Three days later he heard that Caroline Lee was dead. The news stunned him. Surely it could not be possible? He felt stifled, frightened, and incredulous. In a way, it was just what one would expect of Caroline, but none the less he felt outraged. How was it possible for anyone, whom one actually knew, to die? Particularly anyone so vividly and beautifully remembered! The indignity, the horror, of death obsessed him. Had she actually died? He went again to Gordon Square, not knowing precisely what it was that he expected to find, and saw something white hanging by the green door. But if, as it appeared, it was true that Caroline Lee, somewhere inside the house, lay dead, lay motionless, how did it happen that he, who was so profoundly concerned, had not at all been consulted, had not been invited to come and talk with her, and now found himself so utterly and hopelessly and forever excluded—from the house, as from her? This was a thing which he could not understand. As he walked home, pondering it, he thought of the five-dollar goldpiece. What would become of it? Probably John would get it, and, if so, he would steal it from him.… All the same, he was glad he hadn’t taken it.
To this reflection he came back many times, as now once more with the Battle of Gettysburg raging in the next room. If he had actually taken it, what a horror it would have been! As it was, the fact that he had resisted the temptation, restored the goldpiece to the box, seemed to have been a tribute to Caroline’s beauty and strangeness. Yes, for nobody else would he have made the refusal—nobody on earth. But, for her, it had been quite simple, a momentary pang quickly lost in the pleasure of hearing her voice, watching her pale hands twisting the yellow beads, and helping her with her reading. “And what’s this?” she had said, and “Now I’m an Egyptian!”… What was death that could put an end to a clear voice saying such things?… Mystery was once more about him, the same mystery that had shone in the vision of the infernal city. There was something beautiful which he could not understand. He had felt it while he was lying in the grass among the tombstones, looking at the medal; he had felt it when the goldfinch darted in from the rain and then out again. All these things seemed in some curious way to fit together.
III.
The same night, after he had gone to bed, this feeling of enormous and complicated mystery came upon him again with oppressive weight. He lay still, looking from his pillow through the tall window at the moonlight on the white outhouse wall, and again it seemed to him that the explanation for everything was extraordinarily near at hand if he could only find it. The mystery was like the finest of films, like the moonlight on the white wall. Surely, beneath it, there was something solid and simple. He heard someone walk across the yard, with steps that seemed astoundingly far apart and slow. The steps ceased, a door creaked. Then there was a cough. It was old Selena, the Negro cook, going out for wood. He heard the sticks being piled up, then the creak of the door again, and again the slow steps on the hard baked ground of the yard, æons apart. How did the peach tree look in the moonlight? Would its leaves be dark, or shiny? And the chinaberry tree? He thought of the two trees standing there motionless in the moonlight, and at last felt that he must get out of bed and look at them. But when he had reached the hall, he heard his mother’s voice from downstairs, and he went and lay on the old sofa in the hall, listening. Could he have heard aright? His mother had just called his father “Boy!” Amazing!
“It’s two parties every week, and sometimes three or four, that’s excessive. You know it is.”
“Darling, I must have some recreation!”
His father laughed in a peculiar angry way that he had never heard before—as strange, indeed, as his mother’s tone had been.
“Recreation’s all right,” he said, “but you’re neglecting your family. If it goes on, I’ll have another child—that’s all.”
He got off the sofa and went softly down the stairs to the turn of the railing. He peered over the banisters with infinite caution, and what he saw filled him with horror. His mother was sitting on his father’s knee, with her arms about his neck. She was kissing him. How awful!… He couldn’t look at it. What on earth, he wondered as he climbed back into bed, was it all about? There was something curious in the way they were talking, something not at all like fathers and mothers, but more like children, though he couldn’t in the least understand it. At the same time, it was offensive.
He began to make up a conversation with Caroline Lee. She was sitting under the peach tree with him, reading her book. What beautiful hands she had! They were transparent, somehow, like her forehead, and her dark hair and large pale eyes delighted him. Perhaps she was an Egyptian!
“It must be nice to live in your house,” he said.
“Yes, it’s very nice. And you haven’t seen half of it, either.”
“No, I haven’t. I’d like to see it all. I liked the hairy wallpaper and the pink statue of the lady on the table. Are there any others like it?”
“Oh, yes, lots and lots! In the secret room downstairs, where you heard the silver clock striking, there are fifty other statues, all more beautiful than that one, and a collection of clocks of every kind.”
“Is your father very rich?”
“Yes, he’s richer than anybody. He has a special carved ivory box to keep his collars in.”
“What does it feel like to die—were you sorry?”
“Very sorry! But it’s really quite easy—you just hold your breath and shut your eyes.”
“Oh!”
“And when you’re lying there, after you’ve died, you’re really just pretending. You keep very still, and you have your eyes almost shut, but really you know everything! You watch the people and listen to them.”
“But don’t you want to talk to them, or get out of bed, or out of your coffin?”
“Well, yes, at first you do—but it’s nicer than being alive.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know! You understand everything so easily!”
“How nice that must be!”
“It is.”
“But after they’ve shut you up in a coffin and sung songs over you and carried you to Bonaventure and buried you in the ground, and you’re down there in the dark with all that earth above you—isn’t that horrible?”
“Oh, no!.… As soon as nobody is looking, when they’ve all gone home to tea, you just get up and walk away. You climb out of the earth just as easily as you’d climb out of bed.”
“That’s how you’re here now, I suppose.”
“Of course!”
“Well, it’s very nice.”
“It’s lovely.… Don’t I look just as well as ever?”
“Yes, you do.”
There was a pause, and then Caroline said:
“I know you wanted to steal my goldpiece—I was awfully glad when you put it back. If you had asked me for it, I’d have given it to you.”
“I like you very much, Caroline. Can I come to Bonaventure and play with you?”
“I’m afraid not. You’d have to come in the dark.”
“But I could bring a lantern.”
“Yes, you could do that.”
… It seemed to him that they were no longer sitting under the peach tree, but walking along the white shell-road to Bonaventure. He held the lantern up beside a chinquapin tree, and Caroline reached up with her pale, small hands and picked two chinquapins. Then they crossed the little bridge, walking carefully between the rails on the sleepers. Mossy trees were all about them; the moss, in long festoons, hung lower and lower, and thicker and thicker, and the wind made a soft, seething sound as it sought a way through the gray ancient forest.