arnold told the story of his researches and perplexities at the next meeting of the three old friends in the quiet court leading into the inn. the scene had changed into a night in june, with the trees in the inn garden fluttering in a cool breeze, that wafted a vague odour of hayfields far away into the very heart of london. the liquor in the brown jar smelt of gascon vineyards and herb-gardens, and ice had been laid about it, but not for too long a time.
harliss’s word all through arnold’s tale was:
“i know every inch of that neighbourhood, and i told you there was no such place.”
perrott was judicial. he allowed that the history was a remarkable one: “you have three witnesses,” arnold had pointed out.
“yes,” said perrott, “but have you allowed for the marvellous operation of the law of coincidences? there’s a case, trivial enough, perhaps you may think, that made a deep impression on me when i read it, a few years ago. forty years before, a man had bought a watch in singapore—or hong kong, perhaps. the watch went wrong, and he took it to a shop in holborn to be seen to. the man who took it from him over the counter was the man who had sold him the watch in the east all those years before. you can never put coincidence out of court, and dismiss it as an impossible solution. its possibilities are infinite.”
then arnold told the last broken, imperfect chapter of the story.
“after that night at the king of jamaica,” he began, “i went home and thought it all over. there seemed no more to be done. still, i felt as if i would like to have another look at this singular park, and i went up there one dark afternoon. and then and there i came upon the young man who had lost his way, and had lost—as he said—the one who lived in the white house on the hill. and i am not going to tell you about her, or her house, or her enchanted gardens. but i am sure that the young man was lost also—and for ever.”
and after a pause, he added:
“i believe that there is a perichoresis, an interpenetration. it is possible, indeed, that we three are now sitting among desolate rocks, by bitter streams...and with what companions?”
