Revolving Lights: Pilgrimage, Volume 7

by Dorothy M. Richardson

“Do you think Lintoff....” They moved on in their talk, unapprehensive foreigners, leaving the heart of the problem untouched. It was difficult to keep attached to a conversation that was half Michael’s, with the Lintoffs holding back, acquiescing indulgently in his topics. An encyclopædia making statements to people who were moving in a dream; halting and smiling and producing gestures and kindly echoes.... Michael like a rock for most things as they were and had been in the past, yet knowing them only in one way; clear as crystal about ordered knowledge, but never questioning its value.

She wanted, now, to talk again alone with Lintoff ... anything would do. The opposition that was working within her, not to his vision, but to his theory of it, and of the way it should be realised, would express itself to him through any sort of interchange. Something he brought with him would be challenged by the very sound on the air of the things that would be given her to say, if she could be with him before the mood of forgetful interest should be worn away. She sat waiting for the homeward walk, surrounded by images of the things that had made her; not hers, England’s, but which she represented and lived in, through something that had been born with her. If there was anyone she had ever met to whom these things could be conveyed without clear speech or definite ideas, it was he. But when they left the restaurant they walked out into heavy rain and went to the place of parting, separated and silent in a crowded ’bus.

Michael was going to keep his word.

Michael alone. With more than the usual man’s helplessness.... Getting involved. At the mercy of his inability to read people.

The torment of missing his near warm presence would grow less, but the torment of not knowing what was happening to him would increase.

This stillness creeping out from the corners of the room was the opening of a lifetime of loneliness. It would grow to be far more dreadful than it was tonight. Tonight it was alive, between the jolly afternoon with the Lintoffs—jolly; the last bit of shared life—and the agony of tomorrow’s break with Michael. But a day would come when the silence would be untormented, absolute, for life; echoing to all her movements in the room; waiting to settle as soon as she was still.

She resisted, pitting against it the sound of London. But in the distant voice there was a new note; careless dismissal. The busy sound seemed very far away; like an echo of itself.

She moved quickly at the first sinking of her heart, and drew in her eyes from watching her room, the way its features stood aloof, separate and individual; independent of her presence. In a moment panic would have seized her, leaving no refuge. She asserted herself, involuntarily whistling under her breath, a cheerful sound that called across the night to the mistaken voice of London and blended at once with its song.... She would tell Michael he must communicate with her in any dire necessity.... Moving about unseeing she broke up the shape of her room and blurred its features and waited, holding on. Attention to these wise outside threats would drive away something coming confidently towards her, just round the corner of this vast, breathless moment.... She paused to wait for it as for a person about to speak aloud in the room, and drew a deep breath sending through her a glow from head to foot ... it was there; independent, laughing, bubbling up incorrigibly, golden and bright with a radiance that spread all round her; her profanity ... but if incurable profanity was incurable happiness, how could she help believing and trusting it against all other voices ... if the last deepest level of her being was joy ... a hilarity against which nothing seemed to be able to prevail ... able, in spite of herself, in spite of her many solemn eager expeditions in opposition to it, to be always there, not gone; always waiting behind the last door. It was simply rum. Her limbs stirred to a dance ... how slowly he had played that wild Norwegian tune; making it like an old woman singing to a fretful child to cheat it into comfort; a gay quavering.

Its expanded gestures carried her slowly and gently up and down the room, dipping, swaying, with wooden clogs on her feet, her arms swinging to balance the slow movements of her body, the surrounding mountain landscape gleaming in the joy of the festival, defying the passing of the years. She could not keep within the slow rhythm. Her feet flung off the clogs and flew about the room until she was arrested by the flying dust and escaped to the window while it settled behind her on the subdued furniture. A cab whistle was sounding in the street and the voices, coming up through the rain-moist air, of people grouped waiting on a doorstep ... come out into the deep night, out again into endless space, from a room, and still keeping up the sound of carefully modulated speech and laughter. The jingling of a hansom sounded far away in the square. It would be years before it would get to them. They would have to go on fitting things into the shape of their carefully made tones. She was tempted to call down to them to stop; tell them they were not taking anyone in....

A puff of wind brought the rain against her face, inviting her to stay with the night and find again, as she had done in the old days of solitude, the strange wide spaces within the darkness. But she was drawn back by a colloquy set in, behind her, in the room. Warmly the little shabby enclosure welcomed her, given back, eager for her to go on keeping her life in it; showing her the time ahead, the circling scenes; all the undeserved, unsought, extraordinary wealth of going on being alive. She stood with the rain-drops on her face, tingling from head to foot to know why; why; why life should exist....