And yet… It was too much to swallow at one time; in their minds and bodies they were dry of the belief in living children.
“This is all part of your madness, Jingadangelow,” Greybeard said harshly. “Your mind is obsessed with getting hold of more of these young creatures. Please leave us. We want to hear no more – we have our own madnesses to contend with.”
“Wait! You’re mad, Greybeard, yes, not I! Was my reasoning not clear enough? I’m saner than you are, with your crazy desire to get to the mouth of the river.” He leant forward and clasped his hands together in a sort of agony. “Listen to me! I have a reason for telling you all this.”
“It had better be good.”
“It is good. It’s an idea. It’s the best idea I ever had, and I know you – both of you – will also appreciate it.
You are both reasonable people, and it has been a great delight to come across you again after all these centuries, despite that unfortunate incident this morning, for which I fancy you were even more to blame than I – but, no, let’s forget that. The truth is, that seeing you made me yearn for intelligent company – not the company of the fools that surround me now.” Jingadangelow leant forward and addressed himself solely to Greybeard. “I am offering to give up everything and come along with you, wherever you go. I shall follow your lead implicitly, of course. It’s a great and noble renunciation. I make it purely for my soul’s sake, and because I am bored with these imbeciles who follow me.”
In the brief silence that followed, the fat man looked anxiously at his listeners; he tried a smile on Martha, thought better of it, and switched it off.
“You collected the fools who follow you, and you must put up with them,” Greybeard said slowly. “That’s something I think I learned from Martha not a million years ago: however you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.”
“But this Master role, good heavens, it is not my only role. I wish to leave it behind.”
“I don’t doubt you have a dozen roles you can play, Jingadangelow, but I’m equally sure that the essence of you lies in your roles. We don’t want you with us – I have to be brutally frank. We are happy! For all that everyone has lost since the terrible accident back in 1981, one thing at least we have gained – there is no longer need for the hypocrisies and shams of civilization; we can be our natural selves. But you would cause dissent among us, because you carry the old rigmarole of mask-wearing into these simple days. You’re too old to drop it now – how many thousands of years old are you? – and so you would never find peace with us.”
“You and I are philosophers, Greybeard! The salt of the earth! I want to share your simple life with you.”
“No. You couldn’t share it. You could only spoil it. It’s no deal. I’m sorry.”
He took down the lantern from the stone shelf and put it into Jingadangelow’s hand. The Master looked at him, then slowly swung his head to see Martha’s face. Extending a hand, he clutched the hem of her dress.
“Mrs. Greybeard, your husband’s grown hard since we met at Swifford Fair. You persuade him. I tell you there are children on the downs near here – Chammoy was one of them. The three of us could hunt them out and instal ourselves as teachers. They’d look after us while we taught them all our old knowledge. Convince this hard-hearted man of yours, I beg you.”
She said, “You heard what he said. He’s the boss.”
Jingadangelow sighed.
Almost to himself he said, “In the end, we’re all alone. Consciousness – it’s a burden.”
Slowly, he helped himself to his feet. Martha also rose. A tear forced itself from his right eye and rolled with some command down his cheek and over the expanse of his chin, where a crinkle diverted it down towards his neck.