And yet, why blame them for their
survival? And how know that nothing of the past ever came to them,
revisiting, hovering? Something--sometimes--perhaps? One knew so
little. How not be tender to what, as it seemed to me, perhaps the
dead loved?
So strong in me now was the wish to see again all those things, to
touch them and, as it were, commune with them, and so queerly may the
mind be wrought upon in a solitude among memories, that there were
moments when I almost expected that the door would obey my will. I was
recalled to a clearer sense of reality by something which I had not
before noticed. In the door-post to the right was a small knob of
rusty iron--mocking reminder that to gain admission to a house one
does not `will' the door: one rings the bell--unless it is rusty and
has quite obviously no one to answer it; in which case one goes away.
Yet I did not go away. The movement that I made, in despite of myself,
was towards the knob itself. But, I hesitated, suppose I did what I
half meant to do, and there were no sound. That would be ghastly. And
surely there would be no sound. And if sound there were, wouldn't that
be worse still? My hand drew back, wavered, suddenly closed on the
knob. I heard the scrape of the wire--and then, from somewhere within
the heart of the shut house, a tinkle.
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