1
A day of blazing heat changed the season suddenly. Flat threatening
sunlight travelled round the house. The shadowy sun-blinded
flower-scented waiting-room held street-baked patients in its deep
armchairs. Some of them were languid. But none of them suffered. They
kept their freshness and freedom from exhaustion by living away from
toil and grimy heat; in cool clothes, moving swiftly through moving air
in carriages and holland-blinded hansoms; having ices in expensive
shade; being waited on in the cool depths of west-end houses; their
lives disturbed only by occasional dentistry. The lean dark patients
were like lizards, lively and darting and active even in the sweltering
heat.
* * * * *
Miriam's sunless room was cool all day. Through her grey window she
could see the sunlight pouring over the jutting windows of Mr. Leyton's
small room and reflected in the grimy sheen of the frosted windows of
the den. Her day's work was unreal, as easy as a dream. All about her
were open sunlit days that her summer could not bring, and that yet were
hers as she moved amongst them; a leaf dropped in the hall, the sight of
a summer dress, summer light coming through wide-open windows took her
out into them. Summer would never come again in the old way, but it set
her free from cold, and let her move about unhampered in the summers of
the past. Summer was happiness.... Individual things were straws on the
stream of summer happiness.
* * * * *
At tea time in the den there was a darkening hush. It was like a guest,
turning everyone's attention to itself, abolishing differences, setting
free unexpected sympathies. Everyone spoke of the coming storm and
looked beautiful in speaking. The day's work was discussed as if in the
presence of an unseen guest.
* * * * *
She set out from the house of friends to meet the darkened daylight
... perhaps the sudden tapping of thunder-drops upon her thin blouse.
The street was a livid grey, brilliant with hidden sunlight.
* * * * *
The present can be judged by the part of the past it brings up. If the
present brings up the happiness of the past, the present is happy.
* * * * *
Purgatory. The waters of Lethe and Eunoe 'forgetfulness and sweet
memory'; and then Heaven. The Catholics are right about expiation. If
you are happy in the present something is being expiated. If life
contains moments of paradise you must be in purgatory looking across the
vale of Asphodel. You can't be in hell.... Yet hell would not be hell
without a knowledge of heaven. If once you've been in heaven you can
never escape. Yet Dante believed in everlasting punishment.
* * * * *
Bathing in the waters of Lethe and Eunoe unworthily is drinking one's
own damnation. But happiness crops up before one can prevent it. Perhaps
happiness is one long sin, piling up a bill.... It is my secret
companion. Waiting at the end of every dark passage. I did not make
myself. I _can't_ help it.
* * * * *
Brilliant ... _brilliant_; and someone was seeing it. There was no
thunderstorm, no clouds or pink edges on the brilliant copper grey. She
wandered on down the road hemmed by flaring green. The invisible sun was
everywhere. There was no air, nothing to hold her body separate from the
scene. The grey brilliance of the sky was upon the pavement and in the
green of the park, making mauve shadows between the trees and a mist of
mauve amongst the further green. The high house fronts stood out against
the grey, eastern-white, frilled below with new-made green, sprouting
motionlessly as you looked ... white plaster houses against the blue
of the Mediterranean, grey mimosa trees, green-feathered lilac of
wisteria. Between the houses and the park the road glared wooden grey,
dark, baked grey, edged with the shadowless stone grey of the pavement.
Summer. Eternity _showing_....
* * * * *
The Euston Road was a narrow hot channel of noise and unbreathable
odours, the dusty exhausting cruelty of the London summer, leading on to
the feathery green floored woods of Endsleigh Gardens edged by grey
house fronts, and ending in the cool stone of St. Pancras Church.
* * * * *
In the twilit dining-room one's body was like a hot sun throbbing in
cool dark air, ringed by cool walls holding darkness in far corners;
coolness poured out through the wide-open windows towards the rain-cool
grey facades of the opposite houses, cool and cool until the throbbing
ceased.
* * * * *
All the forms seated round the table were beautiful; far-away and secret
and separate, each oneself set in the coming of summer, unconscious. One
soul. Summer is the soul of man. Through all the past months they had
been the waiting guests of summer.
* * * * *
The pain of trying to get back into the moment of the first vision of
spring, the perfect moment before the thought came that spring was going
on in the country unseen, was over. The moment came back of itself ...
the green flush in the squares, the ripples of emerald fringed pink
geraniums along the balconies of white houses.
* * * * *
After dinner Miriam left the dining-room, driven joyfully forth,
remaining behind, floating and drifting happily about, united with
everyone in the room as her feet carried her step by step without
destination, going everywhere, up through the staircase twilight....
* * * * *
The drawing-room was filled with saffron light, filtering in through the
curtains hanging motionless before the high French windows. Within the
air of the room, just inside the faint smell of dusty upholstery was the
peace of the new found summer. Mrs. Bailey's gift. There had been no
peace of summer last year in her stifling garret. This year the summer
was with her, in the house where she was. Far away within the peace of
the room was the evening of a hot summer day at Waldstrasse, the girls
sitting about, beautiful featureless forms together forever in the
blissful twilight of the cool saal and sitting in its little summer
house _Ulrica_, everybody, her dark delicate profile lifted towards the
garden, her unconscious pearly beauty grouped against the undisturbing
presence of Fraulein Pfaff. Miriam turned to the near window and peered
through the thick mesh of the smoke-yellowed lace curtain. Behind it the
french window stood ajar. Drawing aside the thick dust-smelling lace she
stepped out and drew the door to behind her. There were shabby
drawing-room chairs standing in an irregular row on the dirty grey
stone, railed by a balustrade of dark maroon painted iron railings
almost colourless with black grime. But the elastic outer air was there
and away at the end of the street a great gold pink glow stood above and
showed through the feathery upper branches of the trees in Endsleigh
Gardens. A number of people must have been sitting out before dinner.
