A touch of congestion in the right lung was a warning to Reardon that his half-year of insufficient food and general waste of strength would make the coming winter a hard time for him, worse probably than the last. Biffen, responding in person to the summons, found him in bed, waited upon by a gaunt, dry, sententious woman of sixty--not the landlady, but a lodger who was glad to earn one meal a day by any means that offered.
'It wouldn't be very nice to die here, would it?' said the sufferer, with a laugh which was cut short by a cough. 'One would like a comfortable room, at least. Why, I don't know. I dreamt last night that I was in a ship that had struck something and was going down; and it wasn't the thought of death that most disturbed me, but a horror of being plunged in the icy water. In fact, I have had just the same feeling on shipboard. I remember waking up midway between Corfu and Brindisi, on that shaky tub of a Greek boat; we were rolling a good deal, and I heard a sort of alarmed rush and shouting up on deck. It was so warm and comfortable in the berth, and I thought with intolerable horror of the possibility of sousing into the black depths.'
'Don't talk, my boy,' advised Biffen. 'Let me read you the new chapter of "Mr Bailey." It may induce a refreshing slumber.'
Reardon was away from his duties for a week; he returned to them with a feeling of extreme shakiness, an indisposition to exert himself, and a complete disregard of the course that events were taking. It was fortunate that he had kept aside that small store of money designed for emergencies; he was able to draw on it now to pay his doctor, and provide himself with better nourishment than usual. He purchased new boots, too, and some articles of warm clothing of which he stood in need--an alarming outlay.
A change had come over him; he was no longer rendered miserable by thoughts of Amy--seldom, indeed, turned his mind to her at all. His secretaryship at Croydon was a haven within view; the income of seventy-five pounds (the other half to go to his wife)would support him luxuriously, and for anything beyond that he seemed to care little. Next Sunday he was to go over to Croydon and see the institution.
One evening of calm weather he made his way to Clipstone Street and greeted his friend with more show of light-heartedness than he had been capable of for at least two years.
'I have been as nearly as possible a happy man all to-day,' he said, when his pipe was well lit. 'Partly the sunshine, Isuppose. There's no saying if the mood will last, but if it does all is well with me. I regret nothing and wish for nothing.'
'A morbid state of mind,' was Biffen's opinion.
'No doubt of that, but I am content to be indebted to morbidness.
One must have a rest from misery somehow. Another kind of man would have taken to drinking; that has tempted me now and then, Iassure you. But I couldn't afford it. Did you ever feel tempted to drink merely for the sake of forgetting trouble?'
'Often enough. I have done it. I have deliberately spent a certain proportion of the money that ought to have gone for food in the cheapest kind of strong liquor.'
'Ha! that's interesting. But it never got the force of a habit you had to break?'
'No. Partly, I dare say, because I had the warning of poor Sykes before my eyes.'
'You never see that poor fellow?'
'Never. He must be dead, I think. He would die either in the hospital or the workhouse.'
'Well,' said Reardon, musing cheerfully, 'I shall never become a drunkard; I haven't that diathesis, to use your expression.
Doesn't it strike you that you and I are very respectable persons? We really have no vices. Put us on a social pedestal, and we should be shining lights of morality. I sometimes wonder at our inoffensiveness. Why don't we run amuck against law and order? Why, at the least, don't we become savage revolutionists, and harangue in Regent's Park of a Sunday?'
'Because we are passive beings, and were meant to enjoy life very quietly. As we can't enjoy, we just suffer quietly, that's all.
By-the-bye, I want to talk about a difficulty in one of the Fragments of Euripides. Did you ever go through the Fragments?'
This made a diversion for half an hour. Then Reardon returned to his former line of thought.
'As I was entering patients yesterday, there came up to the table a tall, good-looking, very quiet girl, poorly dressed, but as neat as could be. She gave me her name, then I asked "Occupation?" She said at once, "I'm unfortunate, sir." Icouldn't help looking up at her in surprise; I had taken it for granted she was a dressmaker or something of the kind. And, do you know, I never felt so strong an impulse to shake hands, to show sympathy, and even respect, in some way. I should have liked to say, "Why, I am unfortunate, too!" such a good, patient face she had.'
'I distrust such appearances,' said Biffen in his quality of realist.
'Well, so do I, as a rule. But in this case they were convincing.
And there was no need whatever for her to make such a declaration; she might just as well have said anything else; it's the merest form. I shall always hear her voice saying, "I'm unfortunate, sir." She made me feel what a mistake it was for me to marry such a girl as Amy. I ought to have looked about for some simple, kind-hearted work-girl; that was the kind of wife indicated for me by circumstances. If I had earned a hundred a year she would have thought we were well-to-do. I should have been an authority to her on everything under the sun--and above it. No ambition would have unsettled her. We should have lived in a couple of poor rooms somewhere, and--we should have loved each other.'