  I The voluntary swelled, it rose, it rushed to its climax. The organist tossed back his head with a noble gesture, exalted; he rocked on his bench; his feet shuffled faster and faster, pedalling passionately. The young girl who stood beside him drew in a deep, rushing breath; her heart swelled; her whole body listened, with hurried senses desiring the climax, the climax, the crash of sound. Her nerves shook as the organist rocked towards her; when he tossed back his head her chin lifted; she loved his playing hands, his rocking body, his superb, excited gesture. Three times a week Wilfrid Hollyer went down to Lower Wyck, to give Effie Carroll a music lesson; three times a week Effie Carroll came up to Wyck on the Hill to listen to Hollyer’s organ practice. The climax had come. The voluntary fell from its height and died in a long cadence, thinned out, a trickling, trembling diminuendo. It was all over. The young girl released her breath in a long, trembling sigh. ... her whole body listened... The organist rose and put out the organ lights. He took Effie by the arm and led her down the short aisles of the little country church and out on to the flagged path of the churchyard between the tombstones. “Wilfrid,” she said, “you’re too good for Wyck. You ought to be playing in Gloucester Cathedral.” “I’m not good enough. Perhaps—if I’d been trained—” “Why weren’t you?” “My mother couldn’t afford it. Besides, I couldn’t leave her. She hasn’t anybody but me.” “I know. You’re awfully fond of her, aren’t you?” “Yes,” he said shortly. They had passed down the turn of the street into the Market Square. There was a plot of grass laid down in the north-east corner. Two tall elms stood up on the grass, and behind the elms a small, ivy-covered house with mullioned windows, looking south. “That’s our house,” Hollyer said. “Won’t you come in and see her?” They found her sitting by herself in the little cramped, green drawing-room. She was the most beautiful old lady; small, upright and perfect; slender, like a girl, in her grey silk blouse. She had a miniature oval face, pretty and white: a sharp chin, and a wide forehead under a pile of pure white hair. And sorrowful blue eyes, white-lidded, in two rings of mauve and bistre. She couldn’t be so very old, Effie thought. Not more than sixty. Mrs. Hollyer rose, holding out a fragile hand. Presently she said: “I wanted to see you; after all you’ve done for him.” “I? I haven’t done anything.” “You’ve listened to his playing. He can’t get anybody to do that for him in Wyck.” “They hear enough of me on Sundays.” “Then they haven’t heard him. He plays much better on week-days, when he plays to me,” said Effie. “So I can imagine,” Mrs. Hollyer said. “She thinks I’m better than I am,” said Hollyer. “Go on thinking it. That’s the way to make him better.” She was smiling at Effie as if she liked her. All through tea-time and after they talked about Wilfrid’s playing and Wilfrid and Wyck, and the people of Wyck, and how they knew nothing and cared nothing about Wilfrid’s playing. Twilight came, twilight of October. He was going to walk back with Effie down the hill to Lower Wyck. As the house door closed behind them he said: “Now you know why I’m nothing but an organist at Wyck.” “Wilfrid, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen yet—your mother. No wonder you can’t leave her.” “It isn’t that altogether. I mean we’re tied here because we can’t afford to leave; and because I’ve got this organ job. I should never have had it anywhere else.” He paused. “And you know, I couldn’t live on it—without mother. She’s got the house.” Effie said nothing. “So here I am. Thirty-five and still dependent on my mother.” “Oh, Wilfrid, what will you do when—when—” “When my mother dies? That’s the awful thing. I shall have enough then. There’ll be the house and her income. I hate to think of it. I don’t think of it—” “You see,” he went on, “when I was a kid I was so seedy they didn’t think I’d live. So I was brought up to do nothing. Nothing but my playing. They gave me this job just to keep me quiet. And now I’m strong enough, but there’s nothing else I can do.” He hung his head, frowning gloomily. “You know why I’m telling you all this?” “No. But I’m glad you’ve told me.” “It’s because—because—if I had a decent income, Effie, I’d ask you to marry me. As it is, I can only hope that you won’t ever care for me as I care for you.” “But I do care for you. You know I do.” “Would you have married me, Effie? Do you care as much as that?” “You know