1
"Regular field-day, eh Miss Hens'n? Look here----" Mr. Orly turned
towards the light coming in above the front door to exhibit his torn
waistcoat and broken watch-chain. "Came for me like a fury. They've got
double strength y'know when they're under. Ever seen anything like it?"
Miriam glanced incredulously at the portly frontage.
"Fancy breaking the _chain_" she said, sickened by the vision of small
white desperately fighting hands. He gathered up the hanging strings of
bright links, his powerful padded musicianly hands finding the edges of
the broken links and holding them adjusted with the discoloured ravaged
fingers of an artizan. "A good tug would do it," he said kindly. "A
chain's no stronger than the weakest link" he added with a note of
dreamy sadness, drawing a sharp sigh.
"Did you get the tooth out" clutched Miriam automatically making a
mental note of the remark that flashed through the world with a sad
light, a lamp brought into a hopeless sick-room ... keeping up her
attitude of response to show that she was accepting the apology for the
extremities of rage over the getting of the anæsthetist. Mrs. Orly
appearing in the hall at the moment, still flushed from the storm,
joined the group and outdid Miriam's admiring amazement, brilliant
smiles of relief garlanding her gentle outcry. "Hancock busy?" said Mr.
Orly in farewell as he turned and swung away to the den followed by Mrs.
Orly, her unseen face busy with an interrupted errand. He would not hear
that her voice was divided.... No one seemed to be aware of the divided
voices ... no men. Life went on and on, a great oblivious awfulness,
sliding over everything. Every moment things went that could never be
recovered ... on and on, and it was always too late, there was always
some new thing obliterating everything, something that looked new, but
always turned out to be the same as everything else, grinning with its
sameness in an awful blank where one tried to remember the killed things
... if only everyone would stop for a moment and let the thing that was
always hovering be there, let it settle and intensify. But the whole of
life was a conspiracy to prevent it. Was there something wrong in it? It
could not be a coincidence the way life _always_ did that ... she had
reached the little conservatory on the half landing, darkened with a
small forest of aspidistra. The dull dust-laden leaves identified
themselves with her life. What had become of her autumn of hard work
that was to lift her out of her personal affairs and lead somewhere?
Already the holiday freshness and vigour had left her; and nothing had
been done. Nothing was so strong as the desire that everything would
stop for a moment and allow her to remember ... wearily she mounted the
remaining stairs to Mr. Hancock's room. "I think" said a clear high
confident voice from the chair and stopped. Miriam waited with painful
eagerness while the patient rinsed her mouth; "that that gentleman
thinks himself a good deal cleverer than he is," she resumed sitting
back in the chair.
"I am afraid I'm not as familiar with his work as I ought to be, but I
can't say I've been very greatly impressed as far as I have gone."
"Don't go any further. There's nothing there to go for."
Who are you speaking of? How do you know? What have _you_ got that makes
you think he has nothing?--Miriam almost cried aloud. Could she not see,
could not both of them see that the quiet sheen of the green-painted
window-frame cast off their complacent speech? Did they not hear it
tinkle emptily back from the twined leaves and tendrils, the flowers and
butterflies painted on the window in front of them? The patient had
turned briskly to the spittoon again after her little speech. She would
have a remark ready when the brisk rinsing was over. There could be no
peace in her presence. Even when she was gagged there would be the sense
of her sending out little teasing thoughts and comments. They could
never leave anything alone ... oh it was _that_ woman ... the little
gold knot at the back of the cheerful little gold head; hair that curled
tightly about her head when she was a baby and that had grown long and
been pinned up, as the clever daughter of that man; getting to know all
he had said about women. If she believed it she must loathe her married
state and her children ... how _could_ she let life continue through
her? Perhaps it was the sense of her treachery that _gave_ her that
bright brisk amused manner. It was a way of carrying things off, that
maddening way of speaking of everything as if life were a jest at
everybody's expense ... all "clever" women seemed to have that, _never_
speaking what they thought or felt, but always things that sounded like
quotations from men; so that they always seemed to flatter or criticise
the men they were with according as they were as clever as some man they
knew, or less clever. _What_ was she like when she was alone and dropped
that bright _manner_.... "Have you made any New Year resolutions? I
don't make any. My friends think me godless, _I_ think _them_ lacking in
common sense" ... exactly like a man; taking up a fixed attitude ...
