It seemed to
me a knowledge tragical enough for her, that he should have died as he did,
so nearly in English waters; within a few days of the home coming, which
they had passionately expected for years.
It would have been mere brutality to afflict her further, by lifting the
veil of obscurity, which hangs over that calm, moonless night, by pointing
to the note of intention in it. For it is in my experience, that accidents
so opportune do not in real life occur, and I could not forget that,
from Garth's point of view, death was certainly a solution. Was it not,
moreover, precisely a solution, which so little time before he had the
appearance of having found? Indeed when the first shock of his death was
past, I could feel that it was after all a solution: with his 'luck' to
handicap him, he had perhaps avoided worse things than the death he met.
For the luck of such a man, is it not his temperament, his character? Can
any one escape from that? May it not have been an escape for the poor devil
himself, an escape too for the woman who loved him, that he chose to drop
down, fathoms down, into the calm, irrecoverable depths of the Atlantic,
when he did, bearing with him at least an unspoilt ideal, and leaving her a
memory that experience could never tarnish, nor custom stale?
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE POEMS AND PROSE OF ERNEST DOWSON ***
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