He began at once, standing before her, relating in simple unbroken speech the story of his student days, without pleading or extenuation; waiting at the end for her judgment.
“And that first photograph that I liked, was before; and the other, after.”
“That is so.”
“In the first there is someone looking out through the eyes; in the other that someone has moved away.”
“That is so. I agree.”
“Well, can’t you see? Never to come back. Never to come back.”
“Miriam. Remember I am no morethat man. I was in suffering and in ignorance. It would have been better otherwise. I agree with you. But that is all past. I am no more that man.”
“Can’t you see that there is no past?”
“I confess I do not understand this.”
“It is crowding all round you. I felt it. Don’t you remember? Before I knew. It comes between us all the time. I know now. It’s not an idea; or prudishness. It’s more solid than the space of air between us. I can’t get through it.”
“Remember I was suffering andalone.” Somewhere within the vibrating tones was the careless shouting of his boyhood; that past was there too; and the eager lifting voice of his earlier student days, still sometimes alive in the reverie of his lifted singing brows. The voice had been quelled. In his memory as he stood there before her was pain, young lonely pain. Within the life thrown open without reservation to her gaze, she saw, confronting her determination to make him suffer, the image of unhealed suffering, still there, half stifled by his blind obedience to worldly ignorant advice, but waiting for the moment to step forward and lay its burden upon her own unwilling heart, leaving him healed and free. Tears sprang to her eyes, blotting him out, and with them she sprang forth into a pathless darkness, conscious far away behind her, soon to be obliterated on the unknown shores opening ahead, but there gladly in hand, of a debt, signed and to be honoured even against her will, by life, surprised once more at this darkest moment, smiling at her secretly, behind all she could gather of opposing reason and clamourous protests of unworthiness. “Poor boy” she gasped, gathering him as he sank to his knees, with swift enveloping hands against her breast. The unknown woman sat alone, with eyes wide open towards theempty air above his hidden face. This was man; leaning upon her with his burden of loneliness, at home and comforted. This was the truth behind the image of woman supported by man. The strong companion was a child seeking shelter; the woman’s share an awful loneliness. It was not fair.
She moved to raise and restore him, at least to the semblance of a supporting presence. But with a sudden movement he bent and caught a fold of her dress to his lips. She rose with a cry of protest, urging him to his feet.
“I know now,” he said simply, “why men kneel to women.” While in her heart she thanked heaven for preserving her to that hour, the dreadful words invested her in yet another loneliness. She seemed to stand tall and alone, isolated for a moment from her solid surroundings, within a spiral of unconsuming radiance.
“No one ought to kneel to anyone,” she lied in pity, and moved out restlessly into the room. We are real. As others have been real. There is a sacred bond between us now, ratified by all human experience. But oh the cost and the demand. It was as if she were carrying in her hands something that could be kept safe only by a life-long silence. Everything she did and said in future must hide the sacred trust. It gave a freedom; but not of speech or thought. It left the careless dreaming self behind. Only in ceaseless occupation could it hold its way. Its only confidant would be God. Holding to it, everything in life, even difficulties, would be transparent. But seen from the outside,by the world, an awful mysteriously persistent commonplace. It was not fair that men did not know the whole of this secret place and its compact. Why was God in league only with women?
It’snot altogether personal..... Until it is understood and admitted, there is a darkness everywhere. The life of every man in existence, who does not understand and admit it, is perfectly senseless. Until they know they are all living in vain.
“What on earth did you mean?” she said as soon as the omnibus had started.
He turned a startled musing face. He hadforgotten.
“What have I said?”
“Kindly think.”
“Really I am at a loss.”
“When that woman collided with me, crossing the road.”
“Ah, ah, I remember. Well?”
“You pronounced an opinion.”
“It is not my opinion. It is a matter of ascertained fact.”
“Facts are invented by people who start with their conclusions arranged beforehand.”
“Perhaps so.”
“Ah well; that is an admission.”
“The conclusion is amply verified.”
“Where?”
“I speak only of women in the mass. There are of course exceptions.”
“Go on, go on.”
“I see you are annoyed. Let us leave this matter.”