having a sort of prepared way of taking everything ... like the Wilsons
... anything else was 'unintelligent' or 'absurd' ... their impatience
meant something. Somehow all the other people were a reproach. If some
day everyone lived in the clear light of science, "waiting for the
pronouncements of science in all the affairs of life," waiting for the
pronouncements of those sensual dyspeptic men with families who thought
of women as existing only to produce more men ... admirably fitted by
Nature's inexorable laws for her biological rôle ... perhaps she agreed
or pretended to think it all a great lark ... the last vilest flattery
... she had only two children ... si la femme avait plus de sensibilité
elle ne retomberait pas si facilement dans la grossesse.... La femme,
c'est peu galant de le dire, est la femelle de l'homme. The Frenchman at
any rate _wanted_ to say something else. But why want to be gallant ...
and why not say man; it is not very graceful to say it, is the male of
woman. If women had been the recorders of things from the beginning it
would all have been the other way round ... Mary. Mary, the Jewess,
write something about Mary the Jewess; the Frenchman's Queen of Heaven.
Englishmen; the English were "the leading race." "England and America
together--the Anglo-Saxon peoples--could govern the destinies of the
world." _What_ world? ... millions and millions of child-births ...
colonial women would keep it all going ... and religious people ... and
if religion went on there would always be all the people who took the
Bible literally ... and if religion were not true then there was only
science. Either way was equally abominable ... for women.
2
The far end of the ward was bright sunlight ... there she was enthroned,
commanding the whole length of the ward, sitting upright, her head and
shoulders already conversational, her hands busy with objects on the bed
towards which her welcoming head was momentarily bent; like a hostess
moving chairs in a small drawing room ... chrysanthemums all down the
ward--massed on little tables ... a _parrot_ sidling and bobbing along
its perch, great big funny solemn French grey, fresh clean living French
grey pure in the sunlight, a pure canary coloured beak ... clean grey
and yellow ... in the sun ... a curious silent noise in the stillness of
the ward.
"I couldn't hear; I wasn't near enough."
"Better late than never, I _said_."
"D'you _know_ I thought you'd only been here a few days and to-day when
I looked at your letter I was simply _astounded_. You're sitting up."
"I should hope I am. They kept me on my back, half starving for three
weeks."
"You look very pink and well now."
"That's what Dr. Ashley Densley said. You ought to have seen me when I
came in. You see I'm on chicken now."
"And you feel better."
"Well,--you can't really tell how you are till you're up."
"When are you going to get up?"
"Tomorrow I hope dear. So you see you're just in time."
"Do you mean you are going away?"
"They turn you out as soon as you're strong enough to stand."
"But--_how_ can you get about?"
"Dr. Ashley Densley has arranged all that. I'm going to a convalescent
home."
"_Oh_, that's very nice."
"Poor Dr. Ashley Densley, he was dreadfully upset."
"You've had some letters to cheer you up." Miriam spoke impatiently, her
eyes rooted on the pale leisurely hands mechanically adjusting some
neatly arranged papers.
"_No_ de-er. My friends have all left me to look after my_self_ this
time but since I've been sitting up, I've been trying to get my affairs
in order."
"I thought of bringing you some flowers but there was not a single shop
between here and Wimpole Street."
"There's generally women selling them outside. But I'm glad you didn't;
I've too much sympathy with the poor nurses."
Miriam glanced fearfully about. There were so many beds with forms
seated and lying upon them ... but there seemed no illness or pain.
Quiet eyes met hers; everything seemed serene; there was no sound but
the strange silent noise of the sunlight and the flowers. Half way down
the ward stood a large three-fold screen covered with dark American
cloth.
