1
Miriam sat on a damp wooden seat at the station. Shivering with
exhaustion, she looked across at the early morning distance, misty black
and faint misty green.... Something had happened to it. It was not
beautiful; or anything. It was not anything.... That was the
punishment.... The landscape was dead. All that had come to an end. Her
nimble lifeless mind noted the fact. There was dismay in it. Staring at
the landscape she felt the lifelessness of her face; as if something had
brushed across it and swept the life away, leaving her only sight. She
could never feel any more.
* * * * *
Behind her fixed eyes something new seemed moving forward with a strange
indifference. Suddenly the landscape unrolled. The rim of the horizon
was no longer the edge of the world. She lost sight of it in the rolling
out of the landscape in her mind, out and out, in a light easy stretch,
showing towns and open country and towns again, seas and continents on
and on; empty and still. _No_thing. Everywhere in the world nothing. She
drifted back to herself and clung, bracing herself. She was somebody. If
she was somebody who was going to do something ... not roll trolleys
along a platform. The train swept busily into the landscape; the black
engine, the brown, white-panelled carriages, warm and alive in the empty
landscape. Her strained nerves relaxed. In a moment she would be inside
it, being carried back into her own world. She felt eagerly forward
towards it. Hearts-ease was there. She would be able to breathe again.
But not in the same way; unless she could forget. There were other eyes
looking at it. They were inside her; not caring for the things she had
cared for, dragging her away from them.
* * * * *
They are not my sort of people. Alma does not care for me personally.
Little cries and excitement and affection. She wants to; but she does
not care for anyone personally. Neither of them do. They live in a
world.... "Michael Angelo" and "Stevenson" and "Hardy" and "Dürer" and
that other man, ... Alma ... popping and sweeping gracefully about with
little cries and clever sayings and laughter, trying to be real; in a
bright outside way, showing all the inside things because she kept
crushing them down. It was so tiring that one could not like being with
her. She seemed to be carrying something off all the time; and to be as
if she were afraid if the talk stopped for a moment, it would be
revealed.
In the teashop with Alma alone it had been different; all the old
school-days coming back as she sat there. Her eager story. It was
impossible to do anything but hold her hands and admire her bravery and
say you did not care. But it was not quite real; it was too excited and
it was wrong, certainly wrong, to go down not really caring. I need not
go down again.
2
Cold and torpid she got up and stepped into an empty carriage. Both
windows were shut and the dry stuffy air seemed almost warm after her
exposure. She let one down a little; sheltered from the damp the little
stream of outside air was welcome and refreshing. She breathed deeply,
safe, shut in and moving on. With an unnecessarily vigorous swing of her
arms she hoisted her pilgrim basket on to the rack. Of _course_, she
murmured smiling, of _course_ I shall go down again ... _rather_.
3
That extraordinary ending of fear of the great man at the station. Alma
and the little fair square man not much taller than herself looking like
a grocer's assistant with a curious kind confidential ... unprejudiced
eye ... they had come, both of them, out of their house to the station
to meet her ... "this is Hypo" and the quiet shy walk to the house he
asking questions by saying them--statements. You caught the elusive
three-fifteen. This is your bag. We can carry it off without waiting for
the ... British porter. You've done your journey brilliantly. We haven't
far to walk.
4
The strange shock of the bedroom, the strange new thing springing out
from it ... the clear soft bright tones, the bright white light
streaming through the clear muslin, the freshness of the walls ... the
flattened dumpy shapes of dark green bedroom crockery gleaming in a
corner; the little green bowl standing in the middle of the white spread
of the dressing table cover ... wild violets with green leaves and
tendrils put there by somebody with each leaf and blossom standing
separate ... touching your heart; joy, looking from the speaking pale
mauve little flowers to the curved rim of the green bowl and away to the
green crockery in the corner; again and again the fresh shock of the
violets ... the little cold change in the room after the books, strange
fresh bindings and fascinating odd shapes and sizes, gave out their
names ... The White Boat--Praxiter--King Chance--Mrs. Prendergast's
Palings ... the promise of them in their tilted wooden case by the
bedside table from every part of the room, their unchanged names, the
chill of the strange sentences inside--like a sort of code written for
people who understood, written at something, clever raised voices in a
cold world. In Mrs. Prendergast's Palings there were cockney
conversations spelt as they were spoken. None of the books were about
ordinary people ... three men, seamen, alone, getting swamped in a boat
in shallow water in sight of land ... a man and a girl he had no right
to be with wandering on the sands, the cold wash and sob of the sea; her
sudden cold salt tears; the warmth of her shuddering body. Praxiter
beginning without telling you anything, about the thoughts of an
irritating contemptuous superior man, talking at the expense of
everybody. Nothing in any of them about anything one knew or felt;
casting you off ... giving a chill ache to the room. To sit ... alone,
reading in the white light, amongst the fresh colours--but not these
books. To go downstairs was a sacrifice: coming back there would be the
lighting of the copper candlestick, twisting beautifully up from its
stout stem. What made it different to ordinary candlesticks? _What?_ It
was like ... a gesture.
5
"You knew Susan at school." The brown, tweed-covered arm of the little
square figure handed a tea-cup. The high huskily hooting voice ... what
was the overwhelming impression? A common voice, with a cockney twang.
