it always seems to me a matter for wonder why the astronomers, or julius c?sar, or whoever it was who took the trouble to divide time up into months and years, should have made the day of the new year come in the middle of winter. probably it has got something to do with the solar eclipse, or the lunar theory, or movements and motions quite unintelligible to the ordinary mind, which would easily have the point of beginning the new year in spring—for instance, on may-day—when the season is clearly suitable for beginning again. but to make a fresh start by candlelight in a fog on the first of january implies a more vivid effort of the imagination and a sterner resolve of the spirit than most of us able to manage. you might as well try to make up for misspent years by selecting{354} blackfriars or baker street station as a place to start afresh in.
personally, though i think the 1st of may would be a quite reasonable occasion on which to begin a new year, i should prefer a rather later date, when summer is more certain, and it was for this reason that when i formed this (i hope) harmless little project of putting down the quiet happenings of a year of life, i began in june. month by month i kept this diary, and you will see when you come to the end of this month of may that my plan was endorsed by what happened then, and that new year must, in the future, always begin for helen and me on the first of june.
even with the early days of may summer descended on us, and mr. holmes’s panama hat and a neat new suit of yellowish flannel made their due appearance to confirm the fact. soon, if this goes on, he will be handing ices instead of buns at tea-parties, and i have often seen him lately on the ladies’ links playing golf in his little buttoned boots. he came to call yesterday, and told me of charlotte’s engage{355}ment, and announced the fact that my archdeacon (i call him mine because of what happened at that dreadful sunday-school) was giving a garden-party on the 11th, and the wife of the younger son of our baronet had not been invited. the fact of the garden-party on the 11th was not new to us, because we had been invited. oh, revenge is sweet, and we gloated over the discomfiture of the foe. her mother had been a governess, too. that was a new fact that mr. holmes had gathered in the last half-year—just a governess, and not in a noble family even, but in the employment of a retired tradesman. that accounted for the fact that her daughter spoke french so well; no wonder, since the mother had to teach it. her knowledge of that language, scraps of which she constantly introduced into her conversation, had always puzzled mr. holmes; now he knew how it had been acquired. indeed, she had come rightly by it, poor thing! we none of us grudged it her. and it was no wonder now to mr. holmes that she looked so thin; probably she had never had enough to eat when she was a{356} child, and that indescribable air of commonness about her was perfectly accounted for. indeed, mr. holmes became so sardonic that you would have thought that his family was one (as i dare say it is) compared to which the plantagenets were parvenus; and helen changed the subject, which i thought was a pity, as i wanted to hear ever so much more about the lady’s obscure origin.
we chatted very pleasantly for a long time, and learned all that the morning post had said in little paragraphs during the past week, and all that the close and the county (i recommend that expression) and the military were doing here. we were going to be very gay indeed; there was already an absolute clash of entertainments during a week of cricket next month, so that the mayor was forced to give a luncheon-party one day instead of a mere tea, which he would probably not like at all, since if ever there was a mayor who collected candle-ends, this was the one. did i remember that which was called champagne at the famous lunch which has already been spoken of?{357}
in fact, mr. holmes shook his head over the general trend of affairs, and spoke quite bitterly about the wave of radicalism which was passing over the country. the county club, so he said, which had always prided itself on being a little exclusive, was tainted with commonness now, and had positively disgraced itself at the last election by letting in those three new members. they were nobodies—local nobodies—one the son of a doctor, another the father of a doctor; the third nobody at all. and—would i believe it?—there had been a veterinary surgeon up for election as well. luckily, the club had pulled itself together over him, and given him a smart shower of black-balls. no doubt the club was in want of funds, but why, then, have built a new billiard-room? how much better to poke the butt-end of our cues into the chimney-piece, as we had always done when playing from over the left-hand middle pocket, than purchase increased cue-room at the sacrifice of our standing as a county club? if we did not draw the line somewhere, where were we to draw the line? that was unanswerable. we{358} all said what is written, ‘tut!’ and looked very proud. helen, i consider, looked prouder than mr. holmes, but she disagrees with me, having seen her own face in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. true, she had not the natural advantage that mr. holmes’s aquiline nose conferred upon him, but the assumed curl of her lip was superb: she looked like a duchess in her own right.
