The poorest, least sincere type of Anglican priest had a something that was lacking in Dr. Oldfield and the pink man. The absence of it had been the most impressive part of seeing them talking together. He had introduced Michael first. And the feeling of being affronted had quickly changed to thankfulness at representing nothing in the eyes of the suave little man. He had given only half his attention, not taking up the fact that Michael was a Zionist; his eyes wandering about; the proprietary eyes of a churchwarden. …
St. Pancras clock struck two. But there was no sense of night in the soft wide air; pouring in now more strongly at the open casement, rattling its fastening gently, rhythmically, to and fro, sounding its two little notes. It was the west wind. Of course she was not tired and there was no sense of night. She hurried to be in bed in the darkness, breathing it in, listening to the little voice at the window. Here was part of the explanation of her evening. Again and again it had happened; the escape into the tireless unchanging centre; when the wind was in the west. Michael had been hurt when she had told him that the west wind brought her perfect happiness and always, like a sort of message, the certainty that she must remain alone. But it was through him that she had discovered that it transformed her. It was an augury for tomorrow. For the way of the wind tonight, its breath passing through her, recalled, seeming exactly to repeat, that wonderful night of restoration when, for the only time, he had been away from London. It was useless to deplore the seeming cruelty. The truth was forced upon her, wafted through her by this air that washed away all the circumstances of her life.
III
She was inside the dark little hall, her luggage being set down in the shadows by the brisk silent maid. At the sight of the wide green staircase ascending to the upper world, the incidents of the journey, translated as she drove to the house into material for conversation, fell away and vanished.
The thud of the swing door, the flurry of summer skirts threshed by flying footsteps; Alma hurrying to meet her. … It was folly; madness; to flout the year’s fatigue by coming here to stay, instead of going away with friends also tired and seeking holiday. …
With the first step on the yielding pile of the stair-carpet she forgot everything but the escape from noise and gloom and grime. She was going up for four endless weeks into the clean light streaming down from above. This time there should be no brisk beginning. She would act out Alma’s promise to accept her as an invalid deaf mute. There was so much time that fatigue was an asset, the shadow against which all this brightness shone out.
But Alma was not welcoming an invalid. There she stood, at the end of her rush, daintily jigging from foot to foot, in a delicate frilly little dress; heading the perspective of pure white and green, surfaces and angles sharp in the east light coming through the long casement. She checked the bright perspective with the thought in her dress, the careful arrangement of her softly woven pile of bright hair, the afternoon’s excitement, from which she had rushed forth, shining through her always newly charming little pointed square face.
“Shall I labour up the rest of the stairs, or sit down here and burst into tears?”
“Oh, come up, dear ole fing,” she cried with tender irony; but irony. “Paw fing. Is it very tired?” But her gentle arms and hands were perfectly, wonderfully understanding; though her face withdrawn from her gentle kiss still mocked; always within the limpid brown eyes that belabouring, rallying, mocking spirit. She held her smile radiantly, against a long troubled stare, and then it broke into her abrupt gurgle of laughter.
“Come along,” she cried and carried a guest at a run along the passage and through the swing door.
It was the downstairs spare room. … Miriam had expected the winding stair, the room upstairs, where all her shorter visits were stored up. She was to be down here at the centre of the house, just behind low casements, right on the garden, touched by the sound of the sea. And within the curtain-shaded sound-bathed green-lit space there was a deeper remoteness than even in the far high room, so weirdly shaped by the burning roof; its orange light always full of a strange listening silence. …
“Alma. How perfectly glorious.” She stood still, turned away, as Alma closed the door, contemplating the screened light falling everywhere on spaces of pure fresh colour, against which the deep tones of single objects shone brightly.
Alma neighed gently and with little gurgles of laughter put her hands about her and gently shook her. “It is rather a duck of a room. It is rather a duck of a room.” Another little affectionate, clutching shake. Her face was crinkled, her eyes twinkling with mirth; as if she gave the room a little sportive push that left it bashed amusingly sideways. In just this way had she jested when they walked, wearing long pigtails, down the Upper Richmond Road. If she could have echoed the words and joined in Alma’s laughter, she would have been, in Alma’s eyes, suitably launched on her visit. But she couldn’t. Amused approval was an outrage on something. Yet the kind of woman who would be gravely pleased and presently depart to her own quarters proud and possessive,
