He
came over to the window, and, evidently not seeing his son-in-law, faced
out into the night.
In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a
London night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of
the gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the
clustered shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface of
the road, like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the earth by
the feet of the passers-by. There, too, were shapes of men and women
hurrying home, and the great blocked shapes of the houses where they
lived. A halo hovered above the City--a high haze of yellow light,
dimming the stars. The black, slow figure of a policeman moved
noiselessly along the railings opposite.
From then till eleven o'clock, when he would make himself some cocoa on
a little spirit-lamp, the writer of the "Book of Universal Brotherhood"
would alternate between his bent posture above his manuscript and his
blank consideration of the night....
With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of
Socrates.
"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets!"
There certainly was a virus in that notion. One must either take it as a
jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do? How far was it one's business
to identify oneself with other people, especially the helpless--how far
to preserve oneself intact--'integer vita'? Hilary was no young person,
like his niece or Martin, to whom everything seemed simple; nor was
he an old person like their grandfather, for whom life had lost its
complications.
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