Authors: W Somerset Maugham
'I'm so glad,' he whispered – 'I'm so glad.'
Again the cathedral bells rang out, and the watchers counted the deliberate striking of the hour. They sat in silence. And then the darkness was insensibly diminished; as yet there was no light, but they felt the dawn was at hand. A chilliness came into the room, the greater cold of the departing night, and the velvet obscurity took on a subtle hue of amethyst. A faint sound came from the bed, and the Dean went over and listened; the end was very nearly come. He knelt down, and in a low voice began to repeat the prayers for the dying.
O Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of great men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons: We humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear brother, into Thy hands, most humbly beseeching Thee that it may be precious in Thy sight. Wash it, we pray Thee, in the blood of that Immaculate Lamb, that was slain to take away the sins of the world; that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this miserable world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before Thee.
Miss Ley stood up and touched Frank's arm.
'Come,' she whispered; 'you and I can do no more good. Let us leave them.'
He rose silently, and following her, they stole very gently from the room.
'I want to walk in the garden,' she said, her voice trembling. But once in the open air, her nerves, taut till then by a great effort of will, gave way on a sudden, and the strong, collected
woman burst into a flood of tears. Sinking on a bench, she hid her face and wept uncontrollably. 'Oh, it's too awful,' she cried. 'It seems so horribly stupid that people should ever die.'
Frank looked at her gravely, and in a reflective fashion filled his pipe.
'I'm afraid you're rather upset; you'd better let me write you out a little prescription in the morning.'
'Don't be a drivelling idiot,' she cried. 'What do you think I want with your foolish bromides!'
He did not answer, but deliberately lit his pipe; and though Miss Ley knew it not, his words had the calming effect he foresaw. She brushed away the tears and took his arm. They walked up and down the lawn slowly; but Miss Ley, unused to give way to her emotions, was shaken still, and he felt her trembling.
'It's just at such times as these that you and I are so utterly helpless. When people's hearts are breaking for a word of consolation, when they're sick with fear because of the unknown, we can only shrug our shoulders and tell them that we know nothing. It's too awful to think that we shall never see again those we have loved so deeply; it's too awful to think that nothing awaits us but cold extinction. I try to put death from my thoughts – I wish never to think of it; but it's hateful, hateful. Each year I grow older I'm more passionately attached to life. After all, even if the beliefs of men are childish and untrue, isn't it better to keep them? Surely superstition is a small price to pay for that wonderful support at the last hour, when all else fades to insignificance. How can people have the heart to rob the simple-minded of that great comfort?'
'But don't you think most of us would give our very souls to believe? Of course we need it, and sometimes so intensely that we can hardly help praying to a God we know is not there. It's very hard to stand alone and look forward – without hope.'
They wandered still, and the birds began to sing blithely; Nature awoke from her sleep, slowly, with languid movements. The night was gone, and yet the day was not come. The trees and the flowers stood out with a certain ghostly dimness, and the air in those first moments of dawn was fresh and keen: all
things were swathed in a strange violet light that seemed to give new contours and new hues. There was a curious self-consciousness about the morning, and the leaves rustled like animate beings; the sky was very pale, cloudless, grey, and amethystine; and then suddenly a ray of yellow light shot right across it, and the sun rose.
'D'you know,' said Frank, 'it seems to me that just as there is an instinct for life there must be an instinct for death also; some very old persons, here and there, long for the release, just as the majority long for existence. Perhaps in the future this will be more common; and just as certain insects, having done their life's work, die willingly, without regret, from sheer cessation of the wish to live, so it may happen that men, too, will develop some such feeling. And then death will have no terrors, for we shall come to it as joyfully as after a hard day we go to our sleep.'
'And meanwhile?' asked Miss Ley, with a painful smile.
'Meanwhile we must have courage. In our sane moments we devise a certain scheme of life, and we must keep to it in the hour of trouble. I will try to live my life so that when the end comes I can look back without regret, and forward without fear.'
But now the sun flooded the garden with its magnificence, and there was a beauty in the morning that told more eloquently than human words the good lesson that life is to the living and the world is full of joy. Still the birds sang their merry songs – throstle and merle, and finch and twittering sparrow – and the flowers, defiant, squandered their perfume. There were roses everywhere, and side by side were the buds and the full-blown blossoms and the dead, drooping splendours of yesterday; the great old trees of the Deanery garden were fresh and verdant as though they had not bloomed and faded for a hundred years; the very air was jocund and gay, and it was a delight merely to stand still and breathe.