Overwhelming. "What was Susan like at school?" The voice was saying two
things; that was it; doing something deliberately; it was shy and
determined and deliberate and expectant. Miriam glanced incredulously,
summoning all her forces against her sense of strange direct attack,
pushing through and out to some unknown place, dreading her first words,
not taking in a further remark of the live voice. She could get up and
go away for ever; or speak and whatever she spoke would keep her there
for ever. Alma, sitting behind the tea-tray in a green Alma dress with
small muslin cuffs and collars had betrayed her into this. Alma had been
got by this and had brought her to the test of it. The brown walls,
brown paper all over, like parcel paper and Japanese prints; nothing
else, high-backed curious shaped wooden chairs all with gestures, like
the candlestick, and the voice that was in the same difficult, different
world as the books upstairs.... Alma had betrayed her, talking as if
they were like other people and not saying anything about this strange
cold difference. Alma had come to it and was playing some part she had
taken up ... there was some wrong hurried rush somewhere within the
beautiful room. Stop, she wanted to say, you're all wrong. You've
dropped something you don't know anything about deliberately. Alma ought
to have told you. Hasn't she told you?
"Alma hasn't changed" she said, desperately questioning the smooth soft
movements of the smooth soft hands, the quiet controlled pose of the
head. Alma had the same birdlike wide blink and flash of her limpid
brown eyes, the same tight crinkle and snicker when she laughed, the
same way of saying nothing or only the clever superficially true things
men said. Alma had agreed with this man and had told him nothing or only
things in the clever way he would admire.
He made little sounds into his handkerchief. He was nonplussed at a dull
answer. It would be necessary to be brilliant and amusing to hold his
attention--in fact to tell lies. To get on here one would have to say
clever things in a high bright voice.
The little man began making statements about Alma. Sitting back in his
high-backed chair with his head bent and his small fine hands clasping
his large handkerchief he made little short statements, each improving
on the one before it and coming out of it, and little subdued snortings
at the back of his nose in the pauses between his sentences as if he
were afraid of being answered or interrupted before he developed the
next thing. Alma accompanied his discourse with increasing snickerings.
Miriam after eagerly watching the curious mouthing half hidden by the
drooping straggle of moustache and the strange concentrated gleam of the
grey blue eyes staring into space, laughed outright. But how could he
speak so of her? He met the laughter with a minatory outstretched
forefinger, and raised his voice to a soft squeal ending as he launched
with a little throw of the hand his final jest, in a rotund crackle of
high hysterical open-mouthed laughter. The door opened and two tall
people were shown in; a woman with a narrow figure and a long
dark-curtained sallow horse-like face, dressed in a black striped cream
serge coat and skirt and a fair florid troubled fickle smiling man in a
Norfolk tweed and pale blue tie. "Hullo" said the little man propelling
himself out of his chair with a neat swift gesture and standing small
and square in the room making cordial sounds and moving his arms about
as if to introduce and seat his guests without words and formalities.
Alma's thin excited hubbub and the clearly enunciated, obviously
prepared facetiousnesses of the newcomers--his large and tenor and
florid ... a less clever man than Mr. Wilson ... and hers bass and crisp
and contemptuous ... nothing was hidden from her; she would _like_ the
queer odd people who went about at Tansley Street--was broken into by
the entry of three small young men, all three dark and a little grubby
and shabby looking. The foremost stood with vivid eager eyes wide open
as if he had been suddenly checked in the midst of imparting an
important piece of news. Alma came forward to where they stood herded
and silent just inside the door and made little faint encouraging
maternal sounds at them as she shook hands.
As she did this Miriam figured them in a flash coming down the road to
the house; their young men's talk and arguments, their certainty of
rightness and completeness, their sudden embarrassment and secret anger
with their precipitate rescuer. Mr. Wilson was on his feet again, not
looking at them nor breaking up the circle already made, but again
making his sociable sounds and circular movements with his arms as if to
introduce and distribute them about the room. The husband and wife kept
on a dialogue in strained social voices as if they were bent on showing
that their performance was not dependant on an audience. Miriam averted
her eyes from them, overcome by painful visions of the two at breakfast
or going home after social occasions. The three young men retreated to
the window alcove behind the tea-table one of them becoming Miriam's
neighbour as she sat in the corner near the piano whither she had fled
from the centre of the room when the husband and wife came in.
It was the young man with the important piece of news. He sat bent
forward holding his cup and plate with outstretched arms. His headlong
expression remained unchanged. Wisps of black hair stood eagerly out
from his head and a heavy thatch fell nearly to his eyebrows. "Did
anybody see anything of Mrs. Binks at the station?" asked Alma from her
table. "Oh my dear" she squealed gently as the maid ushered in a little
lady in a straight dress of red flannel frilled with black chiffon at
the neck and wrists, "we were all afraid you weren't coming." "Don't
anybody move"--the deep reedy voice reverberated amongst the standing
figures; the firm compact undulating figure came across the room to
Alma. Its light-footed swiftness and easy certainty filled Miriam with
envy. The envy evaporated during the embracing of Alma and the general
handshaking. The low strong reedy voice went on saying things out into
the silence of the room in a steady complete way. There was something
behind it all that did not show, or showed in the brilliant ease,
something that Miriam did not envy. She tried to discover what it was as
the room settled, leaving Mrs. Binkley on a low chair near to Alma,
taking tea and going on with her monologue, each of her pauses
punctuated by soft appreciative sounds from Alma and little sounds from
Mr. Wilson. She was popular with them. Mr. Wilson sat surveying her. Did
they know how hard she was working? Perhaps they did and admired or even
envied it. But what was it for? Surely she must feel the opposition in
the room? Alma and Mr. Wilson approved and encouraged her exhibition.
She was in their curious league for keeping going high-voiced clever
sayings. So had the husband appeared to be at first. Now he sat silent
with a kind polite expression about his head and figure. But his mouth
was uneasy, he was afraid of something or somebody and was staring at
Mrs. Binkley. The wife sat in a gloomy abstraction smoking a large
cigarette ... she was something like Mrs. Kronen in her way; only
instead of belonging to South Africa she had been a hard featured
English school-girl; she was still a hard-featured English school-girl,
with the oldest eyes Miriam had ever seen.
