‘Well, we couldn’t have helped it, if you had,’ said Megan. ‘We shouldn’t have had to feel ashamed about it. That is unfair when people haven’t done anything. And when a thing is done on purpose, it isn’t even sad.’
‘It is sad that anyone should want to do such a thing.’
‘Not if he wanted to when he had an ordinary life. If he had had pain or sorrow, it would be different.’
‘Life itself can be a sorrow, my child.’
‘Only because of what is in it. We are supposed to like life itself. Will you be happier now you have done this? Your life won’t be any different.’
‘I shall be more resigned. And I hope my life will be a little different. I hope something will come out of it, that will make it so. And I must remember what you say, and try to like life itself.’
‘Toby said it,’ said Toby, coming up with something in his hands.
‘What have you there?’ said Cassius.
Toby displayed a box containing various objects.
‘Where did you get that box?’
‘Open drawer,’ said his son.
‘Go and put it back again and shut the drawer.’
‘No,’ said Toby.
‘Do as Father tells you at once.’
‘Bottle,’ said Toby, making a selection from the box.
‘He will break it,’ said Megan.
‘Oh, no,’ said Toby, his voice quavering into mirth. ‘Only hold it. When it break, can’t help it, poor little boy.’
Cassius reached towards the bottle, but desisted and drummed his fingers on the couch.
‘Give the bottle to me,’ said Mr Clare. ‘It is mine, and I have my use for it.’
‘Rattle it,’ said his grandson.
‘No, it is almost empty. It will not make any noise.’
Toby showed that this was not the case, and his grandfather stood with his eyes on it. A change seemed to come into the room. It seemed that time was standing still. Mr Clare and Flavia met each other’s eyes, and the former took the bottle and emptied it pn his hand.
‘Seven tablets! And there were eleven there. So you took four, my son.’
His unusual ending gave weight to his words.
‘Yes, I took four,’ said Cassius, going into deliberate mirth. ‘Enough to make me unconscious and to do no more. But it did a good deal more. It has done its work. And I should not like to face it again, I can tell you. I began to think I should breathe my last. I almost had the experience I was supposed to have had. I thought my last hour had come. But I played a proper trick on all of you. The weak point was that I played it on myself as well. You need not think I did not suffer for what I did, if that is any comfort to you. If four tablets did that, ten would indeed have done the whole.’
‘Well, we knew that,’ said his father.
‘And if you all say it served me right, I say the same to you,’ said Cassius, his tones swelling. ‘You deserved to think you had driven me to my death, when you had done all you could to empty my life. It was the right and fair return; it was poetic justice. So I don’t want any solemn faces or speaking silences or exchange of glances. Things are fair and square between us, and there is an end of it.’
‘There is also a beginning,’ said Flavia. ‘Another conception of you, a mistrust of what you say and do, a question of your presentation of yourself. A difference that will go through our lives and die with us.’
‘And have you had so much trust in me? There has been little sign of it. We cannot lose what we have never had. I have not to face much there.’
‘Did Father pretend he had taken more pills than he had?’ said Megan.
‘He did, my child. That is what he pretended,’ said Cassius, going into further mirth. ‘And he does not regret it. And he hopes you will never be driven to a like course, and that if you are, you will achieve more by it.’
‘I don’t understand why you did it, or what you wanted to achieve.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Henry.
‘Neither do I,’ said Flavia.
‘No,’ said Cassius, looking at them. ‘You would not understand. The heart can only know itself.’
‘You let me know some of it, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.
‘I did, my dear old father. And what I should have done without your listening ear I do not know.’
‘You could hardly have done more than you have.’
‘I could have done the whole thing.’
‘No, you could not, being as you are. We can only act according to ourselves.’
‘I really thought of it.’
‘We are not talking of thoughts. They cover a wide ground.’
‘You are a strange man, Cassius,’ said Flavia. ‘I see I have not known you.’
‘And you are a strange woman. And I have always known you. And now I know you better.’
‘You have put yourself in a class apart.’
‘No, I have not. I have put myself in the class of weak, erring mortals to which we all belong, to which you belong yourself. I am not removed from you by a single act. What about you, who drove me to it? What should be said of that? No, you are not to go, children. I refuse to be left alone with this woman. Father does not want to be left alone with Mater.’ Cassius changed his tone and put his hand on Toby’s head. ‘She is vexed with him and makes him afraid of her. Toby must stay and take care of him.’
Toby placed himself in front of his father and looked round in challenge, and Flavia glanced at him and looked away.
‘I think Mother is in the hall,’ said Fabian. ‘She was coming to see us today. May we go out to her, Father?’
‘You must ask Mater that,’ said Mr Clare.
‘Mater always lets us see her.’
‘Ask her in; ask her in,’ said Cassius. ‘We have nothing to hide. She may as well hear what she must hear in the end, and hear the truth instead of some distortion of it. Let her swell the chorus of my judges. Come in, Catherine, and join them in their verdict on me. I know you and Flavia have but one thought between you.’
‘They do not need more than one for this matter,’ said Mr Clare.
‘Well, Catherine, what have you heard of me? You need not be afraid to say. ‘I am not used to being spared.’
There was a pause.
‘I heard that you found things too much. I heard that you tried to end them.’
‘Well, well, it was not quite that,’ said Cassius, with another sound of mirth and his eyes turned aside. ‘I hardly know how to tell you. I have put myself in an awkward place. You may think in almost a ridiculous one; I can understand that view. Or rather it is chance that has done it; I thought things out myself. Ask Flavia to tell you. You would rather hear it from her. And she can put things in a word better than I can.’
‘No, it is your own history, my boy,’ said Mr Clare. ‘No one else can tell it from the first.’
‘Well, then, I did not take the full dose,’ said Cassius, looking in front of him and speaking easily. ‘Only enough to make me unconscious and do no more. I thought of taking it, and then the will to live, or the impulse of life, or whatever it was, checked me and led me to a compromise. Compromise; yes, that is the word. And I carried it through. I did not fail in my purpose. I hoodwinked my father and my wife. And they are not easy people to deceive;you must have found that. I mean you would understand it. They accepted the whole thing. And upon my word I was near to accepting it myself. It was a dire experience, recovering from that trance. I find myself feeling I have had a narrow escape. I find myself in a mood of thankfulness. It shows how near I was to the actual thing.’
‘It surely shows your distance from it,’ said Flavia.
‘Well, you ought to be glad of that. It ought to be a relief to you. You don’t seem to have taken any lesson from what I have done.’
‘But you seem to have taken one yourself,’ said Mr Clare. ‘And it is you who needed it.’