Part 7 (2/2)

Peter watched him go; he went at seven miles an hour; the dust ruffled and leapt at his heels.

Peter sat very still leaning back against the rough white wall, and thought what a pity it all was. What a pity, and what a bore, that one could not do things like other people. Short of being an Urquhart, who could do everything and had everything, whose pa.s.sing car flamed triumphant and lit the world into a splendid joy, and was approved under investigation with ”quite all right”--short of that glorious competence and pride of life, one might surely be an average man, who could walk from San Pietro to Florence without tumbling on the road at dawn. Peter sighed over it, rather crossly. The marvellous morning was insulted by his collapse; it became a remote thing, in which he might have no share.

As always, the inexorable ”Not for you” rose like a barred gate between him and the lucid country the white road threaded.

Peter in the dust began to whistle softly, to cheer himself, and because he was really feeling better, and because anyhow, for him or not for him, the land at dawn was a golden and glorious thing, and he loved it. What did it matter whether he could walk through it or not? There it lay, magical, clear-hewn, bathed in golden sunrise.

Round the turn of the road a bent figure came, stepping slowly and with age, a woodstack on his back. Heavier even than a knapsack containing a spirit kettle and a Decameron and biscuit remainders in a paper bag, it must be. Peter watched the slow figure sympathetically. Would he sway and topple over; and if he did would the woodstack break his fall? The whisky flask stood ready on Peter's left.

Peter stopped whistling to watch; then he became aware that once more the hidden distances were jarring and humming. He sat upright, and waited; a little s.p.a.ce of listening, then once again the sunG.o.d's chariot stormed into the morning.

Peter watched it grow in size. How extremely fortunate.... Even though one was again, as usual, found collapsed and absurd.

The woodstack pursued its slow advance. The music from Tchaichowsky admonished it, as a matter of form, from far off, then sharply, summarily, from a lessening distance. The woodstack was puzzled, vaguely worried. It stopped, dubiously moved to one side, and pursued its cautious way a little uncertainly.

Urquhart, without his chauffeur this time, was driving over the speed-limit, Peter perceived. He usually did. But he ought to slacken his pace now, or he would miss Peter by the wall. He was nearing the woodstack, just going to pa.s.s it, with a clear two yards between. It was not his doing: it was the woodstack that suddenly lessened the distance, lurching over it, taking the middle of the road.

Peter cried, ”Oh, don't--oh, _don't_,” idiotically, sprawling on hands and knees.

The car swung sharply about like a tugged horse; sprang to the other side of the road, hung poised on a wheel, as near as possible capsized. A less violent jerk and it would have gone clean over the woodstack that lay in the road on the top of its bearer.

By the time Peter got there, Urquhart had lifted the burden from the old bent figure that lay face downwards. Gently he turned it over, and they looked on a thin old face gone grey with more than age.

”He can't be,” said Urquhart. ”He can't be. I didn't touch him.”

Peter said nothing. His eyes rested on the broken end of a chestnut-stick protruding from the f.a.ggot, dangling loose by its bark. Urquhart's glance followed his.

”I see,” said Urquhart quietly. ”That did it. The lamp or something must have struck it and knocked him over. Poor old chap.” Urquhart's hand shook over the still heart. Peter gave him the whisky flask. Two minutes pa.s.sed. It was no good.

”His heart must have been bad,” said Urquhart, and the soft tones of his pleasant voice were harsh and unsteady. ”Shock, I suppose. How--how absolutely awful.”

How absolutely incongruous, Peter was dully thinking. Urquhart and tragedy; Urquhart and death. It was that which blackened the radiant morning, not the mercifully abrupt cessation of a worn-out life. For Peter death had two sharply differentiated aspects--one of release to the tired and old, for whom the gra.s.shopper was a burden; the other of an unthinkable blackness of tragedy--sheer sharp loss that knew no compensation. It was not with this bitter face that death had stepped into their lives on this clear morning. One could imagine that weary figure glad to end his wayfaring so; one could even imagine those steps to death deliberately taken; and one did imagine those he left behind him accepting his peace as theirs.

Peter said, ”It wasn't your fault. It was his doing--poor chap.”

The uncertain quaver in his voice brought Urquhart's eyes for a moment upon his face, that was always pale and was now the colour of putty.

”You're ill, aren't you?... I met Stephen.... I was coming back anyhow; I knew you weren't fit to walk.”

He muttered it absently, frowning down on the other greyer face in the grey dust. Again his hand unsteadily groped over the still heart, and lay there for a moment.

Abruptly then he looked up, and met Peter's shadow-circled eyes.

”I was over-driving,” he said. ”I ought to have slowed down to pa.s.s him.”

He stood up, frowning down on the two in the road.

”We've got to think now,” he said, ”what to do about it.”

To that thinking Peter offered no help and no hindrance. He sat in the road by the dead man and the bundle of wood, and looked vaguely on the remote morning that death had dimmed. Denis and death: Peter would have done a great deal to sever that incredible connection.

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