“We’ll break out. Each bring its little mattress and things. After they’ve retired. Yes, I think, after they’ve retired.” Why the conspirator’s smile? The look of daring? What of the servants? They were bound, anyhow, to know in the morning.
It was glorious to rush about in the lit house, shouting unnecessary remarks. People shouting back. Nobody attending. Shouting and laughing for the sake of the jolly noise. Saying more than could be said in talk. Admitting.
And then just to lie extinguished in the darkness wondering what point there was in sleeping out if you went to sleep at once. All that jolly tumult. And he had been so intent on the adventure that he had let Miss Prout change her mind without protest, only crying out from the midst of busily arranging his bed on the lawn.... “Have you seen Miriam’s pigtails?”
And suddenly everything was prim; the joy of being out in the night surging in the air, waiting for some form of expression. They didn’t know how to be joyful; only how to be clever.... She hummed a little song and stopped. It wreathed about her, telling off the beauties of the night, a song sung by someone else, heard, understood, a perfect agreement.
“What is she doing?”
“She’s sitting up, waving her banana in the air; conducting an orchestra, I think.”
“Tell her to eat the banana and lie down.” Alma, Rose Gauntlett, Mrs. Perry and me, starting off just after I came, to paddle in the moonlight.... “Don’t, don’t do anything that would make a cabman laugh.” Why not? Why should he always imagine someone waiting to be shocked? Damn the silly cabman if he did laugh. Who need care? As soon as her head was on the pillow, nothing visible but the huge night and the stars, she spoke quietly to herself, flouting them. He should see, hear, that it was wicked to simmer stuffily down as if they were in the house. He didn’t want to. She was making his sounds for him.
“Tell Miriam this is not a conversazione.”
His voice was actually sleepy. Kindly, long-suffering, but simply wanting to go to sleep. There was to be no time of being out in the night with him. He was too far off. She imagined herself at his side, a little space of grass between. Silent communication, understanding and peace. All the things that were lost, obliterated by his swift speech, communicated to him at leisure, clear in the night. Here under the verandah, with its roof cutting off a part of the sky, they were still attached to the house. Alma had been quietly posed for sleep from the first moment. They were all more separated than in their separate rooms indoors.
The lingering faint light reflected the day, the large open space of misunderstandings, held off the cloak of darkness in which things grew clear. She lay watching for the night to turn to night.