He could never see that it was impossible without forcibly crushing her, to get out of doing some part of what she desired....
If one were drawn in and did things, let oneself want to do things for anyone else, there would be a change in the atmosphere at Wimpole Street. That never occurred tohim. But he would feel it if it happened. If there were someone near who made distractions there would be a difference, something that was not given to him. He was so unaware of this. He was absolutely ignorant of what it was that kept things going as they were.
Thecycling school was out of sight and done with and Miriam hurried down the Chalk Farm Road. If only she could see an omnibus and be in it going anywhere down away from the north. Miss Szigmondy had brought shame and misery upon her, in Chalk Farm. There was nothing there to keep off the pain. Once back she would never think of Chalk Farm again. How could anyone think it was a place, like other places? It was torture even to be in it, going through it.... Of course the man had thought I should take on a course of lessons and pay for them. I have to learn everything meanly and shamefully. He thinks I’m getting all I can for nothing. The people in the bus will see me pay my fare and I shall be all right again, going down there. What anawfulroad, going on and on with nothing in it. I am shamed and helpless;helpless. It’s no use to try and do anything. It always exposes me and brings this maddening shame and pain. It’s over again this time and I shall soon forget it altogether. I might just as well begin to stop thinking about it now. It’s this part of London. It’s like Banbury Park. The people are absolutely awful. They take cycling lessons quite coolly. They are not afraid of anybody. To them this part is the best bit of North London. They are that sort of people. They are all alike. All of them would dislike me. I should die of being with them.
Why is it that no one seems to know what north London is? They say it is healthy and open. Perhaps I shall meet someone who feels like I do about it and would get ill anddie there. It is not imagination. It is a real feeling that comes upon me....
The north London omnibus reached the tide of the Euston Road and pulled up at Portland Road station. Miriam got out weak and ill. The first breath of the central air revived her. Standing there, the omnibus looked like any other omnibus. She crossed the road, averting her eyes from the north-going roads on either side of the church and got into the inmost corner of another bus. She wanted to ride about, getting from bus to bus, inside London until her misery had passed. Opposite her was a stout woman in a rusty bonnet and shawl and dust-defaced black skirt, looking about with eyes that did not see what they looked at, all the London consciousness in her. Miriam sat gazing at her. The woman’s eyes crossed her and passed unperturbed....
The lane of little shops flowed away, their huddled detail crushing together, wide shop windows glittered steadily by and narrowed away. When the bus stopped at Gower Street the spire of St. Pancras church came into sight spindling majestically up, screened by trees.
The trees in Endsleigh Gardens came along gently waving their budding branches in bright sunshine. The colour of the gardens was so intense that the sun must just be going to set behind Euston Station. The large houses moved steadily behind the gardens in blocks, bright white, with large quiet streets opening their vistas in between the blocks, leading to green freshness and then safely on down into Soho. The long square came to an end. The shrub-trimmed base of St. Pancras church came heavily nearer and stopped. As Miriam got out of the bus she watched its great body rise in clear sharp outline against the blue. Its clock was booming the hour out across the gardens through the houses and down into the squares. On this side its sound was broken up by the narrow roar of the Euston Road and the clamour coming right and left from the two great stations.
Her feet tramped happily across the square of polished roadway patterned with shadows and along the quiet clean sunlit pavement behind the gardens. It was always bright and clean and quiet and happy there, like the pavement of a road behind a sea-front. The sound of a mail van rattling heavily along Woburn Place changed to a soft rumble as she turned in between the great houses of Tansley Street and walked along its silent corridor of afternoon light. Sparrows were cheeping in the stillness. To be able to go down the quiet street and on into the squares—on a bicycle.... I must learn somehow to get my balance. To go along, like in that moment when he took his hands off the handle-bars, in knickers and a short skirt and all the summer to come.... Everything shone with a greater intensity. Friends and thought and work were nothing compared to being able to ride alone, balanced, going along through the air.
On the hall table was a post-card. “Come round on Sunday if you’re in town—Irlandisches Ragout. Mag.” Her heart stirred; that settled it—the girls wanted her; Mag wanted her. She took Alma’s crumpled letter from her pocket and glanced through it once more ... “such a dull Sunday and all your fault. Why did you not come? Come on Saturdayanytime or Sunday morning if you can’t manage the week-end?” What a good thing she had not written promising to go. She would be in London, safe in Kennett Street for Sunday. Mag was quite right; going away unsettled you for the week and you did notgetSunday. She looked at her watch, five-thirty; in half an hour the girls would probably be at Slater’s; the London week-end could begin this minute; all the people who half-expected her, the Brooms, the Pernes, Sarah and Harriett, the Wilsons, would be in their homes far away; she safe in Bloomsbury, in the big house the big kind streets, Kennett Street; places they none of them knew; safe for the whole length of the week-end. Saturday had looked so obstructed, withthe cycling lesson, and the visit to Miss Szigmondy and the many alternatives for the rest of the time.... “Oh I’ve got aboutfiftyengagements for Saturday” and now Saturday was clear and she felt equal to anything for the week-end. What a discovery, standing hidden, there in the London house, to drop everything and go down, with all the discarded engagements, all the solicitous protecting friends put aside; easy and alone through the glimmering green squares to the end of the Strand and find Slater’s.... I’ll never stir out of London again. The girls are right. It isn’t worth it.
She saw the girls seated at a table at the far end of the big restaurant and shyly advanced.
“Hulloh child!”
“What you having?” she asked sitting down opposite to them. The empty white table-cloth shone under a brilliant incandescent light; far away down the vista the door opened on the daylit street.
