1
Miriam rolled up the last pair of mended stockings....
She looked at her watch again. It was too late now even to go round to
Kennett Street. She had spent New Year's Eve alone in a cold bedroom.
Why could one not be sure whether it was right or wrong? It was only by
sitting hour after hour letting one's fingers sew that the evening had
come to an end. It could not be wrong to make up one's mind to begin the
new year with a long night's rest in a tidy room with everything mended.
But the feeling that the old year ought to be seen out with people had
pricked all the time like conscience. It only stopped pricking now
because it was too late. And there was a sadness left in the evening....
She lifted her coat from her knees and stood up. The room shone. In her
throat and nostrils was the smell of dust coming from the floor and
carpet and draperies. But the bright light of the gas and the soft light
of the reading-lamp shone upon perfect order. Everything was mended and
would presently be put away in tidy drawers. She was rested and strong,
undisturbed by changes that would have come from social hours. No one
had missed her. Many people scattered about in houses had thought of
her. If they had, she had been there with them. She could not be
everywhere, with all of them. That was certain. There was nothing to
decide about that.... The Brooms had missed her ... they would have
enjoyed their New Year's Eve better if she had been there. It would have
been jolly to have gone again so soon, after the short half week, and
sat down by the fire where Christmas lingered and waited for the coming
of the year with them. It would have been a loyalty to something. But it
was too soon to be sitting about between comfortable meals talking,
explaining things, making life stop, while reality went on far away....
One still felt rested from Christmas and wanting to begin doing
things.... Perhaps it was not altogether through undecided waiting that
the evening had come and gone by here in this room. Perhaps it was some
kind of decision that could not be seen or expressed. Now that in
solitude it had come to an end there was realisation. Quiet realisation
of new year's eve; just quiet realisation of new year's eve. One would
pass on into the new year in an unbroken peace with the resolutions for
the new life distinct in one's mind. She found an exercise book and
wrote them down. There they stood, pitting the calm steady innermost
part of her against all her other selves. Free desperate obedience to
them would bring a revelation. No matter how the other selves felt as
she kept them, if she kept them every moment of her life would go out
from an inward calm.... The room was full of clear strength. There must
always be a clear cold room to return to. There was no other way of
keeping the inward peace. Outside one need do nothing but what was
expected of one, asking nothing for oneself but freedom to return, to
the centre. Life would be an endless inward singing until the end came.
But not too much inward singing, spending one's strength in song; the
song must be kept down and low so that it would last all the time and
never fail. Then a song would answer back from outside, in everything.
She stepped lightly and powerfully about the room putting away her
mended things.... One would move like the wind always, a steady human
south-west wind, alive, without personality or speech. No more books.
Books all led to the same thing. They were like talking about things.
All the things in books were unfulfilled duty. No more interest in men.
They shut off the inside world. Women who had anything whatever to do
with men were not themselves. They were in a noisy confusion, playing a
part all the time.... The only real misery in being alone was the fear
of being left out of things. It was a wrong fear. It pushed you into
things and then everything disappeared.... Not to listen outside, where
there was nothing to hear. In the end you came away empty with time gone
and lost.... To remember, whatever happened, not to be afraid of being
alone.
She stood staring at the sheeny gaslit brown-yellow varnish of the
wall-paper above the mantelpiece. There was no thought in the silence,
no past or future, nothing but the strange thing for which there were no
words, something that was always there as if by appointment, waiting for
one to get through to it away from everything in life. It was the thing
that was nothing. Yet it seemed the only thing that came near and meant
anything at all. It was happiness and realisation. It was being
suspended, in nothing. It came out of oneself because it came only when
one had been a long time alone. It was not oneself. It could not be God.
