that an appeal to reason would not be unheard by them. But reason,’ she reflected, ‘what is reason without Reality?’
Doing homage to the phrase, she repeated it once more, and caught the ear of Mr Clacton, as he issued from his room; and he repeated it a third time, giving it, as he was in the habit of doing with Mrs Seal’s phrases, a dryly humorous intonation. He was well pleased with the world, however, and he remarked, in a flattering manner, that he would like to see that phrase in large letters at the head of a leaflet.
‘But, Mrs Seal, we have to aim at a judicious combination of the two,’ he added in his magisterial way to check the unbalanced enthusiasm of the women. ‘Reality has to be voiced by reason before it can make itself felt. The weak point of all these movements, Miss Datchet,’ he continued, taking his place at the table and turning to Mary as usual when about to deliver his more profound cogitations, ‘is that they are not based upon sufficiently intellectual grounds. A mistake, in my opinion. The British public likes a pellet of reason in its jam of eloquence—a pill of reason in its pudding of sentiment,’ he said, sharpening the phrase to a satisfactory degree of literary precision.
His eyes rested, with something of the vanity of an author, upon the yellow leaflet which Mary held in her hand. She rose, took her seat at the head of the table, poured out tea for her colleagues, and gave her opinion upon the leaflet. So she had poured out tea, so she had criticized Mr Clacton’s leaflets a hundred times already; but now it seemed to her that she was doing it in a different spirit; she had enlisted in the army, and was a volunteer no longer. She had renounced something and was now—how could she express it?—not quite ‘in the running’ for life. She had always known that Mr Clacton and Mrs Seal were not in the running, and across the gulf that separated them she had seen them in the guise of shadow people, flitting in and out of the ranks of the living—eccentrics, undeveloped human beings, from whose substance some essential part had been cut away. All this had never struck her so clearly as it did this afternoon, when she felt that her lot was cast with them for ever. One view of the world plunged in darkness, so a more volatile temperament might have argued after a season of despair, let the world turn again and show another, more splendid, perhaps. No, Mary thought, with unflinching loyalty to what appeared to her to be the true view, having lost what is best, I do not mean to pretend that any other view does instead. Whatever happens, I mean to have no pretences in my life. Her very words had a sort of distinctness which is sometimes produced by sharp, bodily pain. To Mrs Seal’s secret jubilation the rule which forbade discussion of shop at tea-time was overlooked. Mary and Mr Clacton argued with a cogency and a ferocity which made the little woman feel that something very important—she hardly knew what—was taking place. She became much excited; one crucifix became entangled with another, and she dug a considerable hole in the table with the point of her pencil in order to emphasize the most striking heads of the discourse; and how any combination of Cabinet Ministers could resist such discourse she really did not know.
She could hardly bring herself to remember her own private instrument of justice—the typewriter. The telephone-bell rang, and as she hurried off to answer a voice which always seemed a proof of importance by itself, she felt that it was at this exact spot on the surface of the globe that all the subterranean wires of thought and progress came together. When she returned, with a message from the printer, she found that Mary was putting on her hat firmly; there was something imperious and dominating in her attitude altogether.
‘Look, Sally,’ she said, ‘these letters want copying. These I’ve not looked at. The question of the new census will have to be gone into carefully. But I’m going home now. Good night, Mr Clacton; good night, Sally.’
‘We are very fortunate in our secretary, Mr Clacton,’ said Mrs Seal, pausing with her hand on the papers, as the door shut behind Mary. Mr Clacton himself had been vaguely impressed by something in Mary’s behaviour towards him. He envisaged a time even when it would become necessary to tell her that there could not be two masters in one office—but she was certainly able, very able, and in touch with a group of very clever young men. No doubt they had suggested to her some of her new ideas.
He signified his assent to Mrs Seal’s remark, but observed, with a glance at the clock, which showed only half an hour past five:
‘If she takes the work seriously, Mrs Seal—but that’s just what some of your clever young ladies don’t do.’ So saying he returned to his room, and Mrs Seal, after a moment’s hesitation, hurried back to her labours.
CHAPTER XXI
MARY WALKED TO THE nearest station and reached home in an incredibly short space of time, just so much, indeed, as was needed for the intelligent understanding of the news of the world as the Westminster Gazetteci reported it. Within a few minutes of opening her door, she was in trim for a hard evening’s work. She unlocked a drawer and took out a manuscript, which consisted of a very few pages, entitled, in a forcible hand, ‘Some Aspects of the Democratic State’. The aspects dwindled out in a criss-cross of blotted lines in the very middle of a sentence, and suggested that the author had been interrupted, or convinced of the futility of proceeding, with her pen in the air ... Oh, yes, Ralph had come in at that point. She scored that sheet very effectively, and, choosing a fresh one, began at a great rate with a generalization upon the structure of human society, which was a good deal bolder than her custom. Ralph had told her once that she couldn’t write English, which accounted for those frequent blots and insertions; but she put all that behind her, and drove ahead with such words as came her way, until she had accomplished half a page of generalization and might legitimately draw breath. Directly her hand stopped her brain stopped too, and she began to listen. A paper-boy shouted down the street; an omnibus ceased and lurched on again with the heave of duty once more shouldered; the dullness of the sounds suggested that a fog had risen since her return, if, indeed, a fog has power to deaden sound, of which fact, she could not be sure at the present moment. It was the sort of fact Ralph Denham knew. At any rate, it was no concern of hers, and she was about to dip a pen when her ear was caught by the sound of a step upon the stone staircase. She followed it past Mr Chippen’s chambers; past Mr Gibson’s; past Mr Turner’s; after which it became her sound. A postman, a washerwoman, a circular,cj a bill—she presented herself with each of these perfectly natural possibilities; but, to her surprise, her mind rejected each one of them impatiently, even apprehensively. The step became slow, as it was apt to do at the end of the steep climb, and Mary, listening for the regular sound, was filled with an intolerable nervousness. Leaning against the table, she felt the knock of her heart push her body perceptibly backwards and forwards—a state of nerves astonishing and reprehensible in a stable woman. Grotesque fancies took shape. Alone, at the top of the house, an unknown person approaching nearer and nearer—how could she escape? There was no way of escape. She did not even know whether that oblong mark on the ceiling was a trap- door to the roof or not. And if she got on to the roof—well, there was a drop of sixty feet or so on to the pavement. But she sat perfectly still, and when the knock sounded, she got up directly and opened the door without hesitation. She saw a tall figure outside, with something ominous to her eyes in the look of it.
‘What do you want?’ she said, not recognizing the face in the fitful light of the staircase.
‘Mary? I’m Katharine Hilbery!’
Mary’s self-possession returned almost excessively, and her welcome was decidedly cold, as if she must recoup herself for this ridiculous waste of emotion. She moved her green-shaded lamp to another table, and covered ‘Some Aspects of the Democratic State’ with a sheet of blotting-paper.
‘Why can’t they leave me alone?’ she thought bitterly, connecting Katharine and Ralph in a conspiracy to take from her even this hour of solitary study, even this poor little defence against the world. And, as she smoothed
