Mary Olivier: a Life Part 78

"And what good would he be there? If your Uncle Victor can't keep him, who will, I should like to know?"

"Jem Alderson would. He'd take him for nothing. He told Ned he would. To make up for Roddy."

"Make up! He thinks that's the way to make up! I won't have Dan's death at my door. I'd rather keep him for the rest of my life."

"How about Dan?"

"Dan's safe here."

"He's safe on the moor with Alderson looking after the sheep, and he's safe in the cowshed milking the cows; but he isn't safe when Ned drives into Reyburn market."

"Would it be safer in Canada?"

"Yes. He'd be thirty miles from the nearest pub. He'd be safer here if you didn't give him money."

"The boy has to have money to buy clothes."

"I could buy them."

"I daresay! You can't treat a man of thirty as if he was a baby of three."

She thought. "No. You can only treat a woman.... 'There is one eternal thinker'--"

A knock on the door.

"There," her mother said, "that's Dan."

Mary went to the door. Ned Alderson stood outside; he stood slantways, not looking at her.

"Ah tried to maake yore broother coom back long o' us, but 'e would na."

"Hadn't I better go and meet him?"

"Naw. Ah would na. Ah wouldn' woorry; there's shepherds on t' road wi' t'

sheep. Mebbe 'e'll toorn oop long o' they. Dawn' woorry ef tes laate like."

He went away.

They waited, listening while the clock struck the hours, seven; eight; nine. At ten her mother and the servants went to bed. She sat up, and waited, reading.

"...My son, that subtle essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists.... That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it."

Substance, the Thing-in-itself--You were It. Dan was It. You could think away your body, Dan's body. One eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal thoughts. Dreaming horrible dreams. Dan's drunkenness. Why?

Eleven. A soft scuffle. The scurry of sheep's feet on the Green. A dog barking. The shepherds were back from Reyburn.

Feet shuffled on the flagstone. She went to the door. Dan leaned against the doorpost, bent forward heavily; his chin dropped to his chest.

Something slimy gleamed on his shoulder and hip. Wet mud of the ditch he had fallen in. She stiffened her muscles to his weight, to the pull and push of his reeling body.

Roddy's room. With one lurch he reached Roddy's white bed in the corner.

She looked at the dressing-table. A strip of steel flashed under the candlestick. The blue end of a matchbox stuck up out of the saucer. There would be more matches in Dan's coat pocket. She took away the matches and the razor.

Her mother stood waiting in the doorway of her room, small and piteous in her nightgown. Her eyes glanced off the razor, and blinked.

"Is Dan all right?"

"Yes. He came back with the sheep."

V.

The Hegels had come: The _Logik_. Three volumes. The bristling Gothic text an ambush of secret, exciting, formidable things. The t.i.tles flamed; flags of strange battles; signals of strange s.h.i.+ps; challenging, enticing to the dangerous adventure.

After the first enchantment, the Buddhist Suttas and the Upanishads were no good. Nor yet the Vedanta. You couldn't keep on saying, "This is That," and "Thou art It," or that the Self is the dark blue bee and the green parrot with red eyes and the thunder-cloud, the seasons and the seas. It was too easy, too sleepy, like lying on a sofa and dropping laudanum, slowly, into a rotten, aching tooth. Your teeth were sound and strong, they had to have something hard to bite on. You wanted to think, to keep on thinking. Your mind wasn't really like a tooth; it was like a robust, energetic body, happy when it was doing difficult and dangerous things, balancing itself on heights, lifting great weights of thought, following the long march into thick, smoky battles.

"Being and Not-Being are the same": ironic and superb defiance. And then commotion; as if the infinite stillness, the immovable Substance, had got up and begun moving--Rhythm of eternity: the same for ever: for ever different: for ever the same.

Thought _was_ the Thing-in-itself.

This man was saying, over and over and all the time what you had wanted Kant to say, what he wouldn't say, what you couldn't squeeze out of him, however you turned and twisted him.

You jumped to where the name "Spinoza" glittered like a jewel on the large grey page.

Something wanting. You knew it, and you were afraid. You loved him. You didn't want him to be found out and exposed, like Kant. He had given you the first incomparable thrill.

Hegel. Spinoza. She thought of Spinoza's murky, mysterious face. It said, "I live in you, still, as he will never live. You will never love that old German man. He ran away from the cholera. He bolstered up the Trinity with his Triple Dialectic, to keep his chair at Berlin. _I_ refused their bribes. They excommunicated me. You remember? Cursed be Baruch Spinoza in his going out and his coming in."

You had tried to turn and twist Spinoza, too; and always he had refused to come within your meaning. His Substance, his G.o.d stood still, in eternity. He, too; before the noisy, rich, exciting Hegel, he drew back into its stillness; pure and cold, a little sinister, a little ironic.

And you felt a pang of misgiving, as if, after all, he might have been right. So powerful had been his hold.

Dan looked up. "What are you reading, Mary?"

"Hegel."

"Haeckel--that's the chap Vickers talks about."

Vickers--she remembered. Dan lived with Vickers when he left Papa.

"He's clever," Dan said, "but he's an awful a.s.s."

"Who? Haeckel?"

"No. Vickers."

"You mean he's an awful a.s.s, but he's clever."