"She's unconscious today," said Miss Dear; "she won't last through the
night."
"Do you mean to say there is someone _dying_ there?"
"_Yes de_-er."
"Do you mean to say they don't put them into a separate room to _die_?"
"They can't dear. They haven't got the _space_" flashed Miss Dear.
* * * * *
Death shut in with one lonely person. Brisk nurses putting up the
screen. Dying eyes cut off from all but those three dark surrounding
walls, with death waiting inside them. Miriam's eyes filled with tears.
There, just across the room, was the end. It had to come somewhere; just
that; on any summer's afternoon ... people did things; hands placed a
screen, people cleared you away.... It was a relief to realise that
there were hospitals to die in; worry and torture of mind could end
here. Perhaps it might be easier with people all round you than in a
little room. There were hospitals to be ill in and somewhere to die
neatly, however poor you were. It was a relief ... "she's always the
last to get up; still snoring when everybody's fussing and washing."
That would be me ... it lit up the hostel. Miss Dear liked that time of
fussing and washing in company with all the other cubicles fussing and
washing. To be very poor meant getting more and more social life with no
appearances to keep up, getting up each day with a holiday feeling of
one more day and the surprise of seeing everybody again; and the
certainty that if you died somebody would do something. Certainly it was
this knowledge that gave Miss Dear her peculiar strength. She was a
nurse and knew how everything was done. She knew that people, all kinds
of people were _people_ and would do things. When one was quite alone
one could not believe this. Besides no one _would_ do anything for me. I
don't want anyone to. I should hate the face of a nurse who put a screen
round my bed. I shall not die like that. I shall die in some other way,
out in the sun, with--yes--oh yes--Tah-dee, t'_dee_, t'dee--t'dee.
"It must be funny for a nurse to be in a hospital."
"It's a little too funny sometimes dear--you know too much about what
you're in for."
"Ilikeyourredjacket. Good _Heavens_!"
"That's nothing dear. He does that all the afternoon."
"How can you stand it?"
"It's Hobson's choice, madam."
The parrot uttered three successive squawks fuller and harsher and even
more shrill than the first.
"He's just tuning up; he always does in the afternoon just as everybody
is trying to get a little sleep."
"But I never _heard_ of such a thing! It's monstrous, in a hospital. Why
don't you all complain."
"'Sh dear; he belongs to Matron."
"Why doesn't she have him in her room? Shut _up_, polly."
"He'd be rather a roomful in a little room."
"Well--what is he _here_? It's the wickedest thing of its kind I've ever
heard of; some great fat healthy woman ... why don't the _doctors_ stop
it?"
"Perhaps they hardly notice it dear. There's such a bustle going on in
the morning when they all come round."
"But hang it all she's here to look after you, not to leave her luggage
all over the ward."
3
The ripe afternoon light ... even outside a hospital ... the strange
indistinguishable friend, mighty welcome, unutterable happiness. Oh
death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? The light has
no end. I know it and it knows me, no misunderstanding, no barrier. I
love you--people say things. But nothing that anybody says has any
meaning. Nothing that anybody says has any meaning. There is something
more than anything that anybody says, that comes, first, before they
speak ... vehicles travelling along through heaven; everybody in heaven
without knowing it; the sound the vehicles made all together, sounding
out through the universe ... life touches your heart like dew; that is
_true_ ... the edge of his greasy knowing selfish hair touches the
light; he brushes it; there is something in him that remembers. It is in
everybody; but they won't stop. How maddening. But they know. When
people die they must stop. Then they remember. Remorse may be complete;
until it is complete you cannot live. When it is complete something is
burned away ... ou-agh, flows out of you, burning, inky, acid, flows
right out ... purged ... though thy sins are as _scarlet_ they shall be
white as snow. _Then_ the light is there, nothing but the light, and new
memory, sweet and bright; but only when you have been killed by remorse.
