From that he had been saved, and he gave thanks without pretence, for with the freedom of his body was enwrapped the freedom of his soul. Yet he was still a young man when Nicky was nearing "double figures"—only in the early thirties. To him the years that had passed since Nicky's birth were so different in quality from all that had gone before that it was small wonder they seemed to him another life and he himself another person. Nicky had been the dominating human factor; the public life of the times, as it affected his own corner in particular, the chief interest which had kept him hard at work, too busy for the dreams of his unsatisfied youth. He had altered, hardened, sharpened, become more of a man of the world, thought himself contented, and in action and practical affairs drowned mental speculation and emotion.
This was the Ishmael of the late 'seventies, a being altered indeed, but not more so than the England of that period was from the England of the 'fifties and 'sixties. That she had grown, improved, set her house in better order, it would have been futile to deny—the improvements were of the visible kind, patent to all men. That Mr. Disraeli's new policy of Imperialism was to be a great and splendid thing there were few men among the Liberals wise enough to foresee, and Ishmael was not yet amongst them. That he himself had grown, developed, become a useful member of society, no one who knew him would have denied, but whether his growth had been altogether towards the light was another question. The old Parson was a wise and a patient man who had gone too far along life's road to take any stage in it as necessarily final, and he watched and bided the time perhaps more prayerfully, certainly more silently, than of yore. Ishmael never failed in consideration, in affection, but there had grown a barrier that was not entirely made of a difference in politics. He knew it even if Ishmael, the child of his heart, seemed not to care enough one way or the other to be aware of it.
One day, a sunlit blowy day of spring, when the cloud-shadows drew swiftly over the dappled hills and the young corn was showing its first fine flames of green, Ishmael received a letter. Long after it had come he sat with it in his hand, reading and re-reading it. A tinge of excitement, a heady something he had long not felt, because it was purely personal, went through and through him as he read. The letter was from Killigrew, from whom he had heard nothing for several years, and it held news to awake all the old memories in a flood. The letter began by asking for news of Ishmael, and went on with a brief dismissal of the writer's own life during the past years. It had been the "usual thing"—no small measure of success, friendships, women, play and work. What mattered was that Killigrew had suddenly taken it into his head he must come down again to Cloom. He was coming and at once. He gave a few characteristic reasons.
"I have lost something and till yesterday I couldn't for the life of me tell what," wrote Killigrew. "It's been a good time, and I've enjoyed most of it, but suddenly it occurred to me that really I wasn't enjoying it as much as I thought I was, as much as I used to. I lay on the lawn of this confounded suburban villa whence I'm writing to you now—I'm putting in a few days at my mother's—and I was doing nothing particular but think over a lot of old times. And there came into my mind without any warning—flashed into it rather—a saying of my old master's in Paris. He was a wise old bird, the wisest I ever knew—somehow reminds me of your old Padre, though you couldn't meet two men more different. And what I remembered was this. 'The test of any picture, or indeed of any of the arts, is whether or not it evokes ecstasy.' I don't know whether it's the test of the arts, but I know it's the test of life. And that is what I've lost. Ecstasy! One still feels it now and again, of course, but how more and more rarely! Well, I lay on the lawn, with this light flooding in on me, and suddenly I opened my eyes and what do you think I saw? There was a flock of starlings in the sky, and I opened my eyes full on 'em, so that I got 'em against the west, which was full of sunset. They were flying in a dense mass between me and the glow. I could see their beating wings in serried ranks of black V-shapes. And, quite suddenly, at some bird-command communicated—heaven knows how—the whole flock of them heeled over, presenting nothing but the narrow edge of their wings, hair-fine, all but invisible. In that one flashing moment the whole solid crowd of birds seemed to vanish, as though swallowed up by a shutter of sky. I'd never seen it before, and I might have gone through life without the luck to see it. I can tell you, it made me tingle. I could have shouted aloud, but the sound of my own voice would have spoilt it so. I got ecstasy all right that time, and I realised with a pang of gratefulness that it's the impersonal things that produce ecstasy. In personal contact you may get delirium, but that's not the same thing. This, says I, is the sort of thing I'm after. And so of course I thought of you and that wonderful place of yours and that nice solid impersonality that always wrapped you round and made you so restful. So I'm coming down. I won't stay with you; find me digs somewhere—I'm better on my own."
Ishmael read so far, where the letter ended abruptly; there was, however, a postscript:—"P.S.—Do you remember Judith Parminter? She wants a holiday and is coming down with a friend. If Mrs. Penticost is still in the land of the living you might fix up for them there."
Ishmael followed out all Killigrew's instructions, but that night he took the letter over to Boase. It was as though the atmosphere of the old days re-established by its arrival, the habit of the old days, claimed him sub-consciously. The Parson read it, but did not comment beyond the obvious remark that it would all be very pleasant. After Ishmael had gone he sat and thought for a long while. What struck him as noteworthy was that Killigrew should have been satiated with the personal, which he had cultivated so assiduously, at the moment when, or so it seemed to him, Ishmael, after a life spent for so long in the impersonal, might be expected to react in exactly the opposite direction. Ishmael, as he walked home, was only aware that the letter had stirred him beyond the mere pleasurable expectation of once again seeing his friend. That one word "ecstasy" had stung him to something that had long been dormant—the desire to feel life again as something wonderful, that did not only content but could intoxicate as well. He was unaware of this revulsion, and was only vaguely surprised that a queer discontent should mingle with his pleasure.
CHAPTER VII
PARADISE COTTAGE AGAIN
When the train came slowly into the station and clanked to rest with a long, tired sigh of steam, Ishmael's first search was for Killigrew's red beard and pale face. While his gaze roved up and down the line of carriages a couple of women, one of whom seemed to know him, swam into his range of vision and distracted his attention.
It was nearly ten years since he had seen Judith Parminter, and he stared for a moment in bewilderment. Fashion had undergone in those years one of its rare basic changes. Instead of the swelling curves which had been wont to encompass women, so that they seemed to float upon proud waves, skirts had become a species of swaddling clothes caught back below the knees, whence a series of frills clung tightly about the feet. Rows of flutings, tuckings and what-not, confounded simplicity of line, but all the drapery was pulled in a backwards direction and puffed to a sudden bulkiness behind, so that women looked as though they were walking in the face of a perpetual wind. On their heads they were wont to perch delicious little hats, poked forward, in contradistinction to the trend of the draperies, slanting nosewards and tilted up in the rear by plaited chignons.