how slowly these beautiful days of may passed, for when one is very happy and very expectant, time seems to stop. exactly the opposite happens when one is spending days that are full of pleasures, and living entirely in the moment, for then hours and days pass on unregarded, so that it is saturday again before you know the week has really begun. but happiness—i but bungle with words over a thing that is obvious to everybody who knows the difference between happiness and pleasure—is a thing quite detached from the present moment, just as the sunlight which floods these downs is not of them. happiness ever broods on the wing, and swings high{359} above the things of the earth, like some poised eagle, or like the sun itself. it illuminates what it looks on, turning dew to diamond, and striking sapphires into the heart of what has been a grey sea, but it is independent of material concerns; and were the world to be withdrawn and extinguished, it would shine still. true, it shines on the dewdrop and turns it into wondrous prismatic colours, and thus the common surface of life is always iridescent when we are happy. but happiness—that golden, high-swung sun—does not, i think, particularly regard the jewels he makes out of common things: his own bright shining, perhaps, weaves a golden haze between him and what he shines upon.
it was somehow thus, i think, that things were with us during that first fortnight of may. below the golden haze were these entrancing facts which i have just recorded about the archdeacon’s party, the frightful disclosures concerning the mother of the wife of the younger son of the baronet, and the growing plebeianism of the county club; but neither{360} helen nor i could focus our attention on them; for though, as i have said, time went so slowly, yet there was not time enough to regard them: they belonged to a different plane to that on which we were living. we could penetrate down into it and giggle, but then our attention wandered, and before we knew it, we had swum up again like bubbles through water to the sunlit surface.
there took place, in fact, a revision in our list of joyful and dreadful affairs. no one could appreciate the humour of mr. holmes more than helen did, but, as i have said, she could not attend to him now. nor could she attend to the perfectly hideous fact that the greater part of the ceiling in the dining-room in sloane street had fallen, and that our tenants had (quite reasonably) demanded to be released from their tenancy, of which there was still six weeks to run, since the house was uninhabitable. nor did i think she would have cared if the ceiling had smothered them as they sat at dinner. and the dreadful earthquake in china failed to move her, and so did the church crisis in france. but for certain{361} other things she cared more than ever, though you would have said they were little enough. all the growth of the spring-time made her eyes brighten and ever grow dim again, and she would dream over the tiny buds of the rose-garden with smiles that were sped to her mouth from the inmost spring of happiness. she spread fat heliogabalian feasts for the birds, since they wanted nourishment now that they were so busy over their nests, and many dyspeptic bachelors and spinsters, i expect, reeled daily from their table laid on the lawn to sleep off the results of their excess. she loved the sun, too, more than she had ever loved it, and the shade also, and day and night, and all the firm, great forces of the world.
not less, too, did she love the little things of little rooms, and now we never sat in the drawing-room, with its reynolds’ prints, but went always to the nursery, with its rocking-horse and its noah’s ark, and its lead soldiers, and its play-table. but when there—when playing these silly games of soldiers, which helen had been wont to play as if eternal salvation depended on the nice adjustment of a{362} small tin cannon, which, when you pulled a string, shot a pea—she had a change of mood most disconcerting at first. now and again she shot down my generalissimo, posted, as he should be, out of possibility of attack almost, in the very rear of my army, by some inconceivable ricochet which would a few weeks ago have filled her mouth with laughter. but now, when these unspeakable flukes occurred, and she upset the heaviest soldiers in my brigade, instead of being delighted, she was sorry, and apologized. to injury, which was bad enough, she added insult, which was worse, and said: ‘i am afraid i must win now.’
