Rising from the table she found her room strange, the new room she had entered on the day of her arrival. She remembered drawing the cover from the table by the window and finding the ink-stains. There they were in the warm bright circle of midmorning lamplight, showing between the scattered papers. The years that had passed were a single short interval leading to the restoration of that first moment. Everything they contained centred there; her passage through them, the desperate graspings and droppings, had been a coming back. Nothing would matter now that the paper-scattered lamplit circle was established as the centre of life. Everything would be an everlastingly various joyful coming back. Held up by this secret place, drawing her energy from it, any sort of life would do that left this room and its little table free and untouched.
V
The spell of the ink-stained table had survived the night. Moving about, preparing for today, she turned continually towards the window-space, as to an actual presence, and was answered by the rising within her of a tide of serenity, driving her forward in a stupor of confidence, impervious to strain and pain. It was as if she had entered a companionship that now spread like a shield between her and the life she had so far dealt with unaided. …
The week of working days, standing between her and next Sunday’s opportunity, was a small space that would pass in a dream; the scattered variously-developing interests of life outside Wimpole Street changed, under her eyes, from separate bewildering competitively attractive scraps of life, to pleasantly related resources, permitted distractions from an engrossment so secure that she could, without fear of loss, move away and forget it.
She felt eager to jest. Ranged with her friends she saw their view of her own perpetually halting scrupulousness and marvelled at their patient loyalty. She shared the exasperated intolerance of people who disliked her. … It could be disarmed … by fresh, surprising handling. … Because, she asked herself scornfully as she opened the door to go downstairs, she had corrected Mr. Lahitte’s unspeakable lecture? No. Sitting over there, forgetting, she had let go … and found something … and waking again had seen distant things in their right proportions. But leaving go, not going through life clenched, would mean losing oneself, passing through, not driving in, ceasing to affect and be affected. But the forgetfulness was itself a more real life, if it made life disappear and then show only as a manageable space and at last only as an indifferent distance … a game to be played, or even not played. … It meant putting life and people second; only entering life to come back again, always. This new joy of going into life, the new beauty, on everything, was the certainty of coming back. …
She was forgetting something important to the day; the little volume of stories for her coat pocket. Anxiety at her probable lateness tried to invade her as she made her hurried search. She beat it back and departed indifferently, shutting the door of a seedy room in a cheap boardinghouse, neither hers nor another’s, a lodger’s passing abode, but holding a little table that was herself, alive with her life, and whose image sprang, set for the day, centrally into the background of her thoughts as she ran wondering if there were time for breakfast, down to the dining-room. St. Pancras clock struck nine as she poured out her tea. Mr. Shatov followed up his greeting with an immediate plunge into unfamiliar speech which she realized, in the midst of her wonderment over Mr. Lahitte’s presence at early breakfast, was addressed to herself. She responded absently, standing at the tea-tray with her toast.
“You do not take your fish? Ah, it is a pity. It is true it has stood since half-nine.”
“Asseyez-vous, mademoiselle. I find; the breakfast hour; charming. At this hour one always is, or should be; gay.”
“Mps; if there is time; yes, Sunday breakfast.”
“Still you are gay. That is good. We will not allow philosophy; to darken; these most happy few moments.”
“There are certain limits to cheerfulness,” bellowed Mr. Shatov. They had had some mighty collision. She glanced round.
“None; within the purview of my modest intelligence; none. Always would I rather be; a cheerful coal-heaver; than a philosopher who is learned, dull, and more depressing than the bise du nord.”
That was meant for Mr. Shatov! The pale sensitive features were quivering in control … her fury changed to joy as she leapt between them murmuring reflectively out across the table that she agreed, but had met many depressing coal-heavers and knew nothing about philosophers dull or otherwise. In the ensuing comfortable dead silence she wandered away marvelling at her eloquence. … Cats said that sort of thing, with disarming smiles. Was that what was called sarcasm? How fearfully funny. She had been sarcastic. To a Frenchman. Perhaps she had learned it from him. Mr. Shatov overtook her as she was getting on to a bus at the corner.
“You do not go walkingly?” he bellowed from the pavement. Poor little man; left there with his day and his loneliness till six o’clock.
“All right,” she said, jumping off, “we’ll walk. I’ll be late. I don’t mind.”
They swept quickly along, looking ahead in silence. Presently he began to sing.
