Aaron’s Rod quotes

There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve.

Also the War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace.

A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank that evening.

Then he came out to his neat, bare, wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay on the frozen earth.

The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.

“Hold it up straight,” he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the roots.

“Majority! I'd give 'em majority. They want to get rid of you, and make a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. Strikes me you need something to break your heart over.”

“Nay,” he said. “I s'll never break my heart.”

“You'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else:

But you care about nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don't know what they want except it's more money just for themselves. Self, self, self—that's all it is with them—and ignorance.”

“You'd rather have self without ignorance?”

he said, smiling finely.

But the feet returned and the voices resumed. Almost immediately the door opened, boys were heard muttering among themselves. Millicent had given them a penny. Feet scraped on the yard, then went thudding along the side of the house, to the street.

To Aaron Sisson, this was home, this was Christmas: the unspeakably familiar.

The war over, nothing was changed. Yet everything changed. The scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very clean, the floor was red tiles.

To Aaron Sisson, this was home, this was Christmas: the unspeakably familiar.

The war over, nothing was changed. Yet everything changed.

The scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very clean, the floor was red tiles.

A stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the flute. He played beautifully. He moved his head and his raised bare arms with slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out. It was sixteenth-century Christmas melody, very limpid and delicate.

The pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music delighted him with a strange exasperation.

There was something tense, exasperated to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored breast, as he played the finely-spun peace-music. The more exquisite the music, the more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss;

He played on till about seven o'clock; he did not want to go out too soon, in spite of the early closing of the public houses.

He never went with the stream, but made a side current of his own.

His wife said he was contrary. When he went into the middle room to put on his collar and tie, the two little girls were having their hair brushed, the baby was in bed, there was a hot smell of mince-pies baking in the oven.

The same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was witnessed whenever a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into sight. Then the struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage, but stimulating.

Souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet for their feelings.

As he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the Christmas-tree candles. He did not intend to trouble himself.

“Yes,” said the stately voice of the landlady. “And I'm afraid they will always be the same as ever. When will they learn wisdom?”

“But what do you call wisdom?”

asked Sherardy, the Hindu. He spoke with a little, childish lisp.

“But they've got th' long end o' th' rope, th' masters has,” said Brewitt.

“For as long as one holds, the other will pull,”

concluded Aaron Sisson philosophically.

“And who SHOULD have the money, indeed, if not your wives? They have everything to do with the money. What idea have you, but to waste it!”

“Women waste nothing—they couldn't if they tried,” said Aaron Sisson.

There was a lull for some minutes. The men were all stimulated by drink. The landlady kept them going. She herself sipped a glass of brandy—but slowly. She sat near to Sisson—and the great fierce warmth of her presence enveloped him particularly.

A woman and whiskey, these were usually a remedy—and music. But lately these had begun to fail him. No, there was something in him that would not give in—neither to the whiskey, nor the woman, nor even the music.

Even in the midst of his best music, it sat in the middle of him, this invisible black dog, and growled and waited, never to be cajoled.

He knew of its presence—and was a little uneasy. For of course he wanted to let himself go, to feel rosy and loving and all that. But at the very thought, the black dog showed its teeth.

Whenever he heard anyone holding forth: the landlady, this doctor, the spokesman on the pit bank: or when he read the all-righteous newspaper; his soul curdled with revulsion as from something foul. Even the infernal love and good-will of his wife.

To hell with good-will! It was more hateful than ill-will.

Self-righteous bullying, like poison gas!

“Get up,” she said. “You'll take cold. Get up now, we're going indoors.”

“What do you reckon stars are?”

he persisted.

The stranger lifted his head and looked at him.

“Home!” he repeated. “No. The other road—”

He indicated the direction with his head, and smiled faintly.

“So small!” sang Julia, with real tenderness now—Aaron dropped his head. “But you're going home to them, aren't you?” said Josephine, in whose eyes the tears had already risen. He looked up at her, at her tears. His face had the same pale perverse smile.