That was part of their dinner-time happiness. Presently some of them
would come back. She scanned the disposition of the chairs. The little
comfortable circular velvet chair stood in the middle of the row,
conversationally facing the high-backed wicker chair. The other chairs
were the small stiff velvet-seated ones. The one at the north end of the
balcony could be turned towards the glowing sky with its back to the
rest of the balcony. She reached and turned it and sat down. The
opposite houses with their balconies on which groups were already
forming stood sideways, lost beyond the rim of her glasses. The balcony
of the next house was empty; there was nothing between her and the vista
of green feathering up into the intense gold-rose glow.... She could
come here every night ... filling her life with green peace; preparing
for the stifling heat of the nights in her garret. This year, with
dinner in the cool dining-room and the balcony for the evening, the
summer would not be so unbearable. She sat still, lifted out into garden
freshness.... Benediction.... People were stepping out on to the balcony
behind her, remarking on the beauty of the evening, their voices new and
small in the outer air.... If she never came out again this summer would
be different. It had begun differently. She knew what lay ahead and
could be prepared for it.
* * * * *
She would find coolness at the heart of the swelter of London if she
could keep a tranquil mind. The coolness at the heart of the central
swelter was wonderful life, from moment to moment, pure _life_. To go
forward now, from this moment, alive, keeping alive, through the London
summer. Even to go away for holidays would be to break up the wonder, to
snap the secret clue and lose the secret life....
* * * * *
The rosy gold was deepening and spreading.
* * * * *
Miriam found herself rested as if by sleep. It seemed as if she had been
sitting in the stillness for a time that was longer than the whole of
the working day. To recover like this every day ... to have at the end
of every day a cool _solid_ clear head and rested limbs and the feeling
that the strain of work was so far away that it could never return. The
tireless sense of morning and new day that came in moving from part to
part of her London evenings, and strongest of all at the end of a long
evening, going on from a lecture or a theatre to endless leisure,
reading, the happy gaslight over her book under the sloping roof, always
left her in the morning unwilling to get up, and made the beginning of
the day horrible with languor and breakfast a scramble, taken to the
accompaniment of guilty listening for the striking of nine o'clock from
St. Pancras church, and the angry sense of Mr. Hancock already arriving
cool and grey clad at the morning door of Wimpole Street. To-night,
going strong and steady to her hot room, sleep would be silvery cool.
She would wake early and fresh, and surprise them all at Wimpole Street
arriving early and serene after a leisurely breakfast.
* * * * *
The rosy light shone into far-away scenes with distant friends. They
came into her mind rapidly one by one, and stayed grouped in a radiance,
sharper and clearer than in experience. She recalled scenes that had
left a sting, something still to be answered. She saw where she had
failed; her friends saw what she had meant, in some secret unconscious
part of them that was turned away from the world; in their thoughts with
themselves when they were alone. Her own judgments, sharply poised in
memory upon the end of some small incident, reversed themselves, dropped
meaningless, returned reinforced, went forward, towards some clearer
understanding. Her friends drifted forward, coming too near, as if in
competition for some central place. To every claim, she offered her
evening sky as a full answer. The many forms remained, grouped, like an
audience, confronted by the evening.
The gold was fading, a soft mistiness spreading through the deepening
rose, making the leafage darker and more opaque. Presently the sky would
be mother-of-pearl above a soft dark mass and then pure evening grey
outlining the dark feathery tree tops of a London square turning to
green below in the lamplight, sinking to sleep, deeply breathing out its
freshness to meet the freshness pouring through the streets from the
neighbouring squares. Freshness would steal over the outside walls of
the houses already cool within. Only in the garrets would the sultry day
remain under the slowly cooling roofs.
* * * * *
There was still a pale light flowing into the dusk of the garret. It
must be only about nine o'clock ... the gas flared out making a winter
brilliance ... Four sermons on Dante.... Kuenen's Life of Dante ...
Gemma Donati, _Gemma_, busily making puddings in the world lit by the
light of the Mystic Rose; swept away by the rush of words ... a stout
Italian woman ... _Gem_ma; Bayatrichay ... they were bound to reach
music ... a silent Italian woman in a hot kitchen scolding, left out of
the mystic rose ... Lourdes ... Le Nabab ... atroce comédie de bonheur
conjugale sans relâche ... the Frenchman _expressing_ what the
Englishman only thinks ... "the wife" ... I met my WIFE! ... red
nose and check trousers, smoky self-indulgent married man, all the
self-indulgent married men in the audience guffawing ... "You must be
ready to face being taken for granted, you must hide your troubles,
learn to say nothing of your unnoticed exhausting toil, wear a smile
above the heart that you believe is breaking; stand steady in face of
the shipwreck of all your dreams. Remember that although he does not
know it, in spite of all his apparent oblivion and neglect, if you
_fail_, his universe _crumbles_" ... men live their childish ignorant
lives on a foundation of pain and exhaustion. Down in the fevered life
of pain and exhaustion there is a deep certainty. There is no deep
certainty in the lives of men. If there were they would not be forever
talking with conceited guilty lips as if something were waiting if they
stopped, to spring on them from behind.... The evolution of the Idea of
God.... I have forgotten what that is about ... a picture of a sort
of Madonna ... _corn_ goddess, with a child and sheaves of corn....
The Mechanism of Thought.... Thirty Sane Criticisms.... Critique de la
Pensée Moderne; traduit par H. Navray, Mercure de France.... How did he
begin? Where was he when he came out and began saying everybody was
wrong? How did he get to know about it all? She took down a volume
unwillingly ... there was something being lost, something waiting
within the quiet air of the room that would be gone if she read. It was
not too late. Why did men write books? Modern men? The book was open.