It did not mind what you were or what you had done. It would be there if
you had just murdered someone ... it was only there when you had
murdered everybody and everything and torn yourself away. Perhaps it was
evil. One's own evil genius. But how could it make you so blissful? What
was one--what had one done to bring the feeling of goodness and beauty
and truth into the patch on the wall and presently make all the look of
the distant world and everything in experience sound like music in a
dream? She dropped her eyes. From the papered wall radiance still seemed
to flow over her as she stood, defining her brow and hair, shedding a
warmth in the cold room. Looking again she found the wall less bright;
but within the radius of her motionless eyes everything in the brightly
lit corner glowed happily; not drawing her but standing complete and
serene, like someone standing at a little distance, expressing
agreement.... Just in front of her a single neat warning tap sounded in
the air, touching the quick of her mind.... St. Pancras clock--striking
down the chimney.... She ran across to the dark lattice and flung it
open. In the air hung the echo of the first deep boom from Westminster.
St. Pancras and the nearer clocks were telling themselves off against
it. They would have finished long before Big Ben came to an end. Which
was midnight? Let it be St. Pancras. She counted swiftly backwards; four
strokes.... Out in the darkness the dark world was turning away from
darkness. Within the spaces of the night the surface of a daylit
landscape gleamed for an instant tilted lengthways across the sky....
Little sounds came snapping faintly up through the darkness from the
street below, voices and the creaking open of doors. Windows were being
pushed open up and down the street. The new year changed to a soft
moonlit breath stealing through the darkness, brimming over the faces at
the doors and windows, touching their brows with fingers of dawn,
sending fresh soothing healing fingers in amongst their hair.... Eleven
... twelve.... Across the rushing scale of St. Pancras bells came a
fearful clangour. Bicycle bells, cab whistles, dinner bells the banging
of tea-trays and gongs.... Of course ... New Year ... it must be a
Bloomsbury custom. She had had her share in a Bloomsbury New Year.
Rather jolly ... rowdy; but jolly in that sort of way.... She could
hear the Baileys laughing and talking on their doorstep. A smooth firm
foreign voice flung out a shapely little fragment of song. Miriam
watched its outline. It repeated itself in her mind with the foreign
voice and personality of the singer. She drew back into her room.
2
Her resolutions kept her at work on Saturday afternoon. A steady
morning's work disposed of the correspondence and the inrush of paid
accounts. After lunch she worked in the surgeries until they were ready
for Monday morning and made an attack on the mass of clerical work that
remained from the old year. She sat working until she grew so cold that
she knew if she stayed on in the cold window space she would have the
beginning of a cold. Better to go, and have late evenings every day next
week, cheered by the protests of the Orlys and ending with warm hours in
the den. As she got up and felt the aching of her throat and the harsh
hot chill running through her nerves she realised that anyhow she was in
for a cold. There was no room to go to to get warm before going out.
There seemed to be no warmth anywhere in the world. Torpid and stupid,
miserably realising the increasing glow of her nose and the numb
clumsiness of her feet she put away the ledgers and got into her outdoor
things. She resented the sight of the bound volume of The Dental Cosmos
that she had put aside to take home. Her interest in it was useless; as
useless as everything else in the freezing world. Sounds of dancing and
chanting came up the basement stairs. When their work was done they
could laugh and sing in a warm room.
Turning northwards toward the Marylebone Road she met a bleak wind and
turned back and down Devonshire Street and eastwards towards St. Pancras
through a maze of side streets. The icy wind drove against her all the
way. When she crossed a wide thoroughfare it was reinforced from the
north. Eddies of colourless dust swirled about the pavements. At every
crossing in the many little streets there was some big vehicle just upon
her keeping her shrinking in the cold while it rumbled over the cobbles,
overwhelming her with a harsh grating roar that filled the streets and
the sky. Darkness was beginning; a hard black January darkness, utterly
different to the friendly exciting twilights of the old year standing
far far away with summer just behind them and Christmas ahead....
Inside the house a cold grey twilight was blotting out the warm
brownness. A door opened as she turned the stairhead on the second floor
and a tall thin pale-faced young man in dark clothes and a light
waistcoat flashed past her and leaped lightly downstairs. Miriam carried
her impression up to her room, going hurriedly and stumbling on the
stairs as she went.... Something hard, metallic, like a wire spring,
cold and relentless. Belonging to a cold dreadful darkness and not
knowing it; _confident_. He had whistled going downstairs, or sung.
_Had_ he? Perhaps he was the foreigner who had sung last night?
