“We are so glad you’ve come back,” she said. “These are your flowers.” She presented the bouquet.
“Mine!” cried Gudrun. She was suspended for a moment, then a vivid flush went over her, she was as if blinded for a moment with a flame of pleasure. Then her eyes, strange and flaming, lifted and looked at the father, and at Gerald. And again Gerald shrank in spirit, as if it would be more than he could bear, as her hot, exposed eyes rested on him. There was something so revealed, she was revealed beyond bearing, to his eyes. He turned his face aside. And he felt he would not be able to avert her. And he writhed under the imprisonment.
Gudrun put her face into the flowers.
“But how beautiful they are!” she said, in a muffled voice. Then, with a strange, suddenly revealed passion, she stooped and kissed Winifred.
Mr. Crich went forward with his hand held out to her.
“I was afraid you were going to run away from us,” he said, playfully.
Gudrun looked up at him with a luminous, roguish, unknown face.
“Really!” she replied. “No, I didn’t want to stay in London.”
Her voice seemed to imply that she was glad to get back to Shortlands, her tone was warm and subtly caressing.
“That is a good thing,” smiled the father. “You see you are very welcome here among us.”
Gudrun only looked into his face with dark-blue, warm shy eyes. She was unconsciously carried away by her own power.
“And you look as if you came home in every possible triumph,” Mr. Crich continued, holding her hand.
“No,” she said, glowing strangely. “I haven’t had any triumph till I came here.”
“Ah, come, come! We’re not going to hear any of those tales. Haven’t we read notices in the newspaper, Gerald?”
“You came off pretty well,” said Gerald to her, shaking hands. “Did you sell anything?”
“No,” she said, “not much.”
“Just as well,” he said.
She wondered what he meant. But she was all aglow with her reception, carried away by this little flattering ceremonial on her behalf
“Winifred,” said the father, “have you a pair of shoes for Miss Brangwen? You had better change at once—”
Gudrun went out with her bouquet in her hand.
“Quite a remarkable young woman,” said the father to Gerald, when she had gone.
“Yes,” replied Gerald briefly, as if he did not like the observation.
Mr. Crich liked Gudrun to sit with him for half an hour. Usually he was ashy and wretched, with all the life gnawed out of him. But as soon as he rallied, he liked to make believe that he was just as before, quite well and in the midst of life—not of the outer world, but in the midst of a strong essential life. And to this belief, Gudrun contributed perfectly. With her, he could get by stimulation those precious half-hours of strength and exaltation and pure freedom, when he seemed to live more than he had ever lived.
She came to him as he lay propped up in the library. His face was like yellow wax, his eyes darkened, as it were sightless. His black beard, now streaked with grey, seemed to spring out of the waxy flesh of a corpse. Yet the atmosphere about him was energetic and playful. Gudrun subscribed to this, perfectly. To her fancy, he was just an ordinary man. Only his rather terrible appearance was photographed upon her soul, away beneath her consciousness. She knew that, in spite of this playfulness, his eyes could not change from their darkened vacancy, they were the eyes of a man who is dead.
“Ah, this is Miss Brangwen,” he said, suddenly rousing as she entered, announced by the man-servant. “Thomas, put Miss Brangwen a chair here—that’s right.” He looked at her soft, fresh face with pleasure. It gave him the illusion of life. “Now, you will have a glass of sherry and a little piece of cake. Thomas—”
“No, thank you,” said Gudrun. And as soon as she had said it, her heart sank horribly. The sick man seemed to fall into a gap of death, at her contradiction. She ought to play up to him, not to contravene him. In an instant she was smiling her rather roguish smile.
“I don’t like sherry very much,” she said. “But I like almost anything else.”
The sick man caught at this straw instantly.
“Not sherry! No! Something else! What then? What is there, Thomas?”
“Port wine—curaçao—”
“I would love some curaçao—” said Gudrun, looking at the sick man confidingly
“You would. Well then Thomas, curaçao-and a little cake, or a biscuit?”