“Isn’t it a glorious Spring evening?” Spring? It was, of course. Everyone had been saying the spring would never come, but to-day it was very warm. Spring was here of course. Perspiring in a dusty cycling school and sitting in a hot restaurant was not spring. Spring was somewhere far away. Going to stay and talk in people’s houses did not bring Spring—landscapes belonging to people werepainted; you must be alone ... or perhaps at the Brooms. Perhaps next week-end at the Brooms would be in time for the spring; in their back garden, the watered green lawn and the sweetbriar and the distant trees in the large garden beyond the fence. In London it was better not to think about the times of year.
But Mag seemed to find Spring in London. Her face was all glowing with the sense of it.
“What you having?”
“Have you observed with what a remarkable brilliancethe tender green shines out against the soot-black branches?” Yes, that was wonderful but what was the joke?
“Every spring I have spent in Lonndonn I have heard that remark at least fifty times.”
Miriam laughed politely. “Jan,whathave you ordered?”
“We’ve ordered beef my child, cold beefs and salads.”
“Do you think I should like salad?”
“If youhada brother would he like salad?”
“Do they put dressing on it? If I could have just plain lettuce.”
“Ask for it my child, ask and it shall be given unto thee.”
A waitress brought the beef and salad, two glasses with an inch of whisky in each, and a large syphon.
Miriam ordered beef and potatoes.
“I suppose the steak and onion days are over.”
“I shan’t have another steak and onions, please God, until next November.”
Miriam laughed delightedly.
“Why haven’t you gone away for the week-end, child?”
“I told you she wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know. I wanted to come down here.”
“Is that a compliment to us?”
“I say, I’ve had a bicycle lesson.”
Both faces came up eagerly.
“You remember; that extraordinary woman I met at the Royal Institution.”
The faces looked at each other.
“Oh you know; Itoldyou about it—the two lessons she didn’t want.”
“Go on my child; we remember; go on.”
Miriam sat eating her beef.
“Go on Miriam. You’ve really had a lesson. I’m delighted my child. Tell us all about it.”
“D’you remember the extraordinary moment when you felt the machine going along; even with the man holding the handle-bars?”
“You wait until there’s nobody to hold the handlebars.”
“Have you been out alone yet?”
The two faces looked at each other.
“Shall we tell her?”
“Youmusttell me; es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath.” They leaned across the table and spoke low one after the other. “We went out—last night—after dark—and rode—round Russell Square—twice—in our knickers——”
“No.Did you really? How simply heavenly.”
“Itwas. We came home nearly crying with rage at not being able to go about, permanently, in nothing but knickers. It would make life anabsolutelydifferent thing.”
“The freedom of movement.”
“Exactly. You feel like a sprite you are so light.”
“And like a poet though you don’t know it.”
“You feel like a sprite you are so light, and you feel so strong and capable and so broadshouldered you could knock down a policeman. Jan and I knocked down several last night.”
“Yes; and it is not only that; think of never having to brush your skirt.”
“I know. It would be bliss.”
“I spend half my life brushing my skirt. If I miss a day I notice it—if I miss two days the office notices it. If I miss three days the public notices it.”
“La vie est dure; pour les femmes.”
“You don’t want to be a man Jan.”
“Oh I do, sometimes. They have the best of everything all round.”
“Idon’t. I wouldn’t be a man for anything. I wouldn’t have a man’s—consciousness, for anything.”
“Why not asthore?”
“They’re too absolutely pig-headed and silly....”
“Isn’tshe intolerant?”
Miriam sat flaring. That was not the right answer. There was something; and they must know it; but they would not admit it.
“Then you can both really ride?”
“We do nothing else; we’ve given up walking; we no longer walk up and downstairs; we ride.”
Miriam laughed her delight. “I can quite understand; it alters everything. I realised that this afternoon at the school. To be able to bicycle would make life utterly different; on a bicycle you feel a different person; nothing can come near you, you forget who you are. Aren’t you glad you are alive to-day, when all these things are happening?”
“What things little one?”
“Well cycling and things. You know girls when I’m thirty I’m going to cut my hair short and wear divided skirts.”
Both faces came up.
“Why on earth?”
“I can’t face doing my hair and brushing skirts and keeping more or less in the fashion, that means about two years behind because I never realise fashions till they’re just going, even if I could afford to,—all my life.”
“Then why not do it now?”
“Because all my friends and relatives would object. It would worry them too—they would feel quite sure then I should never marry—and they still entertain hopes, secretly.”
“Don’t you want to marry—ever; ever?”
“Well—it would mean giving up this life.”
“Yes, I know. I agree there. That can’t be faced.”
“I should thinknot. Aren’t you going to have any pudding?”
“But why thirty? Why not thirty-one?”
“Because nobody cares what you do when you’re thirty; they’ve all given up hope by that time. Aren’t you two going to have any pudding?”
“No. But that is no reason why you should not.”
“What a good idea—to have just one dish and coffee.”
“That’s what we think; and it’s cheap.”
“Well, I couldn’t have had any dinner at all only I’m cadging dinner with you to-morrow.”
“What would you have done?”
“An egg, at an A.B.C.”
“How fond you are of A.B.C’s.”
“I love them.”
“What is it that you love about them.”
“Chiefly I think their dowdiness. The food is honest; not showy, and they are so blissfully dowdy.”
Both girls laughed.
“It’s no good. I have come to the conclusion I like dowdiness. I’m not smart. You are.”
“This is the first we have heard of it.”
“Well you know you are. You keep in the fashion. It may be quite right, perhaps you are more sociable than I am.”
“One is so conspicuous if one is not dressed more or less like other people.”
“That’s what I hate; dressing like other people. If I could afford it I should be stylish—not smart. Perfect coats and skirts and a few good evening dresses. But you must be awfully well off for that. If I can’t be stylish I’d rather be dowdy and in a way I like dowdiness even better than stylishness.”
The girls laughed.