Perfectly and awfully dreadful.... The whole house and even her own room
had been changed in a twinkling. Coming in it had had a warmth, even in
the cold twilight. Now it lay open and bleak, all its rooms naked and
visible, a house "foreign young gentlemen" heard of and came to live in.
He was one of the "Norwegian young gentlemen" who had lived in Mrs.
Reynolds' boarding house in Woburn Place and this was just another
boarding house to him. Perhaps the house was full of boarders.... She
had grown accustomed to the Baileys having come up from the basement to
the ground floor and had got into the habit of coming briskly through
the hall with a preoccupied manner, ignoring the invariable appearance
of a peeping form at the partly opened door of the dining-room. It was
strange now to reflect that the house had always been full of lodgers.
What sort of people had they been? She could not remember ever having
met a lodger face to face, or heard any sounds in the many downstairs
rooms.... Perhaps it had been partly through going out so early and
coming back only when the A.B.C. closed and being out or away so much at
week-ends ... but also she must have been oblivious.... The house had
been her own; waiting for her when she found it; the quiet road of large
high grey mysterious houses, the two rows of calm balconied facades, the
green squares at either end, the green door she waited for as she turned
unseeing into the road from the quiet thoroughfare of Endsleigh Gardens,
her triumphant faithful latchkey, the sheltered dimness of the hall, the
great staircase, the many large closed doors, the lonely obscurity of
her empty top floor. What had come now was the fulfilment of the
apprehension she had had when Mrs. Bailey had spoken the word boarders.
Here they were. They would come and go and go up and downstairs from
their bedrooms to that dining-room where the disturbing disclosure had
been made and the unknown drawing-room.... Perhaps it would be a
failure. She could not imagine Mrs. Bailey and the two vague furtive
children in skimpy blue serge dresses dealing with the young Norwegian
gentleman. He would not stay.... If boarders failed Mrs. Bailey might
give up the house altogether.... She found herself sitting in her
outdoor things with the large volume heavy on her knees in the middle of
the room. She felt too languid and miserable to get up and take the
small chair and the large book to the table and began wretchedly turning
the pages with her gloved hands. Here it was. She glanced through the
long article, reading passages here and there. There seemed to be
nothing more; she had gathered the gist of it all in glancing through it
at Wimpole Street. There was no need to have brought it home. It was
quite clear that she belonged to the lymphatico-nervous class. It was
the worst of the four classes of humanity. But all the symptoms were
hers.... She read once more the account of the nervo-bilious type. It
was impossible to fit into that. Those people were dark and sanguine and
energetic. It was very strange. Having bilious attacks and not having
the advantages of the bilious temperament. It meant having the worst of
everything. No energy no initiative no hopefulness no resisting power;
and sometimes bilious attacks. She was useless; an encumbrance; left out
of life forever, because it was better for life to leave her out.... She
sat staring at the shabby panels of her wardrobe, hating them for their
quiet merciless agreement with her thoughts. To stop now and come to an
end would be a relief. But there was nothing anywhere that would come in
and end her. Why did life produce people with lymphatico-nervous
temperaments? Perhaps it was the explanation of all she had suffered in
the past; of the things that had driven her again and again to go away
and away, anywhere. She wrenched herself away from her thoughts and
flung forward to the sense of sunshine, sudden beautiful things,
unreasonable secret happiness, waiting somewhere beyond the blackness,
to come again. But it would be mean to take them. She brought nothing to
anybody. She had no right to anything. She ought to be branded and go
about in a cloak.... There was no one in the world who would care if she
never appeared anywhere again. She sat shrinking before this thought. It
was the plain and simple truth. Nothing that any kind and cheerful
person might say could alter it. It would only make it worse. She
wondered that she had never put it to herself before. It must always
have been there since her mother's death. There were one or two people
who thought they cared. But they only cared because they did not know.
It they saw more of her they would cease even to think they cared; and
they had their own lives.... She had gone on being happy exactly in the
same way as she had forgotten there were people in the house; just going
lymphatico-nervously about with her eyes shut. But any alternative was
worse. Insincere. If one could not die one must go dragging on, keeping
oneself to oneself. That was why it was a relief to be in London;
surrounded by people who did not know what one was really like. Social
life, any sort of social life anywhere would not help. It only made it
worse. Being like this was not a morbid state due to the lack of
cheerful society. People who said that were wrong. The sign that they
were wrong was the way they went about being deliberately cheerful and
sociable. That was worse than anything; the refusal to face the truth.
