She hurried through her Saturday morning’s work, trying to keep warm.
Perhaps it was nervousness and excitement about the afternoon’s
appointment that made her seem so cold. At the end of her hour’s
finicking work in Mr. Hancock’s empty fireless room, amongst cold
instruments and chilly bottles of chemicals she was cold through. There
was no one in the house but Mr. Leyton and the cousin; nothing to
support her against the coming ordeal. Mr. Leyton had had an empty
morning and spent it busily scrubbing and polishing instruments in his
warm little room; retiring towards lunch time to the den fire with a
newspaper. Shivering over her ledgers in the cold window space, she
bitterly resented her inability to go out and get warm in an A.B.C.
before meeting Mr. Shatov in the open. Impossible. It could not be
afforded; though this morning all the absolutely essential work could be
finished by one o’clock. It was altogether horrible. She was not sure
that she was even supposed to stay for lunch on Saturday. The day ended
at one o’clock; unless she were kept by some urgent business, there was
no excuse. To-day she must have finished everything before lunch to keep
her appointment. It could not be helped; and at least there was no
embarrassment in the presence of Mr. Leyton and the boy. She would even
lock up and put on her outdoor things and go down in them. It would not
occur to them that she need not have stayed to lunch .... her spirits
rose as she moved about putting things in the safe. She dressed in Mr.
Leyton’s warm room, washing her hands in very hot water, thawing,
getting warm .... the toque looked nice in his large mirror, quite
stylish, not so home made ..... worldly people always had lunch in their
outdoor things, even when they were staying in a house. Sarah said
people ought always to wear hats, especially with evening dress .....
picture hats, with evening dress, made pictures. It was true, they
would, when you thought of it. But Sarah had found it out for herself;
without opportunities; it came, out of her mind through her artistic
eyes. Miriam recalled smart middle-aged women at the Corries, appearing
at lunch in extraordinary large hats, when they had not been out; that
was the reason. It helped them to carry things off; made them talk well
and quickly, with the suggestion that they had just rushed in from
somewhere or were just going to rush off.... She surveyed herself once
more. It was true; lunch even with Mr. Leyton and the cousin would be
easier with the toque and her black coat open showing the white
neckerchief. It gave an impression of hurry and gaiety. She was quite
ready and looked about for entertainment for the remaining moments.
Actually; a book lying open on Mr. Leyton’s table, a military drill-book
of course. No. _What_ was this. Wondrous Woman, by J. B. G. Smithson.
Why so many similar English initials? Jim, Bill, George, a superfluity
of mannishness ... an attack of course; she scanned pages and headings;
chapter upon chapter of peevish facetiousness; the whole book written
deliberately against women. Her heart beat angrily. What was Mr. Leyton
doing with such a book? Where had it come from? She read swiftly,
grasping the argument. The usual sort of thing; worse, because it was
colloquial, rushing along in modern everyday language and in some
curious way not badly written....
Because some women had corns, feminine beauty was a myth; because the
world could do without Mrs. Hemans’ poetry, women should confine their
attention to puddings and babies. The infernal complacent cheek of it.
This was the kind of thing middle-class men read. Unable to criticise
it, they thought it witty and unanswerable. That was the worst of it.
Books of this sort were read without anyone there to point things
out.... It ought to be illegal to publish a book by a man without first
giving it to a woman to annotate. But what was the answer to men who
called women inferior because they had not invented or achieved in
science or art? On whose authority had men decided that science and art
were greater than anything else? The world could not go on until this
question had been answered. Until then, until it had been clearly
explained that men were always and always partly wrong in all their
ideas, life would be full of poison and secret bitterness... Men fight
about their philosophies and religions, there is no certainty in them;
but their contempt for women is flawless and unanimous. Even Emerson ...
positive and negative, north and south, male and female .... why
_negative_? Maeterlinck gets nearest in knowing that women can live,
hardly at all, with men, and wait, have always been waiting, for men to
come to life. How can men come to life; always fussing? How could the
man who wrote this book? Even if it were publicly burned and he were
made to apologise; he would still go about asquint .... lunch was going
to be late, just to-day, of course....
“I _say_.”
“_What_ do you say,” responded Miriam without looking up from her soup.
Mr. Leyton had a topic; she could keep it going with half her attention
and go restfully on, fortifying herself for the afternoon. She would
attack him about the book one day next week.....
“I _say_. What say you George?”
“Me? All right. I say, I say, I say, anything you like m’lord.”
Miriam looked up. Mr. Leyton was gazing and grinning.
“What’s the matter?” she snapped. His eyes were on her toque.
“_Where_ did you get that hat? Where _did_ you get that tile,” sang the
cousin absently, busy with his lunch.
“I made it if you _must_ know,” said Miriam. The cousin looked across;
large expressionless opinionless eyes.
“Going out in it?” What _was_ the matter; Mr. Leyton had never noticed
anything of hers before; either it was too awful, or really rather
effective and he unconsciously resented the fact of her going about in
an effect.
“Why not?”
“Well; looks rather like a musical comedy.”
“Cheek,” observed the cousin; “I do call that cool cheek; you’re balmy,
Leyton.” Mr. Leyton looked no more; that was his genuine brotherly
opinion; he thought the toque showy. It was the two wings, meeting in
the middle of the front; he meant pantomime; he did not know the wings
were cheap; he was shocked by the effectiveness; it _was_ effective;
cheap and hateful; but it suited her; pantomime effects were becoming.
Where was the objection?
“That’s all right. I’m glad. I like musical comedies.”
“Oh; if you’re satisfied. If you don’t mind looking risky.”
“I say, look here old man, steady on,” blushed the cousin.
“Well. What do you think yourself? Come on.”
“I think it’s jolly pretty.”
“_I_ think it’s jolly _fast_.”
Miriam was quite satisfied. The cousin’s opinion went for nothing; a boy
_would_ like pantomime effects. But the hat was neither ugly nor dowdy.
She would be able to tear down Oxford Street, no matter how ugly the
cold made her feel, looking _fast_. It would help her to carry off
meeting Mr. Shatov. _He_ would not notice hats. But the extraordinary,
rather touching thing was that Mr. Leyton should trouble at all. As if
she belonged to his world and he were in some way responsible.
“All right Mr. Leyton; it’s fast; whatever that may mean.”
“Old Leyton thinks hats ought to be slow.”
“Look here young fellow me lad, you teach your----”
“Great-grandfather not to be rude.”
“I fail to see the rudeness; I’ve merely expressed an opinion and I
believe Miss Henderson agrees with it.”
“Oh absolutely; ab-so_lute_-ly;” chanted Miriam scornfully. “Pray don’t
worry about the pace of my millinery Mr. Leyton.” That was quite good,
like a society novel....
“Well as I say if you’re _satisfied_.”
“Ah. That’s another matter. The next time I want a hat I’ll go to Bond
Street. So easy and simple.”
“Seen the paper to-day, George?”
“Paper? Noospaper? No time.”
“Seen the B. M. J.?”
“No sir.”
“And you an aspiring medico.”
“Should be an expiring medico,” yodelled George “if I read all those
effusions.”
“Well. More disclosures from Schenck.”
“Who’s he, when he’s at home?”
“You know. Schenck, man; _Schenk_. _You_ know.”
“Oh, sorry; all right. What’s he babbling about now?”
“Same thing; only more of it” giggled Mr. Leyton.
“If it’s half past I must go,” announced Miriam peremptorily. Two
watches came out.
“Then I advise you to hook it pretty sharp; it’s twenty to. You’d better
_read_ that article my son.” Miriam folded her serviette.
“Righto. Don’t worry.”
“_Why_ all this mystery? Good morning” said Miriam departing.
“Good morning” said the two voices. Mr. Leyton held the door open and
raised his voice to follow her up the stairs. “We’re discussing matters
somewhat beyond your ken.”
She could not stay. She could not have tackled him if she had stayed.
