1
When she came to herself she was in the Strand. She walked on a little
and turned aside to look at a jeweller's window and consider being in
the Strand at night. Most of the shops were still open. The traffic was
still in full tide. The jeweller's window repelled her. It was very
yellow with gold, all the objects close together and each one bearing a
tiny label with the price. There was a sort of commonness about the
Strand, not like the cheerful commonness of Oxford Street, more like the
City with its many sudden restaurants. She walked on. But there were
theatres also, linking it up with the west-end and streets leading off
it where people like Bob Greville had chambers. It was the tailing off
of the west-end and the beginning of a deep dark richness that began
about Holywell. Mysterious important churches crowded in amongst little
brown lanes ... the little dark brown lane.... She wondered what she had
been thinking since she left Wimpole Street and whether she had come
across Trafalgar Square without seeing it or round by some other way.
They were _fighting_; sending out suffocation and misery into the
surrounding air ... she stopped close to the two upright balanced
threatening bodies, almost touching them. The men looked at her. "Don't"
she said imploringly and hurried on trembling.... It occurred to her
that she had not seen fighting since a day in her childhood when she had
wondered at the swaying bodies and sickened at the thud of a fist
against a cheek. The feeling was the same to-day, the longing to explain
somehow to the men that they _could_ not fight.... Half-past seven.
Perhaps there would not be an A.B.C. so far down. It would be impossible
to get a meal. Perhaps the girls would have some coffee. An A.B.C.
appeared suddenly at her side, its panes misty in the cold air. She went
confidently in. It seemed nearly full of men. Never mind, city men; with
a wisdom of their own which kept them going and did not affect anything,
all alike and thinking the same thoughts; far away from anything she
thought or knew. She walked confidently down the centre, her plaid-lined
golf-cape thrown back her small brown boat-shaped felt hat suddenly hot
on her head in the warmth. The shop turned at a right angle showing a
large open fire with a fireguard, and a cat sitting on the hearthrug in
front of it. She chose a chair at a small table in front of the fire.
The velvet settees at the sides of the room were more comfortable. But
it was for such a little while to-night and it was not one of her own
A.B.Cs. She felt as she sat down as if she were the guest of the city
men and ate her boiled egg and roll and butter and drank her small
coffee in that spirit-gazing into the fire and thinking her own thoughts
unresentful of the uncongenial scraps of talk that now and again
penetrated her thoughts; the complacent laughter of the men amazed her;
their amazing unconsciousness of the things that were written all over
them.
The fire blazed into her face. She dropped her cape over the back of her
chair and sat in the glow; the small pat of butter was not enough for
the large roll. Pictures came out of the fire, the strange moment in her
room, the smashing of the plaque, the lamplit den; Mr. Orly's song, the
strange rich difficult day and now her untouched self here, free, unseen
and strong, the strong world of London all round her, strong free
untouched people, in a dark lit wilderness happy and miserable in their
own way, going about the streets looking at nothing, thinking about no
special person or thing, as long as they were there, being in London.
Even the business people who went about intent, going to definite places
were in the secret of London and looked free. The expression of the
collar and hair of many of them said they had homes. But they got away
from them. No one who had never been alone in London was quite alive....
I'm free--I've got free--nothing can ever alter that she thought, gazing
wide-eyed into the fire, between fear and joy. The strange familiar pang
gave the place a sort of consecration. A strength was piling up within
her. She would go out unregretfully at closing time and up through
wonderful unknown streets, not her own streets till she found Holborn
and then up and round through the Squares.
2
On the hall table lay a letter ... from Alma; under the shadow of the
bronze soldier leaning on his gun. Miriam gathered it up swiftly. No one
knew her here ... no past and no future ... coming in and out unknown,
in the present secret wonder. Pausing for a moment near the smeary
dimly-lit marble slab the letter out of sight she held this
consciousness. There was no sound in the house ... its huge high thick
walls held all the lodgers secure and apart, fixed in richly enclosed
rooms in the heart of London; secure from all the world that was not
London, flying through space, swinging along on a planet spread with
continents--Londoners. Alma's handwriting, the same as it had been at
school only a little larger and firmer, broke into that. Of course Alma
had answered the postcard ... it had been an impulse, a cry of triumph
after years of groping about. But it was like pulling a string. Silly.
And now this had happened. But it was only a touch, only a finger laid
on the secret hall table that no one had seen. The letter need not be
answered. Out of sight it seemed to have gone away ... destroyed
unopened it would be as if it had never come and everything would be as
before.... Enough, more than enough without writing to Alma. An evening
paper boy was shouting raucously in the distance. The letter-box brought
his voice into the hall as he passed the door. Miriam moved on up the
many flights.
3
Upstairs she found herself eagerly tearing open the letter.... "I've
just heard from an old schoolfellow" she heard herself saying to the
girls in Kennett Street. There was something exciting in the letter ...
at the end Alma Wilson (officially Mrs. G. Wilson) ... strange people in
the room ... Alma amongst them; looking out from amongst dreadfulness.