I would. I will the minute you ask me.” “I shall never ask you.” “Why not? I can wait.” “My dear, for what?” He paused again. “I can’t marry in my mother’s lifetime.” “Oh, Wilfrid—I didn’t mean that. Your dear, beautiful mother. You know I didn’t.” “Of course, darling, I know. But there it is.” He left her at the gate of the cottage where she lived with her father. As he went back up the hill he meditated on his position. He was right to make it clear to her, now that she had begun to care for him. He would have told her long ago if he had known that she cared. Yesterday he didn’t know it. But to-day there had been something, in her manner, in her voice, in the way she looked at him in the church after his playing, that had told him. Poor little Effie. She would have nothing either, unless her father—and Effie’s father was a robust man, not quite fifty. Well—he mustn’t think of it. And he mustn’t let his mother think. He wondered whether he was too late, whether she had seen anything. He tried to slink past the drawing-room and up the stairs. But his mother had heard him come in. She called to him. He went to her, shame-faced, as if he had committed a sin. Her large, gentle eyes looked at him, wondering. He could see them wondering. “Wilfrid,” she said suddenly, “do you care for that little girl?” “What’s the good of my caring? I can’t marry her. I’ve just told her so.” “It’s too late. She’s in love with you. You should have told her before.” “How could I if she didn’t care? You can’t be fatuous.” “No—poor boy. Poor Effie.” “Mother—why couldn’t I have been brought up to a profession?” “You know why—you weren’t strong enough. It was as much as I could do to keep you alive.” “I’m strong enough now.” “Only because I took such care of you. Only because you hadn’t to go out and earn your own living. You’d have been dead before you were twenty if I hadn’t kept you with me.” “It would have been better if you’d let me die.” “Don’t say that, Wilfrid. What should I have done without you? What should I do without you now?” “You mean if I married?” “No, my dear. I’d be glad if you could marry. I don’t want to keep you tied to me for ever. If you can get better work and better pay by going anywhere else, I shan’t mind your leaving me.” “I shouldn’t get anything. I’m not good enough. I shall never be worth more than fifty pounds a year anywhere. We can’t live on that.” “If you could live on half my income, I’d give it you, but you couldn’t.” “No. We’ll just have to wait.” “I hope for your sake, my dear, it won’t be too long.” “What do you mean, mother?” “What did you mean?” “Why, I meant we’d have to wait till I heard of something.” “You might have meant something else.” She smiled. “Oh, mother—don’t.” “Why not?” she said cheerfully. “You know—you know I couldn’t bear it.” “You’ll have to bear it some day—I’m an old woman.” “Well, I shall be an old man—by then.” He tossed it back to her, laughing, as he left her to wash his hands and brush his hair. He laughed, to shake off her pathos and to hide his own. When he talked about waiting, he hadn’t meant what she thought he meant. He was simply trying to dismiss a too serious situation with a reassuring levity. Waiting to hear of something? Was it likely he would ever hear of anything? Could he have made a more frivolous suggestion? It was she who had faced it. She had made him see how hopeless their case was, his and Effie’s. He saw it now, as he saw his own face in the glass, between two hair-brushes, a little drawn, even now, a little sallow and haggard. Not a young face. He would be an old man—an old man before he could dream of marrying. His mother, after all, was only sixty, and she came of a long-lived family. Her apparent fragility was an illusion; she had never had a day’s illness as long as he could remember. Nerves like whipcord, young arteries, and every organ sound. She would live ten—fifteen—twenty years longer, live to be eighty. He was thirty-five now, and Effie was twenty-five. Before they could marry, they would be fifty-five and forty-five; old, old; too old to feel, to care passionately. He had no right to ask Effie to wait twenty years for him. He must give up thinking about her. His mother was still in her chair by the drawing-room fire, waiting for him. She turned as he came to her, and held up her face to be kissed, like a child, he thought, or like a young wife waiting for her husband. She put her hands on his hair and stroked it. And he remembered the time when he used to say to her: “I shall never marry. You’re all the wife I want, Mother.” And now it was as if he had been calculating on her death. