Miriam went forward in a dream. As Mr. Shatov’s voice went on, she forgot everything but the need to struggle to the uttermost against the quiet strange attack upon English; the double line of evidence seemed so convincing and was for the present unanswerable from any part of her small store of knowledge; but there must be an answer; meantime the suggestion that the immense range of English was partly due to its unrivalled collection of technical terms, derived from English science, commerce, sports, “all the practical life-manœuvres” promised vibrating reflection, later.
But somewhere outside her resentful indignation, she found herself reaching forward unresentfully towards something very far-off, and as the voice went on, she felt the touch of a new strange presence in her Europe. She listened, watching intently, far-off, hearing now only a voice, moving on, without connected meaning.... The strangething that had touched her was somewhere within the voice; the sound of Russia. So much more strange, so much wider and deeper than the sound of German or French or any of the many tongues she had heard in this house, the inpouring impression was yet not alien. It was notforeign. There was no barrier between the life in it and the sense of life that came from within. It expressed that sense; in the rich, deep various sound and colour of its inflections, in the strange abruptly controlled shapeliness of the phrases of tone carrying the whole along, the voicewasthe very quality he had described, here, alive: about her in the room. It was, she now suddenly heard, the disarming, unforeign thing in the voice of kind commercial little Mr. Rodkin. Then there was an answer. There was something in common between English and this strange language that stood alone in Europe. She came back and awoke to the moment, weary. Mr. Shatov had not noticed her absence. He was talking about Russia. Unwillingly she gave her flagging attention to the Russia already in her mind; a strip of silent sunlit snow, just below Finland, St. Petersburg in the midst of it, rounded squat square white architecture piled solidly beneath a brilliant sky, low sledges smoothly gliding, drawn by three horses, bell-spanned, running wildly abreast, along the silent streets or out into the deeper silence of dark, snow-clad wolf-haunted forests that stretched indefinitely down the map; and listened as he drew swift pictures, now north, now south. Vast outlines emerged faintly, and here and there a patch remained, vivid. She sawthe white nights of the northern winter, felt the breaking through of spring in a single day. Whilst she lingered at Easter festivals in churches, all rich deep colour blazing softly through clouds of incense, and imagined the mighty sound of Russian singing, she was carried away to villages scattered amongst great tracts of forest, unimaginable distances of forest, the vast forests of Germany small and homely ..... each village a brilliant miniature of Russia, in every hut a holy image; brilliant colouring of stained carved wood, each peasant a striking picture, filling the eye in the clear light, many “most-dignified”; their garments coloured with natural dyes, “the most pure plant-stain colours,” deep and intense. She saw the colours, mat and sheenless, yet full of light, taking the light in and in, richly, and turned grievously to the poor cheap tones in all the western shops, clever shining chemical dyes, endless teasing variety, without depth or feeling, cheating the eye of life; and back again homesick to the rich tones of reality...... She passed down the winding sweep of the Volga, a consumptive seeking health, and out into the southern plains where wild horses roamed at large, and stayed at a lodge facing towards miles and miles of shallow salt water, sea-gull haunted, and dotted with floating islands of reeds, so matted and interwoven that one could get out from the little shallow leaky fishing-boat and walk upon them; and over all a crystal air so life-giving that one recovered. She heard the peasants in the south singing in strong deep voices, dancing by torchlight a wild dance with a name that described the dance....
Throughout the recital were vivid words, each a picture of the thing it expressed. She would never forget them. Russia wasrecognisable. So was every language .... but no foreign sound had brought her such an effect of strength and musical beauty and expressiveness combined. That was it. It was the strange number of things that were together in Russian that was so wonderful. In the end, back again in England, sitting in the cold dilapidated room before the table of little books, weary, opposite Mr. Shatov comfortably groaning and stretching, his eyes already brooding in pursuit of something that would presently turn into speech, she struggled feebly with a mournful uneasiness that had haunted the whole of the irrevocable expansion of her consciousness. AGerman, not a Russian ethnologist, and therefore without prejudice, had declared that the Russians were the strongest kinetic force in Europe. He proved himself disinterested by saying that the English came next. The English were “simple and fundamentally sound.” Not intelligent; but healthy in will, which the Russians were not. Then why were the Russians more forceful? What was kinetic force? And ... mystery .... the Russians themselves knew what they were like. “There is in Russia except in the governing and bourgeois classes almost no hypocrisy.” What was kinetic... And religion was an “actual force” in Russia! “What is ki——”
“Ah but you shall at least read some of our great Russian authors .... at least Tourgainyeff and Tolstoy.”
“Of course I have heard of Tolstoy.”
“Ah, but you shall read. He has a most profound knowledge of human psychology; the most marvellous touches. In that he rises to universality. Tourgainyeff is more pure Russian, less to understand outside Russia; more academical; but he shall reveal you most admirably the Russian aristocrat. He is cynic satirical.”
“Then he can’t revealanything,” said Miriam. Here it was again; Mr. Shatov, too, took satire quite unquestioningly; thought it a sort of achievement, worthy of admiration. Perhaps if she could restrain her anger, she would hear at least in some wonderful explanatory continental phrase, what satire really was, and be able to settle with herself why she knew it was in the long run, waste of time;whythe word satirist suggested someone with handsome horns and an evil clever eye and thin cold fingers. Thin. Swift was probably fearfully thin. Mr. Shatov was smiling incredulously. If he went on to explain she would miss the more important worrying thing. Novels. It was extraordinary that he should....
“I don’t care for novels... I can’t see what they are about. They seem to be an endless fuss about nothing.”
“That may apply in certain cases. But it is a too extreme statement.”
“It is extreme. Why not? How can a statement be too extreme if it is true?”
“I cannot express an opinion on English novelistic writings. But of Tolstoy it is certainly not true.No; it is not in general true that in fictionalrepresentations there is no actuality. I have read with my first English teacher in Moscow a story of your Myne-Reade. There was in this story a Scotch captain who remained for me most typical British. He wasveryfine this chap. This presentation here made me the more want what I have want always since a boy; to come to England.” Was Mayne Reade a novelist? Those boys’ stories were glorious. But they were about the sea; and the fifth form ... “a noble three-bladed knife, minus the blades”.....
“There’s a thing called the Ebb-Tide,” she began, wondering how she could convey her impression of the tropical shore; but Mr. Shatov’s attention, though polite, was wandering, “I’ve read some of Gorki’s short stories,” she finished briskly. They were not novels; they were alive in some way English books were not. Perhaps all Russian books were...
“AhGorrrki. He is come out direct from the peasantry; very powerfully strange and rough presentations. He may be called the apostle of misère.”
... the bakery and the yard; the fighting eagles, the old man at the prow of the boat with his daughter-in-law.... Allteachingsomething. How did people find it out?
“But really I must tell you of yesterday” said Mr. Shatov warmly. “I have made a Schach-Partei. That was for mevery good. It include also a certain exploration of London. That is for me I need not say mostfascinatink.” Miriam listened eagerly. The time was getting on; theyhad done no work. She had not once corrected him and he was plunging into his preliminary story as if their hour had not yet begun. She was to share...
