1
Then all these years they might have been going sometimes to those
lectures. Pater talking about them--telling about old Rayleigh and old
Kelvin as if they were his intimates--flinging out remarks as if he
wanted to talk and his audience were incapable of appreciation ...
light, heat, electricity, sound-waves; and _never_ saying that members
could take friends or that there were special lectures for children ...
Sir Robert Ball ... "a fascinating Irish fellow with the gift of the gab
who made a volcano an amusing reality" Krakatoa ... that year of
wonderful sunsets and afterglows ... the air half round the world, full
of fine dust ... it seemed cruel ... deprivation ... all those years;
all that wonderful knowledge just at hand. And now it was coming, the
Royal Institution ... this evening. She must find out whether one had to
dress and exactly how one got in. Albemarle Street.... It all went on in
_Albemarle_ Street.
2
"We might meet" said Mr. Hancock, busily washing his hands and lifting
them in the air to shake back his coat sleeves. Miriam listened from her
corner behind the instrument cabinet, stupid with incredulity; he
_could_ not be speaking of the lecture ... he must be ... he had meant
all the time that he was going to be with her at the lecture.
"... in the library at half past eight."
"Oh yes" she replied casually.
3
To sit hearing the very best in the intellectual life of London, the
very best science there was; the inner circle suddenly open ... the
curious quiet happy laughter that went through the world with the idea
of the breaking up of air and water and rays of light; the strange
_love_ that came suddenly to them all in the object lesson classes at
Banbury Park. That was to begin again ... but now not only books, not
the strange heavenly difficult success of showing the children the
things that had been found out; but the latest newest things from the
men themselves--there would be an audience and a happy man with a lit
face talking about things he had just found out. Even if one did not
understand there would be that. Fancy Mr. Hancock being a member and
always going and not talking about it ... at lunch. He must know an
enormous number of things besides the wonders of dentistry and pottery
and Japanese art.
It was education ... a liberal education. It made up for only being able
to say one was secretary to a dentist at a pound a week ... it sounded
strange at the end of twelve years of education and five months in
Germany and two teaching posts--to people who could not see how
wonderful it was from the inside; and the strange meaning and rightness
there was; there had been a meaning in Mr. Hancock from the beginning, a
sort of meaning in her privilege of associating with fine rare people,
so different to herself and yet coming one after another, like questions
into her life, and staying until she understood ... somebody struggled
all night with the angel ... I will not let thee go until thou bless me
... and there was some meaning--of course, meanings everywhere ...
perhaps a person inside a life could always feel meanings ... or perhaps
only those who had moved from one experience to another could get that
curious feeling of a real self that stayed the same through thing after
thing.
4
"This is the library" said Mr. Hancock leading Miriam along from the
landing at the top of the wide red-carpeted staircase. It seemed a vast
room--rooms leading one out of the other, lit with soft red lights and
giving a general effect of redness, dull crimson velvet in a dull red
glow and people, standing in groups and walking about--a quite new kind
of people. Miriam glanced at her companion. He looked in place; he was
in his right place; these were his people; people with gentle
enlightened faces and keen enlightened faces. They were all alike in
some way. If the room caught fire there would be no panic. They were
gentle, shyly gentle or pompously gentle, but all the same and in
agreement because they all knew everything, the real important difficult
things. Some of them were discussing and disagreeing; many of the
women's faces had questions and disagreements on them and they were
nearly all worn with thought; but they would disagree in a way that was
not quarrelsome, because everyone in the room was sure of the importance
of the things they were discussing ... they were all a part of
science.... "Science is always right and the same, religion cannot touch
it or be reconciled with it, theories may modify or cancel each other
but the methods of science are one and unvarying. To question that
fundamental truth is irreligious" ... these people were that in the type
of their minds--one and unvarying; always looking out at something with
gentle intelligence or keen intelligence ... this was Alma's world ...
it would be something to talk to Alma about. There was something they
were not. They were not ... jolly. They could not be. They would never
stop "looking." Culture and refinement; with something about it that
made them quite different to the worldly people, a touch of rawness, raw
school harshness about them that was unconscious of itself and could not
come to life. Their shoulders and the backs of their heads could never
come to life. It gave them a kind of deadness that was quite unlike the
deadness of the worldly people, not nearly so dreadful--rather funny and
likable. One could imagine them all washing, very carefully, in an
abstracted way still looking and thinking and always with the
advancement of science on their minds; never really aware of anything
behind or around them because of the wonders of science. Seeing these
people changed science a little. They were almost something tremendous;
but not quite.
5
"That's old Huggins" murmured Mr. Hancock, giving Miriam's arm a gentle
nudge as a white-haired old man passed close by them with an old woman
at his side, with short white hair exactly like him. "The man who
invented spectrum analysis--and that's his wife; they're both great
fishermen." Miriam gazed. _There_, was the splendid thing.... In her
mind blazed the coloured bars of the spectrum. In the room was the light
of the beauty, the startling _life_ these two old people shed from every
part of their persons. The room blazed in the light they shed. She stood
staring, moving to watch their gentle living movements. They moved as
though the air through which they moved was a living medium,--as though
everything were alive all round them--in a sort of hushed vitality. They
were young. She felt she had never seen anyone so young. She longed to
confront them just once, to stand for a moment the tide in which they
lived.