“Kindly go on.”
“There is nothing more to say.” Helaughed. He was not even being aware that it was a matter of life and death. He could go on serenely living in an idea, that turned life into a nightmare.
“Oh if it amuses you.” He was silent. The moments went beating on. She turned from him and sat averted. She would go now onward and onward till she could get away over the edge of the world. There was nothing else to do. There were no thoughts or words in which her conviction could take shape. Even looking for them was a degradation. Besides, argument, if she could steady herself to face the pain of it, would not, whatever he might say, even dislodge his satisfied unconcern. He was uneasy; but only about herself, and would accept reassurance from her, without a single backward glance. But what did their personal fate matter beside a question so all-embracing? What future could they have in unacknowledged disagreement over central truth? And if it were acknowledged, what peace?
The long corridor of London imprisoned her. Far away beneath her tumult it was making its appeal, renewing the immortal compact. The irregular façades, dull greys absorbing the light, bright buffs throwing it brilliantly out, dadoed below with a patchwork of shops, and overhead the criss-cross of telephone wires, shut her away from the low-hung soft grey sky. But far away, unfailing,retreating as the long corridor telescoped towards them, an obliterating saffron haze filled the vista, holding her in her place.
The end of the journey brought them to grey streets and winding alleys where the masts and rigging that had loomed suddenly in the distance, robbing the expedition of its promise of ending in some strange remoteness with their suggestion of blind busy worlds beyond London, were lost to sight.
“This must be the docks,” she said politely.
With the curt permission of a sentinel policeman they went through a gateway appearing suddenly before them in a high grey wall. Miriam hurried forward to meet the open scene for one moment alone and found herself on a little quay surrounding a square basin of motionless grey water shut in by wooden galleries, stacked with mouldering casks. But the air was the air that moves softly on still days over wide waters and in the shadowed light of the enclosure, the fringe of green where the water touched the grey stone of the quay gleamed brilliantly in the stillness. She breathed in, in spite of herself, the charm of the scene; an ordered completeness, left to itself in beauty; its lonely beauty to be gathered only by the chance passer-by.
“This is a strange romantic place,” said Mr. Shatov conversationally by her side.
“There is nothing,” said Miriam unwillingly, feeling her theme weaken as she looked away from it to voice well-known words, “Nothingthat reveals more completely the spiritual,” her voice gave over the word which broke into meaninglessness uponthe air, “the status of a man as his estimate of women.”
“I entirely agree. I was a feminist in my college days. I am still a feminist.”
Miriam pondered. The word was new to her. But how could anyone be a feminist and still think women most certainly inferior beings?
“Ah,” she cried “you are one of the Huxleys.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh well.He, impertinent schoolboy, graciously suggested that women should be given every possible kind of advantage, educational and otherwise; saying almost in the same breath that they could never reach the highest places in civilisation; that Nature’s Salic Law would never be repealed.”
“Well, how is it to be repealed?”
“I don’t know I’m sure. I’m not wise enough to give instruction in repealing a law that has never existed. But who is Huxley, that he should take upon himself to say what are the highest places in civilisation?”
“Miriam” he said, coming round to stand before her. “We are not going to quarrel over this matter.” She refused to meet his eyes.
“It is not a question of quarrelling, or even discussion. You have told me all I want to know. I see exactly where you stand; and for my part itdecides, many things. I don’t say this to amuse myself or because I want to, but because it is the only thing I can possibly do.”
“Miriam. In this spirit nothing can be said at all. Let us rather go and have tea.”