“But aren’t clothes awful, anyhow? I’ve spent four and eleven on my knickers and I can’t possibly get a skirt till next year if then, or afford to hire a machine.”
“Why don’t you ask them to raise your salary?”
“After four months? Besides any fool could do the work.”
“If I were you I should tell them. I should say ‘Gentlemen—I wish for a skirt and a bicycle.’”
“Mag, don’t be so silly.”
“Ican’tsee it.Theywould benefit by your improved health and spirits. Jan and I are new women since we have learned riding.Iam thinking of telling the governor I must have a rise to meet the increased demands of my appetite. Our housekeeping expenses I shall say are doubled. Whatwillyou? Que faire?”
“You see the work I’m doing is not worth more than a pound a week—my languages are no good there. I suppose I ought to learn typing and shorthand; but where could I find the money for the training?”
“Will you teach her shorthand if I teach her typing?”
“Certainly if the child wants to learn. I don’t advise her.”
“Why not Jan.Youdid. How long would it take me in evenings?”
“A year at least, to be marketable. It’s a vile thing to learn, unless you are thoroughly stupid.”
“That’s true. Jan was a perfect fool. The more intelligent you are the longer you take.”
“You see it isn’t a language. It is an arbitrary system of signs.”
“With your intelligence you’d probably grow grey at the school. Wouldn’t she, Jan?”
“Probably.”
“Besides I can’t imagine Mistress Miriam in an office.”
“Nobody would have me. I’m not business-like enough. I am learning book-keeping at their expense. And don’t forget they give me lunch and tea. I say are we going to read ‘The Evolution Idea of God’ to-night?”
“Yes. Let’s get back and get our clothes off. If I don’t have a cigarette within half an hour I shall die.”
“Oh, so shall I. I had forgotten the existence of cigarettes.”
Out in the street Miriam felt embarrassed. The sunset glow broke through wherever there was a gap towards the north-west, and flooded a strip of the street and struck a building. The presence of the girls added a sharpness to its beauty, especially the presence of Mag who felt the spring even in London. But both of them seemed entirely oblivious. They marched along at a great rate, very upright and swift—like grenadiers—why grenadiers? Like grenadiers, making her hurry in a way that increased the discomfort of her hard cheap down-at-heel shoes. Theirhigh-heeled shoes were in perfect condition and they went on and on laughing and jesting as if there were no spring evening all round them. She wanted to stroll, and stop at every turn of the road. She grew to dislike them both long before Kennett Street was reached, their brisk gait as they walked together in step, leaving her to manœuvre the passing of pedestrians on the narrow pavements of the side streets, the self-confident set of their this-season’s clothes, “line” clothes, like everyone else was wearing, everyone this side of the west-end; Oxford Street clothes ... and to long to be wandering home alone through the leafy squares. Were people who lived together always like this, always brisk and joking and keeping it up? They got on so well together ... and she got on so well too with them. “No one ever feels a third” Mag had said. I am tired, too tired. They are stronger than I am. I feel dead; and they are perfectly fresh.
“D’you know I believe I feel too played out to read” she said at their door.
“Then come in and smoke” said Mag taking her arm. “The night is yet young.”
Miriamswung her legs from the table and brought her tilted chair to the ground. The leads sloped down as she got to her feet and the strip of sky disappeared. The sunlight made a broad strip of gold along the parapet and a dazzling plaque upon the slope of the leads. She lounged into the shadowy middle of the room and stood feeling tall and steady and easy and agile in the freedom of knickers. The clothes lying on the bed were transformed. “I say” she murmured. Her cigarette end wobbling encouragingly from the corner of her lips as she spoke, “they’re not bad.” She strolled about the room glancing at them from different points of view. They really made quite a good whole. It was the lilac that made them a good whole, the fresh heavy blunt cones of pure colour. In the distance the bunched ribbon looked almost all green. She drew the hat nearer to the light and the ribbon became mauve with green shadows and green with mauve shadows as it moved. The girl had been right about bunching the ribbon a little way up the sugar-loaf and over the wide brim. It broke the papery stiffness of the lilac and the harshness of the black straw. The straw looked very harsh and black in the clearer light. Out of doors it would look almost as if it had been done with that awful shiny hat polish. If the straw had been dull and silky and some shaded tone of mauve and green it would have been one of those hats that give you a sort of madness, taking your eyes in and in, with the effect of a misty distant woodland brought near and moving, depths of interwovencolour under your eyes. But it would not have gone with the black and white check. The black part of the hat was right for the tiny check. That is the idea of some smart woman.... I did not think of it in the shop, but I got it right somehow, I can see now. It’s right. Those might be someone else’s things.... The sight of the black suède gloves and the lace-edged handkerchief and the powder box laid out on the chest of drawers made her eager to begin. This was dressing. The way to feel you were dressing was to put everything out first and come back as another person and make a grand toilet. It makes you feel free and leisurely. There had been the long strange morning. In half an hour the adventure would begin and go on and be over. The room would not be in it. Something nice or horrible would come back. But the room would not be changed.
