1
Sitting down almost the moment Mr. Mendizabal brought him into the room
and playing _Wagner_. With many wrong notes and stumbling phrases, but
self-forgetfully, in the foreign way. Keeping bravely on, making the
shape come even in the most difficult parts. He was hearing the Queen's
Hall Orchestra all the time, and he knew that anyone who knew it could
hear it too. He was one of those people who stand in the arena and talk
about the music and know that there are piano scores and get them and
play them. It was amazing that there should be piano scores of Wagner.
Did he play because he wanted to remember the orchestra; without
thinking of the people who were listening. He did not know the Baileys
and their boarders. He could not imagine how extraordinary it was to
hear Wagner in the room, suddenly offered to the _Baileys_. They knew
something important was going on; sitting close round the piano
surprised and attentive, busily speculating, in scraps, hampered by the
need to appear to be listening. Afterwards they would talk to him
arching and laughing, Mr. Mendizabal's friend. Perhaps he would come and
play Wagner again; there would be music in the room undisturbed by their
forced attention. This was only a beginning.
At the end of the overture he sat quite still, making no movement of
turning towards the room. The group about the piano were taken by
surprise, waiting for him to turn. When they began making exclamations
his hands were on the piano again. The room was silenced by strange
little sentences of music. He played short fragments, unfamiliar things
with strange phrasing, difficult to trace, unmelodious, but haunted by
suggested melody; a curious flattened wandering abrupt intimate message
in their phrases; perhaps Russian or Brahms. Not Wagner writing down the
world in sound nor Beethoven speaking to one person. Other foreign
musicians, set apart, glancing, and listening to strange single things,
speaking in pain, just out of clear hearing, their speech unfinished.
Russian or Hungarian. Dvor-tchak. I will ask him. Perhaps he plays
Chopin.
The Baileys were growing weary of listening. They were becoming
strangers in their own dining-room, with a wonderful important evening
going on all round them. Miriam consulted Sissie, probing enviously for
the dark busy sulkily hidden thoughts going to and fro behind her
attitude of listening. Her eyes were drawing pictures of Mr. Bowdoin's
back view and noting his movements. Mrs. Bailey was still smiling her
pride. Her tired eyes were strained brightly towards the performance
with the proper expression of delighted appreciation. But now and again
they moved observantly across the slender shabby form and revealed her
circling thoughts. When she looked at the back of the thatch of soft
fine fair hair she was seeing that officeful of men painting posters,
the first arrival of Mr. Mendizabal, their resentment of his quick work,
the poster he thought of in the night, here, and worked out at the
office in an hour, the musician playing so gravely not knowing that he
was being seen as the man who was forced by Mr. Mendizabal to play a
Beethoven Sonata on the typewriter with his hair in curl-papers. If Mrs.
Bailey went too deeply into her speculations she would be too confused
to ask him to come again. Perhaps Mr. Mendizabal would bring him anyhow.
He was lounging back in his chair with his hands in his pockets. His
face seemed to be laughing ironically behind a proud smile. He respected
music. He admired Bowdoin for his talent. He was showing him off. It was
charming ... like Trilby. Men laughing at each other and admiring each
other.... She had left off listening. Mr. Bowdoin was sitting there at
her side, separate from his music, sitting there English, a little
altered by going out into foreign music. A sort of foreigner with an
English expression. Her glance had shown her an English profile, a
blunted irregular aquiline, a little defaced about the mouth and chin by
the influence on the muscles of a common way of speaking. But the back
of his head was foreign, the outline of his skull fine and delicate, a
delicate arch at the top and the back flattened a little under the soft
fall of hair. He was stopping. He sat still, facing the piano. There
were stirrings and murmurs and uncertain attempts at applause. Mr.
Mendizabal rose and stood over him, as if to smite him on the shoulder.
What do you think about when you play _Beethoven_?--said Miriam hastily.
His face came round and Mr. Mendizabal turned hilariously away to the
room.--By-toven himself I think said Mr. Bowdoin quietly.--If I get a
Beethoven's Sonatas would you play one?--I _will_ play one for you. But
not this evening I think--He turned back to the piano and Miriam gazed
at his indrawn profile. He was quite English and had all the English
thoughts and feelings about the little group gathered behind him in the
room. But there was something besides. He was a musician and that made
him understand. He knew the room was impervious to music and was ill at
ease after the first joy of playing, and could not convince his hearers
by vitality and exuberance as a foreigner would do even with quite
fragile subdued delicately controlled music. If you care about music he
said towards the piano, will you come one evening and let me play to you
on my own piano? I should like it more than anything said Miriam,
quivering, and clenching her clasped hands. It will be an honour and a
great pleasure to me if you will come he said in his quiet weary voice.
