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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Revolving Lights, by Dorothy M. Richardson
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Revolving Lights
-       Pilgrimage, Volume 7
-
-Author: Dorothy M. Richardson
-
-Release Date: August 18, 2020 [EBook #62967]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVOLVING LIGHTS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Jens Sadowski and the online Distributed
-Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net.
-This file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                            REVOLVING LIGHTS
-
-
-
-
-                              THE WORK OF
-                         DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
-
-
-   "In the ordinary novel, the novelist stands on the banks of the
-   river of life chronicling how and when people arise, and how it
-   is that things happen to them. But Miriam (the central figure of
-   Dorothy Richardson's work) pulls us with her into the yielding
-   water."--_Nation._
-
-   "The style grows upon one with familiarity; it is continually
-   illumined by passages of brilliant insight, and its
-   half-subconscious revelation of personality is wonderfully
-   attractive."--_Daily Telegraph._
-
-      POINTED ROOFS
-      BACKWATER
-      HONEYCOMB
-      THE TUNNEL
-
-      INTERIM
-      DEADLOCK
-      REVOLVING LIGHTS
-
-
-                            DUCKWORTH & CO.
-                    3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C.
-
-
-
-
-                            REVOLVING LIGHTS
-
-
-                                   BY
-                         DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
-
-
-                        LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
-                   3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
-
-
-                        First published in 1923.
-                          All rights reserved.
-
-
-   _Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
-
-
-                                   To
-                                F. E. W.
-
-
-
-
-                            REVOLVING LIGHTS
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER I
-
-
-The building of the large hall had been brought about by people who gave
-no thought to the wonder of moving from one space to another and up and
-down stairs. Yet this wonder was more to them than all the things on
-which their thoughts were fixed. If they would take time to realise it.
-No one takes time. No one knows it.... But I know it.... These seconds
-of knowing, of being told, afresh, by things speaking silently, make up
-for the pain of failing to find out what I ought to be doing....
-
-Away behind, in the flatly echoing hall, was the busy planning world of
-socialism, intent on the poor. Far away in to-morrow, stood the
-established, unchanging world of Wimpole Street, linked helpfully to the
-lives of the prosperous classes. Just ahead, at the end of the walk
-home, the small isolated Tansley Street world, full of secretive people
-drifting about on the edge of catastrophe, that would leave, when it
-engulfed them, no ripple on the surface of the tide of London life. In
-the space between these surrounding worlds was the everlasting solitude;
-ringing as she moved to cross the landing, with voices demanding an
-explanation of her presence in any one of them.
-
-"Now _that_," she quoted, to counter the foremost attack, "is a man who
-can be trusted to say what he thinks."
-
-That cloaked her before the clamorous silence. She was an observant
-intelligent woman; approved. _He_ would never imagine that the hurriedly
-borrowed words meant, to her, nothing but a shadow of doubt cast across
-the earnest little socialist. But they carried her across the landing.
-And here, at the head of the stairs, was the show case of cold Unitarian
-literature. Yet another world. Bright, when she had first become aware
-of it, with freedom from the problem of Christ, offering, until she had
-met its inhabitants face to face, a congenial home. Sending her away, at
-a run, from cold humorous intellectuality. She paused in front of the
-case, avoiding the sight of the well-known, chilly titles of the books,
-to read what had gathered in her mind during the evening.
-
-A group of people who had come out just behind her were going down the
-stairs arguing in high-pitched, public platform voices from the surfaces
-of their associated minds. Not saying what they thought. Not thinking.
-Strong and controlled enough to keep within pattern of clever words.
-Most of them had been born to it. Born on the stage of clever words,
-which yet meant nothing to them. But to one or two people in the society
-these words _did_ mean something....
-
-Nothing came after they had passed but the refrain that had been the
-mental accompaniment of her listening throughout the evening, stepping
-forth now as part of a high-pitched argumentative to and fro. Her part,
-if she could join in and shout them all down. Sounding irrelevant and
-yet coming right down to earth, one small part of a picture puzzle set
-in place ... a clue.
-
-"Any number of barristers," she vociferated in her mind, going on down
-the shallow stair, "take up JOURNALISM. Get into Parliament. On the
-_strength_ of being both educated and _articulate_. Weapons, giving an
-unfair advantage. The easy touch of prominence. Only a good nervous
-system wanted. They are psychologists. Up to a point. Enough to convince
-nice busy people, rushing through life without time to bethink
-themselves. Enough to alarm and threaten and cajole. They can raise
-storms; in newspapers. And brandish about by _name_, at their centres,
-like windmills, kept going by the wind of their psychological
-cheap-jackery. Yes, sir. Psychological cheap-jackery.... Purple-faced
-John Bull paterfamilias. Paterfamiliarity. Avenging his state by hitting
-out.... With an eye for a pretty face....
-
-The little man had no _axe_ to grind. That was the only test. An
-Englishman, and a barrister, and yet awake to foreign art. His opaque
-English temperament not weakened by it; but worn a little transparent.
-He would be silent in an instant before a superior testimony.
-
-He did not count on anything. When Socialism came, he would be placed in
-an administrative post, and would fill it quietly, working harder than
-ever.
-
-He brought the future nearer because he already moved within it; by
-being aware of things most men did not consider; aware of
-_relationships_: possibly believing in God, certainly in the soul.
-
-Modern man, individually, is in many respects less capable than
-primitive man. Evolution is related development. Progress towards social
-efficiency. Benjamin Kidd.
-
-"These large speculations are most-fatiguing."
-
-"No. When you see truth in them they are refreshing. They are all there
-is. All I live for now, is the arrival in my mind, of fresh
-generalisations."
-
-"That is good. But remember also that these things cost life."
-
-"What does it matter what they cost? A shape of truth makes you at the
-moment want to die, full of gratitude and happiness. It fills everything
-with a music to which you _could_ die. The next piece of life comes as a
-superfluity."
-
-"Le superflu; chose necessaire."
-
-At the foot of the stairs stood the yellow street-light, framed in the
-oblong of the doorway. She went out into its shelter. The large grey
-legal buildings that stood by day a solid, dignified pile against the
-sky, a whole remaining region of the pride of London, showed only their
-lower facades, near, gentle frontages of mellow golden light and soft
-rectangular shadow, just above the brightly gilded surface of the
-deserted roadway. For a moment she stood listening to the reflection of
-the fostering light and breathing in the dry warm freshness of the
-London night air.
-
-The illuminated future faded. The street lights of that coming time
-might throw their rays more liberally, over more beautiful streets. But
-something would be lost. In a world consciously arranged for the good of
-everybody there would be something personal ... without foundation ...
-like a nonconformist preacher's smile. The pavements of these streets
-that had grown of themselves, flooded by the light of lamps rooted like
-trees in the soil of London, were more surely pavements of gold than
-those pavements of the future?
-
-They offered themselves freely; the unfailing magic that would give its
-life to the swing of her long walk home, letting her leave without
-regret the earlier hidden magic of the evening, the thoughts that had
-gathered in her mind whilst she listened, and that had now slipped away
-unpondered, leaving uppermost the outlines of the lecture to compete
-with the homeward walk. The surrounding golden glow through which she
-could always escape into the recovery of certainty, warned her not to
-return upon the lecture. But she could not let all she had heard
-disappear unnoted, and postponed her onward rush, apologising for the
-moments about to be spent in conning over the store of ideas. In an
-instant the glow had gone, miscarried like her private impressions of
-the evening. The objects about her grew clear; full of current
-associations; and she wondered as her mind moved back across the linked
-statements of the lecture, whether these were her proper concern, or yet
-another step upon a long pathway of transgression. She was grasping at
-incompatible things, sacrificing the bliss of her own uninfluenced life
-to the temptation of gathering things that had been offered by another
-mind. Things to which she had no right?
-
-But all the things of the mind that had come her way had come unsought;
-yet finding her prepared; so that they seemed not only her rightful
-property, but also in some way, herself. The proof was that they had
-passed her sisters by, finding no response; but herself they had drawn,
-often reluctant, perpetually escaping and forgetting; out on to a path
-that it sometimes seemed she must explore to the exclusion of everything
-else in life, exhaustively, the long way round, the masculine way. It
-was clearly not her fault that she had a masculine mind. If she must pay
-the penalties, why should she not also reap the entertainments?
-
-Still, it was _strange_, she reflected, with a consulting glance at the
-returning brilliance, that without any effort of her own, so very many
-different kinds of people and thoughts should have come, one after the
-other, as if in an ordered sequence, into the little backwater of her
-life. What for? To what end was her life working by some sort of inner
-arrangement? To turn, into a beautiful distance outspread behind her as
-she moved on? What then?
-
-For instance, the sudden appearance of the revolutionaries just at this
-moment, seemed so apt. She had always wanted to meet revolutionaries,
-yet had never gone forth to seek them. Since her contact with
-socialists, she had been more curious about them than ever. And here
-they were, on their way to her, just as the meaning and some of the
-limitations of socialism were growing distinct. Yet it was absurd to
-suppose that their visit to England, in the midst of their exciting
-career, should have been timed to meet her need. Nor would they convince
-her. The light that shone about them was the anticipation of a momentary
-intense interest that would leave her a step farther on the lonely
-wandering that so distracted her from the day's work, and kept her
-family and the old known life at such an immeasurable distance. It was
-her ruling devil who had just handed her, punctually on the eve of their
-arrival, material for conversation with revolutionaries.
-
-But it also seemed to be the mysterious friend, her star, the queer
-strange _luck_ that dogged her path always reviving happiness, bringing
-a sudden joy when there was nothing to account for it, plunging her into
-some new unexpected thing at the very moment of perfect hopelessness. It
-was like a game ... something was having a game of hide and seek with
-her. She winked, smiling, at the returned surrounding glow, and turned
-back to run up and down the steps of the neglected argument.
-
-It was clear in her mind. Freed from the fascinating distraction of the
-little man's mannerisms, it spread fresh light, in all directions,
-tempering the golden light of the street; showing, beyond the outer
-darkness of the night, the white radiance of the distant future. Within
-the radiance, troops of people marched ahead, with springing footsteps;
-the sound of song in their ceaselessly talking voices; the forward march
-of a unanimous, light-hearted humanity along a pathway of white morning
-light.... The land of promise that she would never see; not through
-being born too soon, but by being incapable of unanimity. All these
-people had one mind. They approved of each other and were gay in unity.
-
-The spectacle of their escape from the shadows lessened the pain of
-being left behind. Perhaps even a moment's contemplation of the future
-helped to bring it about? Every thought vibrates through the universe.
-Then there was absolution in thought, even from the anger of
-everlastingly talking people, contemptuous of silence and aloofness. And
-there was unity with the future.
-
-The surrounding light glowed with a richer intensity. Flooded through
-her, thrilling her feet to swiftness.
-
-If the revolutionaries could be with her now, they would find in her
-something of the state towards which they were violently straining? They
-would pause and hover for a moment, with half envious indulgence. But
-sooner or later they would say things about robust English health; its
-unconsciousness of its surroundings.
-
-The _mystery_ of being English. Mocked at for stupidity and envied for
-having something that concerned the mocking people of the two continents
-and challenged them to discover its secret.
-
-But by to-morrow night she would have nothing but the little set of
-remembered facts, dulled by the fatigue of her day's work. These would
-save her, for the one evening, from appearing as the unintelligent
-Englishwoman of foreigner's experience. But they would also keep out the
-possibility of expressing anything.
-
-Even the bare outlines of socialism, presented suddenly to unprepared
-English people, were unfailing as a contribution to social occasions.
-They forced everyone to look at the things they had taken for granted in
-a new light, and to remember, together with the startling picture, the
-person who first drew it for them. But to appear before these Russians
-talking English socialism was to be nothing more than a useful person in
-uniform.
-
-What _was_ the immediate truth that shone, independent of speculation,
-all about her in the English light; the only thing worth telling to
-enquiring foreigners?
