But I wanted a rope round my waist before I approached that rail. A head for heights is not one of the things of which I boast.
Another day, this time in the afternoon, we pulled in a skiff a mile or two down the Rance, where men were fishing with the "balance"—the net on the crossed bough-like arms that made a dripping bag while the rope ran over the pulley of the pry-pole. Men used the same machine in the days before Moses, they are using it to-day on the Rance and the Yang-tse-Kiang. It was this vast antiquity that seemed to strike Derry, even more than the fortifications had struck him, even more than that clock that tried to measure with its "tock-tock" something that had no beginning and can have no end. Several times he seemed on the point of speaking, but each time desisted. There was nothing to be said, no word that, like the clock, was more than "tock-tock, tock-tock." And I fancied that for a day or more past he had talked much less, that he was ceasing to talk, as he had ceased to write, as he had ceased to paint. He sat for long spells thinking, as if measuring that which was himself against all that was not himself and coming to his understanding about it.... He and Jennie had the oars. Suddenly he gave a little laugh, very musical, and took the oar again.
"Stroke," he said.
We set off back up the stream.
We landed at the Old Bridge and began the ascent to the town; but near the Arch of Jerzual, almost on the very spot where Julia had said she hated people who cried, he stopped again. From a dark interior on our left had come the knocking of a hand-loom. We entered, and Madge translated his questions into French.
Once more he seemed to find the same fascination—the spell of the oldest and of the newest, the first primitive principle of which our modern inventions are but elaborated conveniences, man measuring his strength and pitting his wit against all that is not man. So men had fished, so they did fish. So they had woven, so they did weave. They had fought in steel caps with hand-grenades in the past, they fought in steel caps with hand-grenades still. And nothing to be written, painted or said. As it had been in the beginning it would be until the end. A momentary life was not meant for the expression of these things. They were for contemplation, perfect understanding, and—silence.
That was on a Saturday evening. After dinner we strolled to the Jardin des Anglais again and stood looking over the ramparts. There were no shirley poppies in the sky now, but a serene unbroken heaven, a tender blue fading to the still tenderer peaches and greys that merged into the darkening land. The cypresses below us were inky black, the river where the fishermen had fished a soft thread of inverted sky. Folk again took their evening stroll round the walls. None of us spoke. I was wondering what Julia Oliphant was doing in London.
Suddenly Derry broke the silence. He did so in these words.
"It's all right for Léhon and the Château de Beaumanoir to-morrow morning, I suppose?"
"Yes, dear boy," said Madge.