But at least they could endure people.... If one could not endure anyone
one ought to be dead ... to sit staring in front of one until one was
dead ... the wardrobe did not disagree. She averted her eyes as from an
observer. They fell upon her hopeless person dressed in the clothes in
which she moved about in the world. She was bitterly cold. But she sat
on unable to summon courage to turn and face her room. Her eyes wandered
vacantly back to the panels and down to the drawer below them and back
again. The warm quiet booming of a gong came up through the house. She
got to her feet and stood listening in amazement. Mrs. Bailey had
instituted a boarding-house gong! She went out on to the landing; the
gong ceased and rattled gently against its framework released from hands
that had stilled its reverberation. A voice sounded in the hall and then
the dining-room door closed and there was silence. They were having tea.
Of course; every day; life going on down there in the dining-room.
Involuntarily her feet were on the stairs. She went down the narrow
flight holding to the balustrade to steady the stumbling of her benumbed
limbs. _What_ was she doing? Going down to Mrs. Bailey; going to stand
for a moment close by Mrs. Bailey's tea-tray. No; impossible to let the
Baileys save her; having done nothing for herself. Impossible to be
beholden to the _Baileys_ for anything. Restoration by them would be
restoration to shame. She had moved unconsciously. Her life was still
her own. She was in the world, in a house, going down some stairs. For
the present the pretence of living could go on. She could not go back to
her room; nor forward to any other room. She pushed blindly on, bitter
anger growing within her. She _had_ moved towards the Baileys. It was
irrevocable. She had departed from all her precedents. She would always
know it. Wherever she found herself it would always be there, at the
root of her consciousness, shaming her, showing in everything she did or
said. Half-way downstairs she restrained her heavy movements and began
to go swiftly and stealthily. Mean, mean mean; utterly mean and damned,
a sneaking evil spirit. She pulled herself upright and cleared her
throat in a business-like way. The echo of Harriett's voice in her voice
plumbed her for tears. But there were no tears. Only something close
round her that moulded her face in lines of despair. The hall was in
sight. She was going down to the hall to look for letters on the
hall table, and go back. She paused in the hall. If the dining-room door
opened she would kill someone with a cold blind glance and go angrily on
and out of the front door. If it did not open? It remained closed. It
was not going to open. It came quietly wide as if someone had been
waiting behind it with the handle turned. Mrs. Bailey was in the hall
with a firm little hand on her arm.--_Well_, young lady?--Miriam turned
full round, shrinking backwards towards the hall table. Mrs. Bailey was
clutching her hands--Won't you come in and have a cup of tea?----I can't
whispered Miriam briskly, moving towards the dining-room door.--I've got
to go out she murmured, standing just inside the open door.--Going out
asked Mrs. Bailey in a refined little voice throwing a proud fond shy
glance towards Miriam from her recovered place behind the tea-tray. Her
cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled brightly under the gaslight.
Miriam's glance elastic in the warmth coming from the room swept from
the flood of yellow hair on the back of the youngest Bailey girl sitting
close at her mother's left hand, across to the far side of the table.
The pale grey-blue eyes of the eldest Bailey girl were directed towards
the bread and butter her hand was stretched out to take with the
unseeing look they must have had when she had turned her face towards
the door. At her side, between her and her mother sat the young
Norwegian gentleman, a dark blue upright form with a narrow gold bar set
aslant in the soft mass of black silk tie bulging about the uncreased
flatness of his length of grey waistcoat. He had reared his head
smoothly upright and a smooth metallic glance had slid across her from
large dark clear easily opened eyes. He was very young, about twenty;
the leanness of his dart-like perfectly clad form led slenderly up to a
lean distinguished head. But above the wide high pale brow where the
bone stared squarely through the skin and was beaten in at the temples
the skull had a snakelike flatness the polished hair was poor and
worn.--Yes, murmured Miriam abstractedly, I'm just going out----Don't
catch cold young lady, smiled Mrs. Bailey.--Oh well, I'll try not to,
said Miriam departing. They'll never do it, she told herself as she made
her way through the darkness towards her A.B.C. He'll find out. He
thinks he is learning English in an English family.
