Runningupstairs to Mr. Hancock’s room a quarter of an hour before his arrival in the morning Miriam found herself wishing that she lived altogether at Wimpole Street. They were all so kind. Life would be simplified if she could throw in her lot with them. Coming in to breakfast after the lesson had been a sort of home-coming. There were pleasant noises about the house; the family shouted carelessly to each other on the stairs, the school-boy slid down the banisters; the usual subdued manner of the servants was modified by an air of being a possession of the house and liking it. They rushed quietly and happily about. The very aroma of the coffee seemed tranquilly to feed one. At breakfast everyone was cheerful and kind. It was home. They were so sympathetic and amused over the adventure. The meeting in the freshness of the morning made everything easier to handle. It gave the morning a beginning and shed its brightness over the professional hush that fell upon the house at nine o’clock. It would make lunch-time more easy; and at the end of the day, if asked, she would join the family party again.
While Mr. Hancock was looking through his letters she elaborately suppressed a yawn.
“How did you get on?” he asked, with prompt amusement, his eyes on a letter.
“Well, I couldn’t get off; that was just it” murmured Miriam quietly, enjoying her jest; how strong she felt after her good breakfast....
He turned an amused enquiring face and they both laughed.
Everything in the room was ready for the day’s work. She polished the already bright set of forceps with a luxurious sense of leisure.
“It was perfectly awful. When we got to the Inner Circle Mr. Leyton simply put me on the bicycle and sent me off.Herode round the other way and I had to go on and on. He scorched about and kept passing me.”
Mr. Hancock waited smiling for the more that stood in her struggling excited voice.
“There were people going round on horse-back and a few other people on bicycles.”
“I expect they all gave you a pretty wide berth.”
“Theydid; except one awful man, an old gentleman sailing along looking at nothing.”
“What happened?” laughed Mr. Hancock delightedly.
“It was awful, I was most fearfully rude—I shouted ‘Getout of the way’ and I was on the wrong side of the road; but miles off, only IknewI couldn’t get back I had forgotten how to steer.”
“What did he do?”
“He swept round me looking very frightened and disturbed.”
“Hadn’t you a bell?”
“Yes, but it meant sliding my hand along. I daren’t do that; nobody seemed to want it, they all glided about; they were really awfully nice. Ihadto go on because I couldn’t get off. I can wobble along, but I can’t mount or dismount. I was never so frightened in my life.”
“I’m afraid you’ve had a very drastic time.”
“I fell off in the end I was so dead beat.”
“But this is altogether too drastic. Where was Leyton?”
“Rushing round and round meeting me and then overtaking me, startling me out of my wits by ringing behind for me to get to the side. Nobody else did that. It was awfully kind. I went tacking about from side to side.”
“I’m afraid you’ve had a very drastic time. I thinkyou’d better come up this evening and learn getting on and off on the lawn; that’s the way to do it.”
“Oh” said Miriam gratefully; “but I have no machine. Mrs. Orly lent me hers.”
“I daresay we can hire a machine.”
Miriamfound it difficult to believe that the girl was a dental secretary. She swept about among Miss Szigmondy’s guests in a long Liberty dress, her hands holding her long scarf about her person as if she were waiting for a clear space to leap or run, staying nowhere, talking here and there with the assurance of a successful society woman, laughing and jesting, swiftly talking down the group she was with and passing on with a shouted remark about herself as she had done in the library on the night of Lord Kelvin’s lecture.... “I’m tired of being good; I’m going to try being naughty for a change.” Mr. Hancock had stood planted before her in laughing admiration, waiting for the next thing that she might say. How could he of all men in the world be taken out of himself by an effective trick? He had laughed more spontaneously than Miriam had ever seen him do. Whatwasthis effective thing? An appearance of animation. That it seemed, could make any man, even Mr. Hancock, if it were free from any suggestion of loudness or vulgarity, stand gaping and disarmed. Why had he volunteered the information that she was eighteen and secretary to his friend in Harley Street. “You don’t seem verykeen”; that was her voice from the other end of the room; using the new smart word with a delicate emphasis, pretending interest in something, meaning nothing at all. She was a middle-aged woman, she would never be older than she was now. She saw nothing and no one, nor ever would. In all her life she would never be arrested by anything. Nice kind peoplewould call her “a charming girl.” ... “Charming girls” were taught to behave effectively and lived in a brilliant death, dealing death all round them. Nothing could live in their presence. No natural beauty, no spectacle of art, no thought, no music. They were uneasy in the presence of these things, because their presence meant cessation of “charming” behaviour—except at such moments as they could use the occasion to decorate themselves.They had no souls.Yet in social life nothing seemed to possess any power but their surface animation.
There was real power in that other woman. Her strong young comeliness was good, known to be good. It was strange that a student of music should be known for her work among the poor. The serene large outlines of her form gave out light in the room; and the light on her white brow unconscious above her deliberately kind face was the loveliest thing to be seen; the deliberately kind face spoiled it, and would presently change it; unless some great vision came to her it would grow furrowed over “the housing problem” and the face would dry up, its white life cut off at a source; at present she was at the source; one could tell her anything. Mr. Hancock recognised her goodness, spoke of her with admiration and respect. What was she doing here, among all these worldly musicians?Shewould never be a musician, never a first-class musician. Then she had ambition. She was poor. Someone was helping her ... Miss Szigmondy! Why? She must know she would never make a musician. Miriam cowered in her corner. The good woman was actually going to sing before all these celebrities. What a fine great free voice.... “Whenshall we meet—refinedand free, amongst the moorlandbrack-en...” if Mr. Hancock could have heard her sing that, surely his heart must have gone out to her? She knew, to her inmost being, what that meant. Shelongedfor cleansing fires, even she with her radiant forehead; her soul flew out along the sustained notes towards its vision, her dark eyes were set upon it as she sang, the cleartones of her voice called to the companion of her soul for the best that was in him. She was the soul of truth, counting no cost. She would attain her vision, though the earthly companion she longed for might pass her by. The pure beauty of the moorland would remain for her, would set itself along the shores of her life forever....
But she could not sing. It was the worst kind of English singing, all volume and emphasis and pressure. Was there that in her goodness too ... deliberate kindness to everybody. Was that a method—just a social method? She was one of those people about whom it would be said that she never spoke ill of anyone. But was not indiscriminate deliberate conscious goodness to everybody an insult to humanity? People who were like that never knew the difference between one person and another. ‘Philanthropic’ people were never sympathetic. They pitied. Pity was not sympathy. It was a denial of something. It assumed that life was pitiful. Yet her clear eyes would see through anything, any evil thing to the human being behind. But she knew it, and practised it like a doctor. She had never been amazed by the fact that there were any human beings at all ... and with all her goodness she had plans and ambitions. She wanted to be a singer—and she was thinking about somebody. Men were dazzled by the worldly little secretary and they reverenced the singer and her kind. Irreligious men would respect religion for her sake—and would wish, thinking of her, to live in a particular kind of way; but she would never lead a man to religion because she had no thoughts and no ideas.
