They held their places at the window, watching the pale lightning light the rain, hearing the thunder follow more swiftly. Presently a blinding white fire and a splintering crash just above their heads made them both exclaim.
As the thunder rolled bumping and snarling away across the sky they saw the figure of a man appear from the darkness beyond the candle and stand pressed close to the window with arms upstretched and laid against the panes. Through the sheets of rain his face was not quite clear. But he was dark and pale and tall and shouting at the storm. So he lived there alone. The storm was a companion. He was alone and aware. Had he seen the new people across the way?
A brilliant flash lit up the white face and its frame of heavy hair. The dark eyes were looking straight across.
Sayce: and he lived here. Miriam drew back and sat down on the end of her bed. This queer alley was then the place in all London in which to live. He had found it for himself. Was he dismayed at the sight of philistines invading the retreat where he lived hidden amongst unseeing villagers? She vowed not again to look across when there was any sign of his presence. He should be invaded without knowing it. She would see him go in and out, see without seeing: screening him even from her own observation. And all the time his presence would cast its light upon their frontage.
“The strange room,” said Miss Holland, who also had left the window, “has a tenant as eccentric as itself.”
“Do you know who it is?” Miriam stole back to the window to learn the disposition of the door of his house. He had disappeared. It was a side door, next to the cobbler’s window, like theirs next to the stonemason’s.
“It is Sayce. E. W. Sayce … the poet.”
“Indeed?” exclaimed Miss Holland delightedly. “A poet. That is charming. Quite enchanting to feel that poetry is being written so near at hand.”
She was peering out, as if looking for verses on the air between the opposing windows. She had no feeling of shyness in mentioning his work. If unobserved she could catch him at it, she would note his methods. Perhaps he would sit there at work in his window. But the least they could do, having innocently become witnesses of his workshop, would be to stand off and leave him free.
To disperse Miss Holland’s concentration, she rushed into speech.
“I’ve known him by sight for years, wandering about in a black cloak. One night I was strolling along the strip of pavement round one of the Square gardens. It was quite dark under the trees between the stretches of lamplight, and there was nobody about. Suddenly in a patch of light I was confronted by a tall figure, also strolling. We both stood quite still, staring into each other’s eyes with thoughts far away, each taking in only the fact of an obstruction. Then I realised it was Sayce. I can’t remember how we got past each other. One of us must presently have plunged into the gutter. But, looking back, it seems as if we walked through each other.”
Miss Holland produced a series of birdlike sounds, each seeming in turn to refuse to make a word.
The storm was moving on and the strange light, lifting as the sky cleared, left a blankness.
Later in the morning the light from a clear high sky broke up the harmony between the things in the room and set a pallor upon the green pathway to the window. It was the end of a story, the story of the first morning—a single prolonged moment that would last.
It was over, and here she was, conscious of her surroundings.
Something must be swiftly woven up with the treasure she held in her hands or she would drop into the crude spaces of this midday light and lose the threads. She heard Miss Holland, as if in response to her need, leave the little back room and go upstairs. It would be in order, the little back room. A room apart, like Mag’s and Jan’s old sitting-room in Kenneth Street that used to seem such a triumph of elaborate living. Her spirit went forth and nested incredulously within the little back room.
“It will mean growing plump and sedentary. Not wanting to sail forth and see people. Wanting people to come to me, hear the tinkle of my tea-things, sink into the world a bright little afternoon-tea scene makes on Sundays for people who have no centre.”
By Jove, yes. One of the reasons why household people like the odd, homeless sort is that they make them realise the snugness by revelling in it.
Miss Holland was audible upstairs rattling saucepan lids. They were to feed up there, kept warm by the ugly oil-cooker, and reserve the back room for elegant life and tea-parties.
Already Miss Holland had made breakfast on the cooker. By means of some mechanism in its interior. Interesting to explore. One day she would explore it. Find out its secret and then to be quite sure, ask Miss Holland. It stood out, as she thought of it, as the most fascinating thing upstairs, next to the way the light came through the long lattice; and the shadows upon the slopes of the roof.
“You shall teach me,” she heard her own sleepy voice over the welcome tray; “how to kick—”
“How to kick a cooper!” Miss Holland had trilled without a moment’s hesitation, and, after they had laughed: “Kippers require very little in the way of cooking.” A memory of Eleanor: “ ’Addocks don’t ’ardly need any cooking de‑er.”
She tipped herself off the little bed that made such an excellent sofa, and strolled into the back room.
It was darker than ever. Round and round she looked, taking in the things. Looking for more, and different, things. Absurdly half believing that the things she saw would change, would somehow become different under her eyes.
Green serge
