Part 23

"Ah, there you are," he cried in a tone of obvious relief when his white-flannelled figure appeared against the deep dusk of the bushes that lined the stream. "I was getting anxious, and I did not know what to do. I should have come out to look for you, but I did not know where you might be coming from."

And that little touch of anxiety was perhaps the first sign that he had shown since he had abandoned himself to bitterness that his heart was not dead: never before had the faintest spark of the sense of human comradeship or its solicitudes appeared.

Then Merivale knew that the fortnight that Philip had already spent here had not been utterly wasted, and before going to bed that night he wrote one line of hope to Mrs. Home.

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FIFTEENTH

A couple of days after this the weather suddenly broke, and for the unclouded and azure skies they had a day of low, weeping heavens, with an air of dead and stifling dampness. Never for a moment through the hours of daylight did the sullen downpour relax; the trees stood with listless, drooping branches, from which under the drenching rain a few early autumn leaves kept falling, though the time of the fall of the leaf was not yet. In the garden beds the plants had given up all attempts to look gay or to stand up, and bent drearily enough beneath the rain that scattered their petals and dragged their foliage in the muddy earth. The birds, too, were silent; only the hiss of the rain was heard, and towards afternoon the voice of the river grew a little louder. Merivale, however, was undeterred and quite undepressed by these almost amphibious conditions, and, as usual, went off after breakfast for one of those long rambles of his in the forest, leaving Philip alone. There was no hint of unfriendliness taken in this; indeed, Philip had exacted a promise from his host on the evening of arrival that his normal course of life should be undisturbed.

That first little token that he had given two days before that his heart was not dead had more than once repeated itself since then, and he was perhaps faintly conscious of some change in himself. He was not, so far as he knew, less unhappy, but that frightful hardness was beginning to break down, the surface of its ice was damped with thawed water, his hatred of all the world, his deep resentment at the scheme of things--if any scheme underlay the wantonness of what had happened--was less pronounced. It might, indeed, be only that he was utterly broken, that his spirit of rebellion could no longer raise its banner of revolt, yet he did not feel as if he had surrendered, he did not in the least fold his hands and wait mutely for whatever the Powers that be might choose to do with him. He was conscious, indeed, of the opposite, of a certain sense of dawning willpower; and though his life, so to speak, lay shattered round him, he knew that subconsciously somehow he was beginning to regard the pieces with some slight curiosity that was new to him, wondering if this bit would fit on to that. In a way he had plunged into business again with that feverish rush which had taken him through August with some such idea; his immediate salvation, at any rate, he had believed to lie in concentrated occupation; yet there had been nothing constructive about that; it was a palliative measure, to relieve pain, rather than a course that would go to the root of the disease. Also, such as it was, it had failed, his health had given way: he could for the present take no more of that opiate.

In another respect also it had failed, for to-day by the mid-day post there had come for him communications of the greatest importance from the City, information which was valuable, provided only he acted on it without delay. There was no difficulty about it, the question had no complications; he himself had only to send off instructions which ten minutes' thought could easily frame. Yet he sat with paper and pens in front of him, doing nothing, for he had asked himself a very simple question instead. "Is it all worth while?" was what he said to himself. And apparently it was not.

Now, if this had happened a month ago, it would have been equivalent to a surrender; it would have been a confession that he was beaten. But now the whole nature of his doubt was changed. Work, it is true, had done something for him; it had got him through a month in which he was incapable of anything else, it had got him, in fact, to the point which was indicated two days ago by his little anxiety about Merivale. And had he known it, that was much the most important things that had happened to him for weeks. Something within him had instinctively claimed kinship again with mankind.

How hollow and objectless to-day seemed the results of the last month! "Home's August," as it was already ruefully known on the Stock Exchange, had plentifully enriched Home, but though the gold had poured in like a fountain, yet, mixed with it, indissolubly knitted into the success, had come a leanness. What did it all amount to? And lean above all was his paltry triumph over Evelyn, who, as he had since ascertained, had sold out Metiekull when things were at their very worst, only to realise that if he had left it alone, he would have made a handsome profit. But what then? What good did that pin-prick of a vengeance do? What gratification had it brought to Philip's most revengeful and hating mood? The wedding-tour had been cut short: Evelyn and Madge had come back to London, but that to-day gave him not the smallest feeling of satisfaction in that, however feebly, he had hit back at them. It was all so useless: the futility and childishness of his revenge made him feel sick. If he had a similar chance to-day, he would not have stirred a finger.

