A REUNION
427
His smile was mutilated by the moonlight. It was at once inquir–
ing and patronizing. He said, "Why?"
"I don't know. Only perhaps it's suffering."
"Let me allow you to complete the murder," he said, and as
I stood up and started to move towards the dying bug, he added,
"I couldn't step on it again myself. The shell cracking under my foot
gave me a horrible feeling that I was breaking human bones."
"Then I can't
now!))
I cried. I returned to my place. For some
time we remained there, watching the beetle's noiseless fit; it seemed
hours later that a sudden darkness passed over the floor of the sum–
mer house and my father sprang to his feet with a cry. But imme–
diately himself again, as though he had not uttered it, as though the
sound were as unconnected with us as the distant hoot of an owl,
he said, "You must excuse me. I go to bed early, though I don't sleep.
Feel free to stay as long as you like. I can send a lantern out to you."
He lighted a lantern he had taken down from the shelf above the
bench and
his
face, illumined briefly, revealed no more than had
his
voice, the dismay that had made him cry out.
"No, thank you," I said. "The moon will come out again. I
can see without it anyhow."
I followed him out the door and lay down upon the grass. I
leaned on my elbow and watched him pass through the opening in
the hedge. His lantern's arc caricatured him as a ghost out-of-joint;
his head was peaked by the phenomenon of the light and in place of
arms, two narrow wings listlessly swung while the fattened torso
wambled. The sad light diminished and was absorbed. The moon
shone forth again and in its light, as I turned and leaned upon the
other elbow, I could see the beetle on the floor of the summer house
still pitching in its morbid dance. I lay back upon the grass and
seemed to fall into the depths of the earth with a forcible weariness
and closed my eyes and, perhaps for a few minutes, dozed. Then,
suddenly confused as one whose dream of last night contradicts or
corresponds to today's facts, it occurred to me that the beetle actually
was dead and had been from the first and that the changeable moon's
ruflling chiaroscuro had misled us. I went into the summer house and
stooping down, saw that some time since, its life arrested, death had
chosen for its final attitude that of a human foetus with curved thorax
protected by the. folded, tattered
wings.
I left it in its desolate repose
and as I passed through the garden on my way to the house, I shook
the lowest branch of the middle mountain ash tree so that in the silence,
the crimson fruit, soft as it was, made a faint sound as it fell on the
gravestone.