I will take the liberty of writing to suggest an evening. Miriam's
abrupt rising and blind movement left her standing opposite the
lady-help, who was standing with a foot on the fender and an elbow on
the mantelpiece, on the other side of the hearthrug. After only two days
in the house she seemed already more at home than the Baileys; talking
derisively across at Mr. Mendizabal who was marching up and down the far
side of the room with his hands in pockets shouting raillery and
snorting. D'you like London Miss Scott? said Miriam uncontrollably to
her averted talking face. Miss Scott completed her sally; the Baileys
were talking to Mr. Bowdoin, just behind at the piano. Perhaps no one
had witnessed her wild attack. But she could not take her eyes off Miss
Scott's face. It turned towards her still wearing its derisive smile.
What was that you said Miss Henderson I beg your pardon, she stated
encouragingly. She was not in the least impressed by being spoken to.
Her swift amused glance was all she could manage without breaking into
shouts of laughter. Her laughter-shaken person was the front of a
barricade of derision. Miriam repeated her question, fearfully
consulting the small sheeny satin dress, with the lace collar, the neat
slipper on the fender, the heavy little fringe stopping abruptly at the
hollow temples above high cheekbones and slightly hollow cheeks and
leading back to a tiny knot at the top of the head. Perhaps she was a
lady. Ye see so little of it unless yerra wealthy, she said in curious
tonguey tones, standing upright on the hearthrug and flinging back her
head with every other word; backing away with a balancing movement from
foot to foot. She laughed on her last word and stood shaking with
laughter, her elbow on the far corner of the mantelshelf and her foot
once more on the fender. Perhaps she was still laughing at some jest of
Mr. Mendizabal's. Arrya fond of London Miss Henderson, she chuckled and
went on without waiting for an answer, with rhythmically flinging
head,--it's ahl very well if ya can go out to theeaturras and consurruts
and out and about; but when the season comes and the people are in the
parruk and in thayre grand houses having parrties and gaities and yew've
just got to do nothing I think its draydefle.--She laughed consumedly,
throwing back her head. Miriam got herself across the room and outside
the door. On the hall table lay a letter; from Eve; witnessing her
discomfort; soothing, and reproaching.... Eve would have stayed and
talked to the musician.
Up in her cold room everything vanished into the picture of Eve,
deciding away down in green Wiltshire, to leave off teaching; smiling,
stretching out her firm small hands and taking hold of _London_. London
changed as she read. She sat stupefied. It seemed impossible,
terrifying, that Eve penniless, with her uncertain health should leave
the wealthy comfort of the Greens after all these years. Too excited to
read word by word she scanned the pages and learned that Madame Leroy a
friend of Mrs. Green who had a flower shop in Bruton Street had engaged
her.... _I decorated the table for dinner each night when she was
here at Christmas ... the Greens have been charming, quite excited
about the plans_ ... coming up _next week_.... Miriam leapt to her feet
and began hastily putting on her things. "Eve is coming to London for a
six months' course in floral decorations. She is putting up at a
hostel." She pulled on her cold sodden shoes. "Eve is going to be an
assistant in a flower shop at fifteen shillings a week. She has taken a
cubicle at a branch of the Young Women's Bible Association." By the time
she was ready she felt she must have dreamed the news. Eve, not a
governess, free, in London, just as she was herself. Another self, in
London. Eve being led about and taught London, going about under the
same skies, in the streets, feeling exactly as she felt. Nothing would
have changed before she came. The rain gently thudding on the roof and
rattling against the landing skylight was Eve's rain. She was listening
to it and hearing it in exactly the same way....
The girls did not realise the news at all. They kept going off into
questions about details until the fact of Eve's coming disappeared
altogether and only Eve's point of view and Eve's courage and her
difficulties remained.... One had told it the wrong way. Better not to
have given any facts at all but just to have said Eve's coming to
London; isn't it weird? But then they would have said is she coming to
London to see the Queen? The Queen. That would have been true. She was
coming to London partly to see the Queen. Perhaps the trouble was that
they had been cheated by not being told exactly how Eve was only just
managing to come at all and how scraped everything would be. But at
least they realised that one had people belonging to one who made up
their minds and did definite things, like other people. It was amazing
to decide to come to London and be a florist; _Napoleon_. They realised
that and nothing else. She would be able to tell Mr. Hancock on Monday;
first him, first thing in the morning and the Orlys during the day.