-
-It was there at once when she was alone, or watching other people as an
-audience, or as an uncommitted guest, expressing in a great variety of
-places different sets of opinions. It was there radiant, obliterating
-her sense of existence, whenever she was in the midst of things kept
-going by other people. It could be given her by a beggar, purposefully
-crossing a street ... not 'pitiful,' as he was so carelessly called--but
-something that shook her with gratitude to the roots of her being. But
-the instant she was called upon there came the startled realisation of
-being in the world, and the sense of nothingness, preceding and
-accompanying every remark she might make.
-
-One opinion self-consciously stated made the light go down. Immediate
-substitution of the contrary, produced a chill followed by darkness....
-_Men_ called out these contradictory statements, each one with his way
-of having only one set of opinions.
-
-How powerful these Russians were, in advance, making her count herself
-up. If she saw much of them she would fail and fade into nothing under
-the Russian test. If there were only one short interview she might
-escape unknown, and knowing all the things about Russian revolutionaries
-that Michael Shatov had left incomplete.
-
-Their scornful revolutionary eyes watched her glance about amongst her
-hoard of contradictory ideas. Statements about different ways of looking
-at things were irrelevancies that perhaps with Russians might be
-abandoned altogether. Yet to appear before them empty-handed, hidden in
-her earlier uninfluenced personality, would be not to meet them at all.
-Personal life to them was nothing, could be summed up in a few words,
-the same for everybody. They lived for an idea.
-
-She offered them a comprehensive glimpse of the many pools of thought in
-which she had plunged, rising from each in turn, to recover the bank and
-repudiate; unless a channel could be driven, that would make all their
-waters meet. They laughed when she cried out at the hopelessness of
-uniting them. "All these things are nothing."
-
-But a revolutionary is a man who throws himself into space. In Russia
-there is nowhere else to throw himself? That would do as an answer to
-their criticisms of English socialism. She could say also that
-conservatives are the best socialists; being liberal-_minded_. Most
-socialists were narrow and illiberal, holding on to liberal ideas. The
-aim of the Lycurgans, alone amongst the world's socialists, was to show
-the English aristocracy and middle classes that they were, still,
-socialists.
-
-There _were_ things in England. But they struggled at cross purposes,
-refusing to get into a shape that would draw one, _whole_, along with
-it. But there were things in England with truth shining behind them.
-English people did not shine. But something shone behind them. Russians
-shone. But there was nothing behind them. There were things in England.
-She offered them the contents of books. They were as real as the pools
-of experience. Yet they, too, were irreconcilable.
-
-A little blue-lit street; lamps with large round globes, shedding
-moonlight; shadows, grey and black. She had somehow got into the
-west-end--a little west-end street, giving out its character. She went
-softly along the middle of the blue-lit glimmering roadway, narrow
-between the narrow pavements skirting the high facades, flat and grey,
-broken by shadowy pillared porticoes; permanent exits and entrances on
-the stage of the London scene; solid lines and arches of pure grey
-shaping the flow of the pageant, and emerging, when it ebbed away, to
-stand in their own beauty, conjuring back the vivid tumult to flow in
-silence, a continuous ghostly garland of moving shapes and colours,
-haunting their self-sufficient calm.
-
-Within the stillness she heard the jingling of hansoms, swinging in
-morning sunlight along the wide thoroughfares of the west-end; saw the
-wide leisurely shop-fronts displaying in a restrained profusion,
-comfortably within the experienced eye half turned to glance from a
-passing vehicle, all the belongings of west-end life; on the pavements,
-the trooping succession of masked life-moulded forms, their unobservant
-eyes, aware of the resources all about them, at gaze upon their
-continuous adventure, yesterday still with them as they came out, in
-high morning light, into the adventure of to-day. Campaigners, sure of
-their weapons in the gaily decked melee, and sure every day of the
-blissful solitude of the interim times.
-
-For as long as she could remember she had known something of their
-secret. During the years of her London life she had savoured between
-whiles the quality of their world, divined its tests and passwords,
-known what kept their eyes unseeing and their speech clipped to a
-jargon.
-
-Best of all was the illumination that had come with her penetration of
-the mystery of their attitude towards direct _questions_. There was
-something here that had offered her again and again a solution of the
-problem of social life, a safeguard of individuality. Here it was once
-more, a still small voice urging that every moment of association would
-be transformed if she would only remember the practice the technique
-revealed by her contemplation of this one quality. Always to be solid
-and resistent; unmoved. Having no opinions and only one enthusiasm--to
-be unmoved. Momentary experiments had proved that the things that were
-about her in solitude could be there all the time. But forgetfulness
-always came. Because most people brought their worlds with them, their
-opinions, and the set of things they believed in; forcing in the end
-direct questions and disagreements. And most people were ready to answer
-questions, showing by their angry defence of their opinions that they
-were aware, and afraid, of other ways of looking at things. But these
-society people did not seem to be aware of anything but their one world.
-Perhaps that was why their social method was not able to hold her for
-long together.
-
-"Is this the way to Chippenham?" But _everyone_ delights in telling the
-way. It brings the teller out into adventure; with his best self and his
-best moments all about him. The surroundings are suddenly new with life,
-and beautiful like things seen in passing, on a journey. English people
-delight because they are adventurous. They prolong the moment, beaming
-and expanding, and go on their way refreshed. Foreigners, except perhaps
-Germans, answer differently. Obsequiously; or with a studied politeness
-that turns the occasion into an opportunity for the display of manners;
-or indifferently, with a cynical suggestion that they know what you are
-like, and that you will be the same when you reach your destination.
-They are themselves, without any fulness or wonder. English people are
-always waiting to be different, to be fully themselves. Strangers, to
-them, are gods and angels.
-
-But it is another kind of question that is meant, the question that is a
-direct attack on the unseeing gaze; a speech to the man at the wheel.
-That is where, without knowing it, these people are philosophers. What
-Socrates saw, answered all his questions; and his counterings of the
-young men's questions were invitations to them to look for themselves.
-The single world these people see is, to them, so unquestionable that
-there is no room for question. Nothing can be communicated except the
-latest news; and scandal; information about people who have gone outside
-the shape. But, to each other, even their statements are put in the form
-of questions. "Fine day, what?" So that everyone may be not questioned,
-but questioner. It is also a sort of apology for falling into speech at
-all.
-
-It was Michael Shatov's amused delight in her stories of their method
-that had made her begin to cherish them as a possession. Gradually she
-had learned that irritation with their apparent insolence was jealousy.
-Within her early interested unenvious sallies of investigation amongst
-the social elite of the Wimpole Street patients, or as a fellow guest
-amongst the Orlys' society friends, there had been moments of longing to
-sweep away the defences and discountenance the individual. But gradually
-the conviction had dawned that with the genuine members of the clan this
-could not be done. Their quality went right through, shedding its
-central light, a brightness that could not be encircled, over the whole
-of humanity. They disarmed attack, because in their singleness of nature
-they were not aware of anything to defend. They had no contempts; not
-being specially intellectual; and, crediting everyone with their own
-condition, they reached to the sources of nobility in all with whom they
-came in contact. It was refreshment and joy merely to be in the room
-with them. But also it was an arduous exercise. They brought such a wide
-picture and so long a history. They were England. The world-wide spread
-of Christian England was in their minds; and to this they kindled, more
-than to any personal thing.
-
-The existence of these scattered few, explained those who were only
-conventional approximations....
-
-To-night, immersed in the vision of a future that threatened their
-world, she found them one and all bright figures of romance. She sped as
-her footsteps measured off the length of the little street, into the
-recesses, the fair and the evil, of aristocratic English life, and
-affectionately followed the small bright freely moving troupe as it
-spread in the past and was at this moment spreading, abroad over the
-world, the unchangeable English quality and its attendant conventions.
-
-The books about these people are not satisfactory.... Those that show
-them as a moral force, suggest that they are the fair flower of a
-Christian civilisation. But a Christian civilisation would be abolishing
-factories.... Lord Shaftesbury ... Arnold's barbarian idea made a
-convincing picture, but it suggested in the end, behind his back, that
-there was something lacking in the Greeks. Most of the modern books
-seemed to ridicule the English conventions, and choose the worst types
-of people for their characters.
-
-But in _all_ the books about these people, even in novelettes, the chief
-thing they all left out, was there. They even described it, sometimes so
-gloriously that it became _more_ than the people; making humanity look
-like ants, crowding and perishing as a vast scene. Generally the
-surroundings were described separately, the background on which
-presently the characters began to fuss. But they were never sufficiently
-shown as they were to the people when there was no fussing; what the
-floods of sunshine and beauty indoors and out meant to these people as
-single individuals, whether they were aware of it or not. The 'fine'
-characters in the books, acting on principle, having thoughts, and
-sometimes, the less likeable of them, even ideas, were not shown as
-being made strong partly by endless floods of sunshine and beauty. The
-feeble characters were too much condemned for clutching, to keep, at any
-price within the charmed circle....
-
-The antics of imitators, all down the social scale, were wrongly
-condemned.
-
-But _here_, in this separate existence, _was_ a shape that could draw
-her, whole, along with it ... and here suddenly, warmly about her in its
-evening quiet, was the narrow winding lane of Bond Street.... Was this
-bright shape, that drew her, the secret of her nature ... the clue she
-had carried in her hand through the maze?
-
-It would explain my love for kingly old Hanover, the stately ancient
-house in Waldstrasse; the way the charm of the old-fashioned well-born
-Pernes held me so long in the misery of North London; the relief of
-getting away to Newlands, my determination to remain from that time
-forth, at any cost, amidst beautiful surroundings...? Though life has
-drawn me away these things have stayed with me. They were with me
-through the awful months.... If _she_ had been able to escape into the
-beauty of outside things, it would not have happened.
-
-It was not the fear of being alone with the echoes of the tragedy that
-made me ill in suburban lodgings, but the small ugliness and the empty
-crude suburban air; the knowledge that if I stayed and forgot its
-ugliness in happiness it would mould me unawares. My drifting to the
-large old house in grey wide Bloomsbury was a movement of return.
-
-Then I am attached forever to the spacious gentle surroundings in which
-I was born? Always watching and listening and feeling for them to
-emerge? My social happiness dependent upon the presence of some
-suggestion of its remembered features, my secret social ambition its
-perfected form in circumstances beyond my reach?...
-
-No. There was something within her that could not tolerate either the
-people or the thoughts existing within that exclusive world. In the
-silences that flowed about its manifold unvarying expressions, she would
-always find herself ranging off into lively consciousness of other ways
-of living, whose smiling mystery defied its complacent patronage.... It
-drew only her nature, the ease and beauty loving soul of her physical
-being, and that only in critical contemplation. She would never desire
-to bestir herself to achieve stateliness.
-
-So that the faraway moment of being driven forth seemed to bear two
-meanings. It was life's stupid error, a cruel blind destruction of her
-helpless youth. At this moment if it were possible she would reverse it
-and return. During all these years she had been standing motionless,
-fixed tearfully in the attitude of return. The joy she had found in her
-invisible life amongst the servants was the joy of remaining girt and
-ready for the flight of return, her original nature stored up and hidden
-behind the adopted manner of her bondage.
-
-Or it was life's wisdom, the swift movement of her lucky star,
-providence pouncing. And providence, having seized her indolent blissful
-protesting form and flung it forth with a laugh, had continued to pamper
-her with a sense of happiness that bubbled unexpectedly out in the midst
-of her utmost attempts to achieve misery by a process of reason.
-
-It is my strange bungling in misery that makes everyone seem far off. A
-perpetual oblivion not only of my own circumstances, but, at the wrong
-moments, of those of other people, makes me disappoint and shock them,
-suddenly disappearing before their eyes in the midst of a sympathy that
-they had eagerly seemed to find satisfying and rare.... A light
-frivolous elastic temperament? A helpless going to and fro between two
-temperaments. A solid charwomanly commonplace kindliness, spread like a
-doormat at the disposal of everybody, and an intermittent perfect
-dilettantism that would disgust even the devil?