Anger was perhaps as funny as embarrassment. He would have been shocked
at the idea of her quietly considering the results of Schenck’s theory,
if it proved to be true; beyond her ken, indeed. It was hateful to have
to leave that; he _ought_ to be robbed of the one thing that he imagined
gave him an advantage in the presence of women. The women in his world
_would_ be embarrassed by the discussion of anything to do with the
reproduction of the race. _Why?_ Why were the women embarrassed and the
men always suggestive and facetious? If only the men could realise what
they admitted by their tone; what attitude towards life....
It was a bitter east-wind; the worst kind of day there was. All along
Oxford Street were women in furs, serene, with smooth warm faces
untroubled by the bleak black wind, perhaps even enjoying the cold.
Miriam struggled along, towards the cruel east, shivering, her face
shrivelled and frozen and burning, her brain congealed. If she were free
she could at least have a cup of coffee and get warm and go into the
Museum and be warm all the afternoon. To meet a stranger and have to be
active and sociable when she was at her worst. He would be wrapped in
the advantage of a fur-lined coat, or at least astrachan, and be able to
think and speak. He would wonder what was the matter; even his careless
foreign friendliness would not survive her frightful appearance. Yet
when a clock told her the appointed time was past, the torment of the
wind grew sharper in the thought that she might miss him. There was the
Holborn Library, as he had described. There was no one there, the
pavement was empty; he had given her up and gone; had perhaps never
come. She was relieved. She had done her best. Fate had saved her; her
afternoon was her own. But she must show herself, perhaps he might be
sheltering just inside the door. The doorway was empty. There was a man
leaning against the lamppost. She scanned him unwillingly, lest he
should turn into Mr. Shatov; but he produced only the details of the
impression she had taken before she glanced, a shabby, sinister-looking
Tottenham Court Road foreign loafer, in yellow boots, an overcoat of an
evil shade of brown and a waiter’s black-banded grey felt hat; but she
had paused and glanced and of course his eye was immediately upon her
and his lounging figure upright as she swept across the pavement to gain
the road and flee the displeasing contact. He almost ran into her;
trotting .... _ah_, I am glad .... it _was_ Mr. Shatov......
Looking like that, she was now to take him in amongst the British Museum
officials, and the readers she knew by sight and who knew her; introduce
him to the librarian. She scanned him as he eagerly talked, looking in
vain for the presence she had sat with in the drawing-room; the eyes had
come back; but that was all, and she could not forget how brooding,
almost evil, they had looked just now. They gleamed again with
intelligence; but their brilliant beauty shone from a face that looked
almost dingy, in the hard light; and yellowish under the frightful hat
peaked down, cutting off his forehead. He was gloveless and in his
hands, grimed with walking in the winter streets, he held a paper bag of
grapes which he ate as he talked, expelling the skins and flinging them
from him as he walked .... he looked just simply disreputable. Even his
voice had gone; raised against the traffic it was narrow and squeaky; a
disreputable foreigner, plunging carelessly along, piercing her ear with
mean broken English. She shouted vague replies in French; in yelled
French his voice was even more squeaky; but the foreign tongue gave a
refuge and a shape to their grouping; she became a sort of guide; anyone
could be that to any sort of foreigner.
In the cloak room were the usual ladies comfortably eating lunch from
sandwich tins and talking, talking, talking to the staff, moving
endlessly to and fro amongst the cages of hanging garments; answering
unconsciously. The mysterious everlasting work of the lunching ladies,
giving them the privilege of being all day at the museum, always in the
same seats, accepted and approved, seemed to make no mark upon them;
they bore themselves just as they would have done anywhere, the same
mysteriously unfailing flow of talk, the mysterious basis of agreement
with other women, the same enthusiastic discussions of the weather, the
cases in the newspapers, their way of doing this and that, their
opinions of places and people...... they seemed to have no sense of the
place they were in, and yet were so extraordinarily at home there, and
most wonderful of all, serene, with untroubled eyes and hands in the
thin stuffy heat of the cloak-room.
These thoughts came every time; the sense of Mr. Shatov, busy, she
hoped, washing his face and hands down beyond the stairs leading to the
unknown privacies at the other end of the corridor, could not banish
them; the bearing of these ladies was the most mysterious thing in the
museum. In this room she was always on her guard. It was jolly after
roaming slowly across the courtyard towards the unfailing unchanging
beauty of the great grey pillars, pigeon-garlanded, to wander through
the out-branching hall to where the lame commissionaire held open the
magic door, and fly along the passage and break in here, permitted, cold
and grimy and ruffled from the street, and emerge washed and hatless and
rested, to saunter down the corridor and see ahead, before becoming one
of them, the dim various forms sitting in little circles of soft yellow
light under the high mysterious dome. But in one unguarded moment in
this room, all these women would turn into acquaintances, and the spell
of the museum, springing forth perhaps for a while, intensified, would
disappear for ever. They would turn it into themselves, varying and
always in the end, in silence, the same. In solitude it remained
unvarying yet never twice alike, casting its large increasing charm upon
them as they moved distant and unknown.
In the lower cloak-room there was always escape; no sofas, no grouped
forms. To-day it stood bare, its long row of basins unoccupied. She
turned taps joyously; icy cold and steaming hot water rushing to cleanse
her basin from its revealing relics. They were all the same, and all the
soaps, save one she secured from a distant corner, sloppy. Surveying,
she felt with irritated repugnance, the quality, slap-dash and unaware,
of the interchange accompanying and matching the ablutions. A woman came
out of a lavatory and stood at her side, also swiftly restoring a basin.
It was _she_.... Miriam envied the basin..... Freely watching the
peaceful face in the mirror, she washed with an intense sense of
sheltering companionship. Far in behind the peaceful face serene
thoughts moved, not to and fro, but outward and forward from some sure
centre. Perfectly screened, unknowing and unknown, she went about within
the charmed world of her inheritance. It was difficult to imagine what
work she might be doing, always here, and always moving about as if
unseeing and unseen. Round about her serenity any kind of life could
group, leaving it, as the foggy grime and the dusty swelter of London
left her, unsullied and untouched. But for the present she was here, as
if she moved, emerging from a spacious many-windowed sunlight flooded
house whose happy days were in her quiet hands, in clear light about the
spaces of a wide garden. Yet she was aware of the world about her. It
was not a matter of life and death to her that she should be free to
wander here in solitude. For those women she would have a quiet unarmed
confronting manner, at their service, but holding them off without
discourtesy, passing on with cup unspilled. Nothing but music reached
her ears, everything she saw melted into a background of garden
sunlight.
She was out of sight, drying her hands, lighting up the corner of the
room where the towels hung.... If Mr. Shatov were on _her_ hands, she
would not be regretting that the afternoon could hold no solitary
wanderings. She made no calculations; for she could not be robbed. That
was strength. She was gone. Miriam finished her operations as though she
remained, drying her hands unhurriedly, standing where she had stood,
trying to survey the unforetellable afternoon with something of her
sustained tranquillity.
He would probably be plunging up and down the corridor with a growing
impatience..... There he was, unconcernedly waiting; his singing
determined child’s head reared hatless above the dreadful overcoat, the
clear light of the corridor upon its modest thought-moulded dignity ...
distinguished .... that was what he was. She felt unworthy, helplessly
inadequate, coming up the corridor to claim him. She was amongst the
people passing about him before he saw her; and she caught again the
look of profound reproachful brooding melancholy seated in his eyes, so
strangely contradicting his whole happy look of a child standing at a
party, gazing, everything pouring into its wide eyes; dancing and
singing within itself, unconscious of its motionless body.
“Here we are,” she said avertedly as he came eagerly forward.
“Let us quickly to this official” he urged in his indoor voice.
“All right; this way.” He hurried along at her side, beard forward, his
yellow boots plunging in long rapid strides beneath his voluminously
floating overcoat.
She resented the librarian’s official manner; the appearance of the
visitor, the little card he promptly produced, should have been enough.
