When they emerged from the dusty shabbiness of the Euston Road it was
suddenly a perfect June morning. Now was the moment. She opened the
letter unnoticed, with her eyes on the sunlit park-lined vista......
“London owes much to the fact that its main thoroughfares run east and
west; walk westward in the morning down any one of them, or in the
afternoon towards the east and whenever the sun shines you will see”
..... and without arousing his attention hurriedly read the few lines.
Was that man still in London, trying to explain it to himself, or had he
been obliged to go away, or perhaps to die? London is heaven and can’t
be explained. To be sent away is to be sent out of heaven.
“I’ve been telling,” useless words, coming thin and helpless out of
darkness and pressing against darkness .... a desperate clutching at a
borrowed performance to keep alive and keep on ... “my employers what I
think of them just lately.”
“Excellent. What have you told?”
His unconscious voice steadied her; as the darkness drove nearer
bringing thoughts that must not arrive. The morning changed to a painted
scene, from which she turned away, catching the glance of the leaves
near-by, trickily painted, as she turned to steer the eloquence flowing
up in her mind.
“Well, it was a whole point of view I saw suddenly in the train coming
back after Easter. I read an essay, about a superannuated clerk, an
extraordinary thing, very simple and well written, not in the least like
an essay. But there was something in it that was horrible. The employers
gave the old man a pension, with humorous benevolence. He is so
surprised and so blissfully happy in having nothing to do but look at
the green world for the rest of the time, that he feels nothing but
gratitude. That’s all right, from his point of view, being that sort of
old man. But how dare the firm be humorously benevolent? It is no case
for _humour_. It is _not_ funny that prosperous people can use up lives
on small fixed salaries that never increase beyond a certain point, no
matter how well the employers get on, even if for the last few years
they give pensions. And they don’t give pensions. If they do, they are
thought most benevolent. The author, who is evidently in a way a
thoughtful man, ought to have known this. He just wrote a thing that
looks charming on the surface and is beautifully written and is really
perfectly horrible and disgusting. Well, I suddenly thought employers
ought to know. I don’t know what can be done. _I_ don’t want a pension.
I hate working for a salary as it is. But employers ought to _know_ how
fearfully unfair everything is. They ought to have their complacency
smashed up.” He was engrossed. His foreign intelligence sympathised.
Then she was right.
“Anyhow. The worst of it is that my employers are so frightfully nice.
But the principle’s the same, the frightful unfairness. And it happened
that just before I went away, just as Mr. Hancock was going off for his
holiday, he had been annoyed by one of his Mudie books going back before
he had read it, and no others coming that were on his list, and he
suddenly said to me in a grumbling tone ‘you might keep an eye on my
Mudie books.’ I was simply furious. Because before I began looking after
the books--which he had never asked me to do, and was quite my own
idea--it was simply a muddle. They all kept lists in a way, at least put
down books when they hit upon one they thought they would like, and then
sent the whole list _in_, and never kept a copy, and of course forgot
what they’d put down. Well, I privately took to copying those lists and
crossing off the books as they came and keeping on sending in the rest
of the list again and again till they had _all_ come. Well, I know a
wise person would not have been in a rage and would meekly have rushed
about keeping more of an eye than ever. But I can’t stand unfairness. It
was the principle of the thing. What made it worse was that for some
time I have had the use of one of his books myself, his idea, and of
course most kind. But it doesn’t alter the principle. In the train I saw
the whole unfairness of the life of employees. However hard they work,
their lives don’t alter or get any easier. They live cheap poor lives in
anxiety all their best years and then are expected to be grateful for a
pension, and generally get no pension. I’ve left off living in anxiety;
perhaps because I’ve forgotten how to have an imagination. But that is
the principle and I came to the conclusion that no employers, however
generous and nice, are entitled to the slightest special consideration.
And I came back and practically said so. I told him that in future I
would have nothing to do with his Mudie books. It was outside my sphere.
I also said all sorts of things that came into my head in the train, a
whole long speech. About unfairness. And to prove my point to him
individually I told him of things that were unfair to me and their other
employees in the practice; about the awfulness of having to be there
first thing in the morning from the country after a week-end. _They_
don’t. They sail off to their expensive week-ends without even saying
good-bye, and without even thinking whether we can manage to have any
sort of recreation at all on our salaries. I said that, and also that I
objected to spend a large part of a busy Monday morning arranging the
huge bunches of flowers he brought back from the country. That was not
true. I loved those flowers and could always have some for my room; but
it _was_ a frightful nuisance sometimes, and it came into the principle,
and I wound up by saying that in future I would do only the work for the
practice and no odd jobs of any kind.”