Mr. Hancock understood at once, making no response at all at first and
then standing quietly about near her as she busied herself with her
dusting really giving himself to taking in the simple stupendous fact;
and really realising it before asking any questions and asking them in a
tone that showed he knew what it meant and going on showing all day in
his manner that he knew what it was that kept her so brisk about her
work. He was divine; he was a divine person. She would never forget
being able to say just anyhow, h'm, I've got a _sister_ coming to
London; and his immediate silent approach across the room, drying his
hands.... Of _course_ the Orlys immediately said Oh how nice for you,
you won't be so lonely. _What_ did people mean about loneliness? It was
always the people arranged in groups and seeming so lost and isolated
and lonely who said that.... To-night she would begin turning out her
room for Eve's reception. No. It was the Dante lecture.... The day Eve
came she would buy some flowers. She understood now why people wanted to
put flowers in their rooms when people were coming. She would be a
hostess. Some people bought flowers and carried them home when they were
alone.... It must be like inviting a guest to keep you company. Like
saying you were alone and not liking being alone and putting flowers
about to tell you all the time that you did not want to be alone but
were. People _talked_ about these things. "I always buy flowers when I
am alone." Like suddenly taking off all their things and showing that
they had a crooked body. If they were really miserable about being alone
they would be too miserable to buy flowers. If they really wanted the
flowers enough to buy them they were already not alone. If they bought
the flowers in that fussy excited thoughtless way people seemed to do
things they were neither really ever alone or ever really with people
... they were in that sort of state that made social life a talkative
nothingness sliding about on nothing....
At the end of the afternoon she wandered forgetfully into the warmth of
the empty waiting-room. The house was silent. Her footsteps made no
sound along the carpeted hall and were lost in the thick Turkey
carpeting of the waiting-room floor. The room was lit only by the
firelight. From its wide clear core striped by black bars a broad
rose-gold shaft glowed out across the room reaching the copper vessels
on the black oak sideboard and the lower part of the long mirror between
the windows where the midmost piece of copper gleamed in reflection. She
stood still, holding the warm air in her nostrils, everything was
blotted out and then restored to its place ... what place, why was it
good, what was she trying to remember?... In the familiar fire-lit
winter darkness was a faint dry warm scent ... mimosa. It was a
repetition.... It had been there last year, suddenly; drily fragrant
in the winter darkness of the warm room preparing for the light and
warmth of the evening. It had seemed then like some wealthy
extravagance, bringing a sense of the freedom of wealth to have things
out of season, and a keen sudden memory in the dark London room of the
unspoken inexpressible beauty of Newlands ... its soft-toned softly
carpeted and curtained effect, fragrant with clusters of winter flowers,
standing complete somewhere in the secret black spaces of her mind....
But now here it was again, just at the same moment, just before the
winter darkness began to give way. Perhaps mimosa came at this time of
year suddenly in the shops, before the spring flowers, and careful
people like Mrs. Orly could buy it ... then in London mimosa was the
sign of _spring_. It was like the powdery fragrance of a clear warm
midsummer evening, like petal-dust; pollen-dust; the whole summer
circling in the glow of firelight. Then Eve would not come this winter.
The darkest secret winter-time of London was over again. It would come
again in single moments and groups of days, but its time was gone. The
moment of realisation of spring had come by surprise; there lay all the
spring days ahead leading on to summer spread out for anyone to see,
calling to Eve or to anyone who might have come into the room to whom
one could have said doesn't the smell of mimosa make you realise the
winter is over; and here within, lit up as if by a suddenly switched on
electric light was one's own real realisation going back and back; in
pictures that grew clearer, each time something happened that switched
on a light within the black spaces of your mind. Things that no one
could share, coming again and again just as some outside thing was
beginning to interest you, as if to _remind_ you that the inmost reality
comes to you when you are alone.... The prospect of Eve's coming was
changed. The pang of the mimosa came nearer than anything she could
bring. Perhaps it would be possible to tell her about this moment?
Perhaps her coming had made it more real. Yet now it did not seem to
matter so much whether she came or not. In a way it seemed as though the
fact of her coming threatened something.
2
"Antoine Bowdoin." If she had had a solemn letter from him first she
would never have undertaken to go and hear him play. The formal courtly
old-fashioned phrases had nothing to do with the hours of music. She had
thought of nothing but the music on the good piano and now when she had
forgotten all about it there was this awful result; the "few friends"
gathered together in his room on a fixed date so that she might go and
hear him play. She would have to sit, with a party, and afterwards find
something to say.... An Englishman, solemn and polite, playing foreign
music, with English friends politely and solemnly sitting round. There
was no word of Mr. Mendizabal. He was not going. If he had been Mr.
