“Oh, I shall be perfectly comfortable anywhere,” she said.
The single swathe of sunshine carved the hall, dividing it into two dusks as the word Now divides one’s mind. All, all unchanged: the series of hemispherical bronze gongs at the dining-room door, the wakeful asthma of the tall clock, the wide banistered stairway with its air of waiting to creak. The soft, gold-sliced shadow trembled with small sounds, and light voices of children drifted down from above. If this was still real, then what was her life of to-day? Why pretend any longer to make the world seem reasonable? It was all a delightful ironic farce with an audience applauding the wrong moments and the Author gritting his teeth in the wings. What use was Time if it availed so little?
The broad stream of sunlight flowed through the house like a steady ripple of Lethe, washing away the sandy shelves of trivial Now, dissolving little edges of past and future into its current, drawing all Time together in one clear onward sluice. What are we waiting for, she wondered. What is everyone waiting for, always? She was painfully aware of George standing near her. It was not silence that sundered them, but their grotesque desire to speak.
“George,” Phyllis was saying, “you give Ben a drink or something while I take the ladies——”
In the shadow beyond the table there was a clicking sound. Through the wide opening of the dining-room double doors two figures crawled, on all fours, with a toy train. Janet was in her pyjamas, ready for bed. Martin’s hand moved the engine across the floor. They came into the stripe of sunset.
“Wait a minute!” cried Janet. “Here’s one of the passengers.”
“Put him in,” said Martin. “And then the train goes round a sharp curve and smashes into a lot of people, bing!”
“Quick, I’ll telephone for a nambulance. You adbretized Perfect Safety on this railroad. It said so in your booklet.”
“Well, if people will sit down for a Picnic right on the main line——”
“Goodness, what a nasinine thing to do.”