The surprise of finding these two women here and the pain of observing them was a just reward for having come to Miss Szigmondy’s At Home without a real impulse—just to see the musicians and to be in the same room with them. All that remained was to write to someone about them by name. There was nothing to do but mention their names. There was no wonder about them. They were allfat. Not one of them was an artist and they all hatedeach other. It was like a ballad concert. They all sang in the English way. They were not in the least like the instrumentalists; or St. James’s Hall Saturday afternoon audiences, not that kind of “queer soft lot”; not shadowy grey or dead white or with that curious transparent look; they all looked ruddy or pink, and sleek; they had the same sort of kindly commonsense as Harriett’s Lord and Lady Bollingdon ... perhaps to keep a voice going it was necessary to be fat.
“Itwas simply heavenly going off—all standing in the hall in evening dress while the servants blew for hansoms. I wore my bridesmaid’s dress with a piece of tulle arranged round the top of the bodice. It was wrong at the back so I had to sit very carefully the whole evening to prevent it going up like a muffler, but never mind; it was heavenly I tell you. We bowled off down through the west-end in three hansoms one behind the other, in the dark. You know the gleam and shine inside a hansom sprinting along a dark empty street where the lamps are few and dim; (see ‘The Organist’s Daughter’) and then came the bright streets all alight and full of dinner and theatre people in evening dress in hansoms and you kept getting wedged in between other hansoms with people talking and laughing all round you; and it took about ten minutes to get from the end of Regent Street across to the other side of Piccadilly where we dined in wicked Rupert Street. Just as the caviare was brought in we heard that the Prince of Wales had won the Derby. Shakespeare is extraordinary. I had no idea Hamlet was so full of quotations.”
Miriam flushed heavily as the last words ran automatically from her pen. The sense of the richly moving picture that had filled her all the morning and now kept her sitting happily under the hot roof at her small dusty table in the full breadth of Saturday afternoon would be gone if she left that sentence. She felt a curious painful shock at the tips of her fingers as she re-read it; a current singing within her was driven back by it.... Mrs. Orly’s facehad been all alive and alight when she had leant forward across Mr. Hancock and said the words that had seemed so meaningless and irritating. Perhaps she too had felt something she wanted to express and had lost it at that moment. Certainly both she and Mr. Orly would feel the beauty of Shakespeare. But the words had shattered the spell of Shakespeare and writing them down like that was spoiling the description of the evening, though Harriett would not think so.
But anyhow the letter would not do for Harriett—even if words could be found to express “Shakespeare.” That would not interest Harriett. She would think the effort funny and Miriamish but it would not mean anything to her. She had been to Shakespeare because she adored Ellen Terry and put up with Irving for her sake.... People in London seemed to think that Irving was just as great as Ellen Terry.... Perhaps now Irving would seem different. Perhaps Irving was great.... I will go and hear Irving in Shakespeare ... no money and no theatres except with other people.... The rest of the letter would simply hurt Harriett, because it would seem like a reflection on theatres with her. Theatres with her had had a magic that last night could not touch ... sitting in the front row of the pit, safely in after the long wait, the walls of the theatre going up, softly lit buff and gold, fluted and decorated and bulging with red curtained boxes, the clear view across the empty stalls of the dim height of fringed curtain hanging in long straight folds, the certainty that Harriett shared the sense of the theatre, that for her too when the orchestra began the great motionless curtain shut them in in a life where everything else in the world faded away and was forgotten, the sight of the perfection of happiness on Harriett’s little buff-shadowed face, the sudden running ripple, from side to side, of the igniting footlights ... the smoothly clicking rustle of the withdrawing curtain ... the magic square of the lit scene ... the daily growth of the charm ofthese things during that week when they had gone to a theatre every night, so that on looking back the being in the theatre with the certainty of the moving changing scenes ahead was clearer than either of the plays they had seen.... She sat staring through the open lattice.... The sound of the violin from the house down the street that had been a half-heardobbligato to her vision of last night came in drearily, filling the space whence the vision had departed, with uneasy questions. She turned to her letter to recapture the impulse with which she had sat down.... If she turned it into a letter to Eve, all the description of the evening would have to be changed; Eve knew all about grandeurs, with the Greens’ large country house and their shooting-boxes and visits to London hotels; the bright glories must go—overwhelming and unexpressed. Why did that make one so sad? Was it because it suggested that one cared more for the gay circumstances than for the thing seen? What was it they had seen? Why had they gone? WhatwasShakespeare? Her vision returned to her as she brooded on this fresh problem. The whole scene of the theatre was round her once more; she was sitting in the half darkness gazing at the stage. What had it been for her? What was it that came from the stage? Something—real... to say that drove it away. She looked again and it clustered once more, alive. The gay flood of the streets, the social excitements and embarrassments of the evening were a conflagration; circling about the clear bright kernel of moving lights and figures on the stage. She gazed at the bright stage. Moments came sharply up, grouped figures, spoken words. She held them, her contemplation aglow with the certainty that something was there that set her alight with love, making her whole in the midst of her uncertainty and ignorance. Words and phrases came, a sentence here and there that had suddenly shaped and deepened a scene. Perhaps it was only in seeing Shakespeare acted that one could appreciate him? But it wasnotthe acting. Noone could act. They all just missed it. It was all very well for Mag to laugh. Theydidjust miss it.... “Why, my child? In what way?” “They act at the audience, they take their cues too quickly and have their emotions too abruptly; and from outside not inside.” “But if they feltat all, all the time, they would go mad or die.” “No, they would not. But even if they did not feel it, if they looked, it would be enough. They don’tlookat the thing they are doing.” It was not the acting. Nor the play. The characters of the story were always tiresome. The ideas, the wonderful quotations if you looked closely at them were everyone’s ideas; things that everybody knew. To read Shakespeare carefully all through would only be to find all the general things somewhere or other. But that did not matter. Being ignorant of him and of history did not matter, as long as you heard him. Poetry! The poetry of Shakespeare...? Primers of literature told one that. It did not explain the charm. Just the sound. Music. Like Beethoven. Bad acting cannot spoil Shakespeare. Bad playing cannot destroy Beethoven. It was thesoundof Shakespeare that made the scenes real—that made Winter’s Tale, so long ago and so bewildering, remain in beauty.... “Dear Eve, Shakespeare is a sound ...” She tore up the letter. The next time she wrote to Eve she must remember to say that. The garret was stifling. Away from the brilliant window the room was just as hot; the close thick smell of dust sickened her. She came back to the table, sitting as near as possible to the open. The afternoon had been wasted trying to express her evening and nothing had been expressed. The thought of last night was painful now. She had spoiled it in some way. Her heart beat heavily in the stifling room. Her head ached and her eyes were tired. She was too tired to walk; and there was no money; barely enough for next week’s A.B.C. suppers. There was no comfort. It was May ... in a stuffy dusty room. May. Her face quivered and her head sank upon the hot table.
