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“You must write it down, absolutely and in its entirety, write it down,” instructed her mentor. In fact, Maisie thought that if she had a shilling for every time she heard the words, “absolutely, and in its entirety,” she would never have to work again.
But she sat up to listen carefully, remembering Blanche’s advice: “The extraordinary hides behind the camouflage of the ordinary. Assume nothing, Maisie.”
“Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions.” Maurice’s voice once again echoed in her mind. “As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.”
Maurice Blanche maintained that amid the tales, the smokescreens, and the deceptive mirrors of life’s unsolved mysteries, truth resides, waiting for someone to enter its sanctum, then leave, without quite closing the door behind them. That is when truth may make its escape.
Poverty is something we think we understand from description. It is only when it is close to hand that we have a grasp of what it means to be unequal.” “But what can I do?” “No need to wear a hair shirt, Rowan. But perhaps opportunities will present themselves. One only has to ask, ‘How might I serve?’ Goodnight, my dear.”
Stay with the question. The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you. In time, Maisie, you will find that the larger questions in life share such behavior.”
With Khan she learned to sit in deliberate silence, and learned too that the stilled mind would give insight beyond the teaching of books and hours of instruction, and that such counsel would support all other learning.
When she first sat with Khan, she asked what it was she was to do as she sat with legs crossed on the cushion in front of him. The old man lifted his face to the window, then turned his clear white eyes toward her and said simply, “Pay attention.”
She remembered him looking into the distance and speaking, very quietly, almost to himself. “Such is the legacy of war . . . the discarded dreams of children . . . the waste. The tragedy.”
And sitting alone in the gardens at Chelstone, Maisie wondered about the war, and how it was that such blooms could give joy to the soul, when one only had to stand on cliffs overlooking the Channel to hear the boom of cannons on the battlefields of France.
Coincidence was a messenger sent by truth.
