THE BEGINNING
They were to lunch with Peter in Marylebone. Millie had some commission
to execute for Victoria and told Henry that she would meet him in
Peter's room.
When she was gone he felt for a moment lost. He had been in truth
dreaming ever since that last sight of Christina. He had no impulse
to follow her--he knew that in that he had been wise--but he was busy
enthroning her so that she would always remain with every detail of
every incident connected with her until he died.
In this perhaps he was sentimental; nevertheless clearer-sighted than
you would suppose. He knew that he had all his life before him, that
many would come into it and would go out again, that there would be
passions and desires satisfied and unsatisfied. But he also knew that
nothing again would have in it quite the unselfish devotion that his
passion for Christina had had. The first love is not the only love, but
it is often the only love into which self does not enter.
His feet led him to Peter Street. The barrows were there with their
apples and oranges and old clothes and boots and shoes and gimcrack
china. The old woman with the teary eye was there, the policeman
good-humouredly watching. It was all as it had been on that first
afternoon now so long, long, long ago!
Henry looked at the yard, at the little blistered door, at the balcony.
No sign of life in any of them.
The Peter Street romance had just begun, but it had passed away from
Peter Street.
He walked to Marylebone in a dream, and when he was there he had to
pull himself together to listen with sympathy to Peter's excitement
about this new monthly paper of which Peter was to be editor, the paper
that was to transform the world.
He left Peter and Millie talking at the table, went to the window and
looked out. As he saw the people passing up and down below them of a
sudden he loved them all.
The events of the last month came crowding to him--everything that
had happened: the first sight of Christina in the Circus, the first
visit to Duncombe, the Hill Street library and his love for it, his
interviews with Mrs. Tenssen, the day when he had given Christina
luncheon in the little Spanish restaurant, Duncombe and the garden and
Lady Bell-Hall, his struggles with his novel, his recovery of the old
Edinburgh life, Sir Walter and his smile, the row with Tom Duncombe,
the meals and the theatres and the talks with Peter. Millie's trouble
and Peter's wife, his fight with Baxter, Duncombe's last talk with
him and his death, the last time with Christina, to-day's Unknown
Warrior--yes, and smaller things than these: sunsets and sunrises,
people passing in the street, the wind in the Duncombe orchard, books
new and old, his little room in Panton Street, the vista of Piccadilly
Circus on a sunlit afternoon, all London and beyond it, England whom
he loved so passionately, and beyond her the world to its furthest and
darkest fastnesses. What a time to be alive, what a time to be young
in, the enchantment, the miraculous enchantment of life!
"_I am he attesting sympathy (shall I make my list of things in the
house and ship the house that supports them?)._
"_I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet
of wickedness also._
* * * * *
"_My gait is no fault-finder's or rejector's gait, I moisten the roots
of all that has grown._
* * * * *
"_This minute that comes to me over the past decillions._
"_There is no better than it and now. What behaved well in the past or
behaves well to-day is not such a wonder._
"_The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an
infidel._"
He turned round to speak to Peter, then saw that he had his hand on
Millie's shoulder, she seated at the table, looking up and smiling at
him.
Millie and Peter? Why not? Only that would be needed to complete his
happiness, his wonderful, miraculous happiness.