“Do you mean you are going away?”
“They turn you out as soon as you’re strong enough to stand.”
“But—how can you get about?”
“Dr. Ashley Densley has arranged all that. I’m going to a convalescent home.”
“Oh, that’s very nice.”
“Poor Dr. Ashley Densley, he was dreadfully upset.”
“You’ve had some letters to cheer you up.” Miriam spoke impatiently, her eyes rooted on the pale leisurely hands mechanically adjusting some neatly arranged papers.
“No de‑er. My friends have all left me to look after myself this time but since I’ve been sitting up, I’ve been trying to get my affairs in order.”
“I thought of bringing you some flowers but there was not a single shop between here and Wimpole Street.”
“There’s generally women selling them outside. But I’m glad you didn’t; I’ve too much sympathy with the poor nurses.”
Miriam glanced fearfully about. There were so many beds with forms seated and lying upon them … but there seemed no illness or pain. Quiet eyes met hers; everything seemed serene; there was no sound but the strange silent noise of the sunlight and the flowers. Halfway down the ward stood a large threefold screen covered with dark American cloth.
“She’s unconscious today,” said Miss Dear; “she won’t last through the night.”
“Do you mean to say there is someone dying there?”
“Yes de-er.”
“Do you mean to say they don’t put them into a separate room to die?”
“They can’t dear. They haven’t got the space,” flashed Miss Dear.
Death shut in with one lonely person. Brisk nurses putting up the screen. Dying eyes cut off from all but those three dark surrounding walls, with death waiting inside them. Miriam’s eyes filled with tears. There, just across the room, was the end. It had to come somewhere; just that; on any summer’s afternoon … people did things; hands placed a screen, people cleared you away. … It was a relief to realise that there were hospitals to die in; worry and torture of mind could end here. Perhaps it might be easier with people all round you than in a little room. There were hospitals to be ill in and somewhere to die neatly, however poor you were. It was a relief … “she’s always the last to get up; still snoring when everybody’s fussing and washing.” That would be me … it lit up the hostel. Miss Dear liked that time of fussing and washing in company with all the other cubicles fussing and washing. To be very poor meant getting more and more social life with no appearances to keep up, getting up each day with a holiday feeling of one more day and the surprise of seeing everybody again; and the certainty that if you died somebody would do something. Certainly it was this knowledge that gave Miss Dear her peculiar strength. She was a nurse and knew how everything was done. She knew that people, all kinds of people, were people and would do things. When one was quite alone one could not believe this. Besides no one would do anything for me. I don’t want anyone to. I should hate the face of a nurse who put a screen round my bed. I shall not die like that. I shall die in some other way, out in the sun, with—yes—oh yes—Tah-dee, t’dee, t’dee—t’dee.
“It must be funny for a nurse to be in a hospital.”
“It’s a little too funny sometimes dear—you know too much about what you’re in for.”
“Ilikeyourredjacket. Good Heavens!”
“That’s nothing dear. He does that all the afternoon.”
“How can you stand it?”
“It’s Hobson’s choice, madam.”
The parrot uttered three successive squawks fuller and harsher and even more shrill than the first.
“He’s just tuning up; he always does in the afternoon just as everybody is trying to get a little sleep.”
“But I never heard of such a thing! It’s monstrous, in a hospital. Why don’t you all complain.”
“ ’Sh, dear; he belongs to Matron.”
“Why doesn’t she have him in her room? Shut up, polly.”
“He’d be rather a roomful in a little room.”
“Well—what is he here? It’s the wickedest thing of its kind I’ve ever heard of; some great fat healthy woman … why don’t the doctors stop it?”
“Perhaps they hardly notice it, dear. There’s such a bustle going on in the morning when they all come round.”
“But hang it all, she’s here to look after you, not to leave her luggage all over the ward.”
The ripe afternoon light … even outside a hospital … the strange indistinguishable friend, mighty welcome, unutterable happiness. Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? The light has no end. I know it and it knows me, no misunderstanding, no barrier. I love you—people say things. But nothing that anybody says has any meaning. Nothing that anybody says has any meaning. There is something more than anything that anybody says, that comes, first, before they speak … vehicles travelling along through heaven; everybody in heaven without knowing it; the sound the vehicles made all together, sounding out through the universe … life touches your heart like dew; that is true … the edge of his greasy knowing selfish hair touches the light; he brushes it; there is something in him that remembers. It is in everybody; but they won’t stop. How maddening. But they know. When people die they must stop. Then they remember. Remorse may be complete; until it is complete you cannot live. When it is complete something is burned away … ou-agh, flows out of you, burning, inky, acid, flows right out … purged … though thy sins are as scarlet they shall be white as snow. Then the light is there, nothing but the light, and new memory, sweet and bright; but only when you have been killed by remorse.
This is what is meant by a purple twilight. Lamps alight, small round lights, each in place, shedding no radiance, white day lingering on the stone pillars of the great crescent, the park railings distinct, the trees shrouded but looming very large and permanent, the air wide and high and purple, darkness alight and warm. Far far away beyond the length of two endless