Bowdoin would not have said I will call at six-thirty for the purpose of
escorting you to my rooms. He was like a gaoler. Perhaps the walk would
be an opportunity of getting over nervousness. There would be music at
once, no meal to get through. She would thank him very much for the
great treat and when it was over there would only be Eve and the
accomplishment of having heard a good piano played by a musician. He
could be dropped.... He could be asked to come just once and play for
Eve. That would be a great London evening for Eve.... The sense of a
complex London life crowded with engagements made her pace in spite of
her weariness up and down the platform at Gower Street. Its familiar
sulphurous gloom, the platform lights shining murkily from the midst of
slowly rolling clouds of grey smoke, the dark forms and phantom white
faces of waiting passengers emerging suddenly as she threaded the
darkness, revived her. By the time the train rolled slowly in behind its
beloved black dumpy high-shouldered engine with its large unshrieking
mushroom bell-whistle the journey had changed from being an expedition
to a spot within five minutes' walk of Sarah's, unconfessed to Sarah,
and had become a journey on the Metropolitan; going indeed outside the
radius into blackness, but going so far only because the Dante lecture,
wandered out of London was waiting there; and to be repeated at the end
of the evening safely returning through increasing gloom until the
climax of Gower Street was reached again.... Miss Scott was _Scotch_.
She reached the little hall in the suburban road in good time and sat in
a forward row staring at the little platform where presently the
educative voice would be standing. She was conscious of a stirring and
buzzing all about her that had been absent in the London hall. The first
series of lectures had not brought any sense of an audience. Here the
many audible centres of culture, the eager discussions and sudden
incisive remarks, the triumphant intensity on the faces of some of the
women caught as she glanced now and then fearfully about, the curious
happy briskness of the men, made her feel that the lecturer was
superfluous. All these people were the cultured refined kind who did not
trouble much about their clothes. There were no furs to be seen; the
women wore large rather ugly coats or ulsters or capes and bashed muddly
looking hats and had mufflers or long scarves. In the London audience
herself and her clothes had been invisible, here they were just right, a
sort of hall-mark. In her black dress with her clumsy golf-cape thrown
back from her shoulders, her weather-worn felt hat softened perhaps to
harmony with her head in the soft light she could perhaps pass for a
cultured person. _Bianchi_ and _Neri_ whispered her neighbour eagerly in
the midst of a long sentence addressed to a girl at her side. She was an
Englishwoman. But her mind was so at home in the Middle Ages that she
spoke the names and used the Italian pronunciation without a touch of
pedantry, and as eagerly and interestedly as anyone else might say
"they're engaged!" The clergyman in the row in front would drawl out the
words with an unctuous suggestion of superior knowledge. He would use
them to crush someone. Most of the men present were a little like that,
using their knowledge like a code or a weapon. But the women were really
interested in it, they were like people who had climbed a hill and were
eagerly intent on what they could see on the other side. It was
refreshing and also in some way comforting to be with them. They
represented something in life that was going to increase. Perhaps it
would increase too much; they seemed so headlong and unaware of anything
else. Did she want a world made up of women like this? If she spoke to
them they would assume she was one of themselves and look busily at her
with unseeing eyes, fixed only on all the things they thought about,
until they perceived that she was a fraud. Long intercourse with them
might make her able to talk like they did, but never to think in the way
they did. Never to have the extraordinary busy assured appearance
presented by their persons when you could not see their eager faces; a
look that made them seem to be going very fast in some direction that
completely satisfied them, so that if a fire broke out behind them
suddenly they would regard it not as an adventure that might have been
expected but as an annoying interruption, like tripping over a stone....
