II
Miriam rolled up the last pair of mended stockings. …
She looked at her watch again. It was too late now even to go round to Kennett Street. She had spent New Year’s Eve alone in a cold bedroom. Why could one not be sure whether it was right or wrong? It was only by sitting hour after hour letting one’s fingers sew that the evening had come to an end. It could not be wrong to make up one’s mind to begin the new year with a long night’s rest in a tidy room with everything mended. But the feeling that the old year ought to be seen out with people had pricked all the time like conscience. It only stopped pricking now because it was too late. And there was a sadness left in the evening. … She lifted her coat from her knees and stood up. The room shone. In her throat and nostrils was the smell of dust coming from the floor and carpet and draperies. But the bright light of the gas and the soft light of the reading-lamp shone upon perfect order. Everything was mended and would presently be put away in tidy drawers. She was rested and strong, undisturbed by changes that would have come from social hours. No one had missed her. Many people scattered about in houses had thought of her. If they had, she had been there with them. She could not be everywhere, with all of them. That was certain. There was nothing to decide about that. … The Brooms had missed her … they would have enjoyed their New Year’s Eve better if she had been there. It would have been jolly to have gone again so soon, after the short half week, and sat down by the fire where Christmas lingered and waited for the coming of the year with them. It would have been a loyalty to something. But it was too soon to be sitting about between comfortable meals talking, explaining things, making life stop, while reality went on far away. … One still felt rested from Christmas and wanting to begin doing things. … Perhaps it was not altogether through undecided waiting that the evening had come and gone by here in this room. Perhaps it was some kind of decision that could not be seen or expressed. Now that in solitude it had come to an end there was realisation. Quiet realisation of new year’s eve; just quiet realisation of new year’s eve. One would pass on into the new year in an unbroken peace with the resolutions for the new life distinct in one’s mind. She found an exercise book and wrote them down. There they stood, pitting the calm steady innermost part of her against all her other selves. Free desperate obedience to them would bring a revelation. No matter how the other selves felt as she kept them, if she kept them every moment of her life would go out from an inward calm. … The room was full of clear strength. There must always be a clear cold room to return to. There was no other way of keeping the inward peace. Outside one need do nothing but what was expected of one, asking nothing for oneself but freedom to return, to the centre. Life would be an endless inward singing until the end came. But not too much inward singing, spending one’s strength in song; the song must be kept down and low so that it would last all the time and never fail. Then a song would answer back from outside, in everything. She stepped lightly and powerfully about the room putting away her mended things. … One would move like the wind always, a steady human southwest wind, alive, without personality or speech. No more books. Books all led to the same thing. They were like talking about things. All the things in books were unfulfilled duty. No more interest in men. They shut off the inside world. Women who had anything whatever to do with men were not themselves. They were in a noisy confusion, playing a part all the time. … The only real misery in being alone was the fear of being left out of things. It was a wrong fear. It pushed you into things and then everything disappeared. … Not to listen outside, where there was nothing to hear. In the end you came away empty with time gone and lost. … To remember, whatever happened, not to be afraid of being alone.
She stood staring at the sheeny gaslit brown-yellow varnish of the wallpaper above the mantelpiece. There was no thought in the silence, no past or future, nothing but the strange thing for which there were no words, something that was always there as if by appointment, waiting for one to get through to it away from everything in life. It was the thing that was nothing. Yet it seemed the only thing that came near and meant anything at all. It was happiness and realisation. It was being suspended, in nothing. It came out of oneself because it came only when one had been a long time alone. It was not oneself.
