Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/167

155 I finished the soup and the rice.

Dinner was at seven. I had not the intention of eating a dinner then. That was why I had eaten the soup and the rice. It was almost six now by the mantelpiece clock. I got up and rang. Then: 'But Mrs. Herbert,' I thought, 'tells me she has varicose veins.'—So off I went down the kitchen-stairs, and got a can of hot water for myself.

Then I came up again and began slowly to mount the hall-staircase.

As my heavy foot struck the soft carpet, and one or two of the rods sounded, I suddenly recalled my going up the staircase that last night of ours in London. After a few steps, I stopped and looked over the broad banister down upon the dark shiny table where my bed-candle was, and where two had used to be then. I went on again: the thought had occurred to me before this. Now, I have always supposed that there would be something of … of something or other, in living in a house, and alone too, where you had lived with some one that is dead. The sharp sound that struck your hearing would startle you? The lonely depth of the darkness, or the shadowiness, or the gloom would contain its spectre? I cannot say. Death is so dim a thing, if it is anything at all, to me. What do you mean by death? You are not dead. I am not dead. Who is dead?—And with the thought that this was rather ridiculous, I came into my bedroom with the hot-water can. The gas was low.

I put down the can on the washing-stand, and went and turned up the gas. The room was all light. I took off my coat and threw it on to the bed.

I washed slowly, thinking. There was a little of the tremulousness in me somewhere. I felt it for a moment vaguely. But went on thinking and forgot it. I put on, first one, and then the other dress-boot, with the small steel shoe-horn, and tied their laces tight. Then changed my trousers, and brushed my hair before the mirror. Then put on my white shirt, and found and fastened the studs, and my collar to the top stud. As I was looking for the glass-topped box that held the white ties, I thought the gas seemed burning low,