Stud. Schtu_dent_, how much more expressive than _stew_dent .... to be
able to go about the world for years, so-and-so, stud ..... all doors
open and committed to nothing. She asserted herself by making
suggestions in French. Mr. Shatov responded politely, also in French,
and she felt the absurdity of her eager interference, holding him a
prisoner, hiding his studious command of English, in order to flourish
forth her knowledge. “We are not afraid even of Russian, if Mr. Shatov
prefers to use his own tongue,” said the librarian. Miriam flashed a
suspicious glance. He was smiling a self-conscious superior English
smile. It soured into embarrassment under her eye.
“It is no matter” said Mr. Shatov gently, “you shall immediately say me
the requisite formules which I shall at once write.” He stood beautiful,
the gentle unconsciously reproachful prey of English people unable to
resist their desire to be effective. They stood conquered, competing in
silent appreciation, as he bent writing his way into their forgotten
library.
“Now I am pairfectly happy” he said as he passed through the swing doors
of the reading-room. His head was up radiantly singing, he was rushing
trustfully forward, looking at nothing, carrying her on, close at his
side, till they reached the barrier of the outmost catalogue desk. He
pulled up facing her, with wide wild eyes looking at nothing. “We shall
at once take Anaka_ray_ninna in _English_” he shouted in an enthusiastic
whisper.
“We must choose seats before we get books,” murmured Miriam. There was
plenty to do and explain; the revelation of her meagre attack on the
riches of the library need not yet come. Were they to read together? Had
he reached his goal “midst all those literatures” to spend his time in
showing her Tolstoy? He followed her absently about as she filled in the
time while they waited for their book, by showing all she knew of the
routine of the library. “There shall of course” he said in a gruff
explanatory tone, arresting her near the entrance to the central
enclosure, “be a quite exhaustive system of catalogue, but I find there
is too much _formalities_; with all these little baskets.” “Ssh,” begged
Miriam leading him away. She drifted to the bookshelves, showing him the
one shelf she knew on the south side; there was a reader on a ladder at
the very shelf. “Carlyle’s French Revolution is up there” she said
confidently. “Na, na,” he growled reproachfully, “this is a most purely
unreliable fictional history, a tour de force from special individual
prejudices. You should take rather Thiers.” She piloted him across to
her shelf on the north side to point out the Revue des deux Mondes and
the North American Review. He paused, searching along the shelves. “_Ah.
Here_ is books.” He drew out and flung open a heavy beautifully printed
volume with wide margins on the pages; she would show him the clever
little folding arrangements to hold heavy volumes; “You do not know
these?” he demanded of her silence; “ah that is a great pity; it is the
complete discours de l’Académie française; you shall immediately read
them; ah, they are the most _perfect_ modèles.” She glanced at the open
page beginning “Messieurs! Le sentiment de fierté avec laquelle je
vous”; it was a voice; exactly like the voice of Mr. Shatov. He stood
with the heavy open volume, insisting in his dreadfully audible whisper
on wonderful French names prefixed to the titles of addresses,
fascinating subjects, one of them Mr. _Gladstone_! He looked French as
he spoke; a brilliantly polished Frenchman. Why had he not gone to
France? He was German too, with a German education and yet with some
impatiently unexplained understanding and contempt--for Germany. Why was
he drawn towards England? That was the mysterious thing. What was the
secret of the reverence in this man towards England and the English? He
was not an anarchist. There he stood, Russian, come from all that
far-away beauty, with German and French culture in his mind, longingly
to England, coming to Tansley Street; unconsciously bringing her her
share in his longed-for arrival and its fulfilments. She watched as he
talked, marvelling at the undeserved wealth offered to her in the little
figure discoursing so eagerly over the cumbrous volume, and at this
moment the strange Russian book was probably waiting for them.
It was a big thick book. Miriam sat down before it. The lights had come
on. The book lay in a pool of sharp yellow light; Tolstoy, surrounded by
a waiting gloom; the secret of Tolstoy standing at her side, rapidly
taking off his overcoat. He drew up the chair from the next place and
sat close, flattening out the book at the first chapter and beginning to
read at once, bent low over the book. She bent too, stretching her hands
out beyond her knees to make herself narrow, and fastening on the title.
Her anticipations fell dead. It was the name of a woman...... Anna; of
all names. Karenine. The story of a woman told by a man with a man’s
ideas about people. But Anna Karenine was not what Tolstoy had written.
Behind the ugly feebleness of the substituted word was something quite
different, strong and beautiful; a whole legend in itself. Why had the
translator altered the surname? Anna Kar_ay_ninna was a line of Russian
poetry. His word was nothing, neither English nor French, and sounded
like a face-cream. She scanned sceptically up and down the pages of
English words, chilled by the fear of detecting the trail of the
translator.
Mr. Shatov read steadily, breathing his enthusiasm in gusts, pausing as
each fresh name appeared, to pronounce it in Russian and to explain the
three names belonging to each character. They were all expressive; easy
to remember because of their expressiveness. The three-fold name, giving
each character three faces, each turned towards a different part of his
world, was fascinating..... Conversation began almost at once and kept
breaking out; strange abrupt conversation different to any she had read
elsewhere.... What was it? She wanted to hold the pages and find out;
but Mr. Shatov read on and on, steadily turning the leaves. She skipped,
fastening upon the patches of dialogue on her side of the open page,
reading them backwards and forwards, glancing at the solid intervening
portions to snatch an idea of the background. What was the mysterious
difference? Why did she feel she could hear the tone of the voices and
the pauses between the talk; the curious feeling of things moving and
changing in the air that is always there in all conversations? Her
excitement grew, drawing her upright to stare her question into the
gloom beyond the lamp.
“Well?” demanded Mr. Shatov.
“It’s fascinating.”
“What have I told you? That is Tols_toy_,” he said proudly; “but this is
a most vile translation. All these _nu_ and _da_. Why not simply _well_
and _yes_; and boszhe moi is quite simply, my God. But this preliminary
part is not so interesting as later. There is in this book the
self-history of Tolstoy. He is Layvin, and Kitty is the Countess
Tolstoy. That is all most wonderful. When we see her in the early
morning; and the picture of this wedding. There is only Tolstoy for
those marvellous touches. I shall show you.”
“Why does he call it Anna Karaynina” asked Miriam anxiously.
“Certainly. It is a most masterly study of a certain type of woman.”
The fascination of the book still flickered brightly; but far away,
retreated into the lonely incommunicable distance of her mind. It seemed
always to be useless and dangerous to talk about books. They were always
about something else..... If she had not asked she would have read the
book without finding out it was a masterly study of Anna. Why must a
book be a masterly study of some single thing? Everybody wisely raving
about it.... But if one never found out what a book was a masterly study
of, it meant being ignorant of things everyone knew and agreed about; a
kind of hopeless personal ignorance and unintelligence; reading whole
books through and through, and only finding out what they were about by
accident, when people happened to talk about them, and even then,
reading them again, and finding principally quite other things, which
stayed, after one had forgotten what people had explained.
“I see” she said intelligently. The readers on either side were glancing
angrily. Miriam guiltily recalled her own anger with people who sat
together murmuring and hissing. But it felt so different when you were
one of the people. The next time she felt angry in this way she would
realise how interested the talkers were, and try to forget them. Still
it was wrong. “We must not talk” she breathed. He glanced about and
returned to his shuffling of pages.
“Heere it is” he exclaimed in a guttural whisper far more distinct than
his mutterings; “I shall show you this wonderful passage.”
“Ssh, yes,” murmured Miriam firmly, peering at the indicated phrase. The
large warm gloom of the library, with its green-capped pools of happy
light, was stricken into desolation as she read. She swung back to her
world of English books and glanced for comfort at the forms of
Englishmen seated in various attitudes of reading about the far edges of
her circle of vision. But the passage was inexorably there; poison
dropping from the book into the world; foreign poison, but translated
and therefore read by at least some Englishmen. The sense of being in
arms against an onslaught already achieved, filled her with despair. The
enemy was far away, inaccessibly gone forward spreading more poison. She
turned furiously on Mr. Shatov. She could not disprove the lie; but at
least he should not sit there near her, holding it unconcerned.
“I can’t see anything wonderful. It isn’t true,” she said.
