Sunflower Read Free

may be only temporary and subject to reversal at any time, so that the mighty may be put down from their seats and those of low degree exalted. These things are not understood by the people, but they are felt by them. The mill-girl in Oldham, the sweet-shop girl in Huddersfield, believing themselves to be like Sybil Fassendyll, obscurely know themselves to be by that resemblance related to some system which proved Oldham and Huddersfield a dream, and the waking a fair one. And their sweethearts, obscurely too but more intensely, because only the most passionate egoist can love himself as one loves others, rejoiced in that conviction. ‘Think of it, Sunflower! There’s a cotton operative in Oldham, a railway clerk in Huddersfield, who feels like a pious Catholic in the Middle Ages who fell in love with a woman who was like some miracle-working Madonna, just because his girl is like you …’
    And Essington had been right. This little man, with his shy, flickering, devout smile and the solemn, ritualistic movement of his hands as they turned and turned that spanner, was plainly thinking of the resemblance between his wife and her as proof of some imminent sacredness. It was astonishing that Essington, the brilliant and important Essington, whom only the jealous denied to have the greatest mind in the world, who with an almost vicious fastidiousness desired to know as little as possible of all those minds that were not nearly equal to his, should have known the heart of a stupid, flat-spoken little man who kept a garage in Packbury! It showed the power of love. He understood this lover because he himself loved her. Ecstasy shook her. She wished that they could all four be standing here in this yard within the red-gold walls, a group of kindly, friendly lovers, she, Essington, this little man who had so much in his heart, and his wife whom she conceived as a younger, lovelier sister of her own, with a nose that was quite straight …
    There interrupted the happy grazing of her mind one of those sudden, splintering, ripping noises that are apt to break out whenever there are men in overalls. She clapped her hands over her ears and spun round protestingly, because her nerves were so broken that any loud noise made the tears stand in her eyes, and she had so greatly liked the quietness in which she had been standing with the little man. A mechanic was breaking open a large packing-case just inside the garage, with an immense appearance of gusto, and flinging himself upon the crust-coloured boards, tearing off strips of sallow sacking, releasing innumerable shavings to the mercy of the draughts. She marvelled at the way that men did not mind noise, till it struck her that she herself had not minded noise before she was with Essington, and that as a rule single girls could bear what troubles their ears brought them with calmness. ‘They wear one down,’ she muttered, and drooped; for if they wore one down, well, one had to be worn down. But she was diverted from that sad strain of thought by the nature of the object which was being disclosed by the mechanic’s onslaught. It was a perambulator, a new and really prodigious perambulator. Its navy blue body was varnished till it was glossy as water sliding to a weir; its spokes gleamed with the sober but even brightness of the very best japanning, and there were foppishly white rubber tyres; the experienced eye could note that the leather hood was the kind that really washes and does not crack. ‘C-springs, stops, a safety-chain and all!’ she breathed, ‘A really nice one!’ She knew a great deal about prams. It had been part of her duty at the stationer’s shop in Chiswick High Street to take out baby Doris in her pram every afternoon. That one had not had ball-bearings. This one had. Somebody wouldn’t have to break her back pushing the thing when there was bad weather. With that nasty cheap thing the Jenningses had, into which it was a shame to put a pretty little dear like