But all this emptiness, and the intolerable depression that still enveloped him, was, somehow, of different character to what it had been before. It was all bad and hopeless enough, but his eyes, so to speak, had begun to veer round; they were no longer drearily fixed on the storms and wreckage of the past, but were beginning, however, ineffectually as yet, to peer into the mists of the future. It was exactly this which was indicative of the change that had come, and the indication was as significant as the slow shifting of a weather-cock that tells that the blackening east wind is over, and a kindlier air is breathing, one that perhaps in due time shall call up from the roots below the earth the sap that shall again burst out in mist and spray of young green leaf, and put into the heart of the birds that mating-time has come again. And that first hint of change, though lisped about while yet the darkness before dawn was most black, is better than all the gold that had poured in through the hours of the night.

Not all day nor when night fell did the rain cease, but the air was very warm, and the two dined out as usual in the verandah. The candles burned steadily in the windless air, casting squares of uncertain light on to the thick curtain of the night which was hung round them. Merivale, it appeared, had passed a day of high festival even for him; the rain of which the thirsty earth was drinking so deeply suited him no less.

"Ah, there is no mood of Nature," he cried, "which I do not love. This hot, soaking rain falling windlessly, which other people find so depressing, is so wonderful. The earth lies beneath it, drinking like a child at its mother's breast. The trees stand with drooping leaves, relaxing themselves, making no effort, just drinking, recuperating. The moths and winged things creep close into crevices in their bark--I saw a dozen such to-day--or cling to the underside of the leaves, where they are dry and cool. Everything is sleeping to-day, and to watch the earth sleep is like watching a child sleep: however lovely and winsome it is when it is awake, yet its sleep is even more beautiful. There is not a wrinkle on its face: it is as young as love, and with closed eyes and mouth half-open it rests."

Philip was looking at him with a sort of dumb envy, which at length found voice.

"I would give all I have for just one day of your life," he said, pushing back his plate and putting his elbows on the table, a characteristic movement when he wanted to talk, as Merivale knew.

"Ah, my dear fellow," he cried, "it is something very substantial gained already, if you wish that. To want to be happy is a very sensible step towards it."

"It is true that a fortnight ago I don't think I even wanted to be happy," said Philip.

"I know. But you have made the first step. Also, I can say it now, you look very much better than when you came."

"I am not more happy," said Philip.

"No, but you conceive it distantly possible that one day you may be. That has only just begun to occur to you."

Philip established his elbows more firmly yet.

"You are a living miracle, Tom!" he said. "I believe you are happier than any man on this earth has ever been, since, at any rate, man began to grow complicated and want things. You want nothing, I suppose, do you? And is it that which has made you a boy again, while wanting and not getting, and being robbed of what was mine, has made an old man of me?"

Tom smiled, showing his white even teeth.

"Ah, I want," he said, "I want passionately, but I feel sure I shall get what I want. It is the old story, I have told it you before: what I want is the full realisation of the oneness of all life, and of the joy that pervades everything."

"What would I not give to realise one millionth-part of that?" said Philip.

He paused a moment and then broke out suddenly.

"Ah, it is the very intensity and completeness with which I loved her that makes it all so bitter," he said. "A little love would only have meant a little bitterness. But my love was not little, and so also is not my bitterness. And afterwards, I did the best thing I could think of. I worked, using work as a drug. As you know, I took too much of that drug, and nearly broke down in consequence. And, oddly enough, now, so far from finding myself a slave to it, the thought of it is rather distasteful than otherwise. I might have made quite a lot of money to-day, if I had only taken the trouble to write a telegram, which would have been done in ten minutes and have cost me ten shillings. But I thought: 'Is it worth while?' And when one thinks that, it is certainly not worth while: only things that are quite indubitably worth while are worth while at all. And then I thought over what I had done to Evelyn, and that seemed not worth while either. I should not do it again if I had the chance."

"What was that?" asked Merivale.

Philip told him in a few words the history of Metiekull.

"It was designed to hurt Madge, too," he said, "which again doesn't seem worth while. I don't care whether she is hurt or not. And I thought I was so strong, so unbending."

He paused a moment, but the need of confiding, of laying his heart open, was strong upon him. It had long been dammed up, now the flood-water had at last begun to make a breach in the banks.

"I love her still," he said, "and I loved her all the time when I would have done anything to hurt her. I wonder if you understand that. It is true at all events. I would like, or rather I would have liked, to hurt her and go on hurting till she writhed with pain, and all the time I should have been longing to kiss her tears away. But now I don't want to hurt her any more. It does not seem worth while. And besides, I can't hurt her; only one person in the world can really hurt her, because she loves him. I am an object of indifference to her, and therefore I have no power to hurt her. My God, by what diabolical trick is it that only those we love have the power to hurt us? That was a cruel trick God played on us when he made us so. It is infamous!"

His hands, which were supporting his head, trembled, and for the first time his eyes grew soft with unshed tears. Never until this moment had he felt the slightest desire to weep; now the tears were ready to come. But he repressed them and went on.