-
-That was _his_ temperament? The quality that had made him gravitate,
-unaided, towards exclusive things, was also in her. But weaker, because
-it was less narrow? He had thrown up everything for leisure to wander in
-the fields of art and science and philosophy; shutting his eyes to the
-fact of his diminishing resources. She, with no resources at all, had
-dropped to easy irresponsible labour to avoid being shaped and branded,
-to keep her untouched strength free for a wider contemplation than he
-would have approved, a delight in everything in turn, a _plebeian_
-dilettantism, aware and defensive of the exclusive things, but unable to
-restrict herself to them, unconsciously from the beginning resisting the
-drawing of lines and setting up of oppositions? More and more
-consciously ranged on all sides simultaneously. More _catholic_. That
-was the other side of the family. But if with his temperament and his
-sceptical intuitive mind, she had also the nature of the other side of
-the family what a hopeless problem.... If she belonged to both, she was
-the sport of opposing forces that would never allow her to alight and
-settle. The movement of her life would be like a pendulum. No wonder
-people found her unaccountable. But being her own solitary companion
-would not go on forever. It would bring in the end, somewhere about
-middle age, the state that people called madness.... Perhaps the lunatic
-asylums were full of people who had refused to join up? There were happy
-people in them? "Wandering" in their minds. But remembering and knowing
-happiness all the time? In dropping to nothingness they escaped forever
-into that state of amazed happiness that goes on all the time underneath
-the strange forced quotations of deeds and words.
-
-Oxford Street opened ahead, right and left, a wide empty yellow-lit
-corridor of large shuttered shop-fronts. It stared indifferently at her
-outlined fate.
-
-Even at night it seemed to echo with the harsh sounds of its oblivious
-conglomerate traffic. Since the high light-spangled front of the
-Princess's Theatre had changed, there was nothing to obliterate the
-permanent sense of the two monstrous streams flowing all day, fierce and
-shattering, east and west. Oxford Street, unless she were sailing
-through it perched in sunlight on the top of an omnibus lumbering
-steadily towards the graven stone of the City, always wrought
-destruction, pitting its helpless harshness against her alternating
-states of talkative concentration and silent happy expansion. Going west
-it _was_ destruction; forever approaching the west-end, reaching its
-gates and passing them by.
-
-Stay here, suggested Bond Street. Walking here you can keep alive, out
-in the world, until the end, an aged crone, still a citizen of my
-kingdom, hobbling in the sun, along my sacred pavements. She turned
-gladly, encompassing the gift of the whole length of the winding lane
-with a plan of working round through Soho, to cross Oxford Street
-painlessly where it blended with St. Giles's, and would let her through
-northwards into the squares. The strange new thoughts were about her the
-moment she turned back. They belonged to these old, central finely
-etched streets where they had begun, a fresh proof of her love for them;
-a new enrichment of their charm.
-
-Whatever might be the truth about heredity, it was immensely disturbing
-to be pressed upon by two families, to discover, in their so different
-qualities, the explanation of herself. The sense of existing merely as a
-link, without individuality, was not at all compensated by the lifting,
-and distribution backwards, of responsibility. To be set in a mould,
-powerless to alter its shape ... to discover, too late for association
-and enquiry, the people she helplessly belonged to. Yet the very fact
-that young people fled their relatives, was an argument on the side of
-individuality. But not all fled their relatives. Perhaps only those of
-St. Paul's evil generation, "lacking in natural affection."
-
-She glanced narrowly, with a curiosity that embarrassment could no
-longer hold back, at her father's side of the family, and while she
-waited for them to fall upon her and wrathfully consume her, she met the
-shock of a surprise that caught her breath. They did not _object_.
-Boldly faced, in the light of her new interest, the vividly remembered
-forms, paintings and photographs almost as vividly real, came forward
-and grouped themselves about her as if mournfully glad at last of the
-long-deferred opportunity. They offered, not themselves, but what they
-saw and knew, holding themselves withdrawn, rigorously in place about
-the centre of their preoccupation. Yet they _were_ personal. The
-terrible gentleness with which they asked her why for so long she had
-kept aloof from consultation with them, held a personal appeal that made
-her glow. Deeply desiring it, she held herself away from the solicited
-familiarity in a stillness of fascinated observation.
-
-They were _Puritans_.... More wonderful than she had known in thinking
-of them as nonconformists, a disgrace her father had escaped together
-with the trade he had abandoned in youth. They were the Puritans she had
-read of; but not Cromwellian, certainly not Roundheads. Though they were
-tall and gaunt with strongly moulded features, their thoughtless,
-generous English ancestry showed in them, moulded by their sternness to
-a startling ... _beauty_. They had well-shaped hands, alive and speaking
-amongst their rich silks and fine old laces. They wore with a dignified
-austerity, but still they wore, and must therefore have thought about,
-silk and lace and broadcloth and fine frilled linen, as well as the sin
-in themselves and in the world. But principally they were aware of sin,
-gazing with stern meditative eyes, through the pages of their gloomily
-bound books, into the abyss yawning at their feet. She held herself in
-her place, growing bolder, longing now for parley with their silent
-resistance, disguising nothing, offering them pell-mell, the least
-suitable of her thoughts. But the eyes they turned on her, still
-dreadfully begging her to remember now, in the days of her youth, were
-kind, lit by a special smiling indulgence.... Their strong stern lives,
-full of the knowledge of experience, that had led down to her, had made
-them _kind_. However far she might stray, she was still their favourite,
-their different stubby round-faced darling, never to be condemned to the
-abyss. Listening as they called to their part in her, she shared the
-salvation they had wrought ... salvage ... of hard fine lives, reared
-narrowly, in beauty, above the gulf.
-
-Yet it was also from their incompleteness that they called to her; the
-_darkness_ in them, visible in the air about them as they moved, that
-she had always feared and run away from. The thought of the stern gaunt
-chairs in which they sat and died of old age was horrible even at this
-moment, and now that she no longer feared them, she knew, though she
-felt a homesick longing for their stern righteousness, that it was
-incomplete. The pressing darkness kept them firm, fighting the devil
-every inch of the way....
-
-But the devil was not dark, he was bright. Brightest and best of the
-sons of the morning. What shocking profanity. Something has made me
-drunk. I am always drunk in the west-end. Satan was proud. God revenged
-himself. Revengeful, omnipotent, jealous, "the first of the autocrats."
-...
-
-There was a glory hidden in that old darkness, but they did not know it;
-though they followed it. Accepting them, plunging into their darkness
-she would never be able to keep from finding the bright devil and
-wandering wrapt in gloom, but forgetful, perpetually in the bright
-spaces within the darkness. And perhaps it was God. Impossible to say.
-Religious people shunned the bright places believing them haunted by the
-devil. Other religious people believed they were the gift of God and
-would presently be everywhere, for everybody, the kingdom of God upon
-Earth. But even if factories were abolished and the unpleasant kinds of
-work shared out so that they pressed upon nobody, how could the Kingdom
-of Heaven come upon earth as long as there were childbirth and cancer?
-
-Light makes _shadows_. The devil is God's shadow? The Persians believed
-that in the end the light would absorb the darkness. That was credible.
-But it could never happen on earth. That was where the Puritans were
-right with their vale of tears, and why they were more deeply attractive
-than the other side of the family. Their roots in life were deeper and
-harder and the light from the Heavenly City fell upon their foreheads
-_because_ they struggled in the gloom. If only they knew what the gloom
-was, the marvel of its being there. They were solemn and reproachful
-because they could not get at their own gaiety....
-
-The others were _too_ jolly, too much turned out towards life,
-deliberately cheerful and roystering, not aware of the wonder and beauty
-of gloom, yet more dreadfully haunted and afraid of it, showing its
-uncomprehended presence by always deliberately driving it away. They
-spread gloom about them, by their perpetual impatient cheerfulness,
-afraid to listen and look. Their wild spirits were tragic, bright
-tragedy, making their country life sound in the distance like one long
-maddening unbroken noise, afraid to stop, rushing on, taking everything
-for granted, and troubling about nothing. People who lived in the
-country _were_ different. Fresh. All converted by their surroundings
-into perpetual noise? The large spaces gave them large rich voices ...
-rounded sturdy west country yeomen, blunt featured and jolly, with big
-voices. Jesting with women. The women all dark and animated ... arch ...
-minxes. Any amount of flirting. All the scandals of the family were on
-that side. Girls, careering, with flying hair, round paddocks, on
-unbroken bare-backed ponies. Huge families. Hunting. Great Christmas and
-Harvest parties. Maypoles in the spring. They always saw the spring,
-every year without fail. Perhaps that was their secret? Wherever they
-were they saw nothing but dawn and spring, the light coming from the
-darkness. They shouted against the darkness because they knew the light
-was hidden in it. If you're waking, call me early, call me early ...
-
-   So ear-ly in, the mor-ning,
-   My Belo-ved
-   _My_ Beloved.
-
-_Those_ women's voices pealed out into the wakening air of pure silver
-dawns. The chill pure dawn and dark over the fields where L'Allegro
-walked in her picture, the dewy dawn-lit grass under her white feet, her
-hair blown softly back by the morning breeze flowing over her dawn-lit
-face, shaping her garments to her happy limbs as she walked dancing,
-towards the increasing light. Little pools and clumps of wet primroses
-over the surface of the grey-green grass, flushed with rose, like her
-glowing dancing face as she skimmed, her whole bright form pealing with
-song towards the _increasing light_. Was that sort of life still going
-on somewhere?
-
-Yet Il Penseroso _knew_ and L'Allegro did not.
-
-Long-featured Sarah was on the Puritan side, with a strain of the
-artist, drawn from the other half, tormenting her. Eve, delicately and
-unscrupulously adventurous, was the west country side altogether.
-
-Within me ... the _third_ child, the longed-for son, the two natures,
-equally matched, mingle and fight? It is their struggle that keeps me
-adrift, so variously interested and strongly attracted, now here, now
-there? Which will win?... Feeling so identified with both, she could not
-imagine either of them set aside. Then her life _would_ be the battle
-field of her two natures. Which of them had been thrilled through and
-through, so that she had seemed to enter, lightly waving her hand to all
-that had gone before, for good, into a firelit glow, the door closing
-behind her, and leaving her launched, without her belongings, but richly
-accompanied, on a journey to the heart of an unquenchable joy? It was
-not socialism that had drawn her, though the moment before, she had
-been, spontaneously a socialist, for the first time. The glow that had
-come with his words was still there, drawing her, an unfulfilled
-promise. She was still waiting to be, consciously, in league and
-everlasting company with others, a socialist. Yet the earlier lonely
-moment had been so far her only experience of the state; everything that
-had followed had been a slow gradual undoing of it.
-
-What was the secret of the immense relief, the sense of being and doing
-in an unbounded immensity that had come with her dreamy sudden words?
-One moment sitting on the hearth-rug living in the magic of the woven
-text, feeling its message rise from the quiet firelit room, drive
-through the sound of the winter sea and out and away over the world, to
-everyone who had ears to hear; giving the power of hearing to those who
-had not, until they equally possessed it. And then hearing her own
-voice, like a whisper in the immensity, thrilled with the sense of a
-presented truth, coming _given_, suddenly, from nowhere, the glad sense
-of a shape whose denial would be death, and bringing as she dreamily
-followed its prompting, a willingness to suffer in its service.
-
-"You ought to cut out the pathos in that passage."
-
-"_Which_ passage, Miriametta?" The effort of throwing off the many
-distractions of the interested, mocking, critical voice.
-
-"You weaken the whole argument by coming forward in those three words to
-tell your readers what they ought to feel. An _enormous_ amount of time
-is lost, while attention is turned from the spectacle to yourself."
-
-"Yes. _Which_ passage?"
-
-"In the moment that the reader turns away, everything goes, and they
-come back distracted and different, having been racing all over their
-own world, perhaps _indifferent_."
-
-"Passage, passage----"
-
-"The _real_ truth is that you don't feel that pathos to yourself, or not
-in that way and in those words ... there are one or two earlier passages
-that stopped me, the same sort of thing."
-
-"Right. We'll have'm all out."
-
-"Without them the book will convince everybody."
-
-"No sane person can read it and keep out of socialism."
-
-"No." But how fearful that sounds said by the author. As if he knew
-something else as well.
