Was he awake after all? Yes. For there, with all the rest, was his room. He faced a door—a very black door. Its transom was thrown open. And through it came the yellow vagueness of the hall. Other doors were also on that hall. And within them, other people. The little transom let them in and let him out. His watch sang away on a chair, next to his pillow. The vague light of the hall drifted to one side and met the vague light of the window at his head. In this conflict, he saw the meagre gleam of the glass in his bureau. In the morning, he could turn upon one side and see himself reflected there. Now it was a mere ghost of light—a grey pall hung over the darkness. He thought: “I can not see myself, now.” Then, he began to think of himself. The glass in the bureau had helped.
Two years passed through his mind—passed many times; muddled pell-mell, grotesquely stressed, fancifully slurred, parts of them repeated with endless variance until his nerves shrieked for respite, other parts lurking away in the Hinterland, lurid yet ashamed. No reason for this disorder; no rule for the unimaginable gaps, the huddled over-determinations. And yet, withal, a rhythm and a lilt that held him there, gently receptive as one who listens to a well-studied symphony, finding it new.
Rather a dream than a recapitulation. The one measured thing was the little watch, singing away that monotone, the time. Yet, since all the rest lay like a mighty matrix for that beat, it too must have had measure. Perhaps the master of this symphony was a complex composer—too complex to be measured, yet too great not to be enjoyed.
Two years.
What must two years be, in which is nothing that outweighs their number. Not failure. For failure is infinite. Not achievement. For though that be limited, it too transcends counting. What then? Weariness, perhaps? Or a clutter of details signifying the same thing? Or a mass of grey without that spot of gleam which makes parts brighter, greater, than the whole? Or somewhat of all these?
He could rehearse the parts, if he desired. But it seemed more real to let them gyre about at will—as they were doing. Clarice, business, Adelaide and home—a friend looked for, an acquaintance had but not cherished. The indefatigable past, limed with indifference lest it bring nausea. Mother who clamped his ears when she was ineffectually fond. A raise and praise from his employer. Two weeks in the mountains with Lamory whom he had long since detested.... Whom else to go with? Two weeks with himself was no vacation.... Here was such an hour—with himself. And only the lying on his back, so that the two years slid over him, made that hour possible! Two weeks—a thousand such hours? They would have been unlivable! Lamory prevented the woods from speaking to him. At least, since Lamory was there, he blamed Lamory. He was glad, therefore, that Lamory had been there. Suppose he had been alone and the woods had not spoken! Yet, there had been this very afternoon. Well—the village had made noises behind his back. Can a pagan make love with a Christian boy peeping through the curtains? Small wonder, the elm trees and the clambering grass had remained silent. By the mercy of God, let it not be that really, really, the woods were always, now, to be silent to him! Quincy shivered in bed and prayed for that.
And his prayer broke away in the middle, to a waking dream. Clarice walked by his side along a path of poplars and silver-birch that was familiar.
“Quincy,” she said, “why don’t you tell me that you love me?”
“Why—do you love me, Clarice?”
He recalled the day when the sun had been a tiny golden pool in a grey firmament and he had kissed her. Now, he kissed her again. He was very happy, somehow, to recall the earlier occasion. And this angered him. His prayer had broken. Now, also, broke his waking dream. He recalled that he had been praying. It seemed strangely significant that he could never sustain his prayers and dreams. Always, always, they straggled into sleep—or into something else. They were the realest of things to Quincy. Naturally, then, his other ways fared little better.