Which was the stronger? The interest of getting the whole picture there, and struggling with Mr. Wilson’s deductions or the interest of getting the girls to grasp and admire his conclusions even while she herself refused them. …
“Why can’t I keep quiet about the things that happen? It’s all me, my conceit and my way of rushing into things.” … But other people were the same in a way. Only there was something real in their way. They believed in the things they rushed into. “Miss Henderson knows the great critic, intimately.” He had thought that would impress Miss Szigmondy. It did. For a moment she had stopped talking and looked surprised. There was time to disclaim, to tell them they were being impressed in the wrong way; to tell them something, to explain in some way. The moment had passed, full of terrible far-off trouble, “decisive.”
There is always a fraction of a second when you know what you are doing. Miss Szigmondy would have gone on talking about bicycling until Mr. Hancock came back. There was no need to say suddenly, without thinking about it “I am dying to learn.” Really that sudden remark was the result of having failed to speak when they were all talking about Mr. Wilson. If, then, one had suddenly said “I am dying to learn bicycling” or anything they would have known something of the truth about Mr. Wilson. It was the worrying thought of him, still there, that made one say, without thinking, “I am dying to learn.” It was too late. It linked up with the silence about Mr. Wilson and left one being a person who knew and altogether approved of Mr. Wilson and wanted to learn bicycling. Altogether wrong. “You know—I don’t approve of Mr. Wilson; and you might not if you heard him talk, and … his marriage … you know. …”
… If I had done that, I should have been easy and strong and could have “made conversation” when she began talking about bicycling. I was like the man who proposed to the girl at the dance because he could not think of anything to say to her. He could not think of anything to say because he had something on his mind. …
And Miss Szigmondy would not have called this morning.
“No one can pgonounce my name. You had better call me Thégèse my dear girl. Yes, do; I want you to.” She had said that with a worried face, a sudden manner of unsmiling intimacy. She certainly had some plan. Standing there with her broken hearted voice and her anxious face she seemed to be separate from the room, even from her own clothes. Yet something within her was moving so quickly that it made one breathless. She was so intent that she was unconscious of the appealing little figure she made huddled in her English clothes. She stood dressed and determined and prosperous, her smart little toque held closely against her dark hair and sallow face with the kind of chenille-spotted veil that was a rampart against everything in the world to an Englishwoman. But it did not touch her or do anything for her. It gave an effect of prison bars behind which she was hanging her head and weeping and appealing. One could have laughed and gathered her up. Why was she forlorn? Why did she imagine that one was also forlorn? The sight of her made all the forlornness one had ever seen or read about seem peopled with knowledge and sympathy and warm thoughts that flew crowding along one’s brain as close and bright as the texture of everybody’s everyday. But the eyes were anxious and preoccupied, blinking now and then in her long unswerving appealing gaze, shutting swiftly for lightning calculations between her rapid appealing statements. What was she trying to do?
She tried to stand in front of everything, to put everything aside as if it were part of something she knew. Laughing over it with Mr. Hancock would not dispose of that. After the fun of telling him, she would still be there, with the two bicycle lessons that were going begging. He knew already that she had been and would assume that she had suggested things and that one was not going to do them. If one told him about the lessons he would say that is very kind and would mean it. He was always fine in thinking a “kind” action kind … but she does not come because she wants me. She does not want anybody. She does not know the difference between one person and another. … He knows only her social manner. She has never been alone with him and come close and shown him her determination and her sorrow … sorrow … sorrow. …
He could never see that it was impossible without forcibly crushing her, to get out of doing some part of what she desired. …
If one were drawn in and did things, let oneself want to do things for anyone else, there would be a change in the atmosphere at Wimpole Street. That never occurred to him. But he would feel it if it happened. If there were someone near who made distractions there would be a difference, something that was not given to him. He was so unaware of this. He was absolutely ignorant of what it was that kept things going as they were.
IX
The cycling school was out of sight and done with and Miriam hurried down the Chalk Farm Road. If only she could see an omnibus and be in it going anywhere down away from the north. Miss Szigmondy had brought shame
