‘It’s bad enough to see any man in extreme agonies of pain, but when the man is an uncommunicative, efficient, self-reliant creature like MacPherson it becomes ten times worse. I felt that a devil had deliberately set himself to tear the seals from that sternly repressed personality. MacPherson, who had always assumed a mask to disguise any human feelings he may have had, was here forced, driven, tortured into the revelation of ordinary mortal weakness. I believe that, even through the suffering which robs most men of all vestiges of their self-respect, he felt himself to be bitterly humiliated. I believe that he would almost have preferred to fight his disease alone in the wilderness. Yet I could not leave him. He was crying constantly for water, which I provided, and besides this there were many services to render, details of which I will spare you. I sat by the window with my back turned to him whenever he did not need me, glad to spare him what observation I could, and glad also, I confess, to spare myself the sight of that blue, shrivelled face, tormented eyes, and of the long form that knotted and bent itself in contortions like the man-snake of a circus . . . His courage was marvellous. He resolutely stifled the cries which rose to his throat, hiding his face and holding his indrawn breath until the spasm had passed.
‘I knew that this stage of the disease would probably continue for two or three hours, when the man would collapse, and when the pain might or might not be relieved. The sun was high in the heavens when I noticed the first signs of exhaustion. MacPherson sank rapidly, and the deadly cold for which I was watching overcame him; I covered him with blankets – this he feebly resisted – and banked him round with hot water bottles, of which we always kept a supply in case of emergency. It was now midday, and I had continually to wipe the sweat from my face, but I could not succeed in bringing much warmth to poor MacPherson. He lay quiet and silent now, save when the fearful sickness returned, as it did at short intervals. I sat beside him, ready with the water for which he was continually asking.
‘He was, as I have said, always thin, but by this time his face was cavernous; I could have hidden my knuckles in the depression over his temples, and my fist in the hollow under his cheek-bones. His scant, reddish hair, always carefully smoothed, lay about his forehead in tragic wisps. His pale blue eyes showed as two smears of colour in their great sockets. His interminable legs and arms stirred at unexpected distances under the pile of blankets. He was very weak. I feared that he would not pull through.
‘When the merciless sun was beginning to disappear round the corner of the house, MacPherson, who had been lying for the last hour or so in a state of coma, spoke to me in a low voice. I was staring in a melancholy way from my chair by his side, across the bed, between a chink of the Venetian blind; I don’t know what I was thinking of, probably my mind was a blank. I started when I heard him whisper my name, and bent towards him. He whispered,—
“I don’t think I’m going to recover.”
‘Neither did I, and seeing that he had made the remark as a statement of fact, in his usual tone, though low-pitched, I waited for what he should say next. He said,—
‘“I am sorry to be a bore.”
‘This was a hard remark to answer, but I murmured something. He went on, still in that hoarse whisper,—
“I must talk to you first.”
‘I saw that he was perfectly lucid in his mind, and thinking that he wanted to give me some necessary instructions I encouraged him to go on, but he only shook his head, and I saw that he had fallen back into the characteristic apathy. I sat on, expecting the arrival of Marco and the doctor at any moment.
‘Towards night, MacPherson roused himself again. He was so much weaker that I could barely make out the words he breathed.
“It is time you went to water your garden.”
‘I shook my head. A distressed look came over his face, and to comfort him I said,—
“Marco has promised to do it for me.”
‘He was content with that, and lay quiet with his long, long arms and thin hands outside the coverlet. I thought that he wanted to speak again, but had not the energy to begin, so, to help him, I suggested,—
“Was there anything you wanted to say to me?”
‘He nodded, more with his eyelids than with his head, then, bracing himself with pain for the effort, he whispered,—
“You won’t stay on here?”
‘I answered, “No,” feeling that to adopt a reassuring, hearty attitude would be an insult to the man.
‘After a long pause he said,—
‘“I want to be buried up here. By the ruins. I don’t care about consecrated ground.”
‘An appalling attack of sickness interrupted him, after which he lay in such complete exhaustion that I thought he would never speak again. But after about half an hour, he resumed,—
“Give me your word of honour. They will try to prevent you.”
‘I swore it – poor devil.
“Bury me deep,” he said with a grim, twisted smile, “or some one will excavate me.”
‘He seemed a little stronger, but I knew the recovery could only be fictitious. Then he went on,—
“Will you do something else for me?”
“Of course I will,” I answered, “anything you ask.” “My wife . . .” he murmured.
“Your wife?” I said.
“She’s in London,” he whispered, and he gave me the address, dragging it up out of the depths of his memory.
‘In London! Even in that dim room, with the dying man there beneath my hand, I felt my heart bound with a physical sensation.
‘”Just tell her,” he added; “she won’t mind. She won’t make you a scene.”
‘He was silent then, but drank a great draught of water.
‘“Is there any one else?” I asked.
‘His head moved very feebly in the negative on the pillow.
‘“And what am I to do with your things?” I asked lastly.
