They are not my sort of people. Alma does not care for me personally. Little cries and excitement and affection. She wants to; but she does not care for anyone personally. Neither of them do. They live in a world. … “Michelangelo” and “Stevenson” and “Hardy” and “Dürer” and that other man, … Alma … popping and sweeping gracefully about with little cries and clever sayings and laughter, trying to be real; in a bright outside way, showing all the inside things because she kept crushing them down. It was so tiring that one could not like being with her. She seemed to be carrying something off all the time; and to be as if she were afraid if the talk stopped for a moment, it would be revealed.
In the teashop with Alma alone it had been different; all the old schooldays coming back as she sat there. Her eager story. It was impossible to do anything but hold her hands and admire her bravery and say you did not care. But it was not quite real; it was too excited and it was wrong, certainly wrong, to go down not really caring. I need not go down again.
Cold and torpid she got up and stepped into an empty carriage. Both windows were shut and the dry stuffy air seemed almost warm after her exposure. She let one down a little; sheltered from the damp the little stream of outside air was welcome and refreshing. She breathed deeply, safe, shut in and moving on. With an unnecessarily vigorous swing of her arms she hoisted her pilgrim basket on to the rack. Of course, she murmured smiling, of course I shall go down again … rather.
That extraordinary ending of fear of the great man at the station. Alma and the little fair square man not much taller than herself looking like a grocer’s assistant with a curious kind confidential … unprejudiced eye … they had come, both of them, out of their house to the station to meet her … “this is Hypo” and the quiet shy walk to the house he asking questions by saying them—statements. You caught the elusive three-fifteen. This is your bag. We can carry it off without waiting for the … British porter. You’ve done your journey brilliantly. We haven’t far to walk.
The strange shock of the bedroom, the strange new thing springing out from it … the clear soft bright tones, the bright white light streaming through the clear muslin, the freshness of the walls … the flattened dumpy shapes of dark green bedroom crockery gleaming in a corner; the little green bowl standing in the middle of the white spread of the dressing table cover … wild violets with green leaves and tendrils put there by somebody with each leaf and blossom standing separate … touching your heart; joy, looking from the speaking pale mauve little flowers to the curved rim of the green bowl and away to the green crockery in the corner; again and again the fresh shock of the violets … the little cold change in the room after the books, strange fresh bindings and fascinating odd shapes and sizes, gave out their names … The White Boat—Praxiter—King Chance—Mrs. Prendergast’s Palings … the promise of them in their tilted wooden case by the bedside table from every part of the room, their unchanged names, the chill of the strange sentences inside—like a sort of code written for people who understood, written at something, clever raised voices in a cold world. In Mrs. Prendergast’s Palings there were cockney conversations spelt as they were spoken. None of the books were about ordinary people … three men, seamen, alone, getting swamped in a boat in shallow water in sight of land … a man and a girl he had no right to be with wandering on the sands, the cold wash and sob of the sea; her sudden cold salt tears; the warmth of her shuddering body. Praxiter beginning without telling you anything, about the thoughts of an irritating contemptuous superior man, talking at the expense of everybody. Nothing in any of them about anything one knew or felt; casting you off … giving a chill ache to the room. To sit … alone, reading in the white light, amongst the fresh colours—but not these books. To go downstairs was a sacrifice: coming back there would be the lighting of the copper candlestick, twisting beautifully up from its stout stem. What made it different to ordinary candlesticks? What? It was like … a gesture.
“You knew Susan at school.” The brown, tweed-covered arm of the little square figure handed a teacup. The high huskily hooting voice … what was the overwhelming impression? A common voice, with a cockney twang. Overwhelming. “What was Susan like at school?” The voice was saying two things; that was it; doing something deliberately; it was shy and determined and deliberate and expectant. Miriam glanced incredulously, summoning all her forces against her sense of strange direct attack, pushing through and out to some unknown place, dreading her first words,