“Not tonight,” he said.

“But why? You're wrong!” cried Josephine.

There was a light also in the upstairs window. His wife was gone upstairs again. He wondered if she had the baby ill. He could see her figure vaguely behind the lace curtains of the bedroom.

It was like looking at his home through the wrong end of a telescope.

Now the little girls had gone from the middle room: only to return in a moment.

So the long scale of lights seemed to trill across the darkness, now bright, now dim, swelling and sinking. The effect was strange.

And thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights.

There was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs. He felt himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of back premises.

The light from her candle fell faintly behind her. Then she went back, blown by a swirl of wind. But again she was at the door, hastily standing her iron shovel against the wall. Then she shut the back door with a bang.

These noises seemed to scrape and strike the night.

In Aaron's own house, the young person was still talking to Mrs. Sisson. Millicent came out, sheltering a candle with her hand. The candle blew out. She ran indoors, and emerged again, her white pinafore fluttering. This time she performed her little journey safely.

“We were all right at first. I know I was fond of him. But he'd kill anything.—He kept himself back, always kept himself back, couldn't give himself—”

“Ah well,” sighed the doctor. “Marriage is a mystery. I'm glad I'm not entangled in it.”

“Yes, to make some woman's life a misery.—I'm sure it was death to live with him, he seemed to kill everything off inside you. He was a man you couldn't quarrel with, and get it over. Quiet—quiet in his tempers, and selfish through and through.

The audience loved it. They cheered with mad enthusiasm. Josephine looked down on the choppy sea of applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was!

It seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness.

The singers appeared before the curtain—the applause rose up like clouds of dust.

“Oh—as long as it lasts,” said Robert again.

“Starting with eternity,” said Lilly, “and working back to a fortnight.”

“And what's the matter?—looks bad in the eyes of the world?”

“But WON'T they?” said Struthers.

“Not unless you put your head in their hands,” said Lilly.

“I don't know—” said Jim.

She had carried on a nervous kind of amour with him, based on soul sympathy and emotional excitement. But whether to go and live with him? She didn't know if she wanted to or not: and she couldn't for her life find out.

She was in that nervous state when desire seems to evaporate the moment fulfilment is offered.

When the curtain dropped she turned.

“Yes,” he said. Then he sprawled his long six foot of limb and body across the box again.

“You should try loving somebody, for a change,” said Tanny.

“You've been loved too often. Why not try and love somebody?”

“What becomes of me? Oh, I don't know. And it doesn't matter, not to anybody but myself.”

“What becomes of anybody, anyhow? We live till we die. What do you want?”

“Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something. But I don't know—I feel dreadful sometimes—as if every minute would be the last.

So they pursued their way through the high wind, and turned at last into the old, beautiful square.

It seemed dark and deserted, dark like a savage wilderness in the heart of London.

The wind was roaring in the great bare trees of the centre, as if it were some wild dark grove deep in a forgotten land.

Beyond the tall shrubs and the high, heavy railings the wet street gleamed silently.

The houses of the Square rose like a cliff on this inner dark sea, dimly lighted at occasional windows.

Boughs swayed and sang. A taxi-cab swirled round a corner like a cat, and purred to a standstill. There was a light of an open hall door. But all far away, it seemed, unthinkably far away. Aaron sat still and watched.

“You'll think me a fool,” she said. “I don't know why I cry.”

“You can cry for nothing, can't you?” he said.

“Why, yes, but it's not very sensible.”

“I had an inspiration this morning,” said Jim.

“I suddenly saw that if there was a man in England who could save me, it was you.”

“Save you from what?” asked Lilly, rather abashed.

“I had an inspiration this morning,” said Jim. “I suddenly saw that if there was a man in England who could save me, it was you.”

“Save you from what?” asked Lilly, rather abashed.

“Eh—?” and Jim stooped, grinning at the smaller man.

After tea, he wanted to send telegrams, so Lilly took him round to the village post-office.