“Ah that is very English” beamed Mr. Shatov.
“It is. _Any_ English person would know that it is not true.”
Mr. Shatov gurgled his laughter. “Ah that is very naïve.”
“It may be. That doesn’t make any difference.”
“It makes the difference that you are inexperienced,” he growled gently.
That was true. She had no experience. She only _knew_ it was not true.
Perhaps it was true. Then life grew bleak again..... It was not true.
But it was true for men. Skimmed off the surface, which was all they
could see, and set up neatly in forcible quotable words. The rest could
not be shown in these clever, neat phrases.
“But I find the air here is most-evil. Let us rather go have tea.”
Astonishment melted into her pride in leading him down through the great
hall and along the beloved corridor of her solitary pacings, out into
the gigantic granite smile of the Egyptian gallery, to the always sudden
door of the refreshment room.
“If I got locked into the Museum at night I should stay in this
gallery,” she said unable to bear companionship in her sanctuary without
extorting some recognition of its never-failing quality.
“It is certainly impressive, in a crude way,” admitted Mr. Shatov.
“They are so absolutely peaceful” said Miriam struggling on behalf of
her friends with her fury at this extraordinary judgment. It had not
before occurred to her that they were peaceful and that was not enough.
She gazed down the vista to discover the nature of the spell they cast.
“You can see them in clear light in the desert” she exclaimed in a
moment. The charm grew as she spoke. She looked forward to being alone
with them again in the light of this discovery. The chill of Mr.
Shatov’s indifferent response to her explanation was buried in her
private acknowledgment that it was he who had forced her to discover
something of the reason of her enchantment. He forced her to think. She
reflected that solitude was too easy. It was necessary for certainties.
Nothing could be known except in solitude. But the struggle to
communicate certainties gave them new life; even if the explanation were
only a small piece of the truth..... “Excuse me I leave you a moment” he
said, turning off through the maze of little figures near the door. The
extraordinary new thing was that she _could_ think, untroubled, in his
company. She gratefully blessed his disappearing form.
“I’m going to have toast and jam” she announced expansively when the
waitress appeared.
“Bring me just a large pot of tea and some kind of sweetmeat” said Mr.
Shatov reproachfully.
“Pastries” murmured Miriam.
“What is _pastries_” he asked mournfully.
“Pâtisseries” beamed Miriam.
“Ah no” he explained patiently, “it is not that at all; I will have
simply some small things in sugar.”
“No pastries; cake,” said the waitress, watching herself in the mirror.
“Ach bring me just _tea_,” bellowed Mr. Shatov.
Several people looked round, but he did not appear to notice them and
sat hunched, his overcoat coming up behind beyond his collar, his arms
thrust out over the table, ending in grubby clasped hands. In a moment
he was talking. Miriam sat taking in the change in the feeling of the
familiar place under the influence of his unconcerned presence. There
were the usual strangers strayed in from the galleries, little parties,
sitting exposed at the central tables near the door; not quite at home,
their eyes still filled with the puzzled preoccupation with which they
had wandered and gazed, the relief of their customary conversation held
back until they should have paid, out of their weary bewilderment some
tribute of suitable comment; looking about the room, watching in
separate uneasiness for material to carry them past the insoluble
problem. They were unchanged. But the readers stood out anew; the world
they had made for her was broken up. Those who came in twos and sat at
the more sequestered tables, maddening her with endless conversations at
cross purposes from unconsidered assumptions, were defeated. Their
voices were covered by Mr. Shatov’s fluent monologue, and though her own
voice, sounding startlingly in the room, seemed at once only an
exclamatory unpractised reproduction of these accustomed voices,
changing already their aspect and making her judgment of them rock
insecurely in her mind, it was threaded into his unconcerned reality and
would presently be real.
But the solitary readers, sitting in corners over books, or perched,
thoughtfully munching and sipping, with their backs to the room, on the
high stools at the refreshment counter, and presently getting down to
escape untouched and free, through the swing door, their unlifted eyes
recovering already, through its long glass panels, the living dream of
the hugely moving galleries, reproached her for her lost state.
Mr. Shatov’s dreaming face woke to prevent her adding milk to his tea,
and settled again, dwelling with his far off theme. She began listening
in detail to screen her base interest in her extravagant fare. “It is a
remarkable fact” he was saying and she looked up, astonished at the
sudden indistinctness of his voice. His eyes met hers severely, above
the rim of his cup, “but of almost universal application,” he proceeded
thickly, and paused to produce between his lips a saturated lump of
sugar. She stared, horrified. Very gravely, unattained by her disgust,
he drew in his tea in neat noiseless sips till the sugar disappeared
.... when he deftly extracted another lump from the basin and went on
with his story.
The series of lumps, passing one by one without accident through their
shocking task, softened in some remarkable way the history of
Tourgainyeff and Madame Viardot. The protest that struggled in her to
rise and express itself was held in check by his peculiar serenity. The
frequent filling of his cup and the selection of his long series of
lumps brought no break in his concentration.... Above the propped elbows
and the cup held always at the level of his lips, his talking face was
turned to hers. Expressions moved untroubled through his eyes.
When they left the tea-room he plunged rapidly along as if unaware of
his surroundings. The whole Museum was there, unexplored, and this was
his first visit. He assented indifferently to her suggestion that they
should just look at the Elgin Marbles, and stood unmoved before the
groups, presently saying with some impatience that here, too, the air
was oppressive and he would like to go into the freshness.
Out in the street he walked quickly along brumming to himself. She felt
they had been long acquainted; the afternoon had abolished
embarrassments, but he was a stranger. She had nothing to say to him;
perhaps there would be no more communications. She looked forward with
uneasiness to the evening’s lesson. They were both tired; it would be an
irretrievable failure to try to extend their afternoon’s achievement;
and she would have to pass the intervening time alone with her growing
incapability, while he recovered his tone at the dinner-table. The
thought of him there, socially alive while she froze in her room, was
intolerable. She too would go in to dinner ... their present association
was too painful to part upon. She bent their steps cheerfully in the
direction of home. Excuse me, he said suddenly, I will take here fruits,
and he disappeared into a greengrocer’s shop emerging presently munching
from an open bag of grapes.......
* * * * *
Supposing books had no names ..... Villette had meant nothing for years;
a magic name until somebody said it was Brussels ....... she was
impressed by St. Paul’s dome in the morning because it was St. Paul’s.
That spoilt the part about the journey; waking you up with a start like
the end of a dream. St. Paul’s sticking out through the text; someone
suddenly introduced to you at a gathering, standing in front of you,
blocking out the general sense of things; until you began to dance, when
it came back until you stopped, when the person became a person again,
with a name, and special things had to be said. St. Paul’s could not be
got into the general sense of the journey; it was a quotation from
another world; a smaller world than Lucy Snowe and her journey.
Yet it _would_ be wonderful to wake up at a little inn in the city and
suddenly see St. Paul’s for the first time. Perhaps it was one of those
journey moments of suddenly seeing something celebrated, and missing the
impression through fear of not being impressed enough; and trying to
impress your impression by telling of the thing by name ...... everybody
had that difficulty. The vague shimmer of gas-lit people round the table
all felt things without being able to express them ...... she glowed
towards the assembled group; towards everyone in the world. For a moment
she looked about in detail, wanting to communicate her thought and share
a moment of general agreement. Everybody was talking, looking spruce and
neat and finished, in the transforming gaslight. Each one something that
would never be expressed, all thinking they were expressing things and
not knowing the lonely look visible behind the eyes they turned upon the
world, of their actual selves as they were when they were alone. But
they were all saying things they wanted to say ....... they _did_
express themselves, in relation to each other; they grew in knowledge of
each other, in approval or disapproval, tested each other and knew,
behind their strange immovable positive conversations about things that
were all matters of opinion perpetually shifting, in a marvellous way
each others’ characters. They also knew after the first pleasant moment
of meeting eyes and sounding voices when one tried to talk in their way,
that one was playing them false. The glow could live for awhile when one
had not met them for some time; but before the end of the meeting one
was again condemned, living in heavy silence, whilst one’s mind whirled
with the sense of their clear visions and the tantalising inclination to
take, for life, the mould of one or other point of view.