3
Mrs. Bailey came up _herself_ to do Miriam's room on Sunday morning.
Miriam wondered as she came archly in after a brisk tap on the door how
she knew that her visit caused dismay. The visit of the little maid did
not break into anything. It only meant standing for a minute or so by
the window longing for the snuffling and shuffling to be over. But if
Mrs. Bailey were coming up every Sunday morning.... She stood at Mrs.
Bailey's disposal sheepishly smiling, in the middle of the room.--You
didn't expect to see _me_, young lady--Miriam broadened her smile.--I
want to talk to you--They stood confronted in the room just as they had
done the first time Mrs. Bailey had been there with her and they had
settled about the rent. Only that then the room had seemed large and
real and at once inhabited, the crown of the large house and the reality
of all the unknown rooms. Now it seemed to be at a disadvantage, one of
Mrs. Bailey's unconsidered attics, apart from the life that was
beginning to flow all round her downstairs. Something in Mrs. Bailey's
face when she said I was wondering if you would give Sissie a few French
lessons spoke the energy of the new feeling and thought. Miriam was
astounded. She called up a vision of Sissie's pale steady grey-blue
eyes, her characterless hair, her thickset swiftly ambling little
figure. She was the kind of girl who after good schooling could spend a
year in France and come back unable to speak French. But if Mrs. Bailey
wished it she would have to learn from somebody.... So she conspired
with an easy contemptuous conscience and they stood murmuring over the
plan, Mrs. Bailey producing one by one, fearfully, in a low motherly
encouraging tone the things she had arranged beforehand in her own mind.
Before she went she bustled to the window and tweaked the ends of the
little Madras muslin curtains. Why don't you go down to the drawn-room
for a while--she asked tweaking and flicking.--You'll have it all to
yourself. Mr. Elsing's gone out. I should go down if I was you and get a
warm up.--Miriam thanked her and promised to go and wondered whether the
Norwegian's name was Helsing or Elsen. When Mrs. Bailey had gone she
walked busily about her affronted room. It must be Helsing. A man named
Elsen would be shorter and stouter and kindly. Of course she would not
go down to the drawing-room. She ransacked her Saratoga trunk and found
a Havet and a phrase book. She would teach Sissie the rules of French
pronunciation and two or three phrases every day and make some sort of
beginning of syntax with Havet. There would be no difficulty in filling
up the quarter of an hour. But it would be teaching in the bad cruel
old-fashioned way. To begin at once with Piccola or Le Roi des Montagnes
and talk to her in the character of a Frenchman wanting to become a
boarder would be the best.... But Sissie would not grasp that slow way.
It would be too long before she began to see that she was learning
anything ... But the smattering of phrases and rules from a book handed
out without any trouble to herself on her way to her room and before she
wanted to go out was too little to give in exchange for a proper
breakfast ready for her in a warm room every day and the option of
having single meals at any time for a very small sum ... because the
Baileys were trying to turn themselves into an English family prepared
to receive foreigners who wanted to learn English she had promised the
lessons as if she thought the plan good....
She crept downstairs through the silent empty house, pausing at the open
drawing-room door to listen to the faint far-away subterranean sounds
coming from the kitchen. All the furniture seemed to be waiting for
someone or something. That was a console table. She must have noticed
the jar on it as she came into the room, or somewhere else, it looked so
familiar. One ought to know the name of the material it was made of. It
was like a coarse veined agate. In the narrow strip of mirror that ran
from the table high up the wall between the two french windows stood the
heavy self-conscious reflection of the elegant jug. It was elegant and
complete; the heavy minutely moulded flowers and leaves festooned about
its tapering curves did not destroy its elegance. It stood out alone and
complete against the reflected strip of shabby room. Extraordinary.
