1
Miriam came forward seeing nothing but the golden gaslight pouring over
the white table-cloth. She sat down near Mrs. Bailey within the edge of
its radiance. The depths of the light still held unchanged the welcome
that had been there when she had come in and found Emile laying the
table. There was no change and no disappointment. The smeary mirrors and
unpolished furniture were bright in the gaslight, showing distances of
interior and gleaming passages of light. In the spaces between the
pictures the walls sent back sheeny reflections of the glow on the
table. People coming in one by one saying good evening in different
intonations and sitting down sending out waves of enquiry, left her
undisturbed. There were five or six forms about the table besides Sissie
sitting at the far end opposite her mother. They made sudden statements
about the weather one after the other. They were waiting to have their
daily experience of the meal changed by something she might do or say.
Emile was handing round plates of soup. Presently they would all be
talking and would have forgotten her. Then she could see them all one by
one and get away unseen, having had dinner only with Mrs. Bailey. Mrs.
Bailey was standing up carving the joint. When the sounds she made were
all that was to be heard, she responded to the last remark about the
weather or asked some fresh question about it as if no one had spoken at
all. When she was not speaking every movement of her battle with the
joint expressed her triumphant affectionate sense of Miriam's presence.
She had made no introductions. She was saying secretly there you are
young lady. I told you so. Now you're in your right place. It's quite
easy you see. The joint was already partly distributed. Emile was
handing _three_ piled dishes of vegetables. A generous plateful of
well-browned meat and gravy appeared before Miriam with Mrs. Bailey's
strong small toil-disfigured hand firmly grasping its edge. She took it
to pass it on. Everything was hurrying on.... That's yorce my child said
Mrs. Bailey. The low murmur was audible round the silent table.
Asserting her independence with a sullen formality Miriam thanked her
and looked about for condiments without raising her eyes to the range of
those other eyes, all taking photographs now that she was forced into
movements. Mrs. Bailey placed a cruet near her plate. Yorce she pondered
getting angrily away into thought. Mrs. Bailey _could_ not know that it
might be said to be more correct than yourz. It was an affectation. She
had picked it up somewhere from one of those people who carefully say
off-ten instead of awfen and it gave her satisfaction to use it, linked
rebukingly up with the complacent motherly patronage of which she had
boasted to the whole table. The first of Emile's dishes appeared over
her left shoulder and she saw as she turned unprepared, raised heads
turned towards her end of the table. She scooped her vegetables quickly
and clumsily out of the dishes. In her awkward movements and her
unprotected raised face she felt, and felt all the observers seeing, the
marks of her disgrace. They saw her looking like Eve nervously helping
herself to vegetables in the horrible stony cold dark restaurant of the
hostel. They saw that she resented Mrs. Bailey's public familiarity and
could do nothing. She tried to look bored and murmured thank you when
she had taken her third vegetable. It sounded out like a proclamation in
the intense silence and she turned angrily to her plate trying to
remember whether she had heard anyone else thank Emile for
vegetables.... After all she was paying for the meal and her
politeness to Emile was her own affair. Abroad people bowed or raised
their hats going in and out of shops and said Monsieur to policemen. Her
efforts to eat abstractedly and to appear plunged in thought made her
feel more and more like a poor relation. The details of her meeting with
Eve kept appearing in and out of her attempt to get back her sense of
Mrs. Bailey's house as a secret warmth and brightness added to the many
resources of her life. Mrs. Bailey knew that her house had been
transformed by the meeting with Eve and was trying to tell her that she
was not as independent as she thought.
What were the exact things she had told Mrs. Bailey? She had talked
excitedly and scrappily and all the time Mrs. Bailey had been gathering
information and drawing her own conclusions about the Hendersons. Mrs.
Bailey saw Eve's arrival at the station and her weary resentment of
having everything done for her in the London manner, her revenge in the
cab, sitting back and making the little abstracted patronising sounds in
response to everything that was said to her, taking no interest, and at
last saying _how_ you run on. She saw something of the hostel....
Where's Mr. Mendizzable? demanded Sissie.... The Girls' Friendly;
that was the name of that other thing. But that was for servants. The
Young Women's Bible Association was the worst disgrace that could happen
to a gentlewoman.... Eve had liked it. She had suddenly begun going
about with an interested revived face eagerly doing what she was told.
She was there now, it was her only home, and she must have all her meals
there for cheapness; there would be no outside life for her. Her life
was imprisoned by those women, consciously goody conscientious servants
with flat caps, dominating everything, revelling in the goody
atmosphere; the young women in the sitting-room all looking _raw_, as if
they washed very early in the morning in cold water and did their shabby
hair with cold hands; the superintendent, the watchful official
expression on her large well-fed elderly high-school-girl face, the
_way_ she sat on a footstool with her arms round her knees pretending to
be easy and jolly while she recited that it was a privilege and a joy
for sisters to be so near to each other ... as if she were daring us
to deny it. I shan't see very much of Eve. She won't want me to. She
will strike up a friendship with one of those young women.... Miriam
found herself glancing up the table towards the centre of a conflict.