“There was on one of these many omnibuses a gentleman who tell me where in London I shall obtain a genuine coffee. Probably you know it is at this Vienna Café, in Holeborne. You do not know this place?Strange.It is quite near to you all the time. Almost at your British Museum. Ah; this gentleman has told me too a most funny story of a German who go there proudly talking English. He was waiting; ach they are very slow in this place, and at last he shouts for everyone to hear, Vaiter! Venn shall I become a cup of coffee?”
Miriam laughed her delight apprehensively. “Ah, I like very much these stories,” he was saying, his eyes dreamily absent, she feared, on a memory-vista of similar anecdotes. But in a moment he was alive again in his adventure. “It was at London Bridge. I have come all the way, walkingly, to this Café. It is a strange place. Really glahnend; Viennese; very dirrty. But coffee most excellent; just as on the Continent. You shall go there; you will see. Upstairs it is most dreadful. More dirrty; and in an intense gloom of smoke, very many men, ah they are dreadful, I could not describe to you. Like monkeys; but all in Schach-parteis. That shall be very good for me. I am most enthusiastic with this game since a boy.”
“Billiards?”
Why should he look so astonished and impatiently explain so reproachfully and indulgently? Shegrasped the meaning of the movements of his hands. He was a chess-player “a game much older—uralt—and the most mental, the only true abstractive game.” How differently an English chess-player would have spoken. She regarded his eager contained liveliness. Russian chess players remained alive. Was chess mental? Pure tactics. Should she declare that chess was a dreadful boring indulgence, leading nowhere? Perhaps he would be able to show her that this was not so.... Why do the Germans call two people playing chess a chess-party? “I have met there a man, a Polish doctor. We have made party and have play until the Café close, when we go to his room and continue there to play till the morning. Ah, it was most-beautiful.”
“Had you met him before?”
“Oh no. He is in London; stewdye-ink medicine.”
“Studdying,” said Miriam impatiently, lost in incredulous contemplation. It could not be true that he had sat all night playing chess with a stranger. If it were true, they must both be quite insane ..... the door was opening. Sissie’s voice, and Mr. Shatov getting up with an eager polite smile. Footsteps crossing the room behind her; Mr. Shatov and a tall man shaking hands on the hearthrug; two inextricable voices; Mr. Shatov’s presently emerging towards her, deferentially, “I present you Dr. Veslovski.” The Polish doctor, gracefully bowing from a cold narrow height, Mr. Shatov, short, dumpy, deeply-radiant little friend, between them; making a little speech,turning from one to the other. The Polish head was reared again on its still cold grey height; undisturbed.... Perfect. Miriam had never seen anything so perfectly beautiful. Every line of the head and face harmonious; the pointed beard finishing the lines with an expressiveness that made it also a feature, one with the rest. Even the curious long narrow capless flatly lying foreign boots, furrowed with mud-stiffened cracks, and the narrowly cut, thin, shabby grey suit shared the distinction of the motionless reined-in head. Polish beauty. If that were Polish beauty the Poles were the most beautiful people in Europe. Polish; the word suggested the effect, its smooth liquid sheen, sinuous and graceful without weakness .... the whole word was at home in the eyes; horribly beautiful, abysses of fathomless foreign ... any kind of known happenings were unthinkable behind those eyes .... yet he was here; come to play chess with Mr. Shatov who had not expected him until Sunday, but would go now immediately with her permission, to fetch his set from upstairs. She lingered as he hurried away, glancing at the little books on the table. The Emerson was not among them. The invisible motionless figure on the hearthrug had brought her a message she had forgotten in her annoyance at his intrusion. Going from the room towards his dim reflection in the mirror near the door she approached the waiting thought—Mr. Shatov’s voice broke in, talking eagerly to Mrs. Bailey on the floor below. From the landing she heard him beg that it might be somelargevessel, quite voll tea;some drapery to enfold it, and that the gazz might be left alight. They were going to play chess, through the night, in that cold room .... but the thought was gladly there. The Polish doctor’s presence had confirmed Mr. Shatov’s story. It had not been a young man’s tale to cover an escapade.
Shehurried through her Saturday morning’s work, trying to keep warm. Perhaps it was nervousness and excitement about the afternoon’s appointment that made her seem so cold. At the end of her hour’s finicking work in Mr. Hancock’s empty fireless room, amongst cold instruments and chilly bottles of chemicals she was cold through. There was no one in the house but Mr. Leyton and the cousin; nothing to support her against the coming ordeal. Mr. Leyton had had an empty morning and spent it busily scrubbing and polishing instruments in his warm little room; retiring towards lunch time to the den fire with a newspaper. Shivering over her ledgers in the cold window space, she bitterly resented her inability to go out and get warm in an A.B.C. before meeting Mr. Shatov in the open. Impossible. It could not be afforded; though this morning all the absolutely essential work could be finished by one o’clock. It was altogether horrible. She was not sure that she was even supposed to stay for lunch on Saturday. The day ended at one o’clock; unless she were kept by some urgent business, there was no excuse. To-day she must have finished everything before lunch to keep her appointment. It could not be helped; and at least there was no embarrassmentin the presence of Mr. Leyton and the boy. She would even lock up and put on her outdoor things and go down in them. It would not occur to them that she need not have stayed to lunch .... her spirits rose as she moved about putting things in the safe. She dressed in Mr. Leyton’s warm room, washing her hands in very hot water, thawing, getting warm .... the toque looked nice in his large mirror, quite stylish, not so home made ..... worldly people always had lunch in their outdoor things, even when they were staying in a house. Sarah said people ought always to wear hats, especially with evening dress ..... picture hats, with evening dress, made pictures. It was true, they would, when you thought of it. But Sarah had found it out for herself; without opportunities; it came, out of her mind through her artistic eyes. Miriam recalled smart middle-aged women at the Corries, appearing at lunch in extraordinary large hats, when they had not been out; that was the reason. It helped them to carry things off; made them talk well and quickly, with the suggestion that they had just rushed in from somewhere or were just going to rush off.... She surveyed herself once more. It was true; lunch even with Mr. Leyton and the cousin would be easier with the toque and her black coat open showing the white neckerchief. It gave an impression of hurry and gaiety. She was quite ready and looked about for entertainment for the remaining moments. Actually; a book lying open on Mr. Leyton’s table, a military drill-book of course. No.Whatwas this. Wondrous Woman, byJ. B. G. Smithson. Why so many similar English initials? Jim, Bill, George, a superfluity of mannishness ... an attack of course; she scanned pages and headings; chapter upon chapter of peevish facetiousness; the whole book written deliberately against women. Her heart beat angrily. What was Mr. Leyton doing with such a book? Where had it come from? She read swiftly, grasping the argument. The usual sort of thing; worse, because it was colloquial, rushing along in modern everyday language and in some curious way not badly written....
