Vainly as they carried her along, surrounding her, accustomed to her silence and unresentful, she sought for a clear centre where these old friends and the friends with whom her life was now involved, might meet and understand each other. Philistia. The mental immobility of Philistines. But Philistines within their own world were rich and racy. Their critics in failing to savour the essence of middle-class life, missed the essence of all life whatsoever. They feared the power of the Philistines. Their power of stifling freedom. Freedom for what? Freedom, unless people became samurai, slid down into a pit. Perhaps these clever scornful ones, the moderns and the Lycurgans, were all escaped Philistines?
Hearing the life in their voices, she loved them as they were, unchangeable. Through philistinism lay perhaps one of the ways of salvation. No. In the midst of the happiness they brought there was always a lurking shadow. The shadow of incompatibility; of the impossibility of being at once bound and free. The garden breeds a longing for the wild; the wild a homesickness for the garden. Is there no way of life where the two can meet?
And here, she realised as they went up the wide staircase, the broad way leading easily to the destruction of homemade ideas, was a small beginning of such a way of life. Within it the Brooms were small and helpless. Travellers in an unknown land, not yet able to take their bearings. They would recover. Later on, at home, they might make their severe comments, but unawares the range of their vision would have been enlarged. Gleefully she felt their irrevocable experience as they stood ranged just as they had been at the door of her sitting-room, in the doorway of the club smoking-room looking in upon women, unmistakable gentlewomen, lounging insouciantly. Representing not names and families but selves in their own right.
The drawing-room was again crowded, and again there was one free table near a window looking out upon the stately autumn trees and upon it tea set ready, waiting for them as the result of the order they had not seen her give in the hall. It was a perfect moment. Here they were at last after all the years, her guests at a table of her own. And they were much more than at home and happy. They were at court, in the heart of splendours. The girls admired openly. And Mrs. Philps, whose affection for her had flourished upon a background of pity and half-indulgent disapproval, withdrew all their past battlings in one glance, arch, bridling, altogether delighted and approving.
But in the perfect moment a light had gone up that showed Miriam a new self and a new world. It was she, not they, who was abroad in a strange land. She who was travelling ahead beyond recall. The decoration bestowed upon her by Mrs. Philps was already askew, not suiting her, not desired. The understanding exchanged between them was of a pact she would never willingly fulfil. The women’s pact. And while dispensing tea, talking as they liked her to talk, making a little drama for their delight, she privately thanked life for turning on this light in the presence of friends who, cherishing her smallest expressiveness, left her free to survey this new aspect of things whilst the light was still at its first brilliance.
A disquieting brilliance. For her initiation as a hostess was so slight. To sit thus, irresponsibly dispensing club fare, was the merest hint and shadow of hostess-ship. Yet it had been enough to make the world anew.
To feel charming, to want to be charming, to join for a moment the great army of hostesses as an equal was proud experience. But it was also a sort of death. For it included letting everything in the world go by. Feeling ready to do or say anything that would contribute to the comfort and happiness of one’s guests. In Mrs. Philps’ smile there had been, unknown to Mrs. Philps, the recognition of another victim joining the conspiracy of the regiment. And she had recognised aright.
For here, complete and full-grown within herself, was one alert to avoid anything leading to discord. Aware of convictions and points of view, personal feelings, everything that made one’s own intimate vision of life, shelved; receding and falling as if shamed, into the loneliest background of consciousness. If all this and much more, things revealed and sliding away too swiftly be caught and examined, were the price of merely entertaining friends at a club, what of the real hostess? What of the millions of women serving life sentences? Hostesses not only to friends but to households, willing or unwilling humbugs for life.
Yet the game is enchanting. And brings within an immense loneliness a sort of freedom. That was there distinctly. A sort of enforced freedom. To have nothing oneself. To seek only the being of others, regardless of their quality as persons; feel only their weight as mere humanity. Humanity seen thus as guests without distinction brought back the wonder of life renewed. Pitiful and splendid. If these strange large beings taking tea were thieves and murderers, the joy of tending them would be the same. Perhaps greater. It was more thrilling to wait upon Florrie and Mrs. Philps, whose lives she shared only imaginatively, than upon Grace, with whom she had a sort of identity.
IV
Swaggering along the middle of the empty pavement, the long cape of his short overcoat swinging like the cloak of a stage villain. With bent head he is playing his part to an imagined audience. He knows nothing of the contrast between the small figure and the big arrogance.
He swung round into Flaxman’s Court, and Miriam, following, paused for joy, mentally summoning heralds to precede and a brass band to follow him, so stately with head held high and plunging gait controlled to a
