1
The room is still in midnight darkness and full of the feeling of
midnight. There must have been a sudden sound—perhaps a wild squealing
of cats, too soon after I fell asleep. In a minute it will begin again;
a low yowling, just beneath the window, growing louder. Then a scuffle
and piercing shrieks. Silence; and more shrieks, at a comfortable
distance.
Savage night-life of cats. Welcome, heard far off making shrill streaks
of light in the darkness and suggesting daytime; all the friendly little
cats of London.
There is no sound. Not a breath. In spite of the wide open window the
air is stifling. And though there is no breeze, the reek of cats comes
up and in. All the summer it has come in. It is part of the air of the
room.
Yet the nights in here have been paradise. Cool sleep. Escape from the
night-sounds of the court. Escape from Miss Holland’s obliviousness of
the sounds of the court.
She is dull not to hear. Or strong? Dull strength in not hearing.
Noisy home-comings in the spring. Strident, hideous voices in a reeling
procession along the court and dying away in the distance. Drunken
monologues. Every sound echoing near and clear in the narrow court. And
she heard _nothing_. The cobbler, noisily taking down his shutters in
the early light had called her from sleep, not from feverish dreams. And
when the summer came and sounds filled the court till dawn, still she
heard nothing.
Why is all this saying itself over so freshly? At some moment every
night before I go down into sleep, it says itself. And now I have come
back from half-way to sleep it is all there is in my mind. Because I am
always trying to ignore it. Never thinking of it by day. And here it is,
belonging to me. Closer than anything that happened yesterday.
Hoarse-voiced lovers lingering on after the roystering has died down.
Men and women coming in quarrelling from the main street. Voices that
had been gentle for each other madly seeking lost gentleness in curses.
Curses and blows dying down to a panting stillness; out there, in the
dismal court.
Night-long, through open windows, thick, distorted voices in strife.
Shut in, maddened. Maddened confined man. Women despairingly mocking.
Worst of all, children’s voices sane and sweet in protest, shrilling up,
driven by fear, beyond the constriction of malformed throats, into
sweetness.
And she had heard _nothing_.
But this same thickness or dullness had kept her unaware of what it was
that in the end had turned this stuffy little back room into a refuge.
She did not know that there were sounds more intolerable than those
coming in from the street. The street sounds varied. Were sometimes
obliterated by wind and rain, and were at their worst only at the height
of the summer. And even at their worst they were life, fierce and
coarse, driving off sleep; but real, exciting. Only unendurable because
there was no hope during their lifetimes of any alteration in the
circumstances within which all these people were confined.
But those other sounds never varied. And spoke of death. That was the
worst, that they filled the room with the sense of death and the end.
They cast a long shadow backwards over the whole of life, mocking it.
Night after night they had to be anticipated and then lived through. One
by one. To come home late was not to escape them. They were all there
collected in the quiet room. Centring in the imagined spectacle of the
teeth waiting in their saucer for the morning.
To sleep early was to wake to the splutter of a match and see the glare
of candlelight come through the porous curtain. To hear with senses
sharpened by sleep, the leisurely preparations, the slow careful
sipping, the weary sighing, muttered prayers, the slow removal of the
many unlovely garments, the prolonged swishing and dripping of the
dismal sponge. All heralding and leading at last to the dreadful numb
rattle of vulcanite in the basin.
Yet the worst to bear was the discovery of the hatred these innocent
sounds could inspire. Still there unchanged, pure helpless hatred,
rising up as it had risen in childhood, against forced association with
unalterable personal habits....
But the shock of discovering that hatred anew, finding I have not moved
on, only been lulled into good humour by solitude, did not lessen the
first joy of the little back room. For a while, in spite of the ugly
things in it, and the never-ending reek streaming in through the window,
the joy remained. There was that night when I sat writing until morning.
Once more able to expand and think. And the air seemed as pure as if it
had come in over the country-side....
And something of the first joy has remained. A lower tone. But still
here. In the quietude. In the certainty of deep sleep and a happy mood
in the morning.
2
To-night, with Miss Holland away, there is a double stillness. Perhaps I
woke because she is away? For some _reason_, I woke. Something to say
itself. And all these thoughts, bringing back the joy of the little room
anew, are getting in the way. Idling along, going round and round. Me,
gossiping with myself.