_Married._ She had gone in amongst the crowd already--forever. How
clever of her ... deceitful ... that little spark of Alma in her must
have been deceitful ... sly, at some moment. Alma's eyes glanced at her
with a new more preoccupied and covered look ... she used to go
sometimes to theatres with large parties of people with money and the
usual dresses who never thought anything about anything ... perhaps that
was part of the reason, perhaps Alma was more that than she had thought
... marrying in the sort of way she went to theatre-parties--clever. The
letter was full of excitement ... Alma leaping up from her marriage and
clutching at her ... not really married; dancing to some tune in some
usual way like all those women and jumping up in a way that fizzled and
could not be kept up....
"You dear old thing! ... fell out of the sky this morning ... to fill
pages with 'you dear old thing!' ... see you at _once_! _Immediately!_
... come up to town and meet you ... some sequestered tea-shop ... our
ancient heads together ... tell you all that has happened to me since
those days ... next Thursday ... let you know how really really rejoiced
I am ... break the very elderly fact that I am married ... but that
makes no difference...." That would not be so bad--seeing Alma alone in
a tea shop in the west end; in a part of the new life, that would be all
right; nothing need happen, nothing would be touched, "all I have had
the temerity to do ..." what did that mean?
4
Unpinning the buckram-stiffened black velvet band from her neck, she
felt again with a rush of joy that her day was beginning and moved
eagerly about amongst the strange angles and shadows of her room, the
rich day all about her. Somebody had put up her little varnished oak
bookshelf just in the right place, the lower shelf in a line with the
little mantelpiece. When the gas bracket was swung out from the wall the
naked flame shone on the backs of the indiscriminately arranged books
... the calf-bound Shakespeare could be read now comfortably in the
immense fresh dark night under the gas flame; the Perne's memorial
edition of Tennyson.... She washed her face and hands in hard cold water
at the little rickety washstand, yellow-grained rich beloved, drying
them on the thin holey face towel hurriedly. Lying neatly folded amongst
the confusion of oddments in a top drawer was her lace tie. Holding it
out to its full length she spread it against her neck, crossed the ends
at the back bringing them back round her neck to spread in a narrow flat
plastron to her waist, kept in place by a brooch at the top and a pin
fastened invisibly half way down. Her face shone fresh and young above
the creamy lace ... the tie was still fairly new and crisp ... when it
had to be washed it would be limp ... but it would go on some time just
for evenings transforming her harsh black John Doble half guinea costume
into evening dress. For some moments she contemplated its pleasant
continuous pattern and the way the rounded patterned ends fell just
below the belt....
5
The top-floor bell would not ring. After some hesitation Miriam rang the
house bell. The door was opened by a woman in a silk petticoat and a
dressing jacket. Miriam gazed dumbly into large clear blue eyes gazing
at her from a large clean clear fresh face feathered with little soft
natural curls, cut out sharply against the dark passage.
"Are you for the top?" enquired the woman in a smooth serene sleepy
voice.
"Yes" announced Miriam eagerly coming in and closing the door, her ears
straining to catch the placid words spoken by the woman as she
disappeared softly into a softly-lit room. She went tremulously up the
dark stairs into a thick stale odour of rancid fried grease and on
towards a light that glimmered from the topmost short flight of steep
uncarpeted winding stairs. "They're in" said her thoughts with a quick
warm leap. "Hullo" she asserted, ascending the stairs.
"Hullo" came in response a quick challenging voice ... a soft clear
reed-like happy ring that Miriam felt to her knees while her happy feet
stumbled on.
"Is that the Henderson?"
"It's me" said Miriam emerging on a tiny landing and going through the
open door of a low-ceiled lamplit room. "It's me it's me" she repeated
from the middle of the floor. An eager face was turned towards her from
a thicket of soft dull wavy hair. She gazed vaguely. The small slippered
feet planted firmly high up against the lintel the sweep of the red
dressing-gown, the black patch of the Mudie book with its yellow label,
the small ringed hand upon it, the outflung arm and hand the little
wreath of smoke about the end of the freshly lit cigarette, the cup of
coffee on the little table under the lamp, the dim shapes about the room
lit by the flickering blaze....
Miriam smiled into the smiling steel blue of the eyes turned towards her
and waited smiling for the silver reed of tone to break again. "I'm so
glad you've come. I wanted you. Sit down and shut the door my child....
I don't mind which you do first, but--do--them--both," she tinkled,
stretching luxuriously and bringing her feet to the ground with a swing.
Miriam closed the door. "Can I take off my things?"
"Of course child ... take them all off; you know I admire you most
draped in a towel."
"I've got such awful feet" said Miriam hugging the compliment as she
dropped her things in a distant arm-chair.
"It's not your feet, it's your extraordinary shoes."
"M."
"How beautiful you look. You put on ties better than anyone I know. I
wish I could wear things draped round my neck."
Miriam sat down in the opposite wicker chair.
"Isn't it cold--my feet are freezing; it's raining."
