ace to a rotary motion. And all life was a
rotary motion, mechanised, cut off from reality. There was nothing to
look for from life--it was the same in all countries and all peoples.
The only window was death. One could look out on to the great dark sky
of death with elation, as one had looked out of the classroom window as
a child, and seen perfect freedom in the outside. Now one was not a
child, and one knew that the soul was a prisoner within this sordid
vast edifice of life, and there was no escape, save in death.
But what a joy! What a gladness to think that whatever humanity did, it
could not seize hold of the kingdom of death, to nullify that. The sea
they turned into a murderous alley and a soiled road of commerce,
disputed like the dirty land of a city every inch of it. The air they
claimed too, shared it up, parcelled it out to certain owners, they
trespassed in the air to fight for it. Everything was gone, walled in,
with spikes on top of the walls, and one must ignominiously creep
between the spiky walls through a labyrinth of life.
But the great, dark, illimitable kingdom of death, there humanity was
put to scorn. So much they could do upon earth, the multifarious little
gods that they were. But the kingdom of death put them all to scorn,
they dwindled into their true vulgar silliness in face of it.
How beautiful, how grand and perfect death was, how good to look
forward to. There one would wash off all the lies and ignominy and dirt
that had been put upon one here, a perfect bath of cleanness and glad
refreshment, and go unknown, unquestioned, unabased. After all, one was
rich, if only in the promise of perfect death. It was a gladness above
all, that this remained to look forward to, the pure inhuman otherness
of death.
Whatever life might be, it could not take away death, the inhuman
transcendent death. Oh, let us ask no question of it, what it is or is
not. To know is human, and in death we do not know, we are not human.
And the joy of this compensates for all the bitterness of knowledge and
the sordidness of our humanity. In death we shall not be human, and we
shall not know. The promise of this is our heritage, we look forward
like heirs to their majority.
Ursula sat quite still and quite forgotten, alone by the fire in the
drawing-room. The children were playing in the kitchen, all the others
were gone to church. And she was gone into the ultimate darkness of her
own soul.
She was startl
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