And all the time something is waiting. Just at hand. Behind the things
in my mind. And now, with me more awake here came the remains of
yesterday. Crowding in to be looked at. Taking me back to stand and look
again to find out what remains; what really meant something to me, if I
could find out what it meant....
Strangeness of London on Bank Holiday. Its underside turned uppermost
and spread over the whole surface. Daily London grown invisible,
incredible. Never to come back.
I’m glad I’ve spent one Bank Holiday in London. Seen and heard its
reality. I’m glad it’s over. It’s like being separated from a lover. The
blank feeling, at the end of the afternoon, that it is forever.
The certainty that this wild tumult of people is the reality and the
rest a sham. I almost feared to look at them lest they should see me
wondering _why_ they all go back. Why they don’t know their power and
end the system that holds them. I fear them. And to-morrow, with my
lover back again, I shall feel more glad of that than sorry at the
thought of all these people who keep London what it is to me, gagged
again, and chained. Taken out of my sight. Toiling, out of my sight.
Mean. Fear of losing small comforts and accustomed dreams. Like a timid
elderly man of fixed habits settling comfortably in the autumn into his
usual chair at the club. The peacefully noisy streets. Kept clean.
Unconsciousness in the lulling song of the traffic.
Why should I wander in bliss while they toil in grime and darkness?
In the evening _Sayce_. Far away from the tumult; hidden, untroubled in
his green room. Sitting in the window-space, not giving a thought to the
rampant multitudes. Not minding, not giving a thought to them. Yet they
threatened him as he sat there. Made his joy small and absurd. Even
while it was balm to see his unconsidered detachment. To see him, poor
and outcast, a king for the evening, throned in his shadowy little
kingdom in the security of the London night. If he had given a thought
to the unleashed thousands, or to anyone watching, in some way his face
would have changed. But he was aware only of his poetry and the
sounding-board, the green-robed woman sitting low in the opposite chair.
Radiant and composed. But not only listening, not as he thought, just
listening. She, like him, was special, lived in his world, as an
appreciator. But besides hearing, seeing what he saw, feeling as he
felt, she saw him. Saw, far away within the form turned towards her
alone—declaiming from the book held sideways so that he could see her
face and make towards her delighted hand-swayings for the passages that
pleased him most—the halting, half man’s half woman’s adoration he gave
to the world he saw, his only reality....
And while she admired, she pitied.
And fifty yards away the toilers raged. The sound of them made the two
engrossed figures, softly lit by the high presiding candle, a little
absurd. Irrelevant and insecure. As if they might topple. Ought to
topple. Ought to listen and topple down....
* * * * *
Gerald and Harriett. Drawn, driven, washed about by tides they do not
see. Flung on rocks, washed off and flung forward. Their unaware faces.
Strength of unawareness; pushing on. That was my comfort—that they did
not know. And because they did not know, I would not. Clung only to the
things they saw and got away without realisation. Yet I realised it all.
Here it is, tormenting me.
There is no choice of what one shall see on waking by accident. Things
are there, set out clearly, stating their essence. What they meant when
I passed through them feeling only the movement, from behind closed
doors of _le sort_. Not thinking, because they were long prepared and
there was nothing to be done. But there is always when _le sort_ moves,
a sense of guilt. Of having brought things about; let things happen that
need not have happened. That is why, when they happen, one does not
think. The fear of being crippled by condemnation. Yet it is all written
in the book of consciousness.
Written indelibly. Because one can look to and fro, from one thing to
another and each remains in place, presenting always one face, like a
photograph.
Gerald and Harriett and Elspeth starting for Canada. Without good-bye.
None of us dared to say good-bye. Outside the gaslit compartment seemed
nothing but whirling darkness and cruel laughter. We jested without a
gap. Annoying Elspeth, who longed only for the train to start and the
relations who kept attention from centring on herself, to be gone. The
sound of her childish complaints was one with the laughter of the outer
darkness. She stood on the seat, a shining little figure in the harsh
gaslight, clutching the doll Sarah had found time, on that awful last
day, to dress. Beneath her unconscious feet was the machinery that would
carry her into exile.
