Chapter 9

In the silence and solitude of her room, Miss Thriplow sat up for a long time, pen in hand, in front of an open note-book. “Darling Jim,” she wrote, “darling Jim. To-day you came back to me so suddenly and unexpectedly that I could almost have cried aloud in front of all those people. Was it an accident that I picked that stiff leaf from Apollo’s tree and crushed it to fragrance between my fingers? Or were you there? was it you who secretly whispered to the unconscious part of me, telling me to pick that leaf? I wonder; oh, I wonder and wonder. Sometimes I believe that there are no accidents, that we do nothing by chance. To-night I felt sure of it.

“But I wonder what made you want to remind me of Mr. Chigwell’s little shop at Weltringham. Why did you want to make me see you sitting in the barber’s chair, so stiff and grown-up, with the wheel of the mechanical brush still turning overhead and Mr. Chigwell saying, ‘Hair’s very dry, Mr. Thriplow’? And the rubber driving band used always to remind me...” Miss Thriplow recorded the simile of the wounded snake which had first occurred to her this evening. There was no particular reason why she should have antedated the conceit and attributed its invention to her childhood. It was just a question of literary tact; it seemed more interesting if one said that it had been made up when one was a child; that was all. “I ask myself whether there is any particular significance in this reminder. Or perhaps it’s just that you find me neglectful and unremembering—poor darling, darling Jim—and take whatever opportunity offers of reminding me that you existed, that you still exist. Forgive me, Jim. Everybody forgets. We should all be kind and good and unselfish if we always remembered—remembered that other people are just as much alive and individual and complicated as we are, remembered that everybody can be just as easily hurt, that everybody needs love just as much, that the only visible reason why we exist in the world is to love and be loved. But that’s no excuse for me. It’s no excuse for any one to say that other people are just as bad. I ought to remember more. I oughtn’t to let my mind be choked with weeds. It’s not only the memory of you that the weeds choke; it’s everything that’s best and most delicate and finest. Perhaps you reminded me of Mr. Chigwell and the bay rum in order to remind me at the same time to love more, and admire more, and sympathise more, and be more aware. Darling Jim.”