Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“What nonsense! Of course, this pain bothers me—and I feel astonishingly weak—”

“It’s more than that—much more than that. Something is worrying you horribly.” She paused, and then with an air of challenging him, added, “Tell me, did you—”

Her eyes were suddenly asking him blazingly the question he had been afraid of. He flinched, caught his breath, looked away. But it was no use, as he knew; he would have to tell her. He had known all along that he would have to tell her.

“Clarice,” he said—and his voice broke in spite of his effort to control it—“it’s killing me, it’s ghastly! Yes, I did.”

His eyes filled with tears, he saw that her own had done so also. She put her hand on his arm.

“I knew,” she said. “I knew. But tell me.”

“It’s happened twice again— twice —and each time I was farther away. The same dream of going round a star, the same terrible coldness and helplessness. That awful whistling curve.…” He shuddered.

“And when you woke up”—she spoke quietly—“where were you when you woke up? Don’t be afraid!”

“The first time I was at the farther end of the dining saloon. I had my hand on the door that leads into the pantry.”

“I see. Yes. And the next time?”

Mr. Arcularis wanted to close his eyes in terror—he felt as if he were going mad. His lips moved before he could speak, and when at last he did speak it was in a voice so low as to be almost a whisper.

“I was at the bottom of the stairway that leads down from the pantry to the hold, past the refrigerating plant. It was dark, and I was crawling on my hands and knees … crawling on my hands and knees! …”

“Oh!” she said, and again, “Oh!”

He began to tremble violently; he felt the hand on his arm trembling also. And then he watched a look of unmistakable horror come slowly into Clarice’s eyes, and a look of understanding, as if she saw.… She tightened her hold on his arm.

“Do you think.…” she whispered.

They stared at each other.

“I know,” he said. “And so do you.… Twice more—three times—and I’ll be looking down into an empty.…”

It was then that they first embraced—then, at the edge of the infinite, at the last signpost of the finite. They clung together desperately, forlornly, weeping as they kissed each other, staring hard one moment and closing their eyes the next. Passionately, passionately, she kissed him, as if she were indeed trying to give him her warmth, her life.

“But what nonsense!” she cried, leaning back, and holding his face between her hands, her hands which were wet with his tears. “What nonsense! It can’t be!”

“It is,” said Mr. Arcularis slowly.

“But how do you know?… How do you know where the—”

For the first time Mr. Arcularis smiled.

“Don’t be afraid, darling—you mean the coffin?”

“How could you know where it is?”

“I don’t need to,” said Mr. Arcularis.… “I’m already almost there.”

Before they separated for the night, in the smoking room, they had several whisky cocktails.

“We must make it gay!” Mr. Arcularis said. “Above all, we must make it gay. Perhaps even now it will turn out to be nothing but a nightmare from which both of us will wake! And even at the worst, at my present rate of travel, I ought to need two more nights! It’s a long way, still, to that little star.”

The parson passed them at the door.

“What! turning in so soon?” he said. “I was hoping for a game of chess.”

“Yes, both turning in. But tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, then, Miss Dean! And good night!”

“Good night.”

They walked once round the deck, then leaned on the railing and stared into the fog. It was thicker and whiter than ever. The ship was moving barely perceptibly, the rhythm of the engines was slower, more subdued and remote, and at regular intervals, mournfully, came the long reverberating cry of the foghorn. The sea was calm, and lapped only very tenderly against the side of the ship, the sound coming up to them clearly, however, because of the profound stillness.

“‘On such a night as this—’” quoted Mr. Arcularis grimly.

“‘On such a night as this—’”

Their voices hung suspended in the night, time ceased for them, for an eternal instant they were happy. When at last they parted it was by tacit agreement on a note of the ridiculous.

“Be a good boy and take your bromide!” she said.

“Yes, mother, I’ll take my medicine!”

In his stateroom, he mixed himself a strong potion of bromide, a very strong one, and got into bed. He would have no trouble in falling asleep; he felt more tired, more supremely exhausted, than he had ever been in his life; nor had bed ever seemed so delicious. And that long, magnificent, delirious swoop of dizziness … the Great Circle … the swift pathway to Arcturus.…

It was all as before, but infinitely more rapid. Never had Mr. Arcularis achieved such phenomenal, such supernatural, speed. In no time at all he was beyond the moon, shot past the North Star as if it were standing still (which perhaps it was?), swooped in a long, bright curve round the Pleiades, shouted his frosty greetings to Betelgeuse, and was off to the little blue star which pointed the way to the Unknown. Forward into the untrodden! Courage, old man, and hold on to your umbrella! Have you got your garters on? Mind your hat! In no time at all we’ll be back to Clarice with the frozen rime-feather, the time-feather, the snowflake of the Absolute, the Obsolete. If only we don’t wake … if only we needn’t wake … if only we don’t wake in that—in that—time and space … somewhere or nowhere … cold and dark … “Cavalleria Rusticana” sobbing among the palms; if a lonely … if only … the coffers of the poor—not coffers, not coffers, not coffers, Oh, God, not coffers, but light, delight, supreme white and brightness, whirling lightness above all—and freezing—freezing—freezing.…

At this point in the void the surgeon’s last effort to save Mr. Arcularis’s life had failed. He stood back from the operating table and made a tired gesture with a rubber-gloved hand.

“It’s all over,” he said. “As I expected.”

He looked at Miss Hoyle, whose gaze was downward, at the basin she held. There was a moment’s stillness, a pause, a brief flight of unexchanged comment, and then the ordered life of the hospital was resumed.

I.

“You’ve got to be well oiled,” Kit had said. “If you’re well oiled, it’s all right. You come over to my place before it, and we’ll shake up a couple of good potent cocktails, and then you won’t mind it.… Good God, why do you take it so seriously? It’s all in a lifetime!”

No doubt. So was everything, perhaps. But why did it have to be? Why was it a part of the social scheme of things? It seemed to be compulsory—everyone was agreed about that. They all did it. Loo had had one—so had Bill—Everett had got out of his only because he was in Cuba, and hadn’t been able to come home in time for anything but the wedding itself. There seemed to be no escaping it. In fact, it seemed to be a sort of social appendage to the wedding, indispensable preliminary. And the cost!… He had been staggered. A party of twenty, many of whom he would just as soon not have invited, but who—as his mother had said— had to be asked.

And why indeed did he take it so seriously?

He asked himself the foolish question as he took a last look at his necktie and the parting in his hair. It seemed to be—it seemed to be—well, a kind of smirch on the whole thing. A deliberate sort of mud-slinging. What must the girls think of it? What would Loo’s wife think of it, if by any chance she could have known what had gone on at Loo’s bachelor supper? or how it ended, and where? What had Evelyn thought, when she heard next day that Bill had been picked up in a gutter by a taxi-driver, minus most of his clothes? Of course, most of these girls nowadays were pretty “hard-boiled.” But what would Gay think, if the same thing were to happen to him ?