‘“Look through them,” he breathed; “nothing private. Give the fragments to the British Museum. I’ve made a will about money.”
‘“And your personal things? Would you like me to give them to your wife?”
“Oh, no,” he said wearily, “ ‘tisn’t worth while.” Then after a long pause in which he seemed to be meditating, he said, with evidently unconscious pathos, “I don’t know . . . Better throw them away.”
Chapter Five
‘Macpherson died that night about an hour before the doctor came; Marco and the doctor had missed each other, and missed the trains, but the doctor reassured me that I had done all that was possible, and that had he arrived by midday he could not have saved MacPherson’s life.
‘“I suppose you will want to bring him down to the English cemetery at Smyrna?” he said, with an offer of help tripping on the heels of his remark. He looked horrified when I told him of MacPherson’s wish and of my intention of carrying it out.
‘“But no priest, I am afraid, will consent to read the burial service over him under those conditions,” he said primly.
‘“Then I will read it myself,” I replied in a firm voice.
‘“You must please yourself about that,” said the doctor, giving it up. His attitude towards me, which had started by being sympathetic, was now changing subtly to a slight impatience. He took out his watch. “I am afraid I ought to be going,” he remarked, “if I am to catch the last train down to Smyrna, and there seems to be nothing more I can do for you here. There will have to be a certificate of death, of course; I will send you that. And if you like I will stop in the village on the way, and send some one up to you; you understand me – a layer-out.”
‘I said that I should be much obliged to him, and, accompanying him as far as the front door, I watched him go with Marco and a lantern, the little parallelogram of yellow light crisscrossed with black lines, swaying to an
d fro in the night.
‘I could not go to bed, and as I was anxious to leave Ephesus as soon as possible, I thought I would employ my time in going through poor MacPherson’s few possessions. As he said, there was nothing private. I sat downstairs in the sitting-room we had shared, with his tin box open on the table before me, shiny black, and the inside of the lid painted sky-blue. It was pitifully empty. His will was in a long envelope, a will making provision for his wife, and bequeathing the remainder of his income to an archeological society; there was also a codicil directing that his Ephesian fragments were to go, as he had told me, to the British Museum. The box also contained a diary, recording, not his life, but his discoveries; and a few letters from men of science. For the rest, there were his books, his clothes, his wristwatch, his plaid rug, and a little loose cash in Turkish coins. And that was all. There was absolutely nothing else. Not a photograph, not a seal, not even a bunch of keys. Nothing private! I should think not, indeed.
‘I sat there staring at the bleak little collection when Marco came in to say that he had returned with the layer-out. I went into the passage, and there I found our old negro post-woman, grinning as usual in her magenta wrapper; it seemed that she combined several village functions in her own person. I felt an instinctive horror at the thought of those black hands pawing poor MacPherson, but the thing was unavoidable, so I took her upstairs to where he lay in a repose that appeared to me enviable after the brief but terrible suffering he had undergone, and left her there, bending over him, the softer parts of her huge body quivering as usual under her mashlak. I went downstairs again, and stood outside to breathe the clean, cool air; the sky hung over me swarming with stars; I tried not to think of the old negress exercising her revolting profession on MacPherson’s body.
‘Next day two men in baggy trousers and red sashes came up to the house carrying the hastily-made coffin. Then we set out, Marco, myself, and the two men with the coffin and MacPherson inside it. Providentially there were no tourists that day at Ephesus. Marco and I had been hard at work all the morning digging the grave, and as I drove my pick I reflected that this was, humanly speaking, the last time I should ever break up the flinty ground of Ephesus. After ten years! With regard to myself and my future, I dared not think; my present pre-occupation was to have finished with MacPherson and his widow.
‘Well, I buried him up there, and may I be hanged if I don’t think the man was better and more happily buried in the place he had loved, than stuck down in a corner of some unfriendly cemetery he had never seen. For myself – such is the egoism of our nature – I was thinking all the while that I would leave behind me a written request to be buried within sight of Westmacott’s farm in Kent. And after I had buried him, and had got rid of Marco and the two men over a bottle of raki in the kitchen, I took all the flowers from my garden and put them on his grave, and I dug up some roots of orchid and cyclamen and planted them at his head and at his feet; but I don’t suppose they ever survived the move, and probably to this day the tourists who wander far enough afield to stumble over the mound, say, “Why, some one has buried his dog out here.”
‘A week later I was in London, on a blazing August day which seemed strangely misty to me, accustomed as I was to the direct, unmitigated rays of the sun on the Ephesian hills. I still hadn’t thought about my future, and I was resolved not to do so until, my interview with Mrs MacPherson over, I could look upon the whole of the last ten years as an episode of the past. I had tried to forget that I was in the same country as Ruth; but this had been difficult, for the train from Dover had carried me through the heart of Ruth’s own county, a cruel, unforeseen prank of fortune; I had pulled down the blinds of my railway carriage, greatly to the annoyance of my fellow-travellers, but these good people, who might have been involved with Fate in a conspiracy against me, had their unwitting revenge and defeated my object utterly by saying, as we flashed through a station, “That was Hildenborough; now we have to go through a long tunnel.”
