There was something; something that had hung over him the night before.
He had been afraid to wake and find it there. Something--.
Now he remembered.
Nicky was dying and Anne was unhappy. That was what it was; that was
what he had hated to wake to, Anne's unhappiness and the little cat.
There was nothing else. Nothing wrong with Daddy--only indigestion. He
had had it before.
The room was still dark, but the leaded squares of the window lattices
barred a sky pale with dawn. In her room across the passage Anne would
be sitting up with Nicky. He remembered now that he had to get up early
to make her some tea.
He lit a candle and went to her door to see if she were still awake. Her
voice answered his gentle tapping, "Who's there?"
"Me. Jerrold. May I come in?"
"Yes. But don't bring the light in. He's sleeping."
He put out the candle and made his way to her. Against the window panes
he could see the outline of her body sitting upright in a chair. She
glimmered there in her white wrapper and he made out something black
stretched straight and still in her lap. He sat down in the window-seat
and watched.
The room was mysterious, full of dusk air that thinned as the dawn
stirred in it palpably, waking first Anne's white bed, a strip of white
cornice and a sheet of watery looking-glass. Nicky's saucer of milk
gleamed white on the dark floor at Anne's feet. The pale ceiling
lightened; and with a sliding shimmer of polished curves the furniture
rose up from the walls. Presently it stood clear, wine-coloured, shining
in the strange, pure light.
And in the strange, pure light he saw Anne, in her white wrapper with
the great rope of her black hair, plaited, hanging down her back. The
little black cat lay in her white lap, supported by her arm.
She smiled at Jerrold strangely. She spoke and her voice was low and
strange.
"He's asleep, Jerry. He kept on looking at me and mewing. Then he tried
to climb into my lap and couldn't. And I took him up and he was quiet
then. I think he was pleased that I took him ... I've given him the
morphia pill and I don't think he's in pain. He'll die in his sleep."
"Yes. He'll die in his sleep."
He hardly knew what he was saying. He was looking at Anne, and it was as
if now, at last, he saw her for the first time. This, this was what he
wanted, this mysterious, strangely smiling Anne, this white Anne with
the great plaited rope of black hair, who belonged to the night and the
dawn.
"I'm going to get you some tea," he said.