Читать книгу The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping - Warwick Deeping - Страница 5

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Sitting before the fire, Wilmer told himself that there was no survival. Death was the end of things—a disaster that could not be retrieved.

A flutter of black ash recalled his agent’s letter and its opening sentence:

“Messrs. Macalpine are anxious to receive the MS. of your autumn novel.”

Wilmer got up and turned on the light. At the curtained window stood his desk, with papers of notes and a wad of unruled foolscap upon it, the pen laid neatly across the inkstand. During the daytime the window looked out on a little, black walled sooty garden in which grew a scraggy lilac, one or two hollies, and a few other shrubs. For ten years he had sat at that window, writing. He had been a man of an impetuous untidiness, but now this table of his was meticulously neat, for it was a dead table where no live thought flowed.

Wilmer was unable to write. Since his wife’s death his inspiration had deserted him.

For six months he had made a fight of it, sitting down grimly at that desk, and producing nothing but disjointed and unconvincing nonsense. In the end he had given it up. His agents were asking for the autumn book, and the book did not exist. Moreover, Wilmer did not care.

What did it matter? He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, stood a moment in an attitude of deep thought, and then went upstairs to his bedroom. At the top of the stairs he paused to call to the old servant.

“Mary.”

A door opened.

“Did you call, sir?”

“I shall be out to dinner. Take the evening off. Go to the pictures.”

“I would just as soon be at home, sir.”

“No, go out,” he said, with a touch of irritation; “it will do you good.”

A few minutes later Wilmer was in the street, walking fast, but with no definite objective before him. His body was a mere automaton. He felt dissociated from it, this poor thing of the flesh that had to be fed and clothed and put to bed. His mood was one of strange detachment, for the ties that bound him to life had grown weak and frail, mere threads of gossamer waiting to be broken by some sudden impulse.

“Why should one live?”

He found himself in Upper Street—a shadow among shadows—under the haze of a February sky. It was cold, with a dry frostiness in the air, and the lights from the street lamps and the shop windows spread a soft blurred canopy between the houses. People passed him, and were passed by him; the roadway was clamorous and discordant, and yet he had a feeling that everything was unreal, and that he—the man who proposed to die—was the one and only reality. All these people were the mere shadows of his own sense impressions. Already—they were dead and did not know it. Beyond the edge of desire lay the one reality, nothingness.

Wilmer was unconscious of the passing of time, but when he returned to the familiar street he seemed to recognize something dramatic in its dullness. He leaned against a brick gate-pillar and looked at his own house, that little black early Victorian box of bricks where so much and yet so little had happened. The house had a friendly and intimate look. Its eyes seemed to meet his with a stare of infinite understanding.

“Yes, come in out of the night,” it said. “You and I will be together. You shall do just what you please, and I shall not utter a word.”

Wilmer smiled. He crossed the road, walked up the paved path, took out his key and opened the door. A moment later he had closed it behind him, and found himself standing in the darkness of the passage hall. It was familiar, yet strange and silent; and yet—as he stood there—he felt that its silence was alive. A shiver of awe went down his spine. He listened. For a moment he held his breath.

He had a feeling that there was someone in the house, and so strong was this feeling that he challenged the house’s silence.

“Mary—Mary—have you gone out?”

No one answered; but for fully a minute Wilmer stood straining his ears, his heart beating fast and hard. It was as though there—was—something there, something that lay just beyond the perceptive power of his senses—a presence intuitively felt. He was aware of a sense of strain and of tension, as though his self were striving to reach up and out beyond the limitations of his physical body. There was something to be touched, heard, seen, if only he could get beyond the ineffectual flesh.

“Kitty?”

A mysterious excitement seized him. He groped his way down the passage, arms extended, his eyes searching the darkness. A faint line of light showed under the sitting-room door. He found the handle, and pushing the door open, stood looking into the room.

Mary had made up the fire before going out and hung the fire-guard on the bars, and in the light of the little quiet flames Wilmer saw his wife’s chair. It was empty. Of course it was empty. And yet, as he closed the door and moved towards the centre of the room, he found himself questioning its emptiness.

“Supposing she is there?”

He felt an inward trembling.

“There—but invisible. After all one’s senses shut one in. There may be something that can go beyond the senses.”

He drew into the shadow of a corner where the bookcase stood.

“I could swear—that I felt——”

And then his hands went out appealingly.

“Kitty, if you are there, give me some sign, if such a thing is possible.”

The firelight flickered and there was silence; and swept away by some helpless impulse, Wilmer threw himself on his knees by the chair, and buried his face in the green cushion. He remained quite still, with a rigid stillness, but presently he raised his face, and it was the face of one who listened.

Moreover, it had an expression of wonder and of expectancy. He turned, and leaning against the chair, stared at the fire, for somewhere within himself a little, distant voice seemed to be speaking.

“Peter, the holiday we never had, the holiday we always talked of. Sunlight—and the blueness of sea and sky.”

His face twitched; one hand gripped the green cushion.

“Somewhere in the south. I want to see palm trees, Peter, and the mimosa——”

A spasm of emotion seized him.

“By God—I remember. Why shouldn’t she be with me in the spirit? We’ll go.”