“What was his reply?”
“Oh well, I’ve got the sack.”
“Are you serious” he said in a low frightened tone. The heavens were
clear, ringing with morning joy; from far away in the undisturbed future
she looked back smiling upon the episode that lay before her growing and
pressing.
“I’m not serious. But they are. This is a solemn, awfully nice little
note from Mr. Orly; he had to write, because he’s the senior partner, to
inform me that he has come to the conclusion that I must seek a more
congenial post. They have absolutely made up their minds. Because they
know quite well I have no training for any other work, and no resources,
and they would not have done this unless they were absolutely obliged.”
“Then you will be obliged to leave these gentlemen?”
“Of course long before I had finished talking I was thinking about all
sorts of other things; and seeing all kinds of points of view that
seemed to be stated all round us by people who were looking on. I always
do when I talk to Mr. Hancock. His point of view is so clear-cut and so
reasonable that it reveals all the things that hold social life
together, and brings the ghosts of people who have believed and suffered
for these things into the room, but also all kinds of other points of
view..... But I’m not going to leave. I can’t. What else could I do?
Perhaps I will a little later on, when this is all over. But I’m not
going to be dismissed in solemn dignity. It’s too silly. That shows you
how nice they are. I know that really I must leave. Anyone would say so.
But that’s the extraordinary thing; I don’t believe in those things;
solemn endings; being led by the nose by the necessities of the
situation. That may be undignified. But dignity is silly; the back view.
Already I can’t believe all this solemnity has happened. It’s simply a
most fearful bother. They’ve managed it splendidly, waiting till
Saturday morning, so that I shan’t see any of them again. The Orlys will
be gone away for a month when I get there to-day and Mr. Hancock is away
for the week-end and I am offered a month’s salary in lieu of notice, if
I prefer it. I had forgotten all this machinery. They’re perfectly in
the right, but I’d forgotten the machinery..... I knew yesterday. They
were all three shut up together in the den, talking in low tones, and
presently came busily out, each so anxious to pass the dismissed
secretary in hurried preoccupation, that they collided in the doorway,
and gave everything away to me by the affable excited way they
apologised to each other. If I had turned and faced them then I should
have said worse things than I had said to Mr. Hancock. I _hated_ them,
with their resources and their serenity, complacently pleased with each
other because they had decided to smash an employee who had spoken out
to them.”
“This was indeed a scene of remarkable significance.”
“I don’t know..... I once told Mr. Hancock that I would give notice
every year, because I think it must be so horrible to dismiss anybody.
But I’m not going to be sent away by machinery. In a way it is like a
family suddenly going to law.”
But with the passing of the park and the coming of the tall houses on
either side of the road, the open June morning was quenched. It
retreated to balconies, flower-filled by shocked condemning people,
prosperously turned away towards the world from which she was banished.
Wimpole Street, Harley Street, Cavendish Square. The names sounded in
her ears the appeal they had made when she was helplessly looking for
work. It was as if she were still waiting to come.....
Within the Saturday morning peace of the deserted house lingered the
relief that had followed their definite decision. They were all drawn
together to begin again, renewed, freshly conscious of the stabilities
of the practice; their enclosed co-operating relationship.....
She concentrated her mental gaze on their grouped personalities, sharing
their long consultations, acting out in her mind with characteristic
gesture and speech, the part each one had taken, confronting them one by
one, in solitude, with a different version, holding on, breaking into
their common-sense finalities.... It was all nothing; meaningless .....
like things in history that led on to events that did not belong to them
because nobody went below the surface of the way things appear to be
joined together but are not ..... but the words belonging to the
underlying things were far away, only to be found in long silences, and
sounding when they came out into conversations, irrelevant, often
illogical and self-contradictory, impossible to prove, driving absurdly
across life towards things that seemed impossible, but were true .....
there were two layers of truth. The truths laid bare by common-sense in
swift decisive conversations, founded on apparent facts, were
incomplete. They shaped the surface, made things go kaleidoscoping on,
recognisable, in a sort of general busy prosperous agreement; but at
every turn, with every application of the common-sense civilised
decisions, enormous things were left behind, unsuspected, forced
underground, but never dying, slow things with slow slow fruit ..... the
surface shape was powerful, everyone was in it, that was where free-will
broke down, in the moving on and being spirited away for another spell
from the underlying things, but in everyone, alone, often unconsciously,
was something, a real inside personality that was turned away from the
surface. In front of everyone, away from the bridges and catchwords, was
an invisible plank, that would bear ..... always .... forgotten ....
nearly all smiles were smiled from the bridges .... nearly all deaths
were murders or suicides ....
