"Really, Anne, I never laughed so much in my life. That's the funniest thing that ever was written."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The next day Anne went home and the following Monday was back in the loft. A long period of stagnant waiting had ended in a new burst of hope and the place vibrated with the rush of people going and coming. Like the three prongs of a huge fork, Black Tom, Roger and Katya caught up on their unflagging faith and indefatigable energy the smaller plans and physical limitations of those about them.
Often Anne came from a revery to find that her hands had been idle on the keyboard for a long time. There was no safe, quiet spot anywhere in life. The surface at every point was heaving, just as the surface of the earth had heaved and cracked on the day of the Great Quake, torn open by forces within itself. Until then the earth had been the most stable thing in the universe. Sun and moon came and went; stars gleamed and died away; rain beat upon it and the wind swept over it, but, to human sense, the old, old earth was still. And then, in a moment, without warning, its patience exhausted, it had risen and like an angry giant, struggled to hurl aside the pigmies crawling upon it. Anne had never forgotten that feeling, as the earth began to rock, the feeling of being grasped and personally shaken by a malignant force beyond her power to propitiate, a force growing more and more furious, illimitable in its anger. In a moment it might release her or it might go on forever until it had annihilated every living thing.
There was no permanence, no sureness, no stability, no stillness anywhere. Often Anne closed her machine and slipped away unable to endure the noise and confusion. But out upon the streets the noise and confusion continued. People hurried everywhere. Cars clanged by obeying many desires to go in many directions. Newsboys shrieked their announcements of murders, explosions, and terrible deeds of violence. Sometimes Anne sought quietness by the sea, but, gripped in the law of ebb and flood, the sea roared or moaned or whimpered to its degree of strength.
As the weeks passed, the longing for a place of stillness, one little spot of silence, grew to a desperate need. She must have it. Somewhere it must exist, this small place of peace where she could stop for a moment. She thought of the meeting to which she had gone with Charlotte, but when she visioned the interval that preceded filled with the assertions of false optimism, the hymns of gloating joy, the sickening testimony, she could not face them. Then the silence had caught her but Anne knew that if she sought it deliberately in these surroundings it would escape. Perhaps, somewhere else, in other faiths, if she searched she would find it. Anne began to search.
And now, that all her thought was turned to find Silence, she found others seeking, too. Some sought silence in costly edifices, beautiful with stained glass and priceless paintings. Others in public halls, cozily furnished rooms, rickety buildings. In offices that did double service, where Business and Silence alternated like opposing armies occupying the same fortress successively.
There were Services of Silence conducted by men and services by women. Some built a vestibule of music and, in the beautiful vestments of ancient orthodoxy, walked slowly through to the treasure room of Stillness. Others, in the common garb of everyday, entered without prelude. Some plunged from the roar of traffic into Silence as if it were a bath; others went through little personal rituals of reading and bodily posturing, as if to steal upon it unawares.
Old, old faiths claimed silence as their own, and conceded reluctantly to the modern scramble in simple statements of the hour and place they offered it. Like a conservative firm reluctant to meet the modern need of advertising, they offered this staple so long a specialty of their own. New faiths shrieked of Silence as if it were a food to be eaten instantly before it cooled.
"A half-hour of Silence, from twelve to twelve-thirty,"—like the professional card of a reputable physician; and "Come and be Quiet With Us"; "Learn the Power of Silence"; "Be Still and Know"—the paid advertisement of a hustling quack.