d the open down. He had often slept
here himself, alone, and on his wedding-night, and he knew that the turf
was dry, and that if you laid your face to it you would smell the
thyme. For a moment the earth aroused her, and she began to chatter. "My
prayers--" she said anxiously. He gave her one hand, and she was
asleep before her fingers had nestled in its palm. Their touch made him
pensive, and again he marvelled why he, the accident, was here. He was
alive and had created life. By whose authority? Though he could not
phrase it, he believed that he guided the future of our race, and that,
century after century, his thoughts and his passions would triumph in
England. The dead who had evoked him, the unborn whom he would evoke he
governed the paths between them. By whose authority?

Out in the west lay Cadover and the fields of his earlier youth, and
over them descended the crescent moon. His eyes followed her decline,
and against her final radiance he saw, or thought he saw, the outline
of the Rings. He had always been grateful, as people who understood him
knew. But this evening his gratitude seemed a gift of small account. The
ear was deaf, and what thanks of his could reach it? The body was dust,
and in what ecstasy of his could it share? The spirit had fled, in agony
and loneliness, never to know that it bequeathed him salvation.

He filled his pipe, and then sat pressing the unlit tobacco with his
thumb. "What am I to do?" he thought. "Can he notice the things he gave
me? A parson would know. But what's a man like me to do, who works all
his life out of doors?" As he wondered, the silence of the night was
broken. The whistle of Mr. Pembroke's train came faintly, and a lurid
spot passed over the land--passed, and the silence returned. One thing
remained that a man of his sort might do. He bent down reverently and
saluted the child; to whom he had given the name of their mother.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Longest Journey, by E. M. Forster

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