Part 42 (1/2)
”What are you doing to-day, Ishmael?”
”I am thinking of helping with the four-acre. Nicky will soon be down for the Easter recess, and then I shall be so carefully looked after I shall not get the chance to overtire myself.”
”Nicky has turned out a dear boy, and good son,” said Judy kindly.
”Nicky always was a dear boy--even at his most elusive. Jim is more human than Nicky was at his age, but he hasn't Nicky's charm, that something of a piskie's changeling that made Nicky so attractive. Yes, he's a 'good son,' to use your horrible expression, Judy. And Marjorie is a very good wife for him, though I must say I enjoy it when I can have the two boys, the big and the little one, to myself.”
”I sometimes wonder how much you ever really liked women,” said Judy.
”I have always liked them, as you call it, very much indeed. But I don't think I've ever thought of them as women first and foremost, but as human beings more or less like unto myself.”
”That's where you've made your mistake. Not because they aren't--for they are--but because that destroys the mystery, and no one is keener on keeping up the idea that women are mysterious creatures, unlike men, than women themselves.”
”I daresay you're right. But to look at, merely externally, I've always been able to get the mystery. They can look so that a man is afraid to touch such exquisite, ethereal creatures, all the time that they're wanting to be touched most. Georgie always used to say I never understood women.”
”When she meant that you showed your understanding too clearly. Dear Georgie!”
”Yes, dear Georgie! It does seem rough luck that she should have gone the first when she was so much younger than I, doesn't it?”
”Rough luck on you, or on her, are you meaning at the moment?”
”At the moment I was meaning on her. She was so in love with life. But I suppose really on me. I might, humanly speaking, have been fairly sure that I should have had her as a companion all the last years.”
”Do you find it very lonely since Ruth married her tame clergyman and Lissa went away to become a full-blown painter?”
”Doesn't it always have to be lonely? Isn't it always really? The only thing is that when we are young we have distractions which prevent us seeing it. We can cheat ourselves with physical contact that makes us think it possible to fuse with any one other human being. But it isn't.
When we are our age--well, we know it's always isolated, but that it doesn't matter.”
”What does matter? Those to come?”
”Yes, those to come--always them first; yet not that alone, or there would be no more value in them than in ourselves if it were always to be a vicious circle like that. Each individual soul is equally important, the old as much as the young, in the eternal scheme. It is only in the economy of this world that youth is more important than age.”
”I think I can fairly lay claim to being a broadminded ''vert'” said Judith, ”but of course, you know, I can't help feeling I've got something in the way of what makes things worth while that you haven't?”
”Yes, I know you do. I see you're bound to have. But of course, owing to what the Parson inculcated into me, I think I've got it too, but I quite see I can't expect you to think so.”
”It's seeing the light that matters most, I think,” said Judy. ”We believe the same though I _know_ I've got it, and you only _think_ you have! But it's the thinking that is all important. The mystery to me is how anyone can be satisfied with the phenomena of this world alone as an answer to the riddle.”
”It's not so much of a mystery to me. The world is so very beautiful that it can stand instead of human love, so why not, to some people, instead of Divine love also? The beauty of it is what I have chiefly lived by. It could for very long thrill me to the exclusion of everything else.”
”And now?” asked Judith.
”Now? Now I am old that has been young, and still I cannot answer you that. I believe these airmen tell you of air pockets they come to, holes in the atmosphere, where their machines drop, drop.... I think I am in an air pocket, a hole between the guiding winds of the spirit ... one is too occupied in not dropping when in those holes to think of anything else. Action is the best thing, which is why I am now going to leave you to sow the four-acre.”
He got up, slowly and painfully, though he stood as erect as ever once he was upon his feet. He stood a moment looking at Judith.
”Judy, d'you ever have those times when you feel something is going to happen?” he asked, ”when you expect something to come round the corner, so to speak, at every moment. One so often had it in one's youth--one woke with it every morning: I don't mean that, but the expectation of some one thing that is in the air so near one that any moment it may break into actuality?”
”I never have it now, my dear, but I know what you mean. Why? Have you got it?”