Джеймс Хилтон: Morning Journey

“Has he been under any particular strain lately?” the doctor was asking.

“Well, yes, he…” She managed to check herself this time. “His life’s more or less all strain—the way he works.”

He was clearly puzzled by her reticences, but as they continued to talk she felt that his own were at least as great. She said at last: “You haven’t really told me what’s the matter with him, have you?”

“I’d rather your own doctor do that when there’s been a chance to make a complete examination.”

“That… sounds… rather frightening. I wish you could give me some idea.”

He scrutinized her.

“I’d rather know, whatever it is,” she went on. “I’m that kind of person.”

“Well… if you won’t let the word scare you, it looks to me he may have had a slight stroke recently.”

“Is that… possible?”

“Without knowing it, you mean? Yes, if it was only very slight. Certain symptoms… but there again, your own doctor…”

She paid the fee, thanked him, heard his final words of advice (“take it easy on the trip”), then went out to the car. It was dark by then. Paul was fast asleep and she drove on till she saw the hotel. When she stopped and he wakened she could see he was unaware they had travelled further. He said, as if she had just come out of the doctor’s office: “Over-work and high blood pressure. That’s all he told me. He tell you anything else?”

“About the same.”

“And how much was the bill for all that?”

“Ten dollars.”

“He must have seen the car.” It was always his contention since she had rented a Cadillac that everyone would overcharge her. “Nice fellow, though. I like Mexicans. He told me this town is a third Mexican.”

“He told me you must rest, Paul.”

“I know, I know.”

“Then you start resting… now.”

He let her take him into the hotel and book rooms and sign the register as she had always done when they had travelled together, and when he entered the bedroom he went straight to the window and pulled the curtains, ready to fulminate if there were no screens. But there were screens. Then he strode through the bathroom to her bedroom and came back and lay on the bed in his own room and lit a cigar. “I asked if I could smoke and he said two a day. I’ll bet he didn’t know how big these are.”

She pulled a chair close to where his arm would swing down, and put an ash-tray on it.

“So this is the Bristol,” he said, contemplating the ceiling. “Remember the Bristol in Vienna? No, you weren’t with me then… But this is another kind of Bristol. Spittoons in the lobby polished every morning. My ideal of cleanliness… Oh dear, I’m sorry I’m so sleepy. I’ll be all right tomorrow. What do we do then?”

“I don’t know. We’ll settle that when tomorrow comes. This is today.”

“And what a day, from start to finish!… How kind you are to me, Carey.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“A hundred reasons if you weren’t you.”

“But I am, I always am.”

He was silent for a few moments, then said: “D’you think I’ll ever be able to do any work again?”

“Of course you will.”

“I wonder…”

He had spoken so sadly and sincerely, not dramatically at all, that she sat down on the bed and took the hand that did not hold the cigar. She thought with calmness: If he dies, what will _I_ do? Will I be free or will freedom be another kind of bondage to all I can remember? Because so long as he’s alive, anywhere, with anybody… and if that be love, let it flow from me to him whenever he needs it, as now… Oh, Paul, why did I ever meet you if it were not for this, yet why did I ever meet you if it were only for this? So I’m back at last, or you are, it doesn’t matter which, but it’s late, isn’t it?… it’s so terribly late…

She whispered: “You will work again, when you’re rested enough. I’ll help you, I’ll be with you—you know you can count on me. I can work too —I’ll do another picture or a stage play or something. And one of these days, darling, but not yet—because you need that long rest —one of these days, though, you’ll make that picture about children you talked of—the one where the camera itself is a child—you were going to tell me about it once when someone came in and interrupted… don’t you remember?”

He seemed not to at first, but soon he either did so or else began to think about it as if it were a new idea. She did not want to excite him, but the look that came into his face was the look of life itself and it brought life to her. “I think I’d shoot from three feet above the ground,” he muttered. “Everything in a child’s-eye view—a child’s proportion —a smile makes the sun shine twice as bright—we could get a lighting effect for that… and the eye widening like a lens— everything big when it loves something—an apple, a toy, the mother’s breast, a dog as big as a horse…”

He closed his eyes, sighing contentedly. After a little while she knew he was asleep again, so she took the cigar from his hand and laid it down.

First published by Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1951