Then, would you never talk? Or would you confine talking to the weather or the contents of the public prints? Would you have our ideas get hard and sterile for want of being moved? Do you advise that, like some tactful persons we--you--yes, _you_--all know and detest--we systematically let every subject drop as soon as raised?
There! the talking has begun. They are at it, contradicting what they agree with, and asking definitions of what they perfectly understand. Of course not! And here I am, unable to resist, rushing into the argument, excited--who can tell?--perhaps delighted. And by the time we take up our bedroom candles, and wish each other good night (with additional definitions over the banisters) every scrap of sensible meaning I ever had will be turned to nonsense; and I shall feel, next morning, oh, how miserably humiliated and depressed!...
"Well--and to return to what we were saying last night...."
One of the truths which come (if any do) with middle age, is the gradual recognition that in one's friendly intercourse the essential--the one thing needful--is not what people say, but what they think and feel.
Words are not necessarily companionable, far from it; but moods truly meet, to part in violent dissonance; or to move parallel in happy harmonic intervals; or, more poignant and more satisfying still, to pass gradually along some great succession of alien chords--common contemplation, say, of a world grievous or pleasant to both--on towards the peace, the consummation, of a great major close. Once we have sufficient indication that another person cares for the same kind of things that we do--or, as important quite, cares in the same degree or in the same way--all further explanation becomes superfluous: detail, delightful occasionally to quicken and bring home the sense of companionship, but by no means needed.
This is the secret of our intercourse with those persons of whom our friends will say (or think), What _can_ you have in common with So-and-so? What _can_ you find to talk about? Talk about? Why, nothing; the enigmatic person remains with us, as with all the rest of the world, silent, inarticulate; incapable, sometimes, of any inner making of formulæ. But we know that our companion is seeing, feeling, the same lines of the hills and washes of their colours, the same scudding or feathering out of clouds; is _living_, in the completest sense, in that particular scene and hour; and knowing this, it matters nothing how long we trudge along the road or saunter across the grass without uttering. The road of life, too, or the paths and thickets of speculation.
