第116章

"Why horrible?It's ordinary light from the room.""But it moves.""So does the moon.""But it is a clenched fist.""Why not?""But it is going to touch me.""Let it."And,seeming to gather motion,the patch ran up his blanket.Presently a blue snake appeared;then another,parallel to it."Is there life in the moon?""Of course.""But Ithought it was uninhabited.""Not by Time,Death,Judgment,and the smaller snakes.""Smaller snakes!"said Leonard indignantly and aloud."What a notion!"By a rending effort of the will he woke the rest of the room up.Jacky,the bed,their food,their clothes on the chair,gradually entered his consciousness,and the horror vanished outwards,like a ring that is spreading through water.

"I say,Jacky,I'm going out for a bit."

She was breathing regularly.The patch of light fell clear of the striped blanket,and began to cover the shawl that lay over her feet.Why had he been afraid?He went to the window,and saw that the moon was descending through a clear sky.He saw her volcanoes,and the bright expanses that a gracious error has named seas.They paled,for the sun,who had lit them up,was coming to light the earth.Sea of Serenity,Sea of Tranquillity,Ocean of the Lunar Storms,merged into one lucent drop,itself to slip into the sempiternal dawn.And he had been afraid of the moon!

He dressed among the contending lights,and went through his money.It was running low again,but enough for a return ticket to Hilton.As it clinked Jacky opened her eyes.

"Hullo,Len!What ho,Len!"

"What ho,Jacky!see you again later."

She turned over and slept.

The house was unlocked,their landlord being a salesman at Convent Garden.Leonard passed out and made his way down to the station.The train,though it did not start for an hour,was already drawn up at the end of the platform,and he lay down in it and slept.

With the first jolt he was in daylight;they had left the gateways of King's Cross,and were under blue sky.Tunnels followed,and after each the sky grew bluer,and from the embankment at Finsbury Park he had his first sight of the sun.It rolled along behind the eastern smokes--a wheel,whose fellow was the descending moon--and as yet it seemed the servant of the blue sky,not its lord.He dozed again.Over Tewin Water it was day.To the left fell the shadow of the embankment and its arches;to the right Leonard saw up into the Tewin Woods and towards the church,with its wild legend of immortality.Six forest trees--that is a fact--grow out of one of the graves in Tewin churchyard.The grave's occupant--that is the legend--is an atheist,who declared that if God existed,six forest trees would grow out of her grave.These things in Hertfordshire;and farther afield lay the house of a hermit--Mrs.