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t. You couldn’t calculate on anything so far-off, so unlikely. He had done the only possible, the only decent thing. He had given Effie up. II The doctor had gone. Hollyer went back into his mother’s room. She lay there, dozing, in the big white bed, propped high on the pillows. Through her mouth, piteously open, he could hear her short quick breath, struggling and gasping. The illness had lasted nine days. Even now Hollyer hadn’t got used to it. He still looked at the figure in the bed with the same stare of shocked incredulity. It was still incredible that his mother’s influenza should have turned to pleurisy, that she should lie like that, utterly abandoned, the neat pile of her hair undone, and her face, with its open mouth, loose and infirm between the two white loops that hung askew, rumpled by the pillow. He knew in a vague way how it had happened. First his own attack of influenza, then his mother’s. His had been pretty bad, but hers had been slight, so slight that it had not been recognized, and through it she had still nursed him. Then she had gone out too soon, in the raw January weather. And now the doctor came morning and evening; she had a trained nurse for the night, and Hollyer looked after her all day. He had got used to the nurse. Her expensive presence proved to him that he had nothing to reproach himself with; he had done, as they said, everything that could be done. He knew that the nurse and the doctor disagreed about the case. Nurse Eden declared that his mother would get over it. Dr. Ransome was convinced she wouldn’t; she hadn’t strength in her for another rally. Hollyer himself agreed with Nurse Eden. He couldn’t believe that his mother would die. The thought of her death was unbearable, therefore he denied it, he put it from him. When he left her for the night he would come creeping back at midnight and dawn, to make sure that she was still there. The little room was half filled by the big white bed. It seemed to him there was nothing in it but the white bed and his mother and Nurse Eden in her white uniform. She had looked in on her way downstairs to tea. Everything was cold and white. On the window-panes the frost made a white pattern of moss and feathers. From his seat between the bed and the fire he could see Nurse Eden and her small, pure face brooding above the pillows as she shifted them with tender, competent hands. “She’ll be better in the morning,” she said. “She always gets better in the night.” She did. Always she gained ground in the night under Nurse Eden and always she lost it in the daytime, getting worse and worse towards evening. The afternoon wore on. At four o’clock old Martha, the servant, tapped at the door. Miss Carroll, she said, was downstairs and wanted to see him. Martha took his place at the bedside. Every day Effie came to inquire, and every day she went away sad, as if it had been her own mother who was dying. This time she stayed, for the old doctor had stopped her in the Square and told her to get Hollyer out of his mother’s room, if possible. “Talk to him. Take him off it. Make him buck up.” She sat in his mother’s chair behind the round tea-table and poured out his tea for him, and talked to him about his music and a book she had been reading. When he looked at her, at her sweet face, soft and clear with youth, at her hands moving with pretty gestures, his heart trembled. That was how it would be if Effie was his wife. They would sit there every day and she would pour out his tea for him. He would hear her feet ruftning up and down the stairs. When she got up to go she said, “Whatever you do, Wilfrid, don’t keep on thinking about it.” “I can’t help thinking.” She put her hand on his sleeve and stroked it. At her touch he broke down. “Oh, Effie—I cannot bear it. If she dies, I shall never forgive myself.” “Nonsense. Don’t talk about her dying. Don’t think about it.” She turned to him on the doorstep. “Just think how strong she is. I can’t see her ill, somehow. I see her there, all the time, sitting upright in her chair, looking beautiful.” That was how he had once seen her, sitting there between the fire and the round tea-table, for years and years, as long as his own life lasted. But now he saw Effie. Upstairs, in his mother’s room, as he watched, he saw Effie. Effie—the sweet face, and the sweet hands moving. He heard Effie’s voice in the