She found the dark green Atlas ’bus standing ready by the curb and waited until it was just about to start, looking impatiently up and down the long vistas of the empty Sunday street, and then jumped hurriedly in with the polite half-irritated resignation of the man about town who finds himself stranded in a godforsaken part of London, and steered herself carefully against the swaying of the vehicle along between the rows of seated forms, keeping her eyes carefully averted and fixed upon distant splendours. Securing an empty corner she sat down provisionally, on the edge of the seat, occupying the least possible space, clear of her neighbour, her eyes turned inwards on splendours still raking the street, her person ready to leap up at the sight of a crawling hansom—telling herself in a drawl that she felt must somehow be audible to an observant listener how damnable it was that there were not hansoms in these remarkable backwoods—so damned inconvenient when your own barrow is laid up at Windover’s. But ahansom might possibly appear.... She turned to the little corner window at her side and gazed with fierce abstraction down the on-coming street. Presently she would really be in a hansom. Miss Szigmondy had mentioned hansoms ... supposing she should have to pay her share? Her heart beat rapidly and her face flushed as she thought of the fourpence in her purse. She would not be able even to offer. But if Miss Szigmondy were alone she would take cabs. There would be no need to mention it. The ambling trit-trot of the vehicle gradually prevailed over the mood in which she had dressed. She was becoming aware of her companions. Presently she would be taking them all in and getting into a world that had nothing to do with her afternoon. Turning aside so that her face could not be seen and her own vision might be restricted to the roadway rolling slowly upon her through the little end window she dreamed of contriving somehow or other to save money for hansoms. Hansoms were a necessary part of the worldly life. Floating about in a hansom in the west-end, in the season was like nothing else in the world. It changed you, your feelings, manner, bearing, everything. It made you part of a wonderful exclusive difficult triumphant life, a streak of it, going in and out. It cut you off from all personal difficulties, made you drop your personality and lifted you right out into the freedom of a throng of happy people, a great sunlit tide singing, all the same laughing song, wave after wave, advancing, in open sunlight. It took you on to a great stage, lit and decked, where you were lost, everything was lost and forgotten in the masque. Nothing personal could matter so long as you were there and kept there, day and night. Everyone was invisible and visionless, united in the spectacle, gilding and hiding the underworld in a brilliant embroidery ... continuously.
As they rumbled up Baker Street, she wondered impatiently why Miss Szigmondy had not appointed a meeting place in the West end. Baker Street began all right; onefelt safe going up Orchard Street, past the beautiful china shop and the Romish richness of Burns and Oates, seeing the sequestered worldliness of Granville Place and rolling through Portman Square with its enormous grey houses masking hidden wealth; but after that it became a dismal corridor retreating towards the full chill of the north. If they had met in Piccadilly they could have driven straight down through heaven into Chelsea. Perhaps it would not be heaven with Miss Szigmondy. She would not know the difference in the feeling of the different parts of London. She would drive along like a foreigner—or a member of a provincial antiquarian society, “intelligently” noticing things, knowing about the buildings and the statues. Londoners were always twitted with not knowing about London ... the reason why they jested about it, half proudly, was their consciousness of being Londoners, living in London, going about happy, the minute they were outside their houses, looking at nothing and feeling everything, like people wandering happily from room to room in a well known house at some time when everybody’s attention was turned away by a festival or a catastrophe.... London was like a prairie. In a hansom it would be heaven, with anybody. A hansom saved you from your companion more than any other vehicle. You were as much outside it in London as you were inside with your companion, if you were anywhere south of Marylebone ... the way the open hood framed the vista....
There was a hansom waiting outside Miss Szigmondy’s garden gate. The afternoon would begin at once with a swift drive back into the world. Miss Szigmondy met her in the dark hall, with an outbreak of bright guttural talk, talking as she collected her things, breaking in with shouted instructions to an invisible servant. Her voice sounded very foreign in the excited upper notes, but itrang, a thin wiry ring, not shrieking and breaking like the voices of excited Englishwomen, perhaps that was “voice production.”
In the cab she sat sorting her cards, reading out names. Miriam thrilled as she heard them. Miss Szigmondy’s attention was no longer on her. Her mind slipped easily back; the intervening time fell away. She was going with her sisters along past the Burlington Arcade, she saw the pillar box, the old man selling papers, the old woman with the crooked black sailor hat and the fringed shawl, sitting on a box behind her huge basket of tulips and daffodils ... the great grimed stone pillars, the court yard beyond them blazing with sunshine, the wide stone steps at the far end of the court yard leading up into cool shadow, the turnstile and great hall, an archway, and the sudden fresh blaze of colours....
But the hansom had turned into the main road and was goingnorth. They were going even further north than Miss Szigmondy’s ... up a straight empty Sunday suburban road between rows of suburban houses with gardens that tried to look pretty ... an open silly prettiness like suburban ladies coming up to town for matinées ... if there were artists living up here it would not be worth while to go and see them....
As the afternoon wore on it dawned upon Miriam that if Miss Szigmondy were to be at the poet’s house in evening dress by half past six, they had seen nearly all they were going to see. There could be no thought of Chelsea. But she answered with a swift negative when Miss Szigmondy enquired as they were shown into their hansom outside their eighth large Hampstead house whether she were tired. Her unsatisfied consciousness ran ahead, waiting; just beyond, round the next corner was something that would relieve the oppression. “I just want torgunin and see that poor boy Gilbert Haze.” Then it was over and she must go on enduring whilst Miss Szigmondy paid a call; unable to get free because she was being paid for and could not afford to go back alone. They drove for some distance, the large houses disappeared, they were in amongst little drab roadways like those round about Mornington Road. Perhaps if she improvised an engagement she could find her way to Regent’s Park and get back. But they had come so far. They must be on the outskirts of N.W., perhaps even in N. They pulled up before a small drab villa. The sun had gone behind the clouds, the short street was desolate. No touch of life or colour anywhere, hardly a sign of spring in the small parched shrub-filled front gardens, uniformly enclosed by dusty railings. She dreaded her wait alone in the cab with her finery and her empty afternoon while Miss Szigmondy visited her sick friend.
“Come along,” said Miss Szigmondy from the little garden path “poorcgeature youdolook tired.” Miriam got angrily out of the cab. Whose fault was it that she was tired? Why did Miss Szigmondy go to these things? She had not cared and was not disappointed at not caring. She was just the same as when she had started out.
