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Resurrection - Willoam Gerhardie

Again trees.

Blithely, blithely, then . . . . So we'Il go no more a-roving, so late into the night.

Bonzo, you're dead. You're quite dead. Dead ? -

Bonzo looked at me in that mirthful way he had when his amusement at a situation surpassed his power of giving expression to it : when he opened his eyes wide-wide, in mute appealing impotence,
just feebly shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of inanition which suggested that it was beyond him. So late.  So light.

Evidently dying did not bring about in a flash the supra-terrestrial understanding one expects. What balloon-like lightness in one's limbs-and what silliness in the head.

Regent's Park, and who are you ? I am the wind ! the wind ! the wind ! Lighheaded and lighthearted.

There wasn't really anything to say. Neither was there really anything to do. That end of term feeling, of, a vacation too vast to be quite comfortable, overtook us. True enough, the same life went on around us. People passed us, taking no notice of us. It was like visiting your old College, to find the familiar conditions unchanged but no one calling attention to your presence there. This eavesdropping, fascinating at first, palled on one after a time.

Were one able suddenly to surprise one's friends, cry out that one had seen and heard everything, there would have been compensation in it for this sustained ignoring on their part.
But this did not seem possible. Their persistent ignoring ended in wearing down one's capacity for eavesdropping upon the vast mortality of men. Really no more than the anonymous spying we do every day in buses and trains and popular restaurants, so intensely interesting that we would just as soon sit at home.

Away ! Bonzo urged me to get away with the same impatience with which he would drive me out of London into the open country, only to be caught in the network of tramlines and those endless urban arteries called Greater London which wear down the motoring townsman pining for quick escape. Now, as Bonzo urged me forward, I also doubted whether immortality, the perfect bliss and supra-terrestrial understanding was within immediate reach.

I was fascinated, pleased to follow Bonzo's impetuous spirit, so eager to reach the outer depths. No wonder ! Nothing to fear, he who had lost his little tail of light. I felt like a good, well-behaved child, who, in the company of his nurse had been approached in a public park by a street urchin who lures him on to play in the open field, and I stepped out after him a little gingerly, though with a longing heart, without letting go of that tail of light, nurse's hand, who exhorted me to be careful, stressing all the time her responsibility to my people at home.

And then, Bonzo's spirit failing him, he of himself called a halt. It felt-all this-like moving into a great new house as yet without blinds or curtains or carpets. You dwelt here in this cold unsubstantial mansion ; you must make yourself at home for the night in this unfurnished mansion without blinds or curtains. What matter, Bonzo implied, if they have taken from you all you own : what matter about that other body on the bed: you are, as you see, still in life.