This Is the End | Page 2

than Jay or I. But to me, even after twenty
years' intimacy with what I can only describe as a supplementary life
that I cannot describe, it still seems so very wonderful that I cannot
believe I share it with every man and woman in the street.
The great advantage of a Secret Story over other stories is that you
cannot put it into print. So I can only show you the initial letter, and
you may if you choose look upon it as an imaginary hieroglyphic. Or
you may not.
Just this, that a bubble world can contain a round and russet horizon of
high woods which you can attain, and from the horizon a long view of
an unending sea. You can run down across the dappled fields, you can
run down into the cove and stroke the sea and hear the intimate minor
singing of it. And when you feel as strong as the morning, you can
shout and run against the wind, against the flying sand that never blows
above your knees. And when you feel as tired as the night, you can
climb slowly up the cliff path and go into the House, the House you
know much better than any house your ordinary eyes have seen, and
there you will find your Secret Friends. The best part about Secret
Friends is that they will never weary you by knowing you. You share
their House, your passing hand helps to polish the base of that wooden
figure that ends the banisters, you know the childish delight of that
wide short chimney in the big turret room, a chimney so wide and so
short that you can stand inside the great crooked fireplace and whisper
to the birds that look down from the edge of the chimney only a yard or
two above you. You know how comfy those big beds are, you sit at the
long clothless table in the brown dining-room. With all these things you
are intimate, and yet you pass through the place as a ghost, your bubble
enchantment encloses you, your Secret Friends have no knowledge of

you, their story runs without you. Your unnecessary identity is tactfully
ignored, and you know the heaven of being dispassionate and detached
among things you love.
All these things can a bubble world contain. You have to get inside
things to find out how limitless they are. And I think if you don't
believe it all, it is none the less true for that, because in that case you
are the sort of person who believes a thing less the truer it is.
If Jay's Family did not know she was a 'bus-conductor, and did not
know she was a story-possessor, what did it know about her? It knew
she disliked the smell of bananas, and that she had not taken advantage
of an expensive education, and that she was Stock Size (Small Ladies'),
and that she was christened Jane Elizabeth, and that she took after her
father to an excessive extent, and that she was rather too apt to swallow
this Socialist nonsense. As Families go, it was fairly well informed
about her.
The Family was a rather promiscuous one. It had more tortuous
relationships than most families have, although there were only four in
it, not counting Mr. Russell.
I might as well introduce you to the Family before I settle down to the
story. From careful study of the press reviews I gather that a story is
considered a necessary thing in a novel, so this time I am going to try
and include one.
You may, if you please, meet the Family after breakfast at Mr. Russell's
house in Kensington, about three months after Jay had run away. There
were four people in the room. They were Cousin Gustus, Mrs. Gustus,
Kew, and Mr. Russell.
It behoves me to try and tell you very simply about Mrs. Gustus,
because she prided herself on simplicity. Spelt with a capital S, it
constituted her Deity; her heaven was a severe and shadowless eternity,
and plain words were the flowers that grew in her Elysian fields. She
had simplified her life and her looks. Even her smile was shorn of all
accessories like dimples or twinkles. Her hair, which was not abundant,
was the colour of corn, straight and shining. Her eyes were a cold dark
grey.
Now to be simple is all very well, but turn it into an active verb and
you spoil the whole idea. To simplify seems forced, and I think Mrs.
Gustus struck harder on the note of simplification than that of

simplicity. I should not dare to criticise her, however, and Cousin
Gustus was satisfied, so criticism in any case would be intrusive. It is
just possible that he