“There’s a pretty lady” said Mr. Hancock, conversationally, just as the light was lowered. Miriam glanced across the half circle of faintly shining faces and saw an effect, a smoothly coiffured head and smooth neck and shoulders draped by a low deep circular flounce of lace rising from the gloom of a dark dress, sweep in through a side door bending and swaying—“or a pretty dress at any rate”—and sat through the first minutes of the lecture, recalling the bearing and manner of the figure, with sad fierce bitterness. Mr. Hancock admired “feminine” women ... or at any rate he was bored by her own heavy silence and driven into random speech by the sudden dip and sweep of the lace appearing in the light of the doorway. He was surprised himself by his sudden speech and half corrected it ... “or a pretty dress.” ... But anyhow he, even he, was one of those men who do not know that an effect like that was just an effect, a deliberate “charming” feminine effect. But if he did not know that, did not know that it was a trick and the whole advertising manner, the delicate, plunging fall of the feet down the steps—“I am late; look how nicely and quietly I am doing it; look at me being late and apologetic and interested”—out of place in the circumstances; then what was he doing here at all? Did he want science or would he really rather be in a drawing room with “pretty ladies” advertising effects and being “arch” in a polite, dignified, lady-like manner? How dingy and dull and unromantic and unfeminine he must find her. She sat in a lively misery, following the whirling circle of thoughts round and round, stabbed by their dull thorns, and trying to drag her pain-darkened mind to meet the claim of the platform, where, in a square of clear light, a little figure stood talking eagerly and quietly in careful slow English. Presently the voice on the platform won her—clear and with its curious, even, unaccented rat-tat-tat flowing and modulated with pure passion, the thrill of truth and revelation running alive and life-giving through every word. That, at least, she was sharing with her companion ... “development-in-thee-method-of-intaircepting-thee-light.” “Daguerre” ... a little Frenchman stopping the sunlight, breaking it up, making it paint faces in filmy black and white on a glass.... There would only be a few women like the one with the frill in an audience like this ... “women will talk shamelessly at a concert or an opera, and chatter on a mountain top in the presence of a magnificent panorama; their paganism is incurable.” Then men mustn’t stare at them and treat them as works of art. It was entirely the fault of men ... perfectly reasonable that the women who got that sort of admiration from men should assert themselves in the presence of other works of art. The thing men called the noblest work of God must be bigger than the work by a man. Men plumed themselves and talked in a clever expert way about women and never thought of their own share in the way those women went on ... unfair, unfair; men were stupid complacent idiots. But they were wonderful with their brains. The life and air and fresh breath coming up from the platform amongst the miseries and uncertainties lurking in the audience was a man ... waves of light which would rush through the film at an enormous speed and get away into space without leaving any impression were stopped by some special kind of film and went surging up and down in confinement—making strata ... supairposeetion of strata ... no Englishman could move his hands with that smoothness, making you see. “Violet subchloride of silver.” That would interest Mr. Hancock’s chemistry. She glanced at the figure sitting very still, with bent head, at her side. He was asleep. Her thoughts recoiled from the platform and bent inwards, circling on their miseries. That was the end, for him, of coming to a lecture, with her. If she had been the frilled lady, sitting forward with her forward-falling frill, patronising the lecture and “exhibiting” her interest he would not have gone to sleep.
8
When the colour photographs came, Miriam was too happy for thought. Pictures of stained glass, hard crude clear brilliant opaque flat colour, stood in miraculous squares on the screen and pieces of gardens, grass and flowers and trees shining with a shadeless blinding brilliance.
She made vague sounds. “It’s a wonderful achievement” said Mr. Hancock, smiling with grave delighted approval towards the screen. Miriam felt that he understood, as her ignorance could not do, exactly what it all meant scientifically; but there was something else in the things as they stood, blinding, there that he did not see. It was something that she had seen somewhere, often.
“They’ll never touch pictures.”
“Oh no—there’s no atmosphere; but there’s something else; they’re exactly like something else....”
Mr. Hancock laughed, a little final crushing laugh that turned away sceptical of further enlightenment.
Miriam sat silent, busily searching for something to express the effect she felt. But she could not tell him what she felt. There was something in this intense hard rich colour like something one sometimes saw when it wasn’t there, a sudden brightening and brightening of all colours till you felt something must break if they grew any brighter—or in the dark, or in one’s mind, suddenly, at any time, unearthly brilliance. He would laugh and think one a little insane; but it was the real certain thing; the one real certain happy thing. And he would not have patience to hear her try to explain; and by that he robbed her of the power of trying to explain. He was not interested in what she thought. Not interested. His own thoughts were statements, things that had been agreed upon and disputed and that people bandied about, competing with each other to put them cleverly. They were not things. It was only by pretending to be interested in these statements and taking sides about them that she could have conversation with him. He liked women who thought in these statements. They always succeeded with men. They had a reputation for wit. Did they really think and take an interest in the things they said, or was it a trick, like “clothes” and “manners”—or was it that women brought up with brothers or living with husbands got into that way of thinking and speaking. Perhaps there was something in it. Something worth cultivating; a fine talent. But it would mean hiding so much, letting so much go; all the real things. The things men never seemed to know about at all. Yet he loved beautiful things; and worried about religion and had found comfort in “Literature and Dogma” and wanted her to find comfort in it, assuming her difficulties were the same as his own; and knowing the dreadfulness of them. The brilliant unearthly pictures remained in her mind, supporting her through the trial of her consciousness of the stuffiness of her one long-worn dress. Dresses should be fragrant in the evening. The Newlands evening dress was too old fashioned. Things had changed so utterly since last year. There was no money to have it altered. But this was awful. Never again could she go out in the evening, unless alone or with the girls. That would be best, and happiest, really.