Telegrams were a necessary part of his life.

He had to be suddenly starting off to keep sudden appointments, or he felt he was a void in the atmosphere. He talked to Lilly about social reform, and so on. Jim's work in town was merely nominal.

“What, to fall in love?” asked Lilly.

“Then why not leave off trying! What do you want to poke yourself and prod yourself into love, for?”

“Because I'm DEAD without it. I'm dead. I'm dying.”

Tanny looked at Lilly, puzzled, bewildered, but still rather pleased, as if she demanded an answer. None being forthcoming, she said:

“Of course, you mustn't expect to say all those things without rousing a man.”

Still Lilly did not answer. Jim glanced at him, then looked at Tanny.

But he and his wife never saw Jim again. Lilly never intended to see him: a devil sat in the little man's breast.

“You shouldn't play at little Jesus, coming so near to people, wanting to help them,” was Tanny's last word.

Tanny went away to Norway to visit her people, for the first time for three years. Lilly did not go: he did not want to. He came to London and settled in a room over Covent Garden market.

“Ay!” said Aaron, watching the other man with fever-darkened eyes.

“I hate married people who are two in one—stuck together like two jujube lozenges,” said Lilly.

“Me an' all. I hate 'em myself,” said Aaron.

“There there are lots of mes. I'm not only just one proposition. A new place brings out a new thing in a man. Otherwise you'd have stayed in your old place with your family.”

“The man in the middle of you doesn't change,” said Aaron.

“Do you find it so?” said Lilly.

It's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them.”

“The possessing one's own soul—and the being together with someone else in silence, beyond speech.”

“I've got a BIT of the real quietness inside me.”

neat patches, too, my poor mother! So what's the good of talking about advantages? You had the start. And at this very moment you could buy me up, lock, stock, and barrel. So don't feel hard done by. It's a lie.”

“I make it and I take it.”

“Circumstances make it for you.”

never failed to soothe him and give him a sense of liberty. He liked the night, the dark rain, the river, and even the traffic. He enjoyed the sense of friction he got from the streaming of people who meant nothing to him.

It was like a fox slipping alert among unsuspecting cattle.

When he got back, he saw in the distance the lights of a taxi standing outside the building where he lived, and heard a thumping and hallooing. He hurried forward.

he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a German prisoner: and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind, anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, and doesn't know where to turn.

None of the glamour of returned heroes, none of the romance of war: only a hot, blind, mesmerised voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot bear.

In this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour. But underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations:

But underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations: the hot, seared burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not to be relieved.

The experience gradually cooled on top: but only with a surface crust. The soul did not heal, did not recover.

“I used to be awfully frightened,” laughed Herbertson. “Now you say, Lilly, you'd never have stood it. But you would. You're nervous—and it was just the nervous ones that did stand it.

Lilly wondered why he made the presentiment responsible for the death—which he obviously did—and not vice versa. Herbertson implied every time, that you'd never get killed if you could keep yourself from having a presentiment. Perhaps there was something in it.

Perhaps the soul issues its own ticket of death, when it can stand no more.

Surely life controls life: and not accident.

I said I gave him the morphia before he came round from the stunning. So he'd felt nothing. But in two hours he was dead. The doctor says that the shock does it like that sometimes. You can do nothing for them.

Nothing vital is injured—and yet the life is broken in them.

Nothing can be done—funny thing—Must be something in the brain—”

“And they want to hypnotise me. And I won't be hypnotised.

The war was a lie and is a lie and will go on being a lie till somebody busts it.

”

“Let me tell you, moreover, your heroic Herbertsons lost us more than ever they won. A brave ant is a damned cowardly individual. Your heroic officers are a sad sight AFTERWARDS, when they come home. Bah, your Herbertson!

The only justification for war is what we learn from it.

