After nearly an hour, the Superintendent was shaken, but not convinced. ‘See here, my lord,’ he said at last. ‘I see your point, and you’re quite right. It’s no good saying. He might or She might, because there’d always be a clever counsel to say, might ain’t necessarily right. And I see I been a bit hasty, overlooking that window and the trap-door and about something having been thrown at the deceased. Better late than never. I’ll be round again in the morning, and we’ll go into all them points. And here’s another thing. I’ll bring Joe Sellon with me, and you can try for yourself about him gettin’ through them-mullions, d’you call them? Because, not to put too fine a point upon it, he’d make two of you, my lord-and what’s more, it’s my belief you could get through pretty well almost anything, including a judge and jury, if you’ll pardon me saying so… No, don’t you mistake me. I ain’t out to put nothing on Aggie Twitterton-I’m out to find who killed deceased, and prove it. And I will prove it, if I have to go through the place with a tooth-comb.’

‘Then,’ said Peter, ‘you have to be up pretty early in the morning, to stop our London friends from carrying away the furniture, lock, stock and barrel.’

‘I’ll see they don’t take the trap-door,’ retorted the Superintendent. ‘Nor yet the doors and windows. And now I’ll be getting off home, and I’m very sorry for keeping you and her ladyship up like this.’

‘Not at all,’ said Peter. ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow-we’ve had quite a Shakespearean evening, haven’t we?’

‘Well,’ said Harriet, as her lord returned from seeing the Superintendent to the door, ‘he wasn’t unreasonable, after all. But oh! I do hope there won’t be any more people tonight.’

‘Nous menons une vie assez mouvementé. I’ve never known such a day. Bunter looks quite haggard-I have sent him to bed. As for me, I don’t feel like the same person I was before breakfast.’

‘I don’t even feel the same person I was before dinner. Peter-about that. It’s frightened me rather. I’ve always so loathed and dreaded any sort of possessiveness. You know how I’ve always run away from it.’

‘I’ve reason to know.’ He made a wry face. ‘You ran like the Red Queen.’

‘I know I did. And now-I start it, of all people! I simply can’t think what came over me. It’s frightful. Is that sort of thing always going to happen to me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, lightly. ‘I can’t imagine. In an experience of women extending, like the good Dr Watson’s, over many nations, and three separate continents-’

‘Why separate? Do ordinary continents come blended, like teas?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what it says in the book. Three separate continents. In all my experience, you are completely unprecedented. I never met anybody like you.’

‘Why? Possessiveness isn’t unprecedented.’

‘On the contrary-it’s as common as mud. But to recognise it in one’s self and chuck it overboard is-unusual. If you want to be a normal person, my girl, you should let it rip and give yourself and everybody else hell with it. And you should call it something eke-devotion or self-sacrifice and that sort of thing. If you go on behaving with all this reason and generosity, everybody will think we don’t give a damn for one another.’

‘Well-if ever I do anything like that again, for heaven’s sake don’t give in… you wouldn’t have, really?’

‘If it had come to the point-yes, I should. I couldn’t live in a wrangle. Not with you, anyway.’

‘I wouldn’t have believed you could be so weak. As if a possessive person is ever going to be satisfied. If you gave in once, you’d have to do it again and again. Like Danegeld.’

‘Don’t be harsh with me, Domina. If it happens again, I’ll take a stick to you. I promise. But I wasn’t sure what I was up against-la femme jalouse de l’oeuvre, or a perfectly reasonable objection, or just marriage as such. I can’t expect being married to be just like not being married, can I? I thought I might be heading the wrong way. I thought if I showed you where the hitch was-I don’t know what I thought. It doesn’t matter. I only know what you said, and that it took my breath away.’

‘I only know that I started to behave like a pig and thought better of it. Peter-it hasn’t upset the-the things you said before? It hasn’t spoilt anything?’

‘To know that I can trust you better than myself? What do you think?… But listen, dear-for God’s sake let’s take the word “possess” and put a brick round its neck and drown it. I will not use it or hear it used-not even in the crudest physical sense. It’s meaningless. We can’t possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have-Shakespeare, as Kirk would say… I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight. Something seems to have got off the chain. I’ve said things I didn’t think I could say if I lived to be a hundred-by which time most of them wouldn’t be worth saying.’

‘It seems to be that kind of day. I’ve said things too. I think I’ve said everything, except-’

‘That’s true. You never have said it. You’ve always found some other phrase for it. Un peu d’audace, que diable!… Well?’

‘I love you.’

‘Bravely said-though I had to screw it out of you like a cork out of a bottle. Why should that phrase be so difficult? I-personal pronoun, subjective case; L-O-V-E, love, verb, active, meaning-Well, on Mr Squeers’s principle, go to bed and work it out.’

The window was still open; for October, the air was strangely mild and still. From somewhere close at hand a cat-probably the ginger torn-lifted its voice in a long-drawn wail of unappeasable yearning. Peter’s right hand searched the sill, and closed upon the granite paperweight. But even in the act, he changed his mind, released his grip and with the other hand drew the casement to and fastened it

‘Who am I,’ said he aloud, ‘to cast stones at my fellow-mortal?’

Chapter XIX. Prickly Pear

‘Peter, what were you dreaming about early this morning? It sounded pretty awful’

He looked vexed. ‘Oh, my God, have I started that again? I thought I’d learnt to keep my dreams to myself. Did I say things? Tell me the worst.’

‘I couldn’t make out what you said. But it sounded as though-to put it mildly-you had something on your mind.’

‘What an agreeable companion I must be,’ he said, bitterly. ‘I know. I’ve been told about it before. The perfect bedfellow-so long as I keep awake. I’d no business to risk it; but one always hopes one’s going to come right again some time. In future I’ll remove myself.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Peter. You stopped dreaming as soon as I got hold of you.’

‘So I did. It comes back to me now… Fifteen of us, marching across a prickly desert, and we were all chained together. There was something I had forgotten-to do or tell somebody-but I couldn’t stop, because of the chain… Our mouths were full of sand, and there were flies and things… We were in dark blue uniforms, and we had to go on…’

He broke off. ‘I don’t know why blue uniforms-it’s usually something to do with the War. And telling one’s dreams is the last word in egotism.’

‘I want to hear it; it sounds pretty foul.’

‘Well, it was, in a way… Our boots were broken with the march… When I looked down, I saw the bones of my own feet, and they were black, because we’d been hanged in chains a long time ago and were beginning to come to pieces.’

‘Mais priez dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre.’