"_Ah_ Meesturra Hancock--you _are_ a faceful votary."
That's a German, thought Miriam, as the flattering deep caressing
gutturals rebounded dreadfully from her startled consciousness. What a
determined intrusion. How did he come to know such a person? Glancing
she met a pair of swiftly calculating eyes fixed full on her face. There
was fuzzy black hair lifted back from an anxious, yellowish, preoccupied
little face. Under the face came the high collar-band of a
tightly-fitting dark claret-coloured ribbed silk bodice, fastened from
the neck to the end of the pointed peak by a row of small round German
buttons, closely decorated with a gilded pattern. Mr. Hancock was
smiling an indulgent, deprecating smile. He made an introduction and
Miriam felt her hand tightly clasped and held by a small compelling
hand, while she sought for an answer to a challenge as to her interest
in science. "I don't really know anything about it" she said vaguely,
strongly urged to display her knowledge of German. The eyes were removed
from her face and the little lady boldly planted and gazing about her
made announcements to Mr. Hancock--about the fascinating subject of the
lecture and her hopes of a large and appreciative audience.
What did she want? She could not possibly fail to see that Mr. Hancock
was telling her that he could see through her social insincerities. It
was dreadful to find that even here there were social insincerities. She
was like a busy ambassador for things that belonged somewhere else and
that he was laughing at in an indulgent, deprecating way that must make
her blaze with an anger that she did not show. Looking at her as her
eyes and mouth made and fired their busy sentences, Miriam suddenly felt
that it would be easy to deal with her, take her into a corner and talk
about German things, food and love affairs and poetry and music. But she
would always be breaking away to make a determined intrusion on somebody
she knew. She could not really know any English person. What was she
doing, bearing herself so easily in the inner circle of English science?
Treating people as if she knew all about them and they were all alike.
How surprised she must often be, and puzzled.
6
"That was Miss Teresa Szigmondy" said Mr. Hancock, reproducing his
amused smile as they took their seats in the dark theatre.
"Is she German?"
"Well ... I think, as a matter of fact, she's part Austro-Hungarian and
part--well, _Hebrew_." A Jewess ... Miriam left her surroundings,
pondering over a sudden little thread of memory. An eager, very
bright-eyed, curiously dimpling school-girl face peering into hers, and
a whispering voice--"D'you know why we don't go down to prayers? 'Cos
we're _Jews_"--they had always been late; fresh faced and shiny haired
and untidy and late and clever in a strange brisk way and talkative and
easy and popular with the teachers.... Their guttural voices ringing out
about the stairs and passages, deep and loud and stronger than any of
the voices of the other girls. The Hyamson girls--they had been
foreigners, like the Siggs and the de Bevers, but different ... what was
the difference in a Jew? Mr. Hancock seemed to think it was a sort of
disgraceful joke ... what was it? Max Sonnenheim had been a Jew, of
course, the same voice. Banbury Park "full of Jews" ... the Brooms said
that in patient contemptuous voices. But what _was_ it? What did
everybody mean about them?
"Is she scientific?"
"She seems to be interested in science" smiled Mr. Hancock.
"How funny of her to ask me to go to tea with her just because you told
her I knew German."
"Well, you go; if you're interested in seeing notabilities you'll meet
all kinds of wonderful people at her house. She knows everybody. She's
the niece of a great Hungarian poet. I believe he's to be seen there
sometimes. They're all coming in now." Mr. Hancock named the great names
of science one by one as the shyly gentle and the pompously gentle
little old men ambled and marched into the well of the theatre and took
their seats in a circle round the central green table.
7
"_There's_ a pretty lady" said Mr. Hancock, conversationally, just as
the light was lowered. Miriam glanced across the half circle of faintly
shining faces and saw an effect, a smoothly coiffured head and smooth
neck and shoulders draped by a low deep circular flounce of lace rising
from the gloom of a dark dress, sweep in through a side door bending and
swaying--"or a pretty dress at any rate"--and sat through the first
minutes of the lecture, recalling the bearing and manner of the figure,
with sad fierce bitterness. Mr. Hancock admired "feminine" women ... or
at any rate he was bored by her own heavy silence and driven into random
speech by the sudden dip and sweep of the lace appearing in the light of
the doorway. He was surprised himself by his sudden speech and half
corrected it ... "or a pretty dress." ... But anyhow he, even he, was
one of those men who do not know that an effect like that was just an
effect, a deliberate "charming" feminine effect. But if he did not know
that, did not know that it was a trick and the whole advertising manner,
the delicate, plunging fall of the feet down the steps--"I am late; look
how nicely and quietly I am doing it; look at me being late and
apologetic and interested"--out of place in the circumstances; then what
was he doing here at all? Did he _want_ science or would he really
rather be in a drawing room with "pretty ladies" advertising effects and
being "arch" in a polite, dignified, lady-like manner? How dingy and
dull and unromantic and unfeminine he must find her. She sat in a lively
misery, following the whirling circle of thoughts round and round,
stabbed by their dull thorns, and trying to drag her pain-darkened mind
to meet the claim of the platform, where, in a square of clear light, a
little figure stood talking eagerly and quietly in careful slow English.
