“There are different ways of dying. My father’s people are frightened, and have to be hauled out of life into death like cattle into a slaughter-house, pulled by the neck; but my mother’s people are pushed from behind, inch by inch. They are stubborn people, and won’t die.”
“Yes,” said Clara.
“And she won’t die. She can’t. Mr. Renshaw, the parson, was in the other day. ‘Think!’ he said to her; ‘you will have your mother and father, and your sisters, and your son, in the Other Land.’ And she said: ‘I have done without them for a long time, and can do without them now. It is the living I want, not the dead.’ She wants to live even now.”
“Oh, how horrible!” said Clara, too frightened to speak.
“And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me,” he went on monotonously. “She’s got such a will, it seems as if she would never go—never!”
“Don’t think of it!” cried Clara.
“And she was religious—she is religious now—but it is no good. She simply won’t give in. And do you know, I said to her on Thursday, ‘Mother, if I had to die, I’d die. I’d will to die.’ And she said to me, sharp: ‘Do you think I haven’t? Do you think you can die when you like?’ ”
His voice ceased. He did not cry, only went on speaking monotonously. Clara wanted to run. She looked round. There was the black, re-echoing shore, the dark sky down on her. She got up terrified. She wanted to be where there was light, where there were other people. She wanted to be away from him. He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle.
“And I don’t want her to eat,” he said, “and she knows it. When I ask her, ‘Shall you have anything?’ she’s almost afraid to say ‘Yes.’ ‘I’ll have a cup of Benger’s,’ she says. ‘It’ll only keep your strength up,’ I said to her. ‘Yes’ and she almost cried ‘but there’s such a gnawing when I eat nothing, I can’t bear it.’ So I went and made her the food. It’s the cancer that gnaws like that at her. I wish she’d die!”
“Come!” said Clara roughly. “I’m going.”
He followed her down the darkness of the sands. He did not come to her. He seemed scarcely aware of her existence. And she was afraid of him, and disliked him.
In the same acute daze they went back to Nottingham. He was always busy, always doing something, always going from one to the other of his friends.