She could see that when he read the sonnets he forgot how learned he
was. The little lecture had had its own fascination. But it was a
lecture; something told by a specialist to an audience. This was Dante's
voice, and they all listened as they could; the lecturer as well. All
his knowledge was put aside and he listened as he read. She sat
listening, her shocked mind still condemning her for not having
discovered for herself that it was wrong to have a post-office savings
account and that betting and gambling and lotteries were wrong because
they produced nothing. For a time she flashed about with the searchlight
of the new definition of vice ... money can't produce money ... then
all trade was wrong in some way ... dissipation of value without
production ... there was some principle that all civilisation was
breaking ... how did this man know that it was wrong to imagine
affection if there was no affection in your life, that dreaming and
brooding was a sort of beastliness ... love was actual and practical,
moving all the spheres and informing the mind. That was true. That was
the truth about everything. But who could attain to it? Dante knew it
because he loved Beatrice. How could humanity become more loving? How
could social life come to be founded on love? How can I become more
loving? I do not know or love anyone but myself ... it did not mean
being loved. It was not anything to do with marriage. Dante only _saw_
Beatrice. But this is the awful truth; however one may sit as if one
were not condemned and forget again. This is the difficult thing that
_everyone_ has to do. Not dogmas. This man believes that there is a God
who loves and demands that man shall be loving. That is what will be
asked. That is the judgment. It is true because it breaks into you and
condemns you. Everything else is distraction and sham. The humble
yearning devotion in the voice reading the lines made it a prayer, the
very voice a prayer to a spirit waiting all round, present in himself,
in every one listening, in the very atmosphere. It was there, to be had.
It was like something left far behind one on a dark road and still
there; to be had for the asking, to be had by merely turning towards
it.... She looked into the eyes of Dante across the centuries as into
the eyes of a friend. But then these people were the same. It was the
truth about everybody "the goodwill in all of us"....
She travelled back towards London in a dream. Her compartment was empty.
All the people in the world, full of goodwill without troubling or even
thinking about it were away somewhere else. Just as she had learned what
people were there was nobody. There was no love in her nature. If there
were any she would not have been sitting here alone. If a man love not
his brother whom he hath seen how shall he love God whom he hath not
seen? There was a catch in that like a riddle. Heads I win tails you
lose.... If you keep quite quiet and gentle, asking for nothing, not
being anything, not holding on to anything in your life, nor thinking
about anything in your life there is something there ... behind you ...
that must be God, the way to Christ; the edge of the way to Christ.
Keeping quiet and coming to that you feel what you are and that you have
never begun being anything but your evil natural self. You feel thick
with evil ... oh ... that was prayer. One could become more loving. It
is answered at once. Just turning towards that something, in a desire to
be different, begins to change you! At Praed Street the carriage began
to fill with seated forms. This was the beginning of new life....
Keeping perfectly still and looking at no one she realised the presence
of her fellow-travellers, all just like herself, living from within by
the contact with the edge of Christ ... all _knowing_ the thing that to
her was only a little flicker just dawning in a long life of evil. It
made them kindly in the world and able to understand each other. Perhaps
it was the explanation of all the fussing. Everyone in the world was
bathed in the light of love except herself.... It was not certain that a
whole lifetime of prayer and gentleness and self-control would destroy
enough of the thick roots of evil in her to bring her through into the
Paradiso.... But if prayer, just the turning away from all one knew
begging to be destroyed and made loving brought such an immediate sense
of the evil in oneself and the good in everyone else, there was no end
to what it might do. Prayer was the work to do in life, nothing else.
But the turning to the unseen God of love and giving up one's self-will
meant being changed in a way one could not control or foresee; dropping
everything one had and cherished secretly and having things only in
common with other people. It would mean going forward with nothing into
an unknown world; _always_ being agreeable, and agreeing. I _love_ all
these people she murmured in her mind and felt a glow that seemed to
radiate out to all the corners of the compartment. It's _true_. This is
life. This is the only way in. It may be that I am so bad that I can
only sit with all my evil visible silent amongst humanity for the rest
of my life, learning to love them, and then die out completely because I
am too bad to be quite new-born ... her eyes were drawn towards the
face of the woman sitting opposite to her; a shapeless body, a thin
ravaged face strained and sheeny with fatigue and wearing an expression
of undaunted sweetness and patience. Children and housework and a
selfish husband and nothing in life of her own. She was at the disposal
of everyone for kind actions. She would be _really_ sympathetic and
shocked about an earthquake in China. Was that it? Was that being
_inside_? Was that all there was? The woman did not see the wonderful
gold brown light in the carriage; nor the beauty of the blackness
outside. In her brain was the pain and pressure of everything she had to
do. She was good and sweet; perfectly good and sweet. But there was
something irritating about her ... her obliviousness of everything but
"troubles," other people's as much as her own. Yet she would love a day
in the country. The fields and the flowers would make her cry. It was
her obliviousness that made one afraid of associating with her. Being in
conversation with her or in any way associated with her life there would
always be the dreadful imprisoned feeling of knowing she did not
_think_.... Her glance slid over the other seated forms and fell,
leaving her struggling between her desire to feel in loving union with
them and her inability to ignore the revelations pouring from their
bearing and shapes, their clothes and the way they held their
belongings. They were terrible and hateful because all their thoughts
were visible. The terrible maddening thing about them was the thoughts
they did not think. It made them worse than the woman because to get on
with them one would have to pretend to see life as they saw it. It would
be so easy and deceitful with each one alone, knowing exactly what line
to take. She wrenched herself back to her prayer ... instantly the
thought came that all these people far away in themselves wanted to be
more loving. She drew herself together and sat up staring out towards
the darkness. That was an answer again! A state of mind that came from
the state of prayer. But then one would need always to be in a state of
prayer. It would be very difficult. It would be almost impossible even
to remember it in the rush of life ... it would mean being a sort of
fool ... having no judgments or opinions. It would _spoil_ everything.
