She tried to imagine Miss Holland undignified. Rushing about and babbling inconsequently. Tiresome, men called those women, but were glad of them if they had kind hearts. Mrs. Orly has no dignity. But she is neither weak nor tiresome. Her heart is a ... er ... domesticated tornado.
3
Walking home, estranged from Miss Holland, Miriam found her own life, that had stood all day far away and forgotten, all about her again; declaring itself independent of the success or the failure of this new relationship. Like a husband’s life ... the life he goes off into in the morning and can lose himself in, no matter what may be going on at home. If this new arrangement were a success, something would be added to life. If it were a failure nothing would be taken away.
By the time they reached home she felt free from all interest in Miss Holland and saw their contract as it had at first appeared, a marriage of convenience; a bringing down of expenses that would allow them both to live more comfortably than they could alone. Miss Holland no doubt saw it in the same light. The extremest differences of outlook were neither here nor there. There would be no need, now that these first disordered hours were over, for any association beyond what was needed for the running of their quarters.
She looked forward to getting to bed in the new surroundings, recapturing singleness and the usual Saturday night’s sense of the spaces of Sunday opening ahead. Fatigue had given way to the new lease of strength that always came if she stayed up long enough, and when she found herself safely behind the curtain, she hoped that Miss Holland, audible on the other side, was sharing her sense of refreshment. She began to regret the incident that had reduced their exchange to courteous formalities, and to wish for an impossible re-establishment of the inexperience of the earlier part of the day.
Only impossible because of the way people were influenced by things said and done. She was herself, she knew, but never quite permanently: never believing that what people thought themselves to be and thought other people to be, went quite through.... Always certain that underneath was something else, the same in everybody.
“Of course, I could never feel the same again.” She could never make up her mind whether it was good or bad not to be able to make that statement from the heart. Whether it was good fortune to have access to a region where everything was forgotten, and within which it was impossible to believe people were what they represented themselves to be. Yet speaking or acting suddenly from this region where she lived with herself was always disastrous. And still there remained that unalterable certainty that invisibly others were exactly what she thought them, and would suddenly turn into the person she was seeking all the time in everyone ... the person she knew was there.
It seemed now, so far off were those first bright early hours, that Miss Holland and she had been long associated. The first freshness had gone, or she would not now find herself with her hand on her own life. But although that was recovered, there was now also something else. Something going forward even as she moved about, slowly, delightfully hindered by new things and the need for new movements that made the process of going to bed a conscious ceremonial.
On the other side of the curtain Miss Holland was moving about in the same leisurely obstructed way. Her things were not new; but she was having to find her way amongst them afresh. This must be bringing all sorts of things into her mind. They were sharing adventure. At the very least, there was that. It was a great deal. From the point of view of the amazingness of life and people, it was everything. And now the strange something was growing clearer. Their prolonged silence was speaking.... Of course ... “C’est dans le silence que les âmes se révèlent.”
Miriam tiptoed about, breathlessly listening. Clearly, almost audibly, the silence was knitting up the broken fabric of their intercourse. Thought of now, Miss Holland seemed young and small. She had been, once. Alone with herself, of course, she still was. And at the centre of her consciousness there was an image of her new friend, not as she appeared to be, but as she really was; just as within her own consciousness there was an image of the real Miss Holland.