How _obliviously_ they all talked on. She thanked them. With their talk
flowing across the table, giving the central golden glow of light a
feeling of permanence, her failures in life, strident about the room,
were visible and audible only to herself. If she could remain silent,
they would die down, and the stream of her unworthy life would merge,
before he appeared, into a semblance of oneness with these other
lives....... She caught the dark Russian eyes of Mr. Rodkin sitting
opposite. He smiled through his glasses, his dry, sweet, large-eyed
smile, his head turned listening to his neighbour. She beamed her
response, relieved, as if they had had a long satisfactory conversation.
He would have understood ... in spite of his commercial city-life. He
accepted everybody. He was the central kindliness of the room. No wonder
Mrs. Bailey was so fond of him and leant upon his presence, in spite of
his yawning hatred of Sundays. He was illuminated; she had his secret at
last given her by Mr. Shatov. _Russian_ kindliness...... Russians
understand silence and are not afraid of it? Kindly silence comes out of
their speech, and lies behind it, leaving things the same whatever has
been said? This would be truer of him than of Mr. Shatov ....... moy
word. Shatov at the station with his father. You never saw such a thing.
Talking to the old boy as if he was a porter; snapping his head off
whenever he spoke...... She pulled up sharply. If she thought of him,
the fact that she was only passing the time would become visible ......
what was that just now, opening; about silence?
* * * * *
There is no need to go out into the world. Everything is there without
anything; the world is added. And always whatever happens there is
everything to return to. The pattern round her plate was life, alive,
everything ...... what was that idea I used to have? Enough for one
person in the world would be enough for everybody ...... how did it go?
It was so clear, while the voice corneted out spoiling the sunshine,
...... “oh yes we were _very_ jolly; very jolly party, talking all the
time. Miss Hood’s song sounding out at intervals, _Halcyon_ weather.”
...... “Do you ever feel how much there is everywhere?” “Nachah’s
abundance?” “No. I don’t mean that. I mean that nearly everything is
wasted. Not things, like soap; but the meanings of things. If there is
enough for one person there is enough for everybody.” “You mean that one
happy man makes the whole universe glad?” “He does. But I don’t mean
that. I mean--everything is wasted all the time, while people are
looking about and arranging for more things.” “You would like to
simplify life? You feel man needs but little here below?” “He doesn’t
need _anything_. People go on from everything as if it were nothing and
never seem to know there is anything.” “But isn’t it just the stimulus
of his needs that keeps him going?” “Why need he keep going? that is
just my point.” “Je ne vois pas la nécessité, you would say with
Voltaire?” “The necessity of living? Then why didn’t he hang himself.”
“I suppose because he taught in song what he learned in sorrow” ......
How many people knew that Maeterlinck had explained in words what life
was like inside? Seek ye first the Kingdom .... the test is if people
want you at their death-beds. None of these people would want me at
their death-beds. Yet they all ask deliberate questions, shattering the
universe. Maeterlinck would call them innocent questions about the
weather and the crops, behind which they gently greet each other.......
Women always know their questions are insincere, a treachery towards
their silent knowledge......
He must read the chapter on silence and then the piece about the old man
by his lamp. That would make everything clear ..... where was he all
this time? Dinner was nearly over. Perhaps he was going out. She
contemplated her blank evening. His voice sounded in the hall. How
inconvenient for people with very long eyelashes to have to wear glasses
she thought, engrossing herself in a sudden vision of her neighbour’s
profile. He was coming through the hall from seeing somebody out of the
front door. If she could be talking to someone she would feel less huge.
She tried to catch Mr. Rodkin’s eye to ask him if he had read Tolstoy.
Mr. Shatov had come in, bowing his deep-voiced greeting, and begun
talking to Mr. Rodkin before he was in his chair, as if they were in the
middle of a conversation. Mr. Rodkin answered at once without looking at
him, and they went on in abrupt sentences one against the other, the
sentences growing longer as they talked.
Sissie did not hear the remark about the weather because she too was
attending to the rapid Russian sentences. She was engrossed in them, her
pale blue eyes speculative and serene. Miriam watched in swift glances.
The brilliant colour that Mr. Shatov had seemed to distribute when he
sat down, had shrunk to himself. He sat there warm and rich, with easy
movements and easily moving thoughts, his mind far away, his features
animated under his raised carelessly singing eye-brows, by his irascible
comments on Mr. Rodkin’s rapped-out statements. The room grew cold,
every object stiff with lifeless memory, as they sat talking Mr.
Rodkin’s business. Everyone sitting round the table was clean-cut, eaten
into by the raw edge of the winter night, gathered for a moment in the
passing gas-lit warmth, to separate presently and face an everlastingly
renewed nothingness...... The charm of the Russian words, the
fascination of grasping the gist of the theme broke in vain against the
prevailing chill. If the two should turn away from each other and bend
their glowing faces, their strangely secure foreign independence towards
the general bleakness, its dreadful qualities would swell to a more
active torment, all meanings lost in empty voices uttering words that no
one would watch or explain. There was a lull. Their conversation was
changing. Mr. Shatov had sat back in his chair with a Russian word that
hung in the air and spread music. His brows had come down and he was
glancing thoughtfully about the table. She met Mr. Rodkin’s eyes and
smiled and turned again to Sissie with her remark about the weather.
Sissie’s face came round surprised. She disagreed, making a perfect
comment on the change that left Miriam marvelling at her steady ease of
mind. She agreed in an enthusiastic paraphrase, her mind busy on the
hidden source of her random emphasis. It could rest, everything could
rest for awhile, for a little time to come, for some weeks perhaps.....
But he would bring all those books; with special meanings in them that
every one seemed to understand and agree about; real at the beginning
and then going off into things and never coming back. Why could she not
understand them? Finding things without following the story was like
being interested in a lesson without mastering what you were supposed to
master and not knowing anything about it afterwards that you could pass
on or explain. Yet there _was_ something, or why did school which had
left no knowledge and no facts seem so alive? Why did everything seem
alive in a way it was impossible to explain? Perhaps part of the wrong
of being a lazy idiot was being happy in a way no one else seemed to be
happy.
If one was an idiot, people like Mr. Shatov would not.... He looked
straight across, a swift observant glance. She turned once more towards
Sissie making herself smilingly one with the conversation that was going
on between her and her further neighbour and listened eagerly across the
table; “_Gracieuse_” Mr. Shatov was saying at the end of a sentence,
dropping from objection to restatement. Mr. Rodkin had asked him if he
did not think her pretty. That would be his word. He would have no other
word. Mr. Shatov had looked considering the matter for the first time.
“_Gracieuse._” Surely that was the very last thing she could be. But he
thought it.
Grace was a quality, not an appearance. Strong-minded and plain. That,
she knew, was the secret verdict of women; or, doesn’t know how to make
the best of herself. She pondered, seeking in vain for any source of
grace. Grace was delicacy, refinement, little willowy cattish movements
of the head, the inner mind fixed always on the proprieties, making all
the improprieties visible, ....... streaming from the back-view of their
unconscious hair .....
A gracieuse effect means always deliberate _behaving_. Madame de
Something. But people who keep it up can never let thoughts take their
course. They must behave to their thoughts as they behave to people.
When they are by themselves they can only go on mincing quietly, waiting
for their next public appearance. When they are not talking they wait in
an attitude, as if they were talking; ready to behave. Always on guard.
Perhaps that was what Mr. Wilson meant when he said it was the business
of women to be the custodians of manners...... Their “sense of good
form, and their critical and selective faculties.” Then he had no right
to be contemptuous of them..... “Donald Braden ... _lying_ across the
dinner table ... a drink sodden hull, _swearing_ that he would never
again go to a dinner-party where there were no ladies” ...... “Good
_talk_ and particularly good _stories_ are not expected of women, at
dinner tables. It’s their business to _steer_ the conversation and head
it off if it gets out of bounds.” .... To simper and watch, while the
men were free to be themselves, and then step in if they went beyond
bounds. In other words to head the men off if they talked “improperly”;
thus showing their knowledge of improprieties .... “tactfully” ignoring
them and leading on to something else with a gracious pose. Those were
the moments when the improprieties streamed from their hair......