“I will wait in the garden” she said hurriedly as the door opened on the house of sickness. A short young man with untidy dark hair and a shabby suit stood in the doorway. His brilliant dark eyes smiled sharply at Miss Szigmondy and shot beyond her towards Miriam as he stood aside holding the door wide. “Come along” shouted Miss Szigmondy disappearing. Miriam came reluctantly forward and got herself through the door, reaping the second curious sharp smile as she passed. The young man had an extraordinary face, cheerful and grimy, like a street arab; he was rather like a street arab. Miss Szigmondy was talking loudly from a little room to the right of the door. Miriam’s embarrassment in the impossibility of explaining her own superfluous presence was not relieved when sheentered the room. The young man was clearly not prepared. It was a most unwarrantable intrusion. She stood at a loss behind Miss Szigmondy who was planted, still eagerly talking, on the small clear space of bare boards—cracked and dusty, like a warehouse—in the middle of the room and tried not to see anything in particular; but her eyes already had the sense that there was nothing to sit upon, no corner to retire into, nothing but an extraordinary confusion of shabby dust-covered things laid bare by the sunlight that poured through the uncurtained window. Her eyes took refuge in the face of the young man confronting Miss Szigmondy, making replies to her volley of questions. He had no front teeth, nothing but blackened stumps; dreadful, one ought not to look, unless he were going to be helped. Perhaps Miss Szigmondy was going to help him. But he did not look ill. His bright glancing eyes shot about as if looking at something that was not there and he answered Miss Szigmondy’s sallies with a sort of cheerful convulsion of his whole frame. He seemed to be “on wires”; but not weak; strong and cheerful; happy; a kind of cheerfulness and happiness she had never met before. It was quiet. It came from him soundlessly making within his pleasant voice a gay noise that conquered the strange embarrassing room. Presently in answer to a demand from Miss Szigmondy he opened folding doors and ushered them into an adjoining room.
Miriam stood holding the little group in her hands longing for words. She could only smile and smile. The young man stood by looking at it and smiling, too, giving his attention to Miss Szigmondy’s questions about some larger white things standing in the bare room. When he moved away towards these and she could leave off wondering whether it would do to say “and is this really going to the Academy next week” instead of again repeating “howbeautiful,” and her eye could run undisturbed over and over the outlines of the two horses, impressions crowded upon her. The thing moved and changed as she looked at it; it seemed as if it must break away, burst out of her hands into the surrounding atmosphere. Everything about took on a happy familiarity, as if she had long been in the bright bare plaster-filled little room. From the edges of the small white group a radiance spread freshening the air, flowing out into the happy world, flowing back over the afternoon, bringing parts of it to stand out like great fresh bright Academy pictures. The great studios opening out within the large garden-draped Hampstead houses rich and bright with colour in a golden light, their fur rugs and tea services on silver trays, and velvet coated men, wives with trailing dresses and the people standing about, at once conspicuous and lost, were like Academy pictures. It was all real now, the pictures on the great easels, scraps of the Academy blaze; the studio with the bright light, and marble, and bright clear tiger skins on the floor, the big clean fresh tiger almost filling the canvas ... the dark studio with antique furniture and pictures of people standing about in historical clothes....
“Goodness gracious,isn’tshe a swell!”
“Are they all right?”
“Are you a millionaire my dear? Have they raised your salary?”
“Do you really like them?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen you look so nice. You ought always to go about in a large black hat trimmed with lilac.”
“Didn’t one of the artists want to paint your portrait.”
“They all did. I’ve promised at least twenty sittings.”
“Come nearer to the lamp fair child that I may be even more dazzled by thy splendour.”
“I’m awfully glad you like them—they’ll have to go on for ever.”
“Where on earth did you find the money child?”
“Borrowed it from Harry. It was her idea. You see I shall get four pounds for my four weeks’ holiday; and if I go to stay with them it won’t cost me anything; so she advanced me two pounds.”
“And you got all this for two pounds?”
“Practically; the hat was ten and six and the other things twenty seven and six and the gloves half a crown.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Edgware Road.”
“And just put them on?”
“It is really remarkable. Do you realise how lucky you are in being a stock size?”
“I suppose I am. But you know the awful thing about it is that they will never come in for Wimpole Street.”
“Why on earth not? What could be more ladylike, more—simple, more altogether suitable?”
“You see I have to wear black there.”
“What an extraordinary idea.Why?”
“Well they asked me to. I don’t know. I believe it’s the fault of my predecessor. They told me sherustledand wore all kinds of dresses——”
“I see—a series of explosions.”
“On silk foundations.”
“But why should they assume that you would do the same?”
“I don’t know. It’s an awful nuisance. You can’t get black blouses that will wash; it will be awful in the summer; besides it’s so unbecoming.”
“There I can’t agree. It would be for me. It makes me look dingy; but it suits you, throws up your rose-leaf complexion and your golden hair. But I call it jolly hard lines. I’d like to see the governor dictating to me what I should wear.”
“It’s so expensive if one can’t wear out one’s best things.”
“It’s intolerable. Why do you stand it?”
“What can I do?”
“Tell them you must either wearscarletat the office or have a higherscrew.”
“It isn’t an office you see. I have to be so much in the surgeries and interviewing people in the waiting-room, you know.”
“Yes—from dukes to dustmen. But would either the dukes or the dustmen disapprove of scarlet.”
“One has to be a discreet nobody. It’s the professional world; you don’t understand; you are equals, you two, superiors, pampered countesses in your offices.”
“Well I think it’s a beastly shame. I should brandish a pair of forceps at Mr. Hancock and say ‘scarlet—or I leave.’”
“Where should I go? I have no qualifications.”
“You wouldn’t leave. They would say ‘Miss Henderson wear purple and yellow, only stay.’ I think it’s a reflection on her taste, don’t you Jan?”
“Certainly it is. It is fiendish. But employersarefiends—to women.”
“I haven’t found that soh.”
“Ah you keep yours in order, you rule them with a rod of iron.”
