by E. F. Benson
And then I saw that Francis was not among the little group of islanders on the quay. Probably he had not got the telegram I sent from Rome to-day, for the postmaster of Alatri is no friend to telegrams, and, as I have often thought, keeps one in his desk for a day or two, in order to teach you not to be in such a hurry. And when he thinks you have learned your lesson, he has it delivered, two or three days afterwards, among your letters. But in spite of this perfectly adequate method of accounting for the undoubted fact that Francis had not come to meet the boat, I felt an inward resurgence of the uneasiness with which I had received his request that I should come out in March if possible, and not wait till April. I had accounted for that at the time by a reasonable explanation, and I could account, also reasonably, for his absence. But I could now, as the funicular railway drew us up like a bucket from the well, into the higher sunlit slopes of the island, account for both by one and the same explanation. He was ill when last he wrote....
I found a porter in the Piazza, who shouldered my luggage, and I went on ahead, striving to convince myself, with quite decent success, that I was being afraid “even where no fear was,” and yielded myself up, though I walked briskly in order to put an end to my ominous surmises, to the enchantment of the hour, and of the sense that I really had arrived again. The little huddled town, with the Piazza from the doors and arches of which any moment the chorus of light-opera might issue with short skirts and “catchy” chorus, was quite unchanged, save that at this hour of sunset it used always to be guttural with Teutonic tourists, and a place to be avoided by the genuine islander. Unchanged, too, was the narrow street, where two could scarcely walk abreast, that led out to the hill-side on which the villa was perched; there was the narrow slit of blue overhead, and the vegetable shop and the tobacconist’s and the trattoria with the smell of spilt wine issuing from it and the lean cat blinking at the doorway. The same children apparently ran up against one’s legs, the tailor was putting up his shutters, and two Americans, as always, were buying picture-postcards at the stationer’s. The path dipped downwards, ran level between olive groves and villas, made a right turn and a left turn, and there above me was the flight of steps that led steeply up by the whitewashed wall of the garden, and above the wall, still catching the last rays of the sun, was the stone-pine, and behind it, greyish-white and green-shuttered, the house, where in a minute now Francis would welcome me. My bedroom shutters I saw were open, and blankets were being aired on the window-sill, and this looked as if I was expected.
I opened the garden gate, pulling at the string that lifted the latch inside, and a great wave of the scent of wallflower and freesias poured over me, warm from their day-long sunning underneath the southern wall, and intoxicatingly sweet. And even as I inhaled the first breath of it, a woman came out of the dining-room door that opens on to the terrace. She was dressed in the uniform of a hospital nurse.
“We were expecting you,” she said, speaking with that precise utterance of foreigners. “I hope you have had a good journey.”
The scent of the freesias suddenly sickened me.
“What is the matter?” I asked. “What has happened?”
“He wants to tell you himself,” she said.
“He? And is it serious?”
She looked at me with that calm, untroubled sympathy that is the reward of those who give up their lives to mitigate suffering.
“Yes,” she said. “It is very serious. Will you go up and see him now?”
“Surely. Where is he?”
“In his bedroom. The third door along the passage. Ah, I forgot; of course you know.”
He was lying much propped up in bed, opposite the open window, and as he turned towards the door at my entry, I thought that this must be some wicked, inexplicable joke, so radiant and young and normal was his face.
“Ah, that’s splendid!” he said. “It was ripping getting your telegram this morning.”
“Francis, what’s the matter?” I asked. “Why are you in bed? Why is there a nurse here?”
He had not let go of my hand, and now he clasped it more closely.
“I’ll tell you the end first,” he said; “quickly; just in one word. I’m dying. I can’t live more than a few weeks.”
There was a moment’s silence, not prolonged, but at the end of it I felt that I had known this for years.
“Will you hear all about it from the beginning?” he asked. “Or would it bore you?”
He was so perfectly normal that there was really nothing left but to be normal too, or it may be that a great shock stuns your emotional faculties for a while. But I do not think it was that with me now. It was Francis’s intense serenity and happiness that infected and enveloped me.
“I can’t tell whether it would bore me or not,” I said, “until I hear it.”
“Then make yourself comfortable for about half an hour,” he said. “But stop me when you like.”
“It was very soon after I came out to Italy,” he said, “that I kept getting attacks of the most infernal pain. Then they ceased to be attacks; at least, they attacked all the time. It was about then, when it was worst, that I wrote you a pig of a letter. Wasn’t it?”
“It was rather.”
“Yes. I was pretty bad in other ways as well, which I’ll tell you of afterwards. At present this is just physical. I had an awful dread all the time in my mind what this might be, though I kept saying it was indigestion. Then I went down to Rome and saw Schiavetti, the doctor. And I can’t describe to you — though it may sound odd — what a relief it was to know for certain that my fears were correct. The worst I had feared was true, but anyhow, the fear, the apprehension were gone. When you are up against a thing, you may dislike it very much, but you don’t fear the possibility of it any longer. It’s there; and nothing, even the worst, is as bad as suspense. I’ve got cancer.”
