1
Miriam let herself cautiously in. The whole house was hers; she was a
_boarder_; but the right to linger freely in any part of it was bought
by Sissie's French lessons and being Sissie's teacher meant that the
Baileys could approach familiarly at any moment ... all her
privileges were bought with a heavy price, here and at Wimpole Street
... it's us; our family; always masquerading. But the lessons made
opportunities of being affable to the Baileys; removing the need for
seeking them out purposely from time to time. Cut and dried. I've
_pa_triotic ballads cut and dried. I'm cut and dried, everybody thinks.
Moving and speaking stiffly, the stamp of my family, the minute anything
is expected of me. Nobody knows me. I grow more and more unknown and
more and more like what people think of me.... But _I_ know; and things
go on coming; scraps of other people's things. No one in the world could
imagine what it is to me to have this house; the fag-end of the Baileys'
stock-in-trade. God couldn't know, completely. There's something wrong
about it; but damn, I can't help it. In my secret self I should love a
prison. Walls. What _are_ walls?
If she scuffed her muddy shoes too cheerfully someone would appear at
the dining-room door. Beyond the gaslight pouring down on to the smeary
marble of the hall table and glimmering against the threatening
dining-room door the dim staircase beckoned her up into darkness. A few
steps and she would be going upstairs. Where? What for? Hgh--HEE! at the
far end of the passage beyond the hall.... There was a line of bright
light there, coming through the chink of the little door usually hidden
in the darkness beyond where the Baileys disappeared down the basement
stairs. Then there was a _room_ there.... The little door was pushed
open and a man's figure stood outlined against the bright light and
disappeared, shutting the door. There had been a table and a lamp upon
it ... the sound of the laugh rang in her head; a single lively
deep-chested note followed by a falsetto note that curved hysterically
up. Men; gentlemen. How long had they been there? They would not stay.
How had they come? Where had Mrs. Bailey found them? Had they already
found out that it was not their sort of house? Whom were they afraid of
shocking with their refinement and freedom? They were making a bright
little world in there by feeling themselves surrounded by people who
would be shocked. They did not know there was someone there they could
not shock.... She imagined herself in the doorway ... _hullo_! Fancy
you _here_.... The dining-room door had opened and Mrs. Bailey was
standing in the hall with the door open behind her. Miriam was not
prepared with a refusal of the invitation to come in. She glanced over
Mrs. Bailey's shoulder and saw the two girls sitting at the fireside.
Two letters on the hall table addressed to the Norwegian told her that
the Baileys were alone. She yielded to Mrs. Bailey's delighted manner
and went in. She would stay, keeping on her outdoor things, long enough
to hear about the new people. The close sickly sweet air of the room
closed oppressively round her heavy garments--Here you are young lady
sit here--said Mrs. Bailey piloting her to a chair in front of the fire.
There was a stranger sitting at the fireside. Mr. Mendizabble murmured
Mrs. Bailey as Miriam sat down. Miriam's affronted eyes took in the
figure of a man sitting on the wooden stool crowded in between the
mantelpiece and the easy chair occupied by Sissie; a man from a café
... a foreign waiter in his best clothes, sheeny stripy harsh pale
grey, a crimson waistcoat showing up the gleam of a gold watch-chain,
and crimson cloth slippers; an Italian, a Frenchman, a French-Swiss. He
was sitting bent conversationally forward with his elbows on his knees
and his hands clasped; quite at home. They had evidently been sitting
there all the evening. The air was thick with their intercourse. Miriam
received an abrupt nod in answer to her murmur and her stiff bow and
followed with resentful curiosity the little foreign tune the man began
humming far away in his head. He had not even glanced her way and the
tune was his response to Mrs. Bailey's introduction. The remains of a
derisive smile seemed to snort from the firmly sweeping white nostrils
above his tiny trim bushily upward curving black moustache. It moulded
the strong closed lips and shone behind the whole of his curiously
square evenly modelled face. The Bailey girls were watching him with
shiny flushed cheeks and bright eyes. His skin was white and clean ...
mat; like felt ... untouched and untried in the exhausted air of the
shabby room. An insolent waiter. He had turned away towards the fire
after his nod. From under a firm black-lashed white lid a bright dark
eye gazed derision into the flames.