rooms, Effie’s feet on the stairs. That was how it would be if Effie was his wife. That was how it would be if his mother died. He would have an income of his own, and a house of his own; he would be his own master in his house. If his mother died, Effie and he would sleep together. Perhaps in that bed, on those pillows. He shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands, pressing in on his eyelids as if that way he could keep out the sight of Effie. III That evening the doctor came again. He left a little before nine o’clock, the hour when Nurse Eden would begin her night watch. He refused to hold out any hope. She was sinking fast. As Hollyer turned from the front-door he met Nurse Eden coming downstairs. She signed to him to follow her into the drawing-room, moving before him without a sound. She shut the door. He was afraid of Nurse Eden; there was something—he didn’t know what it was, but—there was something unbearable in her small, pure face; in the thrust of her chin tilted by the stiff cap-strings; in her brave, slender mouth, straightening itself against the droop of its compassion; and in the stillness of her dense, grey eyes. Her eyes made him feel uneasy, somehow, and unsafe. He was going to sit up with her to-night; but he would rather have shared his night-watch with old Martha. “Well?” she said. “He says this is the end.” “It may be,” said Nurse Eden. “But it needn’t.” “You’ve seen her.” “Yes.” “Well—?” “She hasn’t gone yet, Mr. Hollyer—” “She’s on the edge. She’s in that state when a breath would tip her one way or the other.” “A breath?” “Yes, Mr. Hollyer. Or a thought.” “A thought?” “A thought. If I had Mrs. Hollyer to myself, I believe I could bring her round even now.” “Oh, Nurse—” “I have brought her round. Night after night I’ve brought her.” “What do you do?” “I don’t know what I do. But it works. Haven’t you noticed she gets better in the night when I’ve had her; and that she slips back in the day?” “Yes, I have.” “You see, Mr. Hollyer, Dr. Ransome’s made up his mind. And when the doctor makes up his mind that the patient’s going to die, ten to one the patient does die. It lowers their resistance. It isn’t every one that would feel it; but your mother would.” “If,” she went on, “I had her day and night, I might save her.” “You really think that?” “I think there’s a chance.” He didn’t know whether he believed her or not. Dr. Ransome shrugged his shoulders and said Nurse Eden could try it if she liked. She had a wonderful way with her; but he wouldn’t advise Hollyer to count on it. Nothing but a miracle, he said, could save his mother. Hollyer didn’t count on Nurse Eden’s way. But he thought—something stronger than himself compelled him to think—that his mother would not die. And each hour showed her slowly coming back. Under his eyes the miracle was being accomplished. At midnight her breathing and temperature and pulse were normal; and by noon of the next day even Ransome was convinced. He wouldn’t swear to the miracle, but whatever Nurse Eden had or had not done, he believed Mrs. Hollyer would recover. Hollyer not only believed it, but he was certain, as Nurse Eden was certain. She came to him, radiant with certainty, and told him that his mind could be at rest now. But his mind was not at rest. It had only rested while he doubted, as if doubt absolved him from knowledge of some secret that he could not face. With the first moment of certainty he was aware of it. It was given to him in physical sensations, a weight and pain about his heart that did not lie. In a flash he saw himself back in his old life of dependence and frustration. There would be no Effie sitting with him in the house, no Effie running up and down the stairs. He would not sleep with Effie in the big, white bed. They would grow old, wanting each other. He tried to jerk his mouth into a smile, but it had stiffened. It opened, gasping, as his muffled heart-beats choked him. He went upstairs to his mother’s room. She was sitting up in bed, clear-eyed, almost alert, and she turned her face to him as he entered. “I don’t know how it is,” she said. “I thought I was going, but there’s something that won’t let me go. It keeps on pulling me back and back.” (Nurse Eden looked at him.) “Is it you, Wilfrid?” He knelt down and buried his face in the bedclothes by her side. His sobs shook the mattress. The nurse took him by the arm; he got up and stared at her as if dazed and drunk with grief. She led him from the room. “You’re upsetting her,” she said. “Don’t come back till you’ve pulled yourself together.” When he went back his mother was sleeping calmly. Hollyer and the nurse withdrew from the bedside to the window and talked there in low voices. “Did you hear what she said. Nurse?” “Yes. We can get her through, between us, if we make up our minds she’s to live. Think of what she was yesterday.” “But do you think we ought to? I don’t want her brought back to suffer.” “She isn’t going to suffer. