The Longest Journey (40 page)

This attitude makes for tranquillity. Before long he felt merely an injured martyr. His brain cleared. He stood deep in thought before the only other picture that the bare room boasted—the Demeter of Cnidus. Outside the sun was sinking, and its last rays fell upon the immortal features and the shattered knees. Sweet-peas offered their fragrance, and with it there entered those more mysterious scents that come from no one flower or clod of earth, but from the whole bosom of evening. He tried not to be cynical. But in his heart he could not regret that tragedy, already half-forgotten, conventionalized, indistinct. Of course death is a terrible thing. Yet death is merciful when it weeds out a failure. If we look deep enough, it is all for the best. He stared at the picture and nodded.

Stephen, who had met his visitor at the station, had intended to drive him back there. But after their spurt of temper he sent him with the boy. He remained in the doorway, glad that he was going to make money, glad that he had been angry; while the glow of the clear sky deepened, and the silence was perfected, and the scents of the night grew stronger. Old vagrancies awoke, and he resolved that, dearly as he loved his house, he would not enter it again till dawn. “Good-night!” he called, and then the child came running, and he whispered, “Quick, then! Bring me a rug.” “Good-night,” he repeated, and a pleasant voice called through an upper window, “Why goodnight?” He did not answer until the child was wrapped up in his arms.

“It is time that she learnt to sleep out,” he cried. “If you want me, we’re out on the hillside, where I used to be.”

The voice protested, saying this and that.

“Stewart’s in the house,” said the man, “and it cannot matter, and I am going anyway.”

“Stephen, I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you wouldn’t
take her. Promise you won’t say foolish things to her. Don’t—I wish you’d come up for a minute—–”

The child, whose face was laid against his, felt the muscles in it harden.

“Don’t tell her foolish things about yourself—things that aren’t any longer true. Don’t worry her with old dead dreadfulness. To please me—don’t.”

“Just tonight I won’t, then.”

“Stevie, dear, please me more—don’t take her with you.”

At this he laughed impertinently. “I suppose I’m being kept in line,” she called, and, though he could not see her, she stretched her arms towards him. For a time he stood motionless, under her window, musing on his happy tangible life. Then his breath quickened, and he wondered why he was here, and why he should hold a warm child in his arms. “It’s time we were starting,” he whispered, and showed the sky, whose orange was already fading into green. “Wish everything good-night.”

“Good-night, dear mummy,” she said sleepily. “Good-night dear house. Good-night, you pictures—long picture—stone lady. I see you through the window—your faces are pink.”

The twilight descended. He rested his lips on her hair, and carried her, without speaking, until he reached the open down. He had often slept here himself, alone, and on his wedding-night, and he knew that the turf was dry, and that if you laid your face to it you would smell the thyme. For a moment the earth aroused her, and she began to chatter. “My prayers—–” she said anxiously. He gave her one hand, and she was asleep before her fingers had nestled in its palm. Their touch made him pensive, and again he marvelled why he, the accident, was here. He was alive and had created life. By whose authority? Though he could not phrase it, he believed that he guided the future of our race, and that, century
after century, his thoughts and his passions would triumph in England. The dead who had evoked him, the unborn whom he would evoke—he governed the paths between them. By whose authority?

Out in the west lay Cadover and the fields of his earlier youth, and over them descended the crescent moon. His eyes followed her decline, and against her final radiance he saw, or thought he saw, the outline of the Rings. He had always been grateful, as people who understood him knew. But this evening his gratitude seemed a gift of small account. The ear was deaf, and what thanks of his could reach it? The body was dust, and in what ecstasy of his could it share? The spirit had fled, in agony and loneliness, never to know that it bequeathed him salvation.

He filled his pipe, and then sat pressing the unlit tobacco with his thumb. “What am I to do?” he thought. “Can he notice the things he gave me? A parson would know. But what’s a man like me to do, who works all his life out of doors?” As he wondered, the silence of the night was broken. The whistle of Mr. Pembroke’s train came faintly, and a lurid spot passed over the land—passed, and the silence returned. One thing remained that a man of his sort might do. He bent down reverently and saluted the child; to whom he had given the name of their mother.