As he sat on his bed he thought too, and the thought was disturbing: one day I shall see Crimond again. Certainly not soon. There is a strict decorum which must be kept between us. There is Jenkin's death, of which we will not speak, and there is the book. Of course I shall want to talk to Crimond about the book, and what I have to say will interest him too. Or will he have forgotten the book, even rejected it? People who write long learned remarkable books sometimes reject them, do not want to discuss them or even hear them mentioned, not necessarily because they now think them no good, but just because quite other matters now obsess them. Crimond is certainly capable, as I said to Rose, of writing another long book to refute this one, or of writing equally passionately, equally learnedly, upon some totally other subject! Still, I shall see him again, some time – and when that time comes he will expect me.
He thought, I'll look after Rose too, I won't let her drift away into Curtland land, I'll make her happy. Rose is happiness – only it's never worked out like that. I can't do without her. He got into bed and turned out the light. He thrust his feet and the hot water bottle down into the icy nether regions of the bed. The wind was blowing in gusts and tossing the drops of rain like little weak pebbles onto the glass. In the dark, as sadness swept over him again, he began to think about his father, and what a gentle, kind, patient, good man he had been, and how he had given way, out of love, to his wife, sacrificing not only his wishes but sometimes even his principles. All that must have caused pain, and his children too, never quite in tune with him, must have grieved him as the years went by. I didn't try enough, thought Gerard, I didn't visit him enough or ask him to stay, I never seemed to have time for him. I should have made him a part of my life. And my mother – but he could not see his mother, that sad shade signalled to him in vain. He thought, they are dead, my father, my Sinclair, my Jenkin, my Levquist, all dead. And then it occurred to him for the very first time to wonder if, really and truly, Grey were dead too. Parrots live longer than we do, and Grey was a young bird then. But parrots in cages are helpless, they depend on the kindness of humans, and there are other ways they can die before they are old, by neglect, by illness, they can be forgotten in empty houses, they can starve. The thought that Grey might have starved to death was so terrible to Gerard that he suddenly sat bolt upright, and there flowed into him, as into a clear vessel, a sudden sense of all the agony and helpless suffering of created things. He felt the planet turning, and felt its pain, oh the planet, oh the poor pool planet. He lay back, turning on his side and burying his face ill the pillow. He let the moment pass. He thought, I've got to go on, or rather, if I can, up, because I'm not going to abandon my life-image, not for Levquist, not even for jenkin. It is up there, solemn and changeless and alone, indifferent and pure, and, yes, I feel its magnetism more strongly at this moment, perhaps, than ever before, and, yes, there is an awful pleasure in that sense of distance, of how high and unattainable it is, how alien, how separated from my corrupt being. I shrivel before it, not as before the face of a person, but as in all indifferent flame. I have seen the false summit, and now as the terrain changes I glimpse more terrible cliffs and peaks far far above again. Yes, I'll attempt the book, but it's a life sentence, and not only may it be no good, but I may never know whether it is or not. Thoughts at peace: could thoughts ever be at peace again? This was the moment before the beginning. Tomorrow, he thought, he would have to begin, to start his pilgrimage toward where Jenkin had once spoken of being, out on the edge of things. Yes, beyond that nearer ridge there was no track, only a sheer cliff going upward, and as he gazed upon that vertical ascent Gerard paled as before a scaffold.
He thought to himself now, I'll never get to sleep. I'd better get up and do something. I wonder if I could mend that Staffordshire dog? It's not too badly broken. But he was already drowsy and beginning to dream. He fell asleep and dreamt that he was standing on that mountainside holding an open book upon whose pages was written Dominus Illuminatio Mea – and from far far above an angel was descending in the form of a great grey parrot with loving clever eyes and the parrot perched upon the book and spread out its grey and scarlet wings and the parrot was the book.
Lily Boyne was walking, with slow haste, along a shabby decrepit street in South London. Her haste was slow because her heart was beating violently and her mouth was open and she was panting with emotion and felt as if she might soon faint or at least have to sit down. Only there was nowhere to sit except on the kerb. She was anxious to arrive, yet afraid of arriving. Although she so much looked forward, she wished it was over and she was going home. When she went home would she be going in one piece or mangled? Was she sane now and would be mad later, or mad now and would be sane later? Or had madness entirely taken her over?
Lily was going to see Crimond. She had not seen him or sent him any communication since the awful occasion of the midsummer ball. The baneful memory of that night haunted her, sometimes tormented her, although she did not really imagine that, for her, it could have been different. Well, perhaps she did imagine a little, could not altogether banish beautiful painful fantasies of how on that evening Crimond could at last have 'found himself' in realising how much he cared for her. She had felt, still a little felt, with a kind of pride and a kind of terror, that it was 'all her fault', because it was she who had brought Jean and Crimond together. If she had not told him of the dance he would not have manifested himself in that kilt, radiant with godlike power. Although she had told no one about her own crucial role in that drama, she could not help feeling that someone or something would punish her for it – perhaps fate, perhaps Crimond. Yet also it was a bond, she had played the part of Love's messenger, and it was not because of her that Love had been, so mysteriously, vanquished. One of her present terrors, as she walked along the ragged street, was that Crimond might think that she had come to sympathise with him! This idea made her feel ready to destroy herself. In fact she knew nothing, and it seemed that nobody knew anything, about the reasons for Jean and Crimond's second parting. The fact was that Crimond was once more alone, and no woman had yet enabled him to 'find himself'. Of that Lily felt sure. She was going to see him because she had to.
As she neared the house and her knees were as water she began to ask herself again (for she had gone over it in detail many times during the last weeks) whether in spite of her intuitions she might be entirely wrong about Crimond, and have been wrong all along? Her impression of him as solitary could be entirely accidental and fallacious. Perhaps the 'Jean business', about which Gerard and company were so solemn, was just one of an endless stream of adventures? Suppose a woman were even now in possession, in the house, ready to open the door to Lily and sneer at her? It seemed madness to make this gratuitous unheralded excursion which could end with some new and more awful humiliation by which she would be scarred forever. But there was upon her a fiercer and more awful imperative, issuing from the depths of her prescient and frightened soul. She might regret having come, but would surely much more terribly regret not having come.