‘There are dozens and dozens of old stories, you know,’ she said, leaning on her elbows, ‘dozens and dozens, meaning only us. You must, you must eat; look, just an apple. We’ve got to say good-bye. And faintness will double the difficulty.’ She lightly touched his hand as if to compel him to smile with her. ‘There, I’ll peel it; and this is Eden; and soon it will be the cool of the evening. And then, oh yes, the voice will come. What nonsense I am talking. Never mind.’
They sat on in the quiet sunshine, and a spider slid softly through the air and with busy claws set to its nets; and those small ghosts the robins went whistling restlessly among the heavy boughs.
A child presently came out of the porch of the inn into the garden, and stood with its battered doll in its arms, softly watching them awhile. But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax her over, she burst out laughing and ran in again.
Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘the whole world mocks me. You say “this evening”; need it be, must it be this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me. If you only knew what we should only detest each other for saying and for listening to. The whole thing’s dulled and staled. Who wants a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe the converted?—and I’m converted to Sabathier’s God. Should we be sitting here talking like this if it were not so? I can’t, I can’t go back.’
She rose and stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, watching him.
‘Won’t you understand?’ he continued. ‘I am an outcast—a felon caught red-handed, come in the flesh to a hideous and righteous judgment. I hear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel, I do, I do love you with all the dull best I ever had. Not now, then; I don’t ask new even. I can, I would begin again. God knows my face has changed enough even as it is. Think of me as that poor wandering ghost of yours; how easily I could hide away—in your memory; and just wait, wait for you. In time even this wild futile madness too would fade away. Then I could come back. May I try?’
‘I can’t answer you. I can’t reason. Only, still, I do know, talk, put off, forget as I may, must is must. Right and wrong, who knows what they mean, except that one’s to be done and one’s to be forsworn; or—forgive, my friend, the truest thing I ever said—or else we lose the savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you’d weary of me. I know you, Monsieur Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, though you have risen from your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or flesh and blood; and not to do what the one old raven within you cries you must, would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. You shall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly more difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced the dark. Life is a little while. And though I have no words to tell what always are and must be foolish reasons because they are not reasons at all but ghosts of memory, I know in my heart that to face the worst is your only hope of peace. Should I have staked so much on your finding that, and now throw up the game? Don’t let us talk any more. I’ll walk half the way, perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my brother guesses—at least my madness. I’ve talked and talked him nearly past his patience. And then, when you are quite safely, oh yes, quite safely and soundly gone, then I shall go away for a little, so that we can’t even hear each other speak, except in dreams. Life!—well, I always thought it was much too plain a tale to have as dull an ending. And with us the powers beyond have played a newer trick, that’s all. Another hour, and we will go. Till then there’s just the solitary walk home and only the dull old haunted house that hoards as many ghosts as we ourselves to watch our coming.’
Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand aflame, with a melancholy rapture in their uplifted boughs above their fading coats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with a golden stillness, awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings. And the old birds that had sung in the spring sang now amid the same leaves, grown older too to give them harbourage.
Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his teacup on his knee while he pretended to be reading, with elbow propped on the table.
‘Here’s Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile,’ said Grisel. She stood for a moment in her white gown, her face turned towards the clear green twilight of the open window. ‘I have promised to walk part of the way with him. But I think first we must have some tea. No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We are going to walk.’