1
Miriam swung her legs from the table and brought her tilted chair to the
ground. The leads sloped down as she got to her feet and the strip of
sky disappeared. The sunlight made a broad strip of gold along the
parapet and a dazzling plaque upon the slope of the leads. She lounged
into the shadowy middle of the room and stood feeling tall and steady
and easy and agile in the freedom of knickers. The clothes lying on the
bed were transformed. "I say" she murmured. Her cigarette end wobbling
encouragingly from the corner of her lips as she spoke, "they're not
bad." She strolled about the room glancing at them from different points
of view. They really made quite a good whole. It was the lilac that made
them a good whole, the fresh heavy blunt cones of pure colour. In the
distance the bunched ribbon looked almost all green. She drew the hat
nearer to the light and the ribbon became mauve with green shadows and
green with mauve shadows as it moved. The girl had been right about
bunching the ribbon a little way up the sugar-loaf and over the wide
brim. It broke the papery stiffness of the lilac and the harshness of
the black straw. The straw looked very harsh and black in the clearer
light. Out of doors it would look almost as if it had been done with
that awful shiny hat polish. If the straw had been dull and silky and
some shaded tone of mauve and green it would have been one of those hats
that give you a sort of madness, taking your eyes in and in, with the
effect of a misty distant woodland brought near and moving, depths of
interwoven colour under your eyes. But it would not have gone with the
black and white check. The black part of the hat was right for the tiny
check. That is the idea of some smart woman.... I did not think of it in
the shop, but I got it right somehow, I can see now. It's right. Those
might be someone else's things.... The sight of the black suède gloves
and the lace-edged handkerchief and the powder box laid out on the chest
of drawers made her eager to begin. This was dressing. The way to feel
you were dressing was to put everything out first and come back as
another person and make a grand toilet. It makes you feel free and
leisurely. There had been the long strange morning. In half an hour the
adventure would begin and go on and be over. The room would not be in
it. Something nice or horrible would come back. But the room would not
be changed.
2
She found the dark green Atlas 'bus standing ready by the curb and
waited until it was just about to start, looking impatiently up and down
the long vistas of the empty Sunday street, and then jumped hurriedly in
with the polite half-irritated resignation of the man about town who
finds himself stranded in a godforsaken part of London, and steered
herself carefully against the swaying of the vehicle along between the
rows of seated forms, keeping her eyes carefully averted and fixed upon
distant splendours. Securing an empty corner she sat down provisionally,
on the edge of the seat, occupying the least possible space, clear of
her neighbour, her eyes turned inwards on splendours still raking the
street, her person ready to leap up at the sight of a crawling
hansom--telling herself in a drawl that she felt must somehow be audible
to an observant listener how damnable it was that there were not hansoms
in these remarkable backwoods--so damned inconvenient when your own
barrow is laid up at Windover's. But a hansom might possibly appear....
She turned to the little corner window at her side and gazed with fierce
abstraction down the on-coming street. Presently she would really be in
a hansom. Miss Szigmondy had mentioned hansoms ... supposing she should
have to pay her share? Her heart beat rapidly and her face flushed as
she thought of the fourpence in her purse. She would not be able even to
offer. But if Miss Szigmondy were alone she would take cabs. There would
be no need to mention it. The ambling trit-trot of the vehicle gradually
prevailed over the mood in which she had dressed. She was becoming aware
of her companions. Presently she would be taking them all in and getting
into a world that had nothing to do with her afternoon. Turning aside so
that her face could not be seen and her own vision might be restricted
to the roadway rolling slowly upon her through the little end window she
dreamed of contriving somehow or other to save money for hansoms.
Hansoms were a necessary part of the worldly life. Floating about in a
hansom in the west-end, in the season was like nothing else in the
world. It changed you, your feelings, manner, bearing, everything. It
made you part of a wonderful exclusive difficult triumphant life, a
streak of it, going in and out. It cut you off from all personal
difficulties, made you drop your personality and lifted you right out
into the freedom of a throng of happy people, a great sunlit tide
singing, all the same laughing song, wave after wave, advancing, in open
sunlight. It took you on to a great stage, lit and decked, where you
were lost, everything was lost and forgotten in the masque. Nothing
personal could matter so long as you were there and kept there, day and
night. Everyone was invisible and visionless, united in the spectacle,
gilding and hiding the underworld in a brilliant embroidery ...
continuously.
