E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1917
This is the end, for the moment, of all my thinking, this is myunfinal conclusion. There is no reason in tangible things, and nosystem in the ordinary ways of the world. Hands were made to grope,and feet to stumble, and the only things you may count on are theunaccountable things. System is a fairy and a dream, you never findsystem where or when you expect it. There are no reasons exceptreasons you and I don't know.
I should not be really surprised if the policeman across the way grewwings, or if the deep sea rose and washed out the chaos of the land. Ishould not raise my eyebrows if the daily press became the Little Sunbeamof the Home, or if Cabinet Ministers struck for a decrease of wages. Ifeel no security in facts, precedent seems no protection to me. Thewisdom you can find in an Encyclopedia, or in Selfridge's InformationBureau, seems to me just a transitory adaptation to quicksandcircumstances.
But if the things which I know in spite of my education were false, ifthe eyes of the sea forgot their secret, or if the accent of the steepwoods became vulgar, if the fairy adventures that happen in my heart fellflat, if the good friends my eyes have never seen failed me,—then indeedshould I know emptiness, and an astonishment that would kill.
I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She isnot the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. Icannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.
She was a person who took nothing in the world for granted, but as shehad only a slight connection with the world, that is not saying verymuch. Her answer to everything was "Why?" The fundamental facts that youand I accept from our youth upwards, like Be Good and You Will Be Happy,or Change Your Boots When You Come In Out Of The Wet, or Respect YourElders, or Love Your Neighbour, or Never Cross Your Legs Above The Knee,did not impress Jay.
I never knew her as a baby, but I am sure she must have been born apropounder of questions, and a smiler at the answers she received. Idaresay she used to ask questions—without result—long before she couldtalk, but I am quite sure she was not embittered by the lack of result.Nothing ever embittered Jay, not even her own pessimism. There is afinality about bitterness, and Jay was never final. Her last word wasalways on a questioning note. Her mind was always open, waiting for more."Oh no," she would tell her pillow at night, "there must be a betteranswer than that …"
Perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that she had quarrelled with herFamily, and run away from home. Her Family knew neither what she wasdoing nor where she was doing it. Families are incurably conceited, andthis one supposed that, having broken away from it, Jay was going tothe bad. On the contrary, she was a 'bus-conductor, but I only tell youthis in confidence. I repeat the Family did not know it, and does notknow it yet.
The Family sometimes said that Jay was an idealist, but it did not reallythink so. The Family sometimes said that she was rather mad, but it didnot know how mad she was, or it would have sent her away to live in adoctor's establishment at Margate. It never realised that it had onlycome in contact with about one-fifth of its young relation, and that theother four-fifths were shut away from it. Shut away in a shining bubbleworld with only room in it for one—for One, and a sh