That evening as he sat in his wife's bedroom--the perfunctory sitting,
lasting usually about a quarter of an hour--the thought took complete
possession of him. What if he went out to the Soudan? Other fellows
were going; they could never have too many. Men dropped off there faster
than their places could be filled. And if he died, as other fellows died?
Well, death was the supreme Artist's god from the machine, the simplest
solution of all tragic difficulties.
A gentle elegiac mood stole over him. He looked on at his own death; he
saw the grave dug hastily in the hot sand; he heard the roll of the Dead
March, and the rattling of the rifles. In all probability these details
would be omitted, but they helped to glorify the dream. He was a mourner
at his own funeral, indifferent to all around him, yet voluptuously
moved. So violently did the hero and the sentimentalist unite in that
strange composite being that was Nevill Tyson.
He drew his chair a little nearer to her bed. "Molly--supposing I wanted
to go abroad again some of these days, would you very much mind?"
There was a slight quivering of the limbs under the bedclothes, but Mrs.
Nevill Tyson said nothing.
"You see, going back to Thorneytoft is out of the question for you and
me. I think we made the place a bit too hot to hold us. And you hate it,
don't you?"
She murmured some assent.
"And if I stick here doing nothing I shan't be able to stand things much
longer; I feel as if I should go off my head. I oughtn't to be doing
nothing, a great hulking fellow like me."
"No, no; it would never do. But why must you go--abroad? Aren't there
things--"
He felt that his only chance was to throw himself as it were naked on her
sympathy. "I must go--sooner or later. I can't settle--never could.
Traveling is in my blood and in my brain. I'm home-sick, Molly--home-sick
for foreign countries, that's all. I shall come back again. You don't
think I want to leave you, surely?"
He looked into her eyes; there was no reproach there, only melancholy
intelligence. She knew the things that are impossible.
"No. I think you'd rather stay with me--if you could. When shall you go?"
He turned aside. "I don't know. I mayn't go at all. I don't want to talk
about it any more."
It was hopeless to talk about it.
He had found his men, fifty brave fellows in all, ordered his outfit and
booked his passage, before he could make up his mind to break the news to
her, for there was the risk of breaking her heart too.
And now it wanted but two days before his departure.