The Breaking Point - Page 119/275

He spoke to the dog, and it came and sniffed at him. Then it squatted in

front of him, looking up into his face.

"Lonely, old chap, aren't you?" he said. "Well, you've got nothing on

me."

He felt a little cheered as he turned back toward the hotel. A few

encounters with the things of his youth, and perhaps the cloud would

clear away. Already the court-house had stirred some memories. And on

turning back down the hill he had another swift vision, photographically

distinct but unrelated to anything that had preceded or followed it. It

was like a few feet cut from a moving picture film.

He was riding down that street at night on a small horse, and his father

was beside him on a tall one. He looked up at his father, and he seemed

very large. The largest man in the world. And the most important.

It began and stopped there, and his endeavor to follow it further

resulted in its ultimately leaving him. It faded, became less real,

until he wondered if he had not himself conjured it. But that experience

taught him something. Things out of the past would come or they would

not come, but they could not be forced. One could not will to revive

them.

He stood at a window facing north that night, under the impression

it was east, and sent his love and an inarticulate sort of prayer to

Elizabeth, for her safety and happiness, in the general direction of the

Arctic Circle.

Bassett had not returned in the morning, and he found himself with a

day on his hands. He decided to try the experiment of visiting the

Livingstone ranch, or at least of viewing it from a safe distance, with

the hope of a repetition of last night's experience. Of all his childish

memories the ranch house, next to his father, was most distinct. When

he had at various times tried to analyze what things he recalled he had

found that what they lacked of normal memory was connection. They stood

out, like the one the night before, each complete in itself, brief, and

having no apparent relation to what had gone before or what came after.

But the ranch house had been different. The pictures were mostly

superimposed on it; it was their background. Himself standing on the

mountain looking down at it, and his father pointing to it; the tutor

who was afraid of horses, sitting at a big table in a great wood-ceiled

and wood-paneled room; a long gallery or porch along one side of the

building and rooms added on to the house so that one had to go along the

gallery to reach them; a gun-room full of guns.