Where had it come from? It was an imitation of something. A reflection
of some other life. Had it ever been seen by anybody who knew the kind
of life it was meant to be surrounded by? She backed into an obstacle
and turned with her hand upon the low velvet back of a little circular
chair. Its narrow circular strip of back was supported by little wooden
pillars. She took possession of it. The coiled spring of the seat showed
its humpy outline through the velvet and gave way crookedly under her
when she sat down. But she felt she was in her place in the room; out
amongst its strange spaces. In front of her about the fireside were two
large armchairs upholstered in shabby Utrecht velvet and a wicker chair
with a woolwork cushion on its seat and a dingy antimacassar worked in
crewels thrown over its high back. To her right stood a small battered
three-tiered lacquer and bamboo tea-table, and beyond it a large
circular table polished and inlaid and strewn with dingy books occupied
the end of the room between the fireplace and the wall. On the other
side of the fireplace stood a chiffonier in black wood supporting and
reflecting in its little mirror a large square deeply carved dusty brown
wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Crowding against the chiffonier
was a large shabby bamboo tea-table and a scatter of velvet-seated
drawing-room chairs with carved dusty abruptly curving backs and legs.
Away to the left rose one of the high french windows. The dingy cream
lace curtains almost meeting across it, went up and up from the dusty
floor and ended high up, under a red woollen valence hanging from a
heavy gilt cornice. Between the curtains she could catch a glimpse of
the balcony railings and strips between them of the brown brickwork of
the opposite house. She stared at the vague scatter of vases and bowls
and small ornaments standing in front of the large overmantel and dimly
reflected in its dusty mirror. Two tall vases on the mantelshelf holding
dried grasses carried her eyes up to two short vases holding dried
grasses standing on the wooden-pillared brackets of the overmantel, and
back again to themselves. She rose and turned away to shake off their
influence and turned back again at once to see what had attracted her
attention. Satsuma; at either end of the mantelpiece shutting in the
scatter of vases and bowls two large squat rounded Satsuma basins--with
arched lids. On the centre of each lid was a little gilded knob.
Extraordinary. Unlike any Satsuma she had ever seen. Where had they come
from? She wandered about the room, eagerly taking in battered chairs and
more little tables and whatnots and faded pictures on the faded walls.
What was it that had risen in her mind as she came into the room? She
recalled the moment of coming in. The _piano_ ... the quiet shock of it
standing there with the shut-in waiting look of a piano, confronting the
large stillness of the room.... Turning to face it she passed into the
world of drawing-room pianos; the rosewood case, the faded rose silk
pleating strained taut, its margin hidden under a rosewood trellis; the
little tarnished sconces, for shaded candles, the small leather-topped
easily twirling stool with its single thick deeply carved leg, a lady
sitting, tinkling and flourishing delicately through airs with
variations; an English piano, perfectly wrought and finished, music
swathed and hidden in elegance ... "a little music" ... but chiefly the
seated form, the small cooped body, the voluminous draperies bulging
over the stool and spreading in under the keyboard and down about the
floor, the elegantly straying arms and mincing hands, the arch swaying
of the head and shoulders, the face bent delicately in the becoming play
of light.... She opened the lid. It went back from the keys till it
lay flat, presenting a little music-stand folded into the sweep of its
upper edge. Mustiness rose from the keys. They were loose and yellow
with age. Softly struck notes shattered the silence of the room. She
stood listening with loudly beating heart. The door would open and show
a face with surprised eyes staring into her betrayed consciousness. The
house remained silent. Her fingers strayed forward and ran up a scale.
The notes were all run down but they rang fairly true to each other.