Poor little man, perhaps he was weary; troubledin this strange grey corner of a country not his own, isolated with an unexpected anger. They had tea in a small dark room behind a little shop. It was close packed with an odorous dampness. Miriam sat frozen, appalled by the presence of a negro. He sat near by, huge, bent snorting and devouring, with a huge black bottle at his side. Mr. Shatov’s presence was shorn of its alien quality. He was an Englishman in the fact that he and she couldnotsit eating in the neighbourhood of this marshy jungle. But they were, they had. They would have. Once away from this awful place she would never think of it again. Yet the man had hands and needs and feelings. Perhaps he could sing. He was at a disadvantage, an outcast. There was something that ought to be said to him. She could not think what it was. In his oppressive presence it was impossible to think at all. Every time she sipped her bitter tea it seemed that before she should have replaced her cup, vengeance would have sprung from the dark corner. Everything hurried so. There was notimeto shake off the sense of contamination. Itwascontamination. The man’s presence was an outrage on something of which he was not aware. It would be possible to make him aware. When his fearful face, which she sadly knew she could not bring herself to regard a second time, was out of sight, the outline of his head was desolate, like the contemplated head of any man alive. Men ought not to have faces. Their real selves abode in the expressions of their heads and brows. Below, their faces were moulded by deceit......
While she had pursued her thoughts, advantagehad fallen to the black form in the corner. It was as if the black face grinned, crushing her thread of thought.
“You see, Miriam, if instead of beating me, you will tell me yourthoughts, it is quite possible that mine may be modified. There is at least nothing of the bigot in me.”
“It is not what people may be made to see for a few minutes in conversations that counts. It is the conclusions they come to, instinctively, by themselves.” He wanted to try and think as she did ...... “chose attendrissante; il me ressemblaient” .....life..wasdifferent, to everybody, even to intellectual male vain-boasters, from everybody’s descriptions; there was nothing to point to anywhere that exactly corresponded to spoken opinions. But the relieving truth of this was only realised privately. The things went on being said. Men did not admit their private discoveries in public. It was not enough to see and force the admittance of the holes in a theory privately, and leave the form of words going on and on in the world perpetually parroted, infecting the sky. “Wise women know better and go their way without listening,” is not enough. It is not only the insult to women; a contempt for men is a bulwark against that, but introduces sourness into one’s own life....... It is the impossibility of witnessing the pouring on of a vast, repeating public life that is missing the significance of everything.
Yet what a support, she thought with a sideways glance, was his own gentleness ... gentilesse ... and humanity, to his own theory. He was sereneand open in the presence of this central bitterness. If she could summon, in words, convincing evidence of the inferiority of man, he would cheerfully accept it and go on unmaimed. But a private reconstruction of standards in agreement with one person would not bring healing. It was history, literature, the way of stating records, reports, stories, the whole method of statement of things from the beginning that was on a false foundation.
If only one could speak as quickly as one’s thoughts flashed, and several thoughts together, all with a separate life of their own and yet belonging, everybody would be understood. As it was, even in the most favourable circumstances, people could hardly communicate with each other at all.
“I have nothing to say. It is not a thing that can be argued out. Those women’s rights people are the worst of all. Because they think women have been “subject” in the past. Women never have been subject. Never can be. The proof of this is the way men have always been puzzled and everlastingly trying fresh theories; foundedonthe very small experience of women any man is capable of having. Disabilities, imposed by law, are a stupid insult to women, but have never touched them as individuals. In the long run they injure only men. For they keep back the civilisation of the outside world, which is the only thing men can make. It is not everything. It is a sort of result, poor and shaky because the real inside civilisation of women, the one thing that has been in them from the first and is not in the natural man, not made by “things,” is kept out of it. Women do not need civilisation.It is apt to bore them.Butit can never rise above their level. They keep it back. That does not matter, to themselves. But it matters to men. And if they want their old civilisation to be anything but a dreary-weary puzzle, they must leave off imagining themselves a race of gods fighting against chaos, and thinking of women as part of the chaos they have to civilise. There isn’t any “chaos.” Never has been. It’s the principal masculine illusion. It is not a truth to say that women must be civilised. Feminists are not only an insult to womanhood. They are a libel on the universe.” In the awful presence she had spoken herself out, found and recited her best most liberating words. The little unseen room shone, its shining speaking up to her from small things immediately under her eyes. Light, pouring from her speech, sent a radiance about the thick black head and its monstrous bronze face. He might have his thoughts, might even look them, from the utmost abyss of crude male life, but he had helped her, and his blind unconscious outlines shared the unknown glory. But she doubted if she would remember that thoughts flowed more easily, with surprising ease, as if given, waiting, ready to be scanned and stated, when one’s eyes ceased to look outwards. If she could remember it, it might prove to be the solution of social life.