And what have they learnt?—Why did so many of them have presentiments, as he called it? Because they could feel inside them, there was nothing to come after. There was no life-courage: only death-courage. Nothing beyond this hell—only death or love—languishing—”

In London he found himself at a loose end. A certain fretful dislike of the patronage of indifferent young men, younger than himself, and a certain distaste for regular work in the orchestra made him look round. He wanted something else.

He wanted to disappear again.

Qualms and emotions concerning his abandoned family overcame him. The early, delicate autumn affected him. He took a train to the Midlands.

It had been mown, and the grass was already growing long. He stood and looked at the line of back windows, lighted once more. He smelled the scents of autumn, phlox and moist old vegetation and corn in sheaf.

A nostalgia which was half at least revulsion affected him.

The place, the home, at once fascinated and revolted him.

Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face.

Telling isn't so easy—especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension.

He couldn't tell what he had against her. And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. He knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves.

“

When you've had enough, you go away and you don't care what you do

,” he said, epigrammatic.

“And you can wait,” she said. “And you shall wait.” She took up her sewing, and stitched steadily, as if calmly.

Anyone glancing in would have imagined a quiet domestic hearth at that moment.

He, too, feeling physically weak, remained silent, feeling his soul absent from the scene.

Ten to one some tramp would have found the stack. He threw a dozen sheaves together and lay down, looking at the stars in the September sky. He, too, would never yield. The illusion of love was gone for ever.

Love was a battle in which each party strove for the mastery of the other's soul.

So far, man had yielded the mastery to woman. Now he was fighting for it back again. And too late, for the woman would never yield.

But whether woman yielded or not, he would keep the mastery of his own soul and conscience and actions. He would never yield himself up to her judgment again. He would hold himself forever beyond her jurisdiction.

Henceforth, life single, not life double.

He looked at the sky, and thanked the universe for the blessedness of being alone in the universe. To be alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything.

He looked at the sky, and thanked the universe for the blessedness of being alone in the universe.

To be alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything.

He thought of Lottie, and knew how much more truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her. And he was thankful for the division between them. Such scenes as the last were too horrible and unreal.

As for future unions, too soon to think about it. Let there be clean and pure division first, perfected singleness.

That is the only way to final, living unison: through sheer, finished singleness.

Having no job for the autumn, Aaron fidgetted in London. He played at some concerts and some private shows.

He played at some concerts and some private shows. He was one of an odd quartette, for example, which went to play to Lady Artemis Hooper, when she lay in bed after her famous escapade of falling through the window of her taxi-cab.

Aaron had that curious knack, which belongs to some people, of getting into the swim without knowing he was doing it.

Lady Artemis thought his flute lovely, and had him again to play for her. Aaron looked at her and she at him.

They climbed the broad, turning stairs, crossed another handsome lounge, gilt and ormolu and yellow silk chairs and scattered copies of The Graphic or of Country Life, then they disappeared through a doorway into a much narrower flight of stairs.

Man can so rarely keep it up all the way, the grandeur.

Two black and white chamber-maids appeared. Aaron found himself in a blue silk bedroom, and a footman unstrapping his bag, which he did not want unstrapped.

It was an old-fashioned, not unpleasant feeling: like retrospect. But she had beautiful, big, smooth emeralds and sapphires on her fingers.

Money! What a curious thing it is!

Aaron noticed the deference of all the guests at table: a touch of obsequiousness: before the money! And the host and hostess accepted the deference, nay, expected it, as their due.

“Lilly calls it Providence,” said Sir William. “For my own part,

I always advise Providence plus a banking account.

I have every belief in Providence, plus a banking account. Providence and no banking account I have observed to be almost invariably fatal. Lilly and I have argued it. He believes in casting his bread upon the waters.

“His whole existence, and that of his wife, is completely precarious. I found, in my youth, the spirit moved me to various things which would have left me and my wife starving. So I realised in time, this was no good.

I took my spirit in hand, therefore, and made him pull the cart which mankind is riding in.

I harnessed him to the work of productive labour. And so he brought me my reward.”

And massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger-like Alps. Tigers prowling between the north and the south. And this beautiful city lying nearest exposed.