there is another curious thing (helen looks over my shoulder as i write, and agrees) that, though she still loves to play soldiers, she wants me to win. consider it: whoever before wanted to play a game (and the more childish the game, the less worth while you would have thought to play it), if he did not care about winning? besides, it is so exceedingly unlike her—she is looking over my shoulder no more—not to play any game as if life and death{363} depended on it. but now she applauds my skill and my luck, and apologizes for her own.
and then, when the game is over, and the duke of wellington on one side and julius c?sar on the other lie dead, she still sits on the ground beside the low play-table, and looks round the room with wandering, happy eyes. there are the playthings i have told you of—the noah’s ark, the rocking-horse, the great dolls’-house, the front of which, windows and door and all, is unfastened by a neat latch in the wall of the second story, and swings open altogether, so that you must be careful not to unlatch it early in the morning or late at night, else you would see all the ladies and gentlemen at their toilet in an embarrassing state of undress. i found helen the other morning playing at dolls all by herself. she had laid a banquet in the dining-room, and had arranged the ladies and gentlemen on the stairs, so that one could see at once that they were going down to dinner. from their attitudes, and a tendency to lean against each other or{364} the wall, you might have thought that they were trying to get upstairs after the banquet. but that, helen told me, was foolish, since their faces were all turned in the direction of downstairs. the answer was that they had indulged even more freely than i had supposed, and were trying to get upstairs backwards.
yes; we did all these extremely childish things, and so far from being ashamed of them, i set them all down here for you to laugh at if you like, or merely to be bored with. things like these—playing at soldiers or at dolls—retained their interest, just as did the spirit of the blossoming summer, when mr. holmes’s discoveries or the fall of the ceiling in sloane street lacked the calibre to interest us. and, if you come to think of it, though i thought an explanation would be difficult, nothing in the world could be more simple. things about children, and birth, and growth were clearly the only affairs that could concern us. one morning, i remember, it was found that the foundations of the cathedral were in a dreadful state, and that it would probably fall down. i told helen this as she was engaged on pre{365}paring a gargantuan breakfast for the birds. she only said:
‘oh, what a pity!’
that was all she cared for the historic norman pile, with all kinds of kings and queens buried inside it!
there is nothing more to be recorded of this month, since the only things that seemed to us to have any real importance were just the childishnesses of which i have already given you such amplitude of specimens, until the morning of the last day of may.
the rule of the house was that there was no rule of any sort as regards breakfast. anybody who came into the dining-room at most hours of the morning would find the breakfast perennials (bread, butter, sugar, milk, the morning paper and marmalade) on the table, and would, on ringing a bell, be given the annuals—i.e., fresh tea and a hot dish. similarly, anybody who did not come into the dining-room was supposed to be breakfasting either elsewhere or not at all. so on this last morning of may, on coming down, i rang the{366} bell, and read the paper till bacon came. an hour before i had just looked into helen’s room, and seen that she was still asleep.
the bacon was rather long coming that morning—i try to reconstruct the day exactly as it happened—and i had already skimmed the news, and found there was not any, and in default of it was reading a superb account of the visit of a member of the royal family to naples, who in the afternoon had ‘honoured’ (so said the loyal press) the volcano of vesuvius with a visit. how gratifying for the immortal principle of fire! one hoped it would not become swollen in the head. this fortunate volcano, whose cone had been blessed——
at the moment i heard a step outside. it was not from the kitchen: it was coming from upstairs, and it came very quickly. then, instantaneously, terror seized me, for time and place were no longer now and here, but it was the evening when i heard my name called in the garden, and thereafter heard legs running downstairs. and quickly as the steps came, they seemed to me to go on for ever; yet i had{367} only just time to get up, when there came a fumbling hand on the door, and helen’s maid came in.