“These things are all matters of opinion. Whereas it is a matter of indisputablefactthat in the past women have been subject.”
“If you believe that it is impossible for us to associate. Because we are living in two utterly different worlds.”
“On the contrary. This difference is a most excellent basis for association.”
“You think I can cheerfully regard myself as an emancipated slave, with traditions of slavery for memory and the form of a slave as an everlasting heritage?”
“Remember that heredity is cross-wise. You are probably more the daughter of your father ...”
“Thatwon’t help you, thank you. If anything I am my mother’s son.”
“Ah—ah, what is this, you are ason. Do you see?”
“That’s a piece of English feudalism.”
“The demands of feudalism do not explain a woman’s desire for sons.”
“That is another question. She hopestheywill give her the understanding she never had from their father. In that Iammy mother’s son for ever. If there’s a future life, all I care for is to meether. If I could have her back for ten minutes I would gladly give up the rest of my life..... Is heredity really criss-cross? Is it proved?”
“Substantially.”
“Oh yes. Of course. I know. To prevent civilisation going ahead too fast! I’ve seen that somewhere. Very flattering to men. But it proves there’s no separate race of men and women.”
“Exactly.”
“Then how have men the face to go on with their generalisations about women?”
“You yourself have a generalisation about women.”
“That’s different. It’s not about brains andattainments. I can’t make you see. I suppose it’s Christianity.”
“What is Christianity? You think Christianity is favourable to women? On the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world. It is only in Christian countries that I find the detestable spectacle of men who will go straight from association with loose women into the society of innocent girls. That I find unthinkable...... With Jews womanhood has always been sacred. And there can be no doubt that we owe our persistence as a race largely to our laws of protection for women;allwomen. Moreover in the older Hebrew civilisation women stood very high. You may read this. To-day there is a very significant Jewish wit which says that women make the best wives and mothers in the world.”
“There you are. No Englishman would make a joke like that.”
“Because he is a hypocrite.”
“No. He may, as you say, think one thing and say another; but long long ago he had a jog. ItwasChristianity. Something happened. Christ was the first man to see women as individuals.”
“You speak easily of Christianity. There is no Christianity in the world. It has never been imagined, save in the brain of a Tolstoy. And he has shown that if the principles of Christianity were applied, civilisation as we know it would at once come to an end.”
“There may not be much Christianity. But Christianity has made a difference. It has not giventhings to women that were not there before. Nothing can do that. But it has shed a light on themwhichthe best women run away from. Never imagine I am speaking of myself. I’m as much a man as a woman. That’s why I can’t help seeing things. But I’m not really interested. Not inside myself. Now look here. You prefer Englishwomen to Jewesses. I can’t bear Jewesses, not because they are not really like other women, but because they reflect the limitations of the Jewish male. They talk and think the Jewish man’s idea of them. It has nothing to do with them as individuals. But they are waiting for the light to go up.”
“I speak always of these assimilated and half-assimilated English Jewesses. Certainly to me they are most inimical.”
“More so than the Germans?”
“In a different way. They have here less social disabilities. But they are most absolutely terre-à-terre.”
“Why are Russian Jewesses different?”
“Many of them are idealist. Many live altogether by one or two ideas of Tolstoy.”
“Why do you smile condescendingly?”
“These ideas can lead only to revolution. I am not a revolutionary. While I admire everywhere those who suffer for their ideals.”
“You admit that Tolstoy has influenced Russian Jewesses.Hegot his ideas from Christ. So you say. I did not know he was religious.”
“It is a later development. But you remember Levin. But tell me, do you not consider that wife and mother is the highest position of woman?”
“It is neither high nor low. It may be anything. If you define life for women, as husbands and children, it means that you have no consciousness at all where women are concerned.”
“There is the evidence of women themselves. The majority find their whole life in these things.”
“That is a description, from outside, by men. When women use it they do not know what they say.”
