Mary Olivier: a Life Part 108

Why hadn't she known that this would happen, instead of being afraid that she would "go like" Aunt Charlotte or Uncle Victor? People talked a lot about compensation, but n.o.body told you that after forty-five life would have this exquisite clearness and intensity.

Why, since it _could_ happen when you were young--reality breaking through, if only in flashes coming and going, going altogether and forgotten--why had you to wait so long before you could remember it and be aware of it as one continuous, shining background? She had never been aware of it before; she had only thought about and about it, about Substance, the Thing-in-itself, Reality, G.o.d. Thinking was not being aware.

She made it out more and more. For twenty-three years something had come between her and reality. She could see what it was now. She had gone through life wanting things, wanting people, clinging to the thought of them, not able to keep off them and let them go.

X.

All her life she had gone wrong about happiness. She had attached it to certain things and certain people: Mamma and Mark, Jenny, visits to Aunt Bella, the coming of Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lavvy and Uncle Victor, the things people would say and do which they had not said and not done: when she was older she had attached it to Maurice Jourdain and to Mark still and Mamma; to going back to Mamma after Dover; to the unknown houses in Morfe; to Maurice Jourdain's coming; then to Mark's coming, to Lindley Vickers. And in the end none of these things had brought her the happiness she had seemed to foresee in them.

She knew only one thing about perfect happiness: it didn't hide; it didn't wait for you behind unknown doors. There were little happinesses, pleasures that came like that: the pleasure of feeling good when you sat with Maggie's sister; the pleasure of doing things for Mamma or Dorsy; all the pleasures that had come through the Sutcliffes. The Sutcliffes went, and yet she had been happy. They had all gone, and yet she was happy.

If you looked back on any perfect happiness you saw that it had not come from the people or the things you thought it had come from, but from somewhere inside yourself. When you attached it to people and things they ceased for that moment to be themselves; the s.p.a.ce they then seemed to inhabit was not their own s.p.a.ce; the time of the wonderful event was not their time. They became part of the kingdom of G.o.d within you.

Not Richard. He had become part of the kingdom of G.o.d without ceasing to be himself.

That was because she had loved him more than herself. Loving him more than herself she had let him go.

Letting go had somehow done the trick.

XI.

I used to think there was nothing I couldn't give up for Richard.

Could I give up this? If I had to choose between losing Richard and losing this? (I suppose it would be generally considered that I _had_ lost Richard.) If I had had to choose seven years ago, before I knew, I'd have chosen Richard; I couldn't have helped myself. But if I had to choose now--knowing what reality is--between losing Richard in the way I have lost him and losing reality, absolutely and for ever, losing, absolutely and for ever, my real self, knowing that I'd lost it?...

If there's anything in it at all, losing my real self would be losing Richard, losing Richard's real self absolutely and for ever. Knowing reality is knowing that you can't lose it. That or nothing.

XII.

Supposing there isn't anything in it? Supposing--Supposing--

Last night I began thinking about it again. I stripped my soul; I opened all the windows and let my ice-cold thoughts in on the poor thing; it stood shivering between certainty and uncertainty.

I tried to doubt away this ultimate pa.s.sion, and it turned my doubt into its own exquisite sting, the very thrill of the adventure.

Supposing there's nothing in it, nothing at all?

That's the risk you take.

XIII.

There isn't any risk. This time it was clear, clear as the black pattern the sycamore makes on the sky. If it never came again I should remember.

THE END