The Town House Read Online Free PDF Page B

kitten, so light she was; but as I went on she grew heavy and heavier. Sweat broke out all over my body, my heart hammered, my sight clouded. In the end I would set her down and fall prone, and she would creep away a little distance, behind the nearest tree or bush and then emerge, more deathly pale than ever. Through the ringing and buzzing in my ears a stern voice would say clearly, ‘Kate is going to die and you are to blame.’ Presently I would brace myself and try again. Again. Again. Making no progress, and the forest going on and on, and nobody in it but us.
    From hunger sleep is no refuge; the starving do not sleep; they slip from one kind of misery to another; the gnawing pain goes on and so does the worry. I would lie down and think, imagine, dream, that a fine fat rabbit was kicking in my snare, then I would struggle up, shouting, to find that the piece of cord was still twisted about my wrist because I had lain where I had fallen and never set the snare at all.
    It was a nightmare time.
    Once I lifted Kate, turned dizzy, and only just set her down before I dropped her. She said, in a weak voice, gasping,
    ‘You can’t… carry me… any more. Leave me. No need… for both… to die.’
    If I had had a known destination or any real hope of finding help I might have been more tempted. But mere walking was not going to save me. Only a miracle could do that. I told her so.
    ‘Only a miracle can save us now. And a miracle could happen here as well as at any other place.’ So I lay beside her for a little, gathering my strength, and then staggered a little distance and set my silly snare. Thatwas the miracle I expected, a rabbit in my snare. As I set it I prayed, not in the manner I had been taught but as though God were the steward and I were begging some small favour of him. ‘God send a rabbit, please God. A rabbit, God, please.’ The light was just beginning to fail; it was a time when rabbits were abroad.
    When I got back to Kate she said,
    ‘I can smell… herrings roasting.’
    I almost wept then. I knew that delusion. It had been my companion for hours, days. As I walked I had smelt more food cooking than had ever been set on my lord’s table; fat pork boiling with peas; roasting fowl; dried herring; new bread; seethed beef; dredged hare; onions.
    ‘Poor Kate,’ I said. ‘My poor, poor Kate. Your hungry nose deceives you.’
    ‘But I can … can’t you?’
    I sniffed. I could smell it. A mouth-watering smell at any time. After the harvest of the earth came the harvest of the sea and the dried herring would come in barrels to Rede. When the day’s work was done father and I would toast them, on long sticks, by the fire. We could have been doing it now, while Kate ate venison and syllabub at Abhurst.
    Call me heartless knave if you will. But first go hungry for uncounted days; then make your own choice, love or a roasted herring. Lie, weak with hunger on the ground and stare death by starvation in the face, and choose. If you say, Love, then I will call you saint and you may call me what you will. I am honest with myself. I wished myself back at Rede with a herring spluttering at the end of a stick, and Kate safe and full fed in Abhurst.
    I lay, wishing that, and the good smell continued. Presently I realized that never before in my delusions had the one kind of smell continued. Moreover it grew more powerful. This, I thought, was because I was growing weaker, slipping farther and farther from reality. Perhaps, I thought, before we died we should taste food as well as smell it, God’s final mercy. And from that I turned to thinking about dying, as Kate and I must do, unshriven, with all our sins upon us. Even the joys of our few happy days had been stolen. Unconfessed and unabsolved they would weigh heavy in the scales. I was beginning, desperately, to try to recall the proper prayers for those on the point of departure when Kate nudged me.
    ‘Go and … look. It can’t … be … far