As they rumbled up Baker Street, she wondered impatiently why Miss
Szigmondy had not appointed a meeting place in the West end. Baker
Street began all right; one felt safe going up Orchard Street, past the
beautiful china shop and the Romish richness of Burns and Oates, seeing
the sequestered worldliness of Granville Place and rolling through
Portman Square with its enormous grey houses masking hidden wealth; but
after that it became a dismal corridor retreating towards the full chill
of the north. If they had met in Piccadilly they could have driven
straight down through heaven into Chelsea. Perhaps it would not be
heaven with Miss Szigmondy. She would not know the difference in the
feeling of the different parts of London. She would drive along like a
foreigner--or a member of a provincial antiquarian society,
"intelligently" noticing things, knowing about the buildings and the
statues. Londoners were always twitted with not knowing about London ...
the reason why they jested about it, half proudly, was their
consciousness of being Londoners, living in London, going about happy,
the minute they were outside their houses, looking at nothing and
feeling everything, like people wandering happily from room to room in a
well known house at some time when everybody's attention was turned away
by a festival or a catastrophe.... London was like a prairie. In a
hansom it would be heaven, with anybody. A hansom saved you from your
companion more than any other vehicle. You were as much outside it in
London as you were inside with your companion, if you were anywhere
south of Marylebone ... the way the open hood framed the vista....
3
There was a hansom waiting outside Miss Szigmondy's garden gate. The
afternoon would begin at once with a swift drive back into the world.
Miss Szigmondy met her in the dark hall, with an outbreak of bright
guttural talk, talking as she collected her things, breaking in with
shouted instructions to an invisible servant. Her voice sounded very
foreign in the excited upper notes, but it rang, a thin wiry ring, not
shrieking and breaking like the voices of excited Englishwomen, perhaps
that was "voice production."
In the cab she sat sorting her cards, reading out names. Miriam thrilled
as she heard them. Miss Szigmondy's attention was no longer on her. Her
mind slipped easily back; the intervening time fell away. She was going
with her sisters along past the Burlington Arcade, she saw the pillar
box, the old man selling papers, the old woman with the crooked black
sailor hat and the fringed shawl, sitting on a box behind her huge
basket of tulips and daffodils ... the great grimed stone pillars, the
court yard beyond them blazing with sunshine, the wide stone steps at
the far end of the court yard leading up into cool shadow, the turnstile
and great hall, an archway, and the sudden fresh blaze of colours....
* * * * *
But the hansom had turned into the main road and was going _north_. They
were going even further north than Miss Szigmondy's ... up a straight
empty Sunday suburban road between rows of suburban houses with gardens
that tried to look pretty ... an open silly prettiness like suburban
ladies coming up to town for matinées ... if there were artists living
up here it would not be worth while to go and see them....
4
As the afternoon wore on it dawned upon Miriam that if Miss Szigmondy
were to be at the poet's house in evening dress by half past six, they
had seen nearly all they were going to see. There could be no thought of
Chelsea. But she answered with a swift negative when Miss Szigmondy
enquired as they were shown into their hansom outside their eighth large
Hampstead house whether she were tired. Her unsatisfied consciousness
ran ahead, waiting; just beyond, round the next corner was something
that would relieve the oppression. "I just want to rgun in and see that
poor boy Gilbert Haze." Then it was over and she must go on enduring
whilst Miss Szigmondy paid a call; unable to get free because she was
being paid for and could not afford to go back alone. They drove for
some distance, the large houses disappeared, they were in amongst little
drab roadways like those round about Mornington Road. Perhaps if she
improvised an engagement she could find her way to Regent's Park and get
back. But they had come so far. They must be on the outskirts of N.W.,
perhaps even in N. They pulled up before a small drab villa. The sun had
gone behind the clouds, the short street was desolate. No touch of life
or colour anywhere, hardly a sign of spring in the small parched
shrub-filled front gardens, uniformly enclosed by dusty railings. She
dreaded her wait alone in the cab with her finery and her empty
afternoon while Miss Szigmondy visited her sick friend.