-
-"Y'know _you_ ought to be a Lycurgan, Miriam." And then had come the
-sense of the door closing on all past loneliness, the rich sense of
-being carried forward to some new accompanied moulding change; but
-without any desire to go. Even with him, a moment of expression,
-seeming, while it lasted, enough in itself; the whole of life, when it
-happened not alone, but in an understanding presence; led to _results_,
-the destructive demand for the pinning of it down to some small shape of
-specialised action. Could he not see that the thing so surprising her
-and coming to him also as a surprise, was enough in itself ... would
-disappear if she rushed forward into activities, masquerading, with
-empty hands, as one who had something to give. Yet _he_ was going
-forward into activities.... She ought, having learned from him a clear
-theory of the working of the whole of human life, to be willing to
-follow, only too glad of the opportunity of any sort of share, even as
-an onlooker in the making of the new world.
-
-But if she responded, she would be supporting his wrong estimate of her,
-his way of endowing everyone with his own gifts, seeing people only as
-capability, waiting for opportunities for action. She wanted only
-further opportunities with him, of forgetfulness, and the strange
-following moments of expression.
-
-"Everyone will be socialists soon; there's no need to join societies."
-
-"There's mountains, my dear Miriam, _mountains_ of work ahead, that only
-an organised society can compass. And you'd like the Lycurgans. We'll
-make you a Lycurgan."
-
-"What could I do?"
-
-"You can talk. You might write. Edit. You've got a deadly critical eye.
-Yes, you are a Lycurgan. That's settled."
-
-"How _can_ you say I can talk?"
-
-"You've got a _tenacity_. I'd back you against anyone in argument, when
-you're roused."
-
-"Argument is no good to anybody, world without end, amen."
-
-"Don't be frivolous, Miriam. Real argument's a fine clean weapon."
-
-"Cutting both ways; proving _anything_."
-
-"Quarrelsome Miriam."
-
-"And you know what you think about my writing. That I, or _anybody_
-could _learn_ to write, passably."
-
-"If you _have_ written anything, I've not seen it. You shall learn to
-write, passably, in the interests of socialism."
-
-What an awful fate. To sit in a dusty corner, loyally doing odd jobs,
-considered by him "quite a useful intelligent creature" among other much
-more clever, and to him, more attractive creatures, all working
-submissively in the interests of a theory that he understood so well
-that he must already be believing in something else. But she was already
-a useful fiercely loyal creature, that was how he described her, at
-Wimpole Street----But that was for the sake of freedom. Working with him
-there would be no freedom at all. Only a series of loyal posings.
-
-Standing upon the footstool to get out, back, away from the wrong
-turning into the sense of essential expression. The return into the room
-of the sound of the sea, empty and harsh, in a void.
-
-"That's admirable. You could carry off any number of inches, Miriam. You
-only want the helmet and the trident. You're Britannia, you know. The
-British Constitution. You're infinitely more British than I am."
-
-"Foreigners always tell me I am the only English person who understands
-them."
-
-"_Flattery._ You've no _idea_ how British you are. A mass of British
-prejudice and intelligent obstinacy. I shall put you in a book."
-
-"Then how can you want me to be a socialist. I am a Tory and an
-anarchist by turns."
-
-"You're certainly an anarchist. You're an individualist you know, that's
-what's wrong with you."
-
-"And what's wrong with _you_?"
-
-"And now you shall experiment in being a socialist."
-
-"Tories are the best socialists."
-
-"You shall be a Tory socialist. My dear Miriam, there will be socialists
-in the House of _Lords_."
-
-The same group of days had contained the relief of the beginning of
-generalisations; the end, on her part, of stories about people, told
-with an eye upon his own way of observing and stating. These stories
-had, during the earlier time, kept him so amused and, with his profane
-comments and paraphrases, so perpetually entertaining, that a large part
-of her private councils during the visits were spent in reviewing the
-long procession of Tansley Street boarders, the patients at Wimpole
-Street, and people ranged far away in her earlier lives, as material for
-anecdote. But throughout the delight of his interest and his surprising
-reiterated envy of the variety of her contacts, there had been a
-haunting sense of misrepresentation, and even of treachery to him, in
-contributing to his puzzling almost unvarying vision of people as
-pitifully absurd, from the small store of experiences she had dropped
-and forgotten, until he drew them forth and called them wealth.
-
-His refusal to believe in a Russian's individuality because no one had
-heard of him had set a term to these communications, leaving an abrupt
-pain. It was so strange that he should fail to recognise the distinction
-of the Russian _being_, the quality of the Russian attitude towards
-life. He had followed with interest, gentle and patient at first before
-her overwhelming conviction, allowing her to add stroke after stroke to
-her picture, seeming for a moment to see what she saw and then----What
-has he _done_? Either it was that his pre-arranged picture of European
-life had no place for these so different, inactive Russians, or her
-attempts to represent people in themselves, without borrowed methods of
-portrayal, were useless because they fell between the caricature which
-was so uncongenial to her and the methods of description current in
-everyday life, which equally refused to serve by reason of their tacit
-reference to ideas she could not accept.
-
-But the beginnings of abstract discussion had brought a most joyful
-relief, and a confirming intensification of the beauty of the interiors
-and of the surrounding landscape, in which their talks were set.
-Discussing people, save when he elaborated legend and profanity until
-privately she called upon the hosts of heaven to share this brightest
-terrestrial mirth, cast a spell of sadness all about her. With every
-finished vignette there came a sense of ending. Sacrificed to its sharp
-expressiveness were the real moments of these people's lives; and the
-moments of the present, counting themselves off, ignored and
-irrecoverable, offering, as their extension, time that was unendurably
-narrow and confined, a narrow featureless darkness, its walls grinning
-with the transfixed features of consciousness that had always been, and
-must, if the pictures were accepted as true, forever be, a motionless
-absurdity.
-
-Launched into wide opposition, no longer trying to see with his eyes,
-while still hoarding, as a contrasting amplification of her own visions,
-much that he had given her, she found people still there; rallying round
-her in might, ranging forward through time, each one standing clear of
-everything that offered material for ironic commentary, in a radiant
-individuality.
-
-Wide generalisation was, she had immediately vowed, the way to
-illuminating contemplation of humanity. Its exercise made the present
-moment a life in itself, going on forever; the thought of the speakers
-and the surroundings blended in an unforgettable whole; her past life
-gleaming about her in a chain of moments; leaping glad acceptances or
-ardent refusals, of large general views.
-
-The joy of making statements not drawn from things heard or read but
-plumbed directly from the unconscious accumulations of her own
-experience was fermented by the surprise of his interested attention,
-and the pride of getting him occasionally to accept an idea or to modify
-a point of view. It beamed compensation for what she was losing in
-sacrificing, whenever expression was urgent in her, his unmatchable
-monologue to her own shapeless outpourings. But she laboured, now and
-then successfully, to hold this emotion in subjection to the urgency of
-the things she longed to express.
-
-"_Women_, everybody knows nowadays, have made civilisation, the thing
-civilisation is so proud of--social life. It's one of the things I
-dislike in them. There you are, by the way, women were the first
-socialists." Havelock Ellis; and Emerson quoting Firdusi's description
-of his Persian Lilla ... but the impression, remaining more sharp and
-deep than the event, became one's own by revealing an inborn sharing of
-the view expressed. And waiting behind it now, was the proof, in life,
-as she had seen it.
-
-"I don't mean that idea of public opinion 'the great moulding and
-civilising force steered by women' that even the most pessimistic men
-admit, in horror."
-
-"What _do_ you mean, Miriam?" Patient scepticism.
-
-"Something quite different. It's amazing, the blindness in men, even in
-you, about women. There must be a reason for it. Because it's universal.
-It's no good looking, with no matter _what_ eyes, if you look in the
-wrong place. All that men have done, since the beginning of the world,
-is to find out and give names to and do, the things that were in women
-from the beginning, and that the best of them have been doing all the
-time. Not me."
-
-"_You_, Miriam, are an incorrigible _loafer_. I've a sneaking sympathy
-with _that_."
-
-"Well, the thing is, that whereas a few men here and there are creators,
-originators ... _artists_, women are this all the time."
-
-"My dear Miriam, I don't know _what_ women are. I'm enormously
-interested in sex; but I don't know _anything_ about it. Nobody does.
-That's just where we are."
-
-"Because you're a man and have no personality."
-
-"Don't talk nonsense, Miriam."
-
-"How can a man have personality?"
-
-"All right. _Men_--have no personality."
-
-"You see women simply as a sex. That's one of the proofs."
-
-"Right. Women have no sex."
-
-"You are doubtful about 'emancipating' women, because you think it will
-upset their sex-life."
-
-"I don't know _anything_, Miriam. No personality. No knowledge. But
-there's Miss Waugh, with a thoroughly able career behind her; been
-_everywhere_, done _everything_, my dear Miriam; come out of it all,
-shouting you back into the nursery."
-
-"I don't know her. Perhaps she's jealous, like a man, of her freedom.
-But the point is, there's no emancipation to be done. Women are
-emancipated."
-
-"Prove it, Miriam."
-
-"I can. Through their pre-eminence in an art. The art of making
-atmospheres. It's as big an art as any other. Most women can exercise
-it, for reasons, by fits and starts. The best women work at it the whole
-of the time. Not one man in a million is aware of it. It's like air
-within the air. It may be deadly. Cramping and awful, or simply
-destructive, so that no life is possible within it. So is the bad art of
-men. At its best it is absolutely life-giving. And not soft. Very hard
-and stern and austere in its beauty. And like mountain air. And you
-can't get behind it, or in any way divide it up. Just as with 'Art.' Men
-live in it and from it all their lives without knowing. Even recluses."
-
-"Don't drive it too far, Miriam."
-
-"Well; I'm so staggered by it. All women, of course, know about it, and
-_there's_ the explanation of why women clash. Over what men call
-'trifles.' Because the thing I mean goes through everything. A woman's
-way of 'being' can be discovered in the way she pours out tea. _Men_
-can't get on together. If they're boxed up. Do you know there's hardly a
-partnership in Wimpole Street that's not a permanent feud. Yes. Would
-you believe it. And for scandal and gossip and jealousy there's
-_nothing_ to beat the professors in a University Town. Several of them
-don't speak. They communicate by letter.... But it's the women who are
-not grouped who can see all this most clearly. By moving, amongst the
-grouped women, from atmosphere to atmosphere. It's one of my principal
-social entertainments. I feel the atmosphere created by the lady of the
-house as soon as I get on to the door step."
-
-"Perceptive Miriam.... You _have_ a flair, Miriam. I grant you that. I
-believe in your flair."
-
-"Well, it's _true_, what I'm trying to tell you. It's one of the answers
-to the question about women and art. It's all there. It doesn't show,
-like men's art. There's no drama or publicity. _There_; d'you see? It's
-hard and exacting; needing 'the maximum of detachment and control.' And
-people have to learn, or be taught, to see it."
-
-"Y...es. Is it conscious?"
-
-"Absolutely. And there you are again. Artists, well, and _literary_
-people, say they have to get away from everything at intervals. They
-associate with queer people, and some of them are dissipated. They can
-only rest, stop being artists, by getting _away_. That is why so many
-women get nervy and break down. The only way they can rest, is by being
-nothing to nobody, leaving off for a while giving out any atmosphere."
-
-"Stop breathing."
-
-"Yes. But if you laugh at that, you must laugh at artists, _and_
-literary people."
-
-"I will. I _do_."
-
-"Yes; but in general. You must see the identity of the two things for
-good or for bad. If people reverence men's art and feel their sacrifices
-are worth while, to _themselves_, as well as to other people, they must
-not just _pity_ the art of women. It doesn't matter to women. But it's
-so jolly bad for men, to go about feeling lonely and superior. Men, and
-the women who imitate them, bleat about women 'finding their truest
-fulfilment in _self-sacrifice_.' In speaking of male art it is called
-_self-realisation_. That's men all over. They get an illuminating
-theory--man must die, to live--and apply it only to themselves. If a
-theory is true, you may be sure it applies in a most thorough-going way
-to women. They don't stop dead at self-sacrifice. They reap ... freedom.
-Self-realisation. Emancipation. Lots of women hold back. Just as men
-do--from exacting careers. _I_ do. _I_ don't want to exercise the
-feminine art."