Itwas strange that it should be the house that had always caught her eye, as she crossed the square; one of the spots that always made the years of her London life show as a continuous communion with the rich brightness of the west-end. The houses round about it were part of the darker colour of London, creating even in sunlight the beloved familiar London atmosphere of dun-coloured mist and grime. But this house was a brilliant white, its windows fringed, during the season, with the gentle deep velvet pink of ivy-leaf geraniums and having, across the lower half of its façade, a fine close trellis of green painted wood, up which a green creeper clambered, neat and sturdy, with small bright polished leaves making a woodland blur across the diamond patterned mesh of white and green. There were other creepers in the square, but they hung in festoons, easily shabby, spoiled at their brightest by the thought of their stringy bare tendrils hung with shrivelled leaves. These small green leaves faded and dried and fell crisply, leaving a network of clean twigs to gleam in the rain, and the trellis bright green against the white house-front, suggesting summer all the year around.
She went eagerly towards this permanent summer created by wealth, warmed by the imagined voiceof a power that could transform all difficulties, setting them in a beauty that lived by itself.
The little leaves, seen from the doorstep, shone like bright enamel in the misty twilight; but their beautiful wild clean-cut shapes, so near, suddenly seemed helpless, unable to escape, forced to drape the walls, life-fevered within, to which their stems were pinned..... But there was a coming in and out...... All people in houses had a coming in and out, those moments of coming, anew out into endless space. And everywhere at moments, in houses, was the sense of the life of the whole world flowing in. Even Jewish houses were porous to the life of the world, and to have a house, however strangely shaped one’s life, would be to have a vantage point for breathing in the life of the world...... She stood in a lull, reprieved, her endlessly revolving problem left behind, the future in abeyance, perhaps to be shown her by the woman waiting within, set in surroundings that now called to her jubilantly, proclaiming themselves to be the only object of her visit. For a moment she found herself back in her old sense of the marvel of existence, gazing at the miraculous spectacle of people and things, existing; herself, however, perplexed and resourceless, within it, everything sinking into insignificance beside the fact of being alive, having lived on to another moment of unexplainable glorious happiness. Light-heartedly she rang the bell. The small movement of her lifted hand was supported, a permitted part of the whole tremendous panorama; and in that whole she wasEngland, a link in the world-wide being of England and English life.The bell, grinding out its summons within the house, brought her back within the limits of the occasion, but she could not drive away the desire to go forward without return, claiming welcome and acceptance, in a life permanently set in beauty.
The door flew open revealing a tall resentfully handsome butler past whom she went confidently announcing her appointment, into an immense hall, its distances leading in every direction to doors, suggesting a variety of interiors beyond her experience. She was left standing. Someone who had come up the steps as the door opened, was being swiftly conveyed, a short squat polished wealthy old English Jew with curly grey hair and an eager busy plunging gait, across the hall to the centremost door. It opened on a murmur of voices and the light from within fell upon a table just outside, its surface crowded with gleaming top-hats. Some kind of men’s meeting was in progress. The woman was not in it...... Had she anticipated, before she married, what it would be, however she might fortify herself with scorn, to breathe always the atmosphere of the Jewish religious and social oblivion of women? Had she had any experience of Jewesses, their sultry conscious femineity, their dreadful acceptance of being admitted to synagogue on sufferance, crowded away upstairs in a stuffy gallery, while the men downstairs, bathed in light, draped in the symbolic shawl, thanked God aloud for making them men and not women? Had she thought what it must be to have always at her side a Jewish consciousness, unconscious of her actuality, believing in its own positive existence,seeing her as human only in her consecration to relationships?
The returning butler ushered her unannounced through a doorway near at hand into a room that spread dimly about her in a twilight deepened by a single core of rosy light at the centre of the expanse. Through a high curtain-draped archway she caught a glimpse, as she came forward, of a further vastness, shadowy in undisturbed twilight.