"Come along," said Miss Szigmondy from the little garden path "poor
cgeature you _do_ look tired." Miriam got angrily out of the cab. Whose
fault was it that she was tired? Why did Miss Szigmondy go to these
things? She had not cared and was not disappointed at not caring. She
was just the same as when she had started out.
"I will wait in the garden" she said hurriedly as the door opened on the
house of sickness. A short young man with untidy dark hair and a shabby
suit stood in the doorway. His brilliant dark eyes smiled sharply at
Miss Szigmondy and shot beyond her towards Miriam as he stood aside
holding the door wide. "Come along" shouted Miss Szigmondy disappearing.
Miriam came reluctantly forward and got herself through the door,
reaping the second curious sharp smile as she passed. The young man had
an extraordinary face, cheerful and grimy, like a street arab; he was
rather like a street arab. Miss Szigmondy was talking loudly from a
little room to the right of the door. Miriam's embarrassment in the
impossibility of explaining her own superfluous presence was not
relieved when she entered the room. The young man was clearly not
prepared. It was a most unwarrantable intrusion. She stood at a loss
behind Miss Szigmondy who was planted, still eagerly talking, on the
small clear space of bare boards--cracked and dusty, like a
warehouse--in the middle of the room and tried not to see anything in
particular; but her eyes already had the sense that there was nothing to
sit upon, no corner to retire into, nothing but an extraordinary
confusion of shabby dust-covered things laid bare by the sunlight that
poured through the uncurtained window. Her eyes took refuge in the face
of the young man confronting Miss Szigmondy, making replies to her
volley of questions. He had no front teeth, nothing but blackened
stumps; dreadful, one ought not to look, unless he were going to be
helped. Perhaps Miss Szigmondy was going to help him. But he did not
look ill. His bright glancing eyes shot about as if looking at something
that was not there and he answered Miss Szigmondy's sallies with a sort
of cheerful convulsion of his whole frame. He seemed to be "on wires";
but not weak; strong and cheerful; happy; a kind of cheerfulness and
happiness she had never met before. It was quiet. It came from him
soundlessly making within his pleasant voice a gay noise that conquered
the strange embarrassing room. Presently in answer to a demand from Miss
Szigmondy he opened folding doors and ushered them into an adjoining
room.
5
Miriam stood holding the little group in her hands longing for words.
She could only smile and smile. The young man stood by looking at it and
smiling, too, giving his attention to Miss Szigmondy's questions about
some larger white things standing in the bare room. When he moved away
towards these and she could leave off wondering whether it would do to
say "and is this really going to the Academy next week" instead of again
repeating "how beautiful," and her eye could run undisturbed over and
over the outlines of the two horses, impressions crowded upon her. The
thing moved and changed as she looked at it; it seemed as if it must
break away, burst out of her hands into the surrounding atmosphere.
Everything about took on a happy familiarity, as if she had long been in
the bright bare plaster-filled little room. From the edges of the small
white group a radiance spread freshening the air, flowing out into the
happy world, flowing back over the afternoon, bringing parts of it to
stand out like great fresh bright Academy pictures. The great studios
opening out within the large garden-draped Hampstead houses rich and
bright with colour in a golden light, their fur rugs and tea services on
silver trays, and velvet coated men, wives with trailing dresses and the
people standing about, at once conspicuous and lost, were like Academy
pictures. It was all real now, the pictures on the great easels, scraps
of the Academy blaze; the studio with the bright light, and marble, and
bright clear tiger skins on the floor, the big clean fresh tiger almost
filling the canvas ... the dark studio with antique furniture and
pictures of people standing about in historical clothes....