“I do. I believe in it.”
“I envy you your late hours in the morning.”
“Ah-ha—she’s had a row about that.”
“Haveyou Mag?”
“Not a row; simply a discussion.”
“What happened?”
“Simply this. The governor begged me—almost in tears—to come down earlier—for the sake of the discipline of the office.”
“What did you say?”
“I said HerrEpstein; what can I do? How do you suppose I can get up, have breakfast and be down here before eleven?”
“What did he say?”
“He protested and implored and offered to pay cabs for me.”
“Good Lord Mag, you are extraordinary.”
“I am not extraordinary and it is no concern of the Deity’s. I fail to see why I should get to the office earlier than I do. I don’t get my letters before half-past eleven. I am fresh and gay and rested, I get through my work before closing-time. I work like anything whilst I am there.”
“And you still go down at eleven?”
“I still go down at eleven.”
“Idoenvy you. You see my people always want me most first thing in the morning. It’s awful, if one has been up very late.”
“And what is our life worth without late hours? The evening is the only life we have.”
“Exactly. And they are the same really. They do their work to be free of it and live.”
“Precisely; but they are waited on. They have their houses and baths and servants and meals and comforts. We get up in cold rooms untended and tired.Theyought to be first at the office and wait upon us.”
“She is a queen in her office; waited upon hand and foot.”
“Well—why not? I do them the honour of bringing my bright petunia clad feminine presence into their dingy warehouse; I expect some acknowledgment of the honour.”
“You don’t allow them either to spit or swear.”
“I do not; and they appreciate it.”
“Mine are beasts. I defy anyone to do anything with them. Iloathethe city man.”
Miriam sighed. In neither of these offices she felt sure, could she hold her own—and yet compared to her own long day—what freedom the girls had—ten to five and eleven to six and any clothes they found it convenient to wear. But city men ... no restrictions were too high a price to pay for the privileges of her environment; theassociation with gentlemen, her quiet room, the house, the perpetual interest of the patients, the curious exciting streaks of social life, linking up with the past and carrying the past forward on a more generous level. The girls had broken with the past and were fighting in the world. She was somehow between two worlds, neither quite sheltered, nor quite free ... not free as long as she wanted, in spite of her reason to stay on at Wimpole Street and please the people there. Why did she want to stay? What future would it bring? Less than ever was there any chance of saving for old age. She could not for ever go on being secretary to a dentist.... She drove these thoughts away; they were only one side of the matter; there were other things; things she could not make clear to the girls; nor to anyone who could not see and feel the whole thing from inside, as she saw and felt it. And even if it were not so, if the environment of her poorly paid activities had been trying and unsympathetic, at least it gave seclusion, her own room to work in, her free garret and her evening and week-end freedom. But what was she going to do with it?
“Tell us about theshow, Miriam. Cease to gaze at Jan’s relations; sit down, light a cigarette.”
“These German women fascinate me,” said Miriam swinging round from the mantelshelf; “they are so like Jan and so utterly different.”
“Yes; Jan is Jan and they are Minna and Erica.”
Taking a cigarette from Mag’s case Miriam lit it at the lamp. Before her eyes the summer unrolled—concerts with Miss Szigmondy, going in the cooling day in her new clothes, with a thin blouse, from daylight into electric light and music, taking off the zouave inside and feeling cool at once, the electric light mixing with the daylight, the cool darkness to walk home in alone, full of music that would last on into the next day; Miss Szigmondy’s musical at homes, evenings at Wimpole Street, week-ends in the flowery suburbs windows and doors open, cool rooms, gardens in the morning and evening, week-ends in thecountry, each journey like the beginning of the summer holiday, week-ends in town, Sunday afternoons at Mr. Hancock’s and Miss Szigmondy’s—all taking her away from Kennett Street. All these things yielded their best reality in this room. Glowing brightly in the distance they made this room like the centre of a song. But a week-end taken up was a week-end missed at Kennett Street. It meant missing Slater’s on Saturday night, the week end stretching out ahead immensely long, the long evening with the girls, its lateness protected by the coming Sunday, waking lazily fresh and happy and easy-minded on Sunday morning, late breakfast, the cigarette in the sunlit window space, its wooden sides echoing with the clamour of St. Pancras bells, the three voices in the little rooms, irlandisches ragout, the hours of smoking and talking out and out on to strange promontories where everything was real all the time, the faint gradual coming of the twilight, the evening untouched by the presence of Monday, no hurry ahead, no social performances, no leave-taking, no railway journey.
“Yes;Jan is Londonised; she looks German; her voice suggests the whole of Germany; these girls are Germany untouched, strong, cheerful, musical, tree-filled Germany, without any doubts. They’ve got Jan’s sense of humour without her cynicism.”
“Is that so, Jan?”
“Yes I think perhaps it is. They are sweet simple children.” Yes sweet—but maddening too. German women were so sure and unsuspicious and practical about life. Jan had some of that left. But she was English too, more transparent and thoughtful.
“The show! The show!”
She told them the story of the afternoon in a glowing précis, calling up the splendours upon which she felt their imaginations at work, describing it as they saw it and as with them, in retrospect, she saw it herself. Her descriptions drew Mag’s face towards her, glowing, wrapt and reverent. Jan sat sewing with inturned eyes and half open,half-smiling appreciative face. They both fastened upon the great gold-framed pictures, asking for details. Presently they were making plans to visit the Academy and foretelling her joy in seeing them again and identifying them. She had not thought of that; certainly, it would be delightful; and perhaps seeing the pictures in freedom and alone she might find them wonderful.
“Why do you say their wives were all like cats?”