Somebody saying ssh, superior people talking together, modern
friends-in-council, a week end in a beautiful house, _subjects_ on the
menu, are you high church or low church, the gleam of a woman’s body
through water. “Ssh.” _Why?_.......
But her impression to himself was good. A _French_ impression; that was
the extraordinary thing. Without any consideration that was the
impression she had made. Perhaps everyone had a sort of style, and
people who liked you could see it. The style of one’s family would show,
to strangers as an unknown strange outside effect. Everyone had an
effect.... She had an _effect_, a stamp, independent of anything she
thought or felt. It ought to give one confidence. Because there would
certainly be some people who would not dislike it. But perhaps he had
not observed her at all until that moment and had been misled by her
assumption of animation.
If I tried to be gracious, I could never keep it up, because I always
forget that I am visible. She called in her eyes, which must have been
staring all the time blankly about the table, so many impressions had
she gathered of the various groups, animated now in their unconscious
relief at the approaching end of the long sitting. Here again was one of
those moments of being conscious of the strange fact of her incurable
illusion, and realising its effects in the past and the effects it must
always have if she did not get away from it. Nearly always she must
appear both imbecile and rude, staring, probably with her mouth half
open, lost. Well-brought-up children were _trained_ out of it. No one
had dared to try and train her for long. They had been frightened, or
offended, by her scorn of their brisk cheerful pose of polite interest
in the _surface_ of everything that was said. It was not worth doing.
Polite society was not worth having. Every time one tried for awhile,
holding oneself in, thinking of oneself sitting there as others were
sitting, consciousness came to an end. It meant having opinions. Taking
sides. It presently narrowed life down to a restive discomfort......
Jan went about the streets thinking she was invisible ... “and then
quite suddenly I saw myself in a shop mirror. _My dear._ I got straight
into an omnibus and went home. I could not stand the sight of my hips.”
But with people, in a room, she never forgot she was there.
The sight of Mr. Shatov waiting for her under the gas in the
drawing-room gathered all her thoughts together, struggling for
simultaneous expression. She came slowly across the room, with eyes
downcast to avoid the dimly-lit corner where he stood, and sought
rapidly amongst the competing threads of thought for some fragment that
could be shaped into speech before he should make the communication she
had seen waiting in his face. The sympathetic form must listen and make
some understanding response. She felt herself stiffening in angry
refusal to face the banishment of her tangled mass of thought by some
calmly oblivious statement, beginning nowhere and leading them on into
baseless discussion, impeded on her part by the pain of unstated
vanishing things. They began speaking together and he halted before her
formal harsh-voiced words.
“There is always a bad light on Saturday evenings because nearly every
one goes out” she said and looked her demand for his recognition of the
undischarged burden of her mind impatiently about the room.
“I had not observed this” he said gently, “but now I see the light is
indeed very bad.” She watched him as he spoke, waiting, counting each
syllable. He paused, gravely consulting her face; she made no effort to
withhold the wave of anger flowing out over the words that stood mocking
her on the desolate air, a bridge, carrying them up over the stream of
her mind and forward, leaving her communications behind for ever. She
waited, watching cynically for whatever he might offer to her dumbness,
wondering whether it surprised him, rebuked as she regarded him, by his
unchanged gentle lustre.
“Oh _please_” he said hurriedly, his downcast inturned smile suddenly
irradiating his forehead, bringing down the eyebrows that must have gone
singing thoughtfully up as he spoke about the light ... a request of
some kind; one of his extraordinary unashamed demands.... “You must help
me. I must immediately pawn my watch. Where is a pawning shop?”
Miriam stared her consternation.
“Ah, no” he said, his features working with embarrassment “it is not for
myself. It is my friend, the Polish Doctor, who was only now here,”
Miriam gazed, plunging on through relief into a chaos of bewildered
admiration.
“But you hardly know him” she exclaimed, sitting down for more leisurely
contemplation.
“That is not the point” he said seriously, taking the chair on the other
side of the little table. “Poor fellow, he is not long in London, and
has almost no friends. He is working in abstruse researchings, needing
much spendings on materials, and is threatened by his landlady to leave
his apartments.”
“Did he tell you this?” said Miriam sceptically recalling the Polish
head, its smooth cold perfect beauty and indifference.
“Most certainly he told me. He must immediately have ten pounds.”
“Perhaps you would not get so much,” persisted Miriam. “And suppose he
does not pay it back?”
“You are mistaken. The watch, with the chain, is worth more than the
double this sum.” His face expressed a grave simple finality.
“But it is a _shame_,” she cried, jealously eyeing the decoration that
seemed now to have been an essential part of their many meetings.
Without this mark of opulence, he would not be quite the same...
“Why a shame?” demanded Mr. Shatov, with his little abrupt snorting
chuckle. “I shall again have my watch when my father shall send me the
next portion of my allowance.” He was not counting on the return of the
money! Next month, with his allowance, he would have the watch and
forget the incident..... Wealth made life safe for him. People could be
people to him; even strangers; not threats or problems. But even a
wealthy Englishman would not calmly give ten pounds to a disreputable
stranger ... he would suspect him even if he were not disreputable. It
_might_ be true that the Pole was in honest difficulties. But it was
impossible to imagine him really working at anything. Mr. Shatov did not
feel this at all......
“I’m afraid I don’t know any pawn shops” she said, shrinking even from
the pronunciation of the word. She scanned her London. They had always
been there ... but she had never noticed or thought of them ... “I don’t
remember ever having seen one; but I know you are supposed to recognise
them,” here was strange useful knowledge, something picturesque floating
in from somewhere ... “by three gold balls hanging outside ... I _have_
seen one” they were talking now, the Polish Doctor was fading away. “Yes
... on a bus” his wide child’s eyes were set impersonally on what she
saw, “somewhere down by Ludgate Circus.”
“I will at once go there” he said sitting leisurely back with dreaming
eyes and his hands thrust into his pockets.
“Oh no” she cried, thrusting off the disaster, “it would be _closed_.”
“That is bad” he reflected, “Ach, no matter. I will write to him that I
come on Monday.”
“He would not get your letter until Monday.”
“That is true. I did not think of this.”
There must be pawn shops quite near; in the Tottenham Court Road. They
would still be open. Not to suggest this would be to be responsible if
anything happened to the Pole... Thrusting down through the numbed mass
of her forgotten thoughts to the quick of her nature came the
realisation that she was being tested and found wanting ... another of
those moments had come round..... She glanced into the open abyss at her
own form staring up from its depths, and through her brain flew, in
clear record, decisive moments of the past; her self, clearly visible,
clothed as she had been clothed, her poise and bearing as she had
flinched and fled. Here she was, unchanged, not caring what happened to
the man, so long as her evening was not disturbed ... she was a
murderess. This was the hidden truth of her life. Above it her false
face turned from thing to thing, happy and forgetful for years, until a
moment came again to show her that she could face and let slip the risk
of anything to anyone, anywhere, rather than the pain of renouncing
personal realisation. Already she was moving away. A second suggestion
was in her mind and she was not going to make it. She glanced enviously
at the unconscious kindliness lolling in the opposite chair. It was
clear to its depths; unburdened by spectres of remembered cruelty......
But there was also something else that was different ....
easy circumstances; the certainty, from the beginning, of
self-realisation.....
“Perhaps someone in the house could tell you.” Oh _stupidity_; blurting
out _anything_ to hide behind the sound of voices.
“Possibly. But it is a delicate matter. I could not for instance mention
this matter to Mrs. Bailey.”
“Do you like him? Didn’t you find him amongst those dreadful men looking
like monkeys?”
“At this Vienna café. Ah indeed it is dreadful there upstairs.”
“He is very handsome.”