"Take off your shoes."
Miriam got off her shoes and propped them in the fender to dry.
"What is that book?"
"Eden Philpotts's 'Children of the Mist'" fluted the voice reverently.
"Read it?"
"No" said Miriam expectantly.
The eager face turned to an eager profile with eyes brooding into the
fire. "He's so wonderful" mused the voice and Miriam watched eagerly.
Mag read books--for their own sake; and could judge them and compare
them with other books by the same author ... but all this wonderful
knowledge made her seem wistful; knowing all about books and plays and
strangely wistful and regretful; the things that made her eyes blaze and
made her talk reverently or in indignant defence always seemed sad in
the end ... wistful hero worship ... raving about certain writers and
actors as if she did not know they were people.
"He's so wonderful" went on the voice with its perpetual modulations "he
gets all the atmosphere of the west country--perfectly. You _live_ there
while you're reading him."
With a little chill sense of Mag in this wonderful room alone, living in
the west country and herself coming in as an interruption, Miriam noted
the name of the novelist in her mind ... there was something about it,
she knew she would not forget it; soft and numb with a slight clatter
and hiss at the end, a rain-storm, the atmosphere of Devonshire and the
mill-wheel.
"Devonshire people are all consumptive," she said decisively.
"Are they?"
"Yes, it's the mild damp air. They have lovely complexions; like the
Irish. There must be any amount of consumption in Ireland."
"I suppose there is."
Miriam sat silent and still watching Mag's movements as she sipped and
puffed, so strangely easy and so strangely wistful in her wonderful rich
Bloomsbury life--and waiting for her next remark.
"You look very happy tonight child; what have you been doing?"
"Nothing."
"You look as happy as a bird."
"Are birds happy?"
"Of _course_ birds are happy."
"Well--they prey on each other--and they're often frightened."
"How wise we are."
Brisk steps sounded on the little stairs.
"Tell me what you have been doing."
"Oh. I don't know. Weird things have been happening.... Oh, weird
things."
"Tell your aunt at once." Mag gathered herself together as the brisk
footsteps came into the room. "Hoh" said a strong resonant voice "it's
the Henderson. I thought as much."
"Yes. Doesn't she look pretty?"
"Yes--she has a beautiful lace tie."
"I wish I could wear things like that round my neck, don't you von
Bohlen?"
"I _do_. She can stick _anything_ round her neck--and look nice."
"Anything; a garter or a--a _kipper_...."
"Don't be so cracked."
"She says weird things have been happening to her. I say I didn't make
any coffee for you and the spirit lamp wants filling."
"Damn you--Schweinhund--verfluchte Schweinhund."
Miriam had been gazing at the strong square figure in the short round
fur-lined cloak and sweeping velvet hat, the firm decisive movements and
imagining the delicate pointed high-heeled shoes. Presently those things
would be off and the door closed on the three of them.
"There's some Bass."
"I'm going to have some suppe. Have some suppe, Henderson."
"Non, merci."
"She's proud. Bring her some. What did you have for supper, child?"
"Oh, we had an enormous lunch. They'd had a dinner-party."
"What did you have for supper?"
"Oh lots of things."
"Bring her some suppe. I'm not sure I won't have a basin myself."
"All right. I'll put some on." The brisk steps went off and a voice
hummed in and out of the other rooms.
Watching Mag stirring the fire, giving a last pull at her cigarette end
and pushing back the hair from her face ... silent and old and ravaged,
and young and animated and powerful, Miriam blushed and beamed silently
at her reiterated demands for an account of herself.
"I say I saw an extraordinary woman downstairs."
Mag turned sharply and put down the poker.
"Yes?"
"In a petticoat."
"Frederika Elizabeth! She's seen the Pierson!"
"Hoh! Has she?" The brisk footsteps approached and the door was closed.
The dimly shining mysteries of the room moved about Miriam, the outside
darkness flowing up to the windows moved away as the tall
dressing-gowned figure lowered the thin drab loosely rattling Venetian
blinds; the light seemed to go up and distant objects became more
visible; the crowded bookshelf the dark littered table under it, the
empty table pushed against the wall near the window--the bamboo
bookshelf between the windows above a square mystery draped to the
ground with a table cover--the little sofa behind Mag's chair, the
little pictures, cattle gazing out across a bridge of snow, cattish
complacent sweepy women. Albert...? Moore? the framed photographs of
Dickens and Irving, the litter on the serge draped mantelpiece in front
of the mirror of the bamboo overmantel, silver candlesticks, photographs
of German women and Canon Wilberforce ... all the riches of comfortable
life.
"You are late."
"Yes I am fear-fully late."
"Why are you late Frederika Elizabeth von Bohlen?"
The powerful rounded square figure was in the leather armchair opposite
the blaze, strongly moulded brown knickered black stockinged legs
comfortably crossed stuck firmly out between the heavy soft folds of a
grey flannel dressing gown. The shoes had gone, grey woollen bedroom
slippers blurred all but the shapely small ankles. Mag was lighting
another cigarette, von Bohlen was not doing needlework, the room settled
suddenly to its best rich exciting blur.