Go on Mr. Mendizzable smiled Mrs. Bailey brushing at her skirt with her
handkerchief--we are most interested.
Hay, madame that is all, he laughed derisively in rich singing swaying
tones towards the middle of the hearthrug--I skate from one end of their
canal to another, faster than them all. I win their prize. Je m'en
fiche--
You skated all the way along the canal.--
Ieeea skate their can_al_. That was Amsterdam. I do many things there. I
edit their newspaper. I conduct a café.
Mts. You _have_ had some adventures--
That was not adventures in Amsterdam mon dieu! He swayed drumming from
foot to foot in time to his shouts. Had he really beaten those wonderful
skaters? Perhaps he had not. She glanced at his brow calm, firm, dead
white under the soft crisply ridged black hair. Perhaps he was Dutch;
and that was why he looked common and also refined.
2
At ten o'clock the youngest girl was sent to bed. Miriam scornfully
watched herself miss her opportunity of getting away. She sat
fascinated, resenting the interruption; enviously filching the gay
outbreaking kindness that robbed the departure of humiliation and sent
the girl away counting on to-morrow. He went out of his way to make
_Polly Bailey_ happy ... and sat on by the dying fire unwearied,
freshly humming to himself towards the dingy hearth scattered thinly
with sparse dusty ash. Mrs. Bailey returned, raked together the remains
of the fire and settled herself in her chair with a shiver. In a moment
she would begin her questionings and the voice would sound again.--You
cold mother darling? Come nearer the fire--Mrs. Bailey pulled her chair
a few inches forward arching her neck and smiling her bright sweet
smile--Oogh, its parky upstairs--Miriam implored herself to go. Parky,
reiterated Mrs. Bailey uncertainly, glancing daintily from side to side
and smiling away a yawn behind her small rough reddened hand--Parky?
What is parky?--_Parky_, said Mrs. Bailey, _cold_; like a park--Ah, I
see. That is good. When I go upstairs I go to Hyde Park.... I shall have
in my bedroom a band and a mass meeting, and a policeman. Salvation Army
Band. Miriam sat stiffly through the laughter of the Baileys. Her
refusal to join brought the discomforting realisation of having laughed,
several times during the past hour. She had laughed in spite of herself,
flinging her laughter out across the hearthrug towards the dying fire,
leading the laughter of the Baileys, holding them off and herself apart.
Now suddenly by refusing to share their laughter when they led the way
she had openly separated herself from them. Then they knew she stayed on
under a charm. They had witnessed her theft from the wealth _they_ had
provided, her gratitude to him for the store of memories she had
gathered. It was the price. It stung and tried to humiliate her. She sat
steadily on, flouting it. The grouping would not recur. Why did not Mrs.
Bailey make him go on talking? A cold gloom spread sideways from the
polished arch of the grate, encroaching on the corner where he sat
drumming and humming. She drew her eyes with an air of absorption
towards the dying fire. Its aspect was unendurably bleak. Her mind
shrank from it, only to meet the sense of the cold darkness waiting
upstairs. Mrs. Bailey's voice bridged the emptiness. Some inner link was
restored. Somewhere in her voice was something that rang restoringly
round the world. The disconnected narrative was flowing again. The
chilly hearth glowed with a small dull brilliance.... The foreign voice
went on and on, narrative dialogue commentary running flowing leaping,
in the voice that rang whatever it said in bright sunshine. She listened
openly, apologising in swift affectionate glances for her stiff
middle-class resentment of his vulgar appearance. Was he vulgar? She
tried in vain to recall her first impression. That curious blending of
sturdy strength and polished refinement in the handsome head was
something well-known in the head of a friend. She forced her friends to
apologise and submit to the charm....