Her eyes scanned unwillingly. Fabric. How did he find his words. No one
had ever said _fabric_ about anything. It made the page alive ... a
woven carpet, on one side a beautiful glowing pattern, on the other dull
stringy harshness ... there is a dangerous _looseness_ ... her heart
began beating apprehensively. The room was dead about her. She sat down
tense, and read the sentence through. There is a dangerous looseness in
the fabric of our minds. She imagined the words spoken, looseness was
ugly, making the mouth ugly in speech. There is a looseness in the
fabric of our minds. That is what he would have said in conversation,
looking nowhere and waiting to floor an objection. There is a dangerous,
he had written. That introduced another idea. You were not supposed to
notice that there were two statements, but to read smoothly on,
accepting. It was deliberate. Put in deliberately to frighten you into
reading more. Dangerous. The adjective in the sentence, personal, a
matter of opinion. People who read the books do not think about
_adjectives_. They like them. Conversation is _adjectives_! ... all
the worry of conversation is because people use adjectives and rush
on.... But you can't describe ... but dangerous is not a descriptive
adjective ... there is a twisted looseness, that describes ... that is
Saxon ... Abendmahl ... dangerous, French ... the Prince of Wales uses
the elegant Norman idiom ... dangerous is an idea, the language of
ideas. It expresses nothing but an opinion about life ... a threat
daring you to disagree. Dangerous to what?... Man is a badly made
machine ... an oculist could improve upon the human eye ... and the
mind wrong in some way too ... logic is a cheap arithmetic.
_Imagination._ What _is_ imagination? Is it his imagination that has
found out that mind is loose? Is not imagination mind? It is his
imaginative mind. A special kind of mind. But if mind discovers that
mind is unreliable, its conclusion is also unreliable. That's logic
... Barbara. All Mind is unreliable. Man is mind, therefore man is
unreliable.... Then it is useless to try and know anything ... books
go on ... he has invented imagination. Images. Fabric. But he did not
invent dangerous. That is cheek. By this sin fell the angels. Perhaps he
is a fallen angel. I was right when I told Eve I had sold my soul to the
devil.... "Quite a good afterglow" and then wheeling alertly about to
capture and restate some thread ... and then later, finding you still
looking. "M'yes; a fine ... fuliginous ... _pink_ ... God's had a
strawberry ice for supper" ... endless inexhaustible objections ... a
cold grim scientific world ... Alma knew it. In that clear bright house
with the satisfying furniture ... now let's all make Buddhas. Let's see
who can make the best Buddha.... Away from them you could forget; but it
was going on all the time ... somehow ahead of everything else that was
going on.... She got up and replaced the book. It was on her shelf; a
signed copy; extraordinary. It was an extraordinary privilege. No one
else could write books like that; no one else knew so much about
everything. Right or wrong it was impossible to give up hearing all he
had to say ... and they were kind, alive to one's life in a way other
people were not....
* * * * *
She strolled to the window, finding renewal in the familiar creaking of
her floor in the house, here.... She went back across the happy creaking
and turned out the gas and came again to the window. The sky was dark
enough to show a brilliant star; here and there in the darkness of the
opposite house fronts was an oblong of golden light. The faint blue
light coming up from the street lit up the outer edges of the grey stone
window-sills. The air under the wooden roof of the window space was
almost as close as it was under the immense height of upper coolness....
Down at the end of the road were the lamplit green trees; plane-tree
shadows on the narrow pavement. She put on her hat in the dark.
Crossing the roadway to reach the narrow strip of pavement running along
under the trees she saw single dark figures standing at intervals
against the brilliant lamplit green and swerved back to the wide
pavement. She had forgotten they would be there. They stood like
sentinels.... Behind them the lamplit green flared feverishly.... In
the shadow of St. Pancras church there were others, small and black in a
desert ... lost quickly in the great shadow where the passers-by moved
swiftly through from light to light. Out in the Euston Road along the
pavements shadowed by trees and left in darkness by the high spindling
shaded candles of the lamps along the centre of the roadway, they came
walking, a foreign walk, steadily slow and wavy and expressive, here and
there amongst the shapeless expressionless forms of the London
wayfarers. The high stone entrance of Euston Station shone white across
the way. Anyone can go into a station. Within the entrance gravelled
darkness opened out on either side. Silence all round and ahead where
silent buildings had here and there a lit window. Where was the station?
Immense London darkness and stillness alone and deserted like a country
place at night, just beyond the noises of the Euston Road. A murder
might happen here. The cry of an engine sounded, muffled and far away.
Just ahead in the centre of the approaching wide mass of building was a
wide dimly lit stone archway. The rattle of a hansom sounded from an
open space beyond. Its light appeared swaying swiftly forward and lit
the archway. The hansom bowled through in startling silence, nothing but
the jingle and dumb leathery rattle of the harness, and passed, the
plonking of the horse's hoofs and the swift slur of the wheels sounding
out again in the open space. The archway had little side pathways for
passengers roofed by small arching extensions of the central arch ...
_indiarubber_ ... pavement to muffle ... the building was a hotel;
Edwards daylight Family Hotel ... expensive people lodging just above
the arch, travelling, coming to London, going away from London, with no
thought of the dark secret neighbourhood. A courtyard opened out beyond
the arch. It was not even yet the station. There was a road just ahead
going right and left, with lamps; just in front to the left across the
road a lit building with a frosted lower window and a clock ... a post
office. Miriam went through the swing door into warm yellow gaslight. At
the long counter people stood busily occupied or waiting their turn,
with their backs to the dusty floor space, not noticing the grey space
of dusty floor and the curious warm gleam of the light falling upon it
from behind the iron grille along the counter. The clerks were fresh and
serene and unhurried, making a steady quiet workaday feeling; late at
night. It swung the day round, morning and evening together in the
gaslit enclosure. She stood at the counter sharing the sense of affairs.