The snow-wind brushed her this morning like the icy whiskers of a tiger.

And clear in the light lay Novara, wide, fearless, violent Novara. Beautiful the perfect air, the perfect and unblemished Alp-sky. And like the first southern flower, Novara.

Little trams flitted down the boulevard in the bright, sweet light. The barbers' shops were all busy, half the Novarese at that moment ambushed in lather, full in the public gaze.

A shave is nothing if not a public act, in the south.

At the little outdoor tables of the cafes a very few drinkers sat before empty coffee-cups. Most of the shops were shut. It was too soon after the war for life to be flowing very fast.

Soldiers were camped in every corner, lying in heaps asleep. In their grey-green uniform, he was surprised at their sturdy limbs and uniformly short stature. For the first time, he saw the cock-feathers of the Bersaglieri. There seemed a new life-quality everywhere.

Many worlds, not one world.

But alas, the one world triumphing more and more over the many worlds, the big oneness swallowing up the many small diversities in its insatiable gnawing appetite, leaving a dreary sameness throughout the world, that means at last complete sterility.

still he approached Aaron heartily, and asked him how he did, and how he had spent his morning. The old man who had made a fortune: how he expected homage: and how he got it!

Homage, like most things, is just a convention and a social trick.

Aaron found himself paying homage, too, to the old man who had made a fortune. But also, exacting a certain deference in return, from the old man who had made a fortune. Getting it, too. On what grounds? Youth, maybe.

The female will! He realised now that he had a horror of it. It was flat and inflexible as a sheet of iron. But also it was cunning as a snake that could sing treacherous songs.

Of two people at a deadlock, he always reminded himself, there is not one only wholly at fault. Both must be at fault.

Having a detached and logical soul, he never let himself forget this truth. Take Lottie! He had loved her. He had never loved any other woman. If he had had his other affairs—it was out of spite or defiance or curiosity. They meant nothing.

Of two people at a deadlock, he always reminded himself, there is not one only wholly at fault. Both must be at fault. Having a detached and logical soul, he never let himself forget this truth. Take Lottie! He had loved her.

He had never loved any other woman.

If he had had his other affairs—it was out of spite or defiance or curiosity. They meant nothing. He and Lottie had loved one another. And the love had developed almost at once into a kind of combat.

Now at last, after years of struggle, he seemed suddenly to have dropped his mask on the floor, and broken it. His authentic self-describing passport, his complete and satisfactory idea of himself suddenly became a rag of paper, ridiculous.

What on earth did it matter if he was nice or not, if his chin was normal or abnormal.

His mask, his idea of himself dropped and was broken to bits. There he sat now maskless and invisible. That was how he strictly felt: invisible and undefined, rather like Wells' Invisible Man. He had no longer a mask to present to people:

The more generous and the more passionate a soul, the more it gives itself. But the more absolute remains the law, that it shall never give itself away.

Give thyself, but give thyself not away.

That is the lesson written at the end of the long strange lane of love.

Perhaps, truly, the process of love is never accomplished. But it moves in great stages, and at the end of each stage a true goal, where the soul possesses itself in simple and generous singleness.

Without this, love is a disease.

So Aaron, crossing a certain border-line and finding himself alone completely, accepted his loneliness or singleness as a fulfilment, a state of fulfilment.

Two eagles in mid-air, maybe, like Whitman's Dalliance of Eagles. Two eagles in mid-air, grappling, whirling, coming to their intensification of love-oneness there in mid-air. In mid-air the love consummation.

But all the time each lifted on its own wings: each bearing itself up on its own wings at every moment of the mid-air love consummation.

That is the splendid love-way.

“Well, we will see,” said Lady Franks. “

But I am afraid of music itself.

”

“

I often find it makes me feel diabolical

,” said he.

“I don't want to carry all before me,” said Aaron. “I should be sorry.

I want to walk past most of it.

”

Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. The presence of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England. In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free.

Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside.