"Tonight I must smoke or die."
"_Must_ you, my dear."
"Why."
"To-_nate_,--a, ay must smoke--a, or _daye_."
"Es ist bestimmt, in Gottes Rath."
"Tell us what you think of the Pierson, child."
"She was awfully nice. Is it your landlady?"
"Yes--isn't she nice? We think she's extraordinary--all things
considered. You know we hadn't the least idea what she was when we came
here."
"What is she?"
"Well--er--you embarrass me, child, how shall we put it to her, Jan?"
"D'you mean to say she's improper?"
"Yes--she's improper. We hadn't the faintest notion of it when we came."
"How extraordinary."
"It is extraordinary. We're living in an improper house--the whole
street's improper we're discovering."
"How absolutely awful."
"_Now_ we know why Mother Cosway hinted when we left her to come here
that we wanted to be free for devil's mirth."
"How did you find out?"
"Henriette told us; you see she works for the Pierson."
"What did she tell you?"
"Well--she told us."
"Six"--laughed Mag, quoting towards Jan.
"Six," trumpeted Jan "and if not six, seven."
They both laughed.
"In one evening," trumpeted Jan.
"I say are you going to leave?" The thought of the improper street was
terrible and horrible; but they might go right away to some other part
of London. Mag answered instantly but the interval had seemed long and
Miriam was cold with anxiety.
"No; we don't see why we should."
Miriam gazed dumbly from one to the other, finding herself admiring and
wondering more than ever at their independence and strength.
"You see the woman's so absolutely self-respecting."
"Much more so than we are!"
"Out of doors she's a model of decorum and good style."
"We're ashamed when we meet her."
"We are. We skip into the gutter."
"We babble and slink!"
"Indoors she's a perfect landlady. She's been awfully good to us."
"A perfect brick!"
"She doesn't drink; she's most exquisitely clean. There's nothing
whatever to--to indicate the er--nature of her profession."
"Except that she sits at the window."
"But she does not tire her hair and look forth."
"Or fifth."
"_Fool._"
Miriam giggled.
"Really Miriam she _is_ rather wonderful you know. We like her."
"Henriette is devoted to her."
"And so apparently is her husband."
"Her _husband_?"
"Yes--she has a husband--he appears at rare intervals--and a little girl
at boarding school. She goes to see her but the child never comes here.
She tells us quite frankly that she wants to keep her out of harm's
way."
"How amazing!"
"Yes, she's extraordinary. She's Eurasian. She was born in India."
"That accounts for a good deal. Eurasians are awful; they've got all the
faults of both sides."
"East is East and West is West and never the two shall meet."
"Well, we like her."
"So we have decided to ignore her little peccadilloes."
"I don't see that it's our business. Frankly I can't see that it has
anything whatever to do with us. Do you?"
"Well I don't know; I don't suppose it has really."
"What would you do in our place?"
"I don't know ... I don't believe I should have found out."
"I don't believe you would; but if you had?"
"I think I should have been awfully scared."
"You would have been afraid that the sixth."
"Or the seventh."
"Might have wandered upstairs."
"No; I mean the whole idea."
"Oh; the idea...."
"London, my dear Miriam, is full of ideas."
"I will go and get the suppe."
Jan rose; her bright head and grey shoulders went up above the
lamplight, darkening to steady massive outlines, strongly moving as she
padded and fluttered briskly out of the room.
The rich blur of the room free of the troubling talk and the swift
conversational movements of the two, lifted and was touched with a faint
grey, a suggestion of dawn or twilight, as if coming from the hidden
windows. Mag sat motionless in her chair, gazing into the fire.
"... Wise and happy infant, I want to ask your opinion."
Miriam roused herself and glanced steadily across. The outlines of
things grew sharp. She could imagine the room in daylight and felt a
faint sharp sinking; hungry.
"I'm going to state you a case. I think you have an extraordinarily
sharp sense of right and wrong."
"Oh _no_."
"You have an extraordinarily sharp sense of right and wrong. Imagine a
woman. Can you imagine a woman?"
"Go on."
"Imagine a woman engaged to a man. Imagine her allowing--another man--to
kiss her."
Miriam sat thinking. She imagined the two, the snatched caress, the
other man alone and unconscious.
"Would you call that treachery to the other person?"
"It would depend upon which she liked best."
"That's just the difficulty."
"_Oh._ That's awful."
"Don't you think a kiss, just a kiss--might be,--well--neither here nor
there."
"Well, if it's nothing, there's nothing in the whole thing. If there
_is_ anything--you can't talk about just kisses."
"Dreadful Miriam."
"Do you believe in blunted sensibilities?" How funny that Mag should
have led up to that new phrase ... but this was a case.
"You mean----"
"Whether if a sensibility is blunted it can ever grow sharp again."
"No. I suppose that's it. How can it?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure. It's a perfectly awful idea, I think."