* * * * *
This is what is meant by a purple twilight. Lamps alight, small round
lights, each in place, shedding no radiance, white day lingering on the
stone pillars of the great crescent, the park railings distinct, the
trees shrouded but looming very large and permanent, the air wide and
high and purple, darkness alight and warm. Far far away beyond the
length of two endless months is Christmas. This kind of day lived for
ever. It stood still. The whole year, funny little distant fussy thing
stood still in this sort of day. You could take it in your hand and look
at it. Nobody could touch this. People and books and all those things
that men had done, in the British Museum were a crackling noise,
outside.... Les yeux gris, vont au paradis. That was the two poplars
standing one each side of the little break in the railings, shooting up;
the space between them shaped by their shapes, leading somewhere. I
_must_ have been through there; it's the park. I don't remember. It
isn't. It's waiting. One day I will go through. Les yeux gris, vont au
paradis. Going along, along, the twilight hides your shabby clothes.
They are not shabby. They are clothes you go along in, funny; jolly.
Everything's here, any bit of anything, clear in your brain; you can
look at it. What a terrific thing a person is; bigger than anything. How
_funny_ it is to be a person. You can never not have been a person.
Bouleversement. It's a fait bouleversant. _Christ_-how-rummy. It's
enough. Du, Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück, ich habe genossen dass
irdische Glück; ich habe geleibt und gelebet.... Oh let the solid earth
not fail beneath my feet, until I am quite quite sure.... Hullo, old
Euston Road, beloved of my soul, my own country, my native heath.
There'll still be a glimmer on the table when I light the lamp ... how
shall I write it down, the _sound_ the little boy made as he carefully
carried the milk jug ... going along, trusted, _trusted_, you could see
it, you could see his mother. His legs came along, little loose feet,
looking after themselves, pottering, behind him. All his body was in the
hand carrying the milk jug. When he had done carrying the milk jug he
would run; running along the pavement amongst people, with cool round
eyes not looking at anything. Where the crowd prevented his running he
would jog up and down as he walked, until he could run again, bumping
solemnly up and down amongst the people; boy.
4
The turning of the key in the latch was lively with the vision of the
jumping boy. The flare of the match in the unlit hall lit up eternity.
The front door was open, eternity poured in and on up the stairs. At one
of those great staircase windows where the last of the twilight stood a
sudden light of morning would not be surprising. Of course a letter;
curly curious statements on the hall-stand.
That is mother-of-pearl, nacre; twilight nacre; crépuscule nacre; I must
wait until it is gone. It is a visitor; pearly freshness pouring in; but
if I wait I may feel different. With the blind up the lamp will be a
lamp in it; twilight outside, the lamp on the edge of it, making the
room gold, edged with twilight.
* * * * *
I _can't_ go to-night. It's all _here_; I _must_ stay here. Botheration.
It's Eve's fault. Eve would rather go out and see that girl than stay
here. Eve _likes_ getting tied up with people. I _won't_ get tied up; it
drives everything away. Now I've read the letter I must go. There'll be
afterwards when I get back. No one has any power over me. I shall be
coming back. I shall always be coming back.
5
Perhaps it had been Madame Tussaud's that had made this row of houses
generally invisible; perhaps their own awfulness. When she found herself
opposite them, Miriam recognised them at once. By day they were one high
long lifeless smoke-grimed façade fronted by gardens colourless with
grime, showing at its thickest on the leaves of an occasional laurel. It
had never occurred to her that the houses could be occupied. She had
seen them now and again as reflectors of the grime of the Metropolitan
Railway. Its smoke poured up over their faces as the smoke from a
kitchen fire pours over the back of a range. The sight of them brought
nothing to her mind but the inside of the Metropolitan Railway; the
feeling of one's skin prickling with grime the sense of one's
smoke-grimed clothes. There was nothing in that strip between Madame
Tussaud's and the turning into Baker Street but the sense of exposure to
grime ... a little low grimed wall surmounted by paintless sooty iron
railings. On the other side of the road a high brown wall, protecting
whatever was behind, took the grime in one thick covering, here it
spread over the exposed gardens and façades turning her eyes away.
