THE TUNNEL
VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES
POINTED ROOFS
BACKWATER
HONEYCOMB
THE TUNNEL
In preparation
INTERIM
THE TUNNEL
BY
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
AUTHOR OF "POINTED ROOFS," ETC.
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
First Published February, 1919
Second Impression March, 1919
All rights reserved
TO
M. K.
THE TUNNEL
CHAPTER I
1
Miriam paused with her heavy bag dragging at her arm. It was a disaster.
But it was the last of Mornington Road. To explain about it would be to
bring Mornington Road here.
"It doesn't matter now" said Mrs. Bailey as she dropped her bag and
fumbled for her purse.
"Oh, I'd better settle it at once or I shall forget about it. I'm so
glad the things have come so soon."
When Mrs. Bailey had taken the half-crown they stood smiling at each
other. Mrs. Bailey looked exactly as she had done the first time. It was
exactly the same; there was no disappointment. The light coming through
the glass above the front door made her look more shabby and worn. Her
hair was more metallic. But it was the same girlish figure and the same
smile triumphing over the badly fitting teeth. Miriam felt like an
inmate returning after an absence. The smeariness of the marble-topped
hall table did not offend her. She held herself in. It was better to
begin as she meant to go on. Behind Mrs. Bailey the staircase was
beckoning. There was something waiting upstairs that would be gone if
she stayed talking to Mrs. Bailey.
Assuring Mrs. Bailey that she remembered the way to the room she started
at last on the journey up the many flights of stairs. The feeling of
confidence that had come the first time she mounted them with Mrs.
Bailey returned now. She could not remember noticing anything then but a
large brown dinginess, one rich warm even tone everywhere in the house;
a sharp contrast to the cold harshly lit little bedroom in Mornington
Road. The day was cold. But this house did not seem cold and when she
rounded the first flight and Mrs. Bailey was out of sight the welcome of
the place fell upon her. She knew it well, better than any place she had
known in all her wanderings--the faded umbers and browns of the stair
carpet, the gloomy heights of wall, a patternless sheen where the
staircase lights fell upon it and in the shadowed parts a blurred
scrolling pattern in dull madder on a brown background; the dark
landings with lofty ceilings and high dark polished doors surmounted by
classical reliefs in grimed plaster, the high staircase windows screened
by long smoke grimed lace curtains. On the top landing the ceiling came
down nearly level with the tops of the doors. The light from above made
the little grained doors stare brightly. Patches of fresh brown and buff
shone here and there in the threadbare linoleum. The cracks of the
flooring were filled with dust and dust lay along the rim of the
skirting. Two large tin trunks standing one upon the other almost barred
the passage way. It was like a landing in a small suburban
lodging-house, a small silent afternoon brightness, shut in and smelling
of dust. Silence flooded up from the lower darkness. The hall where she
had stood with Mrs. Bailey was far away below and below that were
basements deep in the earth. The outside of the house with its
first-floor balcony, the broad shallow flight of steps leading to the
dark green front door, the little steep flight running sharply down into
the railed area seemed as far away as yesterday.
The little landing was a bright plateau, under the skylight, shut off by
its brightness from the rest of the house, the rooms leading from it
would be bright and flat and noisy with light compared with the rest of
the house. From above came the tap-tap of a door swinging gently in a
breeze and behind the sound was a soft faint continuous murmur. She ran
up the short twisting flight of bare stairs into a blaze of light. Would
her room be a bright suburban bedroom? Had it been a dull day when she
first called? The skylight was blue and gold with light, its cracks
threads of bright gold. Three little glaring yellow grained doors opened
on to the small strip of uncovered dusty flooring; to the left the
little box-loft, to the right the empty garret behind her own and in
front of her her own door ajar; tapping in the breeze. The little brass
knob rattled loosely in her hand and the hinge ran up the scale to a
high squeak as she pushed open the door and down again as it closed
behind her neatly with a light wooden sound. The room was half dark
shadow and half brilliant light.
2
She closed the door and stood just inside it looking at the room. It was
smaller than her memory of it. When she had stood in the middle of the
floor with Mrs. Bailey she had looked at nothing but Mrs. Bailey,
waiting for the moment to ask about the rent. Coming upstairs she had
felt the room was hers and barely glanced at it when Mrs. Bailey opened
the door. From the moment of waiting on the stone steps outside the
front door everything had opened to the movement of her impulse. She was
surprised now at her familiarity with the detail of the room ... that
idea of visiting places in dreams. It was something more than that ...
all the real part of your life has a real dream in it; some of the real
dream part of you coming true. You know in advance when you are really
following your life. These things are familiar because reality is here.