“The Poles are perhaps the most beautiful of European peoples. They have
also _immense_ courage” ... unsuspicious thoughtfully talking face,
lifting her up and out again into light and air..... “But the Pole is
undoubtedly the most _treacherous_ fellow in Europe.” Grave live eyes
flashed across at her, easily, moulding the lounging form into
shapeliness. “He is at the same time of the most distinguished
mentality.” Why should anyone help a distinguished mentality to go on
being treacherous? “And in particular is this true of the Polish _Jew_.
There are in all European universities amongst the very most
distinguished professors and students very many Polish Jews.” Le Juif
Polonais ... _The Bells_. It was strange to think of Polish Jews going
on in modern everyday life...... But if Poles were so evil ... That was
Dr. Veslovsky’s expression. Cold evil.
“There was an awful thing last week in Woburn Place.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Bailey told me about it. There was a girl who owed her landlady
twenty-five shillings. She threw herself out of her bedroom window on
the top floor because her landlady spoke to her about it.”
“That is _terrible_” whispered Mr. Shatov. His eyes were dark with pain;
his face shrunk as if with cold. “That could _never_ happen in Russia”
he said reproachfully.
“Why not?”
“No. In Russia such a thing is impossible. And in student circles most
particularly. This young girl living in this neighbourhood without
salary was probably some sort of student.”
“Why? She might have been a governess out of work or a poor clerk.
Besides I thought people were always committing suicide in Russia.”
“That is of course a gross exaggeration. There are certainly suicides in
Russia as everywhere. But in Russia suicide, which does certainly occur
in abnormally high frequency amongst the young intelligentsia, arises
from trouble of _spirit_. They are psychopath. There comes some
spiritual crisis and--phwtt-- ... It is characteristic of the educated
Slav mind to lose itself in face of abstractive insolubilities. But for
need of _twenty-five shillings_. I find in this something peculiarly
horrible. In midst of your English civilisation it is pure-barbaric.”
“There has not been any civilisation in the world yet. We are still all
living in caves.” The quotation sounded less convincing than at Wimpole
Street......
“That is too superficial. Pardon me, but it implies a too slight
knowledge of what has been in the past and what still persists in
various developmental stages.” Miriam felt about among the statements
which occurred to her in rapid succession, all contradicting each other.
Yet somebody in the world believed each one of them...... Mr. Shatov was
gravely waiting, as if for her agreement with what he had just said. Far
away below her clashing thoughts was something she wanted to express,
something he did not know, and that yet she felt he might be able to
shape for her if only she could present it. But between her and this
reality was the embarrassment of a mind that could produce nothing but
quotations. She had no mind of her own. It seemed to be there when she
was alone; only because there was no need to express anything. In speech
she could produce only things other people had said and with which she
did not agree. None of them expressed the underlying thing..... Why had
she not brought down Maeterlinck?
Mr. Shatov’s quiet waiting had ended in a flow of eager talk. She turned
unwillingly. Even he could go on, leaving things unfinished, talking
about something else...... But his mind was steady. The things that were
there would not drop away. She would be able to consider them ...
watching the effect of the light of other minds upon the things that
floated in her own mind; so dreadfully _few_ now that he was beginning
to look at them; and all ending with the images of people who had said
them, or the bindings of books where she had found them set down ......
yet she felt familiar with all points of view. Every generalisation gave
her the clue to the speaker’s mind .... wanting to hear no more, only to
criticise what was said by pointing out, whether she agreed with it or
no, the opposite point of view......
She smiled encouragingly towards his talk, hurriedly summoning an
appearance of attention into her absent eyes while she contemplated his
glowing pallor and the gaze of unconscious wide intelligence, shining
not only towards her own, but also with such undisturbed intentness upon
what he was describing. She could think later on, next year, when he had
gone away leaving her to confront her world with a fresh armoury. As
long as he stayed, he would be there, without effort or encouragement
from her, filling her spare hours with his untired beauty, drawing her
along his carefully spun English phrases, away from personal
experiences, into a world going on independently of them; unaware of the
many scattered interests waiting for her beyond this shabby room, and
yet making them shine as he talked, newly alight with rich superfluous
impersonal fascination, no longer isolated, but vivid parts of a whole,
growing more and more intelligible as he carried her further and further
into a life he saw so distinctly, that he made it hers, too quickly for
her to keep account of the inpouring wealth.....
She beamed in spacious self-congratulation and plunged into the midst of
his theme in holiday mood. She was in a theatre, without walls, her
known world and all her memories spread, fanwise about her, all intent
on what she saw, changing, retreating to their original form, coming
forward, changing again, obliterated, and in some deep difficult way
challenged to renewal. The scenes she watched opened out one behind the
other in clear perspective, the earlier ones remaining visible, drawn
aside into bright light as further backgrounds opened. The momentary
sound of her own voice in the room encouraging his narrative, made no
break; she dropped her remarks at random into his parentheses, carefully
screening the bright centres as they turned one by one into living
memories......
Suddenly she was back withering in the cold shabby room before the shock
of his breaking off to suggest with a swift personal smile that she
herself should go to Russia. For a moment she stared at him. He waited,
smiling gently. It did not matter that he thought her worthy...... The
conviction that she had already been to Russia, that his suggestion was
foolish in its recommendation of a vast superfluous undertaking, hung
like a veil between her and the experiences she now passed through in
imagining herself there. The very things in the Russian student circles
that had most appealed to her, would test and find her out. She would be
one of those who would be mistrusted for not being sufficiently careless
about her dress and hair. It would not suit her to catch up her hair
with one hairpin. She would not be strong enough to study all day and
half the night on bread and tea. She was sure she could not associate
perpetually with men students, even living and sharing rooms with them,
without the smallest flirtation. If she were wealthy like he, she would
not so calmly accept having all things in common; poor she would be
uneasy in dependence on other students. She sat judged. There was a
quality behind all the scenes, something in the Russians that she did
not possess. It was the thing that made him what he was..... It answered
to a call that was being made all the time to everyone, everywhere. Yet
why did so many of them _drink_?
“Well?” said Mr. Shatov. The light was going down. “_What_ is this?” he
asked staring up impatiently at the lessening flame. “Ah it is simply
_stupid_.” He hurried away and Miriam heard his voice shouting down to
Mrs. Bailey from the staircase as he went, and presently in polite
loud-toned remonstrance from the top of the basement stairs. The gas
went up, higher than it had been before. It must be eleven. It was not
fair to keep the gas going for two people. She must wind up the sitting
and send him away.
“What a piece of English stupidity,” he bellowed gently, coming back
across the room.
“I suppose she is obliged to do it” said Miriam feeling incriminated by
her failure to resent the proceeding in the past.
“How _obliged_?”
“She has had an awful time. She was left penniless in Weymouth.”
“That is bad; but it is no cause for _stupidity_.”
“I know. She doesn’t understand. She managed quite well with lodgers;
she will never make boarders pay. It’s no use giving her hints. The
house is full of people who don’t pay their bills. There are people here
who have paid nothing for eighteen months. She has even lent them
money.”
“Is it possible?” he said gravely.
“And the Irish journalist _can’t_ pay. He is a home-ruler.”
“He is a most distinguished-looking man. Ah but she is _stupid_.”
“She can’t _see_” said Miriam--he was _interested_; even in _these_
things. She dropped eagerly down amongst them. The whole evening and all
their earlier interchange stood far off, shedding a relieving light over
the dismal details and waiting to be resumed, enriched by this sudden
excursion--“that when better people come she ought to alter things. It
isn’t that she would think it wrong, like the doctor who felt guilty
when he bought a carriage to make people believe he had patients, though
of course speculation _is_ wrong”--she felt herself moving swiftly
along, her best memories with her in the cheerful ring of her voice,
their quality discernible by him, a kind of reply to all he had told
her--“because she believes in keeping up appearances; but she doesn’t
know how to make people comfortable.” She was creating a wrong
impression but with the right voice. Without Miss Scott’s suggestions,
the discomforts would never have occurred to her.
