Following Darkness/Chapter 56
CHAPTER LVI
I was writing to Owen when my father brought me Katherine's letter. It was to say good-bye to me, and there was a veiled reproach at my not having come to the station to see them off. She had looked out for me up to the last moment; so that in the end it was really I who had failed! I smiled dimly.
As I write it now, in this quiet, gray, autumn morning, it appears to me that the thought then hovering at the back of my mind was, after all, not so very foolish. Death, coming without disease, without weakness, before life has grown stale, before illusions have been shattered and innocence marred;—simply upon the bright, fresh comedy of life, the dropping of a dark, rapid curtain.
I finished my letter to Owen, and addressed it; but when that was done I still sat on at the table, holding my pen, on which the ink had long since dried. Then I bent down and leaned my forehead upon Katherine's open letter. When I looked up the sun was shining in the garden, and shining in on me through the window; nothing had changed. . . . .
In the afternoon I went up to Derryaghy, where Mrs. Carroll received me. I spoke quite quietly to her, just as usual; but all I remember now is that there were some red dahlias in a bowl on the table, and that Mrs. Carroll proposed taking me to Paris for my Christmas holidays.
It was when I had left her and had gone out to walk in the woods, that I suddenly felt the full reality of what had happened. It meant that everything was finished, that I should never see Katherine again. I was filled with desolation, with a kind of sick feeling that my love had been superfluous, wasted, and perhaps distasteful. Last year I had been sorry to say good-bye to her; I had dreaded the new life opening out before me; but I had had the prospect of meeting her again at a year's end, and the belief that she cared for me and would remember me. Now there was nothing—nothing.
My grief was mingled with a kind of bitter, impotent rage against I knew not what. I kicked a stick that lay in my path savagely out of the way, cursing it under my breath. I flung myself down among the bracken. Sometimes a kind of blank would come into my mind, and I would find myself staring stupidly at the trees, while for a few moments an altogether different thought would slip into my brain; then my grief would overwhelm me once more, and blot out the world.
But was this grief I felt? I do not know. It was different from what I felt later. It was something violent and maddening, sweeping over me in paroxysms, leaving me intervals of cold insensibility. And late that night, when, thoroughly wearied out, I went to bed, and from sheer exhaustion would be dropping off to sleep, from time to time it would pierce through my numbing senses, and waken me sharply, as if some one had violently pulled me, so that I would start up, yet for a moment not realize what it was that had wakened me.
I did not go back to Derryaghy on the next day or the next. I took long walks, and it was during these solitary rambles that the thought of death came irresistibly to me. I felt that my life was become an intolerable burden, and in my inexperience I imagined that the pain I felt now I should feel always. I thought of shooting myself, of taking poison, only I disliked the idea of other people knowing. Was there not a better way? I thought of swimming out so far that it would be impossible to return, but I dreaded the pain of suffocation. Then, two days before my time for leaving home, and when Owen had written saying that they expected me and that he would be at the station to meet me, there came a night of wind and rain, and it seemed to me I had found the solution to my problem.
Shortly before midnight, when my father's snores had become deep and regular, I stole out of the house, as I had so often done in the old days of our club. I had put on my overcoat, but under it I wore only my night-shirt, and I hurried down the road and across the golf-links in the cold, driving rain. When I reached an exposed spot, I took off my coat and lay down on the soaking ground, letting the wind and rain sweep over me. I lay there till morning. It did not matter if I were seen returning to the house then; it would simply be thought that I had gone out for an early bathe. As I staggered to my feet my limbs were so stiff and cramped that at first I could hardly bobble along, but after I had gone a little way it became easier.
I got into bed in my wet night-shirt, but I could not go to sleep. My head ached and I was shivering; yet a few minutes later I no longer felt cold; on the contrary, a burning heat seemed like a fire under my skin. I could not lie for two minutes without altering my position; and when I got up to dress I knew I was really ill. At breakfast I only pretended to eat. My father noticed there was something the matter and questioned me, when I answered that I was all right, and presently he left me to go to the school, which was being whitewashed and made ready for the re-opening next week. As for me, I was glad I should not have to repeat my experiment twice, and I had even a naive curiosity as to the precise nature of my illness.
Before night I began to feel much worse. My father went out to a meeting in connection with church matters, and I was left alone. I should have gone to bed, had not the task of climbing two flights of stairs and undressing appeared almost insurmountable; so I half sat, half lay, in a chair, with my eyes shut and my head leaning back. I was extremely thirsty, and at every breath I drew my side hurt me, the pain being increased by the fact that I had begun to cough a little. It had all come on so quickly that I wondered if I should die that night.
When my father came in he immediately saw I was worse, and sent me to bed, giving me something hot to drink; but all that night I hardly slept, and in the morning he went for Doctor O'Brian. By that time I had almost forgotten the cause of my illness; what had led me to seek it; whether I desired it to be fatal or not. I was examined, stethoscoped, asked questions, gazed at. "Acute pneumonia." I caught the words through a kind of lethargy into which I had fallen. They were talking together, my father and the doctor, but neither could understand how the disease had developed so rapidly. . . . .