To-night they looked almost as untenanted as she had been accustomed to
think them. Here and there on the black expanse a window showed a
blurred light. The house she sought appeared to be in total darkness.
The iron gate crumbled harshly against her gloves as she set her weight
against the rusty hinges. Gritty dust sounded under her feet along the
pathway and up the shallow steps leading to the unlit doorway.
6
Her flight up through the sickly sweet-smelling murk of the long
staircase ended in a little top back room brilliant with unglobed
gaslight. Miss Dear got her quickly into the room and stood smiling and
waiting for a moment for her to speak. Miriam stood nonplussed, catching
at the feelings that rushed through her and the thoughts that spoke in
her mind. Distracted by the picture of the calm tall, gold-topped figure
in the long grey skirt and the pale pink flannel dressing-jacket. Miss
Dear was smiling the smile of one who has a great secret to impart.
There was a saucepan or frying pan or something--with a handle--sticking
out.... "I'm glad you've brought a book" said Miss Dear. The room was
closing up and up ... the door was shut. Miriam's exasperation flew out.
She felt it fly out. What would Miss Dear do or say? "I 'oped you'd
come" she said in her softest most thoughtful tones. "I've been rushing
about and rushing about." She turned with her swift limber silent-footed
movement to the thing on the gas-ring. "Sit down dear" she said, as one
giving permission, and began rustling a paper packet. A haddock came
forth and the slender thoughtful fingers plucked and picked at it and
lifted it gingerly into the shallow steaming pan. Miriam's thoughts
whirled to her room, to the dark sky-domed streets, to the coming
morrow. They flew about all over her life. The cane-seated chair
thrilled her with a fresh sense of anger.
"I've been shopping and rushing about" said Miss Dear disengaging a
small crusty loaf from its paper bag. Miriam stared gloomily about and
waited.
"Do you like haddock, dear?"
"Oh--well--I don't know--yes I think I do."
The fish smelled very savoury. It was wonderful and astonishing to know
how to cook a real meal, in a tiny room; cheap ... the lovely little
loaf and the wholesome solid fish would cost less than a small egg and
roll and butter at an A.B.C. How did people find out how to do these
things?
"You know how to cook?"
"Haddock doesn't hardly need any cooking" said Miss Dear, shifting the
fish about by its tail.
7
"What is your book dear?"
"Oh--_Villette_."
"Is it a pretty book?"
She didn't want to know. She was saying something else.... How to
mention it? Why say anything about it? But no one had ever asked. No one
had known. This woman was the first. She of all people was causing the
first time of speaking of it.
"I bought it when I was fifteen," said Miriam vaguely, "and a
Byron--with some money I had; seven and six."
"Oh yes."
"I didn't care for the Byron; but it was a jolly edition; padded leather
with rounded corners and gilt edged leaves."
"_Oh._"
"I've been reading this thing ever since I came back from my holidays."
"It doesn't look very big."
Miriam's voice trembled. "I don't mean that. When I've finished it I
begin again."
"I wish you would read it to me."
Miriam recoiled. Anything would have done; Donovan or anything.... But
something had sprung into the room. She gazed at the calm profile, the
long slender figure, the clear grey and pink, the pink frill of the
jacket falling back from the soft fair hair turned cleanly up, the clean
fluffy curve of the skull, the serene line of the brow bent in
abstracted contemplation of the steaming pan. "I believe you'd like it"
she said brightly.
"I should love you to read to me when we've 'ad our supper."
"Oh--I've had my supper."
"A bit of haddock won't hurt you dear.... I'm afraid we shall have to be
very knockabout; I've got a knife and a fork but no plates at present.
It comes of living in a _box_," said Miss Dear pouring off the steaming
water into the slop-pail.
"I've had my supper--really. I'll read while you have yours."
"Well, don't sit out in the middle of the room dear."
