Old Mr. Peacock of Sarrack was dead, and Dr. Kendal was the oldest man in
the Dale. He was not afraid of death; he was only afraid of dying before
Mr. Peacock died. Mamma had finished building the rockery in the garden.
You had carried all the stones. There were no more stones to carry. That
was all that had happened in the year and nine months since Mark had
gone.
To you nothing happened. Nothing ever would happen. At twenty-one and a
half you were old too, and very wise. You had given up expecting things
to happen. You put 1883 on your letters to Mark and Dan and Roddy,
instead of 1882. Then 1884. You measured time by the poems you wrote and
by the books you read and by the Sutcliffes' going abroad in January and
coming back in March.
You had advanced from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of
Practical Reason, and the Critique of Judgment and the Prolegomena. And
in the end you were cheated. You would never know the only thing worth
knowing. Reality. For all you knew there was no Reality, no God, no
freedom, no immortality. Only doing your duty. "You can because you
ought." Kant, when you got to the bottom of him, was no more exciting
than Mamma. "_Du kannst, weil du sollst_."
Why not "You can because you shall"? It would never do to let Mamma know
what Kant thought. She would say "Your Bible could have told you that."
There was Schopenhauer, though. _He_ didn't cheat you. There was "_reine
Anschauung_," pure perception; it happened when you looked at beautiful
things. Beautiful things were crystal; you looked through them and saw
Reality. You saw God. While the crystal flash lasted "_Wille und
Vorstellung_," the Will and the Idea, were not divided as they are in
life; they were one. That was why beautiful things made you happy.
And there was Mamma's disapproving, reproachful face. Sometimes you felt
that you couldn't stand it for another minute. You wanted to get away
from it, to the other end of the world, out of the world, to die. When
you were dead perhaps you would know. Or perhaps you wouldn't. Perhaps
death would cheat you, too.