‘if you please, sir, would you send at once,’ she began. ‘the nurse—— ’
there were quicker ways than sending, and next minute i was flying up the road on my bicycle. my mind, as i think must always happen with any mind in such moments, seemed curiously inactive, though somewhere there was inside me a little bit of tissue, so to speak, that agonized, and hoped, and prayed. but for the most i only thought of one thing—that once before i had gone on just the same errand, from this same house, up the same road, to fetch the doctor for her, my dearest friend. o margery! i go quickly to god and tell him.... we want him.
and then the tissue that agonized and prayed sank out of sight again, and i was just speeding up the sunny, dusty road, on which, as i got nearer the town, the traffic became denser. once a butcher’s cart pulled suddenly out into the middle of the road in front of me, and i thought collision was inevitable, except that i{368} knew that it was not possible that i should be stopped when going on such an errand as this, and several times i passed people i knew, yet, though i knew them, their faces were meaningless: they conveyed names, but nothing whatever more. and then—whether very soon or countless ages later, i had no idea—i was at the doctor’s door in the quiet, decorous street, which also was meaningless—neither strange nor familiar, but purely without significance. everything i saw was detached; nothing had any relation to life, except just one thing: his dog-cart, which was at the door, concerned me.
he had not yet started on his rounds, and it was not five minutes before he was ready. he had only to pick up a little bag, into which he put a case of some kind, and something bright, that i turned my eyes from, and a bottle which he wrapped up—it seemed to me very neatly and slowly—which clinked against that which was already in the bag.
then he turned to me.
‘now, if you take my advice,’ he said, ‘you won’t come back with me, but will go for a ride on this beautiful morning. you will not see{369} your wife, and for the next hour or so it is not possible that i should have anything to tell you. we don’t want you in the house: we don’t want to be bothered with you.’
he got briskly into his dog-cart, nodded to me over his shoulder, and, instead of driving himself, gave his servant the reins. i know i shouted something after him, telling him, i think, to be careful, and so found myself on the doorstep, looking at a bicycle which was leaning against the pillar of the porch, and was evidently not mine. but, like the dog-cart, it was not meaningless, for it was helen’s, which i must have used by mistake. i must take it back; it was careless of me.
then his advice occurred to me, but it sounded ridiculous, as senseless as some nursery-rhyme. and at the thought there suddenly started in my head the first two lines of ‘humpty-dumpty.’ i could not remember the last two lines, but the first went round and round in my brain, keeping time to my pedalling.
soon after i was home again, only a moment behind him, for he was just getting out when i came to the gate, and i waited till he had{370} gone in, so that he should not know i had failed to follow his advice—at least, i believe that was the reason, but i am not sure.
i went round by the back way into the garden, and sat down in the veranda outside my own room, where fifi was lying in the sun. but i had to coax her silently indoors, for i could not bear that she should lie there, lest suddenly she should again look out into the garden, and howl at something she saw there. she would not come in at first, and once she pricked her ears at something she saw outside, and i stopped mine, lest i should hear her howl. and all the time ‘humpty-dumpty’—the first two lines of it—went on and on. it was so terribly lonely, too—just that silly rhyme, and i all alone. if only legs were here, or anybody—anybody. you see, this was not expected to-day, nor for weeks yet. my mother was coming to stay with us next week, until....
then i heard the muffled sound of steps in the room just above my head—helen’s room—and at that for a little the babble and confusion of my troubled brain cleared, and ‘humpty-{371}dumpty’ ceased, and i was not afraid of fifi howling, for there was no room for anything except the thought of helen, who lay there, and of the life yet unborn. and i could not help—i could not bear any of it for her. i could not even be with her: birth was as lonely as death.
outside the garden lay basking in the heat of the early summer, and everywhere the expansion of life, which had seemed to us so wonderful and glorious a thing through all these weeks of may, suddenly became sinister and menacing. what travail may not go to the opening of a single flower, or the maturing of its casket of seeds? it would all be of a piece with the cruelty and the anguish that runs through life like a scarlet, bleeding thread, beginning, as now, even before birth, and not even ending with death, since those who remain have the wound of that yet to be healed. right through life goes the scarlet thread, knotted on the farther side at each end, so that it shall not slip. and—‘humpty-dumpty sat on a wall.’ ah, yes! i had it all now. ‘the king’s horses’ was what i could not remember. and at that the crowd of{372} trivialities again came between my mind and me.