Mrs. Bergstein had risen to meet her, her head obscured in the gloom above the lamplight, so that only her gown met Miriam’s first sally of investigation; a refined middle-class gown of thin dull black whose elbow sleeves and little vee neck were softened at the edge with a ruche of tulle; the party dress of a middle-aged spinster schoolmistress. Miriam braced herself in vain against its seductions; it called her so powerfully to come forth and rejoice. She revelled off, licensed and permitted, the free deputy of this chained presence, amongst the enchantments of the great house; the joy of her escapade leaping bright against the dark certainty that there was no help awaiting her. It was no longer to be feared that an unscrupulous, successful, brightly cajoling woman would persuade her that her problem did not exist; but neither from this woman to whom the fact of life as a thing in itself never had time to appear, could she hope for support in her own belief in the unsoundness of compromise.
Mrs. Bergstein bowed, murmured a greeting and indicated a little settee near the low chair into which she immediately subsided, her face still inshadow, the shape of her coiffure so much in keeping with the dress that Miriam could hardly refrain from departing then and there. She sat down, a schoolgirl waiting for judgment against which she was armed in advance, and yet helpless through her unenvious, scornful admiration.
“I was much interested by your letter” said Mrs. Bergstein.
The interview was at an end. There was no opening in the smooth close surface represented by the voice, through which questions could be driven home. She was smitten into silence where the sound of the voice echoed and re-echoed, whilst she fumbled for a suitable phrase, clinging to the memory of the statement, still somewhere, which she had come, so desperately, to hear and carry away and set down, a ray of light in the darkness of her revolving thoughts. A numb forgetfulness assailed her, threatening the disaster of irrelevance of speech or behaviour coming from the tides of expression she felt beating below it. She forced a murmured response from her lips, and the tumult was stilled to an echo that flung itself to and fro within, answering the echo of the woman’s voice on the air. She had caught hold and contributed. It was now the turn of the other to go on and confirm what she had revealed......
“Music is sobeautiful—soelevating.” “That depends upon the music.” Never said. Kept treacherously back for the sake of things that might be lost in a clashing of opinions ... the things they never thought of in exercising their benevolence, and demanding in return acceptance of their views... the light of a whole world condensed in the bright old town, the sweet chiming sound of it, coming in at the windows, restoring childhood, the expanses of leisure made by their small hard circle, a world of thoughtless ideas, turning a short week-end into a life, lived before, familiar, building out in the nerves a glorious vitality.....
It was the same voice, the English lady’s voice, bringing all Christendom about her, all the traditions within which, so lately, she had felt herself committed steadfastly to tread. But there was something left out of it, a warmth was missing, it had not in it the glow that was in those other women’s voices, of kindliness towards the generous things they had secretly, willingly renounced. It had, instead, something that was like a cold clean blade thrusting into an intelligible future, something inexorable, founded not upon fixed ideas, but upon ideas, single and cold. This woman would not make concessions; she would always stand, uncompromisingly, in face of everyone, men and women, for the same things, clear cut, delicate and narrowly determining as her voice.
“You are considering the possibility of embracing the Jewish faith?”
“Well,no,” said Miriam startled into briskness by the too quickly developing accumulation of speech. “I heard that you had done so; and wondered, how it was possible, for an Englishwoman.”
“You are a Christian?”
“I don’t know. I was brought up in the Anglican Church.”
“Much depends upon the standpoint from which one approaches the very definite and simple creed of Judaism. I myself was a Unitarian, and therefore able to take the step without making a break with my earlier convictions.”
“I see,” said Miriam coldly. Fate had deceived her, holding in reserve the trick of this simple explanation. She gazed at the seated figure. The glow of her surroundings was quenched by the chill of a perpetually activereason.... Science, ethics, withering common-sense playing over everything in life, making a harsh bareness everywhere, seeing nothing alive but the cold processes of the human mind; having Tennyson read at services because poetry was one of the superior things produced by humanity...... She wondered whether this woman, so exactly prepared to meet a Jewish reform movement, had been helplessly born into Unitarianism, or had taken it up as she herself had nearly done.
“Much of course depends upon the synagogue through which one is admitted.” Ah; shehadfelt the impossibilities. She had compromised and was excusing her compromise.