6
"Goodness gracious, _isn't_ she a swell!"
"Are they all right?"
"Are you a millionaire my dear? Have they raised your salary?"
"Do you really like them?"
"Yes. I've never seen you look so nice. You ought always to go about in
a large black hat trimmed with lilac."
"Didn't one of the artists want to paint your portrait."
"They all did. I've promised at least twenty sittings."
"Come nearer to the lamp fair child that I may be even more dazzled by
thy splendour."
"I'm awfully glad you like them--they'll have to go on for ever."
"Where on earth did you find the money child?"
"Borrowed it from Harry. It was her idea. You see I shall get four
pounds for my four weeks' holiday; and if I go to stay with them it
won't cost me anything; so she advanced me two pounds."
"And you got all this for two pounds?"
"Practically; the hat was ten and six and the other things twenty seven
and six and the gloves half a crown."
"Where did you get them?"
"Edgware Road."
"And just put them on?"
"It is really remarkable. Do you realise how lucky you are in being a
stock size?"
"I suppose I am. But you know the awful thing about it is that they will
never come in for Wimpole Street."
"Why on earth not? What could be more ladylike, more--simple, more
altogether suitable?"
"You see I have to wear black there."
"What an extraordinary idea. _Why?_"
"Well they asked me to. I don't know. I believe it's the fault of my
predecessor. They told me she _rustled_ and wore all kinds of
dresses----"
"I see--a series of explosions."
"On silk foundations."
"But why should they assume that you would do the same?"
"I don't know. It's an awful nuisance. You can't get black blouses that
will wash; it will be awful in the summer; besides it's so unbecoming."
"There I can't agree. It would be for me. It makes me look dingy; but it
suits you, throws up your rose-leaf complexion and your golden hair. But
I call it jolly hard lines. I'd like to see the governor dictating to me
what I should wear."
"It's so expensive if one can't wear out one's best things."
"It's intolerable. Why do you stand it?"
"What can I do?"
"Tell them you must either wear _scarlet_ at the office or have a higher
_screw_."
"It isn't an office you see. I have to be so much in the surgeries and
interviewing people in the waiting-room, you know."
"Yes--from dukes to dustmen. But would either the dukes or the dustmen
disapprove of scarlet."
"One has to be a discreet nobody. It's the professional world; you don't
understand; you are equals, you two, superiors, pampered countesses in
your offices."
"Well I think it's a beastly shame. I should brandish a pair of forceps
at Mr. Hancock and say 'scarlet--or I leave.'"
"Where should I go? I have no qualifications."
"You wouldn't leave. They would say 'Miss Henderson wear purple and
yellow, only stay.' I think it's a reflection on her taste, don't you
Jan?"
"Certainly it is. It is fiendish. But employers _are_ fiends--to women."
"I haven't found that soh."
"Ah you keep yours in order, you rule them with a rod of iron."
"I do. I believe in it."
"I envy you your late hours in the morning."
"Ah-ha--she's had a row about that."
"_Have_ you Mag?"
"Not a row; simply a discussion."
"What happened?"
"Simply this. The governor begged me--almost in tears--to come down
earlier--for the sake of the discipline of the office."
"What did you say?"
"I said Herr _Epstein_; what can I do? How do you suppose I can get up,
have breakfast and be down here before eleven?"
"What did he say?"
"He protested and implored and offered to pay cabs for me."
"Good Lord Mag, you are extraordinary."
"I am not extraordinary and it is no concern of the Deity's. I fail to
see why I should get to the office earlier than I do. I don't get my
letters before half-past eleven. I am fresh and gay and rested, I get
through my work before closing-time. I work like anything whilst I am
there."
"And you still go down at eleven?"
"I still go down at eleven."
"I _do_ envy you. You see my people always want me most first thing in
the morning. It's awful, if one has been up very late."
"And what is our life worth without late hours? The evening is the only
life we have."
"Exactly. And they are the same really. They do their work to be free of
it and live."