"I'm all right" said Miriam impatiently, finding the beginning of the
first chapter. Her hands clung to the book. She had not made herself at
home as Eve would have done and talked. Now, those words would sound
aloud, in a room. Someone would hear and see. Miss Dear would not know
what it was. But she would hear and see something.
"It's by a woman called Charlotte Brontë" she said and began headlong
with the gaslight in her eyes.
The familiar words sounded chilly and poor. Everything in the room grew
very distinct. Before she had finished the chapter Miriam knew the
position of each piece of furniture. Miss Dear sat very still. Was she
listening patiently like a mother, or wife, thinking of the reader as
well as of what was read, and with her own thoughts running along
independently, interested now and again in some single thing in the
narrative, something that reminded her of some experience of her own or
some person she knew? No, there was something different. However little
she saw and heard, something was happening. They were looking and
hearing together ... did she feel anything of the grey ... grey ... grey
made up of all the colours there are; all the colours, seething into an
even grey ... she wondered as she read on almost by heart, at the rare
freedom of her thoughts, ranging about. The book was cold and unreal
compared to what it was when she read it alone. But something was
happening. Something was passing to and fro between them, behind the
text; a conversation between them that the text, the calm quiet grey
that was the outer layer of the tumult, brought into being. If they
should read on, the conversation would deepen. A glow ran through her at
the thought. She felt that in some way she was like a man reading to a
woman, but the reading did not separate them like a man's reading did.
She paused for a moment on the thought. A man's reading was not reading;
not a looking and a listening so that things came into the room. It was
always an assertion of himself. Men read in loud harsh unnatural voices,
in sentences, or with voices that were a commentary on the text, as if
they were telling you what to think ... they preferred reading to being
read to; they read as if they were the authors of the text. Nothing
could get through them but what they saw. They were like showmen....
"Go on, dear."
"My voice is getting tired. It must be all hours. I ought to have gone;
ages ago," said Miriam settling herself in the little chair with the
book standing opened on the floor at her side.
"The time does pass quickly, when it is pleasantly occupied."
A cigarette now would not be staying on. It would be like putting on
one's hat. Then the visit would be over; without having taken place. The
incident would have made no break in freedom. They had been both absent
from the room nearly all the time. Perhaps that was why husbands so
often took to reading to their wives, when they stayed at home at all;
to avoid being in the room listening to their condemning silences or to
their speech, speech with all the saucepan and comfort thoughts
simmering behind it.
"I haven't had much time to attend to study. When you've got to get your
living there's too much else to do."
Miriam glanced sharply. Had she wanted other things in the years of her
strange occupation? She had gone in for nursing sentimentally and now
she knew the other side; doing everything to time, careful carrying out
of the changing experiments of doctors. Her reputation and living
depended on that; their reputation and living depended on her. And she
had to go on, because it was her living.... Miss Dear was dispensing
little gestures with bent head held high and inturned eyes. She was
holding up the worth and dignity of her career. It had meant sacrifices
that left her mind enslaved. But all the same she thought excuses were
necessary. She resented being illiterate. She had a brain somewhere,
groping and starved. What could she do? It was too late. What a _shame_
... serene golden comeliness, slender feet and hands, strange ability
and knowledge of the world, and she knew, _knew_ there was something
that ought to be hers. Miriam thrilled with pity. The inturned eyes sent
out a challenging blue flash that expanded to a smile. Miriam recoiled
battling in the grip of the smile.
"I wish you'd come round earlier to-morrow dear, and have some supper
here."
"How long are you going to stay here?" ... to come again and read
further and find that strange concentration that made one see into
things. Did she really like it?
"Well dear you see I don't know. I must settle up my affairs a little. I
don't know where I am with one thing and another. I must leave it in the
hands of an 'igher power." She folded her hands and sat motionless with
inturned eyes, making the little movements with her lips that would lead
to further speech, a flashing forth of something....
"Well, I'll see" said Miriam getting up.
"I shall be looking for you."