# Haworth's/Chapter XXV

CHAPTER XXV.
"I SHALL NOT TURN BACK."
Murdoch went out into the night alone. When he found himself outside the iron gate he stood still for a moment.
"I will not go home yet," he said; "not yet."
He knew this time where he was going when he turned his steps upon the road again. He had only left the place a few hours before.
The moonlight gave it almost a desolate look, he thought, as he passed through the entrance. The wind still swayed the grass upon the mounds fitfully, and the headstones cast darker shadows upon them. There was no shadow upon the one under which Stephen Murdoch rested. It lay in the broad moonlight. Murdoch noticed this as he stopped beside it. He sat down upon the grass, just as he had done in the afternoon.
"Better not go home, just yet," he said again. "There is time enough."
Suddenly an almost unnatural calmness had fallen upon him. His passions and uncertainties of the past few months seemed small things. He had reached a climax and for a moment there seemed time enough. He thought of the past almost coldly—going over the ground ​mentally, step by step. It was as if he thought of the doings of another man—one who was younger and simpler and whose life was now over.
"There are a good many things that are done with," he said mechanically, recalling Haworth's words.
He thought of the model standing in its old place in the empty room. It was a living thing awaiting his coming. The end might be anything—calamity, failure, death!—but to-night he had taken his first step toward that end.
"To-night I shall begin as he began," he thought; "to-night."
He threw himself full length upon the grass, clasping his hands beneath his head, his face turned upward to the vast clearness and depth above him. He had known it would come some day, but he never thought of its coming in this way. The man who slept under the earth at his side had begun with hope; he began as one who neither hoped nor feared, yielding only to a force stronger than himself.
He lay in this manner looking up for nearly an hour. Then he arose and stood with bared head in the white light and stillness.
"I shall not turn back," he said aloud at last, as if to some presence near him. "I shall not turn back, at least. Do not fear it."
And he turned away.
It was his mother who opened the door for him when he reached home.
"Come in," he said to her, with a gesture toward the inner room. "I have something to say to you."
She followed him in silence. Her expression was cold ​and fixed. It struck him that she, too, had lived past hope and dread.
She did not sit down when she had closed the door, but stood upright, facing him.
He spoke hoarsely.
"I am going upstairs," he said. "I told you once that some day it would see the light again in spite of us both. You can guess what work I shall do to-night."
"Yes," she answered, "I can guess. I gave up long ago."
She looked at him steadily; her eyes dilated a little as if with slow-growing fear of him.
"I knew it would end so," she went on. "I fought against my belief that it would, but it grew stronger every day—every hour. There was no other way."
"No," he replied, "there was no other way."
"I have seen it in your face," she said. "I have heard it in your voice. It has never been absent from your thoughts a moment—nor mine."
He did not speak.
"At first, when he died——"
Her voice faltered and broke, and then rose in a cry almost shrill.
"He did not die!" she cried. "He is not dead. He lives now—here! There is no death for him—not even death until it is done."
She panted for breath; her thin chest rose and fell—and yet suddenly she checked herself and stood before him with her first strained cairn.
"Go," she said. " I cannot hold you. If there is an end to be reached, reach it for God's sake and let him rest."
​"Wish me God-speed," he said. "I—have more to bear than you think of."
For answer she repeated steadily words which she had uttered before.
"I do not believe in it; I have never believed for one hour."