They were all joined in conflict over some common theme. No one was
outside it; the whole table was in an uproar of voices and laughter....
It was nothing but Miss Scott saying things about Mr. Mendizabal and
everyone watching and throwing in remarks.... Miss Scott was neighing
across the table at something that had been said and was preparing to
speak again without breaking into her laughter. All faces were turned
her way. "What's that Mr. Joe-anzen says?" laughed Mrs. Bailey towards
the last speaker. The invisible man opposite Miss Scott was not even Mr.
Helsing; only the younger fainter Norwegian, and this side of him an
_extraordinary_ person ... an abruptly bulging coarse fringe, a
coarse-grained cheek bulging from under an almost invisible deep-sunken
eye, and abruptly shelving bust under a coarse serge bodice.
"Mr. Yo-hanson says Mr. Mendy-zahble like n-gaiety." Miriam glanced
across the table. That was _all_. That little man with an adenoid voice
and a narrow sniggering laugh that brought a flush and red spots all
over his face, and shiny straight Sunday school hair watered and brushed
flat, made up the party. Next to him was only Polly. Then came Miss
Scott on Sissie's left; then Sissie and round the corner the Norwegian.
Everyone looked dreadful in the harsh light, secret and secretly hostile
to everyone else, unwilling to be there; and even here though there was
nothing and no one there was that everlasting conversational fussing and
competition.
"Quite right," hooted the bulky woman in a high pure girlish voice, "I
doan blame 'im."
Miriam turned towards the unexpectedness of her voice and sat helplessly
observing. The serge sleeves were too short to cover her heavy red
wrists; her pudgy hands held her knife and fork broadside, like salad
servers. Her hair was combed flatly up over her large skull and twisted
into a tiny screw at the top just behind the bulge of her fringe. Could
she possibly be a boarder? She looked of far less consequence even than
the Baileys. Her whole person was unconsciously ill at ease, making one
feel ashamed.
"Mrs. m-Barrow is another of 'em," said the little man with his eyebrows
raised as he sniggered out the words.
"I _am_ Mr. Gunna, I doan believe in go-an abate with a face like a
fiddle."
Mr. Gunner's laughter flung back his head and sat him upright and
brought him back to lean over his plate shaking noiselessly with his
head sunk sideways between his raised shoulders as if he were dodging a
blow. The eyes he turned maliciously towards Mrs. Barrow were a hard
opaque pale blue. His lips turned outwards as he ate and his knife and
fork had an upward tilt when at rest. Some of his spots were along the
margin of his lips, altering their shape and making them look angry and
sore. The eating part of his face was sullen and angry, not touched by
the laughter that drew his eyebrows up and wrinkled his bent forehead
and sounded only as a little click in his throat at each breath.
"There's plenty of glum folks abate," scolded Mrs. Barrow.
Miriam was aware that she was recoiling visibly, and tried to fix her
attention on her meal. Mrs. Bailey was carving large second helpings and
Emile's vegetable dishes had been refilled. None of these people thought
it extraordinary that there should be all this good meal and a waiter,
every day ... it would be shameful to come again for the sake of the
meal, feeling hostile. Besides, it would soon be unendurable; they would
be aware of criticisms and would resent them. The only way to be able to
come would be to pretend to laugh at remarks about people and join in
discussions on opinions about cheerfulness and seriousness and winter
and summer. They would not know that one was not sincere. They were
perfectly sincere in their laughter and talk. They all had some sort of
common understanding, even when they disagreed. It was the same
everlasting problem again, the way people took everything for granted.
They would be pleased, would turn and like one if one could say heartily
_isn't_ he a funny little man, mts, my _word_, or well I don't see
anything particularly funny about him, or _oh_, give me the _summer_.
But if one did that one would presently be worn and strained with lying,
left with an empty excitement, while they went serenely on their way,
and the reality that was there when one first sat down with them would
have gone. Always and always in the end there was nothing but to be
alone. And yet it needed people in the world to make the reality when
one was alone. Perhaps just these uninterfering people, when one had
forgotten their personal peculiarities and had only the consciousness of
them in the distance.... One might perhaps then wonder sometimes
longingly what they were saying about the weather. But to be _obliged_
to meet them daily.... She chided herself for the scathing glance she
threw at the unconscious guests. Gunner was smiling sideways down the
table again prepared to execute his laugh when he should have caught an
eye and sent his grin home. Miriam almost prayed that nothing should
provoke him again to speech. During a short silence she cleared her
throat elaborately to cover the sound of his eating. Several voices
broke out together, but Mrs. Bailey was suddenly saying something
privately to her. She raised her head towards the bright promise and was
aware of Mr. Gunner thoughtful and serene. There was a pleasant
intelligence somewhere about his forehead. If only she could think his
head clear and cool and not have to hear again the hot dull hollow
resonance of his voice how joyfully she would be listening to Mrs.