But while they walked Miss Ley gave a cry, and leaving Frank's arm, stepped forward; for Bella was seated on a bench under a tree, with the sun shining full on her face; she stared in front of her with wide-open eyes, unblinded by the brilliance,
and the lines of care were suddenly gone from her face. Her expression was radiant, so that for a momest she was a beautiful woman.
'Bella, what is it?' cried Miss Ley. 'Bella!'
She lowered her eyes and passed her hand over them, for now they were dazzled with shining gold. An ecstatic smile broke upon her lips.
'He died when the sun came into the room; a bridge of gold was set for him, and he passed painlessly into the open.'
'Oh, my poor child!'
Bella shook her head and smiled again.
'I'm not sorry; I'm glad that his suffering is over. He died
so gently that at first I didn't know it. I could hardly believe he was not
asleep. I told father. And then I saw a lovely butterfly – a golden
butterfly such as I've never seen before – hover slowly about the room.
I couldn't help looking at it, for it seemed to know its way, and then it
came into the sunbeam and floated out along it – floated into the blue
sky; and then I lost it.'
A week later Miss Ley was in London, where she meant to stay through August, partly because it bored her to decide where to spend that holiday season, partly because Mrs Barlow-Bassett had been forced to go to a private hospital for an operation; but still more because Frank's presence gave her the certainty that she would have someone to talk to whenever she liked. That month vastly amused her, for London gained then somewhat the air of a foreign capital, and since few of her acquaintance remained, she felt free to do whatever she chose without risk of being thought wilfully eccentric. Miss Ley dined with Frank in shabby little restaurants in Soho, where neither the linen nor the frequenters were of a spotless character; but it entertained her much to watch bearded Frenchmen languishing away from their native land, and to overhear the voluble confidences of ladies whose position in society was scarcely acknowledged. They went together to music-halls over the river or drove on the tops of buses, and discussed interminably the weather and eternity, the meaning of life, the foibles of their friends, Shakespeare, and the
Bilharzia hoematobi.
Miss Ley had left Bella and the Dean at Tercanbury. The widow never for a moment lost her grave serenity. She attended the burying of her husband with dry eyes, absently as though it were a formal ceremony that had no particular meaning to her; and the Dean, who could not understand her point of view, was dismayed, for he was broken down with grief, and it was his daughter who sought to console him. She repeated that Herbert was there among them now; and the furniture of the house, the roses of the garden, the blue of the sky, gained a curious significance, since he seemed to be in all things, partaking of their comfortable beauty, and adding to theirs a more subtle loveliness.
Soon Miss Ley received from her friend a letter, enclosing one from Herbert, scribbled in pencil but a few days before his death. She said:
This is apparently for you, and though it is the last thing he ever wrote, I feel that you should have it. It seems to refer to a conversation that you had with him, and I am glad to have found it. My father keeps well, and I also. Sometimes I can scarcely realize that Herbert is dead, he seems so near to me. I thought I could not live without him, but I am singularly content, and I know that soon we shall be united, and then for ever.
The letter was as follows:
D
EAR
M
ISS
L
EY,
You wanted to ask me a question the other day, and were afraid, in case you pained me; but I guessed it, and would have answered very willingly. Did you not wish to know whether, notwithstanding poverty and illness and frustrated hopes and the prospect of death, I was glad to have lived? Yes, notwithstanding everything. Except that I must leave Bella, I am not sorry to die, for I know at last well enough that I should never have been a great poet; and Bella will join me soon. I have loved the world passionately, and I thank God for all the beautiful things I have seen. I thank God for the green meadows round Tercanbury, and the elm-trees, and the grey monotonous sea. I thank Him for the loveliness of the cathedral on rainy afternoons in winter, and for the jewelled glass of its
painted windows, and for the great clouds that sway across the sky. I thank God for the scented flowers and the carolling birds, for the sunshine and the spring breezes, and the people who have loved me. Oh yes, I am glad to have lived; and if I had to go through it all again, with the sorrows and disappointments and the sickness, I would take it willingly, for to me at least the delight of life has been greater than the pain. I am very ready to pay the price, and I would wish to die with a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips.