Nearlyall the roses were half-opened buds; firm and stiff. Larger ones put in here and there gave the effect of mass. Closest contemplation enhanced the beauty of the whole. Each rose was perfect. The radiant mass was lovely throughout. The body of the basket curved firmly away to its slender hidden base; the smooth sweep of the rim and the delicate high arch of the handle held the roses perfectly framed. It was a perfect gift.... It had been quite enough to have the opportunity of doing little things for Mrs. Berwick ... the surprise of the roses. Thesurpriseof them. Roses, roses, roses ... all the morning they had stood, making the morning’s work happy; visible all over the room. Everyone in the house had had the beautiful shock of them. And they were still as they had been when they had been gathered in the dew. If they were in water by the end of the afternoon the buds would revive and expand ... even after the hours in the Lyceum. If they were thrown now into the waste-paper basket it would not matter. They would go on being perfect—to the end of life. “And as long; as my heart is bea-ting; as long; as my eyes; have; tears.”
Winthrop came up punctually at one o’clock as he had promised. “It would save you comin’ down if I was to ph-come up.” It would go on then. He had thought about it and meant to do it. She opened the cash box quickly and deftly in her gratitude and handed him his four sovereigns and the money for the second mechanicand the apprentices. He waited gently while she counted it out. Next Saturday she would have it ready for him. “Thank you Miss——; ph—phGoodafternoon” he said cheerfully. “Good afternoon Mr. Winthrop” she responded busily with all her heart and listened as he clattered away downstairs. A load was lifted from Saturday mornings, for good. No more going down to run the gauntlet of the row of eyes and get herself along the bench, depositing the various sums. Nothing in future but the letters, the overhauling of Mr. Hancock’s empty surgery, the easy lunch with Mr. Leyton, and the week-end. She entered the sums in the petty cash book. There was that. They would always be that week after week. But to-day the worrying challenge ofit disappeared in the joy of the last entry. “Self” she wrote, the light across the outspread prospect of her life steadying and deepening as she wrote, “one pound, five.” The five, written down, sent a thrill from the contemplated page. Taking the customary sovereign from the cash-box she placed it carefully in the middle pocket of her purse and closed the clip. The five shillings she distributed about the side-pockets; half a crown, a shilling, two sixpenny bits and six coppers. The purse was full of money. By September she would have about four pounds five in hand and two pounds ten of her month’s holiday money still unspent; six pounds fifteen; she could go to a matinée every week and still have about half the four pounds five; about four pounds fifteen altogether; enough to hire a bicycle for the month and buy some summer blouses for the holiday.... She pocketed the heavy purse. Why was there always a feeling of guilt about a salary? It was the same every week. The life at Wimpole Street was so full and so interesting; she was learning so much and seeing so much. Salary was out of place—a payment for leading a glorious life, half of which was entirely her own. The extra five shillings was a present from the Orlys and Mr. Hancock. She could manage on the pound. The new sum was wealth, superfluity.They would expect more of her in future. Surely it would be possible to give more; with so much money; to find the spirit to come punctually at nine; always to have everything in complete readiness in all three surgeries; to keep all the books up to date.... But they would not have given her the rise at the end of five months if they had not felt she was worth it.... It would make all the difference to the summer. Hopefully she took a loose sheet of paper and made two lists of the four pages of the week’s entries—dissecting them under the heads of workshop and surgery. About fifteen pounds had been spent. Again and again with heating head she added her pages of small sums, getting each time slightly different results, until at last they balanced with the dissected lists—twice in succession. The hall clock struck one and Mr. Leyton came downstairs rattling and rattled into her room. “How d’you like this get up?” The general effect of the blue grey uniform and brown leather belt and bandolier was pleasing. “Oh,jolly” she said abstractedly to his waiting figure. He clattered downstairs to lunch.Everybodyhad outside interests. Mr. Hancock would be on the Broads by now. Her afternoon beckoned, easy with the superfluity of money. Anxiously she counted over the balance in the cash box. It was two and ninepence short. Damnation. Damnation. “Put it down to stamps—or miscellanea; not accounted for.” She looked back through her entries. Stamps, one pound, at the beginning of the week. Stamps, ten shillings yesterday. It could not be that. It was some carelessness—something not entered—or a miscalculation. Something she had paid out to the workshop in the middle of a rush and forgotten to put down. She went back through her entries one by one with flaring cheeks; recovering the history of the week and recalling incidents. Nothing came that would account for the discrepancy. It was simply a mistake. Something had been put down wrong. The money had been spent. But was it a workshop or a surgery expense that had gone wrong?“Postage etc.: two and nine,” would make it all right—but the account would not be right. Either the workshop or the surgery account must suffer. It would be another of those little inaccurate spots that came every few weeks; that she would always have to remember ... her mind toiled, goaded and hot.... Mr. Orly had borrowed five pounds to buy tools at Buck and Hickman’s and come back with the money spent and some of the tools to be handed to the practice. Perhaps it was in balancing that up that the mistake had occurred ... or the electric lamp account; some for the house, some for the practice and some for the workshop. Thoroughly miserable she made a provisional entry of the sum against surgery in pencil and left the account unbalanced. Perhaps on Monday it would come right. When the ledgers were all in place and the safe and drawers locked she stretched her limbs and forced away her misery. The roses reproached her, but only for a moment. They understood, in detail, as clearly as she did, all the difficulties. They took her part. Standing there waiting, they too felt that there was nothing now but lunch and Irving.