Moszkowski's Serenade sounded fearfully pathetic; as if the piano were
heart-broken. It could be made to do better. Both the pedals worked, the
soft one producing a woolly sweetness, the loud a metallic shallow
brilliance of tone. She shut the heavy softly closing loose-handled door
very carefully. Its cold china knob told her callously that her real
place was in the little room upstairs with the bedroom crockery cold in
the mid-morning light. But she had already shut the door. She came shyly
back to the piano and sat down and played carefully and obediently piece
after piece remembered from her schooldays. They left the room
triumphantly silent and heavy all round her. If she got up and went away
it would be as if she had not played at all. She could not sit here
playing Chopin. It would be like deliberately speaking a foreign
language suddenly, to assert yourself. Playing pianissimo she slowly
traced a few phrases of a nocturne. They revealed all the flat dejection
of the register. With the soft pedal down she pressed out the notes in a
vain attempt to key them up. Through their mournful sagging the magic
shape came out. She could not stay her hands. Presently she no longer
heard the false tones. The notes sounded soft and clear and true into
her mind weaving and interweaving the sight of moonlit waters, the sound
of summer leaves flickering in the darkness, the trailing of dusk across
misty meadows, the stealing of dawn over grass, the faint vision of the
Taj Mahal set in dark trees, white Indian moonlight outlining the trees
and pouring over the pale facade; over all a hovering haunting consoling
voice pure and clear, in a shape, passing as the pictures faintly came
and cleared and melted and changed upon a vast soft darkness, like a
silver thread through everything in the world. Closing in upon her from
the schoolgirl pieces still echoing in the room came sudden abrupt
little scenes from all the levels of her life, deep-rooted moments still
alive within her challenging and promising as when she had left them,
driven relentlessly on.... The last chord of the nocturne brought the
room sharply back. It was unchanged; lifeless and unmoved; nothing had
passed to it from the little circle where she sat enclosed.... Her heart
swelled and tears rose in her eyes. The room was old and experienced,
full like her inmost mind of the unchanging past. Nothing in her life
had any meaning for it. It waited impassively for the passing to and fro
of people who would leave no impression. She had exposed herself and it
meant nothing in the room. Life had passed her by and her playing had
become a sentimental exhibition of unneeded life.... She was wretched
and feeble and tired.... Life _has_ passed me by; that is the truth. I
am no longer a person. My playing would be the nauseating record of an
uninteresting failure to people who have lived or a pandering to the
sentimental memories of people whom life has passed by ...--you played
that like a snail crossed in love--perhaps he was right. But something
had gone wrong because I played with the intention of commenting on
Alma's way of playing.... That was not all. It did not end there.
There was something in music when one played alone, without thoughts.
Something present, and _new_. Not affected by life or by any kind of
people.... In Beethoven. _Beethoven_ was the answer to the silence of
the room. She imagined a sonata ringing out into it, and defiantly
attacked a remembered fragment. It crashed into the silence. The
uncaring room might rock and sway. Its rickety furniture shatter to
bits. _Something_ must happen under the outbreak of her best reality.
She was on firm ground. The room was nowhere. She cast sidelong
half-fearful exultant glances. The room woke into an affronted silence.
She felt astonishment at the sudden loud outbreak of assertions turning
to scornful disgust. Entrenched behind the disgust something was
declaring that she had no right to her understanding of the music; no
business to get away into it and hide her defects and get out of things
and escape the proper exposure of her failure. In a man it would have
been excusable. The room would have listened with respectful flattering
indulgent tolerance till it was over and then have relapsed untouched.
This dingy woman playing with the directness and decision of a man was
like some strange beast in the room.... It was too late to go back. She
could only rush on re-affirming her assertion, shouting in a din that
must be reaching up and down the house and echoing out into the street
the thing that was stronger than the feeling that had prompted her
appeal for sympathy. It was the everlasting parting of the ways, the
wrenching away that always came.... The Baileys were going on downstairs
with their planning, the Norwegian busy with his cold watchful grappling
with England; all of them far away, flouted. The room became a
background indistinguishable from any other indifferent background. All
round her was height and depth, a sense of vastness and grandeur beyond
anything to be seen or heard, yet stretching back like a sheltering wing
over the past to her earliest memories and forward ahead out of sight.
The piano had changed. It gave out a depth and fulness of tone. By
careful management she could avoid the abrupt contrast between the
action of the pedals. Presently the glowing and aching of the muscles of
her forearms forced her to leave off. She swung round. The forgotten
room was filled with friendly light. Triumphant echoes filled its wide
spaces, pressed against the windows, filtered out into the quiet street
out and away into London. When the room was still there was an unbroken
stillness in the house and the street. Striking thinly across it came
the tones of the solitary unaccompanied violin.