-
-"It's true you don't compete or exploit yourself, Miriam."
-
-"Some women want to be men. And the contrary, men wanting to be women,
-is almost unknown. This is supposed to be evidence of the superiority of
-the masculine state. It isn't. Women only want to be men before they
-begin their careers. It's a longing for exemptions. Young women envy
-men, as young men, faced with the hard work of life, envy dogs."
-
-"Harsh Miriam."
-
-"It's true. At any rate it's deserved, after all men have said. And I
-believe it's _true_."
-
-"Pugilistic Miriam.... Your atmospheric idea is quite illuminating. I
-think there's some truth in it; and I'd be with you altogether but for
-one ... damning ... yes, I think absolutely damning, _fact_."
-
-"Well?"
-
-"The men women will marry. The men quite fine, intelligent women marry;
-and _idolise_, my dear Miriam."
-
-"Many artists have to use any material that comes to hand. The treatment
-is the thing."
-
-"Treatment that mistakes putty for marble, my dear Miriam----"
-
-"And you don't see that you are proving my point. Women _see_ things
-when they are not there. That's creativeness. What is meant by women
-'making' men."
-
-"They don't. They'll make idols of nothing at all; and go on burning
-incense--all their lives."
-
-"I don't believe women are _ever_ deceived about their husbands. But
-they don't give up hope. And there's something in everybody. That's what
-women see."
-
-"Nonsense, Miriam. Girls, with quite good brains and abilities will
-marry anything; accept its views and quote them."
-
-"Yes; just as they will show off a child's tricks. Views and opinions
-are masculine things. Women are indifferent to them, really. Any set
-will do. I know the way a woman's opinions and interests change with her
-different husbands, if she marries more than once, is supposed to prove
-the vacuity of her mind. Half the satirists of women have made their
-reputation on that idea. It isn't so. It is that women can hold all
-opinions at once, or any, or none. It's because they see the relations
-of things which don't change, more than things which are always
-changing, and mostly the importance to men of the things men believe.
-But behind it all their own lives are untouched."
-
-"Behind.... What _is_ there behind, Miriam?"
-
-"Life."
-
-"What do they do with it?"
-
-"Live."
-
-"Mysterious, Miriam.... The business of women; the career; that makes
-you all rivals, is to find fathers. Your material is children."
-
-"Then look here, if you think _that_, there's a perfect instance. If
-women's material is people, their famous 'curiosity' is the curiosity of
-the artist. Men call it 'incurable' in women. Men's curiosity, about
-things, science and so forth, is called divine. There you are. My
-_word_."
-
-"_I_ don't, Miriam."
-
-"Shaw knows how wildly interested women are in psychology. That's
-funny.... But about children. If only you could realise how incidental
-all that is."
-
-"Incidental to what?"
-
-"To the _life_ of the individual."
-
-"Try it, Miriam. Marry your Jew. You know Jew and English makes a good
-mix."
-
-"You see I never knew he was a Jew. It did not come up until a possible
-future came in view. I _couldn't_ have Jewish children."
-
-"Incidents. Mere incidents."
-
-"No; the wrong material. I, being myself, couldn't do anything with it;
-couldn't be anything in relationship to it."
-
-"You'd _be_, through seeing its possibilities and making an atmosphere."
-
-"I've told you I'm _not_ one of those stupendous women."
-
-"What _are_ you?"
-
-"Well, now here's something you will like. If I were to marry a Jew, I
-should feel that all my male relatives would have the right to _beat_
-me."
-
-"That's strange.... And, I think, great nonsense, Miriam."
-
-"And I'm not anti-semite. I think Jews are better Christians than we
-are. We have things to learn from them. But not by marrying them, until
-they've learnt things from us. Women, particularly, can't marry Jews.
-Men can marry Jewesses, if they like."
-
-"Marriage is a more important affair for women than for men. Just so."
-
-"I didn't say so."
-
-"You _did_, Miriam, and it's quite true."
-
-"It appears to be so because, as I've been trying to show you, men don't
-know where they are."
-
-"Your man'll know, Miriam. You ought to marry and have children. You'd
-have good children. Good shapes and good brains."
-
-"The mere sight of a child, moving unconsciously, its little shoulders
-and busy intentions, makes me catch my breath."
-
-"Marry your Jew, Miriam. Well--perhaps no; don't marry your Jew."
-
-"The other day we were walking somewhere. I was dead-tired. He knew it
-and kept on suggesting a hansom. Suddenly there was a woman, lugging a
-heavy perambulator up some steps. He stood still, shouting to _me_ to
-help her."
-
-"What did you do?"
-
-"I blazed his own words back at him. I daresay I stamped my foot.
-Meanwhile the woman, who was very burly, had got the perambulator up. We
-walked on and presently he said in a quiet intensely interested voice
-'_Why_ did you not help this woman?'"
-
-"What did you say?"
-
-"I began to talk about something else."
-
-"Diplomatic Miriam."
-
-"Not at all. It's _useless_ to talk to _instincts_. I know; because I
-have tried. Poor little man. I am afraid, now that I am not going to
-marry him, of hurting and tiring him. I talked one night. We had been
-agreeing about things, and I went on and on, it was in the drawing-room
-in the dark, after a theatre, talking almost to myself, very interested,
-forgetting that he was there. Presently a voice said, trembling with
-fatigue, 'Believe me, Miriam, I am profoundly interested. Will you
-perhaps put all this down for me on paper?' Yes. Wasn't it funny and
-_appalling_. It was three o'clock. Since then I have been afraid.
-Besides, he will marry a Jewess. If I were not sure of that I could not
-contemplate his loneliness. It's heartbreaking. When I go to see friends
-in the evening, he waits outside."
-
-"I _say_. Poor _chap_. That's quite touching. You'll marry him yet,
-Miriam."
-
-"There are ways in which I like him and am in touch with him as I never
-could be with an Englishman. Things he understands. And his absolute
-sweetness. Absence of malice and enmity. It's so strange too, with all
-his ideas about women, the things he will do. Little things like
-cleaning my shoes. But look here; an important thing. Having children is
-just shelving the problem, leaving it for the next generation to solve."
-
-That stood out as the end of the conversation; bringing a sudden bright
-light. The idea that there was something essential, for everybody, that
-could not be shelved. Something had interrupted. It could never be
-repeated. But surely he must have agreed, if there had been time to
-bring it home to him. Then it might have been possible to get him to
-admit uniqueness ... individuality. He would. But would say it was
-negligible. Then the big world he thinks of, since it consists of
-individuals, is also negligible....
-
-_Something_ had been at work in the conversation, making it all so easy
-to recover. Vanity? The relief of tackling the big man? Not altogether.
-Because there had been moments of thinking of death. Glad death if the
-truth could _once_ be stated. Disinterested rejoicing in the fact that a
-man who talked to so many people was hearing _something_ about the world
-of women. And if anyone had been there to express it better, the relief
-would have been there, just the same, without jealousy. But what an
-unconscious compliment to men, to feel that it mattered whether or no
-they understood anything about the world of women....
-
-The remaining days of the visit had glowed with the sense of the
-beginning of a new relationship with the Wilsons. The enchantment that
-surrounded her each time she went to see them and always as the last
-hours went by, grew oppressive with the reminder of its impermanence,
-shone, at last, wide over the future. The end of a visit would never
-again bring the certainty of being finally committed to an overwhelming
-combination of poverties, cut off, by an all-round ineligibility, from
-the sun-bathed seaward garden, the joyful brilliant seaside light
-pouring through the various bright interiors of the perfect little
-house; the inexpressible _charm_, always renewed, and remaining, however
-deeply she felt at variance with the Wilson reading of life, the topmost
-radiance of her social year; ignored and forgotten nearly all the time,
-but shining out whenever she chanced to look round at the resources of
-her outside life, a bright enduring pinnacle, whose removal would level
-the landscape to a rolling plain, its modest hillocks, easy to climb,
-robbed of their light, the bright reflection that came, she half-angrily
-admitted, from this central height.
-
-But there had been a difference in the return to London after that
-visit, that had filled her with misgiving. Usually upon the afterpain of
-the wrench of departure, the touch of her own returning life had come
-like a balm. That time, she had seemed, as the train steamed off, to be
-going for the first time, not away from, but towards all she had left
-behind. There had been a strange exciting sense of travelling, as
-everyone seemed to travel, preoccupied, missing the adventure of the
-journey, merely suffering it as an unavoidable time-consuming movement
-from one place to another. She, like all these others, had a place and a
-meaning in the outside world. She could have talked, if opportunity had
-offered, effortlessly, from the surface of her mind, borrowing emphasis
-and an appearance of availability and interest, from a secure unshared
-possession. She had suddenly known that it was from this basis of
-preoccupation with secure unshared possessions that the easy shapely
-conversations of the world were made. But also that those who made them
-were committed, by their preoccupations, to a surrounding deadness.
-Liveliness of mind checked the expressiveness of surroundings. The
-gritty interior of the carriage had remained intolerable throughout the
-journey. The passing landscape had never come to life.
-
-But the menace of a future invested in unpredictable activities in a
-cause that seemed, now that she understood it, to have been won
-invisibly since the beginning of the world, was lost almost at once in
-the currents of her London life. Things had happened that had sharply
-restored her normal feeling of irreconcilableness; of being altogether
-differently fated, and to return, if ever they should wish it, only at
-the bidding of the inexpressible charm. There had been things moving all
-about her with an utterly reassuring independent reality. Mr. Leyton's
-engagement ... bringing to light as she lived it through chapter by
-chapter, sitting at work in the busy highway of the Wimpole Street
-house, a world she had forgotten, and that rose now before her in serene
-difficult perfection; a full denial of Mr. Wilson's belief in the death
-of family life. In the midst of her effort to launch herself into a
-definite point of view, it had made her swerve away again towards the
-beliefs of the old world. Meeting them afresh after years of oblivion,
-she had found them unassailably new. The new lives inheriting them
-brought in the fresh tones, the thoughts and movement of modern life,
-and left the old symphony recreated and unchanged.
-
-The Tansley Street world had been full and bright all that summer with
-the return of whole parties of Canadians as old friends. With their
-untiring sociability, their easy inclusion of the abruptly appearing
-unintroduced foreigners and provincials, they had made the world look
-like one great family party.
-
-They had influenced even Michael ... steeping him in sunlit gaiety. By
-breaking up the strain of unrelieved association they had made him seem
-charming again. Their immense respect for him turned him, in their
-presence, once more into a proud uncriticised possession.
-
-Rambles round the squares with him, snatched late at night, had been
-easy to fill with hilarious discussions of the many incidents; serious
-exhausting talk held in check by the near presence of unquestioning
-people, and the promise of the lively morrow. Yet every evening, when
-they had her set down and surrounded at the piano, there came the sense
-of division. They cared only for music that interpreted their point of
-view.
-
-Captain Gradoff ... large flat lonely face, pock-marked, eyes looking at
-nothing, with an expression of fear. Improper, naked old grizzly head,
-suggesting other displayed helpless heads, above his stout neat sociable
-Russian skipper's jacket ... praying in his room at the top of his
-voice, with howls and groans. Suddenly teaching us all to make a long
-loud syren-shriek with half a Spanish nutshell. He had an invention for
-the Admiralty ... lonely and frightened, in a ghostly world; with an
-invention to save the lives of ships.
-
-Engstroem and Sigerson!