"Precisely; but they are waited on. They have their houses and baths and
servants and meals and comforts. We get up in cold rooms untended and
tired. _They_ ought to be first at the office and wait upon us."
"She is a queen in her office; waited upon hand and foot."
"Well--why not? I do them the honour of bringing my bright petunia clad
feminine presence into their dingy warehouse; I expect some
acknowledgment of the honour."
"You don't allow them either to spit or swear."
"I do not; and they appreciate it."
"Mine are beasts. I defy anyone to do anything with them. I _loathe_ the
city man."
Miriam sighed. In neither of these offices she felt sure, could she hold
her own--and yet compared to her own long day--what freedom the girls
had--ten to five and eleven to six and any clothes they found it
convenient to wear. But city men ... no restrictions were too high a
price to pay for the privileges of her environment; the association with
gentlemen, her quiet room, the house, the perpetual interest of the
patients, the curious exciting streaks of social life, linking up with
the past and carrying the past forward on a more generous level. The
girls had broken with the past and were fighting in the world. She was
somehow between two worlds, neither quite sheltered, nor quite free ...
not free as long as she wanted, in spite of her reason to stay on at
Wimpole Street and please the people there. Why did she want to stay?
What future would it bring? Less than ever was there any chance of
saving for old age. She could not for ever go on being secretary to a
dentist.... She drove these thoughts away; they were only one side of
the matter; there were other things; things she could not make clear to
the girls; nor to anyone who could not see and feel the whole thing from
inside, as she saw and felt it. And even if it were not so, if the
environment of her poorly paid activities had been trying and
unsympathetic, at least it gave seclusion, her own room to work in, her
free garret and her evening and week-end freedom. But what was she going
to do with it?
"Tell us about the _show_, Miriam. Cease to gaze at Jan's relations; sit
down, light a cigarette."
"These German women fascinate me," said Miriam swinging round from the
mantelshelf; "they are so like Jan and so utterly different."
"Yes; Jan is Jan and they are Minna and Erica."
Taking a cigarette from Mag's case Miriam lit it at the lamp. Before her
eyes the summer unrolled--concerts with Miss Szigmondy, going in the
cooling day in her new clothes, with a thin blouse, from daylight into
electric light and music, taking off the zouave inside and feeling cool
at once, the electric light mixing with the daylight, the cool darkness
to walk home in alone, full of music that would last on into the next
day; Miss Szigmondy's musical at homes, evenings at Wimpole Street,
week-ends in the flowery suburbs windows and doors open, cool rooms,
gardens in the morning and evening, week-ends in the country, each
journey like the beginning of the summer holiday, week-ends in town,
Sunday afternoons at Mr. Hancock's and Miss Szigmondy's--all taking her
away from Kennett Street. All these things yielded their best reality in
this room. Glowing brightly in the distance they made this room like the
centre of a song. But a week-end taken up was a week-end missed at
Kennett Street. It meant missing Slater's on Saturday night, the week
end stretching out ahead immensely long, the long evening with the
girls, its lateness protected by the coming Sunday, waking lazily fresh
and happy and easy-minded on Sunday morning, late breakfast, the
cigarette in the sunlit window space, its wooden sides echoing with the
clamour of St. Pancras bells, the three voices in the little rooms,
irlandisches ragout, the hours of smoking and talking out and out on to
strange promontories where everything was real all the time, the faint
gradual coming of the twilight, the evening untouched by the presence of
Monday, no hurry ahead, no social performances, no leave-taking, no
railway journey.
"Yes; Jan is Londonised; she looks German; her voice suggests the whole
of Germany; these girls are Germany untouched, strong, cheerful,
musical, tree-filled Germany, without any doubts. They've got Jan's
sense of humour without her cynicism."
"Is that so, Jan?"
"Yes I think perhaps it is. They are sweet simple children." Yes
sweet--but maddening too. German women were so sure and unsuspicious and
practical about life. Jan had some of that left. But she was English
too, more transparent and thoughtful.
"The show! The show!"
