All the six years at Babington were the blazing alley of flowers without beginning or end, no winters, no times of day or changes to be seen. There were other memories, quarrelling with Harriett in the nursery, making paper pills, listening to the bells on Sunday afternoon, a bell and a pomegranate, a bell or a pomegranate round about the hem of Aaron’s robe, the squirting of water into one’s aching ear, the taste of an egg after scarlet fever, the witch in the chimney, cowslip balls, a lobster walking upstairs on its tail, dancing in a ring with grownups, the smell of steam and soap the warm smell of the bath towel, Martha’s fingers warming one’s feet, her lips kissing one’s back, something going to happen tomorrow, crackling green paper clear like glass and a gold paper fringe in your hand before the cracker went off; an eye blazing out of the wall at night “Thou God seest me,” apple pasties in the garden; coming up from the mud pies round the summer house to bed, being hit on the nose by a swing and going indoors screaming at the large blots of blood on the white pinafore, climbing up the cucumber frame and falling through the glass at the top, blowing bubbles in the hayloft and singing Rosalie the Prairie Flower, and whole pieces of life indoors and out coming up bit by bit as one thought, but all mixed with sadness and pain and bothers with people. They did not come first or without thought. The blazing alley came first without thought or effort of memory. The flowers all shining separate and distinct and all together, indistinct in a blaze. She gazed at them … sweet Williams of many hues, everlasting flowers gold and yellow and brown and brownish purple, pinks and petunias and garden daisies white and deep crimson … then memory was happiness, one happiness linked to the next. … It was the same already with Germany … the sunny happy beautiful things came first … in a single glance the whole of the time in Germany was beautiful, golden happy light, and people happy in the golden light, garlands of music, and the happy ringing certainty of voices, no matter what they said, the way the whole of life throbbed with beauty when the hush of prayers was on the roomful of girls … the wonderful house, great dark high wooden doors in the distance thrown silently open, great silent space of sunlight between them, high windows, alight against the shadows of rooms; the happy confidence of the open scene. … Germany was a party, a visit, a gift. It had been, in spite of everything in the difficult life, what she had dreamed it when she went off; all woods and forests and music … happy Hermann and Dorothea happiness in the summer twilight of German villages. It had become that now. The heart of a German town was that, making one a little homesick for it. … The impulse to go and the going had been right. It was part of something … with a meaning; perhaps there is happiness only in the things one does deliberately, without a visible reason; drifting off to Germany, because it called; coming here today … in freedom. If you are free you are alive … nothing that happens in the part of your life that is not free, the part you do and are paid for, is alive. Today, because I am free I am the same person as I was when I was there, but much stronger and happier because I know it. As long as I can sometimes feel like this nothing has mattered. Life is a chain of happy moments that cannot die.
“Damn those boys—they woke me up.”
“Did they Mag; so they did me; did you dream?”
Perhaps Mag would say something … but people never seemed to think anything of “dropping off to sleep.”
“I drempt that I dwelt in Marble Halls; you awake von Bohlen?”
“I don’t quite know.”
“But speaking tentatively. …”
“A long lean mizzerable tentative—”
“I perceive that you are still asleep. Shall I sing it—‘I durr‑e‑empt I da‑we‑elt in ma‑ha‑har‑ble halls.’ ”
“Cooooo—oooo—er Bill.” The response sounded faintly from far away on the cliffs.
“Cooooo—ooo—er Micky,” warbled Miriam. “I like that noise. When they are further off I shall try doing it very loud to get the proper crack.”
“I think we’d better leave her here, don’t you von Bohlen?”
Was it nearly teatime? Would either of them soon mention tea? The beauty of the rocks had faded. Yet, if they ceased being clever and spoke of the beauty, it would not come back. The weariness of keeping things up went on. When the gingernuts and lemonade were at last set out upon the sand, they shamed Miriam with the sense of her long preoccupation with them. The girls had not thought of them. They never seemed to flag in their way of talking. Perhaps it was partly their regular meals. It was dreadful always to be the first one to want food. …
But she was happier down here with them than she would have been alone.
Going alone for a moment in the twilight across the little scrub, as soon as she had laughed enough over leaving the room in the shelter of a gorse bush, she recovered the afternoon’s happiness. There was a little fence, bricks were lying scattered about and half-finished houses stood along the edge of the scrub. But a soft land-breeze was coming across the common carrying the scent of gorse; the silence of the sea reminded her of its presence beyond the cliffs; her own gorse-scented breeze, and silent sea and sunlit cliffs.
XXIII
Cool with sound short sleep she rose early, the memory of yesterday giving a Sunday leisure to the usual anxious hurry of breakfast. She was strong with her own possessions. Wimpole Street held nothing but her contract of duties to fulfil. These she could see in a clear vexatious tangle, against the