"It is awful--because we are all blunting our sensibilities all the
time--are we not?"
"That's just it--whether we ought."
"Does one always know?"
"Don't you think so? There's a feeling. Yes I think one always knows."
"Suppe, children."
Miriam took her bowl with eager embarrassment ... the sugar-basin, the
pudding basin and the slop bowl together on a tray, the quickly produced
soup--the wonderful rich life the girls lived in their glowing
rooms--each room with a different glow.... Jan's narrow green clean room
with its suite and hair brushes and cosmetics and pictures of Christ,
Mag's crowded shadowy little square, its litter and its many
photographs, their eiderdowns and baths and hot water bottles; the
kitchen alive with eyes and foreheads--musicians, artists philosophers
pasted on the walls ... why? Why?... Jan with wonderful easy knowledge
of the world's great people ... and strange curious intimate liking for
them ... the sad separate effect of all those engraved faces ... the
perfectly beautiful blur they made all together in patches on the walls
... the sitting room, Mag, nearly all Mag, except the photographs on the
mantelpiece ... the whole rooms from the top of the stairs ... her
thoughts folded down; they were not going away; not; that was certain.
"I say I can't go on for ever eating your soup."
"_Drink_ it then for a change my child."
"No but really."
"This is special soup; there is a charge; one guinea a basin."
"Use of room two guineas."
"Intellectual conversation----"
"One and eleven three."
Miriam flung out delighted admiring glances and laughed unrestrainedly.
Mag's look saying "it does not take much to keep the child amused" took
nothing from her mirthful joy. Their wit, or was it humour?--always
brought the same happy shock ... they were so funny; there was a secret
in it.
"It's awfully good soup."
"Desiccated----"
"A penny a packet."
"Thickened with pea flour."
"Twopence a packet."
6
"Was she your favourite schoolfellow?"
Miriam's jarred mind worked eagerly. The girls thought this was a
revival of some great school friendship ... they would not be in the
least jealous; they were curious and interested, but they must
understand ... they must realise that Alma was wonderful ... something
to be proud of ... in the strange difficult scientific way; something
they knew hardly anything about. Mag almost not at all and Jan only in a
general way in her neat wide education; but not in Alma's way of being
rigid and reverent and personally interested about, so that every other
way of looking at things made her angry. But they must understand, they
must in some quite certain way be quickly made to understand at the same
time that she was outside ... an extra ... a curious bright distant
resource, nothing whatever to do with the wonderful present ... the
London life was sacred and secret, away from everything else in the
world. It would disappear if one had ties outside ... anything besides
the things of holidays and week-ends that they all three had and brought
back from outside to talk about. It would be easy and exciting to meet
Alma if that were clear, and to come back and tell the girls about it.
"I don't think so."
They both looked up, stirring in their quick way, and waited.
Miriam moved her head uneasily. It was painful. They were using a sort
of language ... that was the trouble ... your favourite flower ... your
favourite colour ... it was just the sort of pain that came in trying to
fill up confession albums. This bit of conversation would be at an end
presently. Her anger would shut it up, and they would put it away
without understanding and Mag would go on to something else.
"No--I don't think she was. She was very small and pretty--petite. She
had the most wonderful limpid eyes."
Mag was sitting forward with her elbows on her knees and her little
hands sticking out into the air. A comfortable tinkling chuckle shook
her shoulders. Miriam tugged and wrenched.
"I don't think she cared for me, really ... she was an only child."
Mag's chuckle pealed up into a little festoon of clear laughter.
"She doesn't care for you because--she's--an--only--child" she shook
out.
"One of the sheltered ones." Jan returned to her chiffon pleats. She was
making conversation. She did not care how much or how little Alma
mattered.
"She's sheltered now anyhow--she's married."
"Oh--she's married...."
"She's married is she?"
Polite tones ... they were not a bit surprised ... both faces looked
calm and abstracted. The room was dark and clear in the cold
entanglement. It must be got over now, as if she had not mentioned Alma.
She felt for her packet of cigarettes with an uneasy face, watching
Mag's firm movements as she rearranged herself and her dressing gown in
her chair.
"How old is she?"
"About my age."
"Oh--about nine; that's early to begin the sheltered life."
"You can't begin the sheltered life too early; if you are going to begin
it at all."
"Why begin it at all, Jan?"
"Well my dear little Miriam I think there is a good deal to be said for
the sheltered life."
"Yes----" Mag settled more deeply into her chair, burrowing with her
shoulders and crossing her knees with a fling--"and if you don't begin
it jolly early it's too late to begin it at all...."
Then Mag meant to stay always as she was ... oh, good, good ... with
several people interested in her ... what a curious worry her engagement
must be ... irrelevant ... and with her ideas of loyalty. "Don't you
think soh?" Irritating--why did she do it--what was it--not a
provincialism--some kind of affectation as if she were on the stage. It
sounded brisk and important--soh--as if her thoughts had gone on and she
was making conversation with her lips. Why not let them and drop it ...
there was something waiting, always something waiting just outside the
nag of conversation.
