Free The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch Page B

complex awarenesses could be contained in seconds. A huge space opened, accompanied sometimes by intense joy. Honeydew. Occasionally he worried about it, but not often. This, whatever it was, was one of the things which had put it, whatever it was, which Harry had enquired about, into his head.
    Stuart heard Edward’s window below open, then close. He sighed, and began to think about Edward. He already knew intuitively about the terrible untouchable sufferings of others. But upon the horrors he did not dwell. He could picture Mark Wilsden dead, and his tutor Plowmain who had blown his brains out. Stuart had never met Mark, and did not like Plowmain or know why he had killed himself. Interested people wondered whether this violent death had ‘influenced’ Stuart. It had not, it did not concern him. These bloody casualties were for him sad static things, like tombs, upon the road into the whiteness of his own future, a whiteness which was like a different kind of death. His attitude was that of an unreflective soldier, perhaps not likely to survive for long. Of course he could bleed, he could weep; and if it had been his duty to bury the dead he would have done so. But there were grievous and awful things which must remain externally related to his thought, as if in relation to them, he could always only be concerned as an instrument or servant. Stuart pictured the Good Samaritan as being intently reflective at suitable intervals about the man he had helped, so long as he could continue to help him (for instance by sending the innkeeper some more money), but as otherwise dismissing the matter from his mind. Anything in the nature of drama, of brooding or gloating or re-enacting, was alien to Stuart, as was also joyous or gleeful anticipation. In a way he did not want to reflect too much; and was perhaps in this sense, as Harry had said, lacking in imagination. These peculiarities made of his present task of disposing of his life a curiously cramped and narrow problem. He wanted to find a job, some sort of plain service job, white, blank, like the blankness of time as it continually streamed towards him, getting as it were into his eyes; yet also it must be his job, since he retained a sense of vocation, of being called to some work suited to his talents, not his old talents, but his new talents, the talents of his new life, which had to be begun soon: for whatever it was, it was to be won or lost now. That much was clear to him, and that much of a drama, he sometimes felt it was too much, gave structure to his reflection. In another context and another time, traditions and institutions might have upheld and guided him. Now, as he was forced to think about himself, the very emptiness of his thought, which he so much valued, made it difficult for him to plan and make decisions.
    Stuart had sometimes put it to himself that what he wanted was a (but the right ) cage of duties. And now at any rate there was a clear duty, to which he had not needed to have his attention drawn by Harry, to ‘do something’ about Edward. Did he love Edward? Of course: Stuart did not propose to stumble over that question, any more than over the question of whether some twinge of old jealous resentment might not even now make him the tiniest bit glad that his popular brother was in trouble. His connection with Edward was absolute, and as for base thoughts and feelings, he was used to thrusting them down, as if drowning them, with no misgivings about ‘repression’. His talk with Edward had not been a success. He had done it as an act of will, something no longer to be put off. He had never before offered anybody so much advice, or put into words and uttered things which he so profoundly believed in. But these things had not reached Edward. Stuart was aware, and here he did seem to stumble, that only love could have winged his words, such words, so as to make them reach that objective. Only in a context of love could talk of sin and guilt