Revolving Lights by Dorothy M. Richardson

She was inside the dark little hall, her luggage being set down in the shadows by the brisk silent maid. At the sight of the wide green staircase ascending to the upper world, the incidents of the journey, translated as she drove to the house into material for conversation, fell away and vanished.

The thud of the swing door, the flurry of summer skirts threshed by flying footsteps; Alma hurrying to meet her. It was folly; madness; to flout the year's fatigue by coming here to stay, instead of going away with friends also tired and seeking holiday.

With the first step on the yielding pile of the stair-carpet she forgot everything but the escape from noise and gloom and grime. She was going up for four endless weeks into the clean light streaming down from above. This time there should be no brisk beginning. She would act out Alma's promise to accept her as an invalid deaf mute. There was so much time that fatigue was an asset, the shadow against which all this brightness shone out.

But Alma was not welcoming an invalid. There she stood, at the end of her rush, daintily jigging from foot to foot, in a delicate frilly little dress; heading the perspective of pure white and green, surfaces and angles sharp in the east light coming through the long casement. She checked the bright perspective with the thought in her dress, the careful arrangement of her softly woven pile of bright hair, the afternoon's excitement, from which she had rushed forth, shining through her always newly charming little pointed square face.

"Shall I labour up the rest of the stairs, or sit down here and burst into tears?"

"Oh, come up, dear ole fing," she cried with tender irony; but irony. "Paw fing. Is it very tired? " But her gentle arms and hands were perfectly, wonderfully understanding; though her face withdrawn from her gentle kiss still mocked; always within the limpid brown eyes that belabouring, rallying, mocking spirit. She held her smile radiantly, against a long troubled stare, and then it broke into her abrupt gurgle of laughter.

"Come along," she cried and carried a guest at a run along the passage and through the swing door.

It was the downstairs spare room. Miriam had expected the winding stair, the room upstairs, where all her shorter visits were stored up. She was to be down here at the centre of the house, just behind low casements, right on the garden, touched by the sound of the sea. And within the curtain-shaded sound-bathed green-lit space there was a deeper remoteness than even in the far high room, so weirdly shaped by the burning roof; its orange light always full of a strange listening silence.

"Alma. How perfectly glorious. " She stood still, turned away, as Alma closed the door, contemplating the screened light falling everywhere on spaces of pure fresh colour, against which the deep tones of single objects shone brightly.

Alma neighed gently and with little gurgles of laughter put her hands about her and gently shook her. "It is rather a duck of a room. It is rather a duck of a room. " Another little affectionate, clutching shake. Her face was crinkled, her eyes twinkling with mirth; as if she gave the room a little sportive push that left it bashed amusingly sideways. In just this way had she jested when they walked, wearing long pigtails, down the Upper Richmond Road. If she could have echoed the words and joined in Alma's laughter, she would have been, in Alma's eyes, suitably launched on her visit. But she couldn't. Amused approval was an outrage on something. Yet the kind of woman who would be gravely pleased and presently depart to her own quarters proud and possessive, would also leave everything unexpressed. But that kind of person would not have achieved this kind of room. and to Alma the wonder of it was of course inseparable from the adventure of getting it together. It was something in the independent effect of things that was violated by regarding them merely as successful larks. Yet Alma's sense of beauty, her recognition of its unfamiliar forms was keener, more experienced, more highly-wrought than her own.

"I shall spend the whole of my time in here, doing absolutely nothing."

"You shall! You shall! Dear old Mira. " She was laughing again. "But you'll come out and have tea. Sometimes. Won't you, for instance, come out and have tea now? In a few minutes? There'll be tea; in ever such a few minutes. Wouldn't that be a bright idea? " How dainty she was; how pretty. A Dresden china shepherdess, without the simper; a sturdiness behind her sparkling mirth. If only she would stop trying to liven her up. It seemed always when they were alone, as if she were still brightly in the midst of people keeping things going.

"Tea! Bright idea! Tea! " A little parting shake and a brisk whirling turn and she was sitting away on the side of the bed, meditatively, with both hands, using a small filmy handkerchief, having given up hope of galvanising; saying gravely, "Take off your things and tell me really how you are."

"I'm at my last gasp," said Miriam sinking into a chair. It was clear now that she would not be alone with the first expressiveness of the room. Returning later on she would find it changed. The first, already fading, wonderful moment would return, painfully, only when she was packing up to go. After all it was Alma's home. But it was no use trying to fight this monstrous conviction that the things she liked of other people, were more hers than their own. The door opened again upon a servant with her pilgrim baskets.

"I nearly always am at my last gasp nowadays. " Clean, strong neatly cuffed hands setting the dusty London baskets down to rest in the quiet freshness.