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be as well as ever. If you want her to live.” “Want her? Of course I want her to live.” “I know you do. But you must get rid of your fear.” “My fear?” “Your fear of her dying.” “Do you think my fear could—could make her?” “I know it could. Make up your mind with me that she’s going to get well.” “Supposing she wants to go? Supposing she’s fighting against us all the time?” “She isn’t fighting. She hasn’t any fight in her— Now, while she’s sleeping, is the time. You’ve only got to say to yourself ‘She shall live. She’s going to live.’ There—you sit in that chair, make yourself quite comfortable, shut your eyes, and keep on saying it. Don’t think of anything else.” He sat down. He said it over and over again: “She shall live. She’s going to live. She shall live—” He tried to think of nothing else; but all the time he was aware of the dragging of his heart. He shut his eyes, but he couldn’t get rid of the vision of Effie. Effie sitting in his mother’s place. Effie sleeping beside him in the big bed. “She shall live. She’s going to live.” The words meant nothing. Only the dragging weight at his heart had meaning. And it didn’t lie. He thought: If that’s how I feel about it, I’d better keep my mind off her. Then he was aware that he was tired, dead beat, too tired to think. And presently, sitting upright in the chair, he fell asleep. He was waked by Nurse Eden’s voice calling to him from the bed: “Mr. Hollyer! She’s going!” His mother lay in the nurse’s arms, her head had fallen forward on her chest, her mouth was open; and through it there came a groaning, grating cry. Once, twice, three times; and she was gone. After the funeral Hollyer went up into his mother’s room. Nurse Eden was there, removing the signs of death. She had covered the bed with a white counterpane. She had opened the door and window wide, and a flood of dean cold air streamed through the room. “Nurse,” he said, “come here a minute.” She followed him into his bed-sitting room on the other side of the landing. Hollyer shut the door. “You remember that night when my mother got better?” “Indeed I do.” “Do you still think you brought her back?” “I do think it.” “Do you really believe that a thought—a thought could do that?” “Yes.” “But it doesn’t always work. It breaks down.” “Sometimes. That night she died I felt it wasn’t working. I was up against a wall. I couldn’t get through. But remember, before that, she was going when I brought her back.” “Could a thought—another thought—kill?” “It depends. Perhaps, if it was a very strong thought. A wish.” Her queer eyes looked through him and beyond him, not seeing him, seeing some reality that was not he. He had gone to her for her truth and she had given it him. A wish, even a hidden wish, could kill. In the dark, secret places of the mind your thoughts ran loose beyond your knowing; they burrowed under the walls that shut off one self from another; they got through. It was as if his secret self had broken loose, and got through to his mother, and had killed her secretly, in the dark. His wish was a part of himself, but stronger than himself. The force behind it was indestructible, for it was a form of his desire for Effie; so that while he lived he could not kill it. It had been there all the time, cunningly disguised. It was there in his fear of Nurse Eden; it was there in that obstinate belief of his that his mother would live. His beliefs were always the expression of his fears. He had been afraid that his mother would not die. That was his fear. He saw it all clearly in the moment while Nurse Eden’s voice went on. “But it wasn’t that, Mr. Hollyer,” she was saying. “We were all wishing her to live— No. I think she was too far gone. She had got beyond us.” It was too late for Nurse Eden to go back on it. He knew. He was certain. IV He knew, and if he were to keep on thinking about it—but he was afraid to think. You could go mad, thinking. The moment of his certainty remained in his memory; he knew where to find it if he chose to look that way. But he refused to look. Such