She went about her work borne along
unwearied upon a tide that flowed out in glistening sunlit waves over
the sunlit shore of the world. The doors and windows of her cool shaded
room opened upon a life that spread out before her fanwise towards
endless brilliant distances. Moments of fatigue, little obstinate knots
and tangles of urgent practical affairs did their utmost to convince her
that life was a perpetual conflict, nothing certain and secure but the
thwarting and discrediting of the dream-vision; every contact seemed to
end in an assurance of her unarmed resourceless state. Pausing now and
again to balance her account, to try to find a sanction for her joy, she
watched and felt the little stabs of the actual facts as they would be
summarised by some disinterested observer, and again and again saw them
foiled. Things danced, comically powerless against some unheard piping;
motes, funny and beloved, in the sunbeam of her life.... Next week and
the coming of the favourite cousins made a bright barrier across the
future and a little fence round her labours. Everything must be ordered
and straight before then. She must be free and reproachless for the
wonders and terrors of their visit.... Perhaps there might be only the
one meeting; the evening already arranged might be all the week's visit
would bring. The week would pass unseen by her and everything would be
as before. As before; was not that enough, and more than enough?
4
Her rare visits to the surgery were festivals. Free from the usual daily
fatigue of constant standing for reiterated clearances and cleansings of
small sets of instruments, she swept full of cheerful strength, her mind
free for method, her hands steady and deft, upon the accumulations left
by long sittings, rapping out her commentary upon his prolonged
endurance by emphatic bumpings of basins and utensils; making it
unnecessary for him to voice the controlled exasperation that spoke for
her from every movement and tone. Once or twice she felt it wavering
towards speech and whisked about and bumped things down with extra
violence. Once or twice he smiled into her angry face and she feared he
was going to speak of them.
CHAPTER XVIII
1