There would be no time for anything. Nothing beyond one's daily work and
all the rest of the time being all things to all men. It meant that now
at this moment one must give up the sense of the train going along in
the darkness and the sense of the dark streets waiting lamplit under the
dark sky and go out to the people in the carriage and then on to the
people at Tansley Street ... she thought of people she knew who did
this, appearing to see nothing in life but people, and recoiled.
_Places_ to them were nothing but people; there was something they
missed out that could not be given up. Something goes if you lose
yourself in humanity. You cannot find humanity by looking for God only
there. Making up your mind that God is to be found in humanity is
humanism.... It was Comte's idea. Perhaps Unitarians are all Comtists.
That is why they dress without style. They are more interested in social
reform than the astoundingness of there being people _anywhere_. But to
see God everywhere is pantheism. What _is_ Christianity? Where are
Christians? Evangelicals are humanitarians; rushing about in ulsters.
Anglicans know all about the beauty of life and like comfort. But they
are snobs and afraid of new ideas ... convents and monasteries stop
your mind. But there is a God or a Christ, there is something always
there to answer when you turn away to it from everything. Perhaps one
would have to remain silent, for years, for a lifetime, and in the end
begin to understand.
3
At Gower Street it was eleven o'clock. She was faint with hunger. She
had had no dinner and there was nothing in her room. She wandered along
the Euston Road hoping to meet a potato-man. The shopfronts were black.
There was nothing to meet her need but the empty stretch of lamplit
pavement leading on and on.... Rapid walking in the rain-freshened air
relieved her faintness but she dreaded waking in the night with gnawing
hunger to keep her awake and drag her up exhausted in the morning. A
faint square of brighter light on the pavement ahead came like an
accusation. Passing swiftly across it she glanced bitterly at the
frosted door through which it came. Restaurant. Donizetti Brothers. The
whole world had conspired to leave her alone with that mystery shut in
and hidden every day the whole of her London time behind its closed
frosted doors and forcing her now to admit that there was food there and
she must go in or have the knowledge of being starved through fear. Her
thoughts flashed painfully across a frosted door long ago in Baker
Street and she saw the angry handsome face of the waiter who had shouted
roll and butter and whisked away from the table the twisted cone of
serviette and the knives and forks. That was in the middle of the day.
It would be worse at night. Perhaps they would even refuse to serve her.
Perhaps it was impossible to go into a restaurant late at night alone.
She was coming back. There was nothing to be seen behind the steamy
panes on either side of the door but plants standing on oil cloth mats.
Behind them was again frosted glass. It was not so grand as Baker
Street. There was no menu in a large brass frame with Schweppe's at the
top. She pushed open the glass door and was confronted by another glass
door blankly frosted all over. Why were they so secret? Inside the
second door she found herself at the beginning of a long aisle of
linoleum. On either side people were dotted here and there on short
velvet sofa seats behind marble topped tables. In the close air there
was a strong smell made up of all kinds of meat dishes. A waiter
flicking the crumbs from a table glanced sharply round at her and went
off down the room. He had seen the shifts and miseries that haunted all
her doings. They were apparent in the very hang of her cloak. She could
not first swing down the restaurant making it wave for joy as it did
when she walked across Trafalgar Square in the dark and then order a
roll and butter. After this it would never wave for joy again. A short
compact bald man in a white apron was hurrying down the aisle, towards
_her_. He stopped just in front of her and stood bowing and indicating a
near empty table with his short arm and stood silently hovering while
she dragged herself into place on the velvet sofa. The waiter rushing up
with a menu was gently waved away and the little man stood over the side
of the table blocking out the fuller end of the restaurant. Hardly able
to speak for the beating of her heart she looked up into a little firm
round pallid face with a small snub nose and curious pale waxy blue eyes
and said furiously oh please just a roll and butter and a cup of cocoa.
