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"Oh, I'm so glad you've come! I... was afraid."
Jack sat down with him on the edge of the bed, putting an arm round his shoulders to stop their nervous shivering. He could not understand; to him, grief was a different thing from this; but he had the large humility of the physician, and was content to watch and give what help he could, if need be, without understanding. Theo looked up after a
little while; he was still white, but the shivering had stopped, and his teeth no longer knocked together when he spoke.
"You are good to me, old fellow," he said; "and I'm keeping you up when you're so tired."
"That's all right; I'm used to being up."
"Jack, are you never afraid, never?"
"I don't understand. Afraid of what? "
"Of death."
Jack's brow drew itself down into an ugly line.
"Well," he said slowly, "if one's going in for being afraid, there are worse things than death to be afraid of."
"I don't mean one's own death — that's nothing; I mean..."
"Other people's? Yes, that is worse; but one gets accustomed, in time."
"No, not quite that. I mean... the everlasting presence, the idea of it, always there, always waiting for everything you love. I... never thought of it till now; it's like a pit dug under one's feet, saying: 'Tread over me if you dare.' It is as if we must go through all our life and be afraid to love; if the gods should see, they will take away the thing we love."
Jack sat still, thinking, the sad lines deep about his mouth.
"It doesn't matter," he said at last. "If nothing worse than death happens to the people that a fellow loves, he's lucky. It seems to me death makes a pretty poor show, considering all the bother people have over dying. Anyhow, what's the use of worrying your head about that? Look here, Theo; if you get the horrors, or the blues, or anything, don't sit alone this way; hold on tight to me and I'll pull you through somehow."
"Haven't you ever horrors and blues of your own without mine? And, besides, I can't hold on to you all my life."
"Why not? What else am I there for? I can't play the fiddle."
Theo rose with a sigh, stretching both arms above his head.
"You may thank the gods for that," he said, as he let them fall. "Did you know old Hauptma
"Yes, and you must go and play your best; it will disappoint mother if you don't. Now tumble into bed, and be asleep in five minutes; you must start early to get in to town for the boat train. I'll call you; I shall be up in any case, to look after mother."
Whether Theo's playing of the concerto next evening was up to his best level or no, it was good enough to satisfy both audience and impresario. He ground his teeth a little under the rain of applause that followed; his nerves were overstrung to the pitch that makes any sound appear a menace and any crowd a ravening beast. The excited audience, shouting, staring, clapping hands and waving programmes, horrified and sickened him; he shut his eyes despairingly.
"Bis! Bis!" they yelled at him. "Bis!"
His breath came in quick pants of distress; he was almost ready to clap both hands over his ears and shut out the sound. It struck upon him like a blow, like sacrilege; it was as if he must cry out to them: "Stop! Hush,
for shame! I can't play; my mother is dying."
He turned to leave the platform, but on the steps the impresario thrust the violin into his hands. He pushed it back.
"I can't... I'm tired..."
"Give them something — anything — quick! or we shall never be done to-night. It's the only way to stop them."
Theo took the instrument mechanically and returned to the platform. The roar of shouts and hand-clapping died down suddenly as he raised his bow. Then came silence, and he realised that he had nothing to play. He looked out over the sea of faces, blankly; his memory was a washed slate; not a note remained on it, not the name of a composer.
Yet he must play something; the people down there with the upturned faces were waiting, waiting; and he had nothing to give them. A thin mist spread between him and the glaring lights; there was a dim space at the further end of the hall, and he fixed his eyes upon it, trying to remember. A room seemed to grow out of the shadows; half-
darkened, wholly grief-stricken and cheerless; his mother, with her drawn face white upon the pillow, her wasted, piteous hands; and beside the bed a watching figure, silent, weary-eyed.
He began to play. As for the audience, he had forgotten it; he was playing, not for the concert-goers of Paris, but for Jack and Helen. When he ended there was silence; then thunderous applause burst out again. He shuddered as he went down the steps.
In the artist's room Conrad caught him by the arm. "Theo," he said hoarsely, "was that... your own?"
Theo looked round him desperately; the maddening sound of applause filled him with terror; there seemed no escape from its malignant pursuit.
"I... made it up as I went along. Was it... was it very bad? Uncle Conrad, stop them; make them let me alone! I..."
He was white and shivering. Conrad, too, was pale, but from another cause. He laid a solemn hand on the lad's shoulder.
"Render thanks to God," he said, "for His great gift of genius."
Theo burst suddenly into passionate sobs. "And mother is dying..."
For the remainder of the winter he took no Continental engagements. The impresario argued, coaxed, and threatened in vain; then resigned himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and made arrangements for London concerts. These, fortunately, brought in enough money to keep the little household in comfort, and to surround Helen with small luxuries which did something to soften the hardness of a hard death.
Towards the end she partly lost the suppressed ma
It was only during this last winter that she recovered something of the gift of improvisation for which in her youth she had been remarkable. On the rare "good days" when she was neither suffering acutely nor faint and exhausted, she would slip unconsciously, while talking to Jack or Theo, into a rhapsodic form of expression, now in verse, now in prose, sometimes in an irregular rhythm like that of a chant.
The last time that she left her room was in the begi
On the warmest afternoon Jack and Theo laid her upon her couch and carried her out into the Gardens, that she might see the coming of spring before she died.
They took her to a wide, open space where crocuses, white and gold and purple, bloomed by tens of thousands, their bright heads erect, their stems a silver forest in the grass. Jack sat on a bench beside her; Theo, as usual, flung himself full-length upon the ground, his clasped hands behind his head, Helen lay looking out across the crocus field; the stillness of her face made the two lads silent, as in the presence of death.