6
St. Pancras bells were cheerfully thumping the air when Miriam got up to wander about in the dark brilliance that filled the room like the presence of a guest, and was so exaggerated that it not only supplied a topic wherewith to start the morning, but an occupation engrossing enough to free her, even in thought, from descent into the detail of the day. It held everything off and yet kept her in happy communion with Miss Holland moving busily the other side of the curtain.
Yet the night had done its work. A host of statements were plucking at her mind: balancing the quality of life here and life at Tansley Street. At week-ends. Behind them was a would-be disquieting assertion of the now complete remoteness of both her working life and the eventful leisure that had for so long ousted the old-time Tansley Street evenings. It was a bill of costs, flourished; demanding to know what she had done.
But it stood off, powerless to gain the centre of her attention, making no break in her sense of being nowhere; of inhabiting, within a shadowless brilliance, a living peace that held her immensely unoccupied, and ready, whenever things should once more present themselves in detail, to see them all in a fresh light.
For a while it seemed that they could never again so present themselves. The light as she gazed into it was endless, multiplying upon itself; drawing her away from all known things. Life henceforth would more fully attain her, lived as at this moment she knew it could be lived, uncalculating from the deeps of a masked splendour.
It would not last. Already the strange moments were linking themselves with kindred strange moments in the past. But like them it set itself while it lasted over against the rest of her experience, with a challenge.
It was growing steadily darker.
“It’s a thunderstorm.”
“I think so. The air is most oppressive.”
Miss Holland came and stood at her own half of the window so that they were side by side and visible to each other. Above the curtain screening the lower part of their window, they looked across to the white pillar of candle. A flash of bright daylight lit up the grey street, and soon the wheels of the storm rumbled high up across the sky. Heavy drops fell slowly, increasing until they came in a torrent.
“That will carry it off.”
“Sometimes I don’t mind storms. I don’t to-day.”
They held their places at the window, watching the pale lightning light the rain, hearing the thunder follow more swiftly. Presently a blinding white fire and a splintering crash just above their heads made them both exclaim.
As the thunder rolled bumping and snarling away across the sky they saw the figure of a man appear from the darkness beyond the candle and stand pressed close to the window with arms upstretched and laid against the panes. Through the sheets of rain his face was not quite clear. But he was dark and pale and tall and shouting at the storm. So he lived there alone. The storm was a companion. He was alone and aware. Had he seen the new people across the way?
A brilliant flash lit up the white face and its frame of heavy hair. The dark eyes were looking straight across.
Sayce: and he lived here. Miriam drew back and sat down on the end of her bed. This queer alley was then the place in all London in which to live. He had found it for himself. Was he dismayed at the sight of philistines invading the retreat where he lived hidden amongst unseeing villagers? She vowed not again to look across when there was any sign of his presence. He should be invaded without knowing it. She would see him go in and out, see without seeing: screening him even from her own observation. And all the time his presence would cast its light upon their frontage.
“The strange room,” said Miss Holland, who also had left the window, “has a tenant as eccentric as itself.”
“Do you know who it is?” Miriam stole back to the window to learn the disposition of the door of his house. He had disappeared. It was a side door, next to the cobbler’s window, like theirs next to the stonemason’s.
“It is Sayce. E. W. Sayce ... the poet.”
“Indeed?” exclaimed Miss Holland delightedly. “A poet. That is charming. Quite enchanting to feel that poetry is being written so near at hand.”
She was peering out, as if looking for verses on the air between the opposing windows. She had no feeling of shyness in mentioning his work. If unobserved she could catch him at it, she would note his methods. Perhaps he would sit there at work in his window. But the least they could do, having innocently become witnesses of his workshop, would be to stand off and leave him free.
To disperse Miss Holland’s concentration, she rushed into speech.
“I’ve known him by sight for years, wandering about in a black cloak. One night I was strolling along the strip of pavement round one of the Square gardens. It was quite dark under the trees between the stretches of lamplight, and there was nobody about. Suddenly in a patch of light I was confronted by a tall figure, also strolling. We both stood quite still, staring into each other’s eyes with thoughts far away, each taking in only the fact of an obstruction. Then I realised it was Sayce. I can’t remember how we got past each other. One of us must presently have plunged into the gutter. But, looking back, it seems as if we walked through each other.”
Miss Holland produced a series of bird-like sounds, each seeming in turn to refuse to make a word.
The storm was moving on and the strange light, lifting as the sky cleared, left a blankness.