It would be such an awful labour ..... in the long interval the strength
for it would disappear. Thoughts must be kept away. Activities. The
week-end would be a vacuum of tense determination. That was the payment
for headlong speech. Speech, thought-out speech, does nothing but
destroy. There had been a moment of hesitation in the train, swamped by
the illumination coming from the essay.....
The morning’s letters lay unopened on her table. Dreadful. Dealing with
them would bring unconsciousness, acceptance of the situation would leap
upon her unawares. She gathered them up conversationally, summoning
presences and the usual atmosphere of the working day, but was disarmed
by the trembling of her hands. The letters were the last link. Merely
touching them had opened the door to a withering pain. When the
appointments were kept, she would no longer be in the house. The
patients crowded through her mind; individuals, groups, families, the
whole fabric of social life richly unrolled day by day, for her
contemplation; spirited away. Each letter brought the sting of careless
indifferent farewell.
At the hall door James was whistling for a hansom; it was a dream
picture, part of the week that was past. A hansom drew up, the abruptly
reined-in horse slipping and scrabbling. Perhaps there _was_ a patient
hidden in Mr. Leyton’s quiet sounding surgery. Once more she could watch
a patient’s departure; the bright oblong of street ..... he was away for
the week-end. There was no patient. It was a dream picture. Dream
figures were coming downstairs.... Mrs. Orly, Mr. Orly, not yet gone;
coming hurriedly straight towards her. She rose without thought, calmly
unoccupied, watching them come, one person, swiftly and gently. They
stood about her, quite near; silently radiating their kindliness.
“I suppose we must say good-bye,” said Mrs. Orly. In her sweet little
sallow face not a shadow of reproach; but lively bright sorrow, _tears_
in her eyes.
“I say, we’re awfully sorry about this,” said Mr. Orly gustily, shifting
his poised bulk from one foot to the other.
“So am I,” said Miriam seeking for the things they were inviting her to
say. She could only smile at them.
“It _is_ a pity,” whispered Mrs. Orly. _This_ was the Orlys; the reality
of them; an English reality; utterly unbusinesslike; with no codes but
themselves; showing themselves; without disguises of voice or manner, to
a dismissed employee; the quality of England; old-fashioned.
“I know.” They both spoke together and then Mrs. Orly was saying “No, Ro
can’t bear strangers.”
“If _you_ don’t want me to go I shall stay,” she murmured. But the sense
of being already half reinstated was driven away by Mrs. Orly’s
unaltered distress.
“Ungrateful?” The gustily panting tones were the remainder of the real
anger he had felt, listening to Mr. Hancock’s discourse. They had no
grievance and they had misunderstood his.
“No” she said coldly, “I don’t think so.”
“Hang it all, excuse my language, but y’know he’s done a good deal for
ye.” ‘All expectation of gratitude is meanness and is continually
punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person’ ..... “we are
lucky; we ought to be grateful;” meaning, to God. Then unlucky people
ought to be ungrateful....
“Besides” the same gusty tone “it’s as good as telling us we’re not
gentlemen; y’see?” The blue eyes flashed furiously.
Then all her generalisations had been taken _personally_.... “Oh well,”
she said helplessly.
“We shall be late, laddie.”
“Surely that can be put right. I must talk to Mr. Hancock.”
“Well, to tell y’honestly I don’t think y’ll be able to do anything with
Hancock.” Mrs. Orly’s distressed little face supported his opinion, and
her surprising sudden little embrace and Mr. Orly’s wringing handshake
meant not only the enduring depths of their kindliness but their pained
dismay in seeing her desolate and resourceless, their certainty that
there was no hope. It threw a strong light. It would be difficult for
him to withdraw; perhaps impossible; perhaps he had already engaged
another secretary..... But she found that she had not watched them go
away and was dealing steadily with the letters, with a blank mind upon
which presently emerged the features of the coming week-end.
* * * * *
“Well as I _say_----” Miriam followed the lingering held-in cold
vexation of the voice, privately prompting it with informal phrases
fitting the picture she held, half-smiling, in her mind, of a moody,
uncertain, door-slamming secretary, using the whole practice as material
for personal musings, liable suddenly to break into long speeches of
accusation. But if they were spoken, they would destroy the thing that
was being given back to her, the thing that had made the atmosphere of
the room. “It will be the most unbusinesslike thing I’ve ever done; and
I doubt very much whether it will answer.”