With the basket of roses over her arm she walked as rapidly as possible down to Oxford Circus taking the first turning out of Wimpole Street to hurry the more secretly and conveniently. A ’bus took her to Charing Cross where she jumped off as soon as it began pulling up and ran down the Strand. As soon as she felt herself flying towards her bourne the fears that last week’s magic would have disappeared left her altogether. Last week had been wonderful, an adventure her first deliberate piece of daring in London. Inside the theatre the scruples and the daring had been forgotten. To-day again everything would be forgotten, everything; to-day’s happiness was more secure; it would not mean going almost foodless over the week-end and without an egg for supper all next week; therewas no anticipation of disapproving eyes in the theatre this week; the sense of the impropriety of going alone had gone; it would never return; the feeling of selfishness in spending money on a theatre alone was still there, but a voice within answered that—saying that there was no one at hand to go and no one she knew who would find at the Lyceum performance just what she found, no one to whom it would mean much more than a theatre; like any other theatre and a play, amongst other plays, with a celebrated actor taking the chief part ... except Mag. Mag had been with her as she gazed. Mag was with her now. Mag, fulfilling one or other of her exciting Saturday afternoon engagements would sit at her side.
Easy and happy she fled along ... her heart greeting each passenger in the scattered throng she threaded, her eyes upon the traffic in the roadway. A horseless brougham went by, moving smoothly and silently amongst the noisy traffic—the driver looked as though he were fastened to the front of the vehicle, a little tin driver on a clockwork toy; there was nothing between him and the road but the platform of the little tank on which his feet were set. He looked as if he were falling off. If anything ran into him there was nothing to protect him. It left an uncomfortable memory ... it would only be for carriages; the well-loved horse omnibuses would go on ... it must be somewhere near here ... “Lyceum Pit,” there it was, just ahead, easily discernible. Last week when she had had to ask, she had not noticed the words printed on the side of the passage that showed as you came down the Strand. The pavement was clear for a moment and she rounded the near angle and ran home down the passage without slackening her pace, her half-crown ready in her hand, a Lyceum pittite.
The dark pit seemed very full as she entered the door at the left hand corner; dim forms standing at the backtold her there were no seats left; but she made her way across to the right and down the incline hoping for a neglected place somewhere on the extreme right. Her vain search brought her down to the barrier and the end of her inspection of the serried ranks of seated forms to her left swept her eyes forward. She was just under the overhanging balcony of the dress-circle; the well of the theatre opened clear before her as she stood against the barrier, the stalls half full and filling with dim forms gliding in right and left, the upward sweep of the theatre walls covered with boxes from which white faces shone in the gloom, a soft pervading saffron light, bright light heavily screened. There was space all round her, the empty gangway behind, the gangway behind the stalls just in front of the barrier, the view clear away to the stage over the heads of the people sitting in the stalls.... Why not stay here? If people stood at the back of the pit they might stand in front. She retreated into the angle made by the out-curving wall of the pit and the pit barrier. Putting down the basket of roses on the floor at her side she leaned against the barrier with her elbows on its rim.
He was there before he appeared ... in the orchestra, in the audience, all over the house. Presently, in a few moments he was going to appear, moving and speaking on the stage. Someone might come forward and announce that he was ill or dead. He would die; perhaps only years hence; but long before one was old ... death of Henry Irving. No more thoughts of that; he is there—perhaps for twenty years; coming and going, having seasons at the Lyceum. He knew he must die; he did not think about it. He could turn with a smile and go straight up, in a rosy chariot ... well done thou good and faithful and happy servant. He would go, closing his eyes upon the vision that was always in them, something they saw, something they gave out every moment.Whom the gods love die young ... not always young in years, but young always; trailing clouds of glory. It is always the unexpected that happens. Things you dread never happen. That is Weber—or Meyerbeer. Who chooses the music? Perhaps he does.
The orchestration brought back last week’s performance. It was all there; behind the curtain. Shylock, swinging across the stage with his halting dragging stride; halting, standing with bent head; shut-in, lonely sweetness. She looked boldly now, untrammelled in her dark corner at the pictures which had formed part of her distant view all last week in the far-away life at Wimpole Street; the great scenes ... beautifully staged; “Irving alwaysstageseverything perfectly”—and battled no longer against her sympathy for Shylock. It no longer shocked her to find herself sharing something of his longing for the blood of the Christians. It was wrong; but were not they too wrong? They must be; there must be some reason for this certainty of sympathy with Shylock and aversion from Bassanio. It might be a wrong reason, but it was there in her. Mag said “that’s his genius; he makes you sympathise even with Shylock....” He shows you that youdosympathise with Shylock; Mag thinks that is something to admit shamefacedly. Because those other people were to her just “people.” Bassanio—was it not just as wrong to get into debt and raise money from the Jews as to let money out on usury? But it was his friend. He was innocent. Never mind. They were all, all, smug and complacent in their sunshine. Polished lustful man, with his coarse lustful men friends. Portia and Nerissa were companions in affliction. Beautiful first of all; as lovely and wandering and full of visions as Shylock until their lovers came. Hearn was right. English lovers would shock any Japanese. Not that the Japanese were prudish. According to him they were anything but ... they would not talk as Englishmen did among themselves and in mixed society in a sort of code; thinking themselvesso clever; anyone could talk a code who chose to descend to a mechanical trick.
How much more real was the relation between Portia and Nerissa than between either of the sadly jesting women and their complacently jesting lovers. Did a maneverspeak in a natural voice—neither blustering, nor displaying his cleverness, nor being simply a lustful slave? Women always despise men under the influence of passion or fatigue. What horrible old men those two would be—still speaking in put on voices to hide their shame, pompous and philosophising.... “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart ...” so much the worse for man; there must be something very wrong with his life. But it would go on until men saw and admitted this.... Portia was right when she preached her sermon—it made everyone feel sorry for all harshness—then one ought not to be harsh to the blindness of men ... somebody had said men would lose all their charm if they lost their vanity and childish cocksureness about their superiority—to force and brow-beat them into seeing themselves would not help—but that is what I want to do. I am like a man in that, overbearing, bullying, blustering. I am something between a man and a woman; looking both ways. But to pretend one did not see through a man’s voice would be treachery. Nearly all men will hate me—because I can’t play up for long. Harshness must go; perhaps that was what Christ meant. But Portia only wanted to save Bassanio’s life; and did it by a trick. It was not a Daniel come to judgment; it showed the folly of law; pettifogging; the abuse of the letter of the law. She was harsh to Shylock. Which is most cruel, to take life or to torture the living? The Christians were so self-satisfied; going off to their love-making; that spoiled the play, their future was much more dark and miserable than the struggle between the sensual Englishman and the wily Jew. The play ought to have ended there, with the woman in the cap and gown pleading, showing something that could not be denied—ye are alltogether in one condemnation. In that moment Portia was great, her red robe shone and lit the world. She ought to have left them all and gone through all the law courts of the world; showing up the law. Wit. Woman’s wit. Men at least bowed down to that; though they did not know what it was. ‘Wit’ used to mean knowledge—“in-wit,” conscience. The knowledge of woman is larger, bigger, deeper, less wordy and clever than that of men. Certainly. But why do not men acknowledge this? They talk about mother-love and mother-wit and instinct, as if they were mysterious tricks. They have no real knowledge, but of things; a sort of superiority they get by being free to be out in the world amongst things; they do not understand people. If a woman is good it is all right; if she is bad it is all wrong. Cherchez la femme. Then everything in life depends upon women? “A civilisation can never rise above the level of its women.” Perhaps if women became lawyers they would change things. Women do not respect law. No wonder, since it is folly, an endless play on words. Portia? She had been quite complacent about being unkind to the Jew. She had been invented by a man. There was no reality in any of Shakespeare’s women. They please men because they show women as men see them. All the other things are invisible; nothing but their thoughts and feelings about men and bothers. Shakespeare did not know the meaning of the words and actions of Nerissa and Portia when they were alone together, the beauty they knew and felt and saw, holy beauty everywhere. Shakespeare’s plays are ‘universal’ because they are about the things that everybody knows and hands about, and they do not trouble anybody. They make everyone feel wise. It isn’t what he says it’s the way he says all these things that don’t matter and leave everything out. It’s all a sublime fuss.