There they were in the imprisoning carriage. And then gone. It was a
death. Something buried alive. I dared not feel. There was relief
afterwards in walking down the platform with Gerald’s sister, a stranger
just met, in knowing by the hard clutch of her hand that she, too, was
not daring to feel. We both knew we had witnessed a crime.
“Can you get home?”
“Yes.” Our voices were rough and shuddering.
“We’ll meet again.”
We unclasped our hands and parted abruptly, our faces distorted with not
weeping.
I came home and read the _Punch_ Gerald had left behind.
* * * * *
Michael’s telegram. Once more the presence of him in the early morning,
plunging along across the wide shadow of St. Pancras Church, his voice
at my side and again the discomfort of hearing unknown people lightly
and swiftly described as they appeared to him: delocalised, people in a
void. The things he said about her told me nothing but that she was
courting him and he had no idea of it. And I let him go in ignorance.
Pushed him into the arms of a stranger.
“Take flowers. One always takes flowers to people when they are ill. And
stay long enough to tell her all she wants to know about the congress.”
And I knew when he told me of the engagement that he was uneasy, neither
happy nor confident. And it was broken. Broken by him. And no one will
ever know why, and the obstinate little gentleman can’t see that it
casts a greater shadow on her than if he spoke out and that if he can’t
speak out he should invent. There she goes, back into her life with a
shadow, cast by Michael.
* * * * *
“Methodical culture, my dear young lady, yes. But with plenty of
revolution.”
Raymond wanted me to look at the programme and I told him crossly that I
wanted the music first and didn’t believe in methodical culture. That
was before I noticed the man in the cloak on my right.
“And now it’s over, by way of methodical culture, I’ll look.”
Raymond was genuine and the strange man was genuine. I was more pleased
by his manner than by the truth in either of them. I held both their
views. But wanted to impress both of them. Partly for the sake of the
truth. Men are either-or, all the time. But what I liked best was
peacocking out of the hall with both of them talking, one in each ear.
* * * * *
Strangeness of the seaside at Christmas time. Sunlit frost on the
morning grass. Green garden in full sunlight. Blaze of blue sea and blue
transparent sky. Blue and green and gold of summer, and warmth in the
tingling air.
All the things of an old-fashioned Christmas except religion. Deliberate
Christmassing without belief.
And she came to midday dinner in an old woollen tam held in place by a
grubby motor-veil tied under her chin.
“She gets _one_ good, annihilating dress. Devastates about in it. On
occasions. For the rest of the time she allows her things ... to
accumulate atmosphere.”
He thought her a bit of a charlatan. “No end of a rogue really. But when
she smiles that _brown_ smile—she’s a gipsy you know, a certain amount
of grime sets her off—one would do _anything_ for her.”
He’s always complaining that women don’t do anything, and when they do,
and make others do, he’s at once ready with some belittling explanation.
And I hated them both. Was surly behind politeness till she had gone.
When at once I forgot she was still in the world. _There’s_ stupidity.
Enough to exclude from the élite of all worlds.
Yet Selina Holland is afraid of losing me.
* * * * *
Selina Holland has no doubt that death will transfer her into the
presence of God. Yet she wants, for the time that remains to her, wide
circumstances, ease. Is willing, for the sake of the ease and space she
sees so clearly, to go to the ends of the earth. “_Wide_ sky; unstinted
air; _room_ to move” exactly in the voice she uses for “_Good_
Bermaline.”
A religious woman, living on prayer; blossoming, in middle age, into
splendid health on the power of prayer and teaspoonsful of Listerine.
Ready to give up her work amongst the poor and systematically seek
wealth and comfort.
Perhaps in the end she will actually go; to California. Make her way.
Master hotel-keeping as she has mastered hygiene and midwifery, and
confectionery. Leave London as coolly as years ago she came. And
contrive her transference just as she had contrived this holiday to
Edinburgh. Ingeniously. Horrible ingenuity of genteel poverty: Two coats
and skirts, one on the top of the other, and a little handbag. By the
midnight train.
She despises the world, yet uses it. Is using it now to accumulate
money. The being here with me is now altogether an affair of economy.
