2
“You know” he said turning his blue gaze from the fire to Miriam’s face, “I have never been so worried in my life as I have during the last ten days. It’s upsetting my winter’s work. It is altogether too difficult and impossible. I cannot see any possible adjustment. You see I cannot possibly be continually interrupted and in such—strange ways. She came here yesterday afternoon with a list of complaints about her landlady. I really cannot attend to these things. She sends me telegrams. Only this morning there was a telegram. Come at once. Difficulty with chemist. Of course it was impossible for me to leave my work at a moment’s notice. This afternoon I called. It seems that she was under the impression that there had been some insolence ... it absorbs so much time to enter into long explanations with regard to all these people. I cannot do it. That is what it comes to. I cannot do it.”
Ah. You’ve lost your temper; like anyone else. You want to shelve it. Anyone would. But being a man you want to shelve it on to a woman. You don’t care who hears the long tales as long as you don’t....
“Have you seen her doctor?”
“No. I think just now he is out of town.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“You think I should see him.”
“Certainly.”
“I will do so on the first opportunity. That is the next step. Meantime I will write provisionally to Bournemouth.”
“Oh, she must go to Bournemouth anyhow; that’s settled.”
“Perhaps her medical man may help there.”
“He won’t make her do anything she doesn’t mean to do.”
“I see you are a reader of character.”
“I don’t think I am. I always begin by idealising people.”
“Do you indeed?”
“Yes, always; and then they grow smaller and smaller.”
“Is that your invariable experience of humanity?”
“I don’t think I’m an altruist.”
“I think one must have one’s heroes.”
“In life or in books?”
“In both perhaps—one has them certainly in books—in records. Do you know this book?”
Miriam sceptically accepted the bulky volume he took down from the book-crowded mantelshelf.
“Oh how interesting” she said insincerely when she had read Great Thoughts from Great Lives on the cover.... I ought to have said I don’t like extracts. “Lives of great men all remind us. We can make our lives sublime,” she read aloud under her breath from the first page.... I ought to go. I can’t enter into this.... I hate ‘great men’ I think....
“That book has been a treasure-house to me—for many years. I know it now almost by heart. If it interests you, you will allow me I hope to present it to you.”
“Oh you must not let me deprive you of it—oh no. It is very kind of you; but you really mustn’t.” She looked up and returned quickly to the fascinating pages. Sentences shone out striking at her heart and brain ... names in italics; Marcus Aurelius ... Lao-Tse. Confucius ... Clement of Alexandria ... Jacob Boehme. “It’s full of the most fascinating things. Oh no; I couldn’t think of taking it. You must keep it. Who is Jacob Boehme? That name always fascinates me. I must have read something, somewhere, a long time ago. I can’t remember. But it is such a wonderful name.”
“Jacob Boehme was a German visionary. You will find of course all shades of opinion there.”
“All contradicting each other; that’s the worst of it. Still, I suppose all roads lead to Rome.”
“I see you have thought a great deal.”
“Well” said Miriam feverishly, “there’s always science, always all that awful business of science, and no getting rid of it.”
“I think—in that matter—one must not allow one’s mind to be led away?”
“But one must keep an open mind.”
“Are you familiar with Professor Tyndall?”
“Only by meeting him in books about Huxley.”
“Ah—he was very different; very different.”
“Huxley” said Miriam with intense bitterness “was an egoistic adolescent—all his life. I never came across anything like his conceited complacency in my life. The very look of his side-whiskers,—well, there you have the whole man.” Her heart burned and ached, beating out the words. She rose to go holding the volume in hands that shook to the beating of her heart. Far away in the bitter mist of the darkening room was the strange little figure.
“Let me just write your name in the book.”
“Oh, well, really, it is too bad—thank you very much.”
He carried the book to the window-sill and stood writing his bent head very dark and round in the feeble grey light. Happy monk alone up under the roof with his Plato. It was a shame.