Coming events cast _light_. It is like dropping everything and walking
backwards to something you know is there. However far you go out you
come back.... I am back now where I was before I began trying to do
things like other people. I left home to get here. None of those things
can touch me here. They are mine....
... The room asserted its chilliness. But the dark yellow graining of
the wall-paper was warm. It shone warmly in the stream of light pouring
through the barred lattice window. In the further part of the room
darkened by the steep slope of the roof it gleamed like stained wood.
The window space was a little square wooden room, the long low double
lattice breaking the roof, the ceiling and walls warmly reflecting its
oblong of bright light. Close against the window was a firm little deal
table covered with a thin brightly coloured printed cotton tablecloth.
When Miriam drew her eyes from its confusion of rich fresh tones the
bedroom seemed very dark. The bed drawn in under the slope showed an
expanse of greyish white counterpane, the carpet was colourless in the
gloom. She opened the door. Silence came in from the landing. The blue
and gold had gone from the skylight. Its sharp grey light shone in over
the dim colours of the threadbare carpet and on to the black bars of the
little grate and the little strip of tarnished yellow grained
mantelpiece, running along to the bedhead where a small globeless gas
bracket stuck out at an angle over the head of the bed. The sight of her
luggage piled up on the other side of the fireplace drew her forward
into the dimness. There was a small chest of drawers battered and almost
paintless but with two long drawers and two small ones and a white cover
on which stood a little looking glass framed in polished pine ... and a
small yellow wardrobe with a deep drawer under the hanging part and a
little drawer in the rickety little washstand and another above the
dusty cupboard of the little mahogany sideboard. I'll paint the bright
part of the ceiling; scrolls of leaves.... Shutting the quiet door she
went into the brilliance of the window space. The outside world
appeared; a long row of dormer windows and the square tops of the larger
windows below them, the windows black or sheeny grey in the light, cut
out against the dinginess of smoke grimed walls. The long strip of roof
sloping back from the dormers was a pure even dark grey. She bent to see
the sky, clear soft heavy grey, striped by the bars of her window.
Behind the top rim of the iron framework of the bars was a discoloured
roll of window blind. Then the bars must move.... Shifting the table she
pressed close to the barred window. It smelt strongly of rust and dust.
Outside she saw grey tiles sloping steeply from the window to a cemented
gutter beyond which was a little stone parapet about two feet high. A
soft wash of madder lay along the grey tiles. There must be an afterglow
somewhere, just out of sight. Her hands went through the bars and lifted
the little rod which held the lattice half open. The little square four
paned frame swung free and flattened itself back against the fixed
panes, out of reach, its bar sticking out over the leads. Drawing back
grimed fingers and wrists striped with grime she grasped the iron bars
and pulled. The heavy framework left the window frame with a rusty creak
and the sound of paint peeling and cracking. It was very heavy but it
came up and up until her arms were straight above her head and looking
up she saw a stout iron ring in a little trap door in the wooden ceiling
and a hook in the centre of the endmost bar in the iron framework.
Kneeling on the table to raise the frame once more and fix it to the
ceiling she saw the whole length of the top row of windows across the
way and wide strips of grimy stucco placed across the house fronts
between the windows.
The framework of the freed window was cracked and blistered but the
little square panes were clean. There were four little windows in the
row, each with four square panes. The outmost windows were immovable.
The one next to the open one had lost its bar, but a push set it free
and it swung wide. She leaned out holding back from the dusty sill and
met a soft fresh breeze streaming straight in from the west. The distant
murmur of traffic changed into the clear plonk plonk and rumble of swift
vehicles. Right and left at the far end of the vista were glimpses of
bare trees. The cheeping of birds came faintly from the distant squares
and clear and sharp from neighbouring roofs. To the left the trees were
black against pure grey, to the right they stood spread and bunched in
front of the distant buildings blocking the vista. Running across the
rose-washed façade of the central mass she could just make out
"Edwards's Family Hotel" in large black letters. That was the distant
view of the courtyard of Euston Station.... In between that and the
square of trees ran the Euston Road, by day and by night, her unsleeping
guardian, the rim of the world beyond which lay the northern suburbs,
banished.