we had set up the croquet-hoops again only last week, and had argued over the position of that particular corner one by which my ball had rested when last autumn a telegram had been brought me from the house. helen had said it was square with the corresponding corner; i knew it was not, and from here it was perfectly easy to see that she had been wrong. i hate an awry disposition of hoops. ‘all the king’s horses’ ... they really should bring these rhymes up to date; it ought to be motor-cars instead of horses.
these things passed very slowly through my mind, for it acted as if it was numbed and half-paralyzed, and the croquet-hoop occupied the foreground of it for a considerable time. i had let fifi out again, and she was racing about the lawn in the attempt to catch swallows, a feat of which she never realized the unreasonableness, and i had left the doors into my room, both from the hall and from here outside, open. and then, with the same rapidity as they had come, all these nonsense things{373} passed away again, for i heard steps on the stairs, and, going in, saw the doctor standing on the landing above, talking in low tones to the nurse. he saw me, made a little movement of his hand as if to detain me, and when he had finished what he had to say to her, came downstairs.
‘i will have a word with you,’ he said gravely; and we went into my room. i saw him looking at me rather curiously, and was wondering why, when he suddenly seemed to lean up against me. then i perceived that it was i who was swaying on my feet. he put me in a chair.
‘i suppose you have not had breakfast,’ he said. ‘you are to eat something immediately; i will ring the bell. and now listen. it is going to be difficult, and, i am afraid, dangerous, and it is better that you should know it now.’
and then the dear, kind man just laid his hand on my arm.
‘i’m awfully sorry,’ he said; ‘you can’t think how i hate to tell you this. i hope it will be all right; there is nothing yet that{374} forbids me to hope that. please god, we shall pull her through, but—well, well.’
he broke off as the door opened, and a servant came in.
‘just bring a tray in here,’ he said. ‘tea? yes, tea, and an egg and a couple of bits of toast. thank you.’
‘remember, i still hope it will be all right,’ he said. ‘and even if—well, you are both young still. now i shall be back here in an hour at the outside.’
‘you are not going,’ i said. ‘you mustn’t.’
‘yes, yes. i know what you feel,’ he said. ‘but there is nothing for me to do here yet, and i have to make arrangements so that i can come back and remain here till all—is satisfactory.’
‘you don’t stir from this house,’ i said.
‘do you think i should go if there was the slightest possibility of your wife needing me?’ he said quietly.
‘no; i beg your pardon.’
‘that’s all right. now when your breakfast comes, eat it, and read a book if you can, or go and garden. i am sure those roses of{375} yours want looking after, and i tell you it’s a hard thing for a man in your position, and a thing which we doctors respect, to go and occupy himself. if you can’t, you can’t, but you might have a try.’
the servant brought in a tray before many minutes, and with it the morning paper. when i had eaten, i took it up and looked at it. there was no news, but the middle page contained an account of a visit to vesuvius by an english prince. he ‘honoured’ the volcano with a visit. and then i knew that i had seen the paper before. but when? years and years ago, or this morning?
what the doctor had said to me needed no time or thought for realizing it. i felt as if i had known it all along—known it all my life. but—what happened next, if that all happened long ago? was the room overhead the chamber of death or the chamber of birth? next door to it was the nursery, with its noah’s ark and its soldiers and its rocking-horse. who going to ride on that? and the dolls’-house, with its tottering inhabitants—who next was to play with those, and open the wall?{376} oh, helen, helen, you and your child, will it be? or will it be you and i again, but after a long time, hoping once more? or—dear god, no, not that!
