9
“Then you’d say, Corrie,” said Mr. Staple-Craven, as they all sat down to dinner on Sunday, evening ... now comes flattery, thought Miriam calmly—nothing mattered, the curtains were back, the light not yet gone from the garden and birds were fluting and chirruping out there on the lawn where she had played tennis all the afternoon—at home there was the same light in the little garden and Sarah and Harriett were there in happiness, she would see them soon and meantime, the wonder, the fresh rosebuds, this year’s, under the clear soft lamplight.
“You’d say that no one was to blame for the accident.”
“The cause of the accident was undoubtedly the signalman’s sudden attack of illness.”
Pause. “It sounds,” thought Miriam, “as if he were reading from the Book of Judgment. It isn’t true either. Perhaps a judgment can never be true.” She pondered to the singing of her blood.
“In other words,” said one of the younger men, in a narrow nasal sneering clever voice, “it was a purely accidental accident.”
“Purely,” gurgled Mr. Corrie, in a low, pleased tone.
“They think they’re really beginning,” mused Miriam, rousing herself.
“A genuine accident within the meaning of the act,” blared Mr. Craven.
“An actident,” murmured Mr. Corrie.
“In that case,” said another man, “I mean since the man was discovered ill, not drunk, by a doctor in his box, all the elaborate legal proceedings would appear to be rather—superfluous.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Corrie testily.
Miriam listened gladly to the anger in his voice, watching the faint movement of the window curtains and waiting for the justification of the law.
“The thing must be subject to a detailed inquiry before the man can be cleared.”
“He might have felt ill before he took up his duties—you’d hardly get him to admit that.”
“Lawyers can get people to admit anything,” said Mr. Craven cheerfully, and broke the silence that followed his sally by a hooting monotonous recitative which he delivered, swaying right and left from his hips, “that is to say—they by beneficently pursuing unexpected—quite unexpected bypaths—suddenly confront—their—their examinees—with the truth—the Truth.”
“It’s quite a good point to suggest that the chap felt ill earlier in the day—that’s one of the things you’d have to find out. You’d have, at any rate, to know all the circumstances of the seizure.”
“Indigestible food,” said Miriam, “or badly cooked food.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Corrie, his face clearing, “that’s an excellent refinement.”
“In that case the cause of the accident would be the cook.”
Mr. Corrie laughed delightedly.
“I don’t say that because I’m interested, but because I wanted to take sides with him,” thought Miriam, “the others know that and resent it and now I’m interested.”
“Perhaps,” she said, feeling anxiously about the incriminated cook, “the real cause then would be a fault in her upbringing, I mean he may have lately married a young woman whose mother had not taught her cooking.”
“Oh, you can’t go back further than the cook,” said Mr. Corrie finally.
“But the cause,” she persisted, in a low, anxious voice, “is the sum total of all the circumstances.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Corrie impenetrably, with a hard face—“you can’t take the thing back into the mists of the past.”
He dropped her and took up a lead coming from a man at the other end of the table.
“Oh,” thought Miriam coldly, appraising him with a glance, the slightly hollow temples, the small skull, a little flattened, the lack of height in the straight forehead, why had she not noticed that before?—the general stinginess of the head balancing the soft keen eyes and whimsical mouth—“that’s you; you won’t, you can’t look at anything from the point of view of life as a whole”—she shivered and drew away from the whole spectacle and pageant of Newlands’ life. It all had this behind it, a man, able to do and decide things who looked about like a ferret for small clever things, causes, immediate near causes that appeared to explain, and explained nothing and had nothing to do with anything. Her hot brain whirled back—signalmen, in bad little houses with bad cooking—tinned foods—they’re a link—they bring all sorts of things into their signal boxes. They ought to bring the fewest possible dangerous things. Something ought to be done.
Lawyers were quite happy, pleased with themselves if they made some one person guilty—put their finger on him. “Can’t go back into the mists of the past ... you didn’t understand, you’re not capable of understanding any real movements of thought. I always knew it. You think—in propositions. Can’t go back. Of course you can go back, and round and up and everywhere. Things as a whole ... you understand nothing. We’ve done. That’s you. Mr. Corrie—a leading Q.C. Heavens.”
In that moment Miriam felt that she left Newlands for ever. She glanced at Mrs. Corrie and Mrs. Craven—bright beautiful coloured birds, fading slowly year by year in the stifling atmosphere, the hard brutal laughing complacent atmosphere of men’s minds ... men’s minds, staring at things, ignorantly, knowing “everything” in an irritating way and yet ignorant.