“Of course I have heard of the reform movement.” .. The silence quivered with the assertion that the reformers were as much cut off from Judaism as Unitarianism from Anglican Christianity. To enter a synagogue that made special arrangements for the recognition of women was to admit that women were dependent on recognition. The silence admitted the dilemma. Mrs. Bergstein had passed through these thoughts, suffering? Thoughshe had found a way through, following her cold clear reason, she still suffered?
“I think I should find it impossible to associate with Jewishwomen.”
“Thatis a point you must consider very carefully indeed.” The room leapt into glowing reality. Theywereat one; Englishwomen with a common incommunicable sense. Outcasts...... Far away, within the warm magic circle of English life, sounded the careless easy slipshod voices of Englishmen, she saw their averted talking forms, aware in every line, and protective, of something that Englishwomen held in their hands.
“Don’t you find” she began breathlessly, but calm even tones drove across her eagerness: “What is your fiancé’s attitude towards religion?”
“He is not exactly religious and not fully in sympathy with the reform movement because he is a Zionist and thinks that the old ritual is the only link between the persecuted Jews and those who are better placed; that it would be treachery to break with it as long as any are persecuted........ Nevertheless, he is willing to renounce his Judaism.”
The Queen, who is religious, puts love before religion, for woman. Her Protestantism. He for God only, she for God in him and able to change her creed when she marries. A Catholiccouldn’t. And she would call Catholics idolators.Sheis an idolator; of men.
Mrs. Bergstein was amazed at his willingness. Envious......I am a Jew, a ‘head’ man incapable of ‘love’...... It is your eyes. Imust see them always...... I know now what is meant by love...... I am even willing to renounce my Judaism...... Michaelto think and say that. I am crowned, for life; by a sacrifice I cannot accept. He must keep his Judaism...... Youmustmarry me...... The discovery, flowing through the grey noisy street, of the secret of the ‘mastery’ idea; that women can only be sure that a man is sure when——
“There is thennocommon religious feeling between you?”
She had moved. The light fell upon her. She was aboutforty. She had come forth, so late, from the secret numbness of her successful independent life, and had not found what she came to seek. She was still alone in her circling day. At the period of evening dress she put on a heavy gold bracelet, ugly, a heavy ugly shape. Her face was pinched and drawn; before her lay the ordeal of belated motherhood. Vulgarly violating her refined endurance had come this incident. Dignified condemnation spoke from her averted eyes. She had said her say and was desiring that there should be no further waste of time.
Miriam made no sound. In the stillness that followed the blow she faced the horrible summary, stricken to her feet, her strength ebbing with her thoughts into the gathering swirling darkness. She waited for a moment. But Mrs. Bergstein made no sign. Imponderable, conscious only of the weight of her body about her holding her to the ground beneath her feet, she went away from the room and the house. In the lamplit darkness herfeet carried her joyously forward into the freshness of the tree-filled air. The large square lying between her and the street where he was waiting seemed an immensity. She recovered within it the strange unfailing freedom of solitude in the sounding spaces of London and hurried on to be by his side generally expressive of her rejoicing. The world’s condemnation was out of sight behind her. But he would ask, and whatever she said, the whole problem would be there afresh, insoluble. He would never see that it had been confirmed, never admit anything contemptible in their association...... It was because there was no contempt in him that she was hurrying. But alone again with him, the troubled darkness behind her would return with its maddening influence. She was fleeing from it only towards its darkest centre.
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England.William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
THREELOVINGLADIESBY THEHON. MRS. DOWDALLAuthor of“The Book of Martha,” “Susie,” etc.The “three loving ladies” are Susie and her two grown-up daughters, and the novel, written in Mrs. Dowdall’s own vein of happy gossip, tells of their life in the various social sets of a provincial city. It is amusing, but there is always clever insight behind its smiles.Crown 8vo. 9s. net.
THREELOVINGLADIES
BY THEHON. MRS. DOWDALL
Author of“The Book of Martha,” “Susie,” etc.
The “three loving ladies” are Susie and her two grown-up daughters, and the novel, written in Mrs. Dowdall’s own vein of happy gossip, tells of their life in the various social sets of a provincial city. It is amusing, but there is always clever insight behind its smiles.
Crown 8vo. 9s. net.
