Twilight - Julia Frankau (free novels to read .txt) 📗

there no hope for me?”

“Patients ask so often for the truth. But they never want it.”

“I am not like other patients. Haven’t I got a dog’s chance?” He shook his head.

“How long?”

“Months. Very likely years. No one can tell. You are full of vitality. If you live in the right way…”

“Like this?”

“More or less.”

“And nothing more can be done for me?”

“Rest, open air, occupation for the mind.” I thought over what he had just told me. I had known or guessed it before, but put into words it seemed different, more definite. “Not a dog’s chance.”

“You think Margaret Capel and Gabriel Stanton will do me good? They are part of your treatment?” I asked him.

“They and I,” he said. I was silent after that, silent for quite a long time. He was sitting beside me and put his shapely hand on mine. I did not withdraw it, my thoughts were fully occupied. “You know I shall do everything I can for you; you are a reincarnation.” He spoke with some emotion. “Some day I shall want to ask you something; you will know more about me soon. You are in touch with her.”

“Do you really believe it?” I asked him. We were in the upstairs room. Today I had not adventured the stairs.

“May I play?” he asked. It was not the first time he had played to me. I rather think he played well, but I know nothing of music. If he were talking to me through the keys he was talking to a deaf mute. I lay on the sofa and thought how tired I was, may even have slept. I was taking six grains of codein in the twenty-four hours when the prescription said two, and often fell asleep in the daytime without preparation or expectation.

“I will tell you why I would do anything on earth for you,” he said, turning round abruptly on the piano stool. “If you want to know.” I was wideawake now and surprised, for I had forgotten of what we had talked before I went off. “It is because you are so brave and uncomplaining.”

“It isn’t true. Ask Ella. She has had an awful time with me, grumbling and ungrateful.”

“Your sister adores you, thinks there is no one like you.”

“That is merely her idiosyncrasy.”

“Well! there is another reason. You asked for it and you are going to be told. The love of my life was Margaret Capel.” He stared at me when he said it. “You remind me of her all the time.” I shut my eyes. When I opened them again his back was all I saw and he was again playing softly; talking at the same time. “When I came here, the first time, the first day, and saw you sitting in her chair, at her table, in her attitude, as I said, it was a reincarnation.” He got up from the music stool and came over to me. He said, without preliminary or excuse, “You are taking opium in some form or other.”

“I am taking my medicine.”

“I am not blaming you. You’ve read De Quincey, haven’t you? You know his theory?”

“Some of it.”

“Never mind; perhaps you’ve missed it, better if you have. In those days it was often thought that opium cured consumption.”

“Then it is consumption?”

“What does it matter what we call it? Pleurisy, as you have had it, generally means tubercle. But you will hang on a long time. The life of Margaret Capel must be written and by you. She always wanted it written. From what you tell me she still wants it. I poured my life at her feet those few months she was here, but she never gave me a thought, not until the end. Then, then at the last, I held her eyes, her thoughts, her bewildered questioning eyes. Bewildered or grateful? Shall I ever know? Will you tell me, I wonder, hear it from her, reassure me…” He stopped. “I suppose you think I am mad?”

“I have never thought you quite sane. But,” I added consolingly, “that is better than being merely stupid, like most doctors. So you regard me,” I could not help my tone being bitter, “as a clairvoyante, expectantly…”

“Does any man ever care for a woman except expectantly, or retrospectively?”

“How should I know?” He sat down by my side.

“No one should know better. Tell me more about yourself, I have only heard from Mrs. Lovegrove.”

“She told you, I suppose, that I had a great and growing reputation, had faithful lovers sighing for me, that I was thirty-eight…”

“She told me a great deal more than that.”

“I have no doubt. Well! in the first place I am not thirty-eight, but forty-two. My books sell, but the literary papers ignore them. I make enough for myself and Dennis.”

“Denis?” His tone was surprised.

“Ella never mentioned Dennis to you?”

“No.”

I did not want to talk about Dennis. Since he had left me I never wanted to talk of him. His long absence had meant pain from the first, then agony. Afterwards the agony became physical, and they called it neuritis. Now it has pierced some vital part and I don’t even know what they call it. Decline, consumption, tuberculosis? What does it matter? In the two years he had been away my heart had bled to death. That was the truth and the whole truth. No one knew my trouble and I had spoken of it to nobody save once, in early days, to Ella. Ella indignantly had said the boy was selfish to leave me, and so closed my confidence. It is natural our children should wish to leave us, they make their trial flights, like the birds, joyously. My son wanted to see the world, escape from thraldom, try his wings. But I had only this one. And it seemed to me from his letters that he was never out of danger, now with malaria, and in Australia with smallpox. The last time I heard he had been caught in a typhoon. After that my health declined rapidly. But it was not his fault.