She could be a customer for a penny stamp. Waiting outside was the walk
back through the various darkness, the indiarubber pathway ... knowing
her way.
* * * * *
She let herself into the hall with an air of returning from a hurried
necessary errand. Beyond the mysterious Bailey curtains partly screening
the passage to the front door she saw Dr. Hurd standing at the
dining-room door; good night he laughed back into the room and turned,
meeting her as she emerged into the light. He paused smiling. Here's
Miss Henderson he said into the room. Miriam was passing the door.
Aren't you coming in he urged smiling. Ho, I've just been to the post
office said Miriam passing into the room. Ho, isn't it a perfect evening
she announced taking in Dr. Wayneflete standing tall with small bent
pale face at the end of the table and the other two rising from their
places by the fireside. Dr. Hurd closed the door and came and flopped
down in the easy chair in front of the piano. I know you won't sit here
Miss Henderson. No Miss Henderson doesn't care for cushions murmured Dr.
von Heber at her side. Take this chair he pursued and sat near as she
sat down in a little stiff chair facing the fireplace, Dr. Winchester
subsiding a little behind her on the other side.
It's a purfect evening murmured Dr. Wayneflete. Miriam turned and
searched his white bent face. She had never seen him speaking in a room.
The thought behind the white slightly bulging forehead was his own,
Wayneflete, brilliant, keeping him apart; the little narrowing peak of
livid white face, the green shadows about the small pale mouthing lips,
the fact of his heart-disease and his Irish parentage were things that
dared to approach and attach themselves to him; that people knew.
A purfect evening he repeated plucking gently at the threads of the
table cloth. He would never originate a remark or ask a question except
of patients or an engineer standing near some difficult machinery. He
knew everything by just being about. He was head and shoulders above the
other three. Delicate, of gentle blood and narrow fragile body; a strong
spirit; impossible of approach by speech; everything she said would
carry her away from him; perhaps he was already planning his escape. One
day he would suddenly fall down, dead; young and unknown to anyone in
the world, carrying away his mystery.
"Eleven o'clock." She had shattered the silence he had built.
"You don't call that late" said Dr. von Heber released and rushing to
rescue her. He sat bland and square and simple beneath the coming long
procession of years and days; but his firmly dimpled swift Canadian
smile, brilliant with the flash of the flawless perfect arch of his
strong even teeth brought past and future into the moment, giving them
to the sudden charm of this meeting, referring back to that first
evening by the table.
"Oh no; it's frightfully early."
"That's a most delightful hyperbole."
"I shall summons you for calling me an isosceles triangle."
Dr. Wayneflete laughed too ... a small sound drowned by Dr. Hurd's
thwack on the arm of his chair as he flung back his head for his laugh.
"It _has_ been wonderful to-day, don't you _think_? Did you see the
extraordinary light this afternoon?"
"Well no; we were all of us immured, but we were out this evening; we
thought it the best specimen of London weather we'd struck so far."
"There's nothing whatever the matter with London weather. It's
_perfect_; the most perfect in the world." Dr. Hurd resumed his shakings
of laughter, restrained to listen. Dr. Winchester was sitting bent
forward smiling dreamily.
"I know you won't like me to call that a hyperbole, but you won't quite
expect me to say I unreservedly agree."
"It isn't a question of agreement or disagreement. It's a simple fact."
Dr. Hurd again struck his chair and sat forward feeling for a
handkerchief in a side pocket, his face a tearful grin turned upon Dr.
von Heber.
"You are a loyal champion."
"English weather does not want a champion. It's so wonderful. Perhaps
you are thinking of Italian skies and that sort of thing; in countries
where the weather does not change or not suddenly; only at fixed
seasons. That's very nice in a way. You can make plans. But I know I
should long for grey days and changes in the sky. A grey day is not
melancholy; it's exciting. You can see everything. The sun makes
everything pale and blinds you."
"There I think you mistaken. Nothing beautifies like sunlight, and if
you've the sun behind you, you get the ahead prospect without being
blinded."
"I know what you mean; but I want both; for contrast perhaps; no, that's
silly; the grey days for their own sake, the misty atmosphere. Fog. I
think a real London fog is perfection; everything and the shapes and
outlines of things looming up only as you pass them. Wonderful."
"Well, there you leave us behind. I can't see anything either beautiful
or in the least wonderful in your town fogs."
"Quite so. A taste for town fog is an artificial taste. Town fog's not a
natural phenomenon. It's just, town dirt."
"I don't care how it begins. It's perfect. It makes the whole day an
adventure even if you're indoors. It's perfect to have the light on and
nothing to be seen outside but a copper glare. Outside is a glorious
adventure in a new unknown world.... In a way all our weathers are that.
In a way the weather's enough, in itself, without anything else."
"That seems to me a remarkable, a very extra-ordinairy point of view.
You can't in any circumstances make it a general defence of your
climate. It's a purely personal notion."
"It isn't. Even people who say they don't like fogs are different;
interested in the effect while it is on."
"Uneasy, no doubt, like animals in a trap."
"I refer to Miss Henderson's extra-ordinairy valuation of weather as
enough in itself. I consider that is one of _the_ most _extra-ordinairy_
points of view I ever heard stated."
"No one can deny the quahl-ty of interest to the vagaries of your
western European climut; from our point of view it's all interest and no
climut; ye can't tell from day to day what season ye'll be in and they
all seem--stormy."
"The seasons crop up all the year round, sometimes three in one day.
That's just the fascinating thing."
