albeit an emperor of Rome, was odd reading for a cleric of the Church of England, but not perhaps for what he had first believed Ramsay to be. Its dry, brave, rather comfortless wisdom would be exactly what would echo his own philosophy. It would be a companion voice. He looked beside it and saw half a dozen papers written in two quite different sets of handwriting. He picked up the first.
It was a neat, exact hand with open Greek E’s. Ramsay’s writing. Pitt knew that from other papers on the desk. He began to read it.
You who are dearest to me, how can I express to you the sense of loneliness I feel when we are separated? The distance between us is immeasurable, and yet thoughts may fly across it and I can reach you in heart and mind in as short a space as it takes for one to find some solitary corner where I can summon you to my heart’s eye.
Then time vanishes and once more we can walk and talk as of old. I can share with you my dreams, the explorations of all truth and meaning which is surely our greatest treasure. I am no longer a wanderer among strangers, but am at home in you. We breathe the same air, our understanding is but two halves of the same whole …
He continued down to the end of the page and turned it over. It was all in the same vein, about loneliness and separation, about unity of thought and heart, symbolized by unity of person.
The second was in the same hand, and while dealing with a different subject, it was of the same nature. Again loneliness was a continuous thread running through it, the desire to be together again, to remove all difficulties and barriers that kept them apart. The underlying emotion was obviously deeply felt, but it was couched in metaphor, a trifle pedantic, drawing back from the ultimate of verbal commitment. Pitt could hear Ramsay Parmenter’s careful, slightly dry voice all the way through it.
The third was in a different hand, rapid, exuberant, full of confidence. Here the meaning was undisguised. It began instantly and passionately.
My own beloved, my hunger for you is inexpressible. When we are apart I drown in a void of loneliness, engulfed in the night. Infinity yawns between us. And yet I have but to think of you and neither heaven nor hell could bar my way. The void disappears and you are with me. I touch you, hold you again. We are one heart and one flesh. I drown in you. All pain is forgotten as a dream.
The sweetness of times past returns with all its echoes of passion and hopes and terrors shared. We climb together the starry heights of truth and leap beyond into the unknown deeps of faith, life’s greatest gift, eternity’s crowning glory. All my grief is in the past, slipping from me like shadows before the rising sun. We melt into one another in eternal ecstasy …
There were three more in the same dashing hand. Little wonder Vita Parmenter had been amazed and had challenged her husband to explain them. What could he possibly say?
Pitt set them down again in the place where they had been. He felt confused, overtaken by his own sense of not being equal to the task given him. He had failed to understand Ramsay while he was alive, and thus to prevent his death. And he could not dismiss the fact that Ramsay could have succeeded in hurting Vita. Then Pitt would have been responsible for that, too. Now he understood even less. He had read the love letters, and anyone could see how they would precipitate a quarrel. It was inevitable the moment Vita saw them … or for that matter if anyone else in the family had, or even Dominic. But why had Ramsay left them out on the desk where they must be seen? Why did he have both his and hers? Presumably he must have retrieved them from her belongings after her death. With any sense at all he would have destroyed them.
Did he still love her, or was he so obsessed with her, that he could not, in spite of the risk they represented? Had he abandoned hope of escape for the result of his act? Was he only waiting for the inevitable?
And yet looking at the unbridled passion in the letters, Pitt could see neither Ramsay nor Unity in them. The