“Oh well. There’s not any reason why it shouldn’t.” She smiled
provisionally. It was not yet quite time to rise and feel life flowing
about her in the familiar room, purged to a fresh austerity by the
coming and passing of the storm. There was still a rankling, and
glorious as it was to sit talking at leisure, the passing of time piled
up the sense of ultimate things missing their opportunity of getting
said. She could not, with half her mind set towards the terms, promising
a laborious future, of her resolution that he should never regret his
unorthodoxy, find her way to them. And the moments as they passed
gleamed too brightly with confirmation of the strange blind faith she
had brought as sole preparation for the encounter, hovered with too
quiet a benediction to be seized and used deliberately, without the
pressure of the sudden inspiration for which they seemed to wait.
“Well, as I say, that depends entirely on yourself. You must clearly
understand that I expect you to fulfil all reasonable requests whether
referring to the practice or no, and moreover to fulfil them
_cheerfully_.”
“Well, of course I have no choice. But I can’t promise to be _cheerful_;
that’s impossible.” An obstinate tightening of the grave face.
“I think perhaps I might manage to be _serene_; generally. I can’t
pretend to be cheerful.” ‘Assume an air of cheerfulness, and presently
you will be cheerful, in spite of yourself.’ Awful. To live like that
would be to miss suddenly finding the hidden something that would make
you cheerful for ever.
“Well as I say.”
“You see there’s always the awful question of right and wrong mixed up
with everything; all sorts of rights and wrongs, in the simplest things.
I can’t think how people can go on so calmly. It sometimes seems to me
as if everyone ought to stop and do quite other things. It’s a
nightmare, the way things go on. I want to stay here, and yet I often
wonder whether I ought; whether I ought to go on doing this kind of
work.”
“Well as I say, I know quite well the work here leaves many of your
capabilities unoccupied.”
“It’s not that. I mean everything in general.”
“Well--if it is a question of right and wrong, I suppose the life here
like any other, offers opportunities for the exercise of the Christian
virtues.”
Resignation; virtues deliberately set forth every day like the wares in
a little shop; and the world going on outside just the same. A sort of
sale of mean little virtues for respectability and a living; the living
coming by amiable co-operation with a world where everything was wrong,
turning the little virtues into absurdity; respectable absurdity. He did
not think the practice of the Christian virtues in a vacuum was enough.
But he had made a joke, and smiled his smile.... There was no answer
anywhere in the world to the question he had raised. Did he remember
saying why shouldn’t you take up dentistry? Soon it would be too late to
make any change; there was nothing to do now but to stay and justify
things .. it would be impossible to be running about in a surgery with
grey hair; it would make the practice seem dowdy. All dental secretaries
were young.... The work ... nothing but the life all round it; the
existence of a shadow amidst shadows unaware of their shadowiness,
keeping going a world where there were things, more than people. The
people moved sunlit and prosperous, but not enviable, their secrets
revealed at every turn, unaware themselves, they made and left a space
in which to be aware....
“I want to say that I think it is kind of you to let me air my
grievances so thoroughly.”
“Well, as I _say_, I feel extremely uncertain as to the advisability of
this step.”
“You needn’t” she said rising as he rose, and going buoyantly to move
about in the neighbourhood of the scattered results of his last
operation, the symbols of her narrowly rescued continuity. She was not
yet free to touch them. He was still, wandering about the other part of
the room, lingering with thoughtful bent head in the mazes of her
outrageous halting statements. But a good deal of his resentment had
gone. It was something outside herself, something in the world at large,
that had forced him to act against his “better judgment.” He was still
angry and feeling a little shorn, faced, in the very presence of the
offender, with the necessity of disposing of the fact that he had been
driven into inconsistency.
Miriam drew a deep sigh, clearing her personal air of the burden of
conflict. Was it an affront? It had sounded to her like a song. His
thoughts must be saying, well, there you are, it’s all very well to
throw it all off like that. His pose stiffened into a suggested
animation with regard to work delayed. If only now there could be an
opportunity for one of his humorous remarks so that she could laugh
herself back into their indestructible impersonal relationship. It was,
she thought, prophetically watching his gloriously inevitable recovery,
partly his unconscious resentment of the blow she had struck at their
good understanding that had made him so repeatedly declare that if they
started again it must be on a new footing; that all possibility of
spontaneity between them had been destroyed.
How could it be, with the events of daily life perpetually building it
afresh?