‘I am here, Edwin,’ she answered, bending over him.
‘Will you let Biffen know?’ he said in low but very clear tones.
‘That you are ill dear? I will write at once, or telegraph, if you like. What is his address?’
He had closed his eyes again, and there came no reply. Amy repeated her question twice; she was turning from him in hopelessness when his voice became audible.
‘I can’t remember his new address. I know it, but I can’t remember.’
She had to leave him thus.
The next day his breathing was so harassed that he had to be raised against pillows. But throughout the hours of daylight his mind was clear, and from time to time he whispered words of tenderness in reply to Amy’s look. He never willingly relinquished her hand, and repeatedly he pressed it against his cheek or lips. Vainly he still endeavoured to recall his friend’s address.
‘Couldn’t Mr Carter discover it for you?’ Amy asked.
‘Perhaps. You might try.’
She would have suggested applying to Jasper Milvain, but that name must not be mentioned. Whelpdale, also, would perchance know where Biffen lived, but Whelpdale’s address he had also forgotten.
At night there were long periods of delirium; not mere confused muttering, but continuous talk which the listeners could follow perfectly.
For the most part the sufferer’s mind was occupied with revival of the distress he had undergone whilst making those last efforts to write something worthy of himself. Amy’s heart was wrung as she heard him living through that time of supreme misery—misery which she might have done so much to alleviate, had not selfish fears and irritated pride caused her to draw further and further from him. Hers was the kind of penitence which is forced by sheer stress of circumstances on a nature which resents any form of humiliation; she could not abandon herself to unreserved grief for what she had done or omitted, and the sense of this defect made a great part of her affliction. When her husband lay in mute lethargy, she thought only of her dead child, and mourned the loss; but his delirious utterances constrained her to break from that bittersweet preoccupation, to confuse her mourning with self- reproach and with fears.
Though unconsciously, he was addressing her: ‘I can do no more, Amy. My brain seems to be worn out; I can’t compose, I can’t even think. Look! I have been sitting here for hours, and I have done only that little bit, half a dozen lines. Such poor stuff too! I should burn it, only I can’t afford. I must do my regular quantity every day, no matter what it is.’
The nurse, who was present when he talked in this way, looked to Amy for an explanation.
‘My husband is an author,’ Amy answered. ‘Not long ago he was obliged to write when he was ill and ought to have been resting.’
‘I always thought it must be hard work writing books,’ said the nurse with a shake of her head.
‘You don’t understand me,’ the voice pursued, dreadful as a voice always is when speaking independently of the will. ‘You think I am only a poor creature, because I can do nothing better than this. If only I had money enough to rest for a year or two, you should see. Just because I have no money I must sink to this degradation. And I am losing you as well; you don’t love me!’
He began to moan in anguish.
But a happy change presently came over his dreaming. He fell into animated description of his experiences in Greece and Italy, and after talking for a long time, he turned his head and said in a perfectly natural tone:
‘Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?’
She believed he spoke consciously, and replied:
‘You must take me with you, Edwin.’
He paid no attention to this remark, but went on with the same deceptive accent.
‘He deserves a holiday after nearly getting burnt to death to save his novel. Imagine the old fellow plunging headlong into the flames to rescue his manuscript! Don’t say that authors can’t be heroic!’
And he laughed gaily.
Another morning broke. It was possible, said the doctors (a second had been summoned), that a crisis which drew near might bring the favourable turn; but Amy formed her own opinion from the way in which the nurse expressed herself. She felt sure that the gravest fears were entertained. Before noon Reardon awoke from what had seemed natural sleep—save for the rapid breathing- -and of a sudden recollected the number of the house in Cleveland Street at which Biffen was now living. He uttered it without explanation. Amy at once conjectured his meaning, and as soon as her surmise was confirmed she despatched a telegram to her husband’s friend.
That evening, as Amy was on the point of returning to the sick-room after having dined at her friend’s house, it was announced that a gentleman named Biffen wished to see her. She found him in the dining-room, and, even amid her distress, it was a satisfaction to her that he presented a far more conventional appearance than in the old days. All the garments he wore, even his hat, gloves, and boots, were new; a surprising state of things, explained by the fact of his commercial brother having sent him a present of ten pounds, a practical expression of sympathy with him in his recent calamity. Biffen could not speak; he looked with alarm at Amy’s pallid face. In a few words she told him of Reardon’s condition.
‘I feared this,’ he replied under his breath. ‘He was ill when I saw him off at London Bridge. But Willie is better, I trust?’
Amy tried to answer, but tears filled her eyes and her head drooped. Harold was overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and dread held him motionless.
They conversed brokenly for a few minutes, then left the house, Biffen carrying the hand-bag with which he had travelled hither. When they reached the hotel he waited apart until it was ascertained whether he could enter the sick-room. Amy rejoined him and said with a faint smile:
