whenever I did so I seemed to hear Bastin’s slow voice remarking casually that she might die, as he might have commented on the quality of the claret. At last, however, I grew terrified and asked her bluntly what she meant.
“I don’t quite know, dearest,” she replied, “especially as I am wonderfully well. But—but—”
“But what?” I asked.
“But I think that our companionship is going to be broken for a little while.”
“For a little while!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, Humphrey. I think that I shall be taken away from you—you know what I mean,” and she nodded towards the churchyard.
“Oh, my God!” I groaned.
“I want to say this,” she added quickly, “that if such a thing should happen, as it happens every day, I implore you, dearest Humphrey, not to be too much distressed, since I am sure that you will find me again. No, I can’t explain how or when or where, because I do not know. I have prayed for light, but it has not come to me. All I know is that I am not talking of reunion in Mr. Bastin’s kind of conventional heaven, which he speaks about as though to reach it one stumbled through darkness for a minute into a fine new house next door, where excellent servants had made everything ready for your arrival and all the lights were turned up. It is something quite different from that and very much more real.”
Then she bent down ostensibly to pat the head of a little black cocker spaniel called Tommy which had been given to her as a puppy, a highly intelligent and affectionate animal that we both adored and that loved her as only a dog can love. Really, I knew, it was to hide her tears, and fled from the room lest she should see mine.
As I went I heard the dog whimpering in a peculiar way, as though some sympathetic knowledge had been communicated to its wonderful animal intelligence.
That night I spoke to Bickley about the matter, repeating exactly what had passed. As I expected, he smiled in his grave, rather sarcastic way, and made light of it.
“My dear Humphrey,” he said, “don’t torment yourself about such fancies. They are of everyday occurrence among women in your wife’s condition. Sometimes they take one form, sometimes another. When she has got her baby you will hear no more of them.”
I tried to be comforted but in vain.
The days and weeks went by like a long nightmare and in due course the event happened. Bickley was not attending the case; it was not in his line, he said, and he preferred that where a friend’s wife was concerned, somebody else should be called in. So it was put in charge of a very good local man with a large experience in such domestic matters.
How am I to tell of it? Everything went wrong; as for the details, let them be. Ultimately Bickley did operate, and if surpassing skill could have saved her, it would have been done. But the other man had misjudged the conditions; it was too late, nothing could help either mother or child, a little girl who died shortly after she was born but not before she had been christened, also by the name of Natalie.
I was called in to say farewell to my wife and found her radiant, triumphant even in her weakness.
“I know now,” she whispered in a faint voice. “I understood as the chloroform passed away, but I cannot tell you. Everything is quite well, my darling. Go where you seem called to go, far away. Oh! the wonderful place in which you will find me, not knowing that you have found me. Good-bye for a little while; only for a little while, my own, my own!”
Then she died. And for a time I too seemed to die, but could not. I buried her and the child here at Fulcombe; or rather I buried their ashes since I could not endure that her beloved body should see corruption.
Afterwards, when all was over, I spoke of these last words of Natalie’s with both Bickley and Bastin, for somehow I seemed to wish to learn their separate views.
The latter I may explain, had been present at the end in his spiritual capacity, but I do not think that he in the least understood the nature of the drama which was passing before his eyes. His prayers and the christening absorbed all his attention, and he never was a man who could think of more than one thing at a time.
When I told him exactly what had happened and repeated the words that Natalie spoke, he was much interested in his own nebulous way, and said that it was delightful to meet with an example of a good Christian, such as my wife had been, who actually saw something of Heaven before she had gone there. His own faith was, he thanked God, fairly robust, but still an undoubted occurrence of the sort acted as a refreshment, “like rain on a pasture when it is rather dry, you know,” he added, breaking into simile.
I remarked that she had not seemed to speak in the sense he indicated, but appeared to allude to something quite near at hand and more or less immediate.
“I don’t know that there is anything nearer at hand than the Hereafter,” he answered. “I expect she meant that you will probably soon die and join her in Paradise, if you are worthy to do so. But of course it is not wise to put too much reliance upon words spoken by people at the last, because often they don’t quite know what they are saying. Indeed sometimes I think this was so in the case of my own wife, who really seemed to me to talk a good deal of rubbish. Good-bye, I promised to see Widow Jenkins this afternoon about having her varicose veins cut out, and I mustn’t stop here wasting time in pleasant conversation. She thinks just as much of her varicose veins as we do of the loss of our wives.”
I wonder what Bastin’s ideas of unpleasant conversation may be, thought I to myself, as I watched him depart already wool-gathering on some other subject, probably the heresy of one of those “early fathers” who occupied most of his thoughts.
Bickley listened to my tale in sympathetic silence, as a doctor does to a patient. When he was obliged to speak, he said that it was interesting as an example of a tendency of certain minds towards romantic vision which sometimes asserts itself, even in the throes of death.
“You know,” he added, “that I put faith in none of these things. I wish that I could, but reason and science both show me that they lack foundation. The world on the whole is a sad place, where we arrive through the passions of others implanted in them by Nature, which, although it cares nothing for individual death, is tender towards the impulse of races of every sort to preserve their collective life. Indeed the impulse is Nature, or at least its chief manifestation. Consequently, whether we be gnats or elephants, or anything between and beyond, even stars for aught I know, we must make the best of things as they are, taking the good and the evil as they come and getting all we can out of life until it leaves us, after which we need not trouble. You had a good time for a little while and were happy in it; now you are having a bad time and are wretched. Perhaps in the future, when your mental balance has re-asserted itself, you will have other good times in the afternoon of your days, and then follow twilight and the dark. That is all there is to hope for, and we may as well look the thing in the face. Only I confess, my dear fellow, that your experience convinces me that marriage should be avoided at whatever inconvenience. Indeed I have long wondered that anyone can take the responsibility of bringing a child into the world. But probably nobody does in cold blood, except misguided idiots like Bastin,” he added. “He would have twenty, had not his luck intervened.”
“Then you believe in nothing, Friend,” I said.
“Nothing, I am sorry to say, except what I see and my five senses appreciate.”
“You reject all possibility of miracle, for instance?”