"My house is in ruins," he said, "and perhaps I have been looking at the ruins too long. It has done no good in any case: looking at them has brought me no nearer to laying the first stone again. I have just the sense left to see that. One has to build, to begin again, not count over the destruction that has been wrought. Yet my house was so beautiful, the house that was already built, and waited only for one to enter."

Again he paused, for his voice trembled, too.

"But as there is no such futile fool as the pathetic fool," said he, "I will not go on about that. I want, and I want you to help me in this, to look the other way, forward. I think you have vitality enough, or call it what you will, to resuscitate a man who is all but drowned, over whose head the billows have gone. There is something infectious about you, I think; you somehow shine on one, and I feel as if I was sickening, so to speak, by being with you, for the disease of life. Work, anyhow, did me no good; it only ended in my breaking down. But mere idling here has done something for me. I feel as if I could acquiesce in continuing idle here, whereas before the thought of continuing to do either anything or nothing was intolerable. I could but just get through the present dreadful moment. Through all these weeks the next moment, the next hour, the next day, might easily have proved to be impossible. For, look here--you know I am not melodramatic!"

He took from his pocket a little surgical lancet, and stroked the side of his throat with his thumb.

"I tried to get prussic acid," he said, "but I suppose I asked for it badly, and they did not believe some foolish tale about a dog which I wanted to put out of the way. So I bought this. One little incision--I took the trouble to learn the right place, for it is dreadfully foolish to make a mess, over and above the mess that must be made, about such simple things. I don't really know why I have not used it before; I can only say it was not from cowardice. But now I want it no longer; I am beginning to be able to look forward. So it goes."

With a jerk of his wrist he flung it among the shrubs to the right of the lawn, where it fell with a little splutter of applause, as it were, from the leaves, as if they, too, were glad to assist in the disposal and forgetting of it.

But Merivale looked neither shocked nor surprised; it was as if but a very commonplace thing had been told him.

"Yes, my dear chap," he said, "of course I don't put it down to cowardice, the fact, I mean, that you did not use that abominable little knife. Why, if you were a coward, you would have done so. Of course it must have been much easier for you to die than to live all this time. But I'm glad you weren't a coward, Philip. I don't think a coward can be much good for anything. A man who won't meet what is in front of him, and prefers to run away somewhere, he doesn't know where, is a poor sort of being. Of course, we all have our fears; life is full of terror. All we can do is to say we are not afraid, and to behave as if we were not. And since you have thrown that knife away, I may say that I think suicide is one of the most abject species of cowardice. Of course you were not yourself when you contemplated it, however vaguely. Now that you are a little better, you throw the thing away."

His tone was so extremely matter-of-fact that its very normalness arrested Philip. As he had said, it was perfectly true that nothing was further from his thoughts than melodrama, and the interest he felt in Tom's attitude, as thus revealed, towards life and death and fear was a fresh sign, and he himself felt it to be such, of his reawakening interests. Hitherto it had not, however remotely, concerned him as to what anyone else might think of it all.

"You talk of fears," he said; "what do you know of them? Surely you, at any rate, are free from fear. Oh, talk, Tom, interest me in anything; talk about yourself, or birds, or beasts. You have given me so much: give me more. Give me the foundation of my new house, since it is you--yes, you, you dear fellow--who have made me turn my back upon the ruins. I have got to begin again; I have nothing to begin with. I am bankrupt. I beg you to give me a bit of that which you have so abundantly."

His voice again half-failed him, but he recovered it in a moment.

"We were talking about fear," he said; "what have you got to fear? You don't depend on men and women; you don't love. There is nothing in the world to be afraid of except love. I have found that out. Yet people seek it, the fools. They call it by sweet names: they say it is love that makes life worth living. My God, I should be so content if I had never known what it was. Damn her! I could have lived exactly like you--no, that is not true; I could never have been even remotely happy without loving her, just as, if I had never loved her, I should never have known what misery was. But you among your birds and beasts and trees, what on earth have you to fear? You won't fall in love with a beach-tree and find that it elopes with an elm. Tell me about your bloodless Paradise, and how the serpent, which is fear, can enter into it."

Tom Merivale had grown rather grave during this sudden outburst. Nothing in the world, so he believed, had power to ruffle his temper: only it was difficult to explain to such a child as Philip had shown himself to be. But before the pause was on his side the other spoke again.

"I am sorry," he said, "but it was a sort of baffled ignorance that spoke. I don't understand you; and for that reason I had no business to call your happiness, which is maddeningly real to me, a bloodless Paradise. But, for God's sake, show me anything approaching Paradise, at the door of which there is not an angel with a sword, not flaming, but cold and convincing. And where, above all, is your fear? How can fear exist for you? What is there to be afraid of unless you love and can be betrayed?"

Philip's servant came out from the house, bringing a tray with glasses and bottles. He paused b