She glanced around upon the poor things that already she loved with an immemorial love whose secret eluded her, whose going forth she knew to be blind and personal. Her eye was at once arrested by a small dark something upon the white coverlet of her bed. A ladybird. Too square. Perfectly square and motionless. Even as she called to Miss Holland to come through and observe, the sight of it thrilled her in every nerve.
A swish of the curtain and Miss Holland was at her side, bent and peering.
“Dear, dear, dear!” she moaned. “I feared, I feared. I’ll get the dustpan.”
The floor rocked with her swift departure. Miriam stood fascinated. The unspeakable thing had revealed itself, and she was not only calm but curious. A moment ago it had existed only in her mind, an ultimate she could not imagine herself seeing and surviving. It looked like a fragment of an autumn leaf. Miss Holland’s voice sounded in the further room. Miriam listened to the low tones for entertainment while she kept watch.
“I feared, I feared,” and then a swift ferretting, drowning the anxious monologue.
Weary of the scene that was holding up her installation, she turned away to the window, half expecting to be leapt upon from behind. She was vitalised by the incident; tingling from head to foot. It was strange that one could recognise at sight an unknown thing; but far stranger that within a moment of pure shock there should be life, the keen sense of living that stood away outside the bounds of everyday life.
What a set of circumstances were these that brought only vermin to give her the pang of immortality. Not a thing one could testify at a dinner-table. Why not?
When Miss Holland came back she would remind her that monkeys were timid, and fearful of small creeping things. Being a Protestant she probably revelled in Evolution—wouldn’t see that it left everything more spooky than before.
She was looking straight in at a window of the opposite house. The panes were clean and clear, the curtains on either side a dull dark green, hanging in straight folds. Sombre. Faintly, clearer as she made it out, a thick tall white candle rose in the midst of the gloom, just inside the window, changing the aspect of the curtains, making a picture. Just visible, right and left, were the shoulders of two high-backed chairs. She imagined them occupied, the beam of the thick white candle falling on two forms. But in this street what forms? It was clear that she and Miss Holland were not the only aliens. Perhaps “artistic” bachelor women who made a cult of their diggings, wore sage-green dresses and would emerge to become a spectacle known by heart, now both together, now one alone, crying cultured witticisms from the street to the window. Women standing critically aside from life, hugely amused by it. But would such have achieved that candle, at once a person and a piece of furniture? Lamps they would have, with art shades. Or if candles, still art shades. It might be an anchorite. But the company of such a candle was not solitude. Underneath the window was a cobbler’s shop.
“Just look here,” she cried to Miss Holland coming back preceded by her voice. The things in her own room seemed to greet, as she turned, the things in the room across the way. It was a man’s room. It had an air of waiting for an untimed return.