Father Hull asked Barry and the other man to go across with him to the church, to make an estimate on some repairs.
“Which means,” Mrs. Ashby said smilingly to Julie, as the men went away together, “that Barry will provide the lumber at no cost at all.”
As she sat there watching Julie with her kindly keen eyes, she seemed to throw a veil of friendship around the girl, which her senses gratefully accepted. It seemed to Julie, whose head was aching and who had commenced to feel depressed and dispirited, that she had known Mrs. Ashby a long time and that they understood each other.
Mrs. Ashby asked her how old she was, and when Julie replied, she said: “You are very young! I wonder if there is after all anything quite so tragic as youth. It spends its golden years floundering about trying to find land—such a lot of floundering it sometimes does to no purpose. It perceives nothing clearly, but waits for the universe to clear—like a mist. It searches in vain for the coherence of existence that it was taught to believe in, and it comes darkly to feel that everything on earth—and in the sky is a cruel chance. It feels that it can’t go on unless it can find the connection throughout everything—and at last its poor sad little soul comes to the conclusion that this mad chaos is not worth while.
“Governor Shell told me that he had spent thirty unproductive years of youth groping for the light. And as for me, I had come to the end of the cosmos, and was about to drop off. Why, when there was no clear and perfect aim in life should I waste more time in fruitless seeking, I argued. I became so sure that life was a collocation of meaningless realities that I felt I might as well get myself out of it as fast as I could.
“I didn’t dream that a tireless Scheme would ceaselessly work me over until the reluctant atoms in me would begin to work too to turn the Wheel. Mine was a black existence, that only the worst wretches come to know; but I don’t regret an hour of it. Nor must you despair over any experience that comes to you, for after this manner, my child, do we work our way into the light.
“I was a slacker, an idle wastrel in creation where the Master-mind and all His minute men all over all the worlds were battling toward the goal. I was long in realizing it. Keep running, my friend, in the footsteps of a striving God. That’s what makes these men here so strong. They are battling with chaos to bring law and harmony into a part of the world. Consciously they don’t know what great agents they are, any more than the chrysalis understands why it breaks from its shell. It’s all a mighty subconscious unfoldment of life. This business of the East has got to be straightened out on the earth.”
Julie leaned forward, forgetful of her pain. “When you and Barry talk, I step back into the old enchantment of mood. I’m afraid I am not struggling any more. You see, I found that you can expend yourself fruitlessly.” Her voice shook. “My mind is chaotic—just like your picture; and dark too, at times. Ever since I left the South my convictions have been oozing out, like sands out of an hour-glass. I meet life from moment to moment, and not in the least understanding why it falls as it does. We are all just a lot of ships lurching this way and that, at the wanton mercy of the ocean; and most of us, I think, disastrously collide. The Pilot, whoever and whatever he may be is always unchallengeable. Ah, when your most inspired efforts have failed, when your life seems to toss beyond your control, do you think you will find coherence in anything?”
Mrs. Ashby’s clear eyes penetrated through her. “There is coherence in the solar system, and in all the system beyond; comets, after a thousand years reappear upon a calculated day. There is everywhere coherence, my child, because there is everywhere law.”
“But what good does this law and order do me if I can’t find it? Down here on this tiresome planet a being called Julie is doomed to struggle and battle and hope, and gets nowhere at all. Oh, if only one could get up from the Game, and turn one’s self around for luck!”