-
-Engstroem's huge frame and bulky hard red face, shining with simplicity
-below his great serene intellectual brow and up-shooting hair. His first
-evening at Mrs. Bailey's right hand, saying gravely out into the silence
-of the crowded dinner table, "there is in Pareece very much automobiles,
-and good wash. In London not. I send much manchettes, and all the bords
-are cassed." Devout reproachfulness in his voice; and his brow pure,
-motherly serenity. Sweden in the room amongst all the others. Teased,
-like everyone else, with petty annoyances. But with immense strength to
-throw everything off. Everyone waiting in the peaceful silence that
-surrounded the immense gently booming voice; electing him president as
-he sat burying his jests with downcast eyes that left the mask of his
-bluntly carven face yielded up to friendship. Waves of strength and
-kindliness coming from him, bringing exhilaration. Making even the
-Canadians seem pale and small and powerless. At the mercy of life. And
-then the harsh kind blaze of his brown eyes again. More unhesitating
-phrases. He had brought strength and happiness into the house. A rough,
-clump-worded Swedish song, rawly affronting the English air, words of
-his separate country, the only words for his deepest meanings, making
-barriers ... till he leapt, he was so _light_ in his strength, on to a
-chair to bring out the top note, and the barriers fell.... He pealed his
-notes in farcical agony towards the ceiling. In that moment he was
-kneeling, bowed before the coldest, looking through to the hidden
-sunlight in everybody.... Conducting an imaginary orchestra from behind
-the piano. Sind the Trommels in Ordna? Everybody had understood, and
-loved each word he spoke.
-
-"Wo ist the Veoleena Sigerson? I shall bring." Springing from his place
-near the door, lightly in and out amongst the seated forms, leaping
-obstacles all over the room on his way back to the open door, struggling
-noiselessly with all his strength, strong legs sliding under him as he
-pulled at the handle to open the open door. He and Sigerson had stayed
-on after the spring visitors. Evenings, voyaging alone with the two of
-them into strange new music. He had forgotten that he had said,
-I play nor sing not payshionate musics in bystanding of
-Miss--little--Hendershon. And the German theatre ... a shamed moving
-forward into suspicion, even of Irving, in the way they all played,
-working equally, together ... all taking care of the play ... play and
-acting, rich with life.
-
-Sigerson was jealous. He wanted all the bright sunlight to himself and
-tried to hold it with his cold scornful brains. Waspy Schopenhauerism.
-They went to _Peckham_. The little weepy dabby assistant of the Peckham
-landlady, her speech ready-made quotations in the worst London English.
-Impure vowels, slobbery consonants. She reflected his sunlight like a
-dead moon. There was a large old garden. His first English garden in
-summer. He had loved it with all the power of the Swedish landscape in
-him turned on to its romantic strangeness, and identified the dabby girl
-with it. She fainted when he went away. A despair like death. He had
-come faithfully back and married her. _What_ could she, forever Peckham,
-seeing nothing, distorting everything by her speech, make of Stockholm?
-
-And all the time the Wimpole Street days had glowed more and more with
-the forgotten story. Thanks to the scraps of detail in Mr. Leyton's
-confidences she had lived in the family of girls, centred round their
-widowed mother in the large old suburban house, garden girt, and
-bordering on countrified open spaces. She imagined it always sunlit, and
-knew that it rang all the morning with the echoes of work and laughter,
-and the sharp-tongued ironic commentary of a family of Harrietts freed
-from the shadows that had surrounded Harriett's young gaiety, by the
-presence of an income, small but secure. The bustle of shared work, all
-exquisitely done in the exacting, rewarding old-fashioned way, nothing
-bought that could be home-made, filled each morning with an engrossing
-life of its own, lit, by a surrounding endless glory, and left the house
-a prepared gleaming orderliness, and the girls free to retreat to a
-little room where a sewing machine was enthroned amidst a licensed
-disorder of fashion papers, with coloured plates, and things in process
-of making according to the newest mode, from oddments carefully selected
-at the west-end sales. When they were there, during the times of busy
-work following on consultations and decisions, gossip broke forth; and
-thrilling the tones of their gossiping voices, and shining all about
-them, obliterating the walls of the room and the sense of the day and
-the hour, was a bright eternity of recurring occasions, when the sum of
-their household labours blossomed unto fulfilment ... at-home days;
-calls; winter dances; huge picnic parties in the summer, to which they
-went, riding capably, in their clever home-made cycling costumes on
-brilliantly gleaming bicycles. And all the year round, shed over each
-revolving week, the glamour of Sunday ... the perpetual rising up,
-amongst the varying seasons and days, of a single unvarying shape,
-standing, in the morning quiet, chill and accusing between them and the
-warm, far-off everyday life. The relief of the descent into the
-distractions of dressing for church and bustling off in good time; the
-momentary return of the challenging shape with the sight of the old grey
-ivy-grown church; escape from it again into the refuge of the porch
-amongst the instreaming neighbours, and the final fading of its outlines
-into the colour and sound of the morning service, church shapes in stone
-and wood and metal, secure round about their weakness, holding them
-safe. The sermon, though they suffered it uncritically, could not,
-preached by an intelligent or stupid man, but secure, soft-living and
-married, revive the morning strength of the challenging shape, and as it
-sounded on towards its end, the grey of another Sunday morning had
-brought in sight the rest of the day, when, at the worst, if nobody
-came, there was the evening service, the escape in its midst into a
-state of bliss that stilled everything, and went on forever, making the
-coming week, even if the most glorious things were going to happen,
-wonderful only because it was so amazing to be alive at all ... That was
-too much ... these girls did not consciously feel like that; perhaps
-partly because they had a brother, were the kind of girls who would have
-at least one brother, choking things back by obliviousness, but breezy
-and useful in many ways. It's good to have brothers; but there is
-something they kill, if they are in the majority, absolutely, so that
-one girl with many brothers rarely becomes a woman, but can sometimes be
-a nice understanding jolly sort of man. Brothers without sisters are
-worse off than sisters without brothers; unless they are very gifted ...
-in which case they are really, as people say of the poets, more than
-three parts women. But Sundays, for all girls, were in a way the same.
-And though these girls did not reason and were densely unconscious of
-the challenge embodied in their religion, and enjoyed being snobbish
-without knowing it, or knowing the meaning and good of snobbishness,
-their unconsciousness was harmless, and the huge Sunday things they
-lived in, held and steered their lives, making, in England, in them and
-in all of their kind, a world that the clever people who laughed at them
-had never been inside.... _They_ did not laugh, except the busy enviable
-blissful laughter permitted by God, from the midst of their lives, about
-nothing at all. They thought liberals vulgar--mostly chapel people; and
-socialists mad. But in the midst of their conservatism was something
-that could never die, and that these other people did not seem to
-possess....
-
-And the best, most Charlotte Yonge part of the story, was the arrival of
-Mr. Leyton and his cousin, whilst these girls were still at home amongst
-their Sundays; and the opening out, for two of them at once, of a
-future; with the past behind it undivided.
-
-And they had suddenly asked her to their picnic. And she had been back,
-for the whole of that summer's afternoon, in the world of women; and the
-forgotten things, that had first driven her away from it, had emerged
-again, no longer mysterious, and with more of meaning in them, so that
-she had been able to achieve an appearance of conformity, and had felt
-that they regarded her not with the adoration or half-pitying dislike
-she had had from women in the past, but as a woman, though only as a
-weird sort of female who needed teaching. They had no kind of fear of
-her; not because they were massed there in strength. Any one of them,
-singly, would, she had felt, have been equal to her in any sort of
-circumstances; her superior; a rather impatient but absolutely loyal and
-chivalrous guide in the lonely exclusive feminine life.
-
-Surprised by the unanticipated joy of a summer holiday in miniature,
-their gift, wrested by their energies from the midst of the sweltering
-London July, and with their world and its ways pulling at her memory,
-and the door of their good fellowship wide open before her, for an hour
-she had let go and gone in and joined them, holding herself teachable,
-keeping in check, while she contemplated the transformation of Mr.
-Leyton under the fire of their chaff, her impulse to break into the
-ceaseless jesting with some shape of conversation. And she had felt that
-they regarded her as a postulant, a soul to be snatched from outer
-darkness, a candidate as ready to graduate as they were, to grant a
-degree. And the breaking of the group had left her free to watch the
-way, without any gap of silence or difficulty of transition, they had
-set the men to work on the clearing up and stowing away of the
-paraphernalia of the feast; training them all the while according to the
-Englishwoman's pattern, an excellent pattern, she could not fail to see,
-imagining these young males as they would be, undisciplined by this
-influence, and comparing them with the many unshaped young men she had
-observed on their passage through the Tansley Street house.
-
-But all the time she had been half aware that she was only watching a
-picture, a charmed familiar scene, as significant and as unreal as the
-set figure of a dance. Giving herself to its discipline she would reap
-experience and knowledge, confirming truths; but only truths with which
-she was already familiar, leading down to a lonely silence, where
-everything still remained unanswered, and the dancers their unchanged
-unexpressed selves. Individual converse with these young men on the
-terms these women had trained them to accept, was impossible to
-contemplate. Every word would be spoken in a dark void.
-
-Breaking in, as the little feast ended in a storm of flying buns and
-eggshells, a little scene that she had forgotten completely at the
-moment of its occurrence had risen sharply clear in her mind.... A
-family party of quiet soberly dressed Scotch Canadian people from the
-far-west, seated together at the end of the Tansley Street dinner-table,
-coming out, on the eve of their departure, from the enclosure of their
-small, subduedly conversing group, to respond, in level friendly tones,
-to some bold person's enquiries as to the success of their visit. The
-sudden belated intimacy, ripened in silence, had seemed very good,
-compressed into a single occasion that would leave the impression of
-these homely people single and strong, so well worth losing that their
-loss would be a permanent acquisition. Suddenly from their midst, the
-voice of the youngest daughter, a pale, bitter-faced girl with a long
-thin pigtail of sandy hair, had rung out down the table.
-
-"London's _fine_. But the folks don't all match it. The girls don't.
-They're just queer. I reckon there's two things they don't know. How to
-wear their waists, and how to go around with the boys. When I hear an
-English girl talking to boys, I just have to think she's funny in the
-head. If Canadian girls were stiff like that, they'd have the dullest
-time on earth." Her expressionless pale blue eyes had fixed no one, and
-she had concluded her speech with a little fling that had settled her
-back in her chair, unconcerned.
-
-And in the interval before the ride home, when the men had been driven
-off, and she was alone with the sisters and saw them relax and yawn,
-speak in easy casual tones and apostrophise small things, with great
-gusto, in well-chosen forcible terms, while the men were no doubt also
-enjoying the same blessed relief, she had felt that the Canadian girl
-was more right than she knew. Between men and girls, throughout English
-life there was no exchange, save in the ways of love. Except for those
-moments when they stood, to each other, for all the world, they never
-met. And the sense of these sacred moments embarrassed, even while it
-shaped and beautified, every occasion. Women were its guardians and
-hostesses. Their guardianship made them hostesses for life. Upon the
-faces of these girls as they sat about unmasked and pathetically
-individual, it shed its radiance and, already, its heavy shadows.
-
-Yet American girls with their easy regardlessness seemed lacking in
-depth of feminine consciousness, too much turned towards the surfaces of
-life, and the men with their awakened understanding and quick
-serviceableness, by so much the less men. In any case there was not the
-recognisable difference in personality that was so striking in England,
-and that seemed in some way, even at one's moments of greatest
-irritation with the women, to bring all the men under a reproach. Many
-young American men had faces moulded on the lines of responsible
-middle-aged German housewives; while some of the quite young girls
-looked out at life with the sharp shrewd repudiation of cynical elderly
-bachelors. If it were the building up of a civilisation that had brought
-the sexes together, for generations, in relations that came in English
-society only momentarily, at a house-warming or a picnic, would the
-results remain? Or would there be, in America, later on, a beginning of
-the English differences, the women moving, more and more heavily veiled
-and burdened, towards the heart of life and the men getting further and
-further away from the living centre. Ought men and women to modify each
-other, each standing as it were, halfway between the centre and the
-surface, each with a view across the other's territory? Or should they
-accentuate their natural differences? _Were_ the differences natural?
-
-As they rode home through the twilit lanes, the insoluble problem,
-sounding for her in every shouted remark, had been continually soothed
-away by the dewy, sweet-scented, softly streaming air. The slurring of
-their tyres in unison along the smooth roadway, the little chorus of
-bells as they approached a turning, made them all one entered for good
-into the heritage of the accomplished day. Nothing could touch the
-vision that rose and the confessions that were made within its silence.