"Quite so, we find that varry disturbing."
"Our sudden changes of temperature keep us hardy."
"That's true; you're a hardy people. Your weather suits you, beyond a
doubt."
"In _Ireland_, the weather changes every few minutes."
"Hah, Wayneflete."
"Granted. No doubt that assisted my parents to decide to leave; I don't
wonder at it."
"You're temperate. You've got the sea at a stone's throw all round. You
don't have notable extremes. But there's our trouble. Your extremes when
they come ain't arranged for. There's no heat like your English heat,
and my word your English houses in the winter'd take some beating."
"You mean boarding-houses."
"Not entirely. Though I admit your English hoames are unique in the
matter of comfort. There's nothing in the world like a real good
_English hoame_. And not only in the matter of comfort."
"Yes but look here von Heber. I know your fine English parlours with
fine great fires to sit around, what they call 'cosy' over here, but my
life why don't they warm their corridors and sleeping rooms?"
"We don't be_cause_ it's unhealthy. A cold bedroom keeps you hardy and
you _sleep_ better."
"And not only warm them but light them. My word when they take you out
of their warm parlours into cold corridors and land you in an ice-house
with a little bit of a flickering candle."
"You're not tempted to read in bed and you go to sleep in healthy
bracing air; it keeps you _hardy_."
"Do you never read after you retire?"
"I do; and have the gas and a lamp to keep warm. I like warm rooms and I
think in many ways it must be lovely to be able to wear muslin dresses
indoors in snowy weather and put on a fur coat to go out; but I should
be sorry to see the American warm house idea introduced into England."
"You're willing to be inconsistent then."
"Consistency is the something of something minds."
"I guess our central-heated residences would appeal to you."
"I know they would. But I should freeze in the winter; because I
shouldn't be able to wear a fur coat."
"How so?"
"I'm an anti-vivisectionist."
"Then you'd best stay where they're not needed. Your winters don't call
for them. It's the funniest thing in _life_ the way your wimmun go
around in furs."
"Furs are frightfully becoming; like lace and violets."
"Then you exonerate them although you're against the slaying evidently,
as well as the use of beasts for experiment."
"They don't think."
"My word that's true; but all the thinking in creation won't keep an
Esquimau warm without furs."
"There's no need for anyone to live up there. The Hudson's Bay
Commissioners are tradespeople."
"That's a big proposition."
"Well?"
"You'd advocate everyone living in temperate climes to spare the
beasts?"
"There's no reason except trade for anyone to live in snow."
"There's a mighty except."
"Well?"
"What about phthisical subjects who need dry cold climes?"
"Wool and astrakhan."
"Well I guess furs'll be worn for a bit yet."
"That doesn't affect the question."
"I gather you reckon the beasts oughtn't help advance science."
"They don't. Doctors are as ill as anybody."
"True enough. You consider that invalidates medical science?"
"Of course they are over-worked and many of them splendid. But illness
doesn't decrease. If one disease goes down another goes up."
"Great _Cæsar_, where did you come across that?"
"Even so; but suppose they _all_ went up?"
"Besides, you talk about animals advancing science. Even if there wasn't
that great French physiologist or chemist or something who looked at the
result of experiments on animals and said hélàs, nous avons les mains
vides. He declared that there's nothing to be learned about _human_
bodies from animals and even if there were the thing is that the animals
have no choice. We've no right to force them to suffer."
"An animal's constituted differently to a man. You can't compare them in
the matter of sensitiveness to pain."
"I knew you'd say that. If people really want to advance science by
experiments on bodies they should offer their own bodies."
"Someone's been working on your mind if you believe animals suffer more
than men."
"I'd rather see a woman suffer than a man and a man rather than a child
and a child rather than an animal. Animals are bewildered and don't
understand. They have nothing to help them. They don't understand their
sufferings."
"You rate men lower than women in power to endure pain."
"They get more practice."
"You're right there."
"They're less sensitive."
"That's debateable, Wayneflete."
"Women appear to be callous over the sufferings of other women and to
make a fuss over men. It's because sick men are more helpless and
pitiful. Women _appear_ to be. But the sun _appears_ to go round the
earth."
"I doubt if ever there'll come a time when we'll have live humanity in
our experimental laboratories."
"Science has got to go ahead anyway."
"But if it goes ahead by forcing; sensitive creatures; with ...
sensitive nervous systems, to bear fear and pain ... we shall lose more
morally than we shall gain scientifically even if we gain scientifically
and we don't because nearly everyone is _ill_."
"You consider knahludg can be bought at too high a price."
"Well; look at the continental luminaries; where there are no
restrictions; they don't even care about their patients, only diseases
interest them, and in general, not only in science, they don't really
know anything, the Germans and the French, you have only to look at
them. They are brutal."
"That's a large statement. If you'll pardon me I should say there's a
certain amount of insular prejudice in that."
"I have not a scrap of insular prejudice. I like foreigners. They are
more intelligent than Englishmen. But there's something they don't know
that makes them all alike. I once heard a wealthy old Jew say that he'd
go to Germany for diagnosis and to England for treatment, and he'd had
operations and illnesses all over the world. That expresses it."
"You infer that the English have more humanity."
"They don't regard the patient as a case in the way continentals do."
"Well I guess when we're sick we all like to go home."
"You mean the Jew had no home. But he chose the English to go home to
when he was ill."
"That's true in more senses than one. This country's been a home for the
Jews right away back."
"It's a great country. That's sure."
"Science has got to go away ahead. If you're going to be humanitarians
over here you must leave continental science out of your scheme. So long
as you carry out their results you can't honestly cry down their
methods."
"You must cry down their methods if you don't approve of them."
"You can't put back. You can't prevent association between the different
lands; especially in matters of science."