3
It was nearly midnight. The grey of to-morrow morning kept pressing on
her attention. She gathered herself together to go, and rose
reluctantly. The outer chill came down to meet her rising form. The glow
of life was left there at the heart of the circle by the fire. The
little man leapt up--Hah, _good_ night all--and pushed past her and out
of the room. Mrs. Bailey had made some remark towards her as she neared
the door. She professed not to hear and went slowly on in the wake of
the footsteps leaping up the dark flights. They crossed the landing next
below hers and ceased. When she rounded the stairs light blazed from a
wide-open door and a little melody sounded for an instant in a smooth
swaying falsetto. As soon as she had passed, the door was violently
slammed ... all those stories were _true_. And the first one about the
skating. She imagined the white brow under a fur cap and the square
short strong well-knit form swaying strongly from side to side, on and
on, ironically winning.
4
Sissie read her set of phrases in heavy docility. Her will and the
shapeless colourless voice murmuring from the back of her throat were
given to the lesson; but the kindly sullen profile smouldered in
slumber. Miriam pondered at ease, contrasting the two voices as they
placed one after the other the little trite sentences upon the empty
air. That Sissie should speak her French in the worst kind of English
way did not really matter. But why was it? What did it mean? They all
had something in common--all the people who spoke French like that ...
a slender young man darted noiselessly into the room and began busily
dusting the sideboard. He was wearing a striped cotton jacket. Mrs.
Bailey had engaged a manservant.... It was impossible. He would not be
able to be kept. It was like a play. He was like a character in a farce,
rushing on and whisking things about. It was a play; amateur
theatricals, Mrs. Bailey rushing radiantly about, stage-managing. It was
pretending things were different when they were not; breaking up the
atmosphere of the house. Where did she get her ideas?... Coming back
to her surveillance she listened intently. Wait a minute, she said, we
will begin all over again. I see exactly what it is. There's no
difficulty. You can learn all about pronunciation in a few minutes.
Sissie had started. Controlling herself she took her attention from the
book long enough to give Miriam a sympathetic glancing smile. Let the
words _ring_ in your head, _into_ your nose and against your forehead.
Sissie sat back smiling, and sat watching Miriam's face. It's _we_ who
speak _through_ the nose. And mouth. In gusts, whoof, whoof, from the
chest all sound and no enunciation. Sissie's eyes were roving intently
about Miriam's face. They _stop_ the breath at the lips and in the nose.
Bong. That's through the nose. _Bon!_ D'you hear; like a little
explosion. Hold the lips tight before the b and explode the word up into
the nose partly closing the back of the throat and mouth. It's all like
that and the pronunciation does not vary. When you know the few rules
and get the vowels pure and explode the consonants, that's all there is.
Sissie waited, controlling an apologetic smile. She had realised nothing
but the violent outburst and was secretly laughing over the idea of
explosions.... Say matin, suggested Miriam patiently. Mattong, murmured
Sissie. Say mattah, persisted Miriam. The youth came flourishing in with
the coal box. That's right. Now try forcing the ah up into your nose and
shutting your nose on it. It's time to lay the table Emyou, stated
Sissie reprovingly towards the hearthrug. Pliz?--The young man reared a
mild fair crested head above the rim of the table. Lay the table, tarb,
paw dinnay snapped Sissie. I shall have to go Miss Henderson she added,
getting gently up and ambling to the door. The young man shot murmuring
from the room. They appeared to collide in the hall. Miriam found
herself in the midst of a train of thought that had distracted her
during her morning's work. _Cosmopolis_, she scribbled in her note-book.
The world of science and art is the true cosmopolis. Those were not the
words in "Cosmopolis" but it was the idea. Perhaps no one had thought of
it before the man who thought of having the magazine in three languages.
It would be one of the new ideas. Tearing off the page she laid it on
the sofa-head and sat contemplating an imagined map of Europe with
London Paris and Berlin joined by a triangle, the globe rounding vaguely
off on either side. All over the globe, dotted here and there were
people who read and thought, making a network of unanimous culture. It
was a tiring reflection; but it brought a comfortable assurance that
somewhere beyond the hurrying confusion of everyday life something was
being done quietly in a removed real world that led the other world.