"Why not write an article about a lamp-post?" said one of the young men
suddenly in a gruff voice in answer to a gradually growing murmur of
communications from one of his companions. Miriam breathed easier air.
The shameful irritating tension was over. It was as if fresh wonderful
life-giving things that were hovering in the room, driven back into
corners, pressing up and away against the angles of the ceiling and
about the window-door behind the young men and against the far-away door
of the room, came back, flooding all the spaces of the room. Mr. Wilson
moved in his chair, using his handkerchief towards the young men with an
eye on the speaker. "Or a whole book" murmured the young man farthest
from Miriam in an eager cockney voice. The two young men were speaking
towards Mr. Wilson, obviously trying to draw him in, bringing along one
of his topics; something that had been discussed here before. There
would be talk, men's talk, argument and showing off; but there would be
something alive in the room. In the conflict there would be ideas, wrong
ideas, men taking sides, both right and both wrong; men showing off; but
wanting with all their wrongness to get at something. Perhaps somebody
would say something. She regretted her shy refusal of a cigarette from
Mr. Wilson's large full box. It stood open now by the side of the
tea-tray. He would not offer it again. Cigarettes and talk.... What
would Mr. Hancock think? "People do not meet together for conversation,
nowadays." ... There was going to be conversation, literary conversation
and she was going to hear it ... be in it. Clever literary people trying
to say things well; of course they were all literary; they were all the
same set, knowing each other, all calling Mr. Wilson "Hypo"; talk about
books was the usual Saturday afternoon thing here; and she was in it and
would be able to be in it again, any week. It was miraculous. All these
people were special people, emancipated people. Probably they all wrote,
except the women. There were too many women. Somehow or other she must
get a cigarette. Life, suddenly full of new things made her bold.
Presently, when the conversation was general she would beg one of the
young man at her side. Mr. Wilson would not turn to her again. She had
failed twice already in relation to him; but after her lame refusal of
the cigarette which he had accepted instantly and sat down with, he had
glanced sharply at her in a curious personal way, noticing the little
flat square of white collarette--the knot of violets upon it, the
long-sleeved black nun's-veiling blouse, the long skirt of her old
silkette evening dress. These items had made her sick with anxiety in
their separate poverty as she put them on for the visit; but his eyes
seemed to draw them all together. Perhaps there in the dark corner they
made a sort of whole. She rejoiced gratefully in the memory of Mag's
factory girl, in her own idea of having the sleeves gauged at the wrists
in defiance of fashion, to make frills extending so as partly to cover
her large hands; over the suddenly realised possibility of wearing the
silkette skirt as a day skirt. She must remain in the corner, not
moving, all the afternoon. If she moved in the room the bright light
would show the scrappiness of her clothes. In the evening it would be
all right. She sat back in her corner, happy, and forgetful. She had not
had so much tea as she wanted. She had refused the cigarette against her
will. Now she was alive. These weak things would not happen again, and
next time she would bring her own cigarettes. To take out a cigarette
and light it here, at home amongst her own people. These were her
people. There was something here in the exciting air that she did not
understand; something that was going to tax her more than she had ever
been taxed before. She had found her way to it through her wanderings;
it had come; it was her due. It corresponded to something in herself,
shapeless and inexpressible; but there. She knew it by herself, sitting
in her corner; her own people would know it, if they could see her here;
but no one here would find it out. Every one here was doing something;
or the wife of somebody who did something. They were like a sort of
secret society ... all agreed about something ... about what? _What_ was
it Mr. Wilson was so sure about?... They would despise everybody who was
living an ordinary life, or earning a living in anything but something
to do with books. Seeing her there they would take for granted that she
too, was somebody ... and she was somehow, within herself somewhere;
although she had made herself into a dentist's secretary. She was better
qualified to be here and to understand the strange secret here, in the
end, than anyone else she knew. But it was a false position, unless they
all knew what she was. If she could say clever things they would like
her; but she would be like Alma and Mrs. Binkley; pretending; and
without any man to point to as giving her the right to be about here. It
was a false position. It was as if she were there as a candidate to
become an Alma or a Mrs. Binkley; imitating the clever sayings of men,
or flattering them.
"_Do_ it Gowry," said Mr. Wilson ... "a book" ... he made his little
sound behind his nose as he felt for the phrases that were to come after
his next words ... "a--er--book; about a lamp-post. You see" he held up
his minatory finger to keep off an onslaught and quench an eager
monologue that began pouring from Miriam's nearest neighbour, and went
on in his high weak husky voice. The young men were quiet. For a few
moments the red lady and Alma made bright conversation as if nothing
were happening; but with a curious hard emptiness in their voices, like
people rehearsing and secretly angry with each other. Then they were
silent, sitting posed and attentive, with uneasy intelligent smiling
faces; their costumes and carefully arranged hair useless on their
hands. Mrs. Binkley did not suffer so much as Alma; her corsetless eager
crouch gave her the appearance of intentness, her hair waved naturally,
had tendrils and could be left to look after itself; her fresh easy
strength was ready for the next opportunity. It was only something
behind her face that belied her happy pose. Alma was waiting in some
curious fixed singleness of tension; her responses hovered fixed about
her mouth, waiting for expression, she sat fixed in a frozen suspension
of deliberate amiability and approval, approval of a certain chosen set
of things; approval which excluded everything else with derision ... it
was Alma's old derision, fixed and arranged in some way by Mr. Wilson.
"There will be books--with all that cut out--him and her--all that sort
of thing. The books of the future will be clear of all that."