Bailey. I've got a very special message for you young lady she had said
and now went on with her eye on the conflict at the end of the table
into which Mr. Gunner was throwing comments and exclamations from afar.
The room beamed softly in its golden light. From the heart of the golden
light Mrs. Bailey was hurrying towards her with good tidings.
"_Hah._"...
Mrs. Bailey looked round cloaking her vexation in a bridling smile as
Mr. Mendizabal came in sturdily beaming. He sat down amidst the general
outcry and Emile busied himself to lay him a place. He shouted answers
to everyone, sitting with his elbows on the table. Putting her elbows on
the table Mrs. Bailey applauded with little outbursts of laughter. She
had dropped the idea of delivering her message. Miriam finished her
pudding hurriedly. The din was increasing. No one was aware of her.
Cautiously rising she asked Mrs. Bailey to excuse her. You go Miss?
shouted Mr. Mendizabal suddenly looking her way. He looked
extraordinary, not himself.
2
Eve's shop was a west-end blaze of flowers. The window was blocked with
flowers in jars, tied up in large bundles. In front were gilt baskets of
hot-house flowers. Propped in the middle were a large flower anchor and
a flower horseshoe, both trimmed with large bows of white satin
ribbon--women in white satin evening dresses with trains, bowing from
platforms--on either side were tight dance buttonholes pinned on to
heart-shaped velvet mounts.
It was strange to be able to go in.... Going in to see an employee was
not the right way to go into a west-end shop.... There _was_ Eve;
standing badly in a droopy black dress on a bare wet wooden floor. Cut
flowers in stone jam pots, masses of greenery lying on a wet table.
Hulloh aren't your _feet_ wet demanded Miriam irritably. Eve started and
turned, looking. She was exhausted and excited, grappling dreamily with
abrupt instructions with a conservatory smell competing with them;
trying to become part of a clever arrangement to collect the
conservatory smell for sale. She stepped slenderly forward; all her old
Eve manner, but determined to guard against disturbance; making sounds
without speaking, and the faint shape of a tired smile. She was worn out
with the fatigue of trying to make herself into something else, but
liking it and determined not to be reminded of other things. Even her
hair seemed to be changed. Full of pictures of Eve, gracefully dressed
and with piled brown hair Miriam's eyes passed in fury over the skimpy
untidy sham shop-assistant, beginning a failure defensively, _imagining_
behind it that she was taking hold of London.... Won't you catch
_cold_? You get used to it mouthed Eve nervously turning her head away
and waiting, fumbling a scattered spray of smilax. Eve had always loved
smilax. Did it seem the same to her now? Fancy _you_ said Miriam, in all
this damp. They were both miserable and Eve was not going to put it
right. All her strength and interest was for this new thing. Do you like
it? said Miriam beginning again. Yes awfully flushed Eve looking as if
she were going to cry. It was too late. I suppose its awfully
interesting asked Miriam formally, opening a conversation with a
stranger. Mps said Eve warmly I simply love it. It makes you frightfully
tired at first, but I find I can do things I never dreamed I could. I
don't _mind_ standing in the wet a bit now. You have to if you're
obliged to. Eve was _liking_ hardness imposed by other people. _Liking_
the prices of her new life. Accepting them without resentment. People
would despise and like her for that. Perhaps she would succeed in
staying on if her strength did not give way. Her graceful dresses and
leisurely brown hair going further and further away.... Do you
_serve_? Ssh. I'm learning to. Eve would not look, and wanted her to be
gone. I'm free for lunch said Miriam snappily, holding to the
disappearing glory of her first coming out into London in the middle of
a week-day. Eve should have guessed and stopped being anything but Eve
being taken out to lunch. We could go to an A.B.C. Oh I can't come _out_
murmured Eve ignoringly.
3
Miriam ordered another cup of coffee and went on reading. There was
plenty of time. Eve would not appear at Tansley Street until half-past.
In looking up at the clock she had become aware of detailed people
grouped at tables. She plunged back into Norway, reading on and on. Each
line was wonderful; but all in a darkness. Presently on some turned page
something would shine out and make a meaning. It went on and on. It
seemed to be going towards something. But there was nothing that
_anyone_ could imagine, nothing in life or in the world that could make
it clear from the beginning, or bring it to an end. If the man died the
author might stop. Finis. But it would not make any difference to
anything. She turned the pages backwards re-reading passages here and
there. She could not remember having read them. Looking forward to
portions of the dialogue towards the end of the book she found them
familiar; as if she had read them before ... she read them intently.
