A SLICE OF LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 19274, 12 June 1926, Page 19

A SLICE OF LIFE

THE LETTER [By Reginald Simpson, in the ‘ Sunday Chronicle.’] When Robert Harvey was lifted from tho wreckage of the night express surgeons gave him about eight hours i which to die. . . , Perhaps the half of _ this time had passed when he surprised the mg sister in the tiny country hospital—where ho had been conveyed upon a stretcher improvised from tcmcoate and pieces of wreckage—by sudden! emerging from the coma which tn house surgeon had said would probablj last till the end. , , A moment later the sister was bending over him, anxiously solicitous. “We have wired to your wife, she said soothingly. ” She ought to be here very soon. Is there anytnmg that I can get you?” „ “My coat . . . get ntf coat, he gasped painfully. 11 There s a lettei . . . an unposted letter . . • it’s in one of the pockets, it mustn t go . . , not now.” The sister crossed over to the neap of clothing neatly folded up on top of a locker. Tho letter was there—-in an inside pocket—and she gave it into his hand. “Is this the one you want? she asked. But tho dying man did not answer; ho was gazing intently at the address: Mrs Robert Harvey, Denhy Lodge, Ookloe, Merton. That same evening—half an hour before he had boarded the train—he had written it out in his hotel, intending to post it at Southampton. JOY OR MISERY?

“ I’m airaid of letters,” his wife had once told Mm. “ You never know what they’re going to bring you—joy or misery.” He had. laughed at her then, little thinking that some day he might write that letter. There was no other woman. Ho had just felt himself imprisoned in a groat globe of emptiness, and ho simply had to smash his way out. It was not that Moira wasn’t an excellent wife—a good pal. Conjugally he knew her to be as safe as time and tide. Hut her mind w;is like a work basket—full of tremendously important trifles like scissors, hooks, and eyes—and thimbles. When he came home to dinner he knew exactly the remarks she would make about the weather and tho joint of beef the butcher had sent. The dullness was racking his nerves; ho wanted to get out and livo and realise. That was what he had tried to tell her in tho letter. > . “ Dear Moira,” he had written, the play is ended. We’ve had five years together—we’ve been happier, perhaps, than most couples—but I cannot go on. 1 cannot livo with you. “No, don’t think I’m mad. I was never more sane in my life. And cion t imagine there is anybody else. Ihere isn’t. It is simply that I’ve come to the end of my tether. “Perhaps I’m different from most men. 1 can’t say, but I must have my freedom. I feel all boxed in, and I’ve just got to fight ray way out or go insane. 1 know there’s no possible justification for my action. You vo been an excellent wife. I can only hope you will try to understand.

Harvey’s eyes closed wearily, and the envelope' dropped from his to the bed. Jt looked as though he tiad gone, but th-G noxt second tiio iids flickered open again. “ Nurse!” ■ She came swiftly. “This letter ... I forgot to post it ... it doesn't matter now'. It must be destroyed, you understand burnt!” Ho watched her croos ■to the grate. _ ... JVheu she bent over him again ins breathing had stopped. . . . FREEDOM. A man in the dining car of the Paris Rapide was discussing the morning’s news with his companion. “Yes, it’s a bad business. Signalman’s fault, of course. Let the express go through with another train standing on the lino. ’’ The first three coaches were telescoped like tin cans that have been trodden on. Must have been fearful. Twenty dead, according to the latest reports.” There was a pause while the speaker applied himself to his dinner. Then: “Wo used to do business with one of them. Man named Harvey—Robert Harvev, the manufacturer. lie died in hospital.” A white-faced woman at the next table let her fork drop unnoticed. She stared at the man opposite her with wide, unseeing eyes. Her companion's hand dosed over hers sympathetically. “It was in the morning papers,” lie said, quietly; “I wasn’t going to tell you—yet. Don’t give way now, Moira. Think of what it means to us. You’re free—free!” But the woman’s thoughts wero dwelling on a country house at Merton, where in a conspicuous place in a man's desk was a, letter beginning: “I have gone away with the man I love.”