HUNGERBYKNUT HAMSUNAuthor of“The Growth of the Soil,” “Pan,” etc.In 1920, Knut Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for literature. “Hunger” is unquestionably among his greatest novels: a remarkably vivid portrayal of the effect of want of food on a man’s character, his morals, his whole attitude to life.Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
HUNGER
BYKNUT HAMSUN
Author of“The Growth of the Soil,” “Pan,” etc.
In 1920, Knut Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for literature. “Hunger” is unquestionably among his greatest novels: a remarkably vivid portrayal of the effect of want of food on a man’s character, his morals, his whole attitude to life.
Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
FROMANOTHERANGLEBYMARGARET LOCKYERThis novel tells the story of a young man from Croätia, who leaves Austria in 1912 to support his own race among the Serbs.It is not an army book: it is a picture of men and women working and loving, out of the range of guns, but under the tensity of feeling that holds a war-swept country.Crown 8vo. 9s. net.
FROMANOTHERANGLE
BYMARGARET LOCKYER
This novel tells the story of a young man from Croätia, who leaves Austria in 1912 to support his own race among the Serbs.It is not an army book: it is a picture of men and women working and loving, out of the range of guns, but under the tensity of feeling that holds a war-swept country.
Crown 8vo. 9s. net.
THEGLORIOUSHOPEBYJANE BURRAuthor of“The Passionate Spectator,” etc.The story of a bright girl who gives up personal ambition in the “Bohemia” of New York in order to make a nerve-racked poet take a more human view of life. A vigorous and attractive novel.Crown 8vo. 9s. net.
THEGLORIOUSHOPE
BYJANE BURR
Author of“The Passionate Spectator,” etc.
The story of a bright girl who gives up personal ambition in the “Bohemia” of New York in order to make a nerve-racked poet take a more human view of life. A vigorous and attractive novel.
Crown 8vo. 9s. net.
THEPRICEOF THINGSBYELINOR GLYNAuthor of“Three Weeks,” etc.This, the latest novel by the famous novelist, Elinor Glyn, is now issued at2s. net.
THEPRICEOF THINGS
BYELINOR GLYN
Author of“Three Weeks,” etc.
This, the latest novel by the famous novelist, Elinor Glyn, is now issued at
2s. net.
Transcriber’s NotesThe original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. In “Deadlock”, Dorothy Richardson continued to experiment with punctuation, in particular with leaving out commas and an unconventional use of suspension points and quotation marks. Therefore, punctuation was mostly left unchanged.A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after):... “There’sisn’t much prospect there” recited ...... “Thereisn’t much prospect there” recited ...... “Thatitso” assented Mrs. Bailey; “but I see ...... “Thatisso” assented Mrs. Bailey; “but I see ...... beloved corridor of her solitary pacings, out into ...... beloved corridor of her solitary pacings, out intothe...... them set, at varying angles,inquestioningly towards ...... them set, at varying angles,unquestioningly towards ...... of effort to defineinher small perfection. The list ...... of effort to defineher small perfection. The list ...... lingers andeffectsall the life.” ...... lingers andaffectsall the life.” ...... confronting the speaker, whohasjust spat into the ...... confronting the speaker, whohadjust spat into the ...... voices...... Gathering up herMarieDuclaux ...... voices...... Gathering up herLucieDuclaux ...... Neither of themseethat the fact of ...... Neither of themseesthat the fact of ......mayremain there. Science is a large element in our ......manyremain there. Science is a large element in our ...... not occur to him that this serenity, in whichwas...... not occur to him that this serenity, in whichwere...... The small far-off man’s voice sounded out, lost the ...... The small far-off man’s voice sounded out, lostinthe ...... a misery as wideatthe world, was her own dream ...... a misery as wideasthe world, was her own dream ...... “Miriam. Remember I am no morethanman. ...... “Miriam. Remember I am no morethatman. ...
Transcriber’s Notes
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. In “Deadlock”, Dorothy Richardson continued to experiment with punctuation, in particular with leaving out commas and an unconventional use of suspension points and quotation marks. Therefore, punctuation was mostly left unchanged.
A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after):