And so on, and so on. On ships, in airports, in expensive hotels, in obscure hotels, in restaurants, on trains. Recognised, questioned, sympathised with, fawned upon-yes, that had been the hardest. Women… Women with eyes like spaniels. Women with that capacity for worship that women had.
And then there had been, of course, the Press. For even now he was still news. (Mercifully, that would not last long.) So many crude brash questions: What are your plans? Would you say now that-? Can I quote you as believing-? Can you give us a message?
A message, a message, always a message! To the readers of a particular journal, to the country, to men and women, to the world-
But he had never had a message to give. He had been a messenger, which was a very different thing. But no one was likely to understand that.
Rest-that was what he had needed. Rest and time. Time to take in what he himself was, and what he should do. Time to take stock of himself. Time to start again, at forty, and live his own life. He must find out what had happened to him, to Llewellyn Knox, the man, during the fifteen years he had been employed as a messenger.
Sipping his little glass of coloured liqueur, looking at the people, the lights, the harbour, he thought that this would be a good place to find out all that. It was not the solitude of a desert he wanted, he wanted his fellow kind. He was not by nature a recluse or an ascetic. He had no vocation for the monastic life. All he needed was to find out who and what was Llewellyn Knox. Once he knew that, he could go ahead and take up life once more.
It all came back, perhaps, to Kant’s three questions:
What do I know?
What can I hope?
What ought I to do?
Of these questions, he could answer only one, the second.
The waiter came back and stood by his table.
“They are good magazines?” he asked happily.
Llewellyn smiled.
“Yes.”
“They were not very new, I am afraid.”
“That does not matter.”
“No. What is good a year ago is good now.”
He spoke with calm certainty.
Then he added:
“You have come from the ship? The Santa Margherita? Out there?”
He jerked his head towards the jetty.
“Yes.”
“She goes out again to-morrow at twelve, that is right?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. I am staying here.”
“Ah, you have come for a visit? It is beautiful here, so the visitors say. You will stay until the next ship comes in? On Thursday?”
“Perhaps longer. I may stay here some time.”
“Ah, you have business here!”
“No, I have no business.”
“People do not usually stay long here, unless they have business. They say the hotels are not good enough, and there is nothing to do.”
“Surely there is as much to do here as anywhere else?”
“For us who live here, yes. We have our lives and our work. But for strangers, no. Although we have foreigners who have come here to live. There is Sir Wilding, an Englishman. He has a big estate here-it came to him from his grandfather. He lives here altogether now, and writes books. He is a very celebrated se?or, and much respected.”
“You mean Sir Richard Wilding?”
The waiter nodded.
“Yes, that is his name. We have known him here many, many years. In the war he could not come, but afterwards he came back. He also paints pictures. There are many painters here. There is a Frenchman who lives in a cottage up at Santa Dolmea. And there is an Englishman and his wife over on the other side of the island. They are very poor, and the pictures he paints are very odd. She carves figures out of stone as well-”
He broke off and darted suddenly forward to a table in the corner at which a chair had been turned up, to indicate that it was reserved. Now he seized the chair and drew it back a little, bowing a welcome at the woman who came to occupy it.
She smiled her thanks at him as she sat down. She did not appear to give him an order, but he went away at once. The woman put her elbows on the table and stared out over the harbour.