Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/35



is difficult, as I have said, in looking back over those days, to see things in any fixed order. It is as if one's memories floated in a kind of haze, appearing and disappearing, melting into one another. But there is a definite point from which my story becomes consecutive, and I can carry it back as far as that cold, clear January morning, the morning of Mr. Carroll's funeral, when I stood beside my father, at some distance from the grave, among a group of people I did not know, and whom I should never see again. I examined them all with a mild and impartial curiosity, and was struck by the fact that none of them showed the slightest emotion, though all alike wore a grave and decorous demeanour. I could not blame them, for I did not feel sad myself. Mr. Carroll had always been perfectly amiable to me, but I had seen little of him, and when we did meet he had looked at me vaguely, as if he were unable to remember who I was. I had only known him as an invalid, occasionally hobbling about with the aid of two black, silver-headed sticks, but for the most part keeping pretty closely to his own rooms. He seemed to me to be very old, yet at his death I learned that he was not old at all, his appearance of decrepitude being simply the result of an excessively disorderly life, imposed upon a naturally wretched constitution. I learned, at the same time, the history of Mrs. Carroll's marriage; how, before