Mortal Coils | Page 7

ago."
The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did
not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local
cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable.
Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence's words. At any
moment at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right.
"What happened?" he asked. "What was the cause?"
Dr. Libbard explained. It was heart failure brought on by a violent
attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an
irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had
been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease:
something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not
have suffered much.
III
"IT'S a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow
match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his
top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face
with his handkerchief.
Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire
to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to
hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great
mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did
nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their dead.

But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. Poor
Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the
bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he
couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match.
Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were
drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and
motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background
of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and
unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people
would soon be dead, too.
That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of
Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen
Milton; it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after
midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted
the French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The
night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the
holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless
flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape,
black and grey under the moon.
He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the
stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and
night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between
the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and himself himself.
The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. Perhaps there was
something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his side and
righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There were
only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, the stars,
death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself always himself...
Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of
it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound
of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he
had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I will."
There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the past,
when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar resolutions.

They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, into
nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a
more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would
live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he
would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it
would be so.
In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural
pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed
in the best modern way silos and artificial manures and continuous
cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to
serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for
so long The Effect of Diseases on Civilization.
Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace
had entered into him. He slept for seven and