Again and again as they talked the set of circumstances that were the zest of her personal life had risen before her, in terms such as Miss Holland would use in describing them, and made a preoccupation that had kept her a bright and interesting talker. Yet Miss Holland was aware. Though in her eagerness for every word she had shown only awareness of a different reach and different perceptions, she knew, without recognising its nature, that between them there was a gulf.
To keep back even half-accepted points of view was not fair play. Brought uneasiness. Yet why tell her of things that might not happen?
CHAPTER III
1
Serenity had retreated outdoors, and increased there. To-day, in the space between the week’s work and the week-end with its pattern ready-set, was serenity immeasurable; given by autumn. Autumn gleaming beyond the park railings through sunlit mist.
Autumn had accumulated unawares. But this meeting with it had begun early this morning in the balmy stillness of the square. Just when the lame old woman had crossed the street. Cheerfully; unhampered by heat or cold or wind.
It had made the happiness of the morning’s work, its gaiety and ease. And now at its midday fulness it made the visit of the Brooms—so central as she had sat at her ledgers—retreat into the background. This still air passing into her spirit, the great trees standing in it, thick with coloured leaves upon the spread of misty grass, stamping their image, would remain when the rest of the holiday was forgotten.
Yet the Brooms, both Grace and Florrie, belonged to the unfathomable depth of autumn. Not to its wholeness. To single features. Any single feature contemplated brought them there to look and love. Only in London. They belonged to London from the first. To the heavy, tinted trees. To the first breath of exciting, on-coming cold, distilling the radiance of the sun-warmed earth. To the mauve twilights of fogless November days. To Christmas, and to June with spring and summer together in the scent of sweet briar wafted across their suburban garden; making, in its small green space with masonry visible all about, a sharper sense of summer than was to be found in the open country. They belonged to every feature of the London weather. Taking the sting from the worst and adding brightness to the best.
But this opening with its view of the short broad path belongs to no one. The sight of it is always a stepping forward into nowhere with eyes on the low fence at the end, the gap, the two poplars pluming up on either side, making it a stately portal to the green expanses beyond.
The poplars say: