Miriam turned to her in wrath, feeling an opportunity. Here, for all her revolutionary opinions, was a representative of the talkative oblivious world. She would confess to her that she dared not associate closely with people because of the universal capacity for being bored, and the hurry everyone was in. Her anger began to change into interest as words framed themselves in her mind. … But as she turned to speak she was shocked by the pathos of the little cloaked figure; the beautifully moulded, lovely disc of face, shining out clasped by the cap, above the close black draperies, and withdrew her eyes to contemplate in silence the individual life of this being; her moments of solitary dealing with the detail of the day when she would be forced to think things; not thoughts; and did not know how marvellous things were. That lonely one was the person to approach, ignoring everything else. She would protest, make some kind of defence; but if the ground could be held, they would presently be together in a bright world. But there was not enough time, between here and Hyde Park. Then later.
Behind, near or far, the two dry men were keeping their heads, exchanging men’s ready-made remarks. …
“Est-ce qu’il y a en Angleterre le grand drame psychologique?”
What on earth did she mean?
“Oh yes; here and there,” said Miriam firmly.
She sang over in her mind the duet of the contrasting voices as she turned in panic to the region within her, that was entrenched against England. Some light on the phrase would be there, if anywhere. … Shaw? Were his things great psychological dramas?
“Galumphing about like an elephant.” … The sudden bright English voice reverberated through her search. … Sudermann? She saw eager, unconscious faces, well-off English people, seeing only their English world, translating everything they saw into its language; strayed into Oxford Street to remind her. She wanted to follow them, and go on hearing, within the restricted jargon of their English voices, the answer to questions they never dreamed of putting. The continentals put questions and answered them by theories. These people answered everything in person; and did not know it.
The open spaces of the Park allowed them to line up in a row, and for some time they hovered on the outskirts of the crowd gathered nearest to the gates. Michael, in Russian, was delightedly showing off his Hyde Park crowds, obviously renewing his own first impression of these numbers of people casually gathered together—looking for his friends to show that they were impressed in the same way. They were impressed. They stood side by side, looking small and wan; making little sounds of appreciation, their two pairs of so different eyes wide upon the massed people. He could not wait; interrupted their contemplation in his ironic challenging way.
Lintoff answered with an affectionate sideways movement of the head; two short Russian words pouching his red lips in a gesture of denial. But he did not move, as an Englishman would have done after he thought he had settled a debateable point; remaining there gently, accessible and exposed to a further onslaught. He held his truths carelessly, not as a personal possession, to be fought over with every other male.
It was Michael who made the first movement away from his summed-up crowd. … They drifted in a row towards the broad pathway lined with seated forms looking small and misty under the high trees, but presently to show clearly, scrappy and inharmonious, shreds of millinery and tailoring, no matter how perfect, reduced to confusion, spoiling the effect of the flower beds brightly flaring under the grey sky and the wide stretch of grass, brilliant emerald until it stopped without horizon where the saffron distances of the mist shut thickly down. She asked Michael what Lintoff had said.
“He says quite simply that these people are not free.”
“Nor are they,” she said, suddenly reminded of a line of thought. “They are,” she recited, clipping her sentences in advance as they formed, to fit the Russian intonation, with carelessly turned head and Lintoff’s pout of denial on her lips, “docile material; an inexhaustible supply. An employer must husband; his horses and machinery; his people he uses up; as-cheaply-as-possible-always-quite-sure-of-more.”
“That has been so. But employers begin to understand that it is a sound economic to care for their workers.”
“A few. And that leads only to blue canvas.”
“What is this?”
“Wells’s hordes of uniformed slaves, living in security, with all sorts of material enjoyments.”
“It surprises me that still you quote this man.”
“He makes phrases and pictures.”
“Of what service are such things from one who is incapable of unprejudiced thought?”
“Everybody is.”
“Pardon me; you are wrong.”
“Thought is prejudice.”
“That is most-monstrous.”
“Thought is a secondary human faculty, and can’t lead, anyone, anywhere.”
He turned away to the Lintoffs with a question. His voice was like a cracked bell. Lintoff’s gentle, indifferent tones made a docile response.
“I suggest we have tea,” bellowed Michael softly, facing her with a cheerful countenance. “They agree. Is it not a good idea?”
“Perfectly splendid,” she murmured, smiling her relief. He could be trusted not to endure … to be tired of an adventure before it had begun. …
“Certainly it is splendid if it bring dimples. Where shall we go?” He turned eagerly, to draw them back at once to the park gates, shouting gaily as he broke the group, “Na, na; where. What do you think, Miriam?”
“There isn’t anything near here,” she objected. She pressed forward with difficulty, her strength ebbing away behind her. His impatience was drawing them away from something towards which they
