How wonderful and beautiful life had been; since his earliest boyish recollections, how full of surprising joys! Health and vigour had been his, a clean, wholesome life, the power of loving this exquisite world, an artistic gift that had made a daily Paradise, and, above all, love itself, and the fulfilment of love. Then had come a crash, a break, but how short had been these weeks in comparison of the rest. If this was the pain with which he had to make payment for all his joy, how cheap, to look at it fairly, had joy been. Now that he knew that was the full payment that would be demanded for the joy he had received in such unstinted abundance, he no longer complained, it was only while the payment seemed to be going to be charged him indefinitely, every day for years to come, that he had rebelled and owned himself bankrupt. The one eternal necessity of life, which, the moment it ceases to brace begins to paralyse, had passed from him, the necessity of going on always, every day and hour, having to meet one difficulty after another, and without hope of getting any respite, so long as life lasts. For now he knew that some end was very near.
He paused a moment to brush his dripping hair back from his face, wondering in a sort of vague, uninterested manner whether something had actually cracked in his brain, whether he had gone mad, or so the world could call it. But whatever had cracked, it had been the tension of it which all these weeks had caused his misery, and in this exquisite moment of peace that had suddenly come to him he almost laughed aloud for the unspeakable relief which the cessation of pain had brought. He felt that up till now his mental eyes had been as blind as his physical ones, that the blows that had been dealt him had been dealt from the dark, so that he could not guess who wielded the whip. But now they had ceased, and the clouds of darkness were rolled away, and there sat there One with a face full of infinite compassion, and since none but He was there, it must have been He, or some ministering angel of pain, who at his bidding had chastised him thus. Then Evelyn felt as if he had asked permission of Him to go on, for the river—or Tom’s voice—still hailed him joyously; and since it was allowed, still without intention, without definite thought of any kind, he went on his way, with shuffling steps indeed that stumbled over the gravel of the path, but with a great, serene light shining on him.
He had by now come close to the edge of the river, and the rain for the moment had ceased, so that he could hear the suck and gurgle of the hurrying flood-water, which whispered and chuckled to itself. But this rapturous noise of swift-flowing water sounded but faintly, for a hundred yards below was the weir. All the sluices were raised, and tons of water momently plunged through the openings, bellowing with a great hoarse laugh of ecstasy as they fell into the pool below. It was to that place, somewhere in the middle of the narrow pathway of planks that he was called; it was from there, where he would be surrounded on all sides with the noise of waters, that the voice of Tom, that faithful lover of water, called him. That somehow, and he did not question how or why, was his goal, nor did he know whether life or death awaited him there; only there was going to be reconcilement in some manner.
He had been there many times before; he had been there, indeed, only yesterday to listen to the splendid tumult of water. But to-day its voice was redoubled, and he could feel the mist from the plunging stream wet on his face as he went slowly and cautiously out over the wet planks. Louder and more triumphantly every moment the voice of the river—or was it Tom laughing with open mouth, as he used to laugh when he swam in the garden pool below his cottage?—called to him. On both sides, before and behind, he was surrounded by the joyous riot of waters, that filled and possessed his brain till his whole consciousness was flooded with it till his voice too had to join in it. So he raised his arms, spreading them out to the night, and threw back his head with a great shout of ecstatic rapture. And as he did this his foot slipped on the wet planks, and he fell into the roaring, rushing pool below. So the great Mother took him back to herself.
EPILOGUE