From a window somewhere down the street out of sight came the sound of
an unaccompanied violin, clearly attacking and dropping and attacking a
passage of half a dozen bars. The music stood serene and undisturbed in
the air of the quiet street. The man was following the phrase,
listening; strengthening and clearing it, completely undisturbed and
unconscious of his surroundings. 'Good heavens' she breathed quietly,
feeling the extremity of relief, passing some boundary, emerging strong
and equipped in a clear medium.... She turned back into the twilight of
the room. Twenty-one and only one room to hold the richly renewed
consciousness, and a living to earn, but the self that was with her in
the room was the untouched tireless self of her seventeenth year and all
the earlier time. The familiar light moved within the twilight, the old
light.... She might as well wash the grime from her wrists and hands.
There was a scrap of soap in the soap dish, dry and cracked and seamed
with dirt. The washstand rocked as she washed her hands; the toilet
things did not match, the towel-horse held one small thin face towel and
fell sideways against the wardrobe as she drew off the towel. When the
gas was on she would be visible from the opposite dormer window. Short
skimpy faded Madras muslin curtains screened a few inches of the endmost
windows and were caught back and tied up with tape. She untied the tape
and disengaged with the curtains a strong smell of dust. The curtains
would cut off some of the light. She tied them firmly back and pulled at
the edge of the rolled up blind. The blind streaked and mottled with
ironmould came down in a stifling cloud of dust. She rolled it up again
and washed once more. She must ask for a bath towel and do something
about the blind, sponge it or something; that was all.
3
A light had come in the dormer on the other side of the street. It
remained unscreened. Watching carefully she could see only a dim figure
moving amongst motionless shapes. No need to trouble about the blind.
London could come freely in day and night through the unscreened happy
little panes; light and darkness and darkness and light.
* * * * *
London, just outside all the time, coming in with the light, coming in
with the darkness, always present in the depths of the air in the room.
4
The gas flared out into a wide bright flame. The dingy ceiling and
counterpane turned white. The room was a square of bright light and had
a rich brown glow, shut brightly in by the straight square of level
white ceiling and thrown up by the oblong that sloped down, white, at
the side of the big bed almost to the floor. She left her things half
unpacked about the floor and settled herself on the bed under the gas
jet with the Voyage of the Beagle. Unpacking had been a distraction from
the glory, very nice, getting things straight. But there was no _need_
to do anything or think about anything ... ever, here. No interruption,
no one watching or speculating or treating one in some particular way
that had to be met. Mrs. Bailey did not speculate. She knew, everything.
Every evening here would have a glory, but not the same kind of glory.
Reading would be more of a distraction than unpacking. She read a few
lines. They had a fresh attractive _meaning_. Reading would be real. The
dull adventures of the Beagle looked real, coming along through reality.
She put the book on her knee and once more met the clear brown shock of
her room.
5
The carpet is awful, faded and worn almost to bits. But it is right, in
this room.... This is the furnished room; one room. I have come to it.
"You could get a furnished room at about seven shillings rental." The
awful feeling, no tennis, no dancing, no house to move in, no society.
The relief at first when Bennett found those people ... maddening
endless roads of little houses in the east wind ... their kind way of
giving more than they had undertaken, and smiling and waiting for smiles
and dying all the time in some dark way without knowing it. Filling the
rooms and the piano and the fern on the serge table cloth and the broken
soap dish in the bath room until it was impossible to read or think or
play because of them, the feeling of them stronger and stronger till
there was nothing but crying over the trays of meals and wanting to
scream. The thought of the five turnings to the station, all into long
little roads looking alike and making you forget which was which and
lose your way, was still full of pain ... the _relief_ of moving to
Granville Place still a relief, though it felt a mistake from the first.
Mrs. Corrie's old teacher liking only certain sorts of people knew it
was a mistake, with her peevish silky old face and her antique brooch.