Italians! Of course. Well—Europeans. It is the difference between the Europeans and the Japanese that Hearn had meant.
Then thereistragedy! Things are not simple right and wrong. There are a million sides to every question; as many sides as there are people to see and feel them and in all big national struggles two clear sides, both right and both wrong. The man who wrote “The Struggle against Absolute Monarchy” was a Roundhead; and he made me a Roundhead; Green’s History is Roundhead. I never saw Charles’ point of view or thought about it; but only of the unjust levies and the dissolution of Parliament and the dissoluteness of the Court. If I had seen Irving then it would have made a difference. He could never have been Cromwell. He is Charles. Things happen. People tell him things and he cannot understand. He believes in divine right ... sweet and gentle, with perfect manners for all ... perfect in private life ... the first gentleman in the land, the only person free to have perfect manners; the representative of God on earth. “Decaying feudalism.” But they ought not to have killed him. He cannotunderstand. He is the scapegoat. Freedom looks so fine in your mind. Parliaments and Trial by Jury and the abolition of the Star Chamber and the triumph of Cromwell’s visionaries. But it means this gentle velvet-coated figure with its delicate ruffled hands, its sweetness and courtesy, going with bandaged eyes—to death. Was there no way out? Must one either be a Royalist or a Roundhead. Must monarchies decay? Then why did the Restoration come? What do English people want? “A limited Monarchy”; a King controlled by Parliament. As well not have a King at all. Who would not rather live with Charles than with Cromwell? Charles would have entertained a beggar royally. Cromwell was too busy with “affairs of State” to entertain beggars. Charles dying for his faith was more beautiful than Cromwell fighting for his reason. Yet the people must be free; there must be justice. Kings ought to be taught differently.He did not understand. No one believing in divine right can understand. Was the idea of divine right a mistake? Can no one be trusted? Cromwell’s son was a weak fool. How can a country be ruled? People will never agree. What ought one to be if one can neither be quite a Roundhead nor quite a Cavalier? They worshipped two gods. Are there two Gods?... Irving ... walking gently about inside Charles feeling as he felt the beauty of the sunlit garden, the delicate clothes, the refinement of fine living, the charm of perfect association, the rich beauty of each day as it passed.... Charles died with all that in his eyes,knowingitgood. Cromwell was a farmer. Christ was a carpenter. Christ did not bother about kings. “Render unto Cæsar.”
Theyhad walked swiftly and silently along through the bright evening daylight of the Finchley Road. Miriam held her knowledge suspended, looking forward to the enclosure at the end of the few minutes’ walk. But the conservatoire was not enclosed. The clear bright light flooding the rows and rows of seated summer clad Hampstead people and lighting up every corner of the level square hall was like the outside evening daylight. The air seemed as pure as the outside air. She followed Mr. Hancock to their seats at the gangway end of the fourth row passing between the sounds echoing thinly from the platform and the wave of attention sweeping towards the platform from the massed rows of intelligent faces. As they sat down the chairman’s voice ceased and the lights were lowered; but so slightly that the hall was still perfectly exposed and clear. The people still looked as though they were out of doors or in their large houses. This was modern improvement—hard clear light. Their minds and their thoughts and their lives and their clothes were always in it. She stared at the screen. A large slide was showing, lit from behind. It made a sort of stage scenery for the rest of the scene, all in one light. She fixed her attention. An enormous vessel with its side stove in, yes, “stove in”; in a dock. They gotinformationat any rate and then perhaps got free and thought their own thoughts. No. They would follow and think and talk intelligently about the information. Rattling their cultured voices. Mad with pretences.... Indrydock, going to be repaired. Gazing sternlyat the short man with the long pointer talking in an anxious high thin voice, his head with its upstanding crest of hair half-turned towards the audience, she suppressed a giggle. Folding her hands she gazed, shaking in every limb, not daring to follow what he said for fear of laughing aloud. Shreds of his first long sentence caught in her thoughts and gave her his meaning, shaking her into giggles. Her features quivered under her skin as she held them in forcing her eyes towards the distances of sky beyond the ship. Her customary expletives shot through her mind in rapid succession with each one the scarves and silk and velvet of the audience grew brighter about the edge of her circle of vision.
She was an upstart and an alien and here she was. It was more extraordinary in this Hampstead clarity than at a theatre or concert in town. It was a part of his world ... and theirs; one might get the manner and still keep alive.... Was he out of humour because he had realised what he had done or because she had been late for dinner? Was he thinking what his behaviour amounted to in the eyes of his aunt and cousins; even supposing they did not know that the invitation to dinner and the lecture had been given only this afternoon? He must have known it was necessary to go home and tidy up. When he said the conservatoire was so near that there would be plenty of time was not that as good as saying she might be a little late? Why had he not said they were staying with him? Next week was full of appointments for their teeth. So he knew they were coming ... and then to go marching in to the midst of them three quarters of an hour late and to be so dumbfounded as to be unable to apologise ... my dear I shallneverforget the faces of those women. I could not imagine at first what was wrong. He was looking so strange. The women barely noticed me—barely noticed me. “I’m afraid dinner will be spoiled” he said,in his way. “They had all been sitting round the fire three mortal quarters of an hour waiting forme!” How they would talk. Their thoughts and feelings about employees could be seen at a glance. It was bad enough for them to have a secretary appearing at dinner the first evening of their great visit. And now they were sitting alone round the fire and she was at the lecture alone, unchaperoned, with him, “she had the effrontery to come to dinner three quarters of an hour late ...” feathery hair and periwinkle eyes and white noses; gentle die-away voices. Perhaps the thought of his favourite cousins coming next week buoyed him up. No wonder he wanted to get away to the lecture. He had come, reasonably; not seeing why he should not; just as he would have gone if they had not been there. Now he saw it as they saw it. There he sat. She gazed at the shifting scenes ... ports and strange islands in distant seas, sunlit coloured mountains tops peaking up from forests. The lecturing voice was far away, irrelevant and unintelligible. Peace flooded her.