The letter broke off thus abruptly, as though he had meant to say much more, but wanted opportunity. Miss Ley read the letter to Frank when next he came.
'Do you notice,' she asked, 'that every one of the things he speaks of appeals to the senses? Yet the only point upon which philosophers and divines agree is that this is the lower part of us, and must be resolutely curbed. They put the intellect on an altogether higher plane.'
'They lie in their throats. And you can prove that really they believe nothing of the kind by comparing the concern with which they treat their stomachs, and the negligence with which they use their minds. To make their food digestible, nourishing, and wholesome, enormous trouble is taken, but they will stuff into their heads any garbage they come across. When you contrast the heedlessness with which people choose their books from Mudie's, and the care with which they order their dinner, you can be sure, whatever their protestations, that they lay vastly more store on their bellies than on their intellects.'
'I rather wish I'd said that,' murmured Miss Ley reflectively.
'I have no doubt you will,' he returned.
M
RS
B
ARLOW
-B
ASSETT,
who cultivated the fashion with the assiduity of a woman not too well assured of her position in society, was preparing to spend August in Homburg, when a sudden illness prostrated her, and it was found that an immediate operation was needful. She went into a private hospital with the presentiment that she would never recover, and her chief sorrow was that she must leave Reggie, so ill-prepared for the mundane struggle, to go his way alone just when a mother's loving care was most needed for his guidance. Her heart ached to keep him continually by her side, but she had trained herself to sacrifice every amiable tenderness, and when he told her of an arrangement to read in the country with his tutor, would not hear of its being disturbed. Her possible demise made it all the more necessary that he should be standing on his own feet as a professional man, and resolutely she crushed, not only her natural inclinations, but also all evidence of anxiety for her own condition; she made light of the approaching ordeal, so that his attention should be in no way diverted from his work. Reggie promised to write every day, and went so far (a trait which touched her deeply) as to insist on remaining in London till after her operation; he would not be able to see her, but at least could inquire how she had borne it. Mrs Barlow-Bassett drove to Wimpole Street with her son, and bade him a very tender farewell; at the end, just before he left, her courage partly failed, and she could not prevent a cry of distress.
'And if something happens, Reggie, and I don't recover, you will be a good boy, won't you? You will be honest and straightforward and loyal?'
'What do
you
think?' answered Reggie.
She folded him in her arms, and with a firmness not unbecoming her appearance, fashioned somewhat in the grand
style, let him go with dry eyes and with smiling lips. But Mrs Bassett had exaggerated a little the perils of her condition; she bore the operation admirably, and after the first two days proceeded without interruption to complete recovery. Reggie wrote with considerable regularity from Brighton, where it appeared the tutor had established himself for the summer, and gave his mother accounts of the work he did; he went into considerable detail, and, indeed, seemed so industrious that Mrs Bassett was minded to remonstrate with his tutor. After all, it was holiday time, and scarcely fair that Reggie's goodwill should be thus taken advantage of. Towards the end of the month she was well enough to move back to her own house, and the morning after her return came downstairs in a very contented frame of mind, rejoicing in her new health and in the splendid summer weather. Carelessly she opened her
Morning Post,
and as usual ran her eye down the announcements of birth, death, and marriage. Suddenly it caught her own name, and she read the following intelligence:
B
ARLOW
-B
ASSETT
– H
IGGINS.
– On the 30th ult., at St George's, Hanover Square, W., Reginald, only son of the late Frederick Barlow-Bassett, to Annie (Lauria Galbraith), second daughter of Jonathan Higgins, of Wimbledon.
For a moment Mrs Bassett did not understand, and she read the paragraph twice, hopelessly mystified, before she realized that it announced to the world in general the marriage of her son. The date of the occurrence was the day after her operation, and on that very morning Reggie had called at Wimpole Street to inquire after her. The butler was still in the room, and helplessly Mrs Bassett handed him the paper.
'D'you know what this means?' she asked.
'No, madam.'