-Within each one of the indistinguishable forms the sense of the day was
-clearing with each moment; its incidents blending and shaping, an
-irrevocable piece of decisive life; but behind and around and through it
-all was summer, smiling. Before each pair of eyes, cleared of heat and
-dust by the balm of the evening air, the picture of the English summer,
-in blue and gold and green, stood clear within the outspread invisible
-distances. _That_ was the harvest, the thing that drew people to the
-labour of organising picnics, that remained afterwards forever; that
-would remain for the lovers after their love was forgotten; that linked
-all the members of the party in a fellowship stronger than their
-differences.
-
-But when they reached the suburbs, the problem was there again in might,
-incessant as the houses looming by on either side, driven tyrannously
-home by the easy flight ahead, as Highgate sloped to London, of the two
-whose machines were fitted with "free" wheels.... Only a mind turned
-altogether towards outside things could invent....
-
-And then _London_ came, opening suddenly before me as I rode out alone
-from under a dark archway into the noise and glare of a gaslit Saturday
-night.
-
-Trouble fell away like a cast garment as I swung forward, steering with
-thoughtless ease, into the southernmost of the four converging streets.
-
-This was the true harvest of the summer's day; the transfiguration of
-these northern streets. They were not London proper; but tonight the
-spirit of London came to meet her on the verge. Nothing in life could be
-sweeter than this welcoming--a cup held brimming to her lips, and
-inexhaustible. What lover did she want? No one in the world could oust
-this mighty lover, always receiving her back without words, engulfing
-and leaving her untouched, liberated and expanding to the whole range of
-her being. In the mile or so ahead, there was endless time. She would
-travel further than the longest journey, swifter than the most rapid
-flight, down and down into an oblivion deeper than sleep; and drop off
-at the centre, on to the deserted grey pavements, with the high quiet
-houses standing all about her in air sweetened by the evening breath of
-the trees, stealing down the street from either end; the sound of her
-footsteps awakening her again to the single fact of her incredible
-presence within the vast surrounding presence. Then, for another
-unforgettable night of return, she would break into the shuttered house
-and gain her room and lie, till she suddenly slept, tingling to the
-spread of London all about her, herself one with it, feeling her life
-flow outwards, north, south, east and west, to all its margins.
-
-And it had been so. Nothing had intervened, but, for a moment, the
-question, coming as the wild flowers fell from her unclasped belt,
-bringing back the long-forgotten day--what of those others, lost, for
-life, in perpetual association?
-
-The long lane of Bond Street had come to an end, bringing her out into
-the grey-brown spaciousness of Piccadilly, lit sparsely by infrequent
-globes of gold. The darkness cast by the massive brown buildings
-thrilled heavily about the shrouded oblivion of west-end life. She
-passed elderly men, black coated and mufflered over their evening dress,
-wrapped in their world, stamped with its stamp, still circulating, like
-the well preserved coins of a past reign--thinking their sets of
-thoughts, going home to the small encirclement of clubs and chambers, a
-little aware of the wide night and the time of year told on the air as
-they had passed along where the Green Park slept on the far side of the
-road. This was their moment, between today and tomorrow, of freedom to
-move amongst the crowding presences gathered through so many years
-within themselves; slowly, mannishly; old-mannishly, perpetually pulled
-up, daunted, taking refuge in their sets of thoughts; not going far,
-never returning to renew a sally, for the way home was short, and their
-gait showed them going, almost marching, to the summons of their various
-destinations. Some of their faces betrayed as they went by, unconscious
-of observation, the preoccupation that closed in on all their solitude;
-a look of counting, but with liberal evening hand, the days that
-remained for them to go their rounds. One came prowling with slow,
-gentlemanly stroll, half-halting to stare at her, dim-eyed, from his
-mufflings. Here and there a woman, strayed away from the searching light
-and the rivalry of the Circus, hovered in the shadows. Presently, across
-the way, the Park moved by, brimming through its railings a midnight
-freshness into the dry sophisticated air. Through this strange mingling,
-hansoms from the theatres beyond the Circus, swinging, gold-lamped, one
-by one, along the centre of the deserted roadway, drew bright threads of
-younger west-end life, meshed and tangled, men and women from social
-throngs, for whom no solitude waited.
-
-Piccadilly Circus was almost upon her, the need for thoughtless hurrying
-across its open spaces; the awakening on the far side with the west-end
-dropping away behind; and the tide of her own neighbourhood setting
-towards her down Shaftesbury Avenue; bringing with it the present
-movement of her London life.... Why hadn't she a club down here; a
-neutral territory where she could finish her thoughts undisturbed?
-
-Defying the surrounding influences, she glanced back at the months
-following the picnic ... the shifting of the love-story into the midst
-of the Wimpole Street household, making her room like a little theatre
-where at any moment the curtain might go up on a fresh scene ... knowing
-them all so well, being behind the scenes as well as before them, she
-had watched with a really cruel indifference, and let the light of the
-new theories play on all she saw. For unconscious unquestioning people
-were certainly ruled by _something_. The acting of the play had been all
-carefully according to the love-stories of the sentimental books, would
-always be, for good kind people brought up on the old traditions. And a
-predictable future was there, another home life carrying the traditions
-forward. All the old family sayings applied. Many of them were quoted
-with a rueful recognition. But they were all proud of playing these
-recognisable parts. All of their faces had confessed, as they had come,
-one by one, betweenwhiles, to talk freely to her alone, their belief in
-the story that had lain, hidden and forgotten, in the depths of her
-heart; making her affection for them blaze up afresh from the roots of
-her being. She had _seen_ the new theories disproved. Not that there was
-not some faint large outline of truth in them, but that it was so large
-and loose that it did not fit individuals. It did not correspond to any
-individual experience because it was obliged to ignore the underlying
-things of individuality.... Blair Leighton ... Marcus Stone ... Watts;
-Mendelssohn, corresponded to an actual individual truth.... The new
-people did not know it because they were odd, isolated people without
-up-bringing and circumstances? They did not know because they were
-without backgrounds? Quick and clever, like Jews without a country? They
-would fasten in this story on the critical dismay of the parents, make
-comedy or tragedy out of the lack of sympathy between the two families,
-the persistence of unchanged character in each one, that would tell
-later on. But comedy and tragedy equally left everything unstated. No
-blind victimising force could account for the part of the story they
-left untold, something that justified the sentimental books they all
-jeered at; a light, that had come suddenly holding them all gentle and
-hushed behind even their busiest talk; bringing wide thoughts and
-sympathies; centring in the girl; breaking down barriers so completely
-that for a while they all seemed to exchange personalities. Blind force
-could not soften and illuminate.... There was something more than an
-allurement of "nature," a veil of beauty disguising the "brutal physical
-facts." Why brutal? Brutal is deliberate, a thing of the will. They
-meant brutish. But what was wrong with the brutes, except an absence of
-freewill? Their famous "brutal frankness" was brutish frankness, showing
-them pitifully proud of their knowledge of facts that looked so large,
-and ignorant of the tiny enormous undying fact of freewill. Perhaps
-women have more freewill than men?
-
-It is because these men _write_ so well that it is a relief, from
-looking and enduring the clamour of the way things state themselves from
-several points of view simultaneously, to read their large superficial
-statements. Light seems to come, a large comfortable stretching of the
-mind, things falling into an orderly scheme, the flattering fascination
-of grasping and elaborating the scheme. But the after reflection is
-gloom ... a poisoning gloom over everything.... "Good writing" leaves
-gloom. Dickens doesn't.... But people say he's not a good writer....
-_Youth_ ... and _Typhoon_.... Oh "_Stalked about gigantically in the
-darkness_." ... Fancy forgetting that. And he is modern and a good
-writer. New. They all raved quietly about him. But it was not like
-reading a book at all.... Expecting good difficult "writing" some
-mannish way of looking at things, and then ... complete forgetfulness of
-the worst time of the day on the most grilling day of the year in a
-crowded Lyons' at lunch-time and afterwards joyful strength to face the
-disgrace of being an hour or more late for afternoon work.... They leave
-life so small that it seems worthless. He leaves everything big; and all
-he tells added to experience forever. It's dreadful to think of people
-missing him; the forgetfulness and the new birth into life. Even God
-would enjoy reading Typhoon.... Then _that_ is "great fiction?"
-"Creation?" Why these falsifying words, making writers look cut-off and
-mysterious? _Imagination._ What is imagination? It always seems
-insulting, belittling, both to the writer and to life.... He looked and
-listened with his whole self--perhaps he is a small pale invalid--and
-then came 'stalked about gigantically' ... not made, nor created, nor
-begotten, but _proceeding_ ... and working his salvation. That is what
-matters to him.... In the day of Judgment, though he is a writer, he
-will be absolved. Those he has redeemed will be there to shout for him.
-But he will still have to go to Purgatory; or be born again as a woman.
-_Why_ come forward suddenly, in the midst of a story to say they live
-far from reality? A sudden smooth complacent male voice, making your
-attention rock between the live text and the picture of a supercilious
-lounging form, slippers, a pipe, other men sitting round, and then the
-phrase so smooth and good that it almost compels belief. Why cannot men
-exist without thinking themselves all there is?
-
-She was in the open roadway, passing into the deeps of the central
-freedom of Piccadilly Circus, the crowded corner unknowingly left
-behind. Just ahead was the island, the dark outline of the fountain, the
-small surmounting figure almost invisible against the shadowy upper mass
-of a bright-porched building over the way. The grey trottoir, empty of
-the shawled flowerwomen and their great baskets, was a quiet haven. The
-surrounding high brilliancies beneath which people moved along the
-pavements from space to space of alternating harsh gold and shadowy
-grey, met softly upon its emptiness, drawing a circle of light round the
-shadow cast by the wide basin of the fountain. There was a solitary
-man's figure standing near the curb, midway on her route across the
-island to take to the roadway opposite Shaftesbury Avenue; standing
-arrested; there was no traffic to prevent his crossing; a watchful
-habitue; she would pass him in a moment, the last fragment of the
-west-end ... good-bye, and her thoughts towards gaining the wide
-homeward-going lane. A little stoutish dapper grey-suited ... _Tommy
-Babington!_ Standing at ease, turned quite away from the direction that
-would take him home; still and expressionless, unrecognisable save for
-the tilt of his profile and the set of his pince-nez. She had never
-before seen him in unconscious repose, never with this look of a
-motionless unvoyaged soul encased in flesh; yet had always known even
-when she had been most attracted, that thus he was. He had glanced. Had
-he recognised her? It was too late to wheel round and save his solitude.
-Going on, she must sweep right across his path. Fellow-feeling was
-struggling against her longing to touch, through the medium of his
-voice, the old home-life so suddenly embodied. He had seen her, and his
-unawakened face told her that she would neither pause nor speak. Years
-ago they would have greeted each other vociferously.... She was now so
-shrouded that he was not sure she had recognised him. Through his
-stupefaction smouldered a suspicion that she wished to avoid
-recognition. He was obviously encumbered with the sense of having placed
-her amidst the images of his preoccupation. She rushed on, passing him
-with a swift salute, saw him raise his hat with mechanical promptitude
-as she stepped from the curb and forward, pausing an instant for a
-passing hansom, in the direction of home. It was done. It had always
-been done from the very beginning. They had met equally at last. This
-was the reality of their early association. Her spirits rose, clamorous.
-It was epical she felt. One of those things arranged above one's head
-and perfectly staged. Tommy of all people wakened thus out of his
-absorption in the separated man's life that so decorated him with
-mystery in the feminine suburbs; shocked into helpless inactivity; glum
-with an irrevocable recognising hostility. It had been arranged. Silent
-acceptance had been forced upon him, by a woman of his own class. She
-almost danced to the opposite pavement in this keenest, witnessed moment
-of her yearslong revel of escape. He would presently be returning to
-that other enclosed life to which, being a man, and dependent on
-comforts, he was fettered. Already in his mind was one of those formulas
-that echoed about in the enclosed life ... "Oui, ma chere, little Mirry
-_Henderson_, strolling, at midnight, across Piccadilly Circus."
-
-Suddenly it struck her that the life of men was pitiful. They hovered
-about the doors of freedom, returning sooner or later to the hearth,
-where even if they were autocrats they were not free; but passing
-guests, never fully initiated into the house-life, where the real active
-freedom of the women resided behind the noise and tumult of meetings.
