She went into her own little writing-room, where her escritoire was covered with letters of condolence, to be answered, and the list of those invited to tomorrow's funeral, checked. She took her journal out of her drawer, and one or two other papers, looked irresolutely at the heap, and slipped out again, listening to sleep and death.
She went up another flight, towards the top of the house, where Randolph 's workroom was, from which it had been the business of her life to exclude everyone, anyone, even herself. His curtains were open. Light from a gas-lamp came in, and light from a full moon too, swimming silvery. There was the ghost of the smell of his tobacco. Heaps of books on his desk, from before that last illness. The feeling of him working was still in that room. She sat down at his writing-table, putting the candle in front of her, and felt, not better, that was the wrong thought, but less desolate, as though whatever was still present here was less gaunt and terrible than what slept, or lay as still as stone, down there.
She had his watch in her dressing-gown pocket, with the few papers she had brought up. She took it out and looked at it. Three. Three in the last morning he would be in the house.
She looked around at the glass-fronted bookcases, vaguely reflecting multiplied flames back at her. She opened a drawer or two, in the desk, and found sheafs of paper, in his hand, in others'; how was she to judge and decide the fate of all this?
Along one wall was his botanical and zoological collection. Microscopes in their wooden cases, hinged and latched. Slides, drawings, specimens. The Wardian cases containing sealed worlds of plant life, misted with their own breath, the elegantly panelled marine aquarium, with its weeds, its Actinia and starfish, against which M. Manet had painted the poet amongst his ferns, suggesting a world perhaps of primaeval vegetable swamp or foreshore. All this must go. She would consult his friends at the Science Museum as to a suitable home for it. Maybe it should be donated to an appropriate educational institution-a Working Men's club, a school of some kind. There had been, she remembered, his special airtight specimen box, glass-lined and sealed. She found it where it was kept; he was orderly in his habits. It would be ideal for her purpose.
There was a decision to be made and tomorrow would be too late.
He was a man who had never really had a serious illness, until this last one. And that was long-drawn-out; he had been confined to his bed for the last three months, with both of them knowing what was coming, though not when, nor how fast. They had both, during those months, lived in that one room, his bedroom. She had been close to him at all times, adjusting his air or his pillow, towards the end helping him to feed, reading to him when even the lightest book became too heavy. She thought she could feel his needs and discomforts, without words. The pain too, there was a sense in which she had shared the pain. She had sat quietly beside him, holding the papery white hand, and felt his life ebb, day by day. Not his intelligence. At the beginning there had been a feverish piece of time in which, for some reason, he had become obsessed by the poems of John Donne, had recited them to the ceiling, in a voice both resonant and beautiful, puffing away the fronds of beard from his mouth. When he couldn't find a line he called, "Ellen, Ellen, quickly, I am lost," and she had had to riffle and seek.
"What would I do without you, my dear? Here we are at the end, close together. You are a great comfort. We have been happy."
"We have been happy," she would say, and it was so. They were happy even then, in the way they had always been happy, sitting close, saying little, looking at the same things, together.
She would come into the room and hear the voice:
"Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it."
He carried out his dying in style. She watched him working it out, fighting the pain, the nausea, the fear, in order to have something to say to her that she would remember later, with warmth, with honour. Some of the things he said were said as endings. "I see why Swammerdam longed for the quiet dark." Or, "I tried to write justly, to see what I could from where I was." Or, for her, "Fortyfour years with no anger. I do not think that many husbands and wives can say as much."
She wrote these things down, not for what they were, though they were good things to say, but because they reminded her of his face turned towards hers, the intelligent eyes under the damp creased brow, the frail grip of the once-strong fingers. "Do you remember-dear-when you sat-like a water-nixie on that stone-on that stone in the weeds at the-the name's gone-don't tell me- the poet's fountain-the fountain-the Fontaine de Vaucluse. You sat in the sun."
"I was afraid. It was all rushing."
"You did not look-afraid."
Most of what they shared, after all, after all was done, was silence.
"It was all a question of silence," she said aloud to him, in his workroom, where she could no longer expect any answer, neither anger nor understanding.
She laid out the objects involved in her decision. A packet of letters, tied with faded violet ribbons. A bracelet of hair she had worked, from his hair and her own, over those last months, which now she meant to bury with him. His watch. An unfinished letter, undated, in his own hand, which she had earlier found in his desk. A letter to herself, in a spidery hand.
A sealed envelope.
Trembling slightly, she took up the letter to herself, which had come a month ago.
Dear Mrs Ash,
I believe my name will not be strangetoyou - that you know something of me -I cannot imagine you cannot - though if by chancemy letter is an absolute surprise I ask your pardon. I ask your pardon, however things may be,for intruding on you at this time. a m told Mr Ash is ill. Indeed the papers report so, and makeno concealmentof the gravity of his state. I am reliably told that he may not live long, though of course I ask your pardon again if I am in error, as I may be, as I must hope to be.
I have writ down some things I find I wish, after all, that he should know. am in a state of considerable doubt as to the wisdom of putting myself f orward at this time - do I writefor my own absolution orfor him- I cannot know. I am in your hands, in this matter. I must trust to your judgment, your generosity, your goodwill.
We are two old women now, and my fires at least are out and have long been out. I know nothing of yon, for the best of reasons, that nothing has been said to me, at any time.
I have writ down, for his eyes only, some things - I find I cannotsay, what things - and have sealed the letter.If you wish to read it, it is in your hands, though I must hope, if it can be, that he will readthe letter,and decide.
And if he cannot or will not readit. … oh, Mrs Ash, I am in your hands again, do with my hostage as you see fit, and have the right.
I have done great harm though I meant none to you, as God is my witness, and I hope I have done none - to you that is, or nothing irretrievable.
I find I shall be grateful for a Line from you - of forgiveness - of pity - of a nger, if you must - will you - go so far?
I live in a Turret like an old Witch, and make verses nobody wants.
If in the goodness of your heart, you would tell me what becomes of him -I shall praise God for you. I am in your hands.