‘Hildenborough! After ten years, during which I had consistently kept at least fifteen hundred miles between us, I was at last within two miles of her home. I nearly sprang out of the train at the thought. But I resolutely put it away, so resolutely that I found myself pushing with my hands and with all my force against the side of the railway carriage.
It was too late, when I reached London, to do anything that day. I slept at my old club, where everybody started at the sight of me as of a ghost, and the following morning I went to the address MacPherson had given me. It was a block of flats, a long way up. I was left stranded upon the tiny landing by the lift-boy, who, with his lift, fell rapidly down through the floor as though pulled from below by a giant’s hand. I rang the bell. It tinkled loudly; I heard voices within, and presently a woman came to open the door, with an expression of displeased inquiry on her face; a middle-aged woman, wearing a dingy yellow dressing-gown which she kept gathering together in her hand as though afraid that it would fall open.
‘“Can I see Mrs MacPherson?” I asked.
‘She stared at me.
‘“There’s no Mrs MacPherson here.”
‘I heard a man’s voice from inside the flat,—
‘“What is it, Belle?”
‘She called back over her shoulder,—
‘“Here’s a party asking to see Mrs MacPherson.”
‘“Who is it?” asked the voice.
‘“Who are you, anyway?” said Belle to me. “I have been sent here by Mr MacPherson, Mr Angus MacPherson, with a message for his wife,” I said, “but as I have evidently made a mistake I had better apologise and go away.”
‘‘She looked suddenly thoughtful – or was it apprehensive?
‘“No, don’t go away,” she said. “You haven’t made a mistake. Come in.”
‘I went in, and she closed the door behind me. I followed her into the sitting-room where, amid surroundings at once pretentious and tawdry, a man, also in a dressing-gown, lay stretched on the sofa smoking cigarettes. He was handsome in a vulgar way, with black wavy hair and a curved, sensuous mouth.
‘“Now,” said Belle, “let’s hear your news of Mr Angus MacPherson?”
‘“First of all,” I answered, “may I know who I am talking to?”
‘Belle and the man exchanged glances.
‘“Oh, well,” she said then, “I am Mrs MacPherson all right enough. If you have really got a message for me, let’s hear it.”
‘There was anxiety in her tone, and she edged nearer to the handsome man, and surreptitiously took possession of his hand.
‘I did not think that the news of MacPherson’s death was likely to cause much grief to his widow. I therefore said without preamble,—
‘“I have come to tell you that he died a week ago of cholera. I was with him at the time, and I have brought you the certificate of his death, also his will. He left no other papers.”
‘“Angus dead?” said Angus’s widow. “You don’t say! Poor old Angus!”
‘She was relieved by my words; I know she was relieved. She began reading the will with avidity. If I could find nothing else to admire about her, I could at least admire her candour.
‘“He’s left me five hundred a year,” she said abruptly, “and the rest to some archi — what is it? society. Five hundred a year, and he had a thousand!”
‘“Oh, come, Belle,” said the handsome man, “that’s better than nothing.”
‘She let her eyes dwell on his face with real affection, real kindliness.
‘“Let’s have a look at that will,” he murmured lazily. ‘She passed it across to him, sat down on a stool, clasped her knees, and became meditative.
‘“Poor old Angus!” she repeated. “Fancy that! Well, he was rare fun in his day, wasn’t he, Dick?”
‘“No end of a dog,” replied Dick without removing his eyes from the will.
‘“Perhaps, if there are no questions you want to ask me, I had better be going now,” I began. I was bewildered, for MacPherson, in spite of his eccentricities, had undoubtedly been a scholar and a man of refinement.
‘Dick stirred from his spoilt torpor.
‘“I suppose it is quite certain,” he said, “that there is no mistake? I mean, it’s quite certain he’s dead?”
‘“Quite.” I answered rather grimly, as certain visions rose before my eyes. “I buried him myself”; and the flat with its dirty lace, its cheap pretension, melted away into the quiet beauty of Ephesus.
‘I walked away from the building with an inexpressible loneliness at my heart, faced with my own immediate and remoter future, a problem I had hitherto refused to consider, but which now rushed at me like the oncoming wave rushes at the failing swimmer and overwhelms him. I had finished with Ephesus and MacPherson, and with MacPherson’s wife, and to say that I felt depressed would give you no idea of my feelings: an immense desolation took possession of me, an immense desolation, and more: an immense, soul-destroying disgust and weariness at the cruelty of things, a lassitude such as I had never conceived, so that I envied MacPherson lying for ever at peace, away from strife and difficulties and things that would not go right, among beautiful and untroubled hills, with wild flowers blooming round his grave. Yes, I envied him, I that am a sane man and have always prized rich life at its full value.
‘And as I walked I met two men I had known, who spoke to me by name and stopped me.
‘“Why, it’s Malory,” said one of them. “I haven’t seen you lately. Somebody told me you had gone to Scotland?”
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