Presently the voice on the platform won her--clear and with its curious,
even, unaccented rat-tat-tat flowing and modulated with pure passion,
the thrill of truth and revelation running alive and life-giving through
every word. That, at least, she was sharing with her companion ...
"development-in-thee-method-of-intaircepting-thee-light." "Daguerre" ...
a little Frenchman stopping the sunlight, breaking it up, making it
paint faces in filmy black and white on a glass.... There would only be
a few women like the one with the frill in an audience like this ...
"women will talk shamelessly at a concert or an opera, and chatter on a
mountain top in the presence of a magnificent panorama; their paganism
is incurable." Then men mustn't stare at them and treat them as works of
art. It was entirely the fault of men ... perfectly reasonable that the
women who got that sort of admiration from men should assert themselves
in the presence of other works of art. The thing men called the noblest
work of God must be bigger than the work by a man. Men plumed themselves
and talked in a clever expert way about women and never thought of their
own share in the way those women went on ... unfair, unfair; men were
stupid complacent idiots. But they were wonderful with their brains. The
life and air and fresh breath coming up from the platform amongst the
miseries and uncertainties lurking in the audience was a man ... waves
of light which would rush through the film at an enormous speed and get
away into space without leaving any impression were stopped by some
special kind of film and went surging up and down in confinement--making
strata ... supairposeetion of strata ... no Englishman could move his
hands with that smoothness, making you see. "Violet subchloride of
silver." That would interest Mr. Hancock's chemistry. She glanced at the
figure sitting very still, with bent head, at her side. He was asleep.
Her thoughts recoiled from the platform and bent inwards, circling on
their miseries. That was the end, for him, of coming to a lecture, with
her. If she had been the frilled lady, sitting forward with her
forward-falling frill, patronising the lecture and "exhibiting" her
interest he would not have gone to sleep.
8
When the colour photographs came, Miriam was too happy for thought.
Pictures of stained glass, hard crude clear brilliant opaque flat
colour, stood in miraculous squares on the screen and pieces of gardens,
grass and flowers and trees shining with a shadeless blinding
brilliance.
She made vague sounds. "It's a wonderful achievement" said Mr. Hancock,
smiling with grave delighted approval towards the screen. Miriam felt
that he understood, as her ignorance could not do, exactly what it all
meant scientifically; but there was something else in the things as they
stood, blinding, there that he did not see. It was something that she
had seen somewhere, often.
"They'll never touch pictures."
"Oh no--there's no atmosphere; but there's something else; they're
exactly like something else...."
Mr. Hancock laughed, a little final crushing laugh that turned away
sceptical of further enlightenment.
Miriam sat silent, busily searching for something to express the effect
she felt. But she could not tell him what she felt. There was something
in this intense hard rich colour like something one sometimes _saw_ when
it wasn't there, a sudden brightening and brightening of all colours
till you felt something must break if they grew any brighter--or in the
dark, or in one's mind, suddenly, at any time, unearthly brilliance. He
would laugh and think one a little insane; but it was the real certain
thing; the one real certain happy thing. And he would not have patience
to hear her try to explain; and by that he robbed her of the power of
trying to explain. He was not interested in what she thought. Not
interested. His own thoughts were statements, things that had been
agreed upon and disputed and that people bandied about, competing with
each other to put them cleverly. They were not _things_. It was only by
pretending to be interested in these statements and taking sides about
them that she could have conversation with him. He liked women who
thought in these statements. They always succeeded with men. They had a
reputation for wit. Did they really think and take an interest in the
things they said, or was it a trick, like "clothes" and "manners"--or
was it that women brought up with brothers or living with husbands got
into that way of thinking and speaking. Perhaps there was something in
it. Something worth cultivating; a fine talent. But it would mean hiding
so much, letting so much go; all the real things. The things men never
seemed to know about at all. Yet he loved beautiful things; and worried
about religion and had found comfort in "Literature and Dogma" and
wanted her to find comfort in it, assuming her difficulties were the
same as his own; and knowing the dreadfulness of them. The brilliant
unearthly pictures remained in her mind, supporting her through the
trial of her consciousness of the stuffiness of her one long-worn dress.
Dresses should be fragrant in the evening. The Newlands evening dress
was too old fashioned. Things had changed so utterly since last year.
There was no money to have it altered. But this was awful. Never again
could she go out in the evening, unless alone or with the girls. That
would be best, and happiest, really.