“They were.” She called up the unhatted figures moving about among the guests in trailing gowns,—keeping something up, pretending to be interested, being cattishly nice to the visitors, and thinking about other things all the time.... I can’tstandthem, oh, I can’t stand them.... But the girls would not have seen them in that way; they would have been interested in them and their dresses, they would have admired the prettiness of some of them and found several of them ‘charming’ ... if Mag were an artist’s wife she would behave in the way those women behaved....
“Were they allalike?” that was half sarcastic....
“Absolutely. They were allcats, simply.”
“Isn’t sheextraordinary?”
“It’s the cats who are extraordinary. Why do they do it girls!Whydo they do it?” She flushed feeling insincere. At this moment she felt that she knew that Mag in social life, would conform and be a cat. She had never thought of her in social life; here in poverty and freedom she was herself.
“Dophwattme dear?”
“Oh let them go. It makes me tired, even to think of them. The thought of the sound of their voices absolutely wears me out.”
“I’m not laaazy—I’m tie-erd—I wasborntie-erd.”
“I say girls, I want to ask you something.”
“Well?”
“Why don’t you two write?”
“Write?”
“Write what?”
“Us?”
“Just as we are, without one”—
“Flea—I know. No.Don’tbe silly. I’m perfectly serious. I mean it. Why don’t you write things—both of you. I thought of it this morning.”
Both girls sat thoughtful. It was evident that the idea was not altogether unfamiliar to them.
“Someone kept telling me the other day I ought to write and it suddenly struck me that if anyone ought it’s you two. Why don’t you Mag?”
“Why should I? Have I not already enough on my fair young shoulders?”
“Jan, why don’tyou?”
“I, my dear? For a most excellent reason.”
“What reason?” demanded Miriam in a shaking voice. Her heart was beating; she felt that a personal decision was going to be affected by Jan’s reason, if she could be got to express it. Jan did not reply instantly and she found herself hoping that nothing more would be said about writing, that she might be free to go on cherishing the idea, alone and unbiassed.
“I do not write” said Jan slowly, “because I am perfectly convinced that anything I might write would be mediocre.”
Miriam’s heart sank. If Jan, with all her German knowledge and her wit and experience of two countries felt this, it was probably much truer of herself. To think about it, to dwell upon the things Mr. Wilson had said was simply vanity. He had saidanyonecould learn to write. But he was clever and ready to believe her clever in the same way, and ready to take ideas from him. It was true she had material, “stuff” as he called it, but she would not have known it, if she had not been told. She could see it now, as he saw it, but if she wrote at his suggestion, a borrowed suggestion, there would be something false in it, clever and false.
“Yes—I think Jan’s right,” said Mag cheerfully. “That is an excellent reason and the true one.”
It was true. But how could they speak so lightly and cheerfully about writing ... the thing one had always wanted to do, that everyone probably secretly wanted to do, and the girls could give up the idea without a sigh. They were right. It would be wrong to write mediocre stuff. Why was she feeling so miserable? Of course because neither of them had suggested that she should write. They knew her better than Mr. Wilson and it never occurred to them that she should write. That settled it. But something moved despairingly in the void.
“Do you think it would bewrongto write mediocre stuff?” she asked huskily.
“It would be worse thanwrongchild—it would be foolish; it wouldn’t sell.”
Everythingwas ready for the two o’clock patient. There was no excuse for lingering any longer. Half past one. Why did they not come up? On her way to the door she opened the corner cupboard and stood near the open door hungry, listening for footsteps on the basement stairs, dusting and ranging the neat rows of bottles. At the end of five minutes she went guiltily down. If he had finished his lunch they would wonder why she had lingered so long. If she had hurried down as soon as she could no one would have known that she hoped to have lunch alone. Now because she had waited deliberately someone would read her guilt. She wished she were one of those people who never tried to avoid anything. The lunch-room door opened and closed as she reached the basement stairs. James’s cheerful footsteps clacked along—neat high-heeled shoes—towards the kitchen. She had taken something in. They were still at lunch, unconsciously, just in the same way. No. She was glad she was not one of those people who just went on—not avoiding things....
Mr. Hancock was only just beginning his second course. He must have lingered in the workshop.... He was helping himself to condiments; Mr. Orly proffered the wooden pepper mill; “oh—thank you”; he screwed it with an air of embarrassed appreciativeness. There was a curious fresh lively air of embarrassment in the room making a stirring warmth in its cellar-like coolness. Miriam slipped quietly into her place hoping she was not an interloper.At any rate everyone was too much engrossed to ponder over her lateness. Mr. Orly was sitting with his elbows on the table and his serviette crumpled in his hands, ready to rise from the table, beaming mildness and waiting. Mrs. Orly sat waiting and smiling with her elbows on the table.
“Ah,” said Mr. Orly gently as Miriam sat down, “here comes the clerical staff.”
Miriam beamed and began her soup. It was James waiting to-day too, with her singing manner; a happy day.
Mrs. Orly asked a question in her happiest voice. They were fixing a date.... They were going ... to atheatre... together. Her astonished mind tried to make them coalesce ... she saw them sitting in a row, two different worlds confronted by one spectacle ... there was not a scrap of any kind of performance that would strike them both in the same way.
“Got anything on on Friday Miss Henderson?”
The sudden question startled her. Had it been asked twice? She answered, stammering, in amazed consciousness of what was to follow and accepted the invitation in a flood of embarrassment. Her delight and horror and astonishment seemed to flow all over the table. Desperately she tried to gather in all her emotions behind an easy appreciative smile. She felt astonishment and dismay coming out of her hair, swelling her hands, making her clumsy with her knife and fork. Far away, beyond her grasp was the sense she felt she ought to have, the sense of belonging; socially. It was being offered. But something or someone was fighting it. Always, everywhere someone or something was fighting it.
Mr. Orly had given a ghostly little chuckle. “Like dining at restaurants?” he asked kindly and swiftly.
“I don’t think I ever have.”