Because some women had corns, feminine beauty was a myth; because the world could do without Mrs. Hemans’ poetry, women should confine their attention to puddings and babies. The infernal complacent cheek of it. This was the kind of thing middle-class men read. Unable to criticise it, they thought it witty and unanswerable. That was the worst of it. Books of this sort were read without anyone there to point things out.... It ought to be illegal to publish a book by a man without first giving it to a woman to annotate. But what was the answer to men who called women inferior because they had not invented or achieved in science or art? On whose authority had men decided that science and art were greater than anything else? The world could not go on until this question had been answered. Until then, until it had been clearly explained that men were always and always partly wrong in all their ideas, life would be full of poison and secret bitterness... Men fight about their philosophies and religions, thereis no certainty in them; but their contempt for women is flawless and unanimous. Even Emerson ... positive and negative, north and south, male and female .... whynegative? Maeterlinck gets nearest in knowing that women can live, hardly at all, with men, and wait, have always been waiting, for men to come to life. How can men come to life; always fussing? How could the man who wrote this book? Even if it were publicly burned and he were made to apologise; he would still go about asquint .... lunch was going to be late, just to-day, of course....
“Isay.”
“Whatdo you say,” responded Miriam without looking up from her soup. Mr. Leyton had a topic; she could keep it going with half her attention and go restfully on, fortifying herself for the afternoon. She would attack him about the book one day next week.....
“Isay. What say you George?”
“Me? All right. I say, I say, I say, anything you like m’lord.”
Miriam looked up. Mr. Leyton was gazing and grinning.
“What’s the matter?” she snapped. His eyes were on her toque.
“Wheredid you get that hat? Wheredidyou get that tile,” sang the cousin absently, busy with his lunch.
“I made it if youmustknow,” said Miriam. The cousin looked across; large expressionless opinionless eyes.
“Going out in it?” Whatwasthe matter;Mr. Leyton had never noticed anything of hers before; either it was too awful, or really rather effective and he unconsciously resented the fact of her going about in an effect.
“Why not?”
“Well; looks rather like a musical comedy.”
“Cheek,” observed the cousin; “I do call that cool cheek; you’re balmy, Leyton.” Mr. Leyton looked no more; that was his genuine brotherly opinion; he thought the toque showy. It was the two wings, meeting in the middle of the front; he meant pantomime; he did not know the wings were cheap; he was shocked by the effectiveness; itwaseffective; cheap and hateful; but it suited her; pantomime effects were becoming. Where was the objection?
“That’s all right. I’m glad. I like musical comedies.”
“Oh; if you’re satisfied. If you don’t mind looking risky.”
“I say, look here old man, steady on,” blushed the cousin.
“Well. What do you think yourself? Come on.”
“I think it’s jolly pretty.”
“Ithink it’s jollyfast.”
Miriam was quite satisfied. The cousin’s opinion went for nothing; a boywouldlike pantomime effects. But the hat was neither ugly nor dowdy. She would be able to tear down Oxford Street, no matter how ugly the cold made her feel, lookingfast. It would help her to carry off meeting Mr. Shatov.Hewould not notice hats. But theextraordinary, rather touching thing was that Mr. Leyton should trouble at all. As if she belonged to his world and he were in some way responsible.
“All right Mr. Leyton; it’s fast; whatever that may mean.”
“Old Leyton thinks hats ought to be slow.”
“Look here young fellow me lad, you teach your——”
“Great-grandfather not to be rude.”
“I fail to see the rudeness; I’ve merely expressed an opinion and I believe Miss Henderson agrees with it.”
“Oh absolutely; ab-solute-ly;” chanted Miriam scornfully. “Pray don’t worry about the pace of my millinery Mr. Leyton.” That was quite good, like a society novel....
“Well as I say if you’resatisfied.”
“Ah. That’s another matter. The next time I want a hat I’ll go to Bond Street. So easy and simple.”
“Seen the paper to-day, George?”
“Paper? Noospaper? No time.”
“Seen the B. M. J.?”
“No sir.”
“And you an aspiring medico.”
“Should be an expiring medico,” yodelled George “if I read all those effusions.”
“Well. More disclosures from Schenck.”
“Who’s he, when he’s at home?”
“You know. Schenck, man;Schenk.Youknow.”
“Oh, sorry; all right. What’s he babbling about now?”
“Same thing; only more of it” giggled Mr. Leyton.
“If it’s half past I must go,” announced Miriam peremptorily. Two watches came out.
“Then I advise you to hook it pretty sharp; it’s twenty to. You’d betterreadthat article my son.” Miriam folded her serviette.
“Righto. Don’t worry.”
“Whyall this mystery? Good morning” said Miriam departing.
“Good morning” said the two voices. Mr. Leyton held the door open and raised his voice to follow her up the stairs. “We’re discussing matters somewhat beyond your ken.”
She could not stay. She could not have tackled him if she had stayed. Anger was perhaps as funny as embarrassment. He would have been shocked at the idea of her quietly considering the results of Schenck’s theory, if it proved to be true; beyond her ken, indeed. It was hateful to have to leave that; heoughtto be robbed of the one thing that he imagined gave him an advantage in the presence of women. The women in his worldwouldbe embarrassed by the discussion of anything to do with the reproduction of the race.Why?Why were the women embarrassed and the men always suggestive and facetious? If only the men could realise what they admitted by their tone; what attitude towards life....
It was a bitter east-wind; the worst kind of day there was. All along Oxford Street were women in furs, serene, with smooth warm faces untroubled by the bleak black wind, perhaps even enjoying thecold. Miriam struggled along, towards the cruel east, shivering, her face shrivelled and frozen and burning, her brain congealed. If she were free she could at least have a cup of coffee and get warm and go into the Museum and be warm all the afternoon. To meet a stranger and have to be active and sociable when she was at her worst. He would be wrapped in the advantage of a fur-lined coat, or at least astrachan, and be able to think and speak. He would wonder what was the matter; even his careless foreign friendliness would not survive her frightful appearance. Yet when a clock told her the appointed time was past, the torment of the wind grew sharper in the thought that she might miss him. There was the Holborn Library, as he had described. There was no one there, the pavement was empty; he had given her up and gone; had perhaps never come. She was relieved. She had done her best. Fate had saved her; her afternoon was her own. But she must show herself, perhaps he might be sheltering just inside the door. The doorway was empty. There was a man leaning against the lamppost. She scanned him unwillingly, lest he should turn into Mr. Shatov; but he produced only the details of the impression she had taken before she glanced, a shabby, sinister-looking Tottenham Court Road foreign loafer, in yellow boots, an overcoat of an evil shade of brown and a waiter’s black-banded grey felt hat; but she had paused and glanced and of course his eye was immediately upon her and his lounging figure upright as she swept across the pavement to gain the road and flee the displeasing contact. Healmost ran into her; trotting ....ah, I am glad .... itwasMr. Shatov......
Looking like that, she was now to take him in amongst the British Museum officials, and the readers she knew by sight and who knew her; introduce him to the librarian. She scanned him as he eagerly talked, looking in vain for the presence she had sat with in the drawing-room; the eyes had come back; but that was all, and she could not forget how brooding, almost evil, they had looked just now. They gleamed again with intelligence; but their brilliant beauty shone from a face that looked almost dingy, in the hard light; and yellowish under the frightful hat peaked down, cutting off his forehead. He was gloveless and in his hands, grimed with walking in the winter streets, he held a paper bag of grapes which he ate as he talked, expelling the skins and flinging them from him as he walked .... he looked just simply disreputable. Even his voice had gone; raised against the traffic it was narrow and squeaky; a disreputable foreigner, plunging carelessly along, piercing her ear with mean broken English. She shouted vague replies in French; in yelled French his voice was even more squeaky; but the foreign tongue gave a refuge and a shape to their grouping; she became a sort of guide; anyone could be that to any sort of foreigner.
