They had finished dinner, and Philip turned his chair sideways to the table.
“Yes, and where is the compensation?” he said. “Surely that is needless suffering and needless death.”
“Ah, I don’t believe that. You and I say it is needless, because we cannot see what life is born from it. Your suffering, my dear fellow, you thought that gratuitous, like a lightning flash, but it isn’t; you know that now.”
This had so often been mentioned between them that Philip did not wince at it.
“I take it on trust only,” he said, “but the proof will come when, because of what has happened to me, I am kinder, more indulgent to others. If it has taught me that it is all good, but at present no test has come. I have but lived here with you.”
He paused a moment.
“And I must soon get back,” he said. “Your métier is here, but mine isn’t. This is your life, it has been my rest and my healing and my hospital. But when one is well, one has to go back again. Oh, I know that, I feel it in my bones. This has been given me in order that I may make my life again. With it behind me I have to go—I should be a coward if I did not; I should tacitly imply that I ‘gave up’ if I did not face things again.”
He drew his chair a little closer to his friend.
“Tom, you have saved me,” he said, “but my salvation has to be proved. It is all right for you to stop here, that I utterly believe, but I believe as utterly that it is not for me. I must go back, and be decent, and not be bitter. I must continue my normal life, I must play Halma with my mother, and slang the gardeners if they are lazy. Now, dear old chap, since my time here will be short, I want to talk to you about your affairs. Or rather I want you to talk about them. I want to grasp as clearly as I can any point of view which is not my own. That will help me to understand the—the damnable muddle the world generally has got into. It’s all wrong; I can see that. Nobody goes straight for his aim. We all—you don’t—we all compromise, because other people compromise. Now I don’t want to do that any more. I want to see my aim, and go straight for it. So tell me yours, and let me criticise. Any point of view that is quite clear helps one to believe that there are other points of view as clear, if one could but see them.”
A tired light came over the sky, as if drowsy eyelids had winked. Through the clouds the reflection of distant lightning illuminated the garden for a moment. There was a gap in the trees by the stream, where the stricken tree had stood, but of its corpse nothing remained; it had all been cut up and taken to make firewood for the winter. But a hot air blew, and in the bushes those strange, unaccountable noises of creaking twigs sounded insistently loud.