5
“That’s old Huggins” murmured Mr. Hancock, giving Miriam’s arm a gentle nudge as a white-haired old man passed close by them with an old woman at his side, with short white hair exactly like him. “The man who invented spectrum analysis—and that’s his wife; they’re both great fishermen.” Miriam gazed. There, was the splendid thing.... In her mind blazed the coloured bars of the spectrum. In the room was the light of the beauty, the startling life these two old people shed from every part of their persons. The room blazed in the light they shed. She stood staring, moving to watch their gentle living movements. They moved as though the air through which they moved was a living medium,—as though everything were alive all round them—in a sort of hushed vitality. They were young. She felt she had never seen anyone so young. She longed to confront them just once, to stand for a moment the tide in which they lived.
“Ah Meesturra Hancock—you are a faceful votary.”
That’s a German, thought Miriam, as the flattering deep caressing gutturals rebounded dreadfully from her startled consciousness. What a determined intrusion. How did he come to know such a person? Glancing she met a pair of swiftly calculating eyes fixed full on her face. There was fuzzy black hair lifted back from an anxious, yellowish, preoccupied little face. Under the face came the high collar-band of a tightly-fitting dark claret-coloured ribbed silk bodice, fastened from the neck to the end of the pointed peak by a row of small round German buttons, closely decorated with a gilded pattern. Mr. Hancock was smiling an indulgent, deprecating smile. He made an introduction and Miriam felt her hand tightly clasped and held by a small compelling hand, while she sought for an answer to a challenge as to her interest in science. “I don’t really know anything about it” she said vaguely, strongly urged to display her knowledge of German. The eyes were removed from her face and the little lady boldly planted and gazing about her made announcements to Mr. Hancock—about the fascinating subject of the lecture and her hopes of a large and appreciative audience.
What did she want? She could not possibly fail to see that Mr. Hancock was telling her that he could see through her social insincerities. It was dreadful to find that even here there were social insincerities. She was like a busy ambassador for things that belonged somewhere else and that he was laughing at in an indulgent, deprecating way that must make her blaze with an anger that she did not show. Looking at her as her eyes and mouth made and fired their busy sentences, Miriam suddenly felt that it would be easy to deal with her, take her into a corner and talk about German things, food and love affairs and poetry and music. But she would always be breaking away to make a determined intrusion on somebody she knew. She could not really know any English person. What was she doing, bearing herself so easily in the inner circle of English science? Treating people as if she knew all about them and they were all alike. How surprised she must often be, and puzzled.