Her rare visits to the surgery were festivals. Free from the usual daily fatigue of constant standing for reiterated clearances and cleansings of small sets of instruments, she swept full of cheerful strength, her mind free for method, her hands steady and deft, upon the accumulations left by long sittings, rapping out her commentary upon his prolonged endurance by emphatic bumpings of basins and utensils; making it unnecessary for him to voice the controlled exasperation that spoke for her from every movement and tone. Once or twice she felt it wavering towards speech and whisked about and bumped things down with extra violence. Once or twice he smiled into her angry face and she feared he was going to speak of them.
XVIII
It was a sort of formality. They all three seemed to be waiting for something to begin. They were not at ease. Perhaps they had come to the end of everything they had to say to each other and had only the memory of their common youth to bind them to each other. Members of the same family never seemed to be quite at ease sitting together doing nothing. These three met so seldom that they were obliged when they met to appear to be giving their whole attention to each other, sitting confronted and trying to keep talk going all the time. That made everyone speak and smile and look self-consciously. Perhaps they reminded each other by their mutual presence that the dreams of their youth had not been fulfilled. And the cousins were formal. Like the other cousins they belonged to the prosperous provincial middle class that always tries to get its sons into professions. Without the volume of Sophocles one would have known he was part of a school and she would have been nothing but the wife or daughter or sister of an English professional man. It was always the same world; once the only world that was worthy of one’s envious admiration and respect; changed now … “hardworked little text book people and here and there an enlightened thwarted man.” … Was Mr. Canfield thwarted? There was a curious look of lonely enlightenment about his head. At the University, and now and again with a head master or a fellow assistant-master he had had moments of exchange and been happy for a moment and seen the world alight. But his happiest times had been in loneliness, with thoughts coming to him out of books. They had been his solace and his refuge since he was fifteen; and in spite of the hair greying his temples he was still fifteen; within him were all the dreams and all the dreadful crudities of boyhood … he had never grown to man’s estate. … He had understood at once. “It always seems unnecessary to explain things to people; you feel while you are explaining that they will meet the same thing themselves, perhaps in some different form; but certainly, because things are all the same.” “Oh yes; that’s certainly so.” He had looked pleased and lightened. Darkness and cold had come in an instant with Mrs. Canfield’s unexpected reverent voice. “I don’t quite understand what that means; tell me.” She had put down her fancy work and lifted her flower-like face, not suspiciously as the other cousins would have done, but with their type of gentle formal refinement and something of their look. She could be sour and acid if she chose. She could curl her lips and snub people. What was the secret of the everlasting same awfulness of even the nicest of refined sheltered middle-class Englishwoman? He had stumbled and wandered through a vague statement. He knew that all the long loneliness of his mind lay revealed before one—and yet she had been the dream and wonder and magic of his youth and still was his dear companion. The “lady” was the wife for the professional Englishman—simple sheltered domesticated, trained in principles she did not think about and living by them; revering professional and professionally successful men; never seeing the fifth-form schoolboys they all were. No woman who saw them as they were with their mental pride and vanity and fixity, would stay with them; no woman who saw their veiled appetites. … But where could all these wives go?
Throughout the evening she was kept quiet and dull and felt presently very weary. Her helpless stocktaking made it difficult to face the strangers, lest painful illumination and pity and annoyance should stream from her too visibly. … Perhaps they too took stock and pitied; but they were interested, a little eager in response and though too well bred for questions, obviously full of unanswered surmises, which perhaps presently they would communicate to each other. There were