In the cloak room were the usual ladies comfortably eating lunch from sandwich tins and talking, talking, talking to the staff, moving endlessly to and fro amongst the cages of hanging garments; answering unconsciously. The mysterious everlastingwork of the lunching ladies, giving them the privilege of being all day at the museum, always in the same seats, accepted and approved, seemed to make no mark upon them; they bore themselves just as they would have done anywhere, the same mysteriously unfailing flow of talk, the mysterious basis of agreement with other women, the same enthusiastic discussions of the weather, the cases in the newspapers, their way of doing this and that, their opinions of places and people...... they seemed to have no sense of the place they were in, and yet were so extraordinarily at home there, and most wonderful of all, serene, with untroubled eyes and hands in the thin stuffy heat of the cloak-room.
These thoughts came every time; the sense of Mr. Shatov, busy, she hoped, washing his face and hands down beyond the stairs leading to the unknown privacies at the other end of the corridor, could not banish them; the bearing of these ladies was the most mysterious thing in the museum. In this room she was always on her guard. It was jolly after roaming slowly across the courtyard towards the unfailing unchanging beauty of the great grey pillars, pigeon-garlanded, to wander through the out-branching hall to where the lame commissionaire held open the magic door, and fly along the passage and break in here, permitted, cold and grimy and ruffled from the street, and emerge washed and hatless and rested, to saunter down the corridor and see ahead, before becoming one of them, the dim various forms sitting in little circles of soft yellow light under the high mysteriousdome. But in one unguarded moment in this room, all these women would turn into acquaintances, and the spell of the museum, springing forth perhaps for a while, intensified, would disappear for ever. They would turn it into themselves, varying and always in the end, in silence, the same. In solitude it remained unvarying yet never twice alike, casting its large increasing charm upon them as they moved distant and unknown.
In the lower cloak-room there was always escape; no sofas, no grouped forms. To-day it stood bare, its long row of basins unoccupied. She turned taps joyously; icy cold and steaming hot water rushing to cleanse her basin from its revealing relics. They were all the same, and all the soaps, save one she secured from a distant corner, sloppy. Surveying, she felt with irritated repugnance, the quality, slap-dash and unaware, of the interchange accompanying and matching the ablutions. A woman came out of a lavatory and stood at her side, also swiftly restoring a basin. It wasshe.... Miriam envied the basin..... Freely watching the peaceful face in the mirror, she washed with an intense sense of sheltering companionship. Far in behind the peaceful face serene thoughts moved, not to and fro, but outward and forward from some sure centre. Perfectly screened, unknowing and unknown, she went about within the charmed world of her inheritance. It was difficult to imagine what work she might be doing, always here, and always moving about as if unseeing and unseen. Round about her serenity any kind of life could group, leaving it, as the foggy grime and the dusty swelterof London left her, unsullied and untouched. But for the present she was here, as if she moved, emerging from a spacious many-windowed sunlight flooded house whose happy days were in her quiet hands, in clear light about the spaces of a wide garden. Yet she was aware of the world about her. It was not a matter of life and death to her that she should be free to wander here in solitude. For those women she would have a quiet unarmed confronting manner, at their service, but holding them off without discourtesy, passing on with cup unspilled. Nothing but music reached her ears, everything she saw melted into a background of garden sunlight.
She was out of sight, drying her hands, lighting up the corner of the room where the towels hung.... If Mr. Shatov were onherhands, she would not be regretting that the afternoon could hold no solitary wanderings. She made no calculations; for she could not be robbed. That was strength. She was gone. Miriam finished her operations as though she remained, drying her hands unhurriedly, standing where she had stood, trying to survey the unforetellable afternoon with something of her sustained tranquillity.
He would probably be plunging up and down the corridor with a growing impatience..... There he was, unconcernedly waiting; his singing determined child’s head reared hatless above the dreadful overcoat, the clear light of the corridor upon its modest thought-moulded dignity ... distinguished .... that was what he was. She felt unworthy, helplessly inadequate, coming up the corridor toclaim him. She was amongst the people passing about him before he saw her; and she caught again the look of profound reproachful brooding melancholy seated in his eyes, so strangely contradicting his whole happy look of a child standing at a party, gazing, everything pouring into its wide eyes; dancing and singing within itself, unconscious of its motionless body.
“Here we are,” she said avertedly as he came eagerly forward.
“Let us quickly to this official” he urged in his indoor voice.
“All right; this way.” He hurried along at her side, beard forward, his yellow boots plunging in long rapid strides beneath his voluminously floating overcoat.
She resented the librarian’s official manner; the appearance of the visitor, the little card he promptly produced, should have been enough. Stud. Schtudent, how much more expressive thanstewdent .... to be able to go about the world for years, so-and-so, stud ..... all doors open and committed to nothing. She asserted herself by making suggestions in French. Mr. Shatov responded politely, also in French, and she felt the absurdity of her eager interference, holding him a prisoner, hiding his studious command of English, in order to flourish forth her knowledge. “We are not afraid even of Russian, if Mr. Shatov prefers to use his own tongue,” said the librarian. Miriam flashed a suspicious glance. He was smiling a self-conscious superior English smile. It soured into embarrassment under her eye.
“It is no matter” said Mr. Shatov gently, “you shall immediately say me the requisite formules which I shall at once write.” He stood beautiful, the gentle unconsciously reproachful prey of English people unable to resist their desire to be effective. They stood conquered, competing in silent appreciation, as he bent writing his way into their forgotten library.
“Now I am pairfectly happy” he said as he passed through the swing doors of the reading-room. His head was up radiantly singing, he was rushing trustfully forward, looking at nothing, carrying her on, close at his side, till they reached the barrier of the outmost catalogue desk. He pulled up facing her, with wide wild eyes looking at nothing. “We shall at once take Anakarayninna inEnglish” he shouted in an enthusiastic whisper.