things were better forgotten. He told himself there was nothing in it. Nothing but Nurse Eden’s hysteria and vanity. She wanted you to believe she was wonderful, that she could do things. She didn’t really believe it herself. In her own last moment of honesty she had confessed as much. He was a fool to have been taken in by her. Meanwhile, three months after his mother’s death, he had married Effie Carroll. Her father, who had held out against the engagement, surrendered suddenly on the day of the wedding, and made his daughter an allowance of fifty pounds a year. He said he didn’t want to profit by her folly, and the fifty pounds were no more than the cost of her keep. It was horrible to think they should owe their happiness to his mother’s death; but as things had turned out they didn’t owe it; they could have married even if she had lived. And as he had now no motive for wishing her dead, he almost forgot that he had ever wished it. Not that Hollyer reproached himself; his tendency, when he thought it all over, was to reproach his mother. He had found out something about himself. Before he married he had gone to Dr. Ransome to be overhauled, and Ransome had told him there was nothing much the matter with him; never was. And if the old pessimist said there wasn’t much the matter, you might depend upon it there wasn’t anything at all. Except, Ransome said, molly-coddling; and that wasn’t Hollyer’s fault. “Whose was it, then?” Hollyer had asked. “My mother’s?” “No. Your dear mother, Hollyer, had no faults. But she made mistakes, as we all do.” “You mean, if I’d been allowed to live like other people I’d have been all right?” “Well—you weren’t a very robust infant; and later on there was a slight risk. Personally, I’d have taken it. You must take some risks. But your mother was afraid. You were all she had. And I daresay she wasn’t sorry to keep you with her.” “I see.” He saw it clearly. He had been sacrificed to his mother’s selfishness. Nothing but that had doomed him to his humiliating dependence, his poverty, his intolerable celibacy. He found himself brooding over it, going back and back to it, with a certain gratification, as if it justified him. His mind was appeased by this righteous resentment. When the remembrance of his mother’s beauty and sweetness rushed at him and accused him he turned from it to his brooding. He had begun to talk, to say things about his mother. Put into spoken words his grievance seemed more real; it acquired validity. He had felt so safe. His mother couldn’t hear him. She would never know what he thought about her; he would have died rather than let her know. And he had only talked to Effie. Talking to his wife was no worse than thinking to himself. After all he had gone through, he felt he was entitled to that relief. It was June, a hot, close evening before lamplight; they were sitting together in the drawing-room, Effie in his mother’s chair and he at his piano in the recess on the other side of the fireplace. And there was something that Effie said when he had stopped playing and had turned to her, smiling. “Wilfrid—are you happy?” “Of course I’m happy.” “No, but—really?” “Really. Absolutely. You make me happy.” “Do I? I’m so glad. You see, when I married you I was afraid I couldn’t. It was so hard to come after your mother.” He winced. “How do you mean? You don’t come ‘after’ her.” “I mean, after all she was to you. After all she did. Your life with her was so perfect.” “If it’s any consolation to you, Effie, it wasn’t.” “Wasn’t?” “No. Anything but.” “Oh, Wilfrid!” He seemed to her to be uttering blasphemy. “It’s better you should know it. My dear mother didn’t understand me in the least. My whole up-bringing was a ghastly blunder. If I’d been let live a decent fife, like any other boy, like any other man, I might have been good for something. But she wouldn’t let me. She pretended there was something the matter with me when there wasn’t, so that she could keep me dependent on her.” “Wilfrid dear, it may have been a blunder and it may have been ghastly—” “It was.” “But it was only her love for you.” “A very selfish sort of love, Effie.” “Oh don’t,” she cried. “Don’t. She’s dead, Wilfrid.” “I’m not likely to forget it.” “You talk as if you’d forgotten— If the dead knew—” If the dead knew— “If they knew,” she said, “how we spoke about them, how we thought—” If the dead knew— If his mother had heard him; if she knew what he had been thinking; if she knew that he had wished her dead and that his wish had killed her— If the