Revolving lights : $b Pilgrimage, Volume 7 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Revolving lights : $b Pilgrimage, Volume 7
John Stuart Mill · en
There was no feeling of Sunday in the house. But when Miriam wandered
into her room during the after breakfast lull, she found it waiting for
her; pouring into the room from afar, from all over the world, breaking
her march, breaking up the lines of the past and of the future,
isolating her with itself. The openings of the long lattice framed wide
strips of morning brilliance between short close-drawn folds of flowered
chintz. Everything outside was sharp and near, but changed since
yesterday. The flowers stood vivid in the sunlight; very still. The
humming of the bees sounded careful and secret; not wishing to disturb.
The sea sparkled to itself, refusing to call the eye. Yet outside there,
as in the room, something called. She leaned out. Into the enlarged
picture the sky poured down. The pure blue moved within itself as you
looked, letting you through and up. An unbroken fabric of light, yet
opening all over, taking you up into endless light....
Sunday is in the sky....
Hypo, coming round the corner from the terrace, his arms threshing the
air to the beat of his swift walk; knitting up the moment, casting kind
radiance as he came. Married, but casting radiance. He was making for
the house. Then Miss Prout was somewhere down there alone.... She
hurried to be out, seeking her. On the landing she ran into Hypo.
"Hullo, Miriametta. Going out?"
"I think so. Where's everybody?"
"Everybody, and chairs, is down on the terrace. But you'll want a
_hat_."
"I shan't." He had often admired her ability to go without. He had been
talking to Miss Prout for the last half hour and was now abstractedly
making a shapely thing of a chance meeting with a stranger.... His words
had carried him to the study door. He began inventing his retort, the
unfelt shape of words that would carry him on undisturbed, facing the
door with his back to her, hand on the doorknob. The end of it would
find him within. She cried out at random into the making of his phrase
and escaped into the dining-room to the sound of his voice. In the empty
dining-room she found again the listening presence of Sunday and hurried
to be through it and away at whatever centre had formed down there in
the open. Going down the steps and along the paths she entered the
movement of the day, the beginning of the sense of tomorrow, that would
strengthen with the slow shifting of the sabbath light. Miss Prout came
into view round the first bend, a sunlit figure in a tub chair on the
grassy level at the end of the terrace. _She_ had no hat. Her dark head
was bent over the peak made in her flowing draperies by her crossed
knees. She was _sewing_. Here. In public, serenely, the first thing in
the morning.