He looked radiantly at me.
“That was one relief,” he said, “and on the top of it came another. It was quite impossible to operate. I needn’t be afraid of being cut about. All the surgery that I have had or will have is the morphia needle, which, when you are in bad pain, is neither more nor less than heaven. But I haven’t wanted the morphia needle for the last fortnight, and they think I shan’t want it again. After a few horrible weeks the pain grew much less, and then ceased altogether. I doze and sleep most of the time now, and when I wake it is to an ecstasy. I don’t want to die, it isn’t that, and I don’t want to live. But that complete absence of desire isn’t apathy at all. It’s just the divinest content you can imagine. It’s true that I wanted to see you, and here you are.”
An idea suddenly struck me.
“Then there’s something happened to you,” said I, “which is not physical.”
“Ah! I wondered if you would think of that. Guess once more.”
It was no question of guessing; I knew.
“You have passed through the dark night of the soul.”
He laughed.
“Yes; that’s it. And that explains a thing you must have been asking yourself, why I didn’t write to tell you when I knew what was the matter with me. I couldn’t. For among other things, which I will tell you of, I had the absolute conviction that you wouldn’t come, and wouldn’t want to be bothered. That’s a decent specimen of the pleasures of the dark night.”
He turned a little in bed.
“But I wouldn’t have been spared the dark night for all the treasures of heaven,” he said. “Out of His infinite Love Christ Jesus let me know something of what He felt when He said, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ I remember once we talked about it, and it is summed up in the sense of utter darkness and utter loneliness. My mind reasoned it all out, and came to the absolute conclusion that there was nothing: there was neither love anywhere nor God anywhere, nor honour, nor decency. Had I been physically capable of it, there was no pleasure, carnal and devilish, that I would not have plucked at. At least, I think I should, but perhaps that would not have se
emed worth while. I didn’t, anyhow, because I was in continual pain. But all that I believed, all the amazing happiness that I had enjoyed from such knowledge of God as I had attained to, was completely taken from me. I could remember it dimly, as in some nonsensical dream. My mind, I thought, must have been drugged into some hysterical sentimental mood; but now, clearly and lucidly it saw how fantastic its imagination had been. I went deeper and deeper into the horror of great darkness, and I suppose that it was just that (namely, that my spirit knew that existence without God was horror) which was my means of rescue. I still clung blindly and without hope to something that my whole mind denied. It was precisely in the same way that I telegraphed to you to come in March if you could. My mind knew for certain that you didn’t care, but I did that.
“It was just about then that I had forty-eight hours of the worst pain I had ever known. The morphia had no effect, and I lay here in a sweat of agony. But in the middle of it the dark night lifted off my soul and it was morning. I can’t give you any idea of that, for it happened from outside me, just as dawn comes over the hills. And even while my physical anguish was at its worst, I lay here in a content as deep as that which I have now, with you sitting by me, and that delicious sense of physical lassitude which comes when you are resting after a hard day.
“Next day the pain began to get better, and two days afterwards it was gone. It has never come back since. I am glad of that, for it is quite beastly. But what matters more is that the dark night is gone. And that can’t come back, because I know that the dawn that came to me after it was the dawn of the everlasting day.”
He paused a moment.
“And that’s all,” he said.
He grew drowsy after this, and presently his nurse, a nun from a convent in the mainland, settled him for the night. Seraphina came from the kitchen after I had dined, and wept a little, and told me how Francis, “il santo signorino,” saw her every day, and took no less interest than before in her affairs and the little everyday things. Pasqualino was at the war, and the new boy who waited at dinner was a fat-head, as no doubt I had noticed, and Caterina (if so be I remembered about Caterina and Pasqualino and the baby) was in good service, and the baby throve amazingly. Provisions were dear; you had to take a foolish card with you when you wanted sugar, but the vegetables were coming on well, and we should not do so badly. The Signorino liked to hear all the news, and, if God willed, he would have no more pain; but she wished he would eat more, and then perhaps he would get his strength back, and cheat the undertaker after all. There was a cousin of hers who had done just that; he was dying, they all said, and then, Dio! all of a sudden he got better from the moment Seraphina had cooked him a great beefsteak for his dinner.
To those who have loved the lovely and the jolly things of this beautiful world, the day of little things is never over, and next morning, at Francis’s request, I went down to the bathing-beach with orders not to mind if the water was chilly, but swim out to the rock of the cache and bring the tin box home. From his window he could not see the garden itself, but only the pine-tree, but would it not be possible to fix a looking-glass on the slant in the window-sill, so that from his bed he could see as well as smell the freesias and the narcissus and the wall-flowers? The success of this made him want to see more, and now that the weather was warm, there surely could not be any harm in transplanting him, bed and all, on to the paved platform at the end of the pergola, and letting him spend the rest of his days and nights in the garden. With a few sheets of canvas, to be let down at night, and could we not engineer a room for him there? He often used to sleep out there before. The question was referred to the nurse and met with her approval and that of the doctor; so that afternoon we made everything ready, and by tea-time had carried him out on his mattress with the aid of Seraphina and the fat-head, to his great contentment. This out-of-door bedroom was screened from the north by the house, and between the pillars of the pergola to east and south and west the nimble fingers of Seraphina had rigged up curtains of canvas that could be drawn or withdrawn according to the weather, while overhead was the matting underneath which we dined in the summer. The electric light was handy to his bed, and on the table by it was a bell with which he could summon the nurse, who slept in the bedroom overlooking the pergola. His bedside books stood there also: “Alice in Wonderland,” a New Testament, “Emma,” and a few more. The stone-pine whispered to the left of his bed, and the wind that stirred there blew in the wonderful fragrance of the spring-flowering garden.