6
Miriam sat so enclosed in her unarmed struggle with the new definition
of a book that the entry of the newcomers left her unembarrassed. Two
rotund ruddy men in mud-spotted tweeds, both fair, one with a tuft like
a cockatoo standing straight up from his forehead above a smooth pink
face, the other older than anybody in the room, with a shaggy head and a
small pointed beard. They came in talking aloud and stumped about the
room, making their greetings. Miriam bowed twice and twice received a
sturdy handclasp and the kindly gleam of blue eyes, one pair large, mild
and owl-like behind glasses; the other fierce and glinting, a shaft of
whimsical blue light. The second pair of eyes surely would not agree
with what Mr. Wilson had been saying. But their coming in had broken a
charm; the overwhelming charm of the way he put things; so that even
while you hated what he was saying and his way of stating things as if
they were the final gospel and no one else in the world knew anything at
all, you wanted him to go on; only to go on and to keep on going on. It
was wrong somehow; he was all wrong; "though I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels"; it was wrong and somehow wicked; but it caught you,
it had caught Alma and all these people; and in a sense he despised them
all, and was talking to something else; the thing he knew; the secret
that made him so strong, even with his weak voice and weak mouth; strong
and fascinating. It was wrong to be here; it would be wrong to come
again; but there was nothing like it anywhere else; no other such group
of things; and thought and knowledge of things. More must be heard. It
would be impossible not to risk everything to hear more.
Alma ordered fresh tea; Mr. Wilson and the husband and the two new men
were standing about. The elder man was describing in a large shouting
voice a new mantelpiece--a Tudor mantelpiece. What was a Tudor
mantelpiece? ... to buy a _house_ to put round it. What a clever
idea.... Little Mr. Wilson seemed to be listening; he squealed
amendments of the jests between the big man's boomings ... buy a _town_
to put round it.... What a lovely idea ... buy a NATION to put round it
... there was a burst of guffaws. Mr. Wilson's face was crimson; his
eyes appeared to be full of tears. The big man went on. Mrs. Binkley
kept uttering deep reedy caressing laughs. Two of the young men were
leaning forward talking eagerly with bent heads. Miriam's neighbour sat
upright with his hands on his knees, his eyes glaring as if ... as if he
were just going to jump out of his skin. Hidden by the increased stir
made by the re-entry of the maid, and encouraged by the extraordinary
clamour of hilarious voices Miriam ventured to ask him if he would
perform an act of charity by allowing her to rob him of one of his
cigarettes. She liked her unrecognisable voice. It was pitched deep, but
strong; a little like Mrs. Binkley's. The young man started and turned
eagerly towards her, stammering and muttering and fumbling about his
person. "I swear" he brought out, "I could cut my throat ... my _God_
... oh here we are." Seizing the open box from the tea-table he swung
round with his crossed legs extended across her corner so that she was
cut off from the rest of the room, and held the box eagerly towards her.
They both took cigarettes and he lit them with matches obtained from his
neighbour. "Thank you" said Miriam blissfully drawing "that has saved my
life." Precipitately restoring the matches he swung round again leaning
forward with his elbow on his knee, blocking out Miriam's view. Before
it was blocked out she had caught the eye of Mr. Wilson who was standing
facing her in the little group of men about the tea-table and still
interpolating their hubbub with husky squeals of jocularity, quietly
observing the drama in her corner. For the moment she did not wish to
listen; Alma's appreciative squeals were getting strained and the big
man was a bore. Seen sitting in profile taking his tea he reminded her
of Mr. Staple-Craven; her eye caught and recoiled from weak patches,
touches of frowsy softness here and there about the shaggy head. Cut off
from the room safe in the extraordinary preoccupation of the young man
whose eager brooding was moving now towards some imminent
communication--she had undisturbed knowledge of what she had done.
Speech and action had launched her, for good or ill, into the strange
tide running in this house. Its cold waters beat against her breast. She
was no longer quite herself. There was something in it that quickened
all her faculties, challenged all the strength she possessed. By speech
and action she had accepted something she neither liked, nor approved
nor understood; refusal would have left its secret unplumbed, standing
aside in her life, tormenting it. The sense of the secret intoxicated
her ... perhaps I am selling my soul to the devil. But she was glad that
Mr. Wilson had witnessed her launching.
"You are magnificent" gasped the young man glaring at the wall. "I mean
you are simply magnificent." He flashed unconscious eyes at her--_he_
had no consciousness of the cold tide with its curious touch of evil; it
was hand in hand with him and his simplicity that she had stepped down
into the water--and hurried on. "An angel of dreams. Dreams ... you
know--I say," he spluttered incoherently, "I _must_ tell you." His
working preoccupied face turned to face hers with a jerk that brought
part of the heavy sheaf of hair across one of his eyes. "I've been doing
the best work this week I ever did in my life!" Red flooded the whole of
his face and the far-away glare of his one visible eye became a blaze of
light, near, and smiling a guilty delighted smile. He was demanding
_her_ approval, _her_ sympathy, just on the strength of her being there.
It was the moment of consenting to Alma that had brought this. However
it had come she would have been unable to withstand it. He wanted
approval and sympathy; someone here had some time or other shut him up;
perhaps he was considered second-rate, perhaps he was second-rate; but
he was innocent as no one else in the room was innocent. "_Oh_, I _am_
glad" she replied swiftly. Putting his cigarette on the edge of the
piano he seized one of her hands and crushed it between his own. His
face perspired and there were tears in his eye. "_Do_ tell me about it"
she said with bold uneasy eagerness hoping he would drop her hand when
he spoke. "It's a play" he shouted in a low whisper, a spray of saliva
springing through his lips "a play--it's the finest stuff I ever rout."
Were all these people either cockney or with that very bland anglican
cultured way of speaking--like the husband and the man with the Tudor
mantelpiece?
7
"I can of course admit that the growth of corn was, at first, accidental
and unconscious, and that even after the succession of processes began
to be grasped and the soil methodically cultivated the success of the
crop was supposed to depend upon the propitiation of a _god_. I can see
that the discovery of the possibility of growing _food_ would enormously
alter the savage's conception of God, by introducing a new set of
attributes into his _consciousness_ of him; but in defining the God of
the Christians as a _corn_ deity you and Allen are putting the cart
before the horse."
