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TIME PASSES

I

It grew darker.      Clouds covered the moon; in the early
hours of the morning a thin rain drummed on the roof, and
starlight and moonlight and all light on sky and earth was
quenched. Nothing could survive the flood, the profusion,
the downpouring of the immense darkness which, creeping in at
keyholes and crevices, stole round the window blinds, came in
to the bedrooms, and swallowed up, here a jug and basin, there
a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and
firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture
confounded; but there was scarcely anything left of body or
mind by which one could say 'this is he' or 'this is she'; but
from the many bodies lying asleep either in the rigid attitudes
of the old passively creased in the creases of the beds, or
easily lying scarcely covered, in childhood, as if a cloud
lightly curved under them, there rose, to break silvery on the
surface, thoughts, dreams, impulses, of which the sleepers by
day knew nothing. Now a hand was raised as if to clutch
something or perhaps ward off something; now the anguish which
is forbidden to cry out for comfort parted the lips of the
sleepers; now and then somebody laughed out loud, as if sharing
a joke with nothingness.
      It seemed almost as if there must be ghostly confidantes
about, sharers, comforters, who, stooping by the bedside,

 


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