Her first thought was that it must be a practical joke; and then, what was the meaning of that second name in parentheses – Lauria Galbraith? She rang for the servant, and told him at once to send a wire, which she directed to Reggie at Brighton, asking for an explanation of the extraordinary announcement; after breakfast she telegraphed to her solicitor and to the
tutor's London address. The tutor's reply came first, to the effect that he had not seen Reggie since July; and in answer to her second question, he added that himself had been in London all the summer. At length Mrs Bassett began to understand that something awful had happened. She went into Reggie's room, and coming upon a locked drawer, had it broken open; she found in it a writing-case, and with horror and indignation turned out a motley collection of bills, pawn-tickets, and letters. She examined them all carefully, and first discovered that accounts for which she had given money were unpaid, and that others, enormous to her economical view, existed of which she knew nothing; then from the pawn-tickets she learned that Reggie had pledged his father's watch, all his own trinkets, a dressing-case she had given him, and numberless other things. For an instant she hesitated at the letters, but only for an instant; it seemed her right now to know the worst, and little by little it dawned upon her that hitherto she had lived in a strange fool's paradise. First there came epistles from duns, polite, supplicatory, menacing; then a couple of writs, smacking to her inexperienced eye of prison bars and unimagined penalties; letters from women in various writings, most of them ill-spelt, and the cheap stationery betrayed the senders' rank. With frowning brow she read them, horrified and aghast; some were full of love, others of anger, but all pointed distinctly to Reggie's polygamous tendency. At length came a bundle whereof the paper was quite different – thick, expensive, scented; and though not at once recognizing the hand when she opened the first, Mrs Bassett cried out; on the left side, at the top, in little letters of gold, surrounded by a scroll, was the name
Grace,
and though there was no address she knew that they were from Mrs Castillyon. She read them all, and her dismay turned to abject shame and anger. It appeared that this woman had given Reggie cheques and bank-notes. One letter said, 7
hope you can change the cheque';
another,
'So sorry you're hard up; here's a fiver to go on with';
a third,
'What a pig-dog your mother is to be so mean! What on earth does she spend her money on?'
At first they were burning with passion, but soon began to complain of unkindness or cruelty,
and one letter after another was filled with bitter reproaches.
Mrs Bassett took the whole contents of the writing-case, and locked them in her own cabinet, then hurried to Reggie's tutor. Here she discovered that what she already suspected was true. She went home again, and called the upper servants. It humiliated her enormously that she must catechize them on the conduct of her son, but now she had no scruples. At first they would say nothing, but by dint of promise and threat she extracted from them the full story of how Reggie had lived during the last two years. At length, as a final blow, came an epistle from Reggie himself.
371, Vauxhall Bridge Road
M
Y
D
EAR
M
ATER,
You will have seen in this morning's
Post
that I was married at the end of last month to Miss Higgins, professionally known as Lauria Galbraith, and we are now staying at the above address. I am sure you will like Lauria, who is the best woman in the world, and has saved me from going to the dogs. You might let us have a line to say when we can come and see you. Lauria is most anxious to make your acquaintance. I should tell you that I have decided to chuck the Bar, and I am going on the stage. Lauria and I have got an engagement for the autumn tour of
The Knave of Hearts,
and we have come up to town for rehearsals. I am sure this will meet with your approval, because law is a rotten profession, awfully overcrowded, and as Lauria says, on the stage there is always room for talent. I know I shall get on, and Lauria and I hope in a few years to run our own company. I am working very hard, for although I'm only walking on in this drama (I wouldn't have accepted the offer, only Lauria has a ripping part, and, of course, as I hadn't been on the stage before, I had to take what I could get) I am learning
Hamlet.
Lauria and I think of giving some recitations of that and
Romeo and Juliet
in town next spring.
Your affectionate son,
R
EGGIE
P.S. – You needn't worry about the money, because on the stage I can earn far more than I ever should have done at the Bar. An actor-manager simply makes thousands.
Mrs Bassett burst into tears, for she had never imagined that
Reggie could be so callous, so inanely flippant; but rage succeeded all other emotions in her breast, and she wrote angrily, telling her son never again to show his face at her house, or the servants would throw him into the street – telling him that no farthing of her money should ever be his; then silence seemed more dignified, and she determined merely to leave unanswered that impudent letter. But it was necessary to express her indignation to someone, and she sent an urgent note to Miss Ley, begging her at once to come.
When the good lady, obedient to the summons, arrived, she found Mrs Bassett in a very hysterical condition, walking up and down the room excitedly; and in the disorder of her majestic manner she reminded her somewhat of a middle-aged bacchante.
'Thank God you've come!' she cried. 'Reggie's married an actress, and I've disinherited him. I won't ever see him again, and for all I care he may starve.'