“We must choose seats before we get books,” murmured Miriam. There was plenty to do and explain; the revelation of her meagre attack on the riches of the library need not yet come. Were they to read together? Had he reached his goal “midst all those literatures” to spend his time in showing her Tolstoy? He followed her absently about as she filled in the time while they waited for their book, by showing all she knew of the routine of the library. “There shall of course” he said in a gruff explanatory tone, arresting her near the entrance to the central enclosure, “be a quite exhaustive system of catalogue, but I find there is too muchformalities; with all these little baskets.” “Ssh,” begged Miriam leading him away. She drifted to the bookshelves, showing him the oneshelf she knew on the south side; there was a reader on a ladder at the very shelf. “Carlyle’s French Revolution is up there” she said confidently. “Na, na,” he growled reproachfully, “this is a most purely unreliable fictional history, a tour de force from special individual prejudices. You should take rather Thiers.” She piloted him across to her shelf on the north side to point out the Revue des deux Mondes and the North American Review. He paused, searching along the shelves. “Ah. Hereis books.” He drew out and flung open a heavy beautifully printed volume with wide margins on the pages; she would show him the clever little folding arrangements to hold heavy volumes; “You do not know these?” he demanded of her silence; “ah that is a great pity; it is the complete discours de l’Académie française; you shall immediately read them; ah, they are the mostperfectmodèles.” She glanced at the open page beginning “Messieurs! Le sentiment de fierté avec laquelle je vous”; it was a voice; exactly like the voice of Mr. Shatov. He stood with the heavy open volume, insisting in his dreadfully audible whisper on wonderful French names prefixed to the titles of addresses, fascinating subjects, one of them Mr.Gladstone! He looked French as he spoke; a brilliantly polished Frenchman. Why had he not gone to France? He was German too, with a German education and yet with some impatiently unexplained understanding and contempt—for Germany. Why was he drawn towards England? That was the mysterious thing. What was the secret of the reverence in this man towardsEngland and the English? He was not an anarchist. There he stood, Russian, come from all that far-away beauty, with German and French culture in his mind, longingly to England, coming to Tansley Street; unconsciously bringing her her share in his longed-for arrival and its fulfilments. She watched as he talked, marvelling at the undeserved wealth offered to her in the little figure discoursing so eagerly over the cumbrous volume, and at this moment the strange Russian book was probably waiting for them.
It was a big thick book. Miriam sat down before it. The lights had come on. The book lay in a pool of sharp yellow light; Tolstoy, surrounded by a waiting gloom; the secret of Tolstoy standing at her side, rapidly taking off his overcoat. He drew up the chair from the next place and sat close, flattening out the book at the first chapter and beginning to read at once, bent low over the book. She bent too, stretching her hands out beyond her knees to make herself narrow, and fastening on the title. Her anticipations fell dead. It was the name of a woman...... Anna; of all names. Karenine. The story of a woman told by a man with a man’s ideas about people. But Anna Karenine was not what Tolstoy had written. Behind the ugly feebleness of the substituted word was something quite different, strong and beautiful; a whole legend in itself. Why had the translator altered the surname? Anna Karayninna was a line of Russian poetry. His word was nothing, neither English nor French, and sounded like a face-cream. She scanned sceptically up and down thepages of English words, chilled by the fear of detecting the trail of the translator.
Mr. Shatov read steadily, breathing his enthusiasm in gusts, pausing as each fresh name appeared, to pronounce it in Russian and to explain the three names belonging to each character. They were all expressive; easy to remember because of their expressiveness. The three-fold name, giving each character three faces, each turned towards a different part of his world, was fascinating..... Conversation began almost at once and kept breaking out; strange abrupt conversation different to any she had read elsewhere.... What was it? She wanted to hold the pages and find out; but Mr. Shatov read on and on, steadily turning the leaves. She skipped, fastening upon the patches of dialogue on her side of the open page, reading them backwards and forwards, glancing at the solid intervening portions to snatch an idea of the background. What was the mysterious difference? Why did she feel she could hear the tone of the voices and the pauses between the talk; the curious feeling of things moving and changing in the air that is always there in all conversations? Her excitement grew, drawing her upright to stare her question into the gloom beyond the lamp.
“Well?” demanded Mr. Shatov.
“It’s fascinating.”
“What have I told you? That is Tolstoy,” he said proudly; “but this is a most vile translation. All thesenuandda. Why not simplywellandyes; and boszhe moi is quite simply, my God. But this preliminary part is not so interesting as later.There is in this book the self-history of Tolstoy. He is Layvin, and Kitty is the Countess Tolstoy. That is all most wonderful. When we see her in the early morning; and the picture of this wedding. There is only Tolstoy for those marvellous touches. I shall show you.”
“Why does he call it Anna Karaynina” asked Miriam anxiously.
“Certainly. It is a most masterly study of a certain type of woman.”
The fascination of the book still flickered brightly; but far away, retreated into the lonely incommunicable distance of her mind. It seemed always to be useless and dangerous to talk about books. They were always about something else..... If she had not asked she would have read the book without finding out it was a masterly study of Anna. Why must a book be a masterly study of some single thing? Everybody wisely raving about it.... But if one never found out what a book was a masterly study of, it meant being ignorant of things everyone knew and agreed about; a kind of hopeless personal ignorance and unintelligence; reading whole books through and through, and only finding out what they were about by accident, when people happened to talk about them, and even then, reading them again, and finding principally quite other things, which stayed, after one had forgotten what people had explained.
“I see” she said intelligently. The readers on either side were glancing angrily. Miriam guiltily recalled her own anger with people who sat together murmuring and hissing. But it felt so differentwhen you were one of the people. The next time she felt angry in this way she would realise how interested the talkers were, and try to forget them. Still it was wrong. “We must not talk” she breathed. He glanced about and returned to his shuffling of pages.
“Heere it is” he exclaimed in a guttural whisper far more distinct than his mutterings; “I shall show you this wonderful passage.”
“Ssh, yes,” murmured Miriam firmly, peering at the indicated phrase. The large warm gloom of the library, with its green-capped pools of happy light, was stricken into desolation as she read. She swung back to her world of English books and glanced for comfort at the forms of Englishmen seated in various attitudes of reading about the far edges of her circle of vision. But the passage was inexorably there; poison dropping from the book into the world; foreign poison, but translated and therefore read by at least some Englishmen. The sense of being in arms against an onslaught already achieved, filled her with despair. The enemy was far away, inaccessibly gone forward spreading more poison. She turned furiously on Mr. Shatov. She could not disprove the lie; but at least he should not sit there near her, holding it unconcerned.
“I can’t see anything wonderful. It isn’t true,” she said.
“Ah that is very English” beamed Mr. Shatov.
“It is.AnyEnglish person would know that it is not true.”
Mr. Shatov gurgled his laughter. “Ah that is very naïve.”
“It may be. That doesn’t make any difference.”
“It makes the difference that you are inexperienced,” he growled gently. That was true. She had no experience. She onlyknewit was not true. Perhaps it was true. Then life grew bleak again..... It was not true. But it was true for men. Skimmed off the surface, which was all they could see, and set up neatly in forcible quotable words. The rest could not be shown in these clever, neat phrases.
“But I find the air here is most-evil. Let us rather go have tea.”
Astonishment melted into her pride in leading him down through the great hall and along the beloved corridor of her solitary pacings, out intothe gigantic granite smile of the Egyptian gallery, to the always sudden door of the refreshment room.
“If I got locked into the Museum at night I should stay in this gallery,” she said unable to bear companionship in her sanctuary without extorting some recognition of its never-failing quality.
“It is certainly impressive, in a crude way,” admitted Mr. Shatov.
