Ah! the dead hand that wrote that long ago betrayed itself in the two last lines,
"And the cavalier who lies
By the four cross ways."
I laid it down and cried as if my heart would break. I was crying, not for the cavalier but for "the little hawke."
CHAPTER XV
MY LETTER
That night I went up to my room early. I took pens, ink, and paper with me—why I took them I had no notion—I took them. I lit all the wax lights on the mantel, and the wax lights that stood on the dressing-table. Then I stood before the dressing-table mirror looking at myself. I can see the reflection of my face still, a pale face with dark sombre eyes, and lips that curled in a sneer. That was how Gerald Wilder looked when he was in a rage. I could see now Gerald Wilder, the assassin and the suicide. I was Gerald Wilder.
Geraldine and I were inextricably entangled—she in the body of a boy, I in the body of a woman. Was this my punishment for that murder and that suicide committed long, long ago, this blind maze of the flesh into which I had been led? I could do one of two things. Leave Geraldine to-morrow morning, never to see her again, or—stay. If I left her she would break her heart, and die. I would break my heart, and die. Then perhaps we might meet, and be happy for ever. Surely, if all those stars were suns, and if there were worlds round them like our world, God might give us some little place, some tiny garden out of all His splendour. He was rich, and owned the whole of space, and He would give something to two ghosts who had left the world for the love of each other. That was what would happen if we left each other—we would grow sick and die, but we would meet on the other side. If we remained together, I knew that something would happen to separate us for ever, how I knew this I cannot tell, perhaps it was by instinct.
I turned from the mirror to the table, where I had placed the writing things. Now I knew why I had brought them up: it seems to me that we often think when we don't know we are thinking.