"What _I'm_ saying. You've got to accept the goods, even supposing your
particular constitution of mind inclines you to bulleave them
ill-gotten."
"It's a case of good coming out of evil."
"That's Jesuitical, the end justifying the means. I don't believe that.
Why should science go ahead so fast? Where's the hurry as you say in
Canada?"
"Well, you've only to look around to see that."
"I _don't_ see it. Do you mean that people who make scientific
experiments do it because they want to improve the world. They don't.
It's their curiosity."
"Divine curiosity I've heard it called."
"The divine curiosity of Eve ... that's the answer to the Mosaic fable
about woman. She was interested in the serpent, and polite to him and
gossiped with him. Science is scandal-mongering; gossip about the
universe. Men talk about women gossiping. My word."
"Stars. I'd like some of our chaps to hear you say that."
"It is. Darwin gossiped about monkeys and in his old age he looked
exactly like one and regretted that he had neglected music."
"You can't have it both ways. Each man must pursue one line or another."
"Poor dears yes."
"You're inclined to pity us all."
"That's English humanitarianism may be."
"I'm not a humanitarian. I can't bear humanity, in the mass. I think
it's a frightful idea."
"A fairly solid idea."
"I prefer ... the equator, and the moon, and the plane of the ecliptic;
I think the plane of the ecliptic is a perfectly lovely thing."
"It's a scientific discovery."
"Yes but not on the body of an animal."
"The body of the chap who began all that had some pretty hard
sufferings."
"Do you know the schoolboy's definition of the equator?"
"No, but I guess it's a good one."
"A menagerie lion running round the world once in every twenty-four
hours. I think it's an absolutely perfect idea."
"I guess that's good enough to stop on."
"You off Winchester?"
In the breaking of the group Dr. von Heber came near with his smile. Dr.
Hurd was noisily stretching himself, laughing and coughing. No one was
listening. They were quite alone among their friends, his friends,
Canada. This has been a charming ending to a very lovely day he said
quietly. Miriam beamed and was silent. Did you see the afterglow, she
asked humbly. His smile reappeared. He took in what she said, but beamed
because they were talking. She tried to beat back her words, but they
were on her lips and she was already moving away when she spoke. "A fine
... fuliginous ... _pink_ wasn't it?"
2
"Where is the _harm_ child, in your sitting up at a piano, even behind a
curtain; in a large room in Gower Street, I can't imagine why you say
_GOWER_ Street; playing, with the soft pedal either down or _up_, the
kind of music that you play so beautifully? Can you see her difficulty
Jan?"
"Not even with the most powerful of microscopes."
Lolling on the windowsill of their lives to glance at a passing
show.... The blessed damosel looked out. Leaning, heavy on the golden
balcony. _She_ knew why not. Heavy blossoming weight, weighed down with
her heavy hair, the sky blossoming in it, facing, just able to face
without sinking, the rose-gold world, blossoming under her eyes.
Thin hard fingers of women chattering and tweaking.... They go up
sideways, witches on broomsticks, and chatter angrily in the distance.
They cannot stop the sound of the silent crimson blossoming roses.
"I don't approve of séances."
"Have you ever been to one?"
"No; but I know I don't. It was something about the woman when she asked
me."
"That is a personal prejudice."
"It is not a prejudice; how can it be pre after I have seen her?"
"Séances are wrong; because you have taken a dislike to Madame Devine."
"It can't be right to make half a guinea an hour so easily. And she said
a guinea for occasional public performances." That's all; they know now.
I had made up my mind. I wanted them to _see_ me tempted and refusing
for conscience sake.
"Good Lord; you'd be a millionaire in no time; why not take it until you
are a millionaire and then if you don't like it, chuck it?"
"I should like it all right, my part."
"Well surely that is all that concerns you. You have nothing whatever to
do with what goes on on the other side of the curtain. I think if you
would like the job you are a fool to hesitate, don't you Jan?"
"A fool there was and he made his prayer, yes I think it is foolish to
refuse such an admirable offer."
"A rag and a bone and a hank of hair; that just describes Madame
Devine." That's not true; smooth fat thinness with dark filmy cruel
clothes that last; having supper afterwards; but it would be true in a
magazine; a weird medium; the grocer's wife with second sight was fat
and ordinary; a simple woman. Peter, the rough fisherman.
"Now you are being unchristian."
"I'm not. I love the rag and bone and hank of hair type. Sallow. Like
Mrs. Pat.... The _ingénue_. Sitting in a corner dressed in white,
reading a book. A fat pink face. You can imagine her at forty."
"Now you are being both morbid and improper."
"I'm not morbid. Am I, Jan?"
"No I do not call you morbid. I call Gracie Harter-Jones morbid."
"Who is she?"
"We met her at Mrs. Mackinley's. She says she is perfectly miserable
unless she is in a morbid state. She's written a book called 'The Purple
Shawl of Ceremony.'"
"She must be awfully clever."
"She's mad. She revels in being mad. Like 'the Sun shivered. Earth from
its darkest basements rocked and quivered.'"
"Oh go I said and see the swans harping upon the rooftops in the corn.
Where is the grey felt hat I saw go down, wrinkled and old to meet the
lily-leaf, where where my child the little stick that crushed the wild
infernal apple of the pit where where the pearl. Snarling he cried I
will not have you bless the tropics sitting in a sulky row nor fling
your banners o'er the stately wave; I heard shrill minstrelsies ...
that's all awfully bad; but you can go on forever."
"_I_ couldn't. I don't know how you do it. I think it's awfully clever.
Jan and I roared over your Madeleine Francis Barry letter."
"You can go on for days."
"Barry-paroding."