That was it, that was it--that was right somehow; there was something in
this big red-faced man that was not in Mr. Wilson; but why did his talk
sound so lame and dull, even while he was saving God--and Mr. Wilson's,
while he made God from the beginning a nothing created by the fears and
needs of man, so thrilling and convincing, so painting the world anew?
He was wrong about everything and yet while he talked everything changed
in spite of yourself.
The earlier part of the afternoon looked a bright happy world behind the
desolation of this conflict; the husband and wife and the young men and
Mrs. Binkley and the bright afternoon light, dear far-off friends ...
withstanding in their absence the chilly light of Mr. Wilson's talk. Who
was Mr. Wilson? But he was so certain that men had created God ... life
in that thought was a nightmare. Nothing that could happen could make it
anything but a nightmare henceforth ... it did not matter what happened,
and yet he seemed pleased, amused about everything and eager to go on
and "do" things and get things done.... His belief about life was worse
than agnosticism. There was no doubt in it. "Mr. G" was an invention of
man. There was nothing but man; man, coming from the ape, some men a
little cleverer than others, men had discovered science, science was the
only enlightenment, science would put everything right; scientific
imagination, scientific invention. Man. Women were there, cleverly
devised by nature to ensnare man for a moment and produce more men; to
bring scientific order out of primeval chaos; chaos was decreasing order
increasing; there was nothing worth considering before the coming of
science; the business of the writer was imagination, not romantic
imagination, but realism, fine realism, the truth about "the savage"
about all the past and present, the avoidance of cliché ... what was
cliché?...
* * * * *
"Well my dear man you've got the Duke of Argyll to keep you company"
sighed Mr. Wilson with a smothered giggle, getting to his feet.
Miriam went from the sitting room she had entered in another age with
the bedroom violets pinned against her collarette, stripped and cold and
hungry into the cold of the brightly-lit little dining room. The gay
cold dishes, the bright jellies and fruits, the brown nuts, the pretty
Italian wine in thin white long-necked decanters ... Chianti ... Chianti
... they all seemed familiar with the wine and the word; perhaps it was
a familiar wine at the Wilson supper-parties; they spoke of it sitting
at the little feast amongst the sternness of nothing but small drawings
and engravings on walls that shone some clear light tone against the few
pieces of unfamiliar grey-brown furniture like people clustering round a
fire. But it was a feast of death; terrible because of their not knowing
that it was a feast of death. The wife of the cockatoo had come in early
enough to hear nearly the whole of the conversation and had sat
listening to it with a quiet fresh talkative face under her fresh dark
hair; the large deep furrow between her eyebrows was nothing to do with
anything here, it was permanent, belonging to her life. She had brought
her life in with her and kept it there, the freshness and the furrow;
she seemed now, at supper to be out for the evening, to enjoy
herself--at the Wilsons' ... coming to the Wilsons' ... for a jolly
evening, just as anybody would go anywhere for a jolly evening. She did
not know what was there, what it all meant. Perhaps because of the two
little boys. She, with two little unseen boys and the big house so near,
big and full of her and noise and things, and her freshness and the
furrow of her thought about it prevented anything from going on; the
dreadful thing had to be dropped where it was, leaving the big man who
had fought to pretend to be interested and amused, leaving Mr. Wilson
with the last word and his quiet smothered giggle.
Alma tried to answer Mrs. Pinner's loud fresh talking in the way things
had been answered earlier in the afternoon before the departure of all
the other people. Everything she said was an attempt to beat things up.
Every time she spoke Miriam was conscious of something in the room that
would be there with them all if only Alma would leave off being funny;
something there was in life that Alma had never yet known, something
that belonged to an atmosphere she would call "dull." Mr. Wilson knew
that something ... had it in him somewhere, but feared it and kept it
out by trying to be bigger, by trying to be the biggest thing there was.
Alma went on and on, sometimes uncomfortably failing, her thin voice
sounding out like a corkscrew in a cork without any bottle behind it,
now and again provoking a response which made things worse because it
brought to the table the shamed sense of trying to keep something
going.... The clever excitements would not come back. Mrs. Binkley would
have helped her.... Miriam sat helpless and miserable between her
admiration of Alma's efforts and her longing for the thing Alma kept
out. Her discomfiture at Alma's resentment of her dulness and Alma's
longing for Mrs. Binkley was made endurable by her anger over Alma's
obstructiveness. Mr. Pinner and the big man were busily feeding. Mrs.
Pinner laughed and now and again tried to imitate Alma; as if she had
learned how it was done by many visits to the Wilsons', and then forgot
and talked in her own way, forgetting to try to say good things. Alma
grew smaller as supper went on and Mr. and Mrs. Pinner larger and
larger. Together they were too strong in their sense of some other life
and some other way of looking at things to give the Wilson way a clear
field. Mr. Wilson began monologues in favourable intervals, but they
tailed off for lack of nourishing response. Miriam listened eagerly and
suspiciously; lost in admiration and a silent, mentally wordless
opposition. She felt the big man was on her side and that the Pinners
would be if they could understand. They only saw the jokes ... the--the,
higher facetiousness ... good phrase, that was the Chianti. And they
were getting used to that; perhaps they were secretly a little tired of
it.