But if I were religious, it would not be. I should be the centre of her
personal life. She would try to get me to California. “Would you like to
come?” and then answering herself before I had time to speak: “No; you
are too cultured.” But that was long ago. Whilst there was still the
sense of being her great adventure. Before the trouble about the letter.
Before Miss Trevelyan came to tea. Badly dressed, with a cold in her
head. Tall, like Miss Holland. Two tall figures sitting upright in front
of the little fire, not lounging, sitting as if they were just going to
move. Both looking into the fire, Miss Holland with a pleased smile,
Miss Trevelyan stolidly, as she told without a break and almost without
questions from Miss Holland everything that had happened to her family
and friends during the year. She had Miss Holland’s indifference to
surroundings and her obliviousness of differences in the quality of
experience. Assumed that everything affected everyone in the same way.
“Miss Brown has married and gone to live in Birmingham.”
To hear them talk was to feel that one person was making remarks aloud;
talking to herself of shadows in a dream. I began to understand why Miss
Holland found me lively and charming.
And then, when they had formally said good-bye and Miss Trevelyan had
gone out into the rain in her cloak: “A perfectly happy year together.
We would both gladly repeat it.” I can see their year. A peaceful
association of two workers. Both disciplined and incessantly active.
Sharing disapprovals. Living as if in a siege; enclosed and
conspiratorial and happy. Prayers and puns and loyally exchanged
services. A life of perfect agreement untroubled by thought. And I am
jealous. Perhaps it was then, knowing that if she still desired a
renewal of life with Trevelyan, I was only second-best, that I really
moved away from her. Feeling inferior as well as superior to Miss
Trevelyan. Feeling hidden in them both something I cannot reach. That I
shall reach one day and meet them suddenly, when they have both passed
out of my life. Something they have given without knowing it.
It is since then that she has more and more effaced herself and no
longer courted every opportunity of standing, if only for a moment and
deprecatingly, at fresh angles of vision. Miss Trevelyan reinforced her.
But she still thinks there ought to be personal affection between us.
Doesn’t notice that I can’t call her Selina.
Failing with her leaves other successes shadowed.
* * * * *
To and fro, linked by their common quality of condemnation, went small
forgotten incidents of the year, covering it. There was nothing else.
The central things standing so brightly in her daytime consciousness
were nothing. Unfounded. Mirage of youth. Sunlit reflections on the sea
within whose depths she would presently be lost. Life was being spent in
watching the glint of sunlight upon waves, believing it her own sunlight
and permanent, while all the time it was light created by others, by
millions of lives in the past, by all the labour that now kept the world
going. And while she had watched the penalty had been piling up.
“I am left in a corner with death.” But it is I who am left, and not
dead. Only out of my own element in which, if I were alone, even death
would look quite different.
And far away below evidence and the clear speech of events, even now
something was answering. Suddenly like a blow bringing her sharply
awake, it came: refusal. Surging up and out over everything, clearing
the air, bringing a touch of coolness in the stifling air.
“Profanity. My everlasting profanity.”
She listened guiltily, glad of its imperiousness. Everything had been
thought out. There was nothing appearing behind it. There was in the
depths of her nothing but this single knowledge that she was going away
from this corner where she had been dying by inches. No consideration of
right or wrong. No feeling for persons; either Miss Holland or those
people downstairs, or those of her own she had been able to help by this
cheaper way of living.
She sighed in pure sadness as she faced this deeper self. For it was
clear now forever that to be good was not all in all to her. To endure,
suffer long, and be kind was not her aim. She had never been quite sure
whether it was not the hidden secret of all her decisions, born in her,
independent of thought. Now and then hearing commendation of endurances
that did not bring bitterness, she had been tempted to feel that there
must be, since she had endured much and not become bitter, in her own
character the things called sweetness and fortitude.
It had always been a strange moment. Two impressions side by side. The
certainty that conscious fortitude and sweetness could not persist in
their own right, and the uncertainty of approving of these things in
their unconscious simplicity; a dislike of being discovered in a state
of helpless merit.
Greater than the sadness of not being good, more thrilling, was the joy
of feeling ready to take responsibility for oneself.
