“But,” I said, “I could—I would—do anything.”
I had only the faintest of ideas of what I would do—for her sake.
“Ah, no,” she said, “you must not say that. You don’t understand. … Even that would mean misery for you—and I—I could not bear. Don’t you see? Even now, before you have done your allotted part, I am wanting—oh, wanting—to let you go. … But I must not; I must not. You must go on … and bear it for a little while more—and then. …”
There was a tension somewhere, a string somewhere that was stretched tight and vibrating. I was tremulous with an excitement that overmastered my powers of speech, that surpassed my understanding.
“Don’t you see …” she asked again, “you are the past—the passing. We could never meet. You are … for me … only the portrait of a man—of a man who has been dead—oh, a long time; and I, for you, only a possibility … a conception. … You work to bring me on—to make me possible.”
“But—” I said. The idea was so difficult to grasp. “I will—there must be a way—”
“No,” she answered, “there is no way—you must go back; must try. There will be Churchill and what he stands for—He won’t die, he won’t even care much for losing this game … not much. … And you will have to forget me. There is no other way—no bridge. We can’t meet, you and I. …”
The words goaded me to fury. I began to pace furiously up and down. I wanted to tell her that I would throw away everything for her, would crush myself out, would be a lifeless tool, would do anything. But I could tear no words out of the stone that seemed to surround me.
“You may even tell him, if you like, what I and Gurnard are going to do. It will make no difference; he will fall. But you would like him to—to make a good fight for it, wouldn’t you? That is all I can do … for your sake.”
I began to speak—as if I had not spoken for years. The house seemed to be coming to life; there were noises of opening doors, of voices outside.
“I believe you care enough,” I said, “to give it all up for me. I believe you do, and I want you.” I continued to pace up and down. The noises of returning day grew loud; frightfully loud. It was as if I must hasten, must get said what I had to say, as if I must raise my voice to make it heard amid the clamour of a world awakening to life.
“I believe you do … I believe you do. …” I said again and again, “and I want you.” My voice rose higher and higher. She stood motionless, an inscrutable white figure, like some silent Greek statue, a harmony of falling folds of heavy drapery perfectly motionless.
“I want you,” I said—“I want you, I want you, I want you.” It was unbearable to myself.
“Oh, be quiet,” she said at last. “Be quiet! If you had wanted me I have been here. It is too late. All these days; all these—”
“But …” I said.
From without someone opened the great shutters of the windows, and the light from the outside world burst in upon us.
XV
We parted in London next day, I hardly know where. She seemed so part of my being, was for me so little more than an intellectual force, so little of a physical personality, that I cannot remember where my eyes lost sight of her.
I had desolately made the crossing from country to country, had convoyed my aunt to her big house in one of the gloomy squares in a certain district, and then we had parted. Even afterward it was as if she were still beside me, as if I had only to look round to find her eyes upon me. She remained the propelling force, I a boat thrust out upon a millpond, moving more and more slowly. I had been for so long in the shadow of that great house, shut in among the gloom, that all this light, this blazing world—it was a June day in London—seemed impossible, and hateful. Over there, there had been nothing but very slow, fading minutes; now there was a past, a future. It was as if I stood between them in a cleft of unscalable rocks.
I went about mechanically, made arrangements for my housing, moved in and out of rooms in the enormous mausoleum of a club that was all the home I had, in a sort of stupor. Suddenly I remembered that I had been thinking of something; that she had been talking of Churchill. I had had a letter from him on the morning of the day before. When I read it, Churchill and his Cromwell had risen in my mind like preposterous phantoms; the one as unreal as the other—as alien. I seemed to have passed an infinity of aeons beyond them. The one and the other belonged as absolutely to the past as a past year belongs. The thought of them did not bring with it the tremulously unpleasant sensations that, as a rule, come with the thoughts of a too recent temps jadis, but rather as a vein of rose across a gray evening. I had passed his letter over; had dropped it half-read among the litter of the others. Then there had seemed to be a haven into whose mouth I was drifting.
Now I should have to pick the letters up again, all of them; set to work desolately to pick up the threads of the past; and work it back into life as one does half-drowned things. I set about it listlessly. There remained of that time an errand for my aunt, an errand that would
