Things were astounding enough; enough to make you die of astonishment, if you did nothing at all. Being alive. If one could realise that clearly enough, one would die.
Everything everyone did was just a distraction from astonishment.
It could only be done in a convent. … It cost money to get into a convent, except as a servant. If you were a servant you could not stay day and night in your cell—watching the light and darkness until you died. … Perhaps in women’s convents they would not let you anyhow.
Why did men always have more freedom? … His head had a listening look. His eyes were waiting desperately, seeing nothing of the things in the world … he wanted to stay still until the voice of things grew so clear and near that one could give a great cry and fall dead … a long long cry. … Your hot heart, all of you, pouring out, getting free. Perhaps that happened to people when they were happy. They cried out to each other and were free—lost in another person. Whoso would save his soul … but then they grew strange and apart. … Marriage was a sort of inferior condition … an imitation of something else. … Ho‑o‑zan‑na‑in‑the‑Hi … i … est … the top note rang up and stayed right up, in the rafters of the church.
“Did you ever notice how white the insides of your wrists are?”
Why did Bob seem so serious? … What a bother, what a bother.
It is a good thing to be plain … “the tragedy of beauty; woman’s greatest curse.” … Andromeda on a rock with her hair blowing over her face. …
She was afraid to look at the monster coming out of the sea. If she had looked at it, it would not have dared to come near her. Because Perseus looked and rescued her, she would have to be grateful to him all her life and smile and be Mrs. Perseus. One day they would quarrel and he would never think her beautiful again. …
Adam had not faced the devil. He was stupid first, and afterwards a coward and a cad … “the divine curiosity of Eve. …” Some person had said that. … Perhaps men would turn round one day and see, what they were like. Eve had not been unkind to the devil; only Adam and God. All the men in the world, and their God, ought to apologise to women. …
To hold back and keep free … and real. Impossible to be real unless you were quite free. … Two married in one family was enough. Eve would marry, too.
But money.
The chair-bed creaked as she knelt up and turned out the gas. “I love you” … just a quiet manly voice … perhaps one would forget everything, all the horrors and mysteries … because there would be somewhere then always to be, to rest, and feel sure. If only … just to sit hand in hand … watching snowflakes … to sit in the lamplight, quite quiet.
Pictures came in the darkness … lamplit rooms, gardens, a presence, understanding.
Voices were sounding in the next room. Something being argued. A voice level and reassuring; going up now and again into a hateful amused falsetto. Miriam refused to listen. She had never been so near before. Of course they talked in their room. They had talked all their lives; an endless conversation; he laying down the law … no end to it … the movement of his beard as he spoke, the red lips shining through the fair moustache … splash baths and no soap; soap is not a cleansing agent … he had a ruddy skin … healthy.
A tearful, uncertain voice. …
“Don’t mother … don’t, don’t … he can’t understand. … Come to me! Come in here. … Well, well! …” A loud clear tone moving near the door, “Leave it all to nature, my dear. …”
They’re talking about Sally and Harriett. … He is amused … like when he says “the marriage service begins with ‘dearly beloved’ and ends with ‘amazement.’ …”
She turned about, straining away from the wall and burying her head in her pillow. Something seemed to shriek within her, throwing him off, destroying, flinging him away. Never again anything but contempt. …
She lay weak and shivering in the uncomfortable little bed. Her heart was thudding in her throat and in her hands … beloved … beloved … a voice, singing—
“So ear‑ly in the mor‑ning,
My beloved—my beloved.”
Silence, darkness and silence.
Waking in the darkness, she heard the fluttering of leafage in the garden and lay still and cool listening and smiling. That went on … flutter, flutter, in the breeze. It was enough … and things happened, as well, in the far far off things called “days.”
A fearful clamour—bright sunlight; something sticking sideways through the partly opened door—a tin trumpet. It disappeared with a flash as she leapt out of bed. The idea of Harriett being up first!
Harriett stood on the landing in petticoat and embroidered camisole, her hair neatly pinned, her face glowing and fresh.
“Gerrup,” she said at once.
“You up. You oughtn’t to be. I’m going to get your breakfast. You mustn’t dress yourself. …”
“Rot! You hurry up, old silly, breakfast’s nearly ready.”
She ran upstairs tootling her trumpet. “Hurry up,” she said, from the top of the stairs, with a friendly grin.
Miriam shouted convivially and retired into her crowded sunlit bathroom, turning on both bath taps so that she might sing aloud. Harriett had made the day strong … silver bright and clean and clear. Harriett was like a clear blade. She splashed into the cold water gasping and singing. Two o’clock—ages yet before the weddings. There was a smell of bacon frying. They would all have breakfast together. She could smile at Harriett. They had grown up together and could admit it, because Harriett was going away. But not for ages. She flew through her toilet; the little garden was blazing. It was a fine hot day.
Bennett and Gerald had turned strained pale faces to meet the brides as they came up the aisle. Now, Bennett’s broad white forehead seemed to give out a radiance. It had been fearful to stand behind Harriett through the service listening to the bland hollow voice of