But it had been the beginning of London.... Bond Street that Sunday
morning in the thick fog; these sudden pictures gleaming in a window,
filmy ... von Hier. Adelina Compayne, hanging out silk stockings on the
top balustrade. "I _love_ cawfy" ... that was the only real thing that
had been said downstairs. There was no need to have been frightened of
these two women in black silk evening dresses. None of these clever
things were real. They said young Asquith is a really able man to hide
their thoughts. The American Academy pupils talked together to keep
everybody off, except when they made their clever jokes ... "if anyone
takes that top bit there'll be murder Miss Spink." When they went out of
the room they looked silly. The young man was real somewhere else.
The little man talking about the wonders of the linotype in the smoking
room.... How did I get into the smoking room? Someone probably told Miss
Spink I talked to him in the smoking room and smoked a cigarette.
Perhaps his wife. If they could have seen. It was so surprising to hear
anybody suddenly talking. Perhaps he began in the hall and ushered me
into the smoking room. There was no one there and I can't remember
anything about the linotype, only the quiet and the talking face and
suddenly feeling in the heart of London. But it was soon after that they
all began being stand-offish; before Mr. Chamberlayne came; before Adela
began playing Esther Summerson at the Kennington. They approved of my
going down to fetch her until he began coming too. The shock of seeing
her clumsy heavy movements on the stage and her face looking as though
it were covered with starch.... I can _think_ about it all, here, and
not mind.
6
She _was_ beautiful. It was happiness to sit and watch her smoking so
badly, in bed, in the strip of room, her cloud of hair against the wall
in the candlelight, two o'clock ... the Jesuit who had taught her chess
... and Michael Somebody, the little book "The Purple Pillar." He was an
_author_ and he wanted to marry her and take her back to Ireland.
Perhaps by now she was back from America and had gone, just out of
kindness. She was strong and beautiful and good, sitting up in her
chemise, smoking.... I've got that photograph of her as Marcia
somewhere. I must put it up. Miss Spink was surprised that last week,
the students getting me into their room ... the dark clean shining
piano, the azaleas and the muslin shaded lamp, the way they all sat in
their evening dresses, lounging and stiff with stiff clean polished
hair.... "Miss Dust here's going to be the highest soprano in the
States." ... "None of that Miss Thicker." ... "When she caught that top
note and the gold medal she went right up top, to stay there, that
minute."
She was surprised when Mrs. Potter took me to hear Melba. I heard Melba.
I don't remember hearing her. English opera houses are small; there are
fine things all over the world. If you see them all you can compare one
with the other; but then you don't see or hear anything at all. It seems
strange to be American and at the same time stout and middle-aged. It
would have got more and more difficult with all those people. The
dreadful way the Americans got intimate and then talked or hinted openly
everywhere about intimate things. No one knew how intimate Miss O'Veagh
was. I shall remember. There is something about being Irish Roman
Catholic that makes _happiness_. She did not seem to think the George
Street room awful. She was _surprised_ when I talked about the hole in
the wall and the cold and the imbecile servant and the smell of ether.
"We are brought up from the first to understand that we must never
believe anything a man says." She _came_ and sat and talked and wrote
after she had gone ... "goodbye--sweet blessed little rose of Mary" ...
she tried to make me think I was young and pretty. She was sorry for me
without saying so.
I should never have gone to Mornington Road unless I had been nearly mad
with sorrow ... if Miss Thomas disapproved of germs and persons who let
apartments why did she come and take a room at George Street? She must
have seen she drove me nearly mad with sorrow. The thought of Wales full
of Welsh people like her, makes one mad with sorrow.... Did she think I
could get to know her by hearing all her complaints? She's somewhere
now, sending someone mad.
I was mad already when I went to Mornington Road.
"You'll be all right with Mrs. Swanson" ... the awful fringes, the
_horror_ of the ugly clean little room, the horror of Mrs. Swanson's
heavy old body moving slowly about the house, a heavy dark mountain,
fringes, bulges, slow dead eyes, slow dead voice, slow grimacing evil
smile ... housekeeper to the Duke of Something and now moving slowly
about heavy with disapproval. She thought of me as a business young
lady.
7
Following advice is certain to be wrong. When you don't follow advice
there may be awful things. But they are not arranged beforehand. And
when they come you do not know that they are awful until you have half
got hold of something else. Then they change into something that has not
been awful. Things that remain awful are in some way not finished....
Those women are awful. They will get more and more awful, still
disliking and disapproving till they die. I shall not see them again....