Thepatient sat up with a groan of relief. His dark strong positive liverish profile turned away towards the spittoon. There was a clean broad gap of neck between the strong inturned ending of his hair and the narrow strip of firm heavily glazed blue white collar fitting perfectly into the collar of the well-cut grey coat clothing the firmbulk of his body. “To my mind there’s no reason why they shouldn’t do thoroughly well” he said into the spittoon. “All the hospitals would employ ’em in the end. They’re more natty and conscientious than men and there’s nothing in the work they can’t manage.”
“No, I think that’s so.”
Miriam cleared her throat emphatically. They had no right to talk in that calm disposing way in the presence of a woman. Mr. Hancock felt that too. That kind of man was always nice to women. Strong and cheerful and helping them; but with his mind full of quotations and generalisations. He would bring them out anywhere. It would never occur to him that the statement of them could be offensive. His newspaper office would be full of little girls. “It’s those little ph’girls.” But the Amalgam Company probably had quite uneducated girls. Nobody ought to be asked to spend their lives calculating decimal quantities. The men who lived on these things had their drudgery done for them. They did it themselves first. Yes, but then it meant their future. A woman clerk never becomes a partner. There was no hope for women in business. That man’s wife would be wealthy and screenedand looked after all her days; he working. He would live as long as she—a little old slender nut-brown man.
“What was the employment Mr. Dolland was speaking of?”
“Dispensing. I think he’s quite right. And it’s not at all badly paid.”
“It ought not to be. Think of the responsibility and anxiety.”
“It’s a jolly stiff exam too.”
“I like the calm way he talks, as if it were his business to decide what is suitable.”
Mr. Hancock laughed. “He’s a very influential man, you know,” he said going to the tube. “Yes?—Oh, show them up.”
Miriam detected the note that meant a trial ahead and went about her clearing with quiet swift busy sympathy. But Mr. Dolland had been a good introduction to the trying hour. Her thoughts followed his unconsciousness down to his cab. She saw the spatted boot on the footplate, the neat strong swing of the body, the dip of the hansom, the darkling face sitting inside under the shiny hat ... the room had become dreadful; empty and silent; pressed full with a dreadful atmosphere; those women from Rochester—but they always sat still. These people were making little faint fussings of movement, like the creakings of clothes in church and the same silent hostile feeling; people being obliged to be with people. There were two or three besides the figure in the chair. Mr. Hancock had got to work with silent assiduity. His face when he turned to the cabinet was disordered, separate from the room and from his work; a most curious expression. He turned again, busily. It was something in the mouth, resentful, and a bad-tempered look in the eyes; a look of discomposed youth. Of course. The aunt and cousins. Had she cut them, standing with her back to the room, or they her? She moved sideways with her bundle of cleaned instruments to the cabinet putting them allon the flap and beginning to open drawers, standing at his elbow as he stood turned away from the chair mixing a paste.
“You might leave those there for the present” he murmured. She turned and went down the room between the unoccupied seated figures, keeping herself alert to respond to a greeting. They sat vacant and still. Ladies in church. Acrimonious. Querulously dressed in pretty materials and colours that would only keep fresh in the country. She went to the door lingeringly. It was so familiar. There had been all that at Babington. It was that that was in these figures straggling home from school, in pretty successful clothes, walking along the middle of the sunlit road ...May-belldeah ... not balancing along the row of drain pipes nor pulling streaks of Berkshire goody through their lips. This was their next stage. When she reached the stairs she felt herself wrapped in their scorn. It was true; there was something impregnable about them. They sat inside a little fortress, letting in only certain people. But they did not know she could see everything inside the fortress, hear all their thoughts much more clearly than the things they said. To them she was a closed book. They did not want to open it. But if they had wanted to they could not have read.
Theinsolenceof it. Her social position had been identical with theirs and his. Her early circumstances a good deal more ambitious and generous.... ‘A moment of my consciousness is wider than any of theirs will be in the whole of their lives.’ ... If she could have stayed in all that, she would have been as far as possible just the same, sometimes ... for certain purposes. A little close group, loyal and quarrelsome for ends that any woman could see through. Fawning and flattering and affectionate to each other and getting half-maddened by the one necessity. The girls would repeat the history of their mother, and get hersour faced pretty delicate refinement. They were so exquisite, now, to look at—the flower-like edges of their faces, unchanging from morning to night; warmth and care and cleanliness and rich clean food; no fatigue or worry or embarrassment, once they had learned how to sit and move and eat. To many men they would appear angels. They would not meet many in the Berkshire valley. But their mother would manœuvre engagements for them and their men would see them as angels fresh from their mother’s hands; miracles of beauty and purity....
Refined shrews, turning in circles, like moths on pins; brainless, mindless, heartless, the prey of the professions; priests, doctors and lawyers. These two groups kept each other going. There was something hidden in the fact that these women’s men always entered professions.