They had more meaning read like that, without knowing to what they were
supposed to refer. They were the _same_, read alone in scraps, as the
early parts. It was all one book in some way, not through the thoughts,
or the story, but something in the author. People who talked about the
book probably understood the strange thoughts and the puzzling hinting
story that began and came to an end and left everything as it was
before. The author did not seem to suggest that you should be sorry. He
seemed to know that at the end everything was as before, with the
mountains all round.... The electric lights flashed out all over the
A.B.C. at once.... Miriam remained bent low over her book. Only you
had been in Norway, in a cottage up amongst the mountains and out in the
open. She read a scene at random and another and began again and read
the first scene through and then the last. It was all the _same_. You
might as well begin at the end.... In _Norway_, up among the misty
mountains, in farms and cottages looking down on fiords with glorious
scenery about them all the time are people, sitting in the winter by
fires and worrying about right and wrong. They _wonder_ but more gravely
and clearly than we do. Torrents thunder in their ears and they can see
mountains all the time even when they are indoors. "Ibsen's Brand" is
about all those worrying things, in magnificent scenery. You are _in_
Norway while you read. That is why people read books by geniuses and
look far-away when they talk about them. They know they have been
somewhere you cannot go without reading the book.... _Brand_. You are
in the strangeness of Norway--and then there are people saying things
that might be said anywhere. But with something going in and out of the
words all the time. Ibsen's genius. You can't understand it or see where
it is. Each sentence looks so ordinary, making you wonder what it is all
about. But taking you somewhere, to stay, forgetting everything, until
it is finished. An hour ago Ibsen was just a name people said in a
particular way, a difficult wonderful mystery, and _improper_. Why do
people say he is improper? He is exactly like everyone else, thinking
and worrying about the same things. But putting them down in a
background that is more real than people or thoughts. The life in the
background is in the people. He does not know this. Why did he write it?
A book by a genius is alive. That is why "Ibsen" is superior to novels;
because it is not quite about the people or the thoughts. There is
something else; a sort of lively freshness all over even the saddest
parts, preventing your feeling sorry for the people. Everyone ought to
know. It ought to be on the omnibuses and in the menu. All these people
fussing about not knowing of Ibsen's Brand. A volume, bound in a cover.
Alive. Precious. What _is_ Genius? Something that can take you into
Norway in an A.B.C.
She wandered out into Oxford Street. There was a vast fresh gold-lit sky
somewhere behind the twilight. Why did Ibsen sit down in Norway and
write plays? Why did people say Ibsen as if it were the answer to
something? Walking along Oxford Street with a read volume of Ibsen held
against you is walking along with something precious between two covers
which makes you know you are rich and free.... She wandered on and on
in an expansion of everything that passed into her mind out and out
towards a centre in Norway. She wondered whether Ibsen were still alive.
A vast beautiful Norway and a man writing his thoughts in a made-up
play. Genius. People go about saying Ibsen's Brand as if it were the
_answer_ to _something_ and Ibsen knows no more than anyone else....
She arrived at Tansley Street as from a great distance, suddenly
wondering about her relationship with the sound of carts and near
footfalls. Mrs. Bailey was standing in the doorway seeing someone off.
_Eve_. Forgotten. I couldn't get here before; I'm _so_ sorry. Mrs.
Bailey had disappeared. Eve stepped back into the hall and stood
serenely glowing in the half-light. Are you going? I must, in a minute.
Eve was looking sweet; slenderly beautiful and with her crimson-rose
bloom; shy and indulgent and unenviously admiring as she had been at
home; and Mrs. Bailey had been having it all. Can't you come upstayers?
Not this time; I'll come again some time. Well; you must just tell me;
wot you been doing? Talking to Mrs. Bailey? Yes. Eve had been flirting
with Mrs. Bailey; perhaps talking about religion. Isn't she funny? I
_like_ her; she's perfectly _genuine_, she means what she says and
really _likes_ people. Yes; I know. Isn't it funny? I don't think it's
funny; it's very beautiful and rare. Would you like to be here always?
Yes; I could be always with Mrs. Bailey. Every day of your life for ever
and ever? _Rather._ Yes; I know. And y'know there are all _sorts_ of
interesting people. I wish you lived here Eve. Eve glanced down wisely
smiling and moved slenderly towards the door. What about Sunday?
Couldn't you come round for a long time? No breathed Eve restrainingly,
I'm going to _Sallies_. All Eve's plans were people. She moved,
painfully, through things, from person to person.