People arrived independently at the same conclusions in different
languages and in the world of science they communicated with each other.
That made Cosmopolis. Yet it was an awful thought that the world might
gradually become all one piece; perhaps with one language; perhaps
English if those people were right who talked about Anglo-Saxon
supremacy. "England and America together could rule the world." It
sounded secure and comforting, like a police-station; it would be
wonderful to belong to the race whose language was spoken all over the
world. All the foreigners would simply have to become English. But that
brought a dreadful sense of loss. Foreign languages had a beauty that
could not be found in English, and the world would be _ruled_ by the
kind of English people who could never get the sound of a foreign word
and who therefore had all sorts of appalling obliviousness.
"You write that miss?"
Yes, said Miriam leaping through surprise and indignation to delight.
Sissie and Emile were back again in the room hurrying and angry. The
little man bid them a loud good-evening; a tablecloth was flountering
out across the large table. Miriam returned to her note-book. He was
_writing_, with a scrap of pencil taken from his pocket, on her piece of
paper, held against the wall. There miss he shouted gruffly, handing it
to her. Lies, she read; scribbled in a rounded hand across her words,
and underneath--there is NO Cosmopolis. Bernard Mendizabal.
Oh yes, there _is_ a cosmopolis argued Miriam looking up and out from a
whirl of convincing images. He was walking about in the window space in
his extraordinary clothes, short and somehow too square for his clothes,
making his clothes look square. His square roundly modelled head was
changeably sculptured by the gaslight as he paced up and down. His
distinction seemed to be sharpened by her words as she said vous avez
tort monsieur. She had a sense of Emile and Sissie glancing and
affronted while she slid down her sentence to leap, flouting them,
forsaking her crowding thoughts, and catch at any cost, the joy of
saying and hearing no matter what, in foreign speech. She would pay for
the moment any price to make it sound and keep it sounding in the room.
The spaces of her separate life in the house became a background for
this familiar forgotten joy so unexpectedly renewed.
"_No_ miss!" shouted Mr. Mendizabal. She cast a fierce general scowl
towards his promenading figure. He was another of those foreigners who
care for nothing in England but practising English. Then she would fight
her theory.
"Je n'ai pas tort" he thundered, standing before her with his hands in
his pockets. He was taking her French for granted. In her thankfulness
she sat docile before a torrent of words taking in nothing of their
meaning, throwing out provisional phrases according to his tone of
question or assertion. The Baileys coming in and out of the room would
see "an animated French conversation" and Sissie and Emile would forget
her desperate onslaught in their admiration of the spectacle. The more
she kept it glowing and emphatic and alive the further she was redeemed.
She gave no glance their way. Dinner must be almost ready. Soon she
would have to go. The gong would tell her. Till then she could remain
immersed in the tide of words. The little man was earnest and enraged.
He used his French easily and fluently. It was not wonderful to him
suddenly to become French, to feel the things he expressed change,
become clear neat patterns, lose some of their meaning, fall open to
attack; the pain of the failure of words so set out, was made bearable
by the wonder of the journey from speech to speech. He remained himself,
apparently unaware of the change of environment, or indifferent to
it.... _En déche_ what did that mean? Vous devez me voir en déche. You
ought to see me en déche. That seemed to be his summing up, the basis of
his denial of a cosmopolis. She attended. The only way he declared, as
if recalling an earlier assertion, of proving the indifference of
everyone to everyone else is to be en déche. Smiling comprehensively
just before he turned on his heel and swung round, she drifted out of
the room amidst the clangour of the gong ... en déche ... déchéance?
... somehow at a disadvantage. She thought her written phrases in
French. They sounded a little grandiloquent. Someone seemed to be
declaiming them from a platform. He probably had not realised what she
was trying to say. But he was a cosmopolitan, and he denied that there
was any cosmopolis, any sympathy between races, even between
individuals. He was a pessimist. With all his charm and zest he believed
in nothing and nobody. And he spoke from experience. Perhaps it was only
in thoughts not in life that these things existed. People talked about
cosmopolis because they wanted to believe it. Had he said that?