Revolving Lights by Dorothy M. Richardson

The tiger stepping down his blue plaque. The one thing in the room that nothing could influence. All the other single beautiful things change. They are beautiful, for a moment, again and again; giving out their expression, and presently frozen stiff, having no expression. The blue plaque, intense fathomless eastern blue, the thick spiky grey-green sharply shaped leaves, going up forever, the heavy striped beast forever curving through, his great paw always newly set on the base of the plaque; inexhaustible, never looked at enough; always bringing the same joy. If ever the memory of this room fades away, the blue plaque will remain.

Mr. Hancock was coming upstairs. In a moment she would know whether any price had been paid; any invisible appointment irrevocably missed.

"Good morning. " The everyday tone. Not the tone of welcome after a holiday.

"Good morning. I'm so sorry I could not get back yesterday."

"Yes. I suppose it could not be helped. " He was annoyed. Perhaps even a little suspicious.

"You see, my brother-in-law thought I was still on holiday and free to take my sister home."

"I trust it is not anything serious."

"It was just one of her attacks. " Suppose Sarah should have one, at this moment? Suppose it was Sarah who was paying for her escapade? She summoned her despairingly, explaining. saw her instant approval and her private astonishment at the reason for the deceit.

Supported by Sarah she rounded off her story.

"I see," said Mr. Hancock pleasantly; weighing, accepting. She stood before him seeing the incident as he would imagine it. It was growing true in her mind. Presently she would be looking back on it. This was how criminals got themselves mixed up.

"I'm glad it was not anything serious," said Mr. Hancock gravely, turning to the scatter of letters on his table. He was glad. And his kind sympathy was not being fooled. Sarah was always being ill. It was worth a lie to drag her out into the light of his sympathy. A breath of true life, born from a lie.

The incident was at an end, safely through. He was satisfied and believing, gone on into his day. She gathered up his appointment book from under his nose. He was using it, making entries. But he knew this small tyranny was her real apology, a curse for the trouble she had been obliged to give him. While he sat bereft as she took in the items of his day, their silent everyday conversation was knitted up once more. She was there, not failing him. He knew she would always be there as long as he should really need her. She restored the book to its place and stood at his side affectionately watching him tackle his task, detached, aware of her affection, secure in its independence.

They were so utterly far apart, foreigners in each other's worlds. Irreconcilable. But for all these years she had had daily before her eyes the spectacle of his life work; the way and the cost of his undeviating, unsparing work. It must surely be a small comfort to him that there had been an understanding witness to the shapely building of his life.

Understanding speech she could never have, with anyone. except the Taylors, and she was as incompletely in their world as in his. The joy of being with him was the absence of the need for speech. She whisked herself to the door and went out shutting it behind her with a little slam, a last fling of holiday freedom, her communication to him of the store of joy she had brought back, the ease with which she was shouldering her more and more methodical, irrelevant work.

There was nothing to pay. Then the moment over the telegram had been a revelation.

"You ought to see the Grahams. Stay another day and see the Grahams."

I might have wired asking for another day. Impossible. The day would have been spoilt by the discomfort of knowing him thinking me ungrateful and insatiable. Only being able to say when I came back that I waited to see a man dying of cancer. He would have thought that morbid. The minute the telegram was sent the feeling of guilt passed away. Whilst Hypo was chuckling over it at the top of the stairs there was nothing and no one. Only the feeling of having broken through and stepped forward into space. Strong happiness. All the next day was in space; a day taken out of life; standing by itself.

Mr. Graham was old-fashioned. and modern too. He seemed to have come from so far back, to see backwards, understanding, and to see ahead the things he had always known. Serene and interested, in absolutely everything. As much in the tiny story of the threepenny-bit as in anything else, making it seem worth telling, making me able to tell it. Seeing everything as real. Really finding life marvellous in the way no one else seemed to do. Ill as he was he looked up my trains, carefully and thoughtfully. The horror and fear of death was taken away from me while I watched him. Perhaps he had always felt that the marvellousness of there being such a thing as life was the answer to everything. And now that he was dying knew it more completely?

They were both so serene. Everybody was lifted by being with them into that part of life that goes on behind the life that seems to be being lived.

All the time it was as if they had witnessed that past fortnight and made it immaterial. a part of the immaterial story of life.