"You must not wait, nor think of words. If you are in the mood they come
more quickly than you could speak or even think; you follow them and the
whole effect entertains you. There's something in it. You never know
what is coming and you swing about, as long as you keep the rhythm, all
over the world. It refreshes you. Sometimes there are the most beautiful
things. And you see all the things so vividly."
"She's not morbid; she's mad."
"I'm neither morbid nor mad. It's a splendid way of amusing yourself;
better than imagining the chairs in front of you at a concert quietly
collapsing." They were scarcely listening. Both of them were depending
on each other to listen and answer.
"Do you still go to Ruscino's every night Miriam?"
"With the Spaniard? How is the Spaniard?"
"He's eaten up with dizizz."
"With _what_?"
"That's what Miss Scott says."
"How does she know?"
"All the doctors are prescribing for him."
"Did they tell her?"
"I don't know. She just said it suddenly. Like she says things. The
doctors are all awfully fond of him."
"Why are they fond of him?"
"He is extraordinary. He has given up his poster work and does lightning
silhouettes, outlines of heads, at five shillings each at some gardens
somewhere. Sometimes he makes five pounds an evening at it."
"So you _don't_ go to Ruscino's every evening?"
"He had a few weeks of being awfully poor. One day he had only
eightpence in the world. Of course he was having all his meals at
Tansley Street. But that evening he found out that I had nothing at all.
I had been telling him about my meal arrangements. I always pay Mrs.
Bailey at the time for my shilling dinners and when I can't afford them
I get a fourpenny meal at a Y.W.C.A. He made me take his eightpence. The
next day he _walked_ I found afterwards, all the way to South Kensington
in the grilling heat to see a man about the silhouettes."
"What a little brick."
"He is like that to everybody. And always so...."
"So what?"
"Oh, I can't express him. But he's a Jew, you know, a Spanish Jew. Isn't
it extraordinary?"
"Well really Miriam I can't see that there is anything extraordinary
about a man's being a Spanish Jew if he wants to?"
"I was most awfully surprised. Mrs. Bailey told me. There is some Jewish
girl he has been meeting in Kensington; he drew her portrait, a special
one, for her father, for five guineas, and he has engaged himself to her
because he thought she had money and now finds she has not damn her, he
said damn her to Mrs. Bailey, and that he has been boring himself for
nothing. He is going into hospital for his gastric ulcer when the season
is over and then going to disappear. He told me he never spoke to a
woman more than twice; but that he is willing to marry any woman with
enough money."
"Wise man."
"He has spoken more than twice to you."
"Yes but I know what he means. Besides we don't talk, in the society
way."
"How _do_ you talk?"
"Oh, I don't know. I air my theories sometimes. He always disagrees.
Once he told me suddenly it was very bad for me to go about with him."
"But you go."
"Of course I do." The untold scenes were standing in the way. There was
no way of telling them.... Tansley Street life was more and more
unreal to them the deeper it grew. It was unreal to them because things
were kept back. They were still interested in stories of Wimpole Street,
but even there now they only glanced in passing, their thoughts busy in
the shared life they perpetually jested over. They listened with
reservations; not always believing; sitting in dressing-gowns believing
or not as they chose; because one knew one had lost touch and tried to
make things interesting to get back into the old glow....
"How did the dinner-party go off?"
"Beautifully."
"Did you talk German?"
"There was no need; the man talked better English than anybody."
"Why did it go off beautifully? Tell us about the beautiful things."
The strange silent twilight, the reassuring shyness of all the guests;
no attempt to talk about anything in particular; cool hard face and
upright coldly jewelled body; the sense of success with each simple
remark. The evening of music. Life-marked people; their marks showing
without pain, covered, half-healed by the hours of kindness.
"It's something in the Orlys."
"What do you think it is?"
"It's something frightfully beautiful."
"They are very nice people."
"That doesn't mean anything at all."
"The secret of beauty is colour and texture. The ointment will preserve
the colour and the texture of your skin--in any climate. Read her the
piece about the movement of the hands over a tea-tray.... In pouring
out tea never allow the hands to fall slack, or below the level of the
tray. Keep them well in view, moving deftly among the articles on the
tray; sitting well back on the seat of the chair the body upright and a
little inclined forward from the hips--see Chap.: III. "How to Sit"--so
that the movements of the wrist and hands are in easy harmony with the
whole body. Restrain the hands. Do not let the fingers splay out. Do not
cramp them or allow any effort to appear in the movement of any part of
the hand."
"Good heavens. Can't you _see_ those women. But that must be by an
American."
"Why an American?"
"Oh. I don't know. You can tell. Are you going to try all these things?"
"Rather. We're going in heavily for beauty culture."
"We are going to skip, and have Turkish baths, and steam our faces."
"I suppose one ought."
"I think so. I don't see why one should look old before one's time.
One's life is ageing and ravaging. After a Turkish bath one feels like a
new-born babe."
"But it would take all one's time and money."
"Even so. It restores your self-respect to feel perfectly groomed and
therefore perfectly self-possessed. It makes the office respect you."
"I know. I hate the grubbiness of snipe-life--sometimes."
"Only sometimes?"
"Well, I forget about it. If I didn't I should go mad of grit and dust."
"We _are_ mad of grit and dust. That's why we think it's time to do
something."
"H'm."
"You really like the Orlys, don't you?"
"You can't like everybody at once. You have to choose. That's the
trouble. If you are liking one set of people very much you get out of
touch with the others."
"You have so many sets of people."
"I haven't. I hardly know anybody."
"You have hosts of friends."
"I haven't. In the way you mean. I expect I give you wrong impressions."
"Well I think you've a capacity--Don't you think she has a capacity--von
Bohlen?"
"She has some very nice friends and some extraordinary ones."
"Like the Flat."
"How is the Flat?"