“Then we shall have the pleasure of initiating you. Like caviare?”
“I don’t even know what it is” said Miriam trying to bring gladness into her voice.
“Oh—this is great. Caviare to the million eh?—oh, I ought not to have put it like that, things one would rather have said otherwise—no offence intended—none taken I hope—don’t yeh know really?—Sturgeon’s roe, y’know.”
“Oh, I know I don’t likeroe” said Miriam gravely.
“Chalk it up. Miss Henderson doesn’t like roe.”
Miriam flushed. Pressing back through her anger to what had preceded she found inspiration.
“My education has been neglected.”
“Quite so, but now’s your chance. Seize your opportunity; carpe diem. See?”
“I thought it was caviare, not carp” said Mr. Hancock quietly.
Was it a rescue, or a sacrifice to the embarrassing occasion? She had never heard him jest with the Orlys. Mrs. Orly chuckled gleefully, flashing out the smile that Miriam loved. It took every line from her care-fashioned face and lit it with a most extraordinary radiance. She had smiled like that as a girl in response to the jests of her many brothers ... her eyes were sweet; there was a perfect sweetness in her somewhere.
“Bravo Hancock, that’s a good one.... Ye gods and fishes large and small listen tothat” he murmured half turning towards the door.
The clattering of boots on the stone stairs was followed by the rattling of the loose door knob and the splitting open of the door. Mr. Leyton shot into the room searching the party with a swift glance and taking his place in the circle in a state of headlong silent volubility. By the way he attacked his lunch it was clear he had a patient waiting or imminent. It occurred to Miriam to wonder why he did not always arrange his appointments round about lunch-time ... but any such manœuvre would be discovered and things would be worse than ever. Mr. Orly watched quietly while he refused Mrs. Orly’s offer to ring for soup, devouring bread and butter until she shouldhave carved for him,—and then extended his invitation to his son.
“Oh, is this the annual?” asked Mr. Leyton gruffly. “What’s the show?”
“My dear will you be so good as to inform Mr. Leyton of——”
“Don’t be silly Ro” said Mrs. Orly trying to laugh “we’re going to Hamlet Ley.”
“We have the honour of begging Mr. Leyton’s company on the occasion of our visit, dinner included, to——”
“What’s the date?” rapped Mr. Leyton with his tumbler to his lips.
“The date, ascertained as suited to all present with the exception of your lordship—oh my God, Ley” sighed Mr. Orly hiding his face in his serviette, his huge shoulders shaking.
“What have I done now?” asked Mr. Leyton, gasping after his long drink.
“Don’t be so silly Ley. You haven’t answd fathez queshun.”
“How can I answer till I’m told thedate?”
“Don’t be silly, you can come any evening.”
“Friday” whispered Miriam.
“What?” said Mr. Orly softly, emerging from his serviette, “a traitor in the camp?”
“Friday is it? Well, then it’s pretty certain Ican’tcome.”
“Don’t be silly Ley—you haven’t any engagements.”
“Haven’t I?There’s a sing-song at Headquarters Friday.”
“Enough, my dear, enough, press him no more” said Mr. Orly rising. “Far be it from us to compete. Going to sing Ley or to song, eh? Never mind boy, sorry you can’t come” he added, sighing gustily as he left the room.
“You’ll be able to come Ley won’t you?” whispered Mrs. Orly impatiently lingering.
“If you’d only let me know the date beforehand instead of springing it on me.”
“Don’t be si’y Ley it vexes Father so. You needn’t go to the si’y sing-song.”
“I don’t see how I can get out of it. It’s rather a big function; as an officer I ought to be there.”
“Oh never mind; you’d better come.”
Mr. Orly called from the stairs.
“All right darling” she said in anxious cheerful level tones hurrying to the door. “Youmustcome Ley, you can manage somehow.”
Miriam sat feeling wretchedly about in her mind. Mr. Leyton was busily finishing his lunch. In a moment Mr. Hancock would re-assert himself by some irrelevant insincerity. She found courage to plunge into speech, on the subject of her two lessons at the school. Her story strove strangely against the echoes and fell, impeded. It was an attempt to create a quiet diversion.... It should have been done violently ... how many times had she seen it done, the speaker violently pushing off what had gone before and protruding his diversion, in brisk animated deliberately detached tones. But it was never really any good. There was always a break and a wound, something left unhealed, something standing unlearned ... something that can only grow clear in silence....
“You’ll never learn cycling likethat” said Mr. Leyton with the superior chuckle of the owner of a secret, as he snatched up a biscuit and made off. She clung fearfully to his cheerful harassed departing form. There was nothing left now in the room but the echoes. Mr. Hancock sat munching his biscuits and cheese with a look of determined steely preoccupation in his eyes that were not raised above the level of the spread of disarray along the table; but she could hear the busy circulation of his thoughts. If now she could endure for a moment. But her mind flung hither and thither seeking with a loathed servility some alien neutral topic. She knew anything she might say with the consciousness of his thoughts in her mind would be resented and slain. To get up and go quietly away withsome murmured remark about her work would be to leave him with his judgment upon him. What he wanted was to give her an instruction about something in a detached professional voice and get rid of her, believing that she had gone unknowing, and remaining in his circle of reasonable thoughts. She hit out with all her force, coming against the buttress of silent angry forehead with random speech.
“I can’t believe that it’s less than two months to the longest day.”
“Time flies” responded Mr. Hancock grimly. She recoiled exhausted by her effort and quailed under the pang in the midday gaslit room of realisation of the meaning of her words. Her eye swept over the grey-clad form and the blunted features seeking some power that would stay the inexorable consumption of the bright passing days.
“‘Tempus fugit’ I suppose one ought to say” he said with a little laugh getting up.
“Oui,” said Miriam angrily, “le temps s’envole; die Zeit vergeht, in other words.”