8
The incidents Grace had described went in little disconnected scenes in and out of the caverns of the dying fire. She was waiting tremulously for a verdict. They seemed to Miriam so decisive that she found it difficult to keep within Grace’s point of view. She stood in the picturesque suburb, saw the distant glimpse of Highgate Woods, the pretty corner house standing alone in its garden, the sisters in the dresses they had worn at the dance talking to their mother indoors, waited on by their polite admiring brother; their unconsciousness, their lives as they looked to themselves. Everything fitted in with the leghorn hats they had worn at the league garden party in the summer. She could have warned Grace then if she had heard about the hats.... Grace had not yet found out that people were arranged in groups.... The only honest thing to say now would be—oh well of course with a mother and sisters like that; don’t you see—what they are? Her mind drew a little circle round the family group. It spun round them on and on as they went through life. She frowned her certainty into the fire, ranging herself with the unknown people she knew so well. If she did not speak Grace would see in her something of the quality that was the passport into that smooth-voiced world ... she imagined herself further and further into it, seeing everyday incidents, hearing conversations slide from the surfaces of minds that in all their differences made one even surface, unconscious unbroken and maddeningly unquestioning and unaware.... They were unaware of anything, though they had easy fluent words about everything ... underneath the surface that kept Grace off they were ... amœbæ, awful determined unconscious ... octopi ... frightful things with one eye, tentacles, poison-sacs ... the surface made them, not they the surface; rules ... they were civilisation. But they knew the rules; they knew how to do the surface ... they held to them and lived by them. It was a sort of game.... They were martyrs; with empty lives ... always awake, day and night, with unrelaxed wills ... she turned and met frank eyes still waiting for a verdict. All the strength of Grace’s personality was quivering there; all the determined faith in reason and principle. Perhaps if she had a clear field she could disarm them ... anyone, everyone. If she could get near enough they would find out her reality and her strength. But they would not want to be like her. They would run in the end from their apprehension of her, back to the things she did not see.... They had done so. He had; it was clear. Or she could not have spoken of him. If you can speak of a thing, it is past ... Speaking makes it glow with a life that is not its own.—There’s a lot more to tell you—said Grace pressing her hand. Miriam turned from the fire; Grace was looking as she had done when she began her story. Miriam sat back in her chair searching her face and form trying to find and express the secret of her indomitable conviction. Being what she was, why could she not be sufficient to herself? Entrenched in uncertainty she seemed less than herself. Her careful good clothes, so exquisitely kept, the delicate old gold chain, the little pearled cross, the old fine delicate rings, the centuries of shadowy ecclesiasticism in her head and face, the look of waiting, gazing from grey stone framed days upon a jewelled splendour, grew with her uncertainty small and limited. It was unbearable that they should have no meaning ... Grace was ready to take all she possessed into a world where it would have no meaning; ready to disappear and be changed. She was changed already. She could not get back and there was nothing to go forward to. Miriam dropped her eyes and sat back in her chair. The tide of her own life flowed fresh all about her; the room and the figure at her side made a sharply separated scene, a play watched from a distance, the end visible in the beginning to be read in the shapes and tones and folds of the setting, the intentions and statements nothing but impotent irrelevance, only bearable for the opportunities they offered here and there, involuntarily, for sudden escape into the reality that nothing touched or changed. If only Grace could be forced to see the unchanging reality.... Oh Miriam darling, breathed Grace in an even, anxious tone. Miriam suppressed a desire to whistle;—Oh well of course that may make a difference she said hurriedly, checking the thrill in her voice. Far back in the caverns of the fire life moved sunlit. She dropped her eyes and drew away the hand that Grace had clasped. Life danced and sang within her; shreds of song; the sense of the singing of the wind; clear bright light streaming through large houses, quickening on walls and stairways and across wide rooms. Along clear avenues of light radiating from the future, pouring from behind her into the inner channels of her eyes and ears came unknown forms moving in a brilliance, casting a brilliance across the visible past, warming its shadows, bathing its bright levels in sparkling gold. Her free hands lifted themselves until only the tips of her fingers rested on her knees and her hair strove from its roots as if the whole length would stand and wave upright.—You see—she said to gain a moment. Suddenly her mind became a blank. Her body was heavy on her chair, ill-clothed, too warm, peevishly tingling with desires. She stirred, shrinking from her ugly, inexorable cheap clothes, her glasses, the mystery of her rigid stupidly done hair; how how how did people get expression into their hair consciously and not by accident? Why did Grace like her in spite of all these things, in spite of the evil thoughts which must show. She did. She had felt nothing, seen nothing. She dissembled her face and turned towards Grace, gazing past her into the darkness beyond the range of the firelight. Just outside the rim of her glasses Grace’s firelit face gleamed on the edge of the darkness half turned towards her. Leaping into her mind came the realisation that she was sitting there talking to someone ... Marvellous to speak and hear a voice answer. Astounding; more marvellous and astounding than anything they could discuss. Grace must know this, even if she were unconscious of it ... some little sound they could both hear, a little mark upon the stillness, scattering light and relief. She turned her eyes and met Grace’s, velvety, deeply sparkling, shedding admiration and tyrannous love, patiently waiting—Well,—said Miriam, sleepily feeling for a thread of connected thought.—D’you mean a difference about my taking aunt to call, asked Grace with fear in her eyes.—No, my dear, said Miriam impatiently.—Can’t you see you can’t do that anyhow?——They’ve only been there five years, said Grace in a low determined recitative—We’ve lived in what’s almost the same neighbourhood, fifteen. So it’s our place to call first—Miriam sighed harshly.—That doesn’t make a scrap of difference she retorted flushing with anger.—I wish I had your grasp of things Miriam dear, said Grace with gentle weariness.—Well—we’ve got to-morrow and Monday said Miriam getting up with an appearance of briskness and striking random notes on the piano. Grace laughed.—I suppose we ought to light the gas she said getting up?—Why?——Oh well—Florrie will be coming in and asking why we’re sitting in the dark——What if she does?——Oh, I think I’ll light it Miriam. Miriam sat down again and stared into the fire. After supper they would all sit, harshly visible, round the hot fire, enduring the stifling unneeded gaslight.