DOI issue:
Harland, Henry: Two sketches
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20196#0149
By Henry Harland 143
no reason why he should be tired. But he was tired. A deadly
Jassitude penetrated his body and his spirit, like a fluid. He was
too tired to go to bed.
" I suppose I am getting old," he thought.
To a second person the matter would have appeared one not of
supposition but of certainty, not of progression but of accomplish-
ment. Getting old indeed ? But he was old. It was an old
man, grey and wrinkled and wasted, who sat there, limp, sunken
upon himself, in his easy-chair. In years, to be sure, he was
under sixty ; but he looked like a man of seventy-five.
" I am getting old, I suppose I am getting old."
And vaguely, dully, he contemplated his life, spread out behind
him like a misty landscape, and thought what a failure it had been.
What had it come to ? What had it brought him ? What had
he done or won ? Nothing, nothing. It had brought him
nothing but old age, solitude, disappointment, and, to-night
especially, a sense of fatigue and apathy that weighed upon him
like a suffbcating blanket. On a table, a yard or two away, stood
a decanter of whisky, with some soda-water bottles and tumblers ;
he looked at it with heavy eyes, and he knew that there was what
he needed. A little whisky would strengthen him, revive him,
and make it possible for him to bestir himself and undress and go
to bed. But when he thought of rising and moving to pour the
whisky out, he shrunk from that effort as from an Herculean
labour; no—he was too tired. Then his mind went back to the
friends he had left in Chelsea half an hour ago 5 it seemed an
indefinably long time ago, years and years ago; they were like
blurred phantoms, dimly remembered from a remote past.
Yes, his life had been a failure ; total, miserable, abject. It had
come to nothing ; its harvest was a harvest of ashes. If it had
been a useful life, he could have accepted its unhappiness; if it
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no reason why he should be tired. But he was tired. A deadly
Jassitude penetrated his body and his spirit, like a fluid. He was
too tired to go to bed.
" I suppose I am getting old," he thought.
To a second person the matter would have appeared one not of
supposition but of certainty, not of progression but of accomplish-
ment. Getting old indeed ? But he was old. It was an old
man, grey and wrinkled and wasted, who sat there, limp, sunken
upon himself, in his easy-chair. In years, to be sure, he was
under sixty ; but he looked like a man of seventy-five.
" I am getting old, I suppose I am getting old."
And vaguely, dully, he contemplated his life, spread out behind
him like a misty landscape, and thought what a failure it had been.
What had it come to ? What had it brought him ? What had
he done or won ? Nothing, nothing. It had brought him
nothing but old age, solitude, disappointment, and, to-night
especially, a sense of fatigue and apathy that weighed upon him
like a suffbcating blanket. On a table, a yard or two away, stood
a decanter of whisky, with some soda-water bottles and tumblers ;
he looked at it with heavy eyes, and he knew that there was what
he needed. A little whisky would strengthen him, revive him,
and make it possible for him to bestir himself and undress and go
to bed. But when he thought of rising and moving to pour the
whisky out, he shrunk from that effort as from an Herculean
labour; no—he was too tired. Then his mind went back to the
friends he had left in Chelsea half an hour ago 5 it seemed an
indefinably long time ago, years and years ago; they were like
blurred phantoms, dimly remembered from a remote past.
Yes, his life had been a failure ; total, miserable, abject. It had
come to nothing ; its harvest was a harvest of ashes. If it had
been a useful life, he could have accepted its unhappiness; if it
The Yellow Book—Vol. £ I hac