“Ah she is _stupid_. That is the whole thing.” He sat forward stretching
and contracting his hands till the muscles cracked; his eyes, flashing
their unconcerned contemptuous judgment, were all at once the brilliant
misty eyes of a child about to be quenched by sudden sleep.
“_No_,” she said resentfully, “she wants good people, and when they come
she has to make all she can out of them. If they stayed she would be
able to afford to do things better. Of course they don’t come back or
recommend her; and the house is always half empty. Her _best_ plan would
be to fill it with students at a fixed low figure.” Miss Scott again
...... his attention was wandering... “The dead _flowers_,” he was back
again, “in dirty water in a cracked vase; Sissie rushing out, while
breakfast is kept waiting, to buy just enough butter for one meal.”
“Really?” he giggled.
“She has been most awfully good to me.”
“Why not?” he chuckled.
“Do you think you will go and see your Polish friend to-morrow?” She
watched anxiously.
“Yes” he conceded blinking sleepily at the end of a long yawn. “I shall
perhaps go.”
“He might be driven to desperation” she muttered. Her accomplished
evening was trembling in the balance. Its hours had frittered away the
horrible stranger’s chance.
“Ah no” said Mr. Shatov with a little laugh of sincere amusement,
“Veslovski will not do foolish things.” She rose to her feet on the tide
of her relief, meeting, as she garnered all the hours of her long day
and turned with an out-spreading sheaf of questions towards the expanses
of evening leisure so safely at her disposal in the oncrowding
to-morrows, the rebuke of the brilliantly burning midnight gas.
“But tell me; how has Mrs. Bailey been so good?” He sat conversationally
forward as if it were the beginning of the evening.
“Oh well.” She sought about distastefully amongst the phrases she had
collected in descriptions given to her friends, conveying nothing. Mr.
Shatov knowing the framework, would see the detail alive and enhance her
own sense of it. She glanced over the picture. Any single selection
would be misleading. There was enough material for days of conversation.
He was waiting eagerly, _not_ impatient after all of personal
experiences. Yet nothing could be told......
“You see she lets me be amphibious.” Her voice smote her. Mrs. Bailey’s
kindliness was in the room. She was squandering Mrs. Bailey’s gas in an
effort that was swiftly transforming itself under the influence of her
desire to present an adequate picture of her own separate life. His
quickening interest drove her on. She turned her eyes from the gas and
stared at the carpet, her picture broken up and vanishing before the
pathos of its threadbare faded patterns.
“I’m neither a lodger nor a boarder,” she recited hurriedly. “I have all
the advantages of a boarder; the use of the whole house. I’ve had this
room and the piano to myself for years, on Sunday mornings until dinner
time, and when there are interesting people I can go down to dinner. I
do for weeks on end sometimes, and it is so convenient to be able to
have meals on Sundays.”
“It is really a most _admirable_ arrangement,” he said heartily.
“And last year I had a bicycle accident. I was brought back here with a
very showy arm; in a cab. Poor Mrs. Bailey fainted. It was not at all
serious. But they gave me their best room, the one behind this, for
weeks and waited upon me most beautifully, and mind you they did not
expect any compensation, they knew I could not afford it.”
“An injury that should disable for so many weeks shall not have been a
light one.”
“That was the doctor. You see it was Saturday. It was more than an hour
before they could find anyone at all, and then they found a small
surgeon in Gower Street. He stitched up my arm with a rusty darning
needle taken from Mrs. Bailey’s work-basket just as it was. I told him I
had some carbolic in my room; but he said Nevorr mind that. I’m not one
of yrr faddists, and bound it all up and I came down to dinner. I had
just come back from the first week of my holiday; bicycling in
Buckinghamshire, perfect, I never felt so well in my life. I was going
to Paris the next day.”
“That was indeed most unfortunate.”
“Well I don’t know. I was going with a woman I did not really know. I
meant to go, and she had been thinking of going and knew Paris and where
to stay cheaply and suggested we should join forces. A sort of marriage
of convenience. I was not really disappointed. I was relieved; though
awfully sorry to fail her. But everyone was so kind I was simply
astonished. I spent the evening on the sofa in the dining-room; and they
all sat quietly about near me. One man, a Swede, who had only just
arrived, sat on the end of the sofa and told Swedish folk stories in a
quiet motherly voice, and turned out afterwards to be the noisiest,
jolliest, most screamingly funny man we have ever had here. About eleven
o’clock I felt faint and we discovered that my arm must have broken out
again some time before. Two of the men rushed off to find a doctor and
brought an extraordinary little old retired surgeon with white hair and
trembling hands. He wheezed and puffed and bound me up afresh and went
away refusing a fee. I wanted some milk, and the Swede went out at
midnight and found some somewhere ...... I come back with at least one
cow or I come not at all..... Of course a week later I had stitch
abscesses.”
“But this man was a _criminal_.”
“Yes wasn’t it abominable. Poor man. The two doctors who saw my arm
later said that many limbs have been lost for less. He counted on my
being in such good health. He told Mrs. Bailey I was in splendid health.
But he sent in a big bill.”
“I sincerely trust you did not pay this.”
“I sent him a description of his operation, told him the result and said
that my friends considered that I ought to prosecute him.”
“Certainly it was your duty.”
“I don’t know. I hate cornering people. It would not have made him
different and I am no better than he is.”
“That is a most extraordinary point of view.”
“I was sorry afterwards that I had written like that.”
“Why?”
“Because he threw himself into Dublin Harbour a year later. He must have
been in _fearful_ difficulties.”
“No excuse for criminal neglect.”
“The most wonderful thing in the accident itself,” pursued Miriam
firmly, grasping her midnight freedom and gazing into the pattern her
determination that for another few minutes no one should come up to
interrupt, “was being so near to death.” She glanced up to gauge the
effect of her improvisation. The moment she was now intent upon had not
been ‘wonderful.’ She would not be able to substantiate it; she had
never thought it through. It lay ahead now for exploration if he wished,
ready to reveal its quality to her for the first time ...... he was
sitting hunched against the wall with his hands driven into his pockets,
waiting without resistance, with an intentness equal to her own ... she
returned gratefully to her carpet. “It was a skid” she said feeling the
oily slither of her front tyre. “I fell with my elbow and head between
the horses’ heels and the wheel of a dray. The back-thrown hoof of the
near horse caught the inner side of my arm, and for a long long time I
saw the grey steel rim of the huge wheel approaching my head. It was
strained back with all my force, my elbow pressing the ground, but I
thought it could not miss me. There was a moment of absolute calm;
_indifference_ almost. It came after a feeling of hatred and yet pity
for the wheel. It was so awful, wet glittering grey, and relentless; and
stupid, it could not help going on.”
“This was indeed a most _remarkable_ psychological experience. It
happens rarely to be so near death with full consciousness. But this
absence of fear must be in you a personal idiosyncracy.”
“But I _was_ afraid. The thing is that you don’t go _on_ feeling afraid.
Do you see?”
“I hear what you say. But while there is the chance of life the instinct
of self-preservation is so strong” ...
“But that is the surprise; the tumult in your body, something surging up
and doing things without thinking.”
“Instinctive nervous reaction.”
“But there is something else. In the moment you are _sure_ you are going
to be killed, death changes. You wait, for the moment after.”
“That is an illusion, the strength of life in you that cannot, midst
good health, accept death. But tell me; your arm was certainly broken?”
His gently breathed question took away the sting of his statement.
“No. The wheel went over it just above the bend of the elbow. I did not
feel it, and got up feeling only a little dizzy just for a moment and
horribly annoyed at the crowd round me. But the two men who were riding
with me told me afterwards that my face was grey and my eyes quite
_black_.”
“That was shock.” He rose and stood facing her, in shadow; dark and
frock-coated, like a doctor.
“Yes; but I mean it shows that things look worse than they are.”
“That is most certainly a deduction that might be drawn. Nevertheless
you suffered a most formidable _shock_.”
She moved towards the gas looking decisively up at it; and felt herself
standing unexpressed, under the wide arch of all they had said. He must
be told to remember to put out the gas before he went. That said, there
was nothing in the world but a reluctant departure.