“A biscuit,” said Gudrun. She did not want anything, but she was wise.
“Yes.”
He waited till she was settled with her little glass and her biscuit. Then he was satisfied.
“You have heard the plan,” he said with some excitement, “for a studio for Winifred, over the stables?”
“No!” exclaimed Gudrun, in mock wonder.
“Oh!—I thought Winnie wrote it to you, in her letter!”
“Oh—yes—of course. But I thought perhaps it was only her own little idea—” Gudrun smiled subtly, indulgently. The sick man smiled also, elated.
“Oh no. It is a real project. There is a good room under the roof of the stables—with sloping rafters. We had thought of converting it into a studio.”
“How very nice that would be!” cried Gudrun, with excited warmth. The thought of the rafters stirred her.
“You think it would? Well, it can be done.”
“But how perfectly splendid for Winifred! Of course, it is just what is needed, if she is to work at all seriously. One must have one’s workshop, otherwise one never ceases to be an amateur.”
“Is that so? Yes. Of course, I should like you to share it with Winifred.”
“Thank you so much.”
Gudrun knew all these things already, but she must look shy and very grateful, as if overcome.
“Of course, what I should like best, would be if you could give up your work at the Grammar School, and just avail yourself of the studio, and work there—well, as much or as little as you liked—”
He looked at Gudrun with dark, vacant eyes. She looked back at him as if full of gratitude. These phrases of a dying man were so complete and natural, coming like echoes through his dead mouth.
“And as to your earnings—you don’t mind taking from me what you have taken from the Education Committee, do you? I don’t want you to be a loser.”
“Oh,” said Gudrun, “if I can have the studio and work there, I can earn money enough, really I can.”
“Well,” he said, pleased to be the benefactor, “we can see about all that. You wouldn’t mind spending your days here?”
“If there were a studio to work in,” said Gudrun, “I could ask for nothing better.”
“Is that so?”
He was really very pleased. But already he was getting tired. She could see the grey, awful semi-consciousness of mere pain and dissolution coming over him again, the torture coming into the vacancy of his darkened eyes. It was not over yet, this process of death. She rose softly saying:
“Perhaps you will sleep. I must look for Winifred.”
She went out, telling the nurse that she had left him. Day by day the tissue of the sick man was further and further reduced, nearer and nearer the process came, towards the last knot which held the human being in its unity. But this knot was hard and unrelaxed, the will of the dying man never gave way. He might be dead in nine-tenths, yet the remaining tenth remained unchanged, till it too was torn apart. With his will he held the unit of himself firm, but the circle of his power was ever and ever reduced, it would be reduced to a point at last, then swept away.
To adhere to life, he must adhere to human relationships, and he caught at every straw. Winifred, the butler, the nurse, Gudrun, these were the people who meant all to him, in these last resources. Gerald, in his father’s presence, stiffened with repulsion. It was so, to a less degree, with all the other children except Winifred. They could not see anything but the death, when they looked at their father. It was as if some subterranean dislike overcame them. They could not see the familiar face, hear the familiar voice. They were overwhelmed by the antipathy of visible and audible death. Gerald could not breathe in his father’s presence. He must get out at once. And so, in the same way, the father could not bear the presence of his son. It sent a final irritation through the soul of the dying man.
The studio was made ready, Gudrun and Winifred moved in. They enjoyed so much the ordering and the appointing of it. And now they need hardly be in the house at all. They had their meals in the studio, they lived there safely. For the house was becoming dreadful. There were two nurses in white, flitting silently about, like heralds of death. The father was confined to his bed, there was a come and go of sottovoce sisters and brothers and children.
Winifred was her father’s constant visitor. Every morning, after breakfast, she went into his room when he was washed and propped up in bed, to spend half an hour with him.
“Are you better, Daddie?” she asked him invariably.
