Chapter 29 - Page 2

all? All is vanity. What's the good of
continuing to function if one's doomed to be snuffed out at last
along with everything else?' Yes, yes. I know exactly how you
feel. It's most distressing if one allows oneself to be
distressed. But then why allow oneself to be distressed? After
all, we all know that there's no ultimate point. But what
difference does that make?"

At this point the somnambulist suddenly woke up. "What?" he
said, blinking and frowning at his interlocutor. "What?" Then
breaking away he dashed up the stairs, two steps at a time.

Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him.
"It makes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the
same, always, under whatever circumstances--under whatever
circumstances," he added, raising his voice to a shout. But
Denis was already far out of hearing, and even if he had not
been, his mind to-night was proof against all the consolations of
philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between his teeth and
resumed his meditative pacing. "Under any circumstances," he
repeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it
true? And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his
pipe had burned itself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink
of gin and went to bed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently
asleep.

Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silk
pyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards
on his bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle
which he had left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to
the socket. He looked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one.
His head ached, his dry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had
been bruised from behind, and the blood was beating within his
ears a loud arterial drum. He got up, opened the door, tiptoed
noiselessly along the passage, and began to mount the stairs
towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants' quarters
under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right he opened
a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-
dark cupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and
old leather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping
with his hands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to
the leads of the western tower. He found the ladder, and set his
feet on the rungs; noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his
head; the moonlit sky was over him, he breathed the fresh, cool
air of the night. In a moment he was standing on the leads,
gazing out over the dim, colourless landscape, looking
perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feet below.

Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to
look at