4
Dr. Hurd held the door wide for Miriam to pass out and again his fresh
closely knit worn brick-red face was deeply curved by the ironically
chuckling hilarious smile with which he had met the incidents of the
"awful German language." That of the _fatherland_, the happy
_fatherland_, nearly _dislocates_ my _jaw_ she could imagine him
heartily and badly singing with a group of Canadian students. She smiled
back at him without saying anything, rapidly piecing together the world
that provoked his inclusive deeply carved smiles; himself, the
marvellous little old country he found himself in as an incident of the
business of forcing himself to be a doctor, his luck in securing an
accomplished young English lady to prepare him for the struggle with the
great medical world of Germany; his triumphant chuckling satisfaction in
getting in first before the other fellows with an engagement to take her
out.... The grandeur of this best bedroom of Mrs. Bailey was nothing to
him. The room was just a tent in his wanderings.... For the moment he
was going to take a young lady to a concert. That was how he saw it. He
was a simple boyish red-haired open extension of Dr. von Heber. When she
found herself out in the large grime and gloom of the twilit landing she
realised that he had lifted her far further than Dr. von Heber into
Canada; he was probably more Canadian. The ancient gloom of the house
was nothing to him, he would get nothing of the quality of England in
his personal life there, only passing glimpses from statements in books
and in the conversation of other people. He did not see her as part of
it all in the way Dr. von Heber had done talking at the table that night
and wanting to talk to her because she was part of it. He saw her as an
accomplished young lady, but a young lady like a Canadian young lady and
a fellow was a fool if he did not arrange to take her out quick before
the other fellows. But there was nothing in it but just that triumph.
"I'll get a silk hat before Sunday"; he would prepare for her to go all
the way down to the Albert Hall as a young lady being taken to a
concert; the Albert Hall on Sunday was brass bands; he thought they were
a concert. His world was thin and open; but the swift sunlit decision
and freedom of his innocent reception of her in his bedroom lifted the
dingy brown house of her long memories into a new background. She was to
be fêted, in an assumed character and whether she liked it or no. The
four strange men in the little back sitting-room were her competing
friends, the friends of all nice young ladies. He was the one who had
laughed the laugh she had heard in the hall, of course. They never
appeared but somehow they had got to know of her and had their curious
baseless set ways of thinking and talking about her. Being doctors and
still students they ought to be the most hateful and awful kind of men
in relation to women, thinking and believing all the horrors of medical
science; the hundred golden rules of gynæcology; if they had been
Englishmen they would have gone about making one want to murder them;
but they did not; Dr. Hurd was studying gyn'kahl'jy, but he did not
apply its ugly lies to life; to Canadians women were people ... but they
were all the _same_ people to Dr. Hurd.
5
That evening both Dr. Heber and Dr. Hurd appeared at dinner. Mrs. Bailey
tumultuously arranged them opposite each other to her right and left.
Miriam could not believe they were going to stay until they sat down.
She retreated to the far end of the table taking her place on Sissie's
right hand, separated from Dr. von Heber by the thin Norwegian and the
protruding bulk of Mrs. Barrow. Mr. Mendizabal with a pencil and paper
at the side of his plate was squarely opposite to her. His _méfiant_
sallies to the accompaniment of Sissie's giggles and Miss Strong's rapid
sarcastic remarks, made a tumult hiding her silence. She heard nothing
of the various conversations sprouting easily all round the table. The
doctors were far-off strongholds of serenity, unconscious of their
serenity, unconscious of her and of their extraordinary taking of the
Baileys and Mr. Gunner for granted.... Dr. von Heber was a silence
broken by small courteously curving remarks. Dr. Hurd laughed his
leaping delighted laugh in and out of an unmeditated interchange with
Mr. Gunner and Mrs. Bailey. If she had been at their end of the table
they would not have perceived her thoughts, but they would have felt her
general awareness and got up at last disliking her. They changed the
atmosphere but could not make her forget the underlying unchanged
elements nor rid her of her resentment of their unconsciousness of them.
There was a long interval before the puddings appeared. Mrs. Bailey was
trying to answer questions about books. Dr. Hurd did not care for
reading, but liked to be read to, by his sisters, in the evening, and
had come away, at the most exciting part of a book ... a wonderful
authoress, what's her name now----Rosie----Newchet.... He was just
longing to know how it ended. Was it sweet and wonderful, or too
dreadful for anything to contemplate a student, a fully qualified doctor
having Rosa Nouchette Carey read to him by his sisters? Dr. von Heber
was not joining in. Did he read novels and like them? No one had
anything to say; no one here knew even of Rosa Nouchette Carey ... and
that man Hunter ... he's great ... he's father's favourite; what's
this, Mr. Barnes of New York.... Archibald Clavering Gunter said Miriam
suddenly, longing to be at the other end of the table. Beg pardon? said
Sissie turning aside for a moment from watching Mr. Mendizabal's busy
pencil. There he is shouted Mr. Mendizabal flinging out his piece of
paper--gastric ulcer--there he is. There was a drawing of a sort of crab
with huge claws.--My beautiful gastric ulcer--Have you been to the
'ospital to-day Mr. Mendizzable asked Mrs. Bailey through the general
laughter. I have been madame and I come away. They say they welcome me
inside again soon. Je m'en fiche. The faces of both doctors were turned
enquiringly. Dr. Hurd's look of quizzical sympathy passed on towards
Miriam and became a mask of suppressed hysterical laughter. Perhaps he
and Dr. Heber would scream and yell together afterwards and make a great
story of a man in a London pension. Dr. Hurd would call him a _cure_. My
word isn't that chap a _cure_? Brave little man. Caring for nothing. How
could he possibly have a gastric ulcer and look so hard and happy and
strong. _What_ was Dr. von Heber silently thinking? The doctors
disappeared as soon as dinner was over, Dr. von Heber gravely rounding
the door with some quiet formal phrases of politeness, and the group
about the table broke up. He's a bit pompous Mr. Gunner was saying
presently to someone from the hearthrug. Was he daring to speak of Dr.
von Heber? Presently there were only the women left in the room. Miriam
felt unable to depart and hung about until the table was cleared and sat
down under the gas protected by her note-book. The room was very quiet.