And every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. Which in the end becomes a sort of self-conscious madness.

So the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have got outside himself and his old conditions. It seemed like a great escape.

There was magic again in life—real magic. Was it illusion, or was it genuine?

He thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a if there was no danger.

And he had a faint premonition, based on experience perhaps, that fellow-passengers in the end never forgive the man who has “impressed” them.

Mankind loves being impressed. It asks to be impressed.

It almost forces those whom it can force to play a role and to make an impression. And afterwards, never forgives.

Mankind loves being impressed. It asks to be impressed. It almost forces those whom it can force to play a role and to make an impression.

And afterwards, never forgives.

When the train ran into Bologna Station, they were still in the restaurant car. Nor did they go at once to their seats. Angus had paid the bill. There was three-quarters-of-an-hour's wait in Bologna.

He was glad not to have a cosy hearth, and his own arm-chair. He was glad to feel the cold, and to breathe the unwarmed air. He preferred the Italian way of no fires, no heating.

If the day was cold, he was willing to be cold too. If it was dark, he was willing to be dark.

The cosy brightness of a real home—it had stifled him till he felt his lungs would burst. The horrors of real domesticity. No, the Italian brutal way was better.

He preferred frail, sensitive, abstract music, with not much feeling in it, but a certain limpidity and purity. Night fell as he sat reading the scores. He would have liked to try certain pieces on his flute.

But his flute was too sensitive, it winced from the new strange surroundings, and would not blossom.

Dinner sounded at last—at eight o'clock, or something after. He had to learn to expect the meals always forty minutes late. Down he went, down the long, dark, lonely corridors and staircases. The dining room was right downstairs.

Men tripping along in cloaks, shawls, umbrellas, anything, quite unconcerned. A man loading gravel in the river-bed, in spite of the wet. And innumerable bells ringing: but innumerable bells.

The great soft trembling of the cathedral bell felt in all the air.

Anyhow it was a new world. Aaron went along close to the tall thick houses, following his nose. And suddenly he caught sight of the long slim neck of the Palazzo Vecchio up above, in the air.

The dangerous, subtle, never-dying fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief. But men! Men! A town of men, in spite of everything. The one manly quality, undying, acrid fearlessness.

The eternal challenge of the un-quenched human soul.

Perhaps too acrid and challenging today, when there is nothing left to challenge. But men—who existed without apology and without justification. Men who would neither justify themselves nor apologize for themselves. Just men. The rarest thing left in our sweet Christendom.

Aaron wondered how on earth Francis had been able to discover and bear witness to so much that was incredible, in a bare two days.

But a little gossip, and an addition of lurid imagination will carry you anywhere.

“Well now,” said Francis. “What are you doing today?”

“He'll never forgive me. Depend on it, he'll never forgive me. Ha-ha!

I like to be unforgiven. It adds ZEST to one's intercourse with people, to know that they'll never forgive one.

Ha-ha-ha! Little old maids, who do their knitting with their tongues. Poor old Algy—he drops his stitches now. Ha-ha-ha!—Must be eighty, I should say.”

“No—I was just wondering—I believe I feel something the same myself.

I know orchestra makes me blind with hate or I don't know what. But I want to throw bombs.

”

But it was unlike a bird's singing, in that the notes followed clear and single one after the other, in their subtle gallop. A nightingale is rather like that—a wild sound.

To read all the human pathos into nightingales' singing is nonsense.

A wild, savage, non-human lurch and squander of sound, beautiful, but entirely unaesthetic.

Fool, you might have known beforehand, and then you needn't have paid at all. You can ill afford twelve pounds sterling, you fool. But since paid you have, then mind, mind the lesson is learned. Never again. Never expose yourself again. Never again absolute trust.

It is a blasphemy against life, is absolute trust.

Has a wild creature ever absolute trust? It minds itself. Sleeping or waking it is on its guard. And so must you be, or you'll go under. Sleeping or waking, man or woman, God or the devil, keep your guard over yourself.