“They are so absolutely peaceful” said Miriam struggling on behalf of her friends with her fury at this extraordinary judgment. It had not before occurred to her that they were peaceful and that was not enough. She gazed down the vista to discover the nature of the spell they cast. “You can see them in clear light in the desert” she exclaimed in a moment. The charm grew as she spoke. She looked forward to being alone withthem again in the light of this discovery. The chill of Mr. Shatov’s indifferent response to her explanation was buried in her private acknowledgment that it was he who had forced her to discover something of the reason of her enchantment. He forced her to think. She reflected that solitude was too easy. It was necessary for certainties. Nothing could be known except in solitude. But the struggle to communicate certainties gave them new life; even if the explanation were only a small piece of the truth..... “Excuse me I leave you a moment” he said, turning off through the maze of little figures near the door. The extraordinary new thing was that shecouldthink, untroubled, in his company. She gratefully blessed his disappearing form.
“I’m going to have toast and jam” she announced expansively when the waitress appeared.
“Bring me just a large pot of tea and some kind of sweetmeat” said Mr. Shatov reproachfully.
“Pastries” murmured Miriam.
“What ispastries” he asked mournfully.
“Pâtisseries” beamed Miriam.
“Ah no” he explained patiently, “it is not that at all; I will have simply some small things in sugar.”
“No pastries; cake,” said the waitress, watching herself in the mirror.
“Ach bring me justtea,” bellowed Mr. Shatov.
Several people looked round, but he did not appear to notice them and sat hunched, his overcoat coming up behind beyond his collar, his arms thrust out over the table, ending in grubby claspedhands. In a moment he was talking. Miriam sat taking in the change in the feeling of the familiar place under the influence of his unconcerned presence. There were the usual strangers strayed in from the galleries, little parties, sitting exposed at the central tables near the door; not quite at home, their eyes still filled with the puzzled preoccupation with which they had wandered and gazed, the relief of their customary conversation held back until they should have paid, out of their weary bewilderment some tribute of suitable comment; looking about the room, watching in separate uneasiness for material to carry them past the insoluble problem. They were unchanged. But the readers stood out anew; the world they had made for her was broken up. Those who came in twos and sat at the more sequestered tables, maddening her with endless conversations at cross purposes from unconsidered assumptions, were defeated. Their voices were covered by Mr. Shatov’s fluent monologue, and though her own voice, sounding startlingly in the room, seemed at once only an exclamatory unpractised reproduction of these accustomed voices, changing already their aspect and making her judgment of them rock insecurely in her mind, it was threaded into his unconcerned reality and would presently be real.
But the solitary readers, sitting in corners over books, or perched, thoughtfully munching and sipping, with their backs to the room, on the high stools at the refreshment counter, and presently getting down to escape untouched and free, through the swing door, their unlifted eyes recoveringalready, through its long glass panels, the living dream of the hugely moving galleries, reproached her for her lost state.
Mr. Shatov’s dreaming face woke to prevent her adding milk to his tea, and settled again, dwelling with his far off theme. She began listening in detail to screen her base interest in her extravagant fare. “It is a remarkable fact” he was saying and she looked up, astonished at the sudden indistinctness of his voice. His eyes met hers severely, above the rim of his cup, “but of almost universal application,” he proceeded thickly, and paused to produce between his lips a saturated lump of sugar. She stared, horrified. Very gravely, unattained by her disgust, he drew in his tea in neat noiseless sips till the sugar disappeared .... when he deftly extracted another lump from the basin and went on with his story.
The series of lumps, passing one by one without accident through their shocking task, softened in some remarkable way the history of Tourgainyeff and Madame Viardot. The protest that struggled in her to rise and express itself was held in check by his peculiar serenity. The frequent filling of his cup and the selection of his long series of lumps brought no break in his concentration.... Above the propped elbows and the cup held always at the level of his lips, his talking face was turned to hers. Expressions moved untroubled through his eyes.
When they left the tea-room he plunged rapidly along as if unaware of his surroundings. The whole Museum was there, unexplored, and this was his first visit. He assented indifferently to hersuggestion that they should just look at the Elgin Marbles, and stood unmoved before the groups, presently saying with some impatience that here, too, the air was oppressive and he would like to go into the freshness.
Out in the street he walked quickly along brumming to himself. She felt they had been long acquainted; the afternoon had abolished embarrassments, but he was a stranger. She had nothing to say to him; perhaps there would be no more communications. She looked forward with uneasiness to the evening’s lesson. They were both tired; it would be an irretrievable failure to try to extend their afternoon’s achievement; and she would have to pass the intervening time alone with her growing incapability, while he recovered his tone at the dinner-table. The thought of him there, socially alive while she froze in her room, was intolerable. She too would go in to dinner ... their present association was too painful to part upon. She bent their steps cheerfully in the direction of home. Excuse me, he said suddenly, I will take here fruits, and he disappeared into a greengrocer’s shop emerging presently munching from an open bag of grapes.......
Supposing books had no names ..... Villette had meant nothing for years; a magic name until somebody said it was Brussels ....... she was impressed by St. Paul’s dome in the morning because it was St. Paul’s. That spoilt the part about the journey; waking you up with a start like the end of a dream. St. Paul’s sticking outthrough the text; someone suddenly introduced to you at a gathering, standing in front of you, blocking out the general sense of things; until you began to dance, when it came back until you stopped, when the person became a person again, with a name, and special things had to be said. St. Paul’s could not be got into the general sense of the journey; it was a quotation from another world; a smaller world than Lucy Snowe and her journey.
Yet itwouldbe wonderful to wake up at a little inn in the city and suddenly see St. Paul’s for the first time. Perhaps it was one of those journey moments of suddenly seeing something celebrated, and missing the impression through fear of not being impressed enough; and trying to impress your impression by telling of the thing by name ...... everybody had that difficulty. The vague shimmer of gas-lit people round the table all felt things without being able to express them ...... she glowed towards the assembled group; towards everyone in the world. For a moment she looked about in detail, wanting to communicate her thought and share a moment of general agreement. Everybody was talking, looking spruce and neat and finished, in the transforming gaslight. Each one something that would never be expressed, all thinking they were expressing things and not knowing the lonely look visible behind the eyes they turned upon the world, of their actual selves as they were when they were alone. But they were all saying things they wanted to say ....... theydidexpress themselves, in relation to each other; they grew in knowledgeof each other, in approval or disapproval, tested each other and knew, behind their strange immovable positive conversations about things that were all matters of opinion perpetually shifting, in a marvellous way each others’ characters. They also knew after the first pleasant moment of meeting eyes and sounding voices when one tried to talk in their way, that one was playing them false. The glow could live for awhile when one had not met them for some time; but before the end of the meeting one was again condemned, living in heavy silence, whilst one’s mind whirled with the sense of their clear visions and the tantalising inclination to take, for life, the mould of one or other point of view.
Howobliviouslythey all talked on. She thanked them. With their talk flowing across the table, giving the central golden glow of light a feeling of permanence, her failures in life, strident about the room, were visible and audible only to herself. If she could remain silent, they would die down, and the stream of her unworthy life would merge, before he appeared, into a semblance of oneness with these other lives....... She caught the dark Russian eyes of Mr. Rodkin sitting opposite. He smiled through his glasses, his dry, sweet, large-eyed smile, his head turned listening to his neighbour. She beamed her response, relieved, as if they had had a long satisfactory conversation. He would have understood ... in spite of his commercial city-life. He accepted everybody. He was the central kindliness of the room. No wonder Mrs. Bailey was so fond of him and leant upon hispresence, in spite of his yawning hatred of Sundays. He was illuminated; she had his secret at last given her by Mr. Shatov.Russiankindliness...... Russians understand silence and are not afraid of it? Kindly silence comes out of their speech, and lies behind it, leaving things the same whatever has been said? This would be truer of him than of Mr. Shatov ....... moy word. Shatov at the station with his father. You never saw such a thing. Talking to the old boy as if he was a porter; snapping his head off whenever he spoke...... She pulled up sharply. If she thought of him, the fact that she was only passing the time would become visible ...... what was that just now, opening; about silence?
