‘“Here’s
Nicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye” well, I—what I want you to
understand is that it _is_ Sabathier, the worst he ever was; but also
that it _is_ “good-bye.”’

Herbert slowly turned. ‘I don’t quite see why “goodbye,” Lawford. And—frankly, there is nothing to explain. We have chosen to live such a
very out-of-the-way life,’ he went on, as if following up a train of
thought.... ‘The truth is if one wants to live at all—one’s own life, I
mean—there’s no time for many friends. And just steadfastly regarding
your neighbour’s tail as you follow it down into the Nowhere—it’s that
that seems to me the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go
one’s own way, doing one’s best to free one’s mind of cant—and I dare
say clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One consequence
is that I don’t think, however foolhardy it may be to say so, I don’t
think I care a groat for any opinion as human as my own, good or bad. My sister’s a million times a better woman than I am a man. What
possibly could there be, then, for me to say?’ He turned with a nervous
smile. ‘Why should it be good-bye?’

Lawford glanced involuntarily towards the door that stood in shadow
duskily ajar. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have talked, and we think it must be
that, until, at least,’ he smiled faintly, ‘I can come as quietly as
your old ghost you told me of; and in that case it may not be so very
long to wait.’

Their eyes met fleetingly across the still, listening room. ‘The more I
think of it,’ Lawford pushed slowly on, ‘the less I understand the
frantic purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until I went
down, as you said, “a godsend of a little Miss Muffet,” and the
inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented to
dance my little wooden dance and wait till the showman should put me
down into his box again. And now—well, here I am. The whole thing has
gone by and scarcely left a trace of its visit. Here I am for all my
friends to swear to; and yet, Herbert, if you’ll forgive me troubling
you with this stuff about myself, not a single belief, or thought, or
desire remains unchanged. You will remember all that, I hope. It’s not,
of course, the ghost of an apology, only the mere facts.’

Herbert rose and paced slowly across to the window. ‘The longer I live,
Lawford, the more I curse this futile gift of speech. Here am I,
wanting to tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could appeal
direct to mind, would be merely as the wind passing through the leaves
of a tree with just one—one multitudinous rustle, but which, if I tried
to put into words—well, daybreak would find us still groping on....’ He
turned; a peculiar wry smile on his face. ‘It’s a dumb world: but there
we are. And some day you’ll come again.’

‘Well,’ said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to turn
thought into such primitive speech, ‘that’s where we stand, then.’ He
got up suddenly like a man awakened in the midst of unforeseen danger,
‘Where is your sister?’ he cried, looking into the shadow. And as if in
actual answer to his entreaty, they heard the clinking of the cups on
the little, old, green lacquer tray she was at that moment carrying
into the room. She sat down on the window seat and put the tray down
beside her. ‘It will be before dark even now,’ she said, glancing out
at the faintly burning skies. They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of physical
exhaustion as peasants have who have been labouring in the fields since
daybreak. And a little beyond the village, before the last, long road
began that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, she
stopped with a sob beside an old scarred milestone by the wayside. ‘This—is as far as I can go,’ she said. She stooped, and laid her hand
on the cold moss-grown surface of the stone. ‘Even now it’s wet with
dew.’ She rose again and looked strangely into his face. ‘Yes, yes,
here it is,’ she said, ‘oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But nothing
now can trouble you again of that. We’re both at least past that.’

‘Grisel,’ he said, ‘forgive me, but I can’t—I can’t go on.’

‘Don’t think, don’t think,’ she said, taking his hands, and lifting
them to her bosom. ‘It’s only how the day goes; and it has all, my one
dear, happened scores and scores of times before—mother and child and
friend—and lovers that are all these too, like us. We mustn’t cry out. Perhaps it was all before even we could speak—this sorrow came. Take
all the hope and all the future: and then may come our chance.’

‘What’s life to me now. You said the desire would come back; that I
should shake myself free. I could if you would help me. I don’t know
what you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you; care for
nothing, wish for nothing but to see you and think of you. A flat, dull
voice keeps saying that I have no right to be telling you all this. You
will know best. I know I am nothing. I ask nothing. If we love one
another, what is there else to say?’

‘Nothing, nothing to say, except only good-bye. What could you tell me
that I have not told myself over and over again? Reason’s gone. Thinking’s gone. Now I am only sure.’ She smiled shadowily. ‘What peace
did _he_ find who couldn’t, perhaps, like you, face the last good-bye?’

They stood in utter solitude awhile in the evening gloom. The air was
as still and cold as some grey unfathomable untraversed sea. Above them
uncountable clouds drifted slowly across space. ‘Why do they all keep whispering together?’ he said in a low voice,
with cowering face. ‘Oh if you knew, Grisel, how they have hemmed me
in; how they have come pressing in through the narrow gate I left ajar. Only to mock and mislead. It’s all dark and unintelligible.’

He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows that seemed to him to
be gathering between their faces. He drew her closer and touched her
lips with his fingers. Her beauty seemed to his distorted senses to
fill earth and sky. This, then, was the presence, the grave and lovely
overshadowing dream whose surrender made life a torment, and death the
near fold of an immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faint
cry. And he found himself running and running, just as he had run that
other night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards his
earthly home. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged
unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him. Then he rested
under the dew-sodden hedgeside and buried his face in his hands. Once,
indeed, he did turn and grind his way back with hard uplifted face for
many minutes, but at the meeting with an old woman who in the late dusk
passed him unheeded on the road, he stopped again, and after standing
awhile looking down upon the dust, trying to gather up the tangled
threads of his thoughts, he once more set off homewards. It was clear, starry, and quite dark when he reached the house. The
lamp at the roadside obscurely lit its breadth and height.