She told them the story of the afternoon in a glowing précis, calling up
the splendours upon which she felt their imaginations at work,
describing it as they saw it and as with them, in retrospect, she saw it
herself. Her descriptions drew Mag's face towards her, glowing, wrapt
and reverent. Jan sat sewing with inturned eyes and half open,
half-smiling appreciative face. They both fastened upon the great
gold-framed pictures, asking for details. Presently they were making
plans to visit the Academy and foretelling her joy in seeing them again
and identifying them. She had not thought of that; certainly, it would
be delightful; and perhaps seeing the pictures in freedom and alone she
might find them wonderful.
"Why do you say their wives were all like cats?"
"They were." She called up the unhatted figures moving about among the
guests in trailing gowns,--keeping something up, pretending to be
interested, being cattishly nice to the visitors, and thinking about
other things all the time.... I can't _stand_ them, oh, I can't stand
them.... But the girls would not have seen them in that way; they would
have been interested in them and their dresses, they would have admired
the prettiness of some of them and found several of them 'charming' ...
if Mag were an artist's wife she would behave in the way those women
behaved....
"Were they all _alike_?" that was half sarcastic....
"Absolutely. They were all _cats_, simply."
"Isn't she _extraordinary_?"
"It's the cats who are extraordinary. Why do they do it girls! _Why_ do
they do it?" She flushed feeling insincere. At this moment she felt that
she knew that Mag in social life, would conform and be a cat. She had
never thought of her in social life; here in poverty and freedom she was
herself.
"Do _phwatt_ me dear?"
"Oh let them go. It makes me tired, even to think of them. The thought
of the sound of their voices absolutely wears me out."
"I'm not laaazy--I'm tie-erd--I was _born_ tie-erd."
"I say girls, I want to ask you something."
"Well?"
"Why don't you two write?"
"_Write?_"
"Write what?"
"Us?"
"Just as we are, without one"--
"Flea--I know. No. _Don't_ be silly. I'm perfectly serious. I mean it.
Why don't you write things--both of you. I thought of it this morning."
Both girls sat thoughtful. It was evident that the idea was not
altogether unfamiliar to them.
"Someone kept telling me the other day I ought to write and it suddenly
struck me that if anyone ought it's you two. Why don't you Mag?"
"Why should I? Have I not already enough on my fair young shoulders?"
"_Jan_, why don't _you_?"
"I, my dear? For a most excellent reason."
"What reason?" demanded Miriam in a shaking voice. Her heart was
beating; she felt that a personal decision was going to be affected by
Jan's reason, if she could be got to express it. Jan did not reply
instantly and she found herself hoping that nothing more would be said
about writing, that she might be free to go on cherishing the idea,
alone and unbiassed.
"I do not write" said Jan slowly, "because I am perfectly convinced that
anything I might write would be mediocre."
Miriam's heart sank. If Jan, with all her German knowledge and her wit
and experience of two countries felt this, it was probably much truer of
herself. To think about it, to dwell upon the things Mr. Wilson had said
was simply vanity. He had said _anyone_ could learn to write. But he was
clever and ready to believe her clever in the same way, and ready to
take ideas from him. It was true she had material, "stuff" as he called
it, but she would not have known it, if she had not been told. She could
see it now, as he saw it, but if she wrote at his suggestion, a borrowed
suggestion, there would be something false in it, clever and false.
"Yes--I think Jan's right," said Mag cheerfully. "That is an excellent
reason and the true one."
It was true. But how could they speak so lightly and cheerfully about
writing ... the thing one had always wanted to do, that everyone
probably secretly wanted to do, and the girls could give up the idea
without a sigh. They were right. It would be wrong to write mediocre
stuff. Why was she feeling so miserable? Of course because neither of
them had suggested that she should write. They knew her better than Mr.
Wilson and it never occurred to them that she should write. That settled
it. But something moved despairingly in the void.
"Do you think it would be _wrong_ to write mediocre stuff?" she asked
huskily.
"It would be worse than _wrong_ child--it would be foolish; it wouldn't
sell."