Large portions of the mornings and afternoons of that week were free from visits to the upstairs surgery. From Tuesday morning she kept it well filled with supplies; guessing that she was to be saved further contact with the aunt and cousins; and drew from the stimulus of their comings and goings, the sound of their voices in the hall and on the stairs a fund of energy that filled her unexpected stretches of leisure with unceasing methodical labour. Uninterrupted work on the ledgers awakened her interest in them, the sense that the books were nearly all up to date, the possibility of catching up altogether before the end of the week brought a relief and a sense of mastery that made the June sunshine gay morning after morning as she tramped through it along the Euston Road. Every hour was full of a strange excitement. Wide vistas shone ahead. On the first of September shone a blinding radiance. She would get up that morning in her dusty garret in the heat and dust of London with nothing to do for a month;and ride away, somewhere, ride away through the streets, free, out to the suburbs, like a Sunday morning ride, and then into the country. She had weathered the winter and the strange beginnings and would go away to come back; the rest of the summer till then would go dancing, like a dream. There was all that coming; making her heart leap when she thought of it, unknown Wiltshire—with Leader landscapes for a week and then something else. And meanwhile Wimpole Street. She went about her work borne along unwearied upon a tide that flowed out in glistening sunlit waves over the sunlit shore of the world. The doors and windows of her cool shaded room opened upon a life that spread out before her fanwise towards endless brilliant distances. Moments of fatigue, little obstinate knots and tangles of urgent practical affairs did their utmost to convince her that life was a perpetual conflict, nothing certain and secure but the thwarting and discrediting of the dream-vision; every contact seemed to end in an assurance of her unarmed resourceless state. Pausing now and again to balance her account, to try to find a sanction for her joy, she watched and felt the little stabs of the actual facts as they would be summarised by some disinterested observer, and again and again saw them foiled. Things danced, comically powerless against some unheard piping; motes, funny and beloved, in the sunbeam of her life.... Next week and the coming of the favourite cousins made a bright barrier across the future and a little fence round her labours. Everything must be ordered and straight before then. She must be free and reproachless for the wonders and terrors of their visit.... Perhaps there might be only the one meeting; the evening already arranged might be all the week’s visit would bring. The week would pass unseen by her and everything would be as before. As before; was not that enough, and more than enough?
Her rare visits to the surgery were festivals. Free from the usual daily fatigue of constant standing for reiterated clearances and cleansings of small sets of instruments, she swept full of cheerful strength, her mind free for method, her hands steady and deft, upon the accumulations left by long sittings, rapping out her commentary upon his prolonged endurance by emphatic bumpings of basins and utensils; making it unnecessary for him to voice the controlled exasperation that spoke for her from every movement and tone. Once or twice she felt it wavering towards speech and whisked about and bumped things down with extra violence. Once or twice he smiled into her angry face and she feared he was going to speak of them.
Itwas a sort of formality. They all three seemed to be waiting for something to begin. They were not at ease. Perhaps they had come to the end of everything they had to say to each other and had only the memory of their common youth to bind them to each other. Members of the same family never seemed to be quite at ease sitting together doing nothing. These three met so seldom that they were obliged when they met to appear to be giving their whole attention to each other, sitting confronted and trying to keep talk going all the time. That made everyone speak and smile and look self-consciously. Perhaps they reminded each other by their mutual presence that the dreams of their youth had not been fulfilled. And the cousins were formal. Like the other cousins they belonged to the prosperous provincial middle class that always tries to get its sons into professions. Without the volume of Sophocles one would have known he was part of a school and she would have been nothing but the wife or daughter or sister of an English professional man. It was always the same world; once the only world that was worthy of one’s envious admiration and respect; changed now ... “hardworked little text book people and here and there an enlightened thwarted man.” ... Was Mr. Canfield thwarted? There was a curious look of lonely enlightenment about his head. At the University, and now and again with a head master or a fellow assistant-master he had had moments of exchange and been happy for a moment and seen the world alight. But his happiesttimes had been in loneliness, with thoughts coming to him out of books. They had been his solace and his refuge since he was fifteen; and in spite of the hair greying his temples he was still fifteen; within him were all the dreams and all the dreadful crudities of boyhood ... he had never grown to man’s estate.... He had understood at once. “It always seems unnecessary to explain things to people; you feel while you are explaining that they will meet the same thing themselves, perhaps in some different form; but certainly, because things are all the same.” “Oh yes; that’s certainly so.” He had looked pleased and lightened. Darkness and cold had come in an instant with Mrs. Canfield’s unexpected reverent voice. “I don’t quite understand what that means; tell me.” She had put down her fancy work and lifted her flower-like face, not suspiciously as the other cousins would have done, but with their type of gentle formal refinement and something of their look. She could be sour and acid if she chose. She could curl her lips and snub people. What was the secret of the everlasting same awfulness of even the nicest of refined sheltered middle-class Englishwoman? He had stumbled and wandered through a vague statement. He knew that all the long loneliness of his mind lay revealed before one—and yet she had been the dream and wonder and magic of his youth and still was his dear companion. The ‘lady’ was the wife for the professional Englishman—simple sheltered domesticated, trained in principles she did not think about and living by them; revering professional and professionally successful men; never seeing the fifth-form schoolboys they all were. No woman who saw them as they were with their mental pride and vanity and fixity, would stay with them; no woman who saw their veiled appetites.... But where could all these wives go?
Throughout the evening she was kept quiet and dull and felt presently very weary. Her helpless stock-takingmade it difficult to face the strangers, lest painful illumination and pity and annoyance should stream from her too visibly.... Perhaps they too took stock and pitied; but they were interested, a little eager in response and though too well bred for questions, obviously full of unanswered surmises, which perhaps presently they would communicate to each other. There were people who would say she was too egoistic to be interested in them, a selfish, unsocial, unpleasant person and they were kind charming people, interested in everybody. That might be true.... But it was also true that they were eager and interested because their lives were empty of everything but principles and a certain fixed way of looking at things; and one could be fond of their niceness and respectful to their goodness but never interested because one knew everything about them, even their hidden thoughts and the side of them that was not nice or good without having any communication with them.... He had another side; but there was no place in his life which would allow it expression. It could only live in the lives of people met in books; in sympathies here and there for a moment; in people who passed “like ships in the night”; in moments at the beginning and end of holidays when things would seem real, and as if henceforth they were going to be real every day. If it found expression in his life, it would break up that life. Anyone who tried to make it find personal expression would be cruel; unless it were to turn him into a reformer or the follower of a reformer. That could happen to him. He was secretly interested in adventurers and adventuresses.
Ithad evidently been a great festival. One of the events of Mr. Hancock’s summer; designed by him for the happiness and enjoyment of his friends and enjoyed by him in labouring to those ends. It wasbeautifulto look back upon; in every part; the easy journey, the approach to the cottage along the mile of green-feathered river, the well-ordered feast in the large clean cottage; the well-thought out comfort of the cottage bedrooms, the sight of the orchard lit by Chinese lanterns, the lantern-lit boats, the drifting down the river in the soft moonlit air; the candle lit supper table, morning through the cottage windows, upstairs and down, far away from the world, people meeting at breakfast like travellers in a far-off country, pleased to see well known faces ... the morning on the green river ... the gentleness and kindliness and quiet dignity of everybody, the kindly difficult gently jesting discussion of small personal incidents; the gentle amiable strains; the mild restrained self-effacing watchfulness of the women; the uncompeting mutual admiration of the men; the general gratitude of the group when one or other of the men filled up a space of time with a piece of modestly narrated personal reminiscence....