dead knew— “Happily for us and them, they don’t know,” he said. And he began playing again. He was aware that Effie had risen and was now seated at the writing-table. As he played he had his back to the writing-table and the door. The book on the piano ledge before him was Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte. open as Effie had left it at Number Nine. He remembered that was the one his mother had loved so much. His fingers fell of their own accord into the prelude, into the melody, pressing out its thick, sweet, deliberate sadness. It wounded him, each note a separate stab, yet he went on, half-voluptuously enjoying the self-inflicted pain, trying to work it up and up into a supreme poignancy of sorrow, of regret. As he stopped on the closing chord he heard somewhere behind him a thick, sobbing sigh. “Effie—” He looked round. But Effie was not there. He could hear her footsteps in the room overhead. She had gone, then, before he had stopped playing, shutting the door without a sound. It must have been his imagination. He played a few bars, then paused, listening. The sighing had begun again; it was close behind him. He swung round sharply. There was nobody there. But the door, which had been shut a minute ago, stood wide open. A cold wind blew in, cutting through the hot, stagnant air. He got up and shut the door. The cold wind wrapped him in a belt, a swirl; he stood still in it for a moment, stiff with fear. When he crossed the room to the piano it was as if he moved breast high in deep, cold water. Somewhere in the secret place of his mind a word struggled to form itself, to be born. “Mother.” It came to him with a sense of appalling, supernatural horror. Horror that was there with him in the room like a presence. “Mother.” The word had lost its meaning. It stood for nothing but that horror. He tried to play again, but his fingers, slippery with sweat, dropped from the keyboard. Something compelled him to turn round and look towards his mother’s chair. Then he saw her. She stood between him and the chair, straight and thin, dressed in the clothes she had died in, the yellowish flannel nightgown and bed jacket. The apparition maintained itself with difficulty. The apparition maintained itself with difficulty. Already its hair had grown indistinct, a cap of white mist. Its face was an insubstantial framework for its mouth and eyes, and for the tears that fell in two shining tracks between. It was less a form than a visible emotion, an anguish. Hollyer stood up and stared at it. Through the glasses of its tears it gazed back at him with an intense, a terrible reproach and sorrow. Then, slowly and stiffly, it began to recede from him, drawn back and back, without any movement of its feet, in an unearthly stillness, keeping up, to the last minute, its look of indestructible reproach. And now it was a formless mass that drifted to the window and hung there a second, and passed, shrinking like a breath on the pane. Hollyer, rigid, pouring out sweat, still stared at the place where it had stood. His heart-beats came together in a running tremor: it was as if all the blood in his body was gathered into his distended heart, dragging it down to meet his heaving belly. Then he turned and went headlong towards the door, stumbling and lurching. He threw out his hands to clutch at a support and found himself in Effie’s arms. “Wilfrid—darling—what is it?” “Nothing. I’m giddy. I—I think I’m going to be sick.” He broke from her and dragged himself upstairs and shut himself into his study. That night his old single bed was brought back and made up there. He was afraid to sleep in the room that had been his mother’s. V He had run through all the physical sensations of his terror. What he felt now was the sharp, abominable torture of the mind. If the dead knew— The dead did know. She had come back to tell him that she knew. She knew that he thought of her with unkindness. She had been there when he talked about her to Effie. She knew the thought he had hidden even from himself. She knew that she had died because, secretly, he had wished her dead. That was the meaning of her look and of her tears. No fleshly eyes could have expressed such an intensity of suffering, of unfathomable grief. He thought: the pain of a discarnate spirit might be infinitely sharper than any earthly pain. It might be inexhaustible. Who was to say that it was not? Yet could it—could even an immortal suffering—be sharper than the anguish he felt now? If only he had known what he was