Deadlock

future I would have nothing to do with his Mudie books. It was outside my sphere. I also said all sorts of things that came into my head in the train, a whole long speech. About unfairness. And to prove my point to him individually I told him of things that were unfair to me and their other employees in the practice; about the awfulness of having to be there first thing in the morning from the country after a weekend. They don’t. They sail off to their expensive weekends without even saying goodbye, and without even thinking whether we can manage to have any sort of recreation at all on our salaries. I said that, and also that I objected to spend a large part of a busy Monday morning arranging the huge bunches of flowers he brought back from the country. That was not true. I loved those flowers and could always have some for my room; but it was a frightful nuisance sometimes, and it came into the principle, and I wound up by saying that in future I would do only the work for the practice and no odd jobs of any kind.”

“What was his reply?”

“Oh well, I’ve got the sack.”

“Are you serious,” he said in a low frightened tone. The heavens were clear, ringing with morning joy; from far away in the undisturbed future she looked back smiling upon the episode that lay before her growing and pressing.

“I’m not serious. But they are. This is a solemn, awfully nice little note from Mr. Orly; he had to write, because he’s the senior partner, to inform me that he has come to the conclusion that I must seek a more congenial post. They have absolutely made up their minds. Because they know quite well I have no training for any other work, and no resources, and they would not have done this unless they were absolutely obliged.”

“Then you will be obliged to leave these gentlemen?”

“Of course long before I had finished talking I was thinking about all sorts of other things; and seeing all kinds of points of view that seemed to be stated all round us by people who were looking on. I always do when I talk to Mr. Hancock. His point of view is so clear-cut and so reasonable that it reveals all the things that hold social life together, and brings the ghosts of people who have believed and suffered for these things into the room, but also all kinds of other points of view.⁠ ⁠… But I’m not going to leave. I can’t. What else could I do? Perhaps I will a little later on, when this is all over. But I’m not going to be dismissed in solemn dignity. It’s too silly. That shows you how nice they are. I know that really I must leave. Anyone would say so. But that’s the extraordinary thing; I don’t believe in those things; solemn endings; being led by the nose by the necessities of the situation. That may be undignified. But dignity is silly; the back view. Already I can’t believe all this solemnity has happened. It’s simply a most fearful bother. They’ve managed it splendidly, waiting till Saturday morning, so that I shan’t see any of them again. The Orlys will be gone away for a month when I get there today and Mr. Hancock is away for the weekend and I am offered a month’s salary in lieu of notice, if I prefer it. I had forgotten all this machinery. They’re perfectly in the right, but I’d forgotten the machinery.⁠ ⁠… I knew yesterday. They were all three shut up together in the den, talking in low tones, and presently came busily out, each so anxious to pass the dismissed secretary in hurried preoccupation, that they collided in the doorway, and gave everything away to me by the affable excited way they apologised to each other. If I had turned and faced them then I should have said worse things than I had said to Mr. Hancock. I hated them, with their resources and their serenity, complacently pleased with each other because they had decided to smash an employee who had spoken out to them.”

“This was indeed a scene of remarkable significance.”

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I once told Mr. Hancock that I would give notice every year, because I think it must be so horrible to dismiss anybody. But I’m not going to be sent away by machinery. In a way it is like a family suddenly going to law.”

But with the passing of the park and the coming of the tall houses on either side of the road, the open June morning was quenched. It retreated to balconies, flower-filled by shocked condemning people, prosperously turned away towards the world from which she was banished. Wimpole Street, Harley Street, Cavendish Square. The names sounded in her ears the appeal they had made when she was helplessly looking for work. It was as if she were still waiting to come.⁠ ⁠…

Within the Saturday morning peace of the deserted house lingered the relief that had followed their definite decision. They were all drawn together to begin again, renewed, freshly conscious of the stabilities of the practice; their enclosed cooperating relationship.⁠ ⁠…

She concentrated her mental gaze on their grouped personalities, sharing their long consultations, acting out in her mind with characteristic gesture and speech, the part each one had taken, confronting them one by one, in solitude, with a different version, holding on, breaking into their commonsense finalities.⁠ ⁠… It was all nothing; meaningless⁠ ⁠… like things in history that led on to events that did not belong to them because nobody went below the surface of the way things appear to be joined together but are not⁠ ⁠… but the words belonging to the underlying things were far away, only to be found in long silences, and sounding when they came out into conversations, irrelevant, often illogical and self-contradictory, impossible to prove, driving absurdly across life towards things that seemed