It was now quite dark. I hummed a tune. It was funny, I thought, this finding oneself at the centre. The night made a noise as if the world were humming. It was funny the way things returned to their beginnings just as I had returned to sit beneath the statue. A drunk man passed: we exchanged salutations. There was no regret, since excursions could not be avoided, and everything happened over and over again. It was possible, I believed, that everything could be dealt with better each time it arrived.
At some period of the night I had a sudden vivid memory of Marius’s wife. I was thinking of the last time I saw her in hospital and was trying to remember the things she said. There was something that eluded me, and the harder I thought of it the further away it got. Then it seemed that she was very close to me herself and was trying to tell it to me. In the silence I became startled and spoke to her out loud. I must have been half asleep because the noise of my cry woke me, and then it seemed that I had been speaking to Annabelle. I wanted very much that I could take upon myself what Annabelle was suffering, that I could get close to her. I thought that if I tried hard enough I might be able to. It was necessary and possible that I should. And then I knew that what had been suggested to me was not what Marius’s wife had said, but merely that I should try this about Annabelle. I tried to carry her sadness.
And then, in the night that had become the universe, it was as if this were the purpose and the justification of everything. The world was one, suffering was indivisible, what was carried by one took the burden from another. Whatever would happen in the rest of our lives — if Annabelle should die, if I should fail her — still there was this oneness by which the whole might be revived. In all time all people were responsible for one another. These were the ghosts that I remembered, the ghosts that had to be laid. Whatever would happen, however agonized the future, there was always this communion by which meaning was given over. After this night, I thought, when we go out into the morning, we will know this, and remember this, and nothing will not be worth while. Love is its own justification, and so is suffering. We can all go into eternity and die there for ever. It still will not matter. What matters is the whole, for which we will have died. In the early morning a policeman came to turn me out of the garden and I talked to him and he went away.
Peter came when it was light. He stood beside me, tired, requiring information. “How is Annabelle?” he said.
“She is all right,” I said. “I am going to ring up soon.”
“I must see her.”
“Wait till I telephone.”
“I’m going to Paris to-day.”
“I will be telephoning soon.”
The sun had not yet warmed us. We were dry, brittle, with the weight of consciousness heavy like sand. Peter was blinking his screwed-up eyes and my body was stiff so that if I moved I thought I would break it. We were both like men hung from parachutes above a desert. We waited.
“How do you know she’s all right?” Peter said.
“Alice is with her. And a doctor.”
“A doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Why a doctor?”
“Of course there is a doctor. Wait till I ring up.”
“Yes,” Peter said.
As the heat started it seemed to rise from the stones like a mist. There was a gradual melting of stiffness and time began to tick like water dripping from a cracked pipe after a thaw. Peter stirred uneasily.
“I must go in,” he said. “I must see her.”
“I will ring up,” I said.
“I am going to Paris to join my father. I won’t be back for some time.”
“Wait,” I said.
There was a call-box on the corner. Walking was a mechanical business like exercises. As I moved the heat was ruffled and I shivered. Alice’s flat undeviating voice answered me.
“How is she?” I said.
“She’s all right,” Alice said.
“Good,” I said. I didn’t know how to put it. “And the child?” I said.
“There is no child,” Alice said.
“Oh.” It was extraordinary how the sun still shone and the traffic moved and the news had made no difference. I watched a fly which lay on its back on the ledge of the window faintly moving its legs against the light. “I don’t know about these things,” I said. “How bad are they and how bad was she?”
“She was all right,” Alice said. “They can be bad but it didn’t happen too bad to her.” The fly was waving its tentacles in death.
“Can I come round?”
“Yes,” Alice said.
“Peter is here too.”
“He can’t come.”
“Why not? Why not if I can?”
No answer from Alice.
“He’s going away to-day. He won’t be coming back.”
No answer.
“He’s all right now,” I said.
“He’ll only stay a minute.”
“All right,” Alice said.
I went back to Peter. “She’s not bad,” I said. “Would you like to see her?”
“Yes,” Peter said.
We went in and walked to the lift. It was as if there were a lot of people watching us. On the landing Alice opened the door to us and Peter said, “Thank you,” and then he went quickly along the passage. Alice was staring at me with her hard tired eyes.
“Well,” she said, “there you are, it’s over, and are you now going to grow up?”
Peter had opened the door of Annabelle’s room and I could see the corner of her bed beyond him. He went up to it soundlessly like a man going to fetch something and then he went down on his knees and knelt by the side of the bed and put out his hand across the covering. I did not hear either of them speaking. His hand was towards her where I could not see and his face was turned to the ground so that he was not looking at her. There was only his arm, stretched out, like a branch; and she, somewhere distant, touching it. They remained there. Then he rose with a quick single movement from his knees as if a wind had lifted him and he came out of the room quite soundlessly still and went into his own room next to hers. Her door remained open, a straight continuation of the passage leading to a mirror which reflected the passage straight back again to where I stood, and there was just the one straight line with myself at either end of it and Annabelle in between. I could hear Peter in his room moving ceaselessly and precisely like a tiger in its cage, and as I stared at myself along the passage I was a dangling figure at one end and a small darker replica at the other, myself seeing myself not from either end but both and from the middle where Annabelle lay beyond the one blind corner of the bed. Then Peter emerged carrying an enormous suitcase into which he had packaged all his belongings for a month, and he came up the passage momentarily blocking the view, moving still precise and still ceaseless and he went past me and past Alice and then stopped at the door. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” Then he went out. And the passage remained.
“There,” Alice said, “there now, and have you finished?’
I walked along the passage. In the room I met myself. Annabelle was crying. She was veiled with her tears like a moon. “Annabelle,” I said.
The windows were stained with curtains. A blue light dripped down from the morning, the room was blue with light like water, the water flickered, and we were beneath the water, swimming. I thought, When I am with her I shall always think of the sea. “Annabelle,” I said.
“Yes?” she said.
“I am so sorry,” I said.
“I have lost the only thing that I shall ever love,” she said.
In the sea we should have been made silver. I should have liked to have rested there.
“I know,” I said.
VII. ETERNITY