8
After supper Mr. Pinner sang very neatly in a small clear tenor voice an
English translation of Es war ein König im Thule. Miriam longed for the
German words; Mr. Pinner cancelled even the small remainder of the
German sentiment by his pronunciation of the English rendering; "there
was a king of old tame" he declared and so on throughout the song. Alma
followed with a morsel of Chopin. The performance drove Miriam into a
rage. Mr. Pinner had murdered his German ballad innocently, his little
Oxford voice and his false vowels did not conceal the pleasure he took
in singing his unimagined little song, Alma played her piece at her
audience, every line of her face and body proclaiming it fine music, the
right sort of music, and deprecating all the compositions that were not
"music." It was clear that her taste had become cultivated, that she
_knew_ now, that the scales had fallen from her eyes as they had fallen
from Miriam's eyes in Germany; but the result sent Miriam back with a
rush to cheap music, sentimental "obvious" music, shapely waltzes, the
demoralising chromatics of Gounod, the demoralising descriptive passion
pieces of Chaminade, those things by Liszt whom somebody had called a
charlatan who wrote to make your blood leap and your feet dance and made
your blood leap and your feet dance ... why not?...
Her mind went on amazed at the rushing together of her ideas on music,
at the amount of certainty she had accumulated. Any of these things she
declared to herself played, really _played_, would be better than Alma's
Chopin. The Wilsons had discovered "good" music, as so many English
people had, but they were all wrong about music; nearly all English
people were. Only in England would either the song or the solo have been
possible. The song was innocent, the solo was an insult. The player's
air of superiority to other music was insufferable; her way of playing
out bar by bar of the rain on the roof as if she were giving a lesson
was a piece of intellectual snobbery. Chopin she had never met, never
felt or glimpsed. Chopin was a shape, an endless delicate stern rhythm
as stern as anything in music; all he was came through that, could come
only through it and she played tricks with the shape, falsified all the
values, outdid the worst trickery of the music she was deprecating. At
the end of the performance which was applauded with a subdued reverence,
Miriam eased her agony by humming the opening phase of the motive again
and again in her brain and very nearly aloud, it was such a perfect
rhythmic drop. For long she was haunted and tortured by Alma's horrible
holding back of the third note for emphasis where there was no emphasis
... it was like ... finding a _wart_ at the dropping end of a fine
tendril, she was telling herself furiously while she fended off Alma's
cajoling efforts to make her join in a game of cards. She felt too angry
and too suffering--what _was_ this wrong thing about music in all
English people--even if she had not been too shy to exhibit her large
hands and her stupidity at cards. So they were going to play cards,
actually cards. The room felt cold to her in her long suppressed anger
and misery. She began to wish the Pinners would go. Sitting by the fire
shivering and torpid she listened to Mrs. Pinner's outcries and the
elaboration between the rounds of jests that she felt were weekly jests.
Sitting there dully listening she began to have a sort of insight into
the way these jests were made, it was a thing that could be cultivated.
Her tired brain experimented. Certain things she heard she knew she
would remember; she felt she would repeat them--with an air of
originality. They would seem very brilliant in any of her
circles--though the girls did that sort of thing rather well; but in a
less "refined" way; that was true! This was the sort of thing the girls
did; only their way was not half so clever ... if she did, everyone
would wonder what was the matter with her; and she would not be able to
keep it up, without a great deal of practice; and it would keep out
something else ... but perhaps for some people there was something in
it; it was their way. It had always been Alma's way a little. Only now
she did it better. Perhaps ... it was like Chopin's shape.... They do
not know how angry I have been ... they are quite amiable. I am simply
horrid ... wanting Alma to know I know she's wrong quite as much as I
care for Chopin; perhaps more ... no; if _anybody_ had _played_, I
should be happy; perfectly happy ... what does that mean ... because
real musicians are not at all nice people ... "a queer soft lot." But
why are the English so awful about music? They are poets. Why are they
not musicians? I hope I shall never hear Alma play Beethoven. As long as
she plays Chopin like that I shall never like her.... Perhaps English
people ought never to play, only to listen to music. They are not
innocent enough to play. They cannot forget themselves.
At ten o'clock they trooped into the kitchen. Miriam, half asleep and
starving for food, eagerly ate large biscuits too hungry to care much
for Alma's continued resentment of her failure to join the card party
and her unconcealed contempt of her sudden return to animation at the
prospect of nourishment. She had never felt so hungry.
9
Going at last to her room Miriam found its gleaming freshness warm and
firelit. Warm fresh deeps of softly coloured room that were complete
before she came in with her candle. She stood a moment imagining the
emptiness. The April night air was streaming gently in from meadows.
Going across to the window she hesitated near the flowered curtain. It
stirred gently; but not in that way as if moved by ghostly fingers. The
meadows here were different. They might grow the same again. But woods
and meadows were always there, away from London. One could go to them.
They were going on all the time. All the time in London spring and
summer and autumn were passing unseen. But this was not the time. They
were _different_ here. She pulled a deep wicker chair close up to the
exciting white ash-sprinkled hearth. The evening she had left in the
flames downstairs was going on up here. To-morrow, to-day, in a few
hours she would be sitting with them again, facing flames; no one else
there. She sat with her eyes on the flames. A clock struck two.... I've
got to them at last, the people I ought to be with. The books in the
corner showed their bindings and opened their pages here and there. They
made a little sick patch on her heart. They approved of them. Other
people approved of things. Nothing had been done yet that anybody could
approve of ... the _some_thing village of Grandpré ... und dann sagte
darauf, die gute vernünftige Hausfrau.... It all floated in the air.
They would see it if somebody showed it. They would be angry and amused
if anybody tried to show it. It was wrong in some way to try and show
the things you were looking at. Keep quiet about them. Then somebody
else expressed them; and those other people turned to you and demanded
your admiration--and wondered why you were furious. It's too long to
wait, until the things come up of themselves. You _must_ attend to
them....
