Part 70

“I shall be in the world--yes.”

“I don't feel as though these days ahead were real. Here we are, here we remain.”

“Yes, I feel that. As though you and I were two immortals, who didn't live in time and space at all, who never met, who couldn't part, and here we lie on Olympus. And those two poor creatures who did meet, poor little Richard Remington and Isabel Rivers, who met and loved too much and had to part, they part and go their ways, and we lie here and watch them, you and I. She'll cry, poor dear.”

“She'll cry. She's crying now!”

“Poor little beasts! I think he'll cry too. He winces. He could--for tuppence. I didn't know he had lachrymal glands at all until a little while ago. I suppose all love is hysterical--and a little foolish. Poor mites! Silly little pitiful creatures! How we have blundered! Think how we must look to God! Well, we'll pity them, and then we'll inspire him to stiffen up again--and do as we've determined he shall do. We'll see it through,--we who lie here on the cliff. They'll be mean at times, and horrid at times; we know them! Do you see her, a poor little fine lady in a great house,--she sometimes goes to her room and writes.”

“She writes for his BLUE WEEKLY still.”

“Yes. Sometimes--I hope. And he's there in the office with a bit of her copy in his hand.”

“Is it as good as if she still talked it over with him before she wrote it? Is it?”

“Better, I think. Let's play it's better--anyhow. It may be that talking over was rather mixed with love-making. After all, love-making is joy rather than magic. Don't let's pretend about that even.... Let's go on watching him. (I don't see why her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I don't.) See! There he goes down along the Embankment to Westminster just like a real man, for all that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is running round inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past the Policemen, specks too--selected large ones from the country. I think he's going to dinner with the Speaker--some old thing like that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?--I can't quite see.... And now he's up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll hold on to the thread. He'll have to plan his speeches to the very end of his days--and learn the headings.”

“Isn't she up in the women's gallery to hear him?”

“No. Unless it's by accident.”

“She's there,” she said.

“Well, by accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel. Never any more adventures for us, dear, now. No!... They play the game, you know. They've begun late, but now they've got to. You see it's not so very hard for them since you and I, my dear, are here always, always faithfully here on this warm cliff of love accomplished, watching and helping them under high heaven. It isn't so VERY hard. Rather good in some ways. Some people HAVE to be broken a little. Can you see Altiora down there, by any chance?”

“She's too little to be seen,” she said.

“Can you see the sins they once committed?”

“I can only see you here beside me, dear--for ever. For all my life, dear, till I die. Was that--the sin?”...

I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken fragments, for the most part of unimportant things.

“None of this,” she said abruptly, “seems in the slightest degree real to me. I've got no sense of things ending.”

“We're parting,” I said.

“We're parting--as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I don't feel as though you and I were really never to see each other again for years. Do you?”

I thought. “No,” I said.

“After we've parted I shall look to talk it over with you.”

“So shall I.”

“That's absurd.”

“Absurd.”

“I feel as if you'd always be there, just about where you are now. Invisible perhaps, but there. We've spent so much of our lives joggling elbows.”...

“Yes. Yes. I don't in the least realise it. I suppose I shall begin to when the train goes out of the station. Are we wanting in imagination, Isabel?”

“I don't know. We've always assumed it was the other way about.”