inspiration, religion, enthusiasm,
patriotism, immortality, the fact, essentially identical, whatever we
like to call it, which is not bread and yet is life. He never dared to
say anything to her. He felt that she lived in a world beyond him, and
he did not know what kind of a world it was. He knew that she thought
about things which were strange to him, and that she was anxious upon
subjects which never troubled him. She was often greatly depressed when
there was no cause for depression so far as he could see, and he could
not comprehend why a person should be ill when there was nothing the
matter. If he felt unwell--a rare event with him--he always took two
antibilous pills before going to bed, and was all right the next morning.
He wished he himself could be ill without a reason, and then perhaps he
would be able to understand Catharine better. Her elation and excitement
were equally unintelligible. He once saw her sitting in her father's
counting-house with a book. She was not a great reader--nobody in
Eastthorpe read books, and there were not many to read--but she was so
absorbed in this particular book that she did not lift her eyes from it
when he came in, and it was not until her father had spoken twice to her,
and had told her that he was expecting somebody, that she moved. She
then ran upstairs into a storeroom, and was there for half an hour in the
cold. The book was left open when she went away, and Tom looked at it.
It was a collection of poems by all kinds of people, and the one over
which she had been poring was about a man who had shot an albatross. Tom
studied it, but could make nothing of it, and yet this was what had so
much interested her! "O God!" he said to himself passionately, "if I
could, if I did but know! She cares not a pin for me; this is what she
cares for." Poor Tom! he did not pride himself on the absence of a sense
in him, but knew and acknowledged to himself that he was defective. It
is quite possible to be aware of a spiritual insensibility which there is
no power to overcome--of the existence of a universe in which other
favoured souls are able to live, one which they can report, and yet its
doors are closed to us, or, if sitting outside we catch a glimpse of what
is within, we have no power to utter a single sufficient word to acquaint
anybody with what we have seen: Catharine respected Tom greatly, for she
understood well enough what her father owed to him, but she coul