"I can't imagine anything more awful than what you call the sheltered
life" said Miriam with a little pain in her forehead. Perhaps they would
laugh and that would finish it and something would begin.
"For us yes. Imagine either of us coming down to it in the morning; the
regular breakfast table, the steaming coffee, the dashes of rishers ...
dishers of rashes I mean, the eggs...."
"You are alluding I presume to the beggs and acon."
"Precisely. We should die."
"Of boredom."
"Imagine not being able to turn up on Sunday morning in your knickers
with your hair down."
"I love Sundays. That first cigarette over the _Referee_."
"Is like nothing on earth."
"Or in heaven."
"Well, or in heaven."
"The first cigarette anyhow, with or without the _Referee_. It's just
pure absolute bliss that first bit of Sunday morning; complete
well-being and happiness."
"While the sheltered people are flushed with breakfast table-talk----"
"Or awkward silences."
"The deep damned silence of disillusionment."
"And thinking about getting ready for church."
"The men smoke."
"Stealthily and sleepily in armchairs like cats--ever seen a cat
smoke?--like cats--with the wife or somebody they are tired of talking
to on the doormat--as it were--tentatively, I speak _ten_tatively ... in
a dead-alley--Dedale--Dedalus--coming into the room any minute in Sunday
clothes----"
"To stand on the hearthrug."
"No hanging about the room. If there's any hearthrug standing it's the
men who do it, smoking blissfully alone, and trying to look weary and
wise and important if anyone comes in."
"Like Cabinet ministers?"
"Yes; when they are really--er."
"Cabinets."
"Footstools; office stools; you never saw a sheltered woman venture on
to the hearthrug except for a second if she's short-sighted to look at
the clock." Miriam sprang to the hearthrug and waved her cigarette.
"Con-fu-sion to the sheltered life!" The vast open of London swung,
welcoming, before her eyes.
"Hoch! Hoch!"
"Banzai!"
"We certainly have our compensations."
"Com-pen-_sa_-tions?"
"Well--for all the things we have to give up."
"What things?"
"The things that belong to us. To our youth. Tennis, dancing--er
irresponsibility in general...."
"I've never once thought about any of those things; never once since I
came to town" said Miriam grappling with little anxious pangs that
assailed her suddenly; dimly seeing the light on garden trees, hearing
distant shouts, the sound of rowlocks, the lapping of water against
smoothing swinging sculls. But all that life meant people, daily
association with sheltered women and complacent abominable men, there
half the time and half the time away on their own affairs which gave
them a sort of mean advantage, and money. There was nothing really to
regret. It was different for Mag. She did not mind ordinary women. Did
not know the difference; or men.
"Yes but anyhow. If we were in the sheltered life we should either have
done with that sort of thing and be married--or still keeping it up and
anxious about not being married. Besides anyhow; think of the awful
_people_."
"Intolerant child."
"Isn't she intolerant. What a good thing you met us."
"Yes of course; but I'm not intolerant. And look here. Heaps of those
women envy us. They envy us our freedom. What we're having is
wanderyahre; the next best thing to wanderyahre."
"Women don't want wanderyahre."
"I do, Jan."
"So do I. I think the child's quite right there. Freedom is life. We may
be slaves all day and guttersnipes all the rest of the time but ach
Gott, we are free."
7
"What a perfectly extraordinary idea."
"I know. But I don't see how you can get away from it" mused Miriam,
dreamily holding out against Jan's absorbed sewing and avoiding for a
moment Mag's incredulously speculative eyes; "if it's true," she went
on, the rich blur of the warm room becoming as she sent out her voice
evenly, thinking eagerly on, a cool clear even daylight, "that
everything that can possibly happen does happen, then there must be
somewhere in the world, every possible kind of variation of us and this
room."
"D'you mean to say" gurgled Mag with a fling of her knickered leg and an
argumentative movement of the hand that hung loosely dangling a
cigarette over the fireside arm of the chair, "that there are millions
of rooms exactly like this each with one thing different--say the stem
of one narcissus broken instead of whole for instance."
"My dear Miriam, infinitude couldn't hold them."
"Infinitude can hold anything--of course I can see the impossibility of
a single world holding all the possible variations of everything at
once--but what I mean is that I can think it and there must be something
corresponding to it in life--anything that the mind can conceive is
realised, somehow, all possibilities must come about, that's what I mean
I think."
"You mean you can see, as it were in space, millions of little rooms--a
little different" choked Mag.
"Yes I can--quite distinctly--solid--no end to them."
"I think it's a perfectly horrible idea" stated Jan complacently.
"It isn't--I love it and it's true ... you go on and on and on, filling
space."
"Then space is solid."
"It is solid. People who talk of empty space don't think ... space is
more solid than a wall ... yes ... more solid than a diamond--girls, I'm
sure."
"Space is full of glorious stars...."
"Yes; I know but that's such a tiny bit of it...."
"Millions and trillions of miles."
"Those are only words. Everything is words."
"Well you _must_ use words."