"Is she still living on a hard-boiled egg and a bottle of stout?"
"And sending notes?"
"Come round at once my state of mind is awful?"
"She's moved. I forgot to tell you. She came to tell me. She stood on
the landing and said she had taken up journalism. Writing articles, for
The Taper. Isn't it wonderful?"
"Isn't _what_ wonderful?"
"Suddenly being able to write articles. She's met some people called
occultists and says she has never been so happy in her life."... Are
you going to say anything ... why do you not think it wonderful?...
3
Miriam flung down Tansley Street telling her news. Her conflict with the
June dust and heat of the Euston Road had made her forget it. Back in
her own world it leapt at her from every sunlit paving stone; drawing
her on almost at a run. There was enough to carry her leaping steps
right down through London, to the edge of some unfamiliar part and back
again, but her room called her; she would go in and up to it and come
out again.
... _hopeless_ impossibility ... good _reliable_ Budge-Whitlock at
fifteen. You won't get a Primus under twenty-five. Those other makes are
not made to last; giving way inside somewhere where you could not see,
suddenly; in the midst of the traffic; the man's new bicycle, coming in
_two_, in Cheapside ... smiling, I've got a message for you from
Winthrop; well that's not strictly true. The fact is he wants to advance
the money without your knowing it; commissioned me to see what I can do.
You needn't hesitate; he's got plenty of spare cash. I'll buy the
machine and you'll owe the price to me. Kind kind Winthrop, talking in
the workshop. It's a ph-pity she shouldn't av a ph-ph-machine if she
wants one without waiting t-ph save up frit.... I say Miss Henderson
here's a chance for you; new machine going half-price. No bunkum. It's
Lady Slater's. She's off to India. I'll overhaul it for you. Pay as you
like, through her steward. My advice is you close. You won't get a
better chance ... reaping the benefit of Mr. Leyton's eternal talk about
bicycling ... no trouble; overhauled and reliable; coming out of
space.
... Lifted off the earth, sitting at rest in the moving air, the
London air turning into fresh moving air flowing through your head, the
green squares and high houses moving, sheering smoothly along, sailing
towards you changed, upright and alive, moving by, speaking, telescoping
away behind unforgotten, still visible, staying in your forward-looking
eyes, being added to in unbroken movement, a whole, moving silently to
the sound of firm white tyres circling on smooth wood, echoing through
endless future to the riding ring of the little bell, ground easily out
by firm new cogs.... _Country_ roads flowing by in sun and shadow; the
ring of the bell making the hedges brilliant at empty turnings ...
all there in your mind with dew and freshness as you threaded round and
round and in and out of the maze of squares in evening light; consuming
the evening time but leaving you careless and strong; even with the bad
loose hired machine.
She let herself in and swept into the dining-room taking in while she
said eagerly, crossing the room I've bought a machine. A Wolverhampton
Humber. With Beeston tyres. B.S.A. fittings. Ball Bearings ... the
doctors grouped about the mantelpiece. They gathered round her. She was
going backwards; through a scene she recognised; in a dream. Dr. von
Heber's welcoming smile stood at the end of it. They could not be there
idle at that time of day, she assured herself as she talked. She knew
they were there before she came in, without even thinking of them. She
sat down in their midst confidently saying the phrases of the scene as
they came towards her, backwards unfolding. The doctors went back with
her, brothers, supporting and following. Her bicycle led the way. Their
bright world had made it for her.
* * * * *
They had seen the English country with her. It was more alive to them.
They would remember. Dr. von Heber was taking it in, with his best
ruminating smile, as a personal possession; seeing it with English eyes.
Her last year's ride through the counties was shared now. It would go to
Canada.
"It's coming all the way from _Bakewell_."
"Where will that place be?"
"Oh I don't know; somewhere; in the north I think. Yorkshire. No, the
Peak. The Peak district. Peak Freane. They bake splendidly. The further
north you get the better they bake." The scene was swaying forward into
newness. Dr. Winchester suddenly began talking about the historical
interest of the neighbourhood. They had all been down to look at the Old
Curiosity Shop ... there was something about it ... and there was a
better local story of their kind. She told Mr. Leyton's story of the
passage in Little Gower Place, body snatchers carrying newly buried
bodies through it by night from St. Pancras churchyard to the hospital.
"You don't say so. To think we've gone along there this while and not
known."
"That shop in Lincoln's Inn isn't the shop Dickens meant. It's been
pulled down. It's only the site. Some people think Dickens is
sentimental."
"Those who think so are hyper-critical. Besides being sentimental don't
prevent him being one of your very greatest men."
"_You_ should appreciate him highly. If ever there was any man revealed
abuses.... You ought to read our Holmes' Elsie Venner--We call it his
medicated novel over at home" smiled Dr. von Heber. He was speaking low,
making a separate conversation. The others were talking together.
"Yes," murmured Miriam. "I must." They both smiled a wide agreement.
"I've got it over at home" murmured Dr. von Heber his smile deepening
forwards. You shall read it when you come. _We'll_ read it, he said
smiling to himself. She tried to stay where he was, not to be distracted
by her thoughts. It must be Holmes' worst book. A book written on
purpose, to prove something.
"Didactic" she said with helpless suddenness, "but I like Holmes'
breakfast books."
"You've read those?"
"Yes" said Miriam wearily. He had caught something from her thoughts.
She saw him looking smaller, confined to the passing English present, a
passing moment in his determined Canadian life. His strong unconsidered
opinions held him through it and would receive and engulf him forever
when he went back. Perhaps he had not noticed her thoughts. Well I must
bid you a welcome adoo she said getting up to go.
"Now _where_" he smiled rising, and surrounding her with his smile,
"where did you discover Artemus _Ward_?"