Francis had been very drowsy all day, but for an hour that evening we talked exactly as we might have talked nearly three years ago, before the flame of war had scorched Europe. There were plans we had been making then for certain improvements in the house, and those we discussed anew. We spoke of the odd story concerning the footstep that walked in the studio, and wondered if the strega would be heard again; the tin box, which I had obediently fetched from its cache, was opened; Seraphina came out with commissariat suggestions for next day, and the news that Pasqualino had got a week’s leave and would be here several days before Easter to see the bambino on which he had never yet set eyes. Soon the stars began to appear in the darkening night-blue of the sky, and the breeze from the garden bore in no longer the scent of open flowers, but the veiled fragrance of their closing, and the smell of the damp earth, irrigated by the heavy dew, came with it....
We talked of pleasant and humorous little memories of the past, and plans for the future, just as if we were spending one of the serene summer evenings the last time we were here together, three years ago, and it seemed perfectly natural to do so. Among those plans for the future there came up the question of my movements, and we settled that I should go back to Rome the day after to-morrow, and return here if possible for Easter.
“For that,” said Francis cheerfully, “will be about the end of my tether. The end of it, I mean, in the sense that I shan’t be tethered any more. Oh, and there’s one thing I forgot. Be sure you go to some medium about the packet I sealed up on the last time I was in England. Don’t you remember? We both sealed up a packet?”
“Oh, don’t!” said I. “I hate the thought of it.”
“But you mustn’t shirk,” he said. “If it had been you, not me, I shouldn’t have shirked. You’ve got to go to some medium, and see if he can tell you what’s in my packet. And the interesting thing is that I can’t remember for the life of me what I put there, and certainly nobody else knows. So if any medium can tell you what’s inside it, it will really be extremely curious. Mind you tell me — oh, I forgot.”
“Would you mind not being quite so horrible?” I said.
“I’m not horrible. If anybody is being horrible it’s you in not feeling that I shall be living, not only as much as before, but much more. I say, do get hold of that.”
“Yes, I’ll try. But the flesh is weak.”
He was silent a moment.
“It’s through weakness that His strength is made perfect,” he said. “And here’s my nurse coming to settle me. What a jolly talk we’ve had!”
I got up.
“Good-night, then,” I said.
“Good-night. Sleep as well as I shall.”
It was still early and I went to the studio to read a little before I went to bed. But I found a book was not a thing one could attend to, and I sat doing nothing, scarcely even thinking. I did not want to think; all I wanted to do was to look at what was going on here. Thought, with its perplexities and conjectures and burrowings, did not touch the heart of the situation. I could only contemplate; the best friend I had in the world lay dying, and yet there must be no sorrow. He was too utterly triumphant; banners and trumpets were assembling for his passing, and he called on the joy of the world to congratulate him. He was not dying, in his view, any more than a man dies who leaves a little sphere for a larger one. Death was not closing in upon him, but opening out for him! I saw him walking, not through a dark valley, but upon hill-tops at the approach of dawn, and soon for
him the dim night world would burst into light and colour. Already had he been through the night, and now he lay there with morning in his eyes, assured of day. All that he waited for now was the dimming of the terrestrial stars, and the flooding with sun of the infinite heavens. He knew it; all I could decently do was to try to look at it through his eyes and not through my own, which were blinded with tears that should never have been shed....
I did not doubt the truth of his conviction, I knew it in my bones. But the flesh on my bones was weak, and it cried out for him.
APRIL, 1917
It was on the evening of the Thursday before Easter that I got back to Alatri. Once more the outline of the island, that had been a soft cloud-like shape afloat on the sea, grew distinct, and before we got there it lay dark against an orange sunset and a flame of molten waters. There stood the little crowd on the pier waiting the steamer’s arrival, but to-night I needed not to look for Francis among them. During the last ten days I had had frequent news from his nurse, always of the same sort: he suffered no more pain, but each day he was sensibly weaker. But there among the crowd stood Pasqualino very smart in his Bersaglieri uniform; he had come down to meet me with a similar message. He had arrived two days before on a week’s leave, and, so he told me, spent most of the day up at the villa, helping in the house and weeding in the garden. Sometimes when the Signorino was awake he called to him, and they talked about all manner of things, as in the good days before he was ill and before the accursed war came. “And shall we all be as happy as the Signorino when we come to our last bed?” asked Pasqualino.