Along the path that led from Bapchurch to Great Wymering there walked
two persons, slowly, and with an air of having talked themselves into
embarrassed silence. Their steps were gradually bringing them to the
stile upon which Arthur and Rose sat.
"That last remark of yours cut me to the quick," said the Doctor, at
last.
"I meant it to," said Lilian, firmly. "I want you to be cut to the
quick. It's our only chance."
"Of what?" enquired the Doctor, conscious of masculine stupidity.
"Of loving somehow. Oh, don't you understand? I want to care for you,
but you're making it impossible. You _will_ jest about the things
sacred to me. Your flippant tongue destroys everything. It's as I
said just now. I like my friends to be humorous; but my lover must be
serious."
"But I can't help it," pleaded the Doctor. "Take away my humour and I'm
frightened at what's left of myself. There's nothing but an appalling
chaos."
"Because you are afraid of life," said Lilian. "Men have laughed their
way through the ages; women have wept and lived. I can't share your
world of assumptions and rule of thumb laws. To me love is a chaos, a
dear confusion--a divine muddle. It's creation itself, an indefinite
proceeding beginning with God."
The Doctor harked back in his mind to the beginning of their talk. "But
you objected to my house," he mused, "that was how the discussion
arose. And now we've got somewhere up in the stars."
Lilian glanced up at them. "If only we could keep there! By their
habitations are men known. A house ought to be a sort of resting place.
No more. Once you elaborate it, it becomes a prison, with hard labour
attached."
"But where does all this lead?" pondered the Doctor, half falling in
with her mood. "Why not make some things permanent and as good as they
can be?"
"Because they are only part of ourselves, only so many additions to the
human organism, extra bits of brain. We're slowly discovering that.
Humanity daren't be permanent, except in its fundamentals, and all the
fundamentals have to do with living and being. Just think what would
happen if the blood in your veins became permanent?"
"Death," said the Doctor, speaking from knowledge rather than from
symbolical conviction.
"Well, then," resumed Lilian, triumphantly, "isn't all this possession
of things, all this wanting to have and keep, a sort of death,
beginning from the extremities? Wouldn't it be awful if the human body
didn't change, if we got fixed in some way, didn't grow old or lose our
hair, or have influenza?"
The Doctor paused in his walk. How strange that Lilian should say that!
It almost seemed as though she must have heard about the Clockwork man!
And then they both stopped, and at the same moment saw Rose and Arthur
seated on the stile.
"Let's go back," whispered Lilian, and they turned and retraced their
steps. The sight of the lovers sealed their lips. Doctor Allingham
struggled for a few moments with a strange sense of bigness wanting
to escape. Almost it was a physical sensation; as though the nervous
energy in his brain had begun to flow independently of the controls
that usually guided it through the channels graven by knowledge and
experience. It was Lilian who spoke next, and there was a note of pain
in her voice.
"Oh, why are we troubled like this? Why can't we be like _them_? We
shan't ever get any nearer happiness this way. We shan't ever be better
than those two. We've simply got a few more thoughts, a little more
knowledge--and it may be quite the wrong kind of knowledge."
"Then why--" began the Doctor, as though this begged the whole question.
"Oh, wait," said Lilian, "I had to have it out with you. I had to talk
of these things, as though talking's any good! I couldn't let you just
take me for granted. Don't you see? I suppose all this talk between us
is nothing but an extension of the age-long process of mating. I'm just
like the primitive woman running away from her man."
The Doctor paused in his walk and took hold of her elbows. "Does that
mean that you've been playing with me all this time?"
"Coquette," smiled Lilian, "only it's not been conscious until this
moment. Somehow those two reminded me. There's always this dread of
capture with us women, and nowadays it's more complicated and extended.
Yes, thought does give us longer life. Everything has a larger prelude.
I've been afraid of your big house, which will be such a nuisance to
look after. I've been afraid of a too brief honeymoon, and then of
you becoming a cheerful companion at meals and a regular winder up of
clocks." She laughed hysterically. "And then you might do woodcarving
in the winter evenings."
"Not on your life," roared the Doctor. "At the worst I shall bore you
with my many-times-told jests."
"And at the best I shall learn to put up with them," said Lilian.
"That's where my sense of humour will come in."
The Doctor suddenly took her in his arms. "But you care?" he
whispered. "You consent to make me young again?"
She stirred curiously in his arms, her mind newly alert.
"Oh, I never thought of that. How stupid we clever people are! I never
thought that being a lover would make you young."
"Ignoramus," laughed the Doctor. "A woman's first child is always her
husband."
"You and your epigrams!"
"You and your thoughts!"
She joined in his mirth. A little later it was before she had the last
word.
"Creation," she whispered, "I don't believe it's happened yet. That
seven days and seven nights is still going on. Man has yet to be
created, and woman must help to create him."