"You ought not to think in words. I mean--you can think in your brain by
imagining yourself going on and on through it, endless space."
"You can't grasp space with your mind."
"You don't GRASP it. You go through it."
"I see what you mean. To me it is a fearful idea. Like eternal
punishment."
"There's no such thing as eternal punishment. The idea is too silly. It
makes God a failure and a fool. It's a man's idea. The men who take the
hearthrug. Sitting on a throne judging everybody and passing sentence is
a thing a man would do."
"But humanity is wicked."
"Then God is. You can't separate God and humanity and that includes
women who don't really believe any of those things."
"_But._ Look at the churches. Look at women and the parsons."
"Women like ritual and things and they like parsons, _some_ parsons,
because they are like women, penetrable to light, as Wilberforce said
the other day, and understand women better than most men do."
"Miriam, are you a pantheist?"
"The earth the sea and the sky
"The sun the moon and the stars
"Are not these, oh soul,
"That's the Higher Pantheism."
"Nearer is he than breathing, closer than hands and feet. It doesn't
matter what you call it."
"If you don't accept eternal punishment there can't be eternal
happiness."
"Oh punishment, happiness; tweedledum, tweedledee."
"Well--look here, there's remorse. That's deathless. It must be. If you
feel remorseful about anything the feeling must last as long as you
remember the thing."
"Remorse is real enough. I know what you mean. But it may be
short-sightedness. Not seeing all round a thing. Is that Tomlinson? Or
it may be cleansing you. If it were _complete_ Mag it would _kill_ you
outright. I can believe that. I can believe in annihilation. I am
prepared for it. I can't think why it doesn't happen to me. That's just
it."
"I should like to be annihilated."
"Shut up von Bohlen; you wouldn't. But look here Miriam child, do you
mean to say you think that as long as there is something that keeps on
and on, fighting its way on in spite of everything one has, well, a
right to exist?"
"Well, that may be the survival of the fittest which doesn't mean the
ethically fittest as Huxley had to admit. We kill the ethically fittest
at present. We killed Christ. They go to Heaven. All of us who survive
have things to learn down here in hell. Perhaps this is hell. There
seems something, ahead."
"Ourselves. Rising on the ashes of our dead selves. Lord, it's
midnight----"
The chill of the outside night, solitude and her cold empty room....
"I'm going to bed."
"So am I. We shall be in bed, Miriam, five minutes after you have gone."
Jan went off for the hot water bottles.
"All right, I'm going----" Miriam bent for her shoes. The soles were
dry, scorching; they scorched her feet as she forced on the shoes; one
sole cracked across as she put her foot to the ground ... she braced the
muscles of her face and said nothing. It must be forgotten before she
left the room that they were nearly new and her only pair; two horrid
ideas, nagging and keeping things away.
8
Outside in the air daylight grew strong and clear in Miriam's mind.
Patches of day came in a bright sheen from the moonlit puddles,
distributed over the square. She crossed the road to the narrow pathway
shadowed by the trees that ran round the long oblong enclosure. From
this dark pathway the brightness of the wet moonlit roadway was brighter
and she could see façades that caught the moonlight. There was something
trying to worry her, some little thing that did not matter at all, but
that some part of her had put away to worry over and was now wanting to
consider. Mag's affairs ... no she had decided about that. It might be
true about blunted sensibilities; but she had meant for some reason to
let that other man kiss her, and people never ask advice until they have
made up their minds what they are going to do and Mag was Mag quite
apart from anything that might happen. She would still be Mag if she
were old ... or mad. That was a firm settled real thing, real and
absolute in the daylight of the moonlit square. She wandered slowly on
humming a tune; every inch of the way would be lovely. The figure of a
man in an overcoat and a bowler hat loomed towards her on the narrow
pathway and stopped. The man raised his hat, and his face showed smiling
with the moonlight on it. Miriam had a moment's fear; but the man's
attitude was deprecating and there was her song; it was partly her own
fault. But why why ... fierce anger at the recurrence of this kind of
occurrence seized her. She wanted him out of the way and wanted him to
know how angry she was at the interruption.
"Well," she snapped angrily, coming to a standstill in the moonlit gap.
"Oh" said the man a little breathlessly in a lame broken tone, "I
thought you were going this way."
"So I am," retorted Miriam in a loud angry shaking tone, "obviously."
The man stepped quickly into the gutter and walked quickly away across
the road. St. Pancras church chimed the quarter.
