THAT evening, about nine o’clock, when Melia and the Corporal returned to Torrington Cottage, they found a cosy fire awaiting them in the charming sitting room, an act of grace on the part of Fanny, a handmaiden from the village, for the evenings were chilly. They sat a few minutes together and then Melia retired for the night after having drawn a promise from the Corporal that he would not be long in following her example.

Alas, the Corporal did not feel in the least like going to bed. There was a decision to be made. In fact he had half made it already. But the good wife upstairs and the very chair in which he sat had cast their spells upon him. Gazing into the heart of the fire he realized that he was deliciously and solidly comfortable. All his days he had been a catlike lover of the comfortable. In the first instance it had been that as much as anything that had so nearly undone him. Conflicting voices were urging him, as somehow they always did, at critical moments in his life.

This beautiful room with its old furniture, its china, its bric-a-brac, its soft carpet, its one rare landscape upon the wall was an enchanted palace. Even now, after all these months of occupation, it seemed like sacrilege to be sitting in it. But it was a symptom of a changed condition. This lovely place with its poetry and its elegance was a dream come true. And the honor and the affection with which a world formerly so hard and so supercilious surrounded him now made life so much sweeter than ever before.

Sitting there in front of a delicious fire he felt that the peace and the beauty all about him had entered his soul. He had a right to these languors; he had purchased them with many unspeakable months of torture and pain. No one would blame him, no one could blame him if he left the dance to younger men. Suddenly he heard a little wind steal along the valley and he shivered at the image that was born upon its whisper. Just beyond these cosy, lamplit walls was Night, Chaos, Panic. Outside the tiny harbor he had won at such a price was all hell let loose.

He heard the awful Crumps, he could taste the icy mud they flung over him, he was plunged again in endless, hideous hours, he could see and feel the muck, the senseless muck, the boredom, the excruciating misery. The wind in the valley grew a little louder and he shuddered in the depths of his spirit.

The crocuses were out in the fields by the river. Next week would be April, the time of cloud, of glowing brake and flowering thorn, of daffodils and miraculous lights along the Sharrow. The little picture over the chimneypiece, which he had copied three times in his long convalescence, showed what April meant along the Sharrow. Friendship had taught him something, had given him eyes. He had been initiated into the higher mysteries. Beauty for the sake of Beauty—the world religion of the future—had been revealed to him. The sense of it seemed to fill him with passion as he gazed into the fire.

“Auntie!” Surely there was a voice in the room. Or was it the little wind outside softly trying the shutters? “Auntie!” It was there again. He got up unsteadily, but in a kind of ecstasy, half entrancement, half pain, and crossed to the French window. Very gently he slipped back the bolts and flung open the door. The darkness hit him, but there was nothing there. He knew there was nothing there, yet in his old carpet slippers he stepped out gingerly on to the wet lawn. The air was moist and mild and friendly, and as his eyes grew used to the mirk the rosebushes and the fruit trees took shape on either hand.

The shafts of light from the room he had left guided him across the grass as far as the path which led to the tower at the end of the garden. As soon as his feet were on the gravel he thought he heard the voice again. Of course it couldn’t be so. It was only the wind along the valley. And yet ... no ... if the wind wasn’t calling....

The gaunt line of the many-windowed tower loomed ahead. Less by calculation than by instinct he suddenly found the lowest of the twelve stone steps which led to its high door—in that darkness he couldn’t see it, and if he had seen it there was not the slightest reason for ascending, but just now he was possessed. Step after step shaped itself with a kind of intelligence to his old waterlogged slippers, the damp knob of the door came into his hand.

The door was locked. Silly fool he was! Must be cracked anyway! But the starched cuff of his best Sunday shirt had got entangled with something. The key, of course. It had been left in the lock. Careless to leave it like that.

Of a sudden the door came open. The ghostly abyss within smelt very damp and cheerless. Ought to have had an occasional fire there during the winter months. He felt his way cautiously in and his eyes adjusted themselves to the grimmer texture of the darkness. The chill made his teeth chatter. He felt in his pockets for a match, but he hadn’t got one; he moved gingerly forward, past a wooden table and a wicker chair; the spectral outline of an unshuttered window confronted him.

Outside was nothing but the wind in the valley. He couldn’t see a yard beyond the glass. The chill of the musty place was settling into his bones. What a fool not to be in his comfortable bed! But ... a voice was still whispering. There was something ... somewhere....

The wind was just like the little wind along that damned Canal. No wonder his teeth chattered. And then right out in the void he saw a star. It was so faint, so far beyond the valley and the wind’s voice that he was not sure it was a star. But as he stood looking at it the voice seemed to come quite close.

“Auntie ... Auntie....”

“That you, Jim ... here I am, boy....”

... Only a fool would stand with chattering teeth, in carpet slippers, at a goodish bit past midnight, talking to something that wasn’t there....

Somewhere in the darkness there was a presence. Perhaps it was outside the window. He felt his way back to the open door, as far as the veiled peril of the twelve stone steps. It was so dark that he couldn’t even see the topmost; there was not even a railing for such an emergency; a single false step and he would break his neck.

Queerly excited he stood poised on the threshold, feeling into space with one foot. The wind was in the garden below him. And then oddly, at a fresh angle, over by his left hand, he caught a glimpse of the star. He swayed forward into the void but the lamp of faith had been lit in his eyes. His taut nerves awoke to the fact that he was really descending the unseen steps one by one and that he was counting them. If he didn’t take extraordinary care he was very likely to kill himself, but the care he was taking seemed by no means extraordinary.

His old carpet slippers were shuffling along the gravel at last. He could make out a line of currant bushes by which ran the path to the house. As he moved forward the wind died away in the valley and he lost sight of the star. But he knew his way now. Pent up forces flowed from him through the wall of living darkness. “I’m coming, Jim!” he muttered. The wind seemed to answer him. And then he came to the end of the row of bushes and there beyond a patch of wet grass was the door of the cosy room still open with a subdued glow of lamp and fire shining beyond.

When he came in he took off his soaked slippers that they might not soil the beautiful carpet of which Melia was so proud. As he barred the door and drew the curtains across the window, the pretty old-fashioned clock on the chimneypiece chided him by melodiously striking one o’clock. He must be a fool—he had to be up at seven; but the enchanted room that was like a dream embodied cast one last spell upon him.

He had no need ... the Chaps wouldn’t expect it ... he was forty-five....

The voice was in the valley. It was a quarter past one. He raked out the last faint embers of the fire, then he put out the lamp and carried his wet slippers into the hall. After his recent adventure it was but a simple matter to find his way up the richly carpeted stairs without a light and creep into the room where his wife slept.

She was sleeping now. So cunningly he crept into the room that she did not stir. He listened to the gentle rise and fall of her soft breath. Good woman! brave woman! He tiptoed past the bed to where the window was and managed to draw up the clever new-fangled blinds without making a sound. Yes, there was the star. That was all he wanted to see. Faint it was, so faint that faith was needed to believe that it was a star. But there was nothing else it could be.

The little sobbing voice, now no more than a whisper, that, too, was out there. Jim’s voice ... cracked he must be ... such sloppy notions ... the wind along that damned canal....

Suddenly he turned from the star. At the beck of a queer impulse he knelt by the bed, burying his eyes in the soft counterpane. He prayed for the Chaps. He prayed for Melia. He prayed for the life that lay with her, the life coming to them so miraculously they knew not whence, after all those years.

Could it be that Jim was coming back to complete his great beginnings? Coming back to witch the world with beauty? Just a fancy. But everything was just a fancy. Jim had said so once, looking at the sunset on the bank of that canal.

And he was one who....

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