in.”
Eric threw off the dressing-gown and put on his pyjamas. The doctor, he knew, was watching him, but he was successfully deliberate and composed. They shook hands and said good-night without emotion or straining after heroics. There was a half-heard phrase about “having another word with” him in the morning. Eric lay for a few moments in darkness, waiting to hear the doctor’s car drive away; there was no sound, however, and he was asleep before he had done speculating whether Gaisford had come on foot or in a car....