... I was in an impish mood and said: "Oh! dear, I"m full of misery."
"Don"t be silly," she said, "so am I."
_November_ 17.
E---- has been telling me some of her emotions during and after her fateful visit to my Doctor just before our marriage. He did not spare her and even estimated the length of my life after I had once taken to my bed--about 12 months. I remember his consulting room so well--all its furniture and the photograph of Madam Blavatsky over the door, and I picture her to myself sitting opposite to him in a sullen silence listening to the whole lugubrious story. Then she said at last: "All this won"t make any difference to me." She went home to her mother in a dream, along the streets I have followed so often. I can follow all her footsteps in imagination and keep on retracing them. It hurts, but I do so because it seems to make her some amends for my being childishly unconscious at the time. Poor darling woman--if only I had known! My instinct was right--I felt in my bones it was wrong to marry, yet here was M---- urging me on. "You marry," her mother said to her, "I"ll stand by you," which was right royal of her. There followed some trying months of married life with this white hot secret in her bosom as a barricade to perfect intimacy; me she saw always under this cloud of crude disgusting pathos making her say a hundred times to herself: "He doesn"t know;" then Zeppelin raids and a few symptoms began to grow obvious, until what before she had to take on trust from the Doctor came diabolically true before her eyes. Thank G.o.d that"s all over at last. I know her now for all she is worth--her loyalty and devotion, her courage and strength. If only I had something to give her in return! something more than the dregs of a life and a const.i.tutional pessimism. I greatly desire to make some sacrifice, but I am so poor these days, so very much a pauper on her charity, there is no sacrifice I can make. Even my life would scarcely be a sacrifice in the circ.u.mstances--it is hard not to be able to give when one _wants_ to give.
_November_ 20.
In the doldrums. Tired of this d.a.m.nable _far niente_,--I am being gently smothered under a mountain of feathers. I should like to engage upon some cold, hard, glittering intellectualism.
"I want to read Kant," I said. The Baby slept, E---- was sewing and N---- writing letters. I leaned back in my armchair beside the bookshelf and began to read out the t.i.tles of my books in a loud voice.
"My dear!" E---- said.
"I am caressing my past," I answered. "Wiedersheim"s _Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates_, Smith Woodward"s _Vertebrate Palaeontology_--why it"s like visiting old prospects and seeing how the moss has grown over the stones."
I hummed a comic song and then said: "As I can"t burn the house down, I shall go to bed."
N----: "You can talk if you like, it won"t interfere."
E----: "He"s talking to his besoms."
"Certainly," I said to N----, absent-mindedly.
E----: "You ought to have said "Thank you.""
I blew out my cheeks and E---- laughed.
N----: "How do you spell "regimental"?"
I told her--wrongly, and E---- said I was in a devilish mood.
"If we say that we have no sin" I chanted in reply, "we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." I next gave a bit out of a speech by Disraeli with exaggerated rhetorical gestures.
E---- (with pity): "Poor young man."
Presently she came over and in a tired way put her arms around my neck so I immediately began to sing "Rock of Ages, cleft for me," in the ba.s.s, which immediately reminded me of dear old Dad, whose favourite hymn it was.... Then I imitated the Baby. And then to bed fretful and very bitter.
_November_ 27.
... I wish I could die of heart failure--and at once! What a luxury that would be as compared with my present prospect!
A Tomt.i.t on the fence this morning made me dissolve in tears:--self-pity I believe. I remember Tomt.i.ts in ----shire. Put on a gramophone record and--ugh! but I"m too sick to write.
_November_ 28.
The shock I gave my spinal column in 1915 up in the Lakes undoubtedly re-awakened activity among the bacteria. Luck for you! I, of all persons to concuss my spine!!
... I listen to the kettle singing, I look at the pictures in the fire, read a bit, ask what time it is, see the Baby "topped and tailed," yawn, blow my nose, put on a gramophone record--I have the idea of pa.s.sing on the midnight with no pain to the tune of some healing ragtime.
_November_ 29.
The anniversary of our engagement day two years ago. How mad the idea of marriage seemed to me--and my instinct was right: if only I had known!
Yet she says she does not regret anything.
This morning I turned to read with avidity accounts of the last hours of Keats, Gibbon, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire. I gained astonishing comfort out of this, especially in the last ... who died of G.P.I, in a Brussels Hospital.
E---- is awfully courageous and,--as usual ready to do everything in her power. How can I ever express sufficient grat.i.tude to these two dear women (and my wife, above all) for casting in their lot knowingly with mine?
_December_ 1.
I believe I am good for another 12 months without abnormal worries. Just now, of course, the Slug ain"t exactly on the thorn--on the cabbage in fact as E---- suggested. The Gra.s.shopper is much of a burden and the voice of the Turtle has gone from my land (where did all these Bible phrases come from?). The first bark of the Wolf (G.o.d save us, "tis all the Animal Kingdom sliding down my penholder) was heard with the reduction in her work to-day, and I suspect there"s worse to come with a sovereign already only worth 12s. 6d.
_December_ 4.
The Baby touch is the most harrowing of all. If we were childless we should be merely unfortunate, but an infant....
_December_ 11.
Am receiving ionisation treatment from an electrical therapeutist--a quack! He is a sort of electrician--still, if he mends my bells I"ll kiss his boots. As for ----, he is no better than a byreman, and I call him Hodge. This is not the first time I have felt driven to act behind the back of the Profession. In 1912, being desperate, and M---- worse than a headache, I greedily and credulously sucked in the advice of my boarding-house proprietor and went to see a h.o.m.opathist in Finsbury Circus. He proved to be a charlatan at 10s. 6d. a time, and tho" I realised it at once, I religiously travelled about for a month or more with tinctures and drop-bottle. I could write a book on the Doctors I have known and the blunders they have made about me.... The therapeutist took me for 33. I feel 63. I am 27. What a wreck I am, and....
_December_ 12.
It is so agreeable to be able to write again that I write now for the sheer physical pleasure of being able to use a pen and form letters.
_An Adventure in Search of Health_
About the end of September, I began to feel so ill that Nurse went for the Doctor who a.s.sured me that E---- was all right--I need not worry--"You go away at once and get some fresh air," and so forth. "I feel quite ill," I said, struggling to break the news.
"Sort of nervous?" he enquired good-naturedly, "run down? I should get right away at once."
I began tentatively. "Well, I have a rather long medical history and perhaps ... you ... might care to read the certificate of my London Doctor?"
I went to my escritoire and returned with M----"s letter addressed to "The M.O. examining Mr. B."
Hodge pulled out the missive, studied the brief note carefully and long, at the same time drawing in his breath--deeply, and gnawing the back of his hand.
"I know all about it," I said to relieve him.
"Is it quite certain? about this disease?" he said presently. "You are very young for it."
"I think there is no doubt," and he began to put me thro" the usual tricks.