Part 3 (2/2)
Running it in and out, across and over, spinning a web through which G.o.d himself--hush, don't think of G.o.d! How firm the st.i.tches are! You must be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens!
Back again to the thing you did, the plate gla.s.s with the violet loops?
But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close the breach.
Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh lays it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with decision. I catch sight of her face in the gla.s.s. Lips are pursed. Chin held high. Next she laces her shoes. Then she touches her throat. What's your brooch? Mistletoe or merry-thought? And what is happening? Unless I'm much mistaken, the pulse's quickened, the moment's coming, the threads are racing, Niagara's ahead. Here's the crisis!
Heaven be with you! Down she goes. Courage, courage! Face it, be it! For G.o.d's sake don't wait on the mat now! There's the door! I'm on your side. Speak! Confront her, confound her soul!
”Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle.” [But, Minnie, though we keep up pretences, I've read you right--I'm with you now].
”That's all your luggage?”
”Much obliged, I'm sure.”
(But why do you look about you? Hilda won't come to the station, nor John; and Moggridge is driving at the far side of Eastbourne).
”I'll wait by my bag, ma'am, that's safest. He said he'd meet me.... Oh, there he is! That's my son.”
So they walk off together.
Well, but I'm confounded.... Surely, Minnie, you know better! A strange young man.... Stop! I'll tell him--Minnie!--Miss Mars.h.!.+--I don't know though. There's something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but it's untrue, it's indecent.... Look how he bends as they reach the gateway.
She finds her ticket. What's the joke? Off they go, down the road, side by side.... Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone.
And yet the last look of them--he stepping from the kerb and she following him round the edge of the big building brims me with wonder--floods me anew. Mysterious figures! Mother and son. Who are you?
Why do you walk down the street? Where to-night will you sleep, and then, to-morrow? Oh, how it whirls and surges--floats me afres.h.!.+ I start after them. People drive this way and that. The white light splutters and pours. Plate-gla.s.s windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me--adorable world!
THE STRING QUARTET
Well, here we are, and if you cast your eye over the room you will see that Tubes and trams and omnibuses, private carriages not a few, even, I venture to believe, landaus with bays in them, have been busy at it, weaving threads from one end of London to the other. Yet I begin to have my doubts--
If indeed it's true, as they're saying, that Regent Street is up, and the Treaty signed, and the weather not cold for the time of year, and even at that rent not a flat to be had, and the worst of influenza its after effects; if I bethink me of having forgotten to write about the leak in the larder, and left my glove in the train; if the ties of blood require me, leaning forward, to accept cordially the hand which is perhaps offered hesitatingly--
”Seven years since we met!”
”The last time in Venice.”
”And where are you living now?”
”Well, the late afternoon suits me the best, though, if it weren't asking too much----”
”But I knew you at once!”
”Still, the war made a break----”
If the mind's shot through by such little arrows, and--for human society compels it--no sooner is one launched than another presses forward; if this engenders heat and in addition they've turned on the electric light; if saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures, vanities, and desires--if it's all the facts I mean, and the hats, the fur boas, the gentlemen's swallow-tail coats, and pearl tie-pins that come to the surface--what chance is there?
Of what? It becomes every minute more difficult to say why, in spite of everything, I sit here believing I can't now say what, or even remember the last time it happened.
”Did you see the procession?”
”The King looked cold.”
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