If I had “destroyed” Carol, it was remarkable that Antony had said, at an earlier meeting, not only that she had loved me from the moment we met in Hartley Harrington’s studio, but that this love was “sun, moon, and stars to her.” He had also said: “The catastrophic change in her life caused by her father’s sudden death was given meaning by the fact that, through it, she met you. You say that love is rare. That’s perfectly true, it is. You say it transfigures. That’s true too, it does. It transfigured Carol.”
How, then, had I destroyed her?
For some complex reason, directly Antony discovered that I loved Carol, jealousy dominated him and compelled him to reveal everything he had intended to hide. So long as I loathed my servitude to Carol and longed to break it, he could endure the knowledge that she loved me. It was secret knowledge. It would continue to be secret, because I was blind. And he wanted me to remain blind.
Of all the false catchwords which circulate daily, like counterfeit coins, none is more spurious than the one which glibly asserts that “love is blind.” It is a total lie. Hatred is blind. Only love sees the reality behind the appearance—and only love, therefore, can create a transformation scene, I have discovered that. And the modern world will discover it—or perish.
A sudden roar of traffic warned me that I had reached a main thoroughfare. I looked round. I was near Regent’s Park. The pale sunshine would last only a few minutes, then the short January day would be done.
I looked at my watch. Drina was due at the flat in about an hour. I went into the park, which was almost deserted. Ungainly ducks slipped on the ice while an excited dog barked furiously. A little girl in a red coat and white gaiters—looking like a figure in a fairy story—gazed at a toy boat, ice-bound near the bank. Wheeling gulls uttered their long-drawn melancholy cry.
I walked on.
If Carol’s vicissitudes had been given meaning because, through them, she had met me—I now recognised that isolated events in my life had become linked because of her: childhood; the Empty House; that Whit Monday; loneliness; servitude; the terror of the dream. And—Fredrika.
It seemed inevitable that, locked away together, were drawings of a girl I had created—and photographs of a woman I had destroyed. For, in a sense unguessed by Antony, I had destroyed Carol. I had destroyed a Carol who would have reached full stature if I had not been blinded by pride.
But I knew now that I should not be alone. I should never be alone. I cared nothing how incredulous others would be, I knew that, since her death, Carol had been near me and would remain near me. And I knew too that the innocence of which I have often dreamed—not the fragile innocence of childhood, but innocence which stems from experience—need be a dream no longer.
“He is the most fortunate of men who can trace an unbroken connection between the end of his life and the beginning.”
I came to a standstill.
Ghostly sunshine had vanished. No one to be seen or heard. Already, night was annexing the dominion of day.
I stood motionless.
And then I prayed—as I had not prayed since I knelt in the porch of the Empty House. . . .