Sissie and Mrs. Bailey were mending near a lamp at the far end of the
table. Miriam's thoughts left her suddenly. The tide of life had swept
away leaving an undisturbed stillness, a space swept clear. She was
empty and nothing. In all the clamour that had passed she had no part.
In all the noise that lay ahead, no part. Strong people came and went
and never ceased, coming and going and acting ceaselessly, coming and
going, and here, at her centre, was nothing, lifeless thoughtless
nothingness. The four men studied apart in the little room, away from
the empty lifeless nothingness ... the door opened quietly. Mrs. Bailey
and Sissie looked expectantly up and were silent. Something had come
into the room. Something real, clearing away the tumult and compelling
peaceful silence. She exerted all her force to remain still and
apparently engrossed, as Dr. von Heber placed an open note-book and a
large volume on the table exactly opposite to where she sat and sat
down. He did not see that she was astonished at his coming nor her still
deeper astonishment in the discovery of her unconscious certainty that
he would come. A haunting familiar sense of unreality possessed her.
Once more she was part of a novel; it was right, true like a book, for
Dr. Heber to come in in defiance of everyone, bringing his studies into
the public room in order to sit down quietly opposite this fair young
English girl. He saw her apparently gravely studious and felt he could
'pursue his own studies' all the better for her presence. She began
writing at random, assuming as far as possible the characteristics he
was reading into her appearance. If only it were true; but there was not
in the whole world the thing he thought he saw. Perhaps if he remained
steadily like that in her life she could grow into some semblance of his
steady reverent observation. He did not miss any movement or change of
expression. Perhaps you need to be treated as an object of romantic
veneration before you can become one. Perhaps in Canada there were
old-fashioned women who _were_ objects of romantic veneration all their
lives, living all the time as if they were Maud or some other woman from
Tennyson. It _was_ glorious to have a real, simple homage coming from a
man who was no simpleton, coming simple, strong and kindly from Canada
to put you in a shrine.... I have always liked those old-fashioned
stories because I have always known they were _true_. They have lived on
in Canada. Canadian men have kept something that Englishmen are losing.
She turned the pages of her note-book and came upon the scrap crossed
through by Mr. Mendizabal. She read the words through forcing them to
accept a superficial meaning. Disturbance about ideas would destroy the
perfect serenity that was demanded of her. Be good sweet maid and let
who will be clever. Easy enough if one were perpetually sustained by a
strong and adoring hand. Perhaps more difficult really to be good than
to be clever. Perhaps there were things in this strong man that were not
perfectly good and serene. He exacted his own serenity by sheer force;
that was why he worshipped and looked for natural serenity....
Presently she stirred from her engrossment and looked across at him as
if only just aware of his presence. He did not meet her look but a light
came on his face and he raised his head and turned towards the light to
aid her observation. The things that are beginning to be called silly
futile romances are true. Here _is_ the strong silent man who does not
want to talk and grin.... He would love laughter. Freed from worries
and sustained by him one could laugh all one's laughter out and dance
and sing through life to a happy sunsetting.... Was he _religious_?
She found she had risen to her feet with decision and began collecting
her papers in confusion as if she had suddenly made a great clamour. Dr.
Heber rose at once and with some quiet murmuring remark went away from
the room. Miriam felt she must get into the open and go far on and on
and on. Going upstairs through the house and into her room for her
outdoor things she found her own secret belongings more her own. In the
life she shyly glanced at, out away somewhere in the bright blaze of
Canadian sunshine her own secret belongings would be more her own. That
was one of the secrets of the sheltered life ... one of the things
behind the smiles of the sheltered women; their own secret certainties
intensified because they were surrounded; perhaps in Canada men
respected the secret certainties of women which they could never share.
With your feet on that firm ground what would it matter how life went on
and on? There was someone in the hall. Mr. Mendizabal in a funny little
short overcoat.
"You go out Miss?" he said cheerfully.
"I'm going for a walk," she said eagerly, her eyes on the clear grey and
black of the hat he was taking from the hall stand.
"I too go for a walk" he murmured cramming the soft hat on to his
resisting hair and opening the door for her.
6
This was one of those _mild_ February days; it is a mistake to imagine
that the winter is gone; but it is gone in your mind; you can see ahead
two summers and only one winter. I go with you was meant as a
question.... It was on the tip of her tongue to turn and say you should
have said shall I go with you; she was rebuked by a glimpse of Mr.