I will never again be at the mercy of such women or at all in the places
where they are. That means keeping free of all groups. In groups sooner
or later one of them appears, dead and sightless and bringing blindness
and death ... although they seem to like brightness and children and the
young people they approve of. I run away from them because I must. They
kill me. The thought of their death is awful. Even in heaven no one
could explain anything to them if they remain as they are. Wherever
people advise you to go there is in the end one of those women....
8
When she turned out the gas the window spaces remained faintly alight
with a soft light like moonlight. At the window she found a soft bluish
radiance cast up from below upon the opposite walls and windows. It went
up into the clear blue darkness of the sky.
When she lay down the bed smelt faintly of dust. The air about her head
under the sharply sloping ceiling was still a little warm with the gas.
It was full of her untrammelled thoughts. Her luggage was lying about,
quite near. She thought of washing in the morning in the bright light on
the other side of the room ... leaves crowding all round the lattice and
here and there a pink rose ... _several pink roses_ ... the lovely air
chilling the water ... the basin quite up against the lattice ... dew
splashing off the rose bushes in the little garden almost dark with
trellises and trees, crowding with Harriett through the little damp
stiff gate, the sudden lineny smell of Harriett's pinafore and the
thought of Harriett in it, feeling the same, sudden bright sunshine, two
shouts, great cornfields going up and up with a little track between
them ... up over Blewburton ... _Whittenham Clumps_. Before I saw
Whittenham Clumps I had always known them. But we saw them before we
knew they were called Whittenham Clumps. It was a surprise to know
anybody who had seen them and that they had a name.
9
St. Pancras bells were clamouring in the room; rapid scales, beginning
at the top, coming with a loud full thump on to the fourth note and
finishing with a rush to the lowest which was hardly touched before the
top note hung again in the air, sounding outdoors clean and clear while
all the other notes still jangled together in her room. Nothing had
changed. The night was like a moment added to the day; like years going
backwards to the beginning; and in the brilliant sunshine the unchanging
things began again, perfectly new. She leaped out of bed into the
clamorous stillness and stood in the window rolling up the warm hair
that felt like a shawl round her shoulders. A cup of tea and then the
'bus to Harriett's. A 'bus somewhere just out there beyond the morning
stillness of the street. What an _adventure_ to go out and take a 'bus
without having to face anybody. They were all out there, away somewhere,
the very thought and sight of them, disapproving and deploring her
surroundings. She listened. There they were. There were their very
voices, coming plaintive and reproachful with a held-in indignation,
intonations that she knew inside and out, coming on bells from somewhere
beyond the squares--another church. She withdrew the coloured cover and
set her spirit lamp on the inkstained table. Strong bright light was
standing outside the window. The clamour of the bells had ceased. From
far away down in the street a loud hoarse voice came thinly up.
Referee--Lloyd's--Sunday Times--People--_pypa_.... A front door opened
with a loud crackle of paint. The voice dropped to speaking tones that
echoed clearly down the street and came up clear and soft and
confidential. Referee? Lloyd's? The door closed with a large firm wooden
sound and the harsh voice went on down the street.
St. Pancras bells burst forth again. Faintly interwoven with their
bright headlong scale were the clear sweet delicate contralto of the
more distant bells playing very swiftly and reproachfully a five finger
exercise in a minor key. That must be a very high-Anglican church; with
light coming through painted windows on to carvings and decorations.
10
As she began on her solid slice of bread and butter St. Pancras bells
stopped again. In the stillness she could hear the sound of her own
munching. She stared at the surface of the table that held her plate and
cup. It was like sitting up to the nursery table. "How frightfully happy
I am," she thought with bent head. Happiness streamed along her arms and
from her head. St. Pancras bells began playing a hymn tune in single
firm beats with intervals between that left each note standing for a
moment gently in the air. The first two lines were playing carefully
through to the distant accompaniment of the rapid weaving and
interweaving in a regular unbroken pattern of the five soft low
contralto bells. The third line of the hymn ran through Miriam's head a
ding-dong to and fro from tone to semitone. The bells played it out,
without the semitone, with a perfect satisfying falsity. Miriam sat
hunched against the table listening for the ascending stages of the last
line. The bells climbed gently up, made a faint flat dab at the last top
note, left it in the air askew above the decorous little tune and rushed
away down their scale as if to cover the impropriety. They clamoured
recklessly mingling with Miriam's shout of joy as they banged against
the wooden walls of the window space.