And invariably he answered:
“Yes, I think I’m a little better, pet.”
She held his hand in both her own, lovingly and protectively. And this was very dear to him.
She ran in again as a rule at lunch time, to tell him the course of events, and every evening, when the curtains were drawn, and his room was cosy, she spent a long time with him. Gudrun was gone home, Winifred was alone in the house: she liked best to be with her father. They talked and prattled at random, he always as if he were well, just the same as when he was going about. So that Winifred, with a child’s subtle instinct for avoiding the painful things, behaved as if nothing serious was the matter. Instinctively, she withheld her attention, and was happy. Yet in her remoter soul, she knew as well as the adults knew: perhaps better.
Her father was quite well in his make-belief with her. But when she went away, he relapsed under the misery of his dissolution. But still there were these bright moments, though as his strength waned, his faculty for attention grew weaker, and the nurse had to send Winifred away, to save him from exhaustion.
He never admitted that he was going to die. He knew it was so, he knew it was the end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the fact, mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by death. For him, there was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great need to cry out and to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry aloud to Gerald, so that his son should be horrified out of his composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of this, and he recoiled, to avoid any such thing. This uncleanness of death repelled him too much. One should die quickly, like the Romans, one should be master of one’s fate in dying as in living. He was convulsed in the clasp of this death of his father’s, as in the coils of the great serpent of Laocobn.
ca
The great serpent had got the father, and the son was dragged into the embrace of horrifying death along with him. He resisted always. And in some strange way, he was a tower of strength to his father.
The last time the dying man asked to see Gudrun he was grey with near death. Yet he must see someone, he must, in the intervals of consciousness, catch into connection with the living world, lest he should have to accept his own situation. Fortunately he was most of his time dazed and half gone. And he spent many hours dimly thinking of the past, as it were, dimly re-living his old experiences. But there were times even to the end when he was capable of realising what was happening to him in the present, the death that was on him. And these were the times when he called in outside help, no matter whose. For to realise this death that he was dying was a death beyond death, never to be borne. It was an admission never to be made.
Gudrun was shocked by his appearance, and by the darkened, almost disintegrated eyes, that still were unconquered and firm.
“Well,” he said in his weakened voice, “and how are you and Winifred getting on?”
“Oh, very well indeed,” replied Gudrun.
There were slight dead gaps in the conversation, as if the ideas called up were only elusive straws floating on the dark chaos of the sick man’s dying.
“The studio answers all right?” he said.
“Splendid. It couldn’t be more beautiful and perfect,” said Gudrun.
She waited for what he would say next.
“And you think Winifred has the makings of a sculptor?”
It was strange how hollow the words were, meaningless.
“I’m sure she has. She will do good things one day.”
“Ah! Then her life won’t be altogether wasted, you think?”
Gudrun was rather surprised.
“Sure it won’t!” she exclaimed softly.
“That’s right.”
Again Gudrun waited for what he would say.
“You find life pleasant, it is good to live, isn’t it?” he asked, with a pitiful faint smile that was almost too much for Gudrun.
“Yes,” she smiled—she would lie at random—“I get a pretty good time I believe.”
“That’s right. A happy nature is a great asset.”
Again Gudrun smiled, though her soul was dry with repulsion. Did one have to die like this-having the life extracted forcibly from one, whilst one smiled and made conversation to the end? Was there no other way? Must one go through all the horror of this victory over death, the triumph of the integral will, that would not be broken till it disappeared utterly? One must, it was the only way. She admired the self-possession and the control of the dying man exceedingly. But she loathed the death itself. She was glad the everyday world held good, and she need not recognise anything beyond.
“You are quite all right here?—nothing we can do for you?—nothing you find wrong in your position?”
“Except that you are too good to me,” said Gudrun.
“Ah, well, the fault of that lies with yourself,” he said, and he felt a little exultation, that he had made this speech. He was still so strong and living! But the nausea of death began to creep back on him, in reaction.