In the first stabbing sense of loss he hoped that he had caught the contagion and might die. Life without her was unthinkable. Then, through very excess of grief, his feelings became blunted. It seemed impossible that he would ever again fear or expect.
He moved as in a shadow-world. Time had no significance. Days slipped by uncounted. He was trying to understand life, searching behind the external show for its secret meaning and purpose. Up till now, with the gay generosity of a child, he had shared himself with those whom he loved and by whom he was loved, concentrating and intensifying his affections. Now, dimly at first, he began to view existence from the angle of responsibility, as a river ever broadening and growing more adventurous, pouring down from forgotten highlands to the conjectured sea. It was not his journey that counted; it was the direction and journey of the total river. If he suffered and had been glad, there were multitudes who were glad and had suffered. What was the meaning of it—this alternating sorrow and gladness? For the first time he asked himself how other people thought, felt, endured—people like Jehane and Riska, like the golden woman and Glory.
A month ago, had anyone told him that his sister would be taken from him, he would have defied God by turning infidel. But now——. He realized reluctantly how his very passion for her might have crippled her, shutting out the natural and fine things that belong to every man and woman. In giving her too much, he might have deprived her of what was most splendid, giving her ultimate curtailment. How near he had come to doing this he had learnt from Harry.
Her words were continually recurring in his memory, dragging him back from despondency. “You won’t be bitter—won’t break your heart about me? If you did, I should know. I shouldn’t be happy.” The shame that he might be paining her was always with him. He had the sure knowledge that, though he could not see her, she still lingered in the house. Sitting with closed eyes, especially at twilight, he believed he could hear her moving—moving gladly. The sound was always behind him, even when he turned his head. He placed flowers about her room, pretending she was alive; he liked to picture her surprise when she found them. A white wraith of laughing mist, he imagined he saw her stoop above them. In his mind he heard her voice, “Oh, Peterkins, how good you still are to me!” The wind touched his cheek; it was her mouth.
While her body remained in the house his grief was inconsolable. Yet peace came to him even before the mortal part, long and lily-white, was borne through the sun-swept village to the garden on the hill gazing out to sea, cypress-shadowed and quiet.
Through the first long night he sat beside her, fixing her features, everything that had been her, indelibly in his mind. The swathed feet, immobile as marble beneath the tall candles, brought back her saying, “The joy goes into my feet when I’m glad.”
Wearied by watching, he slept. Again she was dying. He could hear her voice, trying so hard to be patient. Someone entered, bringing a new body, exactly like the old one but well. She rose and slipped into it, just as if she were trying on a new dress. She caught him by the hand, laughing excitedly. In their gladness, as they left the room, neither of them remembered to look back to the bed; they had no pity for the abandoned fleshly garment.
——And was death no more than that to the dead—clothes cast aside, outworn by the spirit? What a little to make a fuss about!
Through the open window dawn was breaking. In a chair Harry slept, his chin fallen forward. Peter rose to his feet and tiptoed over to the still face lying on the pillow, framed in the golden hair. He stood gazing down. The morning wind walked the sea, like the feet of Jesus bringing peace to sinful men. Far back he remembered another early morning when Kay’s eyes had been closed and he had heard those same feet walking—snow had lain on the ground. Another girl, strangely like her, with the same bowed mouth and penciled brows, had been stretched beside her. While Kay’s eyes were shuttered, the other eyes had opened.
As the days went by, the desire grew strong within him to see Glory—he wanted to trace Kay’s likeness in the living features. And yet he postponed.