The Angel of Pain. Benson Edward Frederic

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СКАЧАТЬ apologise,” said the other. “But do dismiss him to-morrow. For I didn’t want to come to an hotel; I wanted to see how the Hermit really lived.”

      “Stop over to-morrow then, and you will see,” said Merivale. “But I keep a woman in the house, who cooks.”

      “That also is inconsistent.”

      “No, I don’t think so. It takes longer than you would imagine to do all the housework yourself. I tried it last winter and found it not worth while. Besides, dusting and cleaning are so absorbing. I could think of nothing else.”

      “But doesn’t she find it absorbing?”

      Merivale laughed.

      “I feel sure she doesn’t,” he said, “or she would do it better. But when I dusted for myself, nothing short of perfection would content me. I was dusting all day long.”

      Evelyn looked doubtfully at his bed.

      “Shall I have to make it – whatever ‘making’ means?” he asked, “if I sleep in it? If so, I really don’t think it would be worth while. Besides, I know I shan’t sleep, and if I don’t sleep I am a wreck.”

      Merivale raised his eyebrows.

      “Surely you sleep when you want sleep just as you eat when you are hungry,” he said, “or is that an exploded superstition?”

      “Quite exploded. I shan’t sleep a wink,” said Evelyn, beginning to undress. “Oh, how can I?” he cried.

      “And you really want to?”

      “Why, of course. I’m as cross as two sticks if I don’t.”

      Merivale shook his head.

      “I’ll make you sleep if you wish,” he said. “Get into bed. I must go and turn out the lights. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

      He left the room, and Evelyn undressed quickly.

      All that had happened to-day ran like a mill-race in his head, and, arguing from previous experience, he knew perhaps the tithe of what awaited him when the light was out. For often before, when a picture, not as now the original of it, occupied him, misshapen parodies of rest had been his till cock-crow. First of all would come a sense of satisfaction at being alone, at being able to let his thoughts take their natural course uninterrupted; he would feast his eyes on the untenanted blackness, letting his imagination paint there all that it had been so intensely occupied with during the day. But then as the brain wearied, in place of the ideal he had been striving for would come distorted reflections of it, seen as if in some bloated mirror, and still awake he would see his thoughts translated into some horrible grotesque that would startle him into sitting-up in bed, just for the grasping of the bed-post, or the feeling of the wall, to bring himself back into the realm of concrete things. Otherwise the grotesques would grow into dancing, shapeless horrors, and in a moment he would have to wrench himself free from the clutches of nightmare and start up, with dripping brow and quivering throat that could not scream, into reality again. But to-night he feared no nightmare; he knew simply that sleep could not come to him, his excitement had invaded and conquered the drowsy lands, and though he felt now that he would be content to think and think and love till morning, morning, he knew, would, like an obsequious waiter, present the bill for the sleepless night. Consequently, when Merivale again entered, he welcomed him.

      “I demand a conjuring-trick,” he said, “I know I shan’t sleep at all, unless you have some charm for me. Good God, how can I sleep? And, after all, why should I want to? Isn’t waking good enough?”

      Merivale paused; waking and sleeping seemed to him no more matters for concern than they seem to an animal which sleeps when it is sleepy, and wakes when its sleepiness has gone.

      “That is entirely for you to settle,” he said. “If you want to sleep I can make you; if you don’t, I shall go to sleep myself. I shall do that in any case,” he added.

      Evelyn was already overwrought with the events of the day, and he spoke petulantly.

      “Oh, make me sleep, then!” he said. “There is to-morrow coming. I can do nothing to-night, so let’s get it over.”

      “Lie down, then,” said the Hermit, “and look at me, look at my eyes, I mean.”

      He sat down on the edge of Evelyn’s bed, and spoke low and slow.

      “The wind is asleep,” he said, “it sleeps among the trees of the forest, for the time of sleep has come, and everything sleeps, your love sleeps too. Lie still;” he said, as Evelyn moved, “the trees of the forest sleep; and their leaves sleep, and high in the branches the birds sleep. Everything sleeps, the tired even and the weary sleep, and those who are strong sleep, and those who are weak.”

      Evelyn’s eyelids quivered, shut a moment, then half-opened again.

      “The flowers sleep,” said Merivale, “and the eyelids of their petals are closed, as your eyelids are closing. Sleep, the black soft wing, has shut over them, as the wings of birds shut over their heads. The earth sleeps, the very stones of her sleep; she will not stir till morning, or if she stirs it will be but to sleep again. The sad and the happy sleep, the very sea sleeps and is hushed, and the tides of the sea are asleep. Sleep, too,” he said, slightly raising his voice, “sleep till they wake – sleep till I wake you.”

      He waited a moment, but Evelyn’s eyelids did not even quiver again. Then he blew out the light and left the room.

      Merivale stepped softly down the stairs, and went out on to the verandah, where they had dined a few hours before. At the touch of the soft night-air all the trouble that during this evening had been his was evaporated and vanished. The sum of his consciousness was contained in the bracket, that he was alive, and that he was part of life. It was like stepping into an ocean that received him and bore him on its surface, or took him to its depths; which mattered not at all – the thing embraced and encompassed him. He went back again to it from the fretful trivialities that had arrested him as the midge on his wrist could for the moment arrest him, trivially and momentarily causing him some infinitesimal annoyance. But that was over; the huge sky was above him, the world was asleep, and was his possession. It – the material part of it – was but a dream, the spirit of it all suffused him. There was life everywhere, life in its myriad forms, its myriad beauties. The sleepy voice of the river was part of him, the moon was he, the utmost twinkle of a star was he also. Yet no less the smallest blade of grass was he; there was no atom of the universe with which he did not claim identity.

      Yes, there was one, the fretting of the human spirit, whereas his own did not fret. What he could interpret existence into was to him satisfying. For himself he longed and wished for nothing, except to hold himself open, as he indeed held himself, for the moods of Nature to play upon. Yet in that bedroom upstairs he had left one, asleep indeed by the mere exercise of a stronger will on his, who would to-morrow awake and combat and perhaps succumb to forces that were stronger than he. For himself, he combatted with no force; he but yielded in welcome to what to him was irresistible. But Evelyn, who slept now, would awake to try his strength against another. Which was right?

      SEVENTH

      GLADYS ELLINGTON, as has been remarked, was not in the least ill-natured, and never even hinted ill-natured things against anybody unless she was certain to be undiscovered. So, as all the world knew, since she was not “quite devoted,” a phrase of her’s, to her mother-in-law, the merest elements of wisdom demanded of her that she should be unreserved in her commendation of Madge’s engagement. Unreserved, in consequence, СКАЧАТЬ