“Do you see signs of the old maid coming out in me? Oh, I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. We all end that way.

Age makes old maids of us all.

And Tanny is all right, you say? Bring her to see me. Why didn't she come today?”

“Ah, no! No! There is no such thing as accident,” said the Italian. “

A man is drawn by his fate, where he goes.

”

“You are right,” said Argyle, who came now with the teapot. “A man is drawn—or driven. Driven, I've found it.

Ah, my dear fellow, what is life but a search for a friend? A search for a friend—that sums it up.

”

“Nay,” said Lilly. “

There is a time to love, and a time to leave off loving.

”

“Impossible! Completely impossible!” said Argyle. “

Man is a seeker, and except as such, he has no significance, no importance.

”

“He bores me with his seeking,” said Lilly. “

He should learn to possess himself—to be himself—and keep still.

”

“Ah, yes. That is one side of the truth. It is quite true, also.

But it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself, than in the supreme state of love.

Never less himself, than then.”

The lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! She wasn't aware of the flute. She didn't know there was anything except her own pure lovely song-drift.

Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings.

For the first time! For the first time her soul drew its own deep breath. All her life, the breath had caught half-way. And now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest extent of her being.

Well, here was a letter for a poor old man to receive. But, in the dryness of his withered mind, Aaron got it out of himself.

When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else. Perhaps the same is true of a book.

His letter written, however, he stamped it and sealed it and put it in the box. That made it final. Then he turned towards home. One fact remained unbroken in the debris of his consciousness: that in the town was Lilly:

Much that is life has passed away from men, leaving us all mere bits. In the dark, mindful silence and inflection of the cypress trees, lost races, lost language, lost human ways of feeling and of knowing.

Men have known as we can no more know, have felt as we can no more feel.

Great life-realities gone into the darkness. But the cypresses commemorate.

And his soul seemed to leave him and to go far away, far back, perhaps, to where life was all different and time passed otherwise than time passes now.

As in clairvoyance he perceived it: that our life is only a fragment of the shell of life.

That there has been and will be life, human life such as we do not begin to conceive. Much that is life has passed away from men, leaving us all mere bits.

“Those old people,” said Aaron. “

They licked the sugar off the pill, and go on as if everything was toffee. And we've got to swallow the pill.

It's easy to be refreshing—-”

Which, to say the least of it, was fraudulent and damnable. It was then, after his departure, that they realised his basic indifference to them, and his silent arrogance.

A silent arrogance that knew all their wisdom, and left them to it.

Aaron had been through it all. He had started by thinking Lilly a peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing:

“Naples. We've got a little house there for the winter—in the country, not far from Sorrento—I must get a bit of work done, now the winter is coming. And forget all about everything and just live with life.

What's the good of running after life, when we've got it in us, if nobody prevents us and obstructs us?

”

“Oh, only the winter.

I am a vagrant really: or a migrant. I must migrate.

Do you think a cuckoo in Africa and a cuckoo in Essex is one AND the same bird? Anyhow, I know I must oscillate between north and south, so oscillate I do. It's just my nature. All people don't have the same needs.”

“

Well, I didn't make life and society. I can only go my own way.

”

“Ah—bah! The grinding the old millstones of love and God is what ails us, when there's no more grist between the stones.

We've ground love very small. Time to forget it.

Forget the very words religion, and God, and love—then have a shot at a new mode. But the very words rivet us down and don't let us move. Rivets, and we can't get them out.”

“There is no goal.

I loathe goals more than any other impertinence. Gaols, they are.

Bah—jails and jailers, gaols and gaolers—-”

The old women and the girl squatted under the trees, eating their bread and figs. The boys were dressing, fluttering into their shirts on the stream's shingle. A big girl went past, with somebody's dinner tied in a red kerchief and perched on her head.

It was one of the most precious hours: the hour of pause, noon, and the sun, and the quiet acceptance of the world.

At such a time everything seems to fall into a true relationship, after the strain of work and of urge.