There is no need to go out into the world. Everything is there without anything; the world is added. And always whatever happens there is everything to return to. The pattern round her plate was life, alive, everything ...... what was that idea I used to have? Enough for one person in the world would be enough for everybody ...... how did it go? It was so clear, while the voice corneted out spoiling the sunshine, ...... “oh yes we wereveryjolly; very jolly party, talking all the time. Miss Hood’s song sounding out at intervals,Halcyonweather.” ...... “Do you ever feel how much there is everywhere?” “Nachah’s abundance?” “No. I don’t mean that. I mean that nearly everything is wasted. Not things, like soap; but the meanings of things. If there is enough for one person thereis enough for everybody.” “You mean that one happy man makes the whole universe glad?” “He does. But I don’t mean that. I mean—everything is wasted all the time, while people are looking about and arranging for more things.” “You would like to simplify life? You feel man needs but little here below?” “He doesn’t needanything. People go on from everything as if it were nothing and never seem to know there is anything.” “But isn’t it just the stimulus of his needs that keeps him going?” “Why need he keep going? that is just my point.” “Je ne vois pas la nécessité, you would say with Voltaire?” “The necessity of living? Then why didn’t he hang himself.” “I suppose because he taught in song what he learned in sorrow” ...... How many people knew that Maeterlinck had explained in words what life was like inside? Seek ye first the Kingdom .... the test is if people want you at their death-beds. None of these people would want me at their death-beds. Yet they all ask deliberate questions, shattering the universe. Maeterlinck would call them innocent questions about the weather and the crops, behind which they gently greet each other....... Women always know their questions are insincere, a treachery towards their silent knowledge......
He must read the chapter on silence and then the piece about the old man by his lamp. That would make everything clear ..... where was he all this time? Dinner was nearly over. Perhaps he was going out. She contemplated her blank evening. His voice sounded in the hall. How inconvenientfor people with very long eyelashes to have to wear glasses she thought, engrossing herself in a sudden vision of her neighbour’s profile. He was coming through the hall from seeing somebody out of the front door. If she could be talking to someone she would feel less huge. She tried to catch Mr. Rodkin’s eye to ask him if he had read Tolstoy. Mr. Shatov had come in, bowing his deep-voiced greeting, and begun talking to Mr. Rodkin before he was in his chair, as if they were in the middle of a conversation. Mr. Rodkin answered at once without looking at him, and they went on in abrupt sentences one against the other, the sentences growing longer as they talked.
Sissie did not hear the remark about the weather because she too was attending to the rapid Russian sentences. She was engrossed in them, her pale blue eyes speculative and serene. Miriam watched in swift glances. The brilliant colour that Mr. Shatov had seemed to distribute when he sat down, had shrunk to himself. He sat there warm and rich, with easy movements and easily moving thoughts, his mind far away, his features animated under his raised carelessly singing eye-brows, by his irascible comments on Mr. Rodkin’s rapped-out statements. The room grew cold, every object stiff with lifeless memory, as they sat talking Mr. Rodkin’s business. Everyone sitting round the table was clean-cut, eaten into by the raw edge of the winter night, gathered for a moment in the passing gas-lit warmth, to separate presently and face an everlastingly renewed nothingness...... The charm of the Russian words, the fascination ofgrasping the gist of the theme broke in vain against the prevailing chill. If the two should turn away from each other and bend their glowing faces, their strangely secure foreign independence towards the general bleakness, its dreadful qualities would swell to a more active torment, all meanings lost in empty voices uttering words that no one would watch or explain. There was a lull. Their conversation was changing. Mr. Shatov had sat back in his chair with a Russian word that hung in the air and spread music. His brows had come down and he was glancing thoughtfully about the table. She met Mr. Rodkin’s eyes and smiled and turned again to Sissie with her remark about the weather. Sissie’s face came round surprised. She disagreed, making a perfect comment on the change that left Miriam marvelling at her steady ease of mind. She agreed in an enthusiastic paraphrase, her mind busy on the hidden source of her random emphasis. It could rest, everything could rest for awhile, for a little time to come, for some weeks perhaps..... But he would bring all those books; with special meanings in them that every one seemed to understand and agree about; real at the beginning and then going off into things and never coming back. Why could she not understand them? Finding things without following the story was like being interested in a lesson without mastering what you were supposed to master and not knowing anything about it afterwards that you could pass on or explain. Yet therewassomething, or why did school which had left no knowledge and no facts seem so alive? Why did everything seemalive in a way it was impossible to explain? Perhaps part of the wrong of being a lazy idiot was being happy in a way no one else seemed to be happy.
If one was an idiot, people like Mr. Shatov would not.... He looked straight across, a swift observant glance. She turned once more towards Sissie making herself smilingly one with the conversation that was going on between her and her further neighbour and listened eagerly across the table; “Gracieuse” Mr. Shatov was saying at the end of a sentence, dropping from objection to restatement. Mr. Rodkin had asked him if he did not think her pretty. That would be his word. He would have no other word. Mr. Shatov had looked considering the matter for the first time. “Gracieuse.” Surely that was the very last thing she could be. But he thought it.
Grace was a quality, not an appearance. Strong-minded and plain. That, she knew, was the secret verdict of women; or, doesn’t know how to make the best of herself. She pondered, seeking in vain for any source of grace. Grace was delicacy, refinement, little willowy cattish movements of the head, the inner mind fixed always on the proprieties, making all the improprieties visible, ....... streaming from the back-view of their unconscious hair .....
A gracieuse effect means always deliberatebehaving. Madame de Something. But people who keep it up can never let thoughts take their course. They must behave to their thoughts as they behave to people. When they are by themselves they can only go on mincing quietly, waiting for their nextpublic appearance. When they are not talking they wait in an attitude, as if they were talking; ready to behave. Always on guard. Perhaps that was what Mr. Wilson meant when he said it was the business of women to be the custodians of manners...... Their “sense of good form, and their critical and selective faculties.” Then he had no right to be contemptuous of them..... “Donald Braden ...lyingacross the dinner table ... a drink sodden hull,swearingthat he would never again go to a dinner-party where there were no ladies” ...... “Goodtalkand particularly goodstoriesare not expected of women, at dinner tables. It’s their business tosteerthe conversation and head it off if it gets out of bounds.” .... To simper and watch, while the men were free to be themselves, and then step in if they went beyond bounds. In other words to head the men off if they talked “improperly”; thus showing their knowledge of improprieties .... “tactfully” ignoring them and leading on to something else with a gracious pose. Those were the moments when the improprieties streamed from their hair...... Somebody saying ssh, superior people talking together, modern friends-in-council, a week end in a beautiful house,subjectson the menu, are you high church or low church, the gleam of a woman’s body through water. “Ssh.”Why?.......