I must create my life. Life is creation. Self and circumstances the raw
material. But so many lives I can’t create. And in going off to create
my own I must leave behind uncreated lives. Lives set in motionless
circumstances.
A voice sounded in the hot darkness. Just outside the window. Almost in
the room.
“I’ll do you _in_. If I get you I’ll do you in.” Sound of furniture
violently collided with. Perrance. Mrs. Perrance.
And I’m sitting up trembling. This, the beginning of this, was what woke
me a few moments ago. The end of their Bank Holiday.
Again a crash.
I’m full of horror. Too full of horror for pity. It is _my_ voice this
time that must sound that awful cry from a window.
With her feet on the floor and her hands feeling for garments, she
listened. Perrance was in monologue. Perhaps he was helpless. Probably
more drunk than Mrs. Perrance. Perhaps he would talk himself out. Poor
man. Poor woman.
This is life. However far I go away, this will go on. To go away is only
to get mental oblivion of it. Yet that is just what I am planning. Here
in the midst of it is the hope that my lucky star, the star that keeps
even my sympathies clear of being actively involved, will carry me
through this, too, without bringing it into my hands.
The voice of Perrance was growing high and thin. Lying down once more in
the darkness she could hear each word wailing out into the night. He was
chanting his loathing of the mystery of womanhood, cursing it, its
physical manifestations, cursing them to heaven in the vile den created
by his ignorance and helpless poverty. The den where lived the despair
of his isolated mind. Miriam felt its dailyness. Seemed to be within it
and to breathe its thick odours as she listened. And to rebel and curse
with him. In his soul was light. Something he felt his wife fought
against with her dark, silent ways. Why did he not murder her?
And the woman was there with her youth. Before her eyes, pictures of
Devonshire. In her mind wonder at the way things had slipped down and
down, to this; and fear, of this maddened stranger who desired only her
death.
Well, they adore each other, they adore each other, muttered Miriam as
quietness fell. It is terrifying to me because I’m not accustomed.
A shriek brought her to the middle of the floor feeling cool and strong.
“Stop! stop!” she shouted down out of the window. “I’m coming.” But her
voice was drowned in the tumult below. A blazing lamp crashed out into
the garden and then came the man’s voice feeble and sane:
“We mighta been killed. We mighta been before our maker, Maria.” And a
sobbing. Mrs. Perrance sobbing in serene despair. Without fear.
Away. Away....
Transcriber’s Notes
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved.
A few obvious typographical and formatting errors were silently
corrected. Further careful corrections, some after consulting other
editions, are listed here (before/after):
[p. 47]:
... drawing her head across a level that showed no ...
... drawing her ahead across a level that showed no ...
[p. 73]:
... le silence que les âmes se revêlent.” ...
... le silence que les âmes se révèlent.” ...
[p. 73]:
... The result of their having been, a force de préoccupations, ...
... The result of their having been, à force de préoccupations, ...
[p. 75]:
... and the low pillow fitted itself to her neck. Oh, ...
... and the low pillow fitted itself to her neck. “Oh, ...
[p. 75]:
... “music that softlier on the spirit lies——” ...
... music that softlier on the spirit lies——” ...
[p. 97]:
... But a night’s sleep play’s strange tricks. ...
... But a night’s sleep plays strange tricks. ...
[p. 127]:
... suggesting works ahead to be delivered ...
... suggesting words ahead to be delivered ...
[p. 142]:
... know its popular. There are lots of people who ...
... know it’s popular. There are lots of people who ...
[p. 142]:
... grin and snort and stand aside. Woman, he ...
... grin and snort and stand aside. Women, he ...
[p. 147]:
... what would set her definitely in the ...
... that would set her definitely in the ...
[p. 174]:
... fiancée, who has altered so, any tiresome things, ...
... fiancée, who has altered so many tiresome things, ...
[p. 207]:
... and through not actually looking about him, yet ...
... and though not actually looking about him, yet ...
[p. 211]:
... édition de luxe if the noisy elements in a street ...
... édition de luxe of the noisy elements in a street ...
[p. 222]:
... thought, just listening. She, like he, was ...
... thought, just listening. She, like him, was ...