How the fragrance of the cigarette stood out upon the fresh warm air ...
that was perique, that curious strong flavour. They were very strong, he
had said so; but downstairs, talking like that they had had no
particular flavour, just cigarettes, bringing the cigarette mood ... no
wonder he had been surprised, really surprised, at her smoking so many
... but then he had been surprised at her eating a hard apple at
midnight ... the sitting room had suddenly looked familiar going into it
alone while they were seeing out the Pinners and the big man. Strange
unknown voices that perhaps she would not hear again, going out into the
night ... their voices jesting the last jests as the guests went down
the garden, sounding in the hall, familiar and homely, well known to
her, presently coming back into the sitting room; the fire burning
brightly like any other fire, the exciting deep pinkness of the shaded
lamplight like nothing else in the world. Alma knew it, rushing in ...
whirling about with Alma in that room with that afternoon left in it;
the sounds of bolting and locking coming in from the hall.
10
... "You looked extraordinarily pretty...."
"You have come through it all remarkably well" ... remarkable had a k in
it in English, and German, merkwürdig, and perhaps in Scandinavian
languages; but not in other languages; it was one of the things that
separated England from the south ... remarkable ... hard and chilly.
"You know you're awfully good stuff. You've had an extraordinary variety
of experience; you've got your freedom; you ought to write."
"That is what a palmist told me at Newlands. It was at a big afternoon
'at home'; there was a palmist in a little dark room sitting near a
lamp; she looked at nothing but your hands; she kept saying whatever you
do, write. If you haven't written yet, write, if you don't succeed go on
writing."
"Just so, have you written?"
"Ah, but she also told me my self-confidence had been broken; that I
used to be self-confident and was so no longer. It's true."
"Have you written anything?"
"I once sent in a thing to Home Notes. They sent it back but asked me to
write something else and suggested a few things."
"If they had taken your stuff you would have gone on and learnt to turn
out stuff bad enough for Home Notes and gone on doing it for the rest of
your life."
"But then an artist, a woman who had a studio in Bond Street and knew
Leighton, saw some things I had tried to paint and said I ought to make
any sacrifice to learn painting, and a musician said the same about
music."
"You could work in writing quite well with your present work."
... "Pieces of short prose; anything; a description of an old woman
sitting in an omnibus ... anything. There's plenty of room for good
work. There's the Academy always ready to consider well-written pieces
of short prose. Write something and send it to me."
Nearing London shivering and exhausted she recalled Sunday morning and
the strangeness of it being just as it had promised to be. Happy waking
with a clear refreshed brain in a tired drowsy body, like the feeling
after a dance; making the next morning part of the dance, your mind full
of pictures and thoughts and the evening coming up again and again, one
great clear picture in the foreground of your mind. The _evening_ in the
room as you sat propped on your pillows drinking the clear pale
curiously refreshing tea left by the maid on a little wooden tray by
your bedside; its fragrance drew you to sip at once, without adding milk
and sugar. It was delicious; it steamed aromatically up your nostrils
and went straight to your brain; potent without being bitter. Perhaps it
was "China" tea; it must be. The two biscuits on the little plate
disappeared rapidly, and she poured in milk and added much sugar to her
remaining tea to appease her hunger. The evening stayed during her
deliberately perfunctory toilet; she wanted only to be down. It began
again unbroken with the first cigarette after breakfast, when a nimble
remark thrown out from the excited gravity of her happiness made Mr.
Wilson laugh. She was learning how to do it. It stayed on through the
day, adding the day to itself in a chain, a morning of talk, a visit to
Mr. Wilson's study--the curious glimpses of pinewood from the windows;
pinewood looking strange and far-away--there were people in Weybridge to
whom those woods were real woods where they walked and perhaps had the
thoughts that woods bring; here they were like woods in a picture book;
not real, just a curious painted background for Mr. Wilson's talk ...
all those books in fifty years' time burnt up by the air; he did not
seem to think it an awful idea ... you can do anything with English ...
and then the names of authors who had done some of these things with
English ... making it sing and dance and march, making it like granite
or like film and foam. Other languages were more simple and single in
texture; less flexible.... Gazing out at the exciting silent pines--so
dark and still, waiting, not knowing about the wonders of
English--Miriam recalled her impressions of those of the authors she
knew. It was true that those were their effects and the great
differences between them. How did he come to know all about it and to
put it into words? Did the authors know when they did it? She
passionately hoped not. If they did, it was a trick and spoilt books.
Rows and rows of "fine" books; nothing but men sitting in studies doing
something cleverly, being very important, "men of letters"; and looking
out for approbation. If writing meant that, it was not worth doing.
English a great flexible language; more than any other in the world. But
German was the same? Only the inflections filled the sentences up with
bits. English was flexible and beautiful. Funny. Foreigners did not
think so. Many English people thought foreign literature the best.
Perhaps Mr. Wilson did not know much foreign literature. But he wanted
to; or he would not have those translations of Ibsen and Björnsen.
German poetry marched and sang and did all sorts of things. Anyhow it
was wonderful about English--but if books were written like that,
sitting down and doing it cleverly and knowing just what you were doing
and just how somebody else had done it, there was something wrong, some
mannish cleverness that was only half right. To write books, knowing all
about style would be to become like a man. Women who wrote books and
learned these things would be absurd and would make men absurd. There
was something wrong. It was in all those books upstairs. "Good stuff"
was wrong, a clever trick, not worth doing. And yet everybody seemed to
want to write.
The rest of the day--secret and wonderful. Sitting about, taken for one
of the Wilson kind of people, someone who was writing or going to write,
by the two Scotch professors; sitting about listening to their quiet
easy eager unconcerned talk, seeing them "all round" as Mr. Wilson saw
them, the limits of professorship and teaching, the silly net and trick
of examinations, their simplicity and their helplessness; playing the
lovely accompaniment like quiet waves, of Schubert's Ave Maria, the
sudden, jolly, sentimental voice of Professor Ewings, his nice
attentions ... if it had been Wimpole Street or anywhere in society he
would not have seen me....