But her impression to himself was good. AFrenchimpression; that was the extraordinary thing. Without any consideration that was the impression she had made. Perhaps everyone had a sort of style, and people who liked you could see it.The style of one’s family would show, to strangers as an unknown strange outside effect. Everyone had an effect.... She had aneffect, a stamp, independent of anything she thought or felt. It ought to give one confidence. Because there would certainly be some people who would not dislike it. But perhaps he had not observed her at all until that moment and had been misled by her assumption of animation.
If I tried to be gracious, I could never keep it up, because I always forget that I am visible. She called in her eyes, which must have been staring all the time blankly about the table, so many impressions had she gathered of the various groups, animated now in their unconscious relief at the approaching end of the long sitting. Here again was one of those moments of being conscious of the strange fact of her incurable illusion, and realising its effects in the past and the effects it must always have if she did not get away from it. Nearly always she must appear both imbecile and rude, staring, probably with her mouth half open, lost. Well-brought-up children weretrainedout of it. No one had dared to try and train her for long. They had been frightened, or offended, by her scorn of their brisk cheerful pose of polite interest in thesurfaceof everything that was said. It was not worth doing. Polite society was not worth having. Every time one tried for awhile, holding oneself in, thinking of oneself sitting there as others were sitting, consciousness came to an end. It meant having opinions. Taking sides. It presently narrowed life down to a restive discomfort......
Jan went about the streets thinking she was invisible ... “and then quite suddenly I saw myself in a shop mirror.My dear.I got straight into an omnibus and went home. I could not stand the sight of my hips.” But with people, in a room, she never forgot she was there.
The sight of Mr. Shatov waiting for her under the gas in the drawing-room gathered all her thoughts together, struggling for simultaneous expression. She came slowly across the room, with eyes downcast to avoid the dimly-lit corner where he stood, and sought rapidly amongst the competing threads of thought for some fragment that could be shaped into speech before he should make the communication she had seen waiting in his face. The sympathetic form must listen and make some understanding response. She felt herself stiffening in angry refusal to face the banishment of her tangled mass of thought by some calmly oblivious statement, beginning nowhere and leading them on into baseless discussion, impeded on her part by the pain of unstated vanishing things. They began speaking together and he halted before her formal harsh-voiced words.
“There is always a bad light on Saturday evenings because nearly every one goes out” she said and looked her demand for his recognition of the undischarged burden of her mind impatiently about the room.
“I had not observed this” he said gently, “but now I see the light is indeed very bad.” She watched him as he spoke, waiting, counting each syllable. He paused, gravely consulting her face; she made noeffort to withhold the wave of anger flowing out over the words that stood mocking her on the desolate air, a bridge, carrying them up over the stream of her mind and forward, leaving her communications behind for ever. She waited, watching cynically for whatever he might offer to her dumbness, wondering whether it surprised him, rebuked as she regarded him, by his unchanged gentle lustre.
“Ohplease” he said hurriedly, his downcast inturned smile suddenly irradiating his forehead, bringing down the eyebrows that must have gone singing thoughtfully up as he spoke about the light ... a request of some kind; one of his extraordinary unashamed demands.... “You must help me. I must immediately pawn my watch. Where is a pawning shop?”
Miriam stared her consternation.
“Ah, no” he said, his features working with embarrassment “it is not for myself. It is my friend, the Polish Doctor, who was only now here,” Miriam gazed, plunging on through relief into a chaos of bewildered admiration.
“But you hardly know him” she exclaimed, sitting down for more leisurely contemplation.
“That is not the point” he said seriously, taking the chair on the other side of the little table. “Poor fellow, he is not long in London, and has almost no friends. He is working in abstruse researchings, needing much spendings on materials, and is threatened by his landlady to leave his apartments.”
“Did he tell you this?” said Miriam scepticallyrecalling the Polish head, its smooth cold perfect beauty and indifference.
“Most certainly he told me. He must immediately have ten pounds.”
“Perhaps you would not get so much,” persisted Miriam. “And suppose he does not pay it back?”
“You are mistaken. The watch, with the chain, is worth more than the double this sum.” His face expressed a grave simple finality.
“But it is ashame,” she cried, jealously eyeing the decoration that seemed now to have been an essential part of their many meetings. Without this mark of opulence, he would not be quite the same...
“Why a shame?” demanded Mr. Shatov, with his little abrupt snorting chuckle. “I shall again have my watch when my father shall send me the next portion of my allowance.” He was not counting on the return of the money! Next month, with his allowance, he would have the watch and forget the incident..... Wealth made life safe for him. People could be people to him; even strangers; not threats or problems. But even a wealthy Englishman would not calmly give ten pounds to a disreputable stranger ... he would suspect him even if he were not disreputable. Itmightbe true that the Pole was in honest difficulties. But it was impossible to imagine him really working at anything. Mr. Shatov did not feel this at all......
“I’m afraid I don’t know any pawn shops” she said, shrinking even from the pronunciation of theword. She scanned her London. They had always been there ... but she had never noticed or thought of them ... “I don’t remember ever having seen one; but I know you are supposed to recognise them,” here was strange useful knowledge, something picturesque floating in from somewhere ... “by three gold balls hanging outside ... Ihaveseen one” they were talking now, the Polish Doctor was fading away. “Yes ... on a bus” his wide child’s eyes were set impersonally on what she saw, “somewhere down by Ludgate Circus.”
“I will at once go there” he said sitting leisurely back with dreaming eyes and his hands thrust into his pockets.
“Oh no” she cried, thrusting off the disaster, “it would beclosed.”
“That is bad” he reflected, “Ach, no matter. I will write to him that I come on Monday.”
“He would not get your letter until Monday.”
“That is true. I did not think of this.”
There must be pawn shops quite near; in the Tottenham Court Road. They would still be open. Not to suggest this would be to be responsible if anything happened to the Pole... Thrusting down through the numbed mass of her forgotten thoughts to the quick of her nature came the realisation that she was being tested and found wanting ... another of those moments had come round..... She glanced into the open abyss at her own form staring up from its depths, and through her brain flew, in clear record, decisive moments of the past; her self, clearly visible,clothed as she had been clothed, her poise and bearing as she had flinched and fled. Here she was, unchanged, not caring what happened to the man, so long as her evening was not disturbed ... she was a murderess. This was the hidden truth of her life. Above it her false face turned from thing to thing, happy and forgetful for years, until a moment came again to show her that she could face and let slip the risk of anything to anyone, anywhere, rather than the pain of renouncing personal realisation. Already she was moving away. A second suggestion was in her mind and she was not going to make it. She glanced enviously at the unconscious kindliness lolling in the opposite chair. It was clear to its depths; unburdened by spectres of remembered cruelty...... But there was also something else that was different .... easy circumstances; the certainty, from the beginning, of self-realisation.....
“Perhaps someone in the house could tell you.” Ohstupidity; blurting outanythingto hide behind the sound of voices.
“Possibly. But it is a delicate matter. I could not for instance mention this matter to Mrs. Bailey.”