Never, never could she belong to that world. It was a perfect little world; enclosed; something one would need to be born and trained into; the experience of it as an outsiderwas pure pain and misery; admiration, irritation and resentment running abreast in a fever. Welcome and kindliness could do nothing; one’s own straining towards it, nothing; a night of sleepless battering at its closed doors, nothing. There was a secret in it, in spite of its simple seeming exterior; an undesired secret. Something to which one could not give oneself up. Its terms were terms on which one could not live. That girl could live on them, in spite of her strenuous different life in the east-end settlement ... in spite of her plain dull dress and red hands. She knew the code; her cheap straw hat waved graciously, her hair ruffled about her head in soft clouds. Why had he never spoken of her uncle’s cottage so near his own? She must be always there. When she appeared in the surgery she seemed to come straight out of the east-end ... his respect for workers amongst the poor ... his general mild revulsion from philanthropists; but down here she was not a philanthropist ... outwardly a girl with blowy hair and a wavy hat, smiling in boats, understanding botany and fishing ... inwardly a designing female, her mind lit by her cold intellectual “ethical”—hooooo—the verysoundof the word—“ethical Pantheism”; cool and secret and hateful. “Rather a nice little thing”; “pretty green dress”;nice!
Miriamturned swiftly in her chair and looked up. But Mr. Hancock was already at the door. There was only a glimpse of his unknown figure arrested for a moment with its back to her as he pulled the door wide enough to pass through. The door closed crisply behind him and his crisp unhastening footsteps went away out of hearing along the thickly carpeted hall.
“Dearme!” she breathed through firmly held lips, standing up. Her blood was aflame. The thudding of her heart shook the words upon her breath. She was fighting against something more than amazement. She knew that only part of her refused to believe. In a part of her brain illumination leaving the shock already far away in the past, was at work undisturbed, flowing rapidly down into thoughts set neatly in the language of the world. She held them back, occupying herself irrelevantly about the room, catching back desperately at the familiar trains of revery suggested by its objects; cancelling the incident and summoning it again and again without prejudice or afterthought. Each time the shock recurred unchanged, firmly registered, its quality indubitable. She sat down at last to examine it and find her thoughts. Taking a pencil in a trembling hand she began carefully adding a long column of figures. A system of adding that had been recommended to her by the family mathematician now suggested itself for the first time in connection with her own efforts....
Howdarehe?
It was deliberate. A brusque casual tone, deliberatelyput on; a tone he sometimes used to the boys downstairs, or to cabmen. How did he dare to use it to her? It must cease instantly. It was not to be suffered for a moment. Not for a moment could she hold a position which would entitle any one, particularly any man to speak to her in that—outrageous—officialtone. Why not? It was the way of business people and officials all the world over.... Then he should have begun as he meant to go on.... I won’t endure it now. No one has ever spoken to me in that way—and no one shall, with impunity. I have been fortunate. They have spoiled me.... I should never have come if I had found they had that sort of tone. It was his difference that made me come.
Those two had talked to him and made him think. The aunt and cousins had prepared the way. But their hostility had been harmless. These two had approved. That was clear at the week-end. They must have chaffed him and given him their blessing. Then, for the first time, he had thought, sitting alone and pondering reasonably. It was he himself who had drawn back. He was quite right. He belonged to that side of society and must keep with them and go their way. Very wise and right ... but damn his insolent complacency....
“Everything a professional man does, must stabilise his position.” Perhaps that is true. But then his business relationships must be business relationships from the first ... that was expected. The wonder of the Wimpole Street life was that it had not been so. Instead of an employer there had been a sensitive isolated man; prosperous and strong outwardly and as suffering and perplexed in mind as any one could be. He had not hesitated to seek sympathy.
Anyfair-minded onlooker would condemn him. Anyone who could have seen the way he broke through resistance to social intercourse outside the practice. He may have thought he was being kind to a resourceless girl. It wasnotto resourcelessness that he had appealed. It was not that. That was not the truth.
He would have cynical thoughts. The truth was that something came in and happened of itself before one knew. A woman always knows first. It was not clear until Babington. But there was a sharp glimpse then. He must have known how amazed they would be at his cycling over after he had neglected them for years, on that one Sunday. They had concealed their amazement from him. But it was they who had revealed things. There was nothing imaginary after that in taking one wild glance and leaving things to go their way. Nothing. No one was to blame. And now he knew and had considered and had made an absurd reasonable decision and taken ridiculous prompt action.
A business relationship ... byallmeans. But he shall acknowledge and apologise. He shall explain his insulting admission of fear. He shall admit in plain speech what has accounted for his change of manner.
Then that little horror is also condemned.Sheis not a wealthy efficient woman of the world.
Men are simply paltry and silly—all of them.
In pain and fear she wandered about her room, listening for her bell. It had gone; the meaning of their days had gone; trust and confidence could never come back. A door was closed. His life was closed on her for ever....
The bell rang softly in its usual way. The incident had been an accident; an illusion. Even so; she had been prepared for it, without knowing she was prepared, otherwise she would not have understood so fully and instantly. If she had only imagined it, it had changed everything, her interpretation of it was prophetic; just as before he had not known where they were so now the rupture was imminent whether he knew it or no. She found herself going upstairs breathing air thick with pain. This was dreadful.... She could not bear much of this.... The patient had gone. He would be alone. They would be alone. To be in his presence would be a relief ... this was appalling. This pain could not be endured. The sight of the room holding the six months would be intolerable. She drew her face together, but her heart was beating noisily. The knob of the door handle rattled in her trembling hand ... large flat brass knob with a row of grooves to help the grasp ... she had never observed that before. The door opened before her. She flung it wider than usual and pushed her way, leaving it open ... he was standing impermanently with a sham air of engrossment at his writing table and would turn on his heel and go the moment she was fairly across the room. Buoyant with pain she flitted through the empty air towards the distant bracket-table. Each object upon it stood marvellously clear. She reached it and got her hands upon the familiar instruments ... no sound; he had not moved. The flame of the little spirit-lamp burned unwavering in the complete stillness ... now was the moment to drop thoughts and anger. Up here was something that had been made up here, real and changeless and independent. The least vestige of tumult would destroy it. It was something that no one could touch; neither his friends nor he nor she. They had not made it and they could not touch it. Nothing had happened to it; and he had stood quietly there longenough for it to re-assert itself. Steadily with her hands full of instruments she turned towards the sterilising tray. The room was empty. Pain ran glowing up her arms from her burden of nauseating relics of the needs of some complacent patient ... the room was stripped, a west-end surgery, among scores of other west-end surgeries, a prison claiming her by the bonds of the loathsome duties she had learned.