my cigar. Something that is as old as man and has to do with all mourning and ceremonial told me to do it. There was something unnecessarily horrible, it seemed to me, in the idea of there being only two men in that train, one of them dead and the other smoking a cigar. And as the red and gold of the butt end of it faded like a funeral torch trampled out at some symbolic moment of a procession, I realized how immortal ritual is. I realized the origin and essence of all ritual. That in the presence of those sacred riddles about which we can say nothing it is often more decent merely to do something. And I realized that ritual will always mean throwing away something; destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
When the train panted at last into Paddington Station I sprang out of it with a suddenly released curiosity. There was a barrier and officials guarding the rear part of the train; no one was allowed to press towards it. They were guarding and hiding something; perhaps death in some too shocking form, perhaps something like the Merstham matter, so mixed up with human mystery and wickedness that the law has to give it a sort of sanctity; perhaps something worse than either: I went out gladly enough into the streets and saw the lamps shining on the
14
