The rest of the day—secret and wonderful. Sitting about, taken for one of the Wilson kind of people, someone who was writing or going to write, by the two Scotch professors; sitting about listening to their quiet easy eager unconcerned talk, seeing them “all round” as Mr. Wilson saw them, the limits of professorship and teaching, the silly net and trick of examinations, their simplicity and their helplessness; playing the lovely accompaniment like quiet waves, of Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” the sudden, jolly, sentimental voice of Professor Ewings, his nice attentions … if it had been Wimpole Street or anywhere in society he would not have seen me. …
It would be wrong to try and write just because Mr. Wilson had said one ought. … The reasons he had given for writing were the wrong ones … but it would be impossible to go down again without doing some writing. … Impossible not to go down again. … They knew one was “different”; and liked it and thought it a good thing; a sort of distinction. No one had thought that before. It made them a home and a refuge. The only refuge there was except being by oneself … only their kind of difference was not the same. They thought nearly everyone “futile” and “dull”—everyone who did not see things in their way was that. Presently they would find that one was not different in the same way. He had spoken of people who grow “dull” as you get to know them. Awful … perhaps already, he meant—
“It’s all very well … people read Matthew Arnold’s simple profundities; er—simple profundities; and learn his little trick; and go about—hcna, hcna—arm in arm with this swell … hcna … puffing with illumination. All about nothing. It’s all, my dear Miss Henderson, about absolutely nothing.”
The train stopped. Better not to go down again. There was something all wrong in it. Wrong about everything. The Pinners and the big man were right … but there was something dreadful in them, the something that is in all simple right sort of people, who just go on, never thinking about anything. Were they good and right? It did not enter their heads to think that they were wrong in associating with him. … Here in London it seemed wrong … she hurried wearily with aching head up the long platform. The Wimpole Street people would certainly think it wrong; if they knew about the marriage. They knew he was a coming great man; the great new “critic”; a new kind of critic … they knew everybody was beginning to talk about him. But if they knew they would not approve. They would never understand his way of seeing things. Impossible to convey anything to them of what the visit had been.
The hall clock said half-past nine. The hall and the large rooms had shrunk. Everything looked shabby and homely. The house was perfectly quiet. Passing quietly and quickly into her room she found the table empty. The door into the den was shut and no sound came from behind it. No one but James had seen her. The holiday was still there. Perhaps there would be time to take hold in the new way before anyone discovered her and made demands. Perhaps they were all three wanting her at this moment. But the house was so still, there was nothing urgent. Perhaps she would never feel nervous at Wimpole Street again. It was really all so easy. There was nothing she could not manage if only she could get a fair start and get everything in order and up to date. Her mind tried to encircle the bookkeeping. There must be a plan for it all; so much work on the accounts to keep the whole ledger-full sent out to date, so much on the address books, and so much on the monthly cash books—a little of all these things every day in addition to the day’s work, whatever happened; that would do it. Then there would be no muddle and nothing to worry about and perhaps time to write. They must be told that she would use any spare time there was on other things. … They would be quite ready for that provided the books were always up to date and the surgeries always in order. That is what a Wilson would have done from the first.
“Mr. Grove to see you, miss.”
“Mr. Grove?”
“Yes miss; a dark gentleman.”
Miriam rose from her chair. James had gone after a moment of sympathetic waiting, back down the basement stairs
