The power of London to obliterate personal affairs depended upon
unlimited freedom to be still. The worst suffering in the days of
uncertainty had been the thought of movements that would make time
move..... Now that the stillness had returned, life was going on,
dancing, flowing, looping out in all directions able to bear its periods
of torment in the strength of its certainty of recovery, so long as time
stayed still. Life _ceased_ when time moved on. Out in the world life
was ceasing all the time. All the time people were helplessly doing
things that made time move; growing up, old people growing onwards, with
death suddenly in sight, rushing here and there with words that had lost
their meaning, dodging and crouching no matter how ridiculously, to
avoid facing it. Young men died in advance; it was visible in their
faces, when they took degrees and sat down to tasks that made time begin
to move; never again free from its movement, always listening and
looking for the stillness they had lost... But why is the world which
produces them so fresh and real and free, and then seizes and makes them
dead old leaves whirled along by time, so different to people alone in
themselves when time is not moving? People in themselves want nothing
but reality. Why can’t reality exist in the world? All the things that
happen produce friction because they distract people from the reality
they are unconsciously looking for. That is why there are everywhere
torrents of speech. If she had not read all those old words in the train
and had been silent. Silence is reality. Life ought to be lived on a
basis of silence, where truth blossoms. Why isn’t such an urgent thing
known? Life would become like the individual; alive .... it would show,
inside and out, and people would leave off talking so much. Life does
show, seen from far off, pouring down into stillness. But the
contemplation of it, not caring for pain or suffering except as part of
a picture, which no one who is in the picture can see, seems mean. Old
women sitting in corners, suddenly making irrelevant remarks and
chuckling, see; they make a stillness of reality, a mind picture that
does not care, out of the rush of life. Perhaps they do not fear death.
Perhaps people who don’t take part don’t fear death ...... the outsider
sees most of the game; but that means a cynical man who does not care
for anything; body and mind without soul. Lying dead at last, with
reality left unnoticed on his dressing-table, along the window sill,
along the edge of things outside the window....
But one day in the future time would move, by itself, not through
anything one did, and there would be no more life.... She looked up
hurriedly towards the changing voice. He was no longer reading with a
face that showed his thoughts wandering far away.
“The thought of death is, throughout life, entirely absent from the mind
of the healthy man.” His brilliant thought filled eyes shone towards her
at the end of the sentence.
“There is _indeed_ a vulgarity in perfect health,” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” she said hurriedly, carrying off the statement for examination,
as peacefully he went on reading. What did vulgarity mean, or perfect
health? Nobody knew. Dante ennobled the vulgar tongue.... People went on
forever writing books using the same words with different meanings. Her
eyes returned to the relaxed unconscious form. He thought too much of
books. Yet it did not appal him to think of giving up his free
intellectual life and taking to work. ‘I shall still be an interested
amateur.’ ... He would go on reading, all his life, sitting as he was
sitting now, grave and beautiful; with a mind outspread in a mental
experience so wide that he was indifferent to the usual ideas of freedom
and advantage. Yet he did not seem to be aware how much the sitting like
this, linked to the world by its deep echo in the book, was a
realisation of life as he saw it. It did not occur to him that this
serenity, in which were accumulated all the hours they had passed
together, _was_ realisation, the life of the world in miniature, making
a space where everything in human experience could emerge like a
reflection in deep water, with its proportions held true and right by
the tranquil opposition of their separate minds. She summoned onlookers,
who instantly recognised themselves in this picture of leisure. It was
in every life that was not astray in ceaseless movement. It was the
place where everything was atoned. He fitted placed thus, happy, without
problems or envies, in possession of himself and his memories in the
room where he had voiced them, into the centre of English life where all
turned to good, in the last fastness of the private English mind where
condemnation could not live. He reinforced it with a consciousness that
was not in the English, making it show as an idea, revealing in plain
terms their failure to act it out...... Thus would his leisure always
be. But it was no part of her life. In this tranquillity there was no
security .... we will always sit like this; we must, she said within
herself impatiently towards his unconsciousness. Why did he not
_perceive_ the life there was, the mode of life, in this sitting
tranquilly together? Was he thinking of nothing but his reading? She
listened for a moment half carried into the quality of the text. There
was reality there, Spinoza, by himself, sounding as if the words were
being traced out now, for the first time. One day in a moment of
blankness, she would read it and agree and disagree and carry away some
idea and lose and recover it and go on, losing and recovering, agreeing
and disagreeing....
When he went away her life would be swept clear of intelligently
selected books and the sting of conflict with them .... that would not
matter; perhaps; books would come, somehow, in the unexpected way they
always did. But it was impossible to face the ending of these settled
tranquil elderly evenings of peaceful unity, the quiet dark-bearded
form, sitting near, happily engrossed......
“Well, what do you think of this?”
“I haven’t been attending. But I will read it .... some time.”
“Ah, it is a pity. But tell me your thoughts at least.”
“Oh, I was thinking of my sisters.”
“Ah. You must tell me,” and again with unrelaxed interest he was
listening to story after story, finding strange significances, matter
for envy and deep chuckles of appreciative laughter.