Miss Ley made no movement of surprise, merely noting the fact that herself was a woman of prevision. All she had expected was come about.
'I've been utterly deceived in him. He's not passed a single examination, and the servants have told me that he often came home at night tipsy. He's lied to me systematically; he's deceived me in every possible way; and all the time I flattered myself he was a good, honest boy, he's been leading the life of a rip and a libertine.'
Her words were interrupted by a fit of crying, while Miss Ley watched her reflectively. Presently Mrs Bassett recovered herself.
'I confess the marriage surprises me,' murmured Miss Ley. 'Your daughter-in-law must be a woman of character and tact, Emily; but all the rest has been known to your friends for the last year.'
'D'you mean to say you knew he was a drunken sot, and little better than a thief and a liar?'
'Yes.'
'Why didn't you tell me?'
'I thought you'd find out quite soon enough; and really,
Emily, you're such a fool you would probably have only made things worse.'
Mrs Bassett was too much crushed to resent this plain speech.
'But you don't know everything. I've found a lot of letters from women. It's they who've led him astray. And d'you know whose are the worst?'
'Mrs Castillyon's?'
'Did you know that, too? Did everyone know my shame, and that my boy was being ruined, and did no one warn me? But I'm going to pay her out. I shall send every one to her husband. It's she who's done the mischief.'
She took from a drawer the bundle of letters, and excitedly gave them to Miss Ley.
'Is this all?' she asked.
'Yes.'
Miss Ley had with her a black satin bag, in which she kept her handkerchief and her purse, and swiftly opening it, she put the letters in.
'What are you doing?'
'My dear, don't be a fool! You're not going to send these letters to anyone, and as soon as I get home I mean to burn them. Reggie was a dissolute rip before ever he met Grace Castillyon, and the only woman who ruined him is – yourself! You were very angry when I told you once that the greatest misfortune which could befall a man was to have a really affectionate mother, but I assure you, except for your bad influence, Reggie would have been no worse a boy than any other.'
Mrs Bassett turned livid.
'I think you must be mad, Mary. I've done all I could by example and precept to make him a gentleman. I've devoted my life to his education, and I've sacrificed myself to him absolutely from the day he was born. I can honestly say that I've been a good mother.'
'Pardon me,' answered Miss Ley coolly, 'you've been a very bad mother, a very selfish mother, and you've systematically sacrificed him to your own whims and fancies.'
'How can you talk to me like that when I want sympathy and help? Haven't you any pity for me?'
'None! All that has happened you've brought entirely on yourself. You made him a liar by compelling him to tell you his most private affairs, you drove him to deception by expecting from him an impossible purity, you warned him of temptation so as to make it doubly attractive. You never let him have a free will or a natural instinct, but insisted on his acting and feeling like a middle-aged and rather ill-educated woman. You thwarted all his inclinations, and forced upon him yours. Good heavens! you couldn't have been more selfish, cruel, and exacting if you'd detested the boy!'
Mrs Bassett stared at her, overwhelmed.
'But I only asked common honesty and truthfulness. I only wanted to keep him from spot and stain, and I only expected the morality which religion and everything else enforces upon us.'
'You starved his instincts – the natural desire of a boy for gaiety and amusement, the natural craving of youth for love. You applied to him the standards of a woman of fifty. A wise mother lets her son go his own way, and shuts her eyes to youthful peccadillos; but you made all these peccadillos into deadly sins. After all, moralists talk a deal of nonsense about the frailty of mankind. When you come to close quarters with vice, it's not really so desperately wicked as all that. A man may be a very good fellow though he does sit up late and occasionally drink more than is discreet, gamble a little and philander with ladies of doubtful fame. All these things are part of human nature, when youth and hot blood are joined together, and for some of them foreign nations, wiser than ourselves, have made provision.'
'I wish I'd never had a son!' cried Mrs Bassett. 'How much luckier you are than I!'
Miss Ley got up, and a curious expression came over her face.
'Oh, my dear, don't say that! I tell you, that even though I know Reggie to be idle and selfish and dissolute, I would give all I have in the world if he were only mine. There's not a soul
on this wide earth that cares for me – except Frank, because I amuse him – and I'm so dreadfully lonely. I'm growing old. Often I feel so old I wonder how I can continue to live, and I want someone so badly to whom it's not a matter of absolute indifference if I'm well or ill, dead or alive. Oh, my dear, thank God for your son!'