He shook hands and left her at the door of her cousin’s
house. When he turned away he felt the last hold
for him had gone. The town, as he sat upon the
car, stretched away over the bay of railway, a level
fume of lights. Beyond the town the country,
little smouldering spots for more towns—the
sea—the night—on and on!
And he had no place in it! Whatever spot he stood
on, there he stood alone. From his breast, from
his mouth, sprang the endless space, and it was there
behind him, everywhere. The people hurrying along
the streets offered no obstruction to the void in
which he found himself. They were small shadows
whose footsteps and voices could be heard, but in
each of them the same night, the same silence.
He got off the car. In the country all was dead
still. Little stars shone high up; little stars
spread far away in the flood-waters, a firmament below.
Everywhere the vastness and terror of the immense
night which is roused and stirred for a brief while
by the day, but which returns, and will remain at
last eternal, holding everything in its silence and
its living gloom. There was no Time, only Space.
Who could say his mother had lived and did not live?
She had been in one place, and was in another; that
was all. And his soul could not leave her, wherever
she was. Now she was gone abroad into the night,
and he was with her still. They were together.
But yet there was his body, his chest, that leaned
against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar.
They seemed something. Where was he?—one
tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear of wheat
lost in the field. He could not bear it.
On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing
him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost
nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which
everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars
and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went
spinning round for terror, and holding each other
in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them
all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much,
and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness,
and yet not nothing.
“Mother!” he whispered—“mother!”
She was the only thing that held him up, himself,
amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled
herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him
alongside with her.
But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply,
he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence.
His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would
not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow
her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing
town, quickly.
