He's afraid he's going to die and he hates me because I'm going to live.
I have to be on my guard all the time: almost everything I say, if I speak of the children, if I speak of the future, exasperates him, and he says bitter, wounding things.
When I speak of something I've had to do to the house or a servant I've had to change it irritates him beyond endurance.
He complains that I treat him as if he didn't count any more.
We used to be so united, and now I feel there's a great wall of antagonism between us.
I know I shouldn't blame him, I know it's only his illness, he's a dear good man really, and kindness itself, normally he's the easiest man in the world to get on with; and now I simply dread coming here and I go with relief.
He'd be terribly sorry if I had TB but I know that in his heart of hearts it would be a relief.
He could forgive me, he could forgive fate, if he thought I was going to die too.
Sometimes he tortures me by talking about what I shall do when he's dead, and when I get hysterical and cry out to him to stop, he says I needn't grudge him a little pleasure when he'll be dead so soon and I can go on living for years and years and have a good time.
Oh, it's so frightful to think that this love we've had for one another all these years should die in this sordid, miserable way.'
Mrs Chester sat down on a stone by the roadside and gave way to passionate weeping.
Ashenden looked at her with pity, but could find nothing to say that might comfort her.
What she had told him did not come quite as a surprise
'Give me a cigarette,' she said at last.
'I mustn't let my eyes get all red and swollen, or Henry'll know I've been crying and he'll think I've had bad news about him.
Is death so horrible?
Do we all fear death like that?'
'I don't know,' said Ashenden
'When my mother was dying she didn't seem to mind a bit.
She knew it was coming and she even made little jokes about it.
But she was an old woman.'
Mrs Chester pulled herself together and they set off again.
They walked for a while in silence.
'You won't think any the worse of Henry for what I've told you?' she said at last.
'Of course not.'
'He's been a good husband and a good father.
I've never known a better man in my life.
Until this illness I don't think an unkind or ungenerous thought ever passed through his head.'
The conversation left Ashenden pensive.
People often said he had a low opinion of human nature.
It was because he did not always judge his fellows by the usual standards.
He accepted, with a smile, a tear or a shrug of the shoulders, much that filled others with dismay.
It was true that you would never have expected that good-natured, commonplace little chap to harbour such bitter and unworthy thoughts; but who has ever been able to tell to what depths man may fall or to what heights rise?
The fault lay in the poverty of his ideals.
Henry Chester was born and bred to lead an average life, exposed to the normal vicissitudes of existence, and when an unforeseeable accident befell him he had no means of coping with it.
He was like a brick made to take its place with a million others in a huge factory, but by chance with a flaw in it so that it is inadequate to its purpose.
And the brick too, if it had a mind, might cry: What have I done that I cannot fulfil my modest end, but must be taken away from all these other bricks that support me and thrown on the dust-heap?
It was no fault of Henry Chester's that he was incapable of the conceptions that might have enabled him to bear his calamity with resignation.
It is not everyone who can find solace in art or thought.
It is the tragedy of our day that these humble souls have lost their faith in God, in whom lay hope, and their belief in a resurrection that might bring them the happiness that has been denied them on earth; and have found nothing to put in their place.
There are people who say that suffering ennobles.
It is not true.
As a general rule it makes man petty, querulous and selfish; but here in this sanatorium there was not much suffering.
In certain stages of tuberculosis the slight fever that accompanies it excites rather than depresses, so that the patient feels alert and, upborne by hope, faces the future blithely; but for all that the idea of death haunts the subconscious.
It is a sardonic theme song that runs through a sprightly operetta.
Now and again the gay, melodious arias, the dance measures, deviate strangely into tragic strains that throb menacingly down the nerves; the petty interests of every day, the small jealousies and trivial concerns are as nothing; pity and terror make the heart on a sudden stand still and the awfulness of death broods as the silence that precedes a tropical storm broods over the tropical jungle.
After Ashenden had been for some time at the sanatorium there came a boy of twenty.
He was in the navy, a sublieutenant in a submarine, and he had what they used to call in novels galloping consumption.
He was a tall, good-looking youth, with curly brown hair, blue eyes and a very sweet smile.
Ashenden saw him two or three times lying on the terrace in the sun and passed the time of day with him.