Miriam marched angrily forward with shaking limbs that steadied
themselves very quickly ... the night had become suddenly cold; bitter
and penetrating; a north-east wind, of course. It was frightfully cold
after the warm room; the square was bleak and endless; the many façades
were too far off to keep the wind away; the pavement was very cold under
her right foot; that was it; the broken sole was the worry that had been
trying to come up; she could walk with it; it would not matter if the
weather kept dry ... an upright gait, hurrying quickly away across the
moonlit sheen; just the one she had summoned up anger and courage to
challenge was not so bad as the others ... they were not bad; that was
not it; it was the way they got in the way ... figures of men, dark, in
dark clothes, presenting themselves, calling attention to themselves and
the way they saw things, mean and suggestive, always just when things
were loveliest. Couldn't the man see the look of the square and the
moonlight? ... that afternoon at Hyde Park Corner ... just when
everything flashed out after the rain ... the sudden words close to her
ear ... my beauty ... my sweet ... you sweet girl ... the puffy pale old
face, the puffs under the sharp brown eyes. A strange ... _conviction_
in the trembling old voice ... it was deliberate; a sort of statement;
done on purpose, something chosen that would please most. It was like
the conviction and statement there had been in Bob Greville's voice. Old
men seemed to have some sort of understanding of things. If only they
would talk with the same conviction about other things as there was in
their tone when they said those personal things. But the things they
said were worldly--generalisations, like the things one read in books
that tired you out with trying to find the answer, and made books so
awful ... things that might look true about everybody at some time or
other and were not really true about anybody--when you knew them. But
people liked those things and thought them clever and smiled about them.
All the things the old men said about life and themselves and other
people, about everything but oneself, were sad; disappointed and sad
with a glint of far off youth in their faces as they said them ...
something moving in the distance behind the blue of their eyes.... "Make
the best of your youth my dear before it flies." If it all ended in
sadness and envy of youth, life was simply a silly trick. _Life_ could
not be a silly trick. Life cannot be a silly trick. That is the simple
truth ... a certainty. Whatever happens, whatever things look like, life
is not a trick.
Miriam began singing again when she felt herself in her own street,
clear and empty in the moonlight. The north wind blew down it
unobstructed and she was shivering and singing ... "spring is _co_-ming
a-and the _swa_-llows--have come _back_ to te-ell me _so_." Spring could
not be far off. At this moment in the dark twilight behind the thick
north wind the squares were green.
9
Her song, restrained on the doorstep and while she felt her already
well-known way in almost insupportable happiness through the unlit hall
and through the moonlight up the seventy-five stairs, broke out again
when her room was reached and her door shut; the two other doors had
stood open showing empty moonlit spaces. She was still alone and unheard
on the top floor. Her room was almost warm after the outside cold. The
row of attic and fourth floor windows visible from her open lattice were
in darkness, or burnished blue with moonlight. Warm blue moonlight
gleamed along the leads sloping down to her ink-black parapet. The room
was white and blue lit, with a sweet morning of moonlight. She had a
momentary impulse towards prayer and glanced at the bed. To get so far
and cast herself on her knees and hide her face in her hands against the
counterpane, the bones behind the softness of her hands meeting the
funny familiar round shape of her face, the dusty smell of the
counterpane coming up, her face praying to her hands, her hands praying
to her face, both throbbing separately with their secret, would drive
something away. Something that was so close in everything in the room,
so pouring in at the window that she could scarcely move from where she
stood. She flung herself more deeply into her song and passed through
the fresh buoyant singing air to light the gas. The room turned to its
bright evening brown. _Prayer._ Being so weighed down and free with
happiness was the time ... sacrifice ... the evening _sacrifice_ of
praise and prayer. That is what that means. To toss all the joys and
happiness away and know that you are happy and free without anything.
That you cannot escape being happy and free. It always comes.
Why am I so happy and free she wondered with tears in her eyes. Why? Why
do lovely things and people go on happening? To _own_ that something in
you had no right. But not crouching on your knees ... standing and
singing till everything split with your joy and let you through into the
white white brightness.
10
To _see_ the earth whirling slowly round, coloured, its waters catching
the light. She stood in the middle of the floor hurriedly discarding her
clothes. They were old and worn, friendly and alive with the fresh
strength of her body. Other clothes would be got somehow; just by going
on and working ... there's so much--eternally. It's stupendous. I've no
right to be in it; but I'm in. Someone means me to be in. _I_ can't help
it. Fancy people being alive. You would think everyone would go mad. She
found herself in bed, sitting up in her flannellette dressing jacket.
The stagnant air beneath the sharp downward slope of the ceiling was
warmed by the gas. The gaslight glared beautifully over her shoulder
down on to the page....
11
_All_ that has been said and known in the world is in _language_, in
words; all we know of Christ is in Jewish words; all the dogmas of
religion are words; the meanings of words change with people's thoughts.
Then no one _knows_ anything for certain. Everything depends upon the
way a thing is put, and that is a question of some particular
civilisation. Culture comes through literature, which is a half-truth.
People who are not cultured are isolated in barbaric darkness. The
Greeks were cultured; but they are barbarians ... why? Whether you agree
or not, language is the only way of expressing anything and it dims
everything. So the Bible is not true; it is a culture. Religion is wrong
in making word-dogmas out of it. Christ was something. But Christianity
which calls Him divine and so on is false. It clings to words which get
more and more wrong ... then there's nothing to be afraid of and nothing
to be quite sure of rejoicing about. The Christians are irritating and
frightened. The man with side-whiskers understands something. But.