“And Dennis?”

“Since you know so much you can hear the rest. I married at eighteen. I forget what my husband was like. I’ve no recollection of his ever having interested me particularly. Married life itself I abhorred, I abhor. But it gave me Dennis. My husband died when I was two-and-twenty. Ever since Ella has been trying to remarry me. But when one writes, and has a son “I could talk no more.

“You are tired now.”

“I am always tired. Why do you say years? You mean months, surely?”

“You will write one more book.”

“Still harping on Margaret?”

“Let me carry you into your room; I have so often carried her.”

“Physically at least I am a bigger woman than she was.”

“A little heavier, not much.”

“Well, give me your arm, help me. I don’t need to be carried.” I leaned on his arm. “We will talk more about your Margaret another day. I daresay I shall write her story. Not using all the letters, people are bored with letters. I am myself. And I am not sure about the copyright acts!”

“You will give them back to me when you have done with them?”

“Why not?”

Benham bullied him for having let me sit up so late. My illness was deepening upon me so quietly, so imperceptibly that I had forgotten I once resented her overbearing ways. Now I depended on her for many things. Suzanne had gone, finding the house too triste, and seeing no possibility of further emolument from my neglected wardrobe. Benham did everything for me; yawningly at night, but willingly in the day.

I was desperately homesick for Ella this evening. I wondered what she would say when she knew what Dr. Kennedy had told me. I cried again a little because he said I had not a dog’s chance, but was quickly ashamed. Why should I cry? I was so hopelessly tired. The restfulness of Death began to appeal to me. Not to have to get up and go to bed, dress and undress daily, drag myself from room to room. I had not done all my work, but like an idle child I wanted to be excused from doing any more. I was in bed and my mind wandered a little. Why was not Ella here? It seemed cruel she should have left me at such a time. But of course she did not know that I was going to die. Well! I would tell her, then she would come, would stay with me to the end. I forgot Margaret and Gabriel Stanton, two ghosts who walked at night. No extra codein for me any more. I no longer wanted to dream, only to face what was before me with courage. My writing-block was by my side and pencils, one of Ella’s last gifts, and I drew them toward me. I had to break to her that if she would be lonely in the world without me, then it was time for her to prepare for loneliness. I wanted to break it to her gently, but for the life of me I could not think, with pencil in my hand and writing-block before me, of any other way than that of the man who, bidden to break gently to a woman that her husband was dead, had called up to the window from the garden: “Good-morning, Widow Brown.” So I started my farewell letter to Ella:

“Good-morning, Widow Lovegrove.”

I never got any further. The haemorrhage broke out again and I rang for Benham. She came yawning, buttoning up her dressinggown, pushing back her undressed hair, but when she saw what was happening her whole note changed. This time I was neither alarmed nor confused, even watching her with interest. She rang for more help, got ice, gave rapid instructions about telephoning for a doctor.

“Will you wait for an injection until he comes, or would you like me to give it to you?”

“You.”

“Very well, lie quite quiet, I shan’t be a minute.”

I lay as quietly as circumstances would allow whilst she brewed her witches’ broth.

“What dreams may come.”

“Hush, do keep quiet.”

“Mind you give me enough.”

“I shall give you the same dose he does, a quarter of a grain.”

“It won’t stop it this time.”

“Oh, yes! it will.”

She gave the injection as well, or better than Dr. Kennedy. I hardly felt the prick, and when she rubbed the place, so cleverly and gently, she almost made a suffragist of me. Women who did things so well deserved the vote.

“Do you want the vote?” I asked her feebly.

“I want you to lie quite still,” was her inappropriate answer. I seemed to be wasting words. The room was slowly filling with the scent of flowers. When I shut my eyes I saw growing pots of hyacinth, then lilies, floating in deep glass bowls, afterwards Suzanne came in, and began folding up my clothes, in her fat lethargic way.

“I thought Suzanne went away.”

“So she did.”

“Who is in the room, then?”

“No one. Only you and I.”

“And Dr. Kennedy?”

“No.”

“You have sent for him?”

“I thought you wouldn’t care for me to give you a morphia injection.”

“Why not? You give it better than he does. I want to see him when he comes.”

“You may be asleep.”

“No! I shan’t. Morphia keeps me awake, comfortably awake. De Quincey used to go to the opera when he was full up with it.”

Peter Kennedy came in, and I followed the line of my own thoughts. I was feeling drowsy.

“I don’t want you to play for me,” I said, a little pettishly perhaps. “I