us there’s no return.—Go back,” she said, “go back to the life you know—the life you understand—where there can always be a new beginning—a new life.”
“And you—” Eugene said dumbly, miserably.
“Good-bye, my dear,” she said so low and gently he could scarcely hear her. “Think of me sometimes, won’t you?—I’ll not forget you.” And before he could speak she kissed him once and was gone, so light and swift that he did not know it, until the door had closed behind her. And for some time, like a man in a stupor, he stood there looking out of the window at the grey wet light of England.
The next day he went away, and never saw any of them again, but he could not forget them. Although he had never passed beyond the armour of their hard bright eyes, or breached the wall of their crisp, friendly, and impersonal speech, or found out anything about them, he always thought of them with warmth, with a deep and tender affection, as if he had always known them—as if, somehow, he could have lived with them or made their lives his own had he only said a word or turned the handle of a door—a word he never knew, a door he never found.
LXXIV
The day before he went away, the Rhodes scholars invited Eugene to lunch. That was a fine meal: they ate together in their rooms in college, they had opened their purses to the college chef, and had told him not to spare himself but to go the limit. Before the meal they drank together a bottle of good sherry wine, and as they ate they drank the college ale, strong, brown, and mellow, and when they came to coffee, they all finished off on a bottle of port apiece.
There was a fine thick seasonable soup, of the colour of mahogany, and then a huge platter piled high with delicate brown-golden portions of filet of sole, and a roast of mutton, tender, fragrant, juicy and delicious as no other mutton that Eugene had ever eaten, with red currant jelly, well-seasoned sprouts, and boiled potatoes, to go with it, and at the end a fine apple-tart, thick cream, sharp cheese, and crackers.
It was a fine meal, and when they finished with it they were all happy and exultant. They were beautifully drunk and happy, with that golden, warm, full-bodied and most lovely drunkenness that can come only from good rich wine and mellow ale and glorious and abundant food—
