After that a period of time passed during which Tom climbed up and down flights of stairs in the dark, swallowing the steamy atmosphere and scorching his feet and failing to find any continuous way up. Stairs which he ascended ended in locked doors or else unaccountably started to go down again. He called out at intervals but was appalled to hear his puny cries echoing so vainly. He went up, then down, then up until he had lost all sense of which way was up and which down. He sat down at last while all around him the hot darkness quietly seethed and boiled. Sitting still, he concentrated on breathing and on overcoming his fear of suffocation. He breathed the dark and it filled him to the brim. Later still, waking up from what had surely not been sleep, he tried calling out again, and uttered one extremely loud cry which resonated in the huge enclosed space and set the whole network of invisible metal tingling and ringing with a tiny very high noise. After this the lights went on and an angry man opened the door at the top and came running down the stairways.
The man was less angry when he discovered who the intruder was. Tom was forgiven, quite unjustly, as no doubt he will be forgiven by God if God exists. He told the now gently chiding and amused employee that he had lost his shoes and his socks and his mackintosh and his jacket and his knife somewhere down below. He tried to describe his feat of levitation but found himself unable to picture what had happened. His rescuer, telling him to ‘bugger off home!’, left him in the corridor of the Ennistone Rooms. Tom began to walk toward the swing doors at the end; but before he reached them he saw, through the open door of one of the empty rooms, a divine sight, a bed with plump pillows and white sheets. He entered, drew back the sheets and climbed in. The most refreshing slumber he had ever had came to him instantly, and wisdom and clear vision dripped quietly upon him as he slept. He awoke knowing exactly what to do, and set off at once for Hare Lane.
Tom pushed open the back gate of the Belmont garden and Hattie went through. He followed her. She said, ‘I haven’t got the keys.’
Tom said, ‘Don’t worry. I can get in.’
The garden was airily green, a little misty, a little hazy, and innumerable birds were making a great network of sweet noise. They walked along the path under the trees, covered with moss and old leaves and little shapely bits of wooden debris which hurt Tom’s feet, then they walked across the grass. Tom told Hattie to wait at the front door while he ran round the back, into the coal shed and through the window into the back passage by the route taken by George. He ran to let Hattie in. She had profited by the interval to smooth her hair down and comb it with her fingers. She looked calmer.
She came in, passed Tom and began to go up the stairs. Now, for the first time since his visionary slumber, Tom began to be uncertain of his role: not that he had actually thought out any role, he had acted instinctively at each moment as he felt he must. But now the dream-like unfolding of destined action seemed to have come to an end, the magic was switched off, and he was returned to the clumsy perilous muddle of ordinary life.
Hattie went into her bedroom and threw herself on the bed, lying on her back. Her feet fumbled, one rubbing against the other as she tried to push her shoes off. Tom took the shoes from her feet and put them under the bed. Then he stood looking down at her.
Hattie lay upon her spread hair, and her desolated face had become calm and quietly weary. As Tom stared down humbly, apologetically, questioningly, she smiled at him and reached out her hand. He took it, then sat down on the edge of the bed. He could see now that her body, to which her dress clung closely, was soaked with sweat. He kissed her hand. It tasted salt.
‘Hattie, may I lie down beside you?’
‘Yes. But just that.’
He lay down on his side, stretching himself out, measuring her body with his body, not trying to draw her to him, but touching her shoulder with one hand. He felt her very slight shrinking resistance.
‘Hattie.’
‘Yes, Tom.’
‘Will you marry me?’
She was silent.
‘Hattie — ’
It took Tom a moment longer to discover that she had fallen fast asleep. He lay still, protecting her while she slept, filled with the most pure intense happiness which went coursing through his body in a dazzling quiet stream.
Later on, while Hattie was still sleeping, he went downstairs. A neat parcel had been placed inside the front door which he had left open. Inside the parcel he found his shoes and socks and mackintosh and jacket and the knife which Emma had given him.
George McCaffrey pushed open the swing doors at the entrance to the Ennistone Rooms. The porter in his glass box was reading the Ennistone Gazette, and did not notice George’s arrival. If he had seen George, he might have been amazed by the beatific expression on his face. How could one describe that expression? George was not ‘wreathed in smiles’, but his face looked plumped out with deep satisfaction, or perhaps with inner peace. This could have been the face of a man who had inherited a million, or of one who had, after long asceticism, achieved enlightenment. This was the look which had so much alarmed Tom McCaffrey on the occasion of the ‘court martial’ and on the evening at Diane’s Hat when George had so quietly, almost absently, thrust him out of the door.
George walked along the corridor with a sort of affected step, as if he were being watched (which he was not), picking up his feet carefully from the carpet, like a dainty high-stepping horse. He walked slowly, as if reflectively. He was breathing deeply, however. His eye, roving like that of a carefree man, had elicited from the notice board the information that Professor John Robert Rozanov was ‘in’.
On the door of John Robert’s room hung a card provided by the management saying Do not disturb. George smiled at the card. Then he stood at the door and, still smiling, listened. He heard within the sound, which he expected, of the quiet snoring of the sleeping sage. It was the afternoon time when it was John Robert’s habit to be asleep. It was the afternoon of Monday. George had visited the Rooms at the same time on the previous day, only then John Robert had been ‘out’. (He had been still at Hare Lane sorting papers and writing letters.) George now pressed the door. It opened, letting the roaring sound of the water out into the corridor. George entered quickly and closed the door behind him. The scene was much as he had observed it on his former visit. The frosted-glass windows cast a clear pearly light. The sun was shining outside. John Robert was lying on the bed. but on this occasion clothed in a great blue sail-like Ennistone Rooms nightshirt which amply covered his domed bulk. He was lying on his back, one arm across his chest, the other depending from the bed. The table was covered with books and notebooks, the notebooks now being neatly stacked up.
George was still smiling. The smile intensified the beatific glow of his expression so that he now looked like a man inspired at some great moment of his life, as when, perhaps, in a battle he seizes a flag and rushes forward against the enemy with a loud joyous cry, possessed by a divine frenzy or the sacred impulse of supreme duty. Yet at the same time he was quiet and deliberate in his movements; as well he might be since he was executing a routine which he had rehearsed many times in his imagination. Indeed as he moved now in the room he might still have been within the secret unresisting chamber of his mind. He moved as if treading on air. The double doors of the bathroom behind which the waters roared were ajar, and a pillar of steam hung behind them, rapidly dissipating itself in the cooler air. George, after casting a glance at the quiet figure on the bed, slowly opened the two doors wide. From the big brass taps the waters plunged into the white abyss of the sunken bath, hiding it in their cloud. George stepped into the bathroom and peered to see whether the outlet pipe was closed. It was open. maintaining a foot or so of water at the bottom of the bath. He leaned over and turned the brass handle to close the outlet. Already, as he retreated, the steam had covered him with moisture. Turning to gaze at John Robert, he began to take off his jacket. His smile had now become a grin which might have been an expression of extreme pain. He rolled up his shirt-sleeves.