I said yes.
‘She said this morning that I could ask you about it. She’d rather you told me than tell me herself.’
I was taken aback, so much so that I did not want to speak over the telephone. I arranged to call at his house. As I walked there along the reach from Chelsea, the river oily in the misty sunshine, the chimneys quivering in the languid Indian summer, I was seized by a sense of strangeness. This new wish of Ann’s — for she had, while in danger, said that if she recovered she would tell Charles herself — this wish to have her message given him at second hand seemed bizarre. But it was not really that wish which struck so strange. It was the comfort of the senses, the warmth of the air and the smell of the autumn trees, assuring one that life might be undisturbed.
Charles was in his surgery. He was not pleased to see me. He did not want to be reminded of what I had come to tell him. He was looking better than when I had last seen him: he had made up sleep, the colour had come back to his face. But he was not rested. In a tone brittle and harsh, he began: ‘I’d better hear what she said. I suppose it’s about this wretched paper, isn’t it? I’d better hear it.’
I was sure that, since she got better, he had not been able to put the choice out of his mind. I gave him her message, as I should have been obliged to if she had died.
‘So she left it to me,’ Charles said.
He did not ask for any explanation at all. With a deliberate effort — it was the habit I had got used to when he was a younger man — he talked of things which prevented me saying any more.
‘I’ve been writing a letter,’ he said. ‘Would you like to read it? Do you think you would?’
I did not know what to expect. It was, in fact, a letter to the Lancet. In August, just before Ann’s illness, one of Charles’ cases had been a child of three ill with a form of diphtheria, in such a way that the ordinary feeding-tube could not be used. Charles had improvised a kind of two-way tube which had worked well. In the last fortnight, since he knew Ann would recover, he had discovered another case in a hospital, and persuaded them to use the same technique. It had worked again, and now he thought it worthwhile to publish the method.
‘You see, no one has ever been worse with his hands than I am,’ said Charles. ‘So if I can use this trick, anyone else certainly can. I can’t understand why some practical man hasn’t thought of it long ago. Still, it’s remarkably satisfying. You can believe that, can’t you?’
He put the letter on his desk, ready to be typed.
‘It’s all very odd,’ he said. ‘When I was very young, I used to think that I might write something. I imagined I might write something on a simply enormous scale. I should have been extremely surprised to be told that my first published work would be a note on a minor device to make life slightly more comfortable for very small children suffering from a rather uncommon disease.’
He was talking to keep me at a distance: but the sarcasm pleased him. He was genuinely gratified by what he had done. It was good to have aroused a bit of professional envy, to receive a bit of professional praise. It was good to have something definite to one’s credit. Concentrated and undiffuse as he was, he had been distracted for a few hours, even at this time, by getting a result.
But I was frightened, because he would not talk about the Note. I tried to get him to.
We had been intimate so long: not thinking it out as a technique to soften him, but just because I did not want to leave him quite alone, I confided something about my own marriage — something I had not told him before, nor anyone else. His eyes became sharp with insight, he gave me the support with which he had never failed me. But I did not get any other response.
At last I said: ‘Charles, will you let me ask you about something else?’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t want to add to your trouble. You know that.’
‘I know that,’ he said.
‘Can you tell me what you propose to do? About stopping this paper?’
There was a silence.
‘No,’ he said. His eyes were steady. He went on: ‘I don’t know. It’s no use talking about it.’
The words were slow, dragged out. Looking at him, I believed he had spoken the precise truth. What his decision would be, he just did not know. But he was by himself, and nothing that anyone said could affect it now.
We went on talking. We even talked politics. I knew by his tone, what I already knew, that whatever he chose, politics would not move him either way.
As I sat with him, I believed that, whatever he chose, he was asking himself — I remembered, with a trace of superstition, the night in Bryanston Square after I had taken Ann to the concert — how much he could bear to dominate another. He had gone through too much in order to be free himself: it was harder for him to choose that she should not be.
Late that night I happened to see him again. I had been dining in Dolphin Square, and was walking home along the Embankment in the moonlight. I saw Charles coming very slowly towards me on the opposite side of the road. His head was bent, he was wearing no overcoat or hat; he might have been out at a case. As he came nearer, he did not look up. Soon I could see his face in the bright moonlight: I did not cross the road, I did not say good night.
41: Family Gathering
Three days later, I was surprised to be rung up by Charles. He told me that Katherine, her children, and Francis had arrived the evening before at Bryanston Square. I was surprised again; it was only a month since the baby was born; then I realized from Charles’ tone that they had come for a purpose.
They were pressing him to go to Bryanston Square for tea that afternoon: would I pick him up and go with him?
As soon as I saw him, I thought he looked transformed. He was still pale and tired: he was tired but not restless, tired but easy, as though he had just finished playing a game.
At once he asked me, in a relaxed, affectionate voice: ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but just tell me again exactly what Ann said to you, will you, Lewis?’
At that moment I knew he had made up his mind.
When I had finished, he was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, almost as though he were making fun of her: ‘I suppose she is much braver than you or me, isn’t she? I’ve always thought she was, haven’t you? Yet she didn’t want to tell it me herself. She was glad to get out of that.’
He smiled.
‘She’s been incomparably nearer to me than any other human being ever has, or could be again,’ he said. ‘She thinks I know her. But I was astonished when she wanted to get out of telling me. Sometimes I think that I don’t know her at all.’
On the way to Bryanston Square he asked me if I had ever felt the same, if I had ever felt that someone I knew and loved had for the moment become a stranger — utterly mysterious, utterly unknown. It was like the talks we used to have when we were younger.
Katherine and Francis were waiting in the drawing-room. Charles embraced his sister, held her in his arms, asked about the child. She told him how the delivery had been quick and easy. Charles showed a doctor’s interest as he questioned her. She replied with zest; she was physically happier, and more unreticent, than anyone there. She looked blooming with health, radiant as though she had just come from a holiday. The next hour was preying on her mind, she was heavy-hearted, but still she gave out happiness. It set her apart from Charles, or even from her husband, in whom one could see already the signs of strain.
Charles said: ‘I must run up and see Ann for five minutes.’
‘I suppose,’ said Francis, ‘that she can’t come down for tea?’