Revolving Lights

gigantic in the half light and went to the piano murmuring that he would be pleased to improvise a little. Amazing. With all his foreign experience and his serene mind, his musical reflections would be wonderful. But they were not. His gentle playing was colourless. Vague and woolly. And it brought a silence in which his own silence stood out. He seemed to have retired, politely and gently, but definitely, into himself. The darkness surrounding the one small shaded light began to state the joy of the day. Everyone was beaming quietly with the sense of a glorious day. The tall man was at ease in stillness. In his large quiet atmosphere communication flowed, following serenely on the cessation of sound. Nun danket alle Gott.⁠ ⁠… How far was he a believer in the old things? His consciousness was the widest in the room; seemed to hold the balance between the old and the new, sympathetically, broad shouldered and rather weary with his burden. Speaking always in a frayed tired voice that would not give in to any single brisk idea. There was room and space and kind shelter in his mind for a woman to state herself, completely, unopposed. But he would not accept conclusions.⁠ ⁠… His mild smooth shape of words would survive anything; persisting. It was his style. With it he carried himself through everything, making his way of talking a thing in itself.⁠ ⁠… No ideas, no convictions; but something in him that made a perfect manner. A blow between the eyes, flattening him out, would not break it. There was nothing there to break, nothing hard in him. A made mould, chosen, during his growing, filling itself up from life, but not living⁠ ⁠… a gentleman, of course, that was it. Then there was an abyss beneath. Unstated things that lived in darkness.

But the silence lasted only an instant. Before its test could reveal anything further than the sudden sharp division of the sitters into men and women, Alma made movements to break up the party. Hypo’s voice came, enchanting, familiar and new, its qualities renewed by the fresh contacts. The thing to do he said rising, coming forward into the central light, not in farewell, into a self-made arena, with needless challenging sturdiness from one of the distances of his crowded mind. It would be one of his unanswerable fascinating misapprehensions. The thing to do was to go out into the world; leave everything behind, wife, and child and things; go all over the world and come back; experienced.

“And what about the wives?”

“The wives, Miriam, will go to heaven when they die.” He turned on his laugh to the men in the background; and gathered their amused agreement in a swift glance. They had both risen and were standing, exposed by the frankness of their spokesman, silent in polite embarrassment. They really thought, these two nice men, that something had been said. The spell of the evening was broken up. The show had been given. Dream picture of moving life. Entertainment and warm forgetfulness. Everyone enchanted and alive. Now was the time for talk, exchange; beginning with the shattering of Hypo’s silly idea. How could men have experience? Nothing would make them discover themselves. Either of them. Perhaps the tall man.⁠ ⁠…

“Men as they are,” she began, trusting to the travelling power of her mental picture of him as an exception, “might go⁠—”

But her words were lost. Alma had come forward and was saying her good nights, hurriedly. They were to go, just as everything was beginning. All chance of truth was caught, in a social trap. The men were to be left, with their illusions, to talk their monstrous lies, unchecked. Imagining they were really talking, because there was no one to contradict. Unfair.

She rose perforce and got through her part. It was idiotic, a shameful farce. Evening dress and the set scene, so beautifully arranged, were suddenly shameful and useless. Taken to bits; silly. She seemed to be taking leave of herself, three separate selves, united in the blessed relief of getting rid of the women. In the person of the tall man she strode gracefully across the room to open the door for Alma and herself, breaking out, with the two other men, at once, before the door was closed, with immeasurable relief, into the abrupt chummy phrases of old friends newly met.

IV

The tiger stepping down his blue plaque. The one thing in the room that nothing could influence. All the other single beautiful things change. They are beautiful, for a moment, again and again; giving out their expression, and presently frozen stiff, having no expression. The blue plaque, intense fathomless eastern blue, the thick spiky grey-green sharply shaped leaves, going up forever, the heavy striped beast forever curving through, his great paw always newly set on the base of the plaque; inexhaustible, never looked at enough; always bringing the same joy.⁠ ⁠… If ever the memory of this room fades away, the blue plaque will remain.

Mr. Hancock was coming upstairs. In a moment she would know whether any price had been paid; any invisible appointment irrevocably missed.

“Good morning.” The everyday tone. Not the tone of welcome after a holiday.

“Good morning. I’m so sorry I could not get back yesterday.”

“Yes⁠ ⁠… I suppose it could not be helped.” He was annoyed. Perhaps even a little suspicious.⁠ ⁠…

“You see, my brother-in-law thought I was still on holiday and free to take my sister home.”

“I trust it is not anything serious.”

“It was just one of her attacks.” Suppose Sarah should have one, at this moment? Suppose it was Sarah who was paying for her escapade? She summoned her despairingly, explaining⁠ ⁠… saw her instant approval and her private astonishment at the reason for the deceit.

Supported by Sarah she rounded off her story.

“I see,” said Mr. Hancock pleasantly; weighing, accepting. She stood before him seeing the incident as he would imagine it. It was growing true in her mind. Presently she would be