doing to her— If he had known. If he had known— But, he thought, we know nothing, and we care less. We say we believe in immortality, but we do not believe in it. We treat the dead as if they were dead, as if they were not there. If he had really believed that she was there, he would have died rather than say the things he had said to Effie. Nobody, he told himself, could have accused him of unkindness to his mother while she lived. He had really loved her up to the moment, the moment of supreme temptation, when he wanted Effie. He had not willed her to die. He had been barely conscious of his wish. How, then, could he be held accountable? How could he have destroyed the thing whose essence was the hidden, unknown darkness? Yet, if men are accountable at all, he was accountable. There had been a moment when he was conscious of it. He could have destroyed it then. He should have faced it; he should have dragged it out into the light and fought it. Instead, he had let it sink back into its darkness, to work there unseen. And if he had really loved his mother, he would have wished, not willed her to live. He would have wanted her as he wanted her now. For, now that it was too late, he did want her. His whole mind had changed. He no longer thought of her with resentment. He thought, with a passionate adoration and regret, of her beauty, her goodness, and her love for him. What if she had kept him with her? It had been, as Effie had said, because she loved him. How did he know that if she had let him go he would have been good for anything? What on earth could he have been but the third-rate organist he was? He remembered the happiness he had had with her before he had loved Effie; her looks, her words, the thousand Clings she used to do to please him. The Mendelssohn she had given him. A certain sweet cake she made for him on his birthdays. And the touch of her hands, her kisses. He thought of these things with an agony of longing. If only he could have her back; if only she would come to him again, that he might show her— He asked himself: How much did Effie know? She must wonder why he had taken that sudden dislike to the drawing-room; why he insisted on sleeping in his study. She had never said anything. A week had passed—they were sitting in the dining-room after supper, when she spoke. “Wilfrid, why do you always want to sit here?” “Because I hate the other room.” “You didn’t use to. It’s only since that day you were ill, the last time you were playing. Why do you hate it?” “Well, if you want to know—you remember the beastly things I said about mother?” “You didn’t mean them.” “I did mean them— But it wasn’t that. It was something you said.” “I?” “Yes. You said ‘If the dead knew—’” “Well—?” “Well—they do know—I’m certain my mother knew. Certain, as I’m certain I’m sitting here, that she heard.” “Oh, Wilfrid, what makes you think that?” “I can’t tell you what makes me think it— But—she was there.” “You only think it because you’re feeling sorry. You must get over it. Go back into the room and play.” He shook his head and still sat there thinking. Effie did not speak again; she saw that she must let him think. Presently he got up and went into the drawing-room, shutting the doors behind him. The Mendelssohn was still on the piano ledge, open at Number Nine. He began to play it. But at the first bars of the melody he stopped, overwhelmed by an agony of regret. He slid down on his knees, with his arms on the edge of the piano and his head bowed on his arms. His soul cried out in him with no sound. “Mother—Mother—if only I had you back. If only you would come to me. Come—Come—” And suddenly he felt her come. From far-off, from her place among the blessed, she came rushing, as if on wings. He heard nothing; he saw nothing; but with every nerve he felt the vibration of her approach, of her presence. She was close to him now, closer than hearing or sight or touch could bring her; her self to his self; her inmost essence was there. The phantasm of a week ago was a faint, insignificant thing beside this supreme manifestation. No likeness of flesh and blood could give him such an assurance of reality, of contact. For, more certain than any word of flesh and blood, her meaning flashed through him and thrilled. She knew. She knew she had him again; she knew she would never lose him. He was her son. As she had once given him flesh of her flesh, so now, self to innermost self, she gave him her blessedness, her peace. |
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