The little man bowed low with a beaming face and went gently away.
Miriam watched him go down the aisle bowing here and there right and
left. The hovering waiter came forward questioningly to meet him and was
again waved aside and she presently saw the little man at a speaking
tube and heard him sing in a soft smooth high monotone, un-sho-co-lat.
He brought her things and arranged them carefully about her and brought
her an Illustrated London News from another table. She sipped and
munched and looked at all the pictures. The people in the pictures were
real people. She imagined them moving and talking in all manner of
circumstances and suffered their characteristics gently, feeling as if
some one were there gently half-reproachfully holding her hands tied
behind her back. The waiter roamed up and down the aisle. People came
in, sometimes two or three at a time. The little man was sitting writing
with a stern bent face at a little table at the far end of the
restaurant just in front of a marble counter holding huge urns and glass
dishes piled with buns and slices of cake. He did not move again until
she rose to go when he came once more hurrying down the aisle. Her bill
was sixpence and he took the coin with a bow and waited while she
extricated herself from the clinging velvet, and held the door wide for
her to pass out. Good evening thank you very much she murmured hoping
that he heard, in response to his polite farewell. She wandered slowly
home through the drizzling rain warmed and fed and with a glow at her
heart. Inside those frightful frosted doors was a home, a bit of her own
London home.
4
The hall gas was out. The dining-room door was ajar showing a faint
light and light was coming from the little room at the end of the
passage. Miriam cautiously pushed open the dining-room door. Mrs. Bailey
was sitting alone poised socially in a low armchair by the fire with the
gas turned low. Miriam came dutifully forward in response to the
entrancement of her smile and stood on the hearthrug enwrapped in her
evening, invaded by the sense of beginning it anew with Mrs. Bailey.
When had she seen Mrs. Bailey last? She could tell her now about Eve in
great confidential detail and explain that she could not _at present_
afford to come to Tansley Street. That would be a great sociable
conversation and the engagement with Mr. Bowdoin would remain untouched.
She stood in a glow of eloquence. Mrs. Bailey preened and bridled and
made little cheerful affectionate remarks and waited silent a moment
before asking if it rained. Miriam forgot Eve and gathered herself
together for some tremendous communication. Was it raining? She glanced
at the outside London world and was lost in interchanging scenes, her
mind split up, pressing several ways at once. Mrs. Bailey saw all these
scenes and felt and understood them exactly as she did. There was no
need to answer the question. She glanced stonily towards her and saw the
downcast held-in embarrassment of her waiting form. In a dry
professional official voice she said gazing at the hearthrug with an air
of judicial profundity, _no_, at least oh yes, I _think_ it is raining
and drifted helplessly towards the window. The challenge was behind her.
She would have to face it again. A borrowed voice said briskly within
her yes it's pouring, I _hope_ it will be fine to-morrow, what _weather_
we have had; well _good_night Mrs. Bailey. I have been to a lecture she
said in imagination standing by the window. It was what any other
boarder would have said and then so fine, such a splendid lecturer and
told the subject and his name and one idea out of the lecture and they
would have agreed and gone cheerfully to bed, with no thoughts. To try
and really tell anything about the lecture would be to plunge down into
misrepresentations and misunderstandings and end with the lecture
vanished. To say anything real about it would lead to living the rest of
her life with the Baileys helping them with their plans ... she turned
and came busily back. It's very late she murmured. Mrs. Bailey smiled
and yawned. At least not so very late, not quite to-morrow she pursued
turning round to the clock and back again to consult the pictures and
the wall-paper. Just staying there was answering Mrs. Bailey's question.
Suddenly she laughed out and turned, laughing, as if she were about to
communicate some mirthful memory. It's too _absurd_ she said distracted
between the joy of her lingering laughter and the need for instantly
inventing an explanation. Mrs. Bailey was laughing delightedly. There
was a most absurd thing--chanted Miriam above her laughter; a gentle tap
took Mrs. Bailey scurrying to the door. May I have a _candle_ Mrs.
Bailey murmured a low voice in a curious solidly curving intonation.
Certainly doctor answered Mrs. Bailey's voice in the hall. She scurried
away downstairs. Miriam turned towards the window and stood listening to
St. Pancras clock striking midnight. Then those men in the little back
sitting-room were _doctors_. How pleased and proud Mrs. Bailey must be.