daffodil-day, and its sisters of the spring! and rose-day will come next month. roses ... heaped for the beloved’s bed. dear god, not that: it does not mean that bed. indeed—indeed it does not. you have so many souls already in your house of many mansions. give us a few more years together, for they are so sweet, and a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday. and we should so like a young thing, one of our own, in the house. but ... thank you very much for the years that have been so sweet. they have been—they have been. and, please don’t let her suffer or be frightened.
then i went across the lawn and into the rose-garden. though we had been very industrious there, i never saw yet the rose-tree on which there is nothing to be done, and for a little my hands made themselves busy. then quite suddenly it all became impossible, and{377} there was nothing in the world except what the doctor had told me, and floating on the top of that ‘humpty-dumpty, humpty-dumpty.’
so it was within the hour that i got back again to the house, and the doctor had not yet returned. i missed something familiar on the lawn, without at once knowing what it was, and then i saw that the birds’ breakfast was not there. that took me to the dining-room, where i found lunch was already laid, and with bread-crumb and little bits of cheese, and cold meat mixed, i made a plateful for them, though, as you know, it was the last day of may, and i suppose it was but pauperism among the thrushes that i encouraged. but helen all these days had done so. i knew she would not like them to miss their provision.
soon after—so soon that the news of their belated meal had not yet become public among the birds—the doctor returned. i heard him go upstairs, and after that i crept into the hall, and sat down on the lowest step of the seventeen that led to the landing. legs used to jump down them in two bounds, taking eight steps first, and then nine, and get up (with a{378} run) in three—two sixes and a five.... what am i maundering about? and before very long i must have been sitting higher up the stairs, for i could see out of the window on the staircase. the dog-cart had drawn away from the door into the shade, and the groom had got down, and was gently stroking the mare’s nose. then he laid his smooth young cheek against it, and she stood quite still, liking it. i expect he is kind to her.
the sun had swung round farther to the west, and it came in through the window. but now i was nearly at the top of the stairs; there were but three above where i sat. the house was very still; below me on the ground-floor there had been no step or sign of life, and there was nothing from behind the second door to the left just above me. then came the sharp tingle of an electric bell. there was only one room from which it could have come.
i tapped very gently, though my heart beat so that i thought it must have been a hammer-noise to those inside. the door opened a chink, and a level, quiet voice said: ‘some hot water, please—very hot.’ perhaps a minute afterwards{379} i tapped again, and a hand took the can of hot water from me.
i went back again, this time to the top step, and still waited. since i had done something, though it was but the handing of a can of hot water into the room, that nightmare of incoherent thoughts began to clear more completely, and, like some remembered sunlight breaking clouds, and shining with the serene quietude of eventide, helen—she herself, no intercepted vision, no vision even of remembrance only or anxiousness—shone out. whatever happened, she was i, and i was she, and the will of god, whatever it might ordain for us, could not alter that. she and i, i think, have never feared anything when we were together, and surely of all days that life or death could hold for us, we could never be more together than to-day. so, surely, of all hours this is the one when fear should be farthest from us, for never have we been together like this. yet, o my god, my god, since christ was born of a woman, let him go in there, the second door....
and the next door, you know, is the nursery.... no, not the farther one, but the one this{380} side. yes, yes, of course you know, but you might have forgotten. there’s the noah’s ark there, and the dolls’-house, and the lead soldiers. we had hoped....
red light came in through the window on the stairs—light of sunset. once more the stinging sound of the electric bell came to me; once more i took up a can of hot water.
then it grew dark; in the hall below the lamp had been lit, and from the window, after the last red of sunset had faded, there came the distant shining of stars, endlessly remote. then the door opened again, and the nurse came hurrying out, forgetting to close it. from within came the cry of a child.
* * * * *
june 1.—i overstep the bounds of the year, but you may like to know. quite early this morning i was allowed to go in and look. they were sleeping, both of them—she and he.
afterwards i went into the nursery.