Mendizabal swinging sturdily unconsciously along on the gutter side of
the narrow width of pavement, swinging his stick, the strong modelling
of his white face unconscious under his strong black hair and the jaunty
sweep of his black banded grey hat. "Jaunty and debonair"; but without a
touch of weakness. What a lovely _mild_ evening; extraordinary for the
time of year; he would be furious at being interrupted for that,
thinking of her as a stiff formal institutrice and shouting something
ironic that would bring the world about their ears. Quel beau temps;
that was it.
"Quel _beau_ temps." They had reached the Gower Street curb and stood
waiting to plunge through the passing traffic.
"Une soirée superbe mademoiselle" shouted Mr. Mendizabal in a smooth
flattened squeal as they crossed side by side; "hah-_eh_!" he squealed
pushing her off to dart clear of a hansom and away to the opposite curb.
Miriam pulled back just in time, receiving the angry yell of the driver
full in her upturned face. Mr. Mendizabal was waiting unconcernedly
outside the chemist's, singing, with French words. She disposed hastily
of the incident, eager to be walking on through the darkness towards the
mingled darkness and gold of the coming streets. They went along past
the grey heights of University College Hospital, separate creatures of
mysteriously different races; she expected that when they reached the
light she would find herself alone--and swung with one accord round into
the brilliance of the Tottenham Court Road; the tide of light and sound
raising them into a companionship that needed no bending into shapes of
conversation. It was something to him and it was something to her, and
they threaded their way together, meeting and separating and rejoining,
unanimous and apart. We are both batteurs de pavé, she thought; both
people who must be free to be nothing; saying to everything je m'en
fiche ... the hushed happiness that had begun in the dining-room half
an hour ago seized her again suddenly, sending her forward almost on
tiptoe. It was securely there; the vista it opened growing in beauty as
she walked. There was some source of light within her, something that
was ready to spread out all round her and ahead and flow over the past.
It confirmed scenes she had read and wondered at and cherished, seeking
in vain in the world for women who were like the women described in
them. She understood what women in books meant by _sacred_ "It is all
too sacred for _words_." There was no choice in all that; only secret
and sacred beauty; unity with all women who had felt in the same way;
the freedom of following certainties. Outside it was this other self
untouched and always new, her old free companion attending to no one.
She tossed Mr. Mendizabal shreds of German or French whenever the
increasing throng of passing pedestrians allowed them to walk for a
moment side by side.
His apparent oblivion of her incoherence gave full freedom to her
delight in her collection of idioms and proverbs. Each one flung out
with its appropriate emphasis and the right foreign intonation gave her
a momentary change of personality. He caught the shreds and returned
them woven into phrases increasing her store of convincing foreignness,
comfortably, from the innocence of his polyglot experience, requiring no
instructive contribution from her, reassuringly assuming her equal
knowledge, his conscious response being only to her joyousness, his eyes
wide ahead, his features moulded to gaiety. The burden of her personal
dinginess and resourcelessness in a strong resourceful world was hidden
by him because he was not aware of dinginess and resourcelessness
anywhere. Dingy and resourceless she wandered along keeping as long as
her scraps of convincing impersonation should hold out, to her equal
companionship with his varied experience; bearing within her in secret
unfathomable abundance the gift of ideal old-English rose and white
gracious adorable womanhood given her by Dr. Heber. At the turning into
Oxford Street they lost each other. Miriam wandered in solitude amidst
jostling bodies. The exhausted air rang with lifeless strident voices in
shoutings and heavy thick flattened unconcerned speech; even from above
a weight seemed to press. Clearer space lay ahead; but it was the clear
space of Oxford Street and pressed upon her without ray or break. Once
it had seemed part of the golden west-end; but Oxford Street was not the
west-end. It was more lifeless and hopeless than even the north of
London; more endurable because life was near at hand. Oxford Street was
like a prison ... the embarrassment of her enterprise came upon her
suddenly; the gay going off was at an end; perhaps she might get away
and back home alone up a side street. Amidst the shouting of women and
the interwoven dark thick growlings of conversations she heard Mr.
Mendizabal's ironic snorting laugh not far behind her. Glancing round
from the free space of darkness she had reached she saw him emerge
shouldering from a group of women, short and square and upright and
gleaming brilliantly with the remains of his laughter. A furious wrath
flickered over her. He came forward with his eyes ahead unseeing,
nearer, near, safe at her side, _her_ little foreign Mr. Mendizabal,
mild and homely.