It would be wrong to try and write just because Mr. Wilson had said one
ought.... The reasons he had given for writing were the wrong ones ...
but it would be impossible to go down again without doing some
writing.... Impossible not to go down again.... They knew one was
"different"; and liked it and thought it a good thing; a sort of
distinction. No one had thought that before. It made them a home and a
refuge. The only refuge there was except being by oneself ... only their
kind of difference was not the same. They thought nearly everyone
"futile" and "dull"--everyone who did not see things in their way was
that. Presently they would find that one was not different in the same
way. He had spoken of people who grow "dull" as you get to know them.
Awful ... perhaps already, he meant----
* * * * *
"It's all very well ... people read Matthew Arnold's simple
profundities; er--simple profundities; and learn his little trick; and
go _about_--hcna, hcna,--arm in arm with this swell ... hcna ...
_puffing_ with illumination. All about _nothing_. It's all, my dear Miss
Henderson, about absolutely nothing."
* * * * *
The train stopped. Better not to go down again. There was something all
wrong in it. Wrong about everything. The Pinners and the big man were
right ... but there was something dreadful in them, the something that
is in all simple right sort of people, who just go on, never thinking
about anything. Were they good and right? It did not enter their heads
to think that they were wrong in associating with him.... Here in London
it seemed wrong ... she hurried wearily with aching head up the long
platform. The Wimpole Street people would certainly think it wrong; if
they knew about the marriage. They knew he was a coming great man; the
great new "critic"; a new kind of critic ... they knew everybody was
beginning to talk about him. But if they knew they would not approve.
They would never understand his way of seeing things. Impossible to
convey anything to them of what the visit had been.
11
The hall clock said half-past nine. The hall and the large rooms had
shrunk. Everything looked shabby and homely. The house was perfectly
quiet. Passing quietly and quickly into her room she found the table
empty. The door into the den was shut and no sound came from behind it.
No one but James had seen her. The holiday was still there. Perhaps
there would be time to take hold in the new way before anyone discovered
her and made demands. Perhaps they were all three wanting her at this
moment. But the house was so still, there was nothing urgent. Perhaps
she would never feel nervous at Wimpole Street again. It was really all
so easy. There was nothing she could not manage if only she could get a
fair start and get everything in order and up to date. Her mind tried to
encircle the book-keeping. There must be a plan for it all; so much work
on the accounts to keep the whole ledger-full sent out to date, so much
on the address books, and so much on the monthly cash books--a little of
all these things every day in addition to the day's work, whatever
happened; that would do it. Then there would be no muddle and nothing to
worry about and perhaps time to write. They must be told that she would
use any spare time there was on other things.... They would be quite
ready for that provided the books were always up to date and the
surgeries always in order. That is what a Wilson would have done from
the first.
12
"Mr. Grove to see you, miss."
"Mr. _Grove_?"
"Yes miss; a dark gentleman."
Miriam rose from her chair. James had gone after a moment of sympathetic
waiting, back down the basement stairs to her dinner. Miriam felt
herself very tall and slender--set apart and surrounded; healed of all
fighting and effort. She went quickly through the hall thinking of
nothing; herself, walking down Harriett's garden path. At the door of
the waiting-room she hesitated. Mr. Grove was the other side of the
door, waiting for her to come in. She opened the door with a flourish
and advanced with stiffly outstretched hand. Before she said "teeth?" in
a cheerful breezy professional tone that exploded into the past and
scattered it she saw the pained anxiousness of his face and the flush
that had risen under his dark skin.
"No" he said recoiling swiftly from his limp handshake and sitting
abruptly down on the chair from which he had risen. Miriam watched him
go helplessly on to say in stiff resentfulness what he had come to say
while she stood apologetically at his chair side.
"I meant to write to you--two or three times."
"Oh why didn't you?" she responded emphatically.... Why can't I be quiet
and hear what he has to say? He must have wanted to see me dreadfully to
come here like this.
His eyes were fixed blindly upon the far-off window.
"Yes. I wanted to very much. How do you like your life here?" He was
flushing again. His skin still had that shiny film over it, so unlike
the clear snaky brilliance of the eyes. They were dreadful and all the
rest flappy and floppy and somehow feverish.
"Oh--I like it immensely."
"That is a very good thing."
"Do you like your life?"
He drew in his lower lip on an indrawn breath and held it with his
teeth. His eyes were thinking busily under a slight frown.
"That is one of the things I wished to discuss with you."
"Oh _do_ discuss it with me," cried Miriam.
"I am very glad you are getting on here so well" he murmured
thoughtfully, gazing through the window, to and fro as if scanning the
opposite house-fronts.
"Oh, I like it immensely" said Miriam after a silence. Her head was
beginning to ache. He sat quite still, scanning to and fro, his lip
recaptured under his teeth.
"They are such nice people. I like it for so many things."
He looked absently round at her.
"M-yes. On several occasions I thought of writing to you."
"Yes" said Miriam sitting down opposite to him.
He shifted a little in his chair to keep his way clear to the window.
For a few moments they sat silent; then he suddenly took out his watch
and stood up.
Miriam rose. "Have you seen the Ducaynes lately?" she asked hurriedly,
moving nervously towards the door. Murmuring an indistinct response he
led the way to the door and held it open for her.
James was coming forward with a patient. They stood aside for the
patient to pass in, James waiting to escort Mr. Grove to the front door.
They shook hands limply and silently. Miriam stood watching his narrow
loosely knit clerical back as he plunged along through the hall and out.
She turned as James turned from the door.... What it must have cost him
to break in here and ask for me ... how silly and how rude I was.... I
_can't_ believe he's been; it's like a dream. He's seen me in the new
life changed ... and I'm not really changed.