How wonderful of her to say nothing about them. Can I have a _candle_
missuz Bailey. Wrapped away in the suave strong courteous voice were the
knowledge and the fineness of a world no one in the house knew anything
about. Mrs. Bailey dimly knew, and screened it fearing to lose it. She
had the wonderful voice all to herself. "Good evening." The voice was in
the _room_. Miriam turned instantly; a square strong-looking man a
little over middle height with flat pale fair hair smooth on a squarish
head above grave bluntly moulded features was moving easily forward from
the door. They met at the end of the table standing one each side the
angle of the fireside corner, smiling as if her murmured response to his
greeting had been a speech in a play ready-made to bring them together.
Miriam felt that if she had said oh I'm so glad he would have responded
yes; so am I. My name's von Heber he announced quietly, his restrained
uncontrollably deepening smile sending out a radiance all round her. It
was as if they had met before without the opportunity of speaking and
here at last was the opportunity and they had first to smile out their
recognition of its perfection. They stood in a radiant silence, his even
tones making no break in their interchange. She felt a quality in him
she had not met before; in the ease of his manner there was no trace of
the complacent assumption of the man of the world. His deference was no
mask worn to decorate himself. It was deliberate and yet genuine. It was
the shape in which he presented to her, personally, set above and away
from her ugly clothes and her weariness, the beam of delight which had
been his inward greeting. The completeness and confidence of his
delight, his own completeness and security revealed to her an unknown
reading of life that she longed to hold and fathom. She offered in
return as a measure of her qualification, the laughter she had laughed
to Mrs. Bailey, hoping he had heard it. I find this custom of putting
down the light at eleven very inconvenient he was saying. Miriam smiled
and listened eagerly for more of the low even curiously curving
intonations. I propose to take the London medical examination in July
and I've a good deal of hard work to get through prior to that date. He
had not been going to stop speaking but Miriam found an immense
welcoming space for the word she summoned in vain desperately from far
away Wimpole Street. The _con_joint she declared at last eagerly, almost
before the word reached her consciousness. The Conjoint he repeated and
as his voice went on Miriam contemplated the accumulation they had
gathered. She stood smiling, growing familiar with the quality of his
voice, gathering the sense of a word here and there. Through his talk he
smiled a quizzical pleased appreciation of this way of listening. She
felt as if they were talking backwards, towards something already said
and when she took in I'm taking the post-graduate _course_ at your great
hospital near here she tried in vain to resist the temptation of leading
his talk down into detail. The way to preserve the charm unbroken would
be to let him go on talking. She might even listen carefully, and learn
the meaning of the post-graduate course and its place in the London
medical world; the whole of the London medical world was being
transformed by this man into something simple and joyful. But the eager
words had escaped her--oh; that's the one with the glorious yarn. Tell
me the yarn he chuckled gently, showing a row of strong squarish
flawless teeth. Well, she said the big surgeons were operating and the
patient was collapsing and one said I think it is time we called in
Divine aid. Nonsense said the other I don't believe in unqualified
assistants. That's great he declared; that's one of the greatest yarns
I've heard. I shan't forget it. He was not shocked and she had told the
story as evenly and as much without emphasis as he would have done
himself. She suddenly realised that this was the way to say things. It
made no pause and did not disturb anything. She was learning from him
every moment. He was _utterly_ different to the men she knew. He did not
resent her possession of the story nor attempt to cap it. You've got
some very great men over here he said; some of the very greatest; and he
began outlining the Canadian reputation of names that were amongst the
pinnacles of Wimpole Street conversation. She learned exactly why Victor
Horsley was great in the world and what it was that Dr. Barker did to
fractured knee-caps. When Mrs. Bailey came up it was half-past twelve.
He accepted his candle and thanked her gravely and gravely took his
leave. Miriam and Mrs. Bailey were left confronted. Miriam laughed a
social laugh, unintentionally, and listened happily to Mrs. Bailey's
kind brisk echo of it as she stood turning out the gas. They turned to
each other in the hall and laughed goodnight. Mrs. Bailey was like a
happy excited girl. She trotted busily and socially downstairs humming a
tune towards a sociable waiting world, flouting difficulties with the
sweep of the laughter in her voice.
Your Barker and your Horsley mused Miriam slackening her speed on the
stairs; the sound of the low quiet glad confident voice steadying the
aspect of the world and a strange new sense of the London medical world
dotted by men who were world-famous, approached from afar, reverently,
for specialist training, by already qualified medical men, competed
together within her as she prepared for bed, going serenely through all
the tiresome little processes. Something in the centre of life had
steadied and clarified. It sent a radiance like sunlight through the
endless processes of things; even a ragged tooth-brush was a part of the
sunlit scene; not unnoticed, or just dismal, but a part of the sunlit
scene.