Here is Ruscino's mademoiselle, _all_ons, we will go to Ruscino
_all_ons! Ruscino, in electric lights round the top of the little square
portico, like the name of a play round the portico of a theatre, the
sentry figure of the commissionaire, the passing glimpse of palm ferns
standing in semi-darkness just inside the portico, the darkness beyond,
suddenly became a place, separate and distinct from the vague confusion
of it in her mind with the Oxford Music Hall; offering itself, open
before her, claiming to range itself in her experience; open, with her
inside and the mysteries of the portico behind ... continental London
ahead of her, streaming towards her in mingled odours of continental
food and wine, rich intoxicating odours in an air heavy and parched with
the flavour of cigars, throbbing with the solid, filmy thrilling swing
of music. It was a café! Mr. Mendizabal was evidently a habitué. She
could be, by right of her happiness abroad. She was here as a foreigner,
all her English friends calling her back from a spectacle she could not
witness without contamination. Only Gerald knew the spectacle of
Ruscino's. "Lord, Ruscino's; _Lord_".... In a vast open space of
light, set in a circle of balconied gloom, innumerable little tables
held groups of people wreathed in a brilliancy of screened light, veiled
in mist, clear in sharp spaces of light, clouded by drifting spirals of
smoke. They sat down at right angles to each other at a little table
under the central height. The confines of the room were invisible. All
about them were worldly wicked happy people.
7
She could understand a life that spent all its leisure in a café; every
day ending in warm brilliance, forgetfulness amongst strangers near and
intimate, sharing the freedom and forgetfulness of the everlasting
unchanging café, all together in a common life. It was like a sort of
dance, everyone coming and going poised and buoyant, separate and free,
united in freedom. It was a heaven, a man's heaven, most of the women
were there with men, somehow watchful and dependent, but even they were
forced to be free from troublings and fussings whilst they were there
... the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest ... she
was there as a man, a free man of the world, a continental, a
cosmopolitan, a connoisseur of women. That old man sitting alone with a
grey face and an extinguished eye was the end of it, but even now the
café held him up; he would come till death came too near to allow him
movement. He was horrible, but less horrible than he would be alone in a
room; he had to keep the rules and manage to behave; as long as he could
come he was still in life.... White muslin wings on a black straw hat, a
well-cut check costume and a carriage, bust forward, an elegant carriage
imposing secrets and manners.... Miriam turned to watch her proceeding
with a vague group of people through the central light towards the outer
gloom. Voilà une petite qui est jolie she remarked judicially.--Une
jeune fille avec ses parents--rebuked Mr. Mendizabal. Even he, wicked
fast little foreigner did not know how utterly meaningless his words
were. He was here, in Ruscino's quite simply. He sat at home, at the
height of his happy foreign expansiveness. He had no sense of desperate
wickedness. He gave no help to the sense of desperate wickedness;
pouring like an inacceptable nimbus from his brilliant strong head was a
tiresome homeliness. She flung forth to the music, the shining fronds of
distant palm ferns; sipped her liqueur with downcast eyes and thought of
an evening along the digue at Ostend, the balmy air, the telescoping
brilliant interiors of the villas, the wild arm-linked masquerading
stroll, Elsie had really looked like an unprincipled Bruxelloise ...
foreigners were all innocent in their depravity.... To taste the joy of
depravity one must be English.... Hah; Strelinsky! Ça va bien, hein? A
figure had risen out of the earth at Mr. Mendizabal's elbow and stood
looking down at him; another foreigner. She glanced with an air of
proprietorship; a slender man in a thin faded grey overcoat, a sharp
greyish yellow profile and small thin head under a dingy grey felt hat.
Strelinsky. Mr. Mendizabal stood sturdily up bowing with square
outstretched hand, wrapped in the radiating beam of his smile. I present
you Mr. Strelinsky. A musician. A composer of music. His social manner
was upon him again; fatherliness, strong responsible hard-working
kindliness. The face under the grey hat turned slowly towards her. She
bowed and looked into eyes set far back in the thin mask of the face.
Her eyes passed a question from the expressionless eyes to the
motionless expressionless face. How could he be a composer; looking so
... vanishing? Strelinsky ... Morceau pour piano ... that must be
_he_ standing here; did you write this she said abruptly and hummed the
beginning. It sounded shapeless and toneless, but there was a little
tune just ahead. She broke off short of it not sure that he was
attending; the world burst into laughter; his face turned slowly and
stopped looking downwards across her, his eyes fixed in a dead
repetition of the laughter in which she was drowning. He stood in space
in a faded coat and hat, a colourless figure clothed by her feebleness
in lively dignity and wisdom ... grouped inaccessibly beyond the vast
space were solid tables filled with judges; dim figures stood in
judgment in the amber light under the gallery where palms stood; she was
drowning alone, surrounded by a distant circle of palms. Eleven. We must
go miss stated Mr. Mendizabal cordially. Miriam rose. The tide of café
life flowed all round her. She wandered blissfully out through the misty
smoke-wreathed golden light, threading her way amongst the tables
towards the black and gold of the streets. Far away behind her, staying
in the evening, Strelinsky blocked the view, moving, fixed avertedly,
with eyes in his shoulders along an endless narrowing distance of café.