“We can—we do. Imagination isn’t guided by rule of thumb. Even here the promise dawns slowly. Scabs are thickest on the body when it’s healing of its fever. They will fall off by and by, for all the dismal shrieks that degeneration has seized us.”
He closed his eyes and lay back upon his hands once more.
“Imagination? Was this ever my world? There is a wide green forest, and the murmur of its running brooks is all of faces sweet as flowers and voices that I know, for I heard them long ago in a time before I existed here. And I walk on, free forever of the aching past; the eternity of most beautiful possibilities and discoveries before me; joyous all through but for one sad little longing that encumbers me. Not for long—no, not for long. On a lawn fragrant with loving flowers and gathered here and there to deep silence by the stooping shadows, I come upon her—my love; my dear, dear love. And she kisses the sorrow from my eyes, and holds me to her and whispers, ‘You have come at last.’”
His voice broke with a sob. Glancing at him, I saw the tears running down his cheeks. This grief was sacred from word of mine. I rose softly and set to pacing the meadow at a little distance. By and by, when I returned, I saw him sitting up. The mood had passed, but he was still gentle and human.
Till dawn was faint in the sky we sat and talked the dark hours away. The sun had risen and Duke was watching something in the grass, when suddenly he shook himself and turned to me.
“Cut me my stick, Renny,” he said. “The pilgrim must be journeying.”
“Come home with me, Duke.”
He shook his head.
“Look!” he said, “I have tried to read a lesson of a spider as Bruce did. I broke and tangled the little fellow’s web like a wanton and what did he do but roll the rubbish up into a ball and swallow it. I can’t get rid of my web in that way, Renny.”
I did my utmost to hold him to his softer mind. He would not listen, but drove me from him.