-Man's life was bandied to and fro ... from _word_ to _word_. Hemmed in
-by women, fearing their silence, unable to enter its freedom--being
-himself made of words--cursing the torrents of careless speech with
-which its portals were defended.
-
-And all the time unselfconscious thoughtless little men, with neat or
-shabby sets of unconsidered words for everything, busily bleating
-through cornets, blaring through trombones and euphoniums, thrumming
-undertones on double-basses. She summoned Harriett and shrieked with
-laughter at the cheerful din. It was cheerful, even in a funeral march.
-There would certainly be music in heaven; but not books.
-
-The shock of meeting Tommy had brought the grey of tomorrow morning into
-the gold-lit streets. There was a fresh breeze setting down Shaftesbury
-Avenue. Here, still on the Circus, was that little coffee-place. Tommy
-was going home. _She_ was rescuing the last scrap of a London evening
-here at the very centre and then going home, on foot, still well within
-the charmed circle.
-
-The spell of the meeting with Tommy broke as she went down the little
-flight of steps. Here was eternity, the backward vista indivisible,
-attended by throngs of irreconcilable interpretations. Years ago, a
-crisis of loneliness, this little doorway, a glimpse, from the top of
-the steps, of a counter and a Lockhart urn, a swift descent, unseen
-people about her, companions; misery left behind, another little
-sanctuary added to her list. The next time, coming coldly with Michael
-Shatov, in a unison of escape from everlasting conflict; people clearly
-visible, indifferent and hard; the moment of catching, as they sat down,
-the flicker of his mobile eyelid, the lively unveiled recognising glance
-he had flung at the opposite table, describing its occupants before she
-saw them; the rush of angry sympathy; a longing to _blind_ him; in some
-way to screen them from the intelligent unseeing glance of all the men
-in the world.
-
-"You don't _see_ them; they are not _there_ in what you see."
-
-"These types are generally quite rudimentary; there is no question of a
-soul there."
-
-"If you could only have seen your look; the most horrible look I have
-ever seen; _alive_ with interest."
-
-"There is always a certain interest."
-
-The strange agony of knowing that in that moment he had been alone and
-utterly spontaneous; simple and whole; that it had been, for him, a
-moment of release from the evening's misery; a sudden plunge into his
-own eternity, his unthreatened and indivisible backward vista. The
-horrible return, again and again, in her own counsels, to the fact that
-she had seen, that night, for herself, more than he had ever told her;
-that the pity he had appealed to was unneeded; his appeal a bold bid on
-the strength of his borrowed conviction that women do not, in the end,
-really care. How absolutely men are deceived by a little
-cheerfulness....
-
-And now she herself was interested; had attained unawares a sort of
-connoisseurship, taking in, at a glance, nationality, type, status, the
-difference between inclination and misfortune. Was it he who had aroused
-her interest? Was this contamination or illumination?
-
-And Michael's past was a matter of indifference.... Only because it no
-longer concerned her? Then it _had_ been jealousy? Her new calm interest
-in these women was jealousy. Jealousy of the appeal to men of their
-divine simplicity?
-
-"... which women don't understand.
-
-And them as sez they does is not the marryin' brand."
-
-Oh, the hopeless eternal inventions and ignorance of men; their utter
-cleverness and ignorance. _Why_ had they been made so clever and yet so
-fundamentally stupid?
-
-She ordered her coffee at the counter and stood facing upstairs towards
-the oblong of street. The skirts of women, men's trousered legs, framed
-for an instant in the doorway, passed by, moving slowly, with a lifeless
-intentness.... Is the absence of personality original in men? Or only
-the result of their occupations? Original. Otherwise environment is more
-than the human soul. It is original. Belonging to maleness; to Adam with
-his spade; lonely in a universe of _things_. It causes them to be
-moulded by their occupations, taking shape, and status, from what they
-do. A barrister, a waiter, recognisable. Men have no natural rank. A
-woman can become a waitress and remain herself. Yet men pity women, and
-think them hard because they do not pity each other.
-
-It is man, puzzled, astray, always playing with breakable toys, lonely
-and terrified in his universe of chaotic forces who is pitiful. The
-chaos that torments him is his own rootless self. The key, unsuspected,
-at his side.
-
-In women like Eleanor Dear? Calm and unquestioning. Perfectly at home in
-life. With a charm beyond the passing charm of a man. She was central.
-All heaven and earth about her as she spoke. Illiterate, hampered,
-feeling her way all the time. And yet with a perfect knowledge.
-_Perfect_ comprehension in her smile. All the maddening moments spent
-with her, the endless detail and fussing, all afterwards showing upon a
-background of gold.
-
-Men weave golden things; thought, science, art, religion upon a black
-background. They never _are_. They only make or do; unconscious of the
-quality of life as it passes. So are many women. But there is a moment
-in meeting a woman, any woman, the first moment, before speech, when
-everything becomes new; the utter astonishment of life is there, speech
-seems superfluous, even with women who have not consciously realised
-that life is astonishing. It persists through all the quotations and
-conformities, and is there again, the one underlying thing that women
-have to express to each other, at parting. So that between women, all
-the practical facts, the tragedies and comedies and events, are but
-ripples on a stream. It is not possible to share this sense of life with
-a man; least of all with those who are most alive to "the wonders of the
-universe." Men have no present; except sensuously.... That would explain
-their _ambition_ ... and their doubting speculations about the future.
-
-Yet it would be easier to make all this clear to a man than to a woman.
-The very words expressing it have been made by men.
-
-It was just after coming back from the Wilsons, in the midst of the time
-round about Leyton's wedding, that Eleanor had suddenly appeared on the
-Tansley Street doorstep.... I was just getting to know the houseful of
-Orly relations ... Mrs. Sloan-Paget, whisking me encouragingly into
-everything.... "my dear you've got style, and taste; stunning hair and a
-good complexion. Look at my girls. Darlings, I know. But what's the good
-of putting clothes on figures like that?" ... Daughterless Mrs. Orly
-looked pleased like a mother when Mrs. Paget said "S'Henderson's got to
-come down to Chumleigh." ... I almost gave in to her reading of me;
-feeling whilst I was with her, back in the conservative, church point of
-view. I could have kept it up, with good coats and skirts and pretty
-evening gowns. Playing games. Living hilariously in roomy country
-houses, snubbing "outsiders," circling in a perpetual round of family
-events, visits to town, everything fixed by family happenings, hosts of
-relations always about, everything, even sorrow, shared and distributed
-by large rejoicing groups; the warm wide middle circle of English life
-... secure. And just as the sense of belonging was at its height,
-punctually, Eleanor had come, sweeping everything away. As if she had
-been watching. Coming out of the past with her claim.... Skimpier and
-more beset than ever. Yet steely with determination. Deepening her
-wild-rose flush and her smile. It was all over in a moment. Wreckage.
-Committal to her and her new set of circumstances.... She would not
-understand that a sudden greeting is always wonderful; even if the
-person greeted is not welcome. But Andrew Lang did not know what he was
-admitting. Men greet only themselves, their own being, past, present or
-future.... I am a man. The more people put you at your ease, the more
-eagerly you greet them.... That is why we men like "ordinary women." And
-always disappoint them. They mistake the comfort of relaxation for
-delight in their society.
-
-Eleanor swept everything away. By seeming to know in advance everything
-I had to tell, and ignore it as not worth consideration. But she also
-left her own circumstances unexplained; sitting about with peaceful
-face, talking in hints, telling long stories about undescribed people,
-creating a vast leisurely present, pitting it against the whole world,
-with graceful condescending gestures.
-
-It was part of her mystery that she should have come back just that very
-afternoon. Then she was in the right. If you are in the right everything
-works for you. The original thing in her nature that made her so
-beautiful, such a perpetually beautiful spectacle, was _right_. The
-moment that had come whilst she must have been walking, brow modestly
-bent, with her refined, conversational little swagger of the shoulders,
-aware of all the balconies, down the street, had worked for her....
-
-The impulses of expansive moments always make things happen. Or the
-moments come when something is about to happen? How can people talk
-about coincidence? How not be struck by the inside pattern of life? It
-is so obvious that everything is arranged. Whether by God or some deep
-wisdom in oneself does not matter. There is something that does not
-alter. Coming up again and again, at long intervals, with the same face,
-generally arresting you in midway, offering the same choice, ease or
-difficulty. Sometimes even a lure, to draw you back into difficulty.
-Determinists say that you choose according to your temperament, even if
-you go against your inclinations. But what is temperament?... Uniqueness
-... something that has not existed before. A free edge.... Contemplation
-is freedom. The _way_ you contemplate is your temperament. Then action
-is slavery?
-
-There is something always plucking you back into your own life. After
-the first pain there is relief, a sense of being once more in a truth.
-Then why is it so difficult to remember that things deliberately done,
-with a direct movement of the will, always have a falseness? Never meet
-the desire that prompted the action. The will is really meant to prevent
-deliberate action? That is the hard work of life? The Catholics know
-that desire can never be satisfied. You must not _desire_ God. You must
-love. I can't do that. I can't get clear enough about what he wants. Yet
-even without God I am not lonely; or ever completely miserable. Always
-in being thrown back from outside happiness, there seem to be two. A
-waiting self to welcome me.
-
-It can't be wrong to exist. In those moments before disaster existence
-is perfect. Being quite still. Sounds come presently from the outside
-world. Your mind moving about in it without envy or desire, realises the
-whole world. The future and the past are all one same stuff, changing
-and unreal. The sense of your own unchanging reality comes with an
-amazement and sweetness too great to be borne alone; bringing you to
-your feet. There _must_ be someone there, because there is a shyness.
-You rush forward, to share the wonder. And find somebody engrossed with
-a cold in the head. And are so emphatic and sympathetic that they think
-you are a new friend and begin to expand. And it is wonderful until you
-discover that they do not think life at all wonderful.... That afternoon
-it had been a stray knock at the front door and a sudden impulse to save
-Mrs. Bailey coming upstairs. And Mrs. Bailey, after all she had said,
-also surprised into a welcome, greeting Eleanor as an old friend, taking
-her in at once. And then the old story of detained luggage, and plans
-prevented from taking shape. The dreadful slide back, everything
-disappearing but her and her difficulties, and presently everything
-forgotten but the fact of her back in the house. Afterwards when the
-truth came out, it made no difference but the relief of ceasing to be
-responsible for her. But this time there had been no responsibility. She
-had made no confidences, asked for no help. Was it blindness, or
-flattered vanity, not to have found out what she was going through?
-
-Yet if the facts had been stated, Eleanor would not have been able to
-forget them. In those evenings and week-ends she had forgotten, and been
-happy. The time had been full of reality; memorable. It stood out now,
-all the going about together, drawn into a series of moments when they
-had both seen with the same eyes. Experiencing identity as they laughed
-together. Her recalling of their readings in the little Marylebone room,
-before the curate came, had not been a pretence. Mr. Taunton was the
-pretence. There had been no space even for curiosity as to the end of
-his part of the story. Eleanor, too, had not wished to break the charm
-by letting things in. She had been taking a holiday, between the
-desperate past and the uncertain future. In the midst of overwhelming
-things she had stood firm, her power of creating an endless present at
-its height. A great artist.
-
-To Michael, a poor pitiful thing; Rodkin's victim. _She_, of course, had
-given Michael that version. Little Michael, stealing to her room night
-by night, towards the end, to sleep at her side and say consoling
-things; never guessing that her threat of madness was an appeal to his
-Jewish kindness, a way of securing him. What a story for proper English
-people ... the best revelation in the whole of her adventure. And Mrs.
-Bailey too; true as steel. Serenely warding off the women boarders ...
-gastric distension.
-
-Rodkin ... poor little Rodkin with his weak dreadful little life.
-Weekdays; the unceasing charm of Anglo-Russian speculation, Sundays;
-boredom and newspapers. Then the week again, business and a City man's
-cheap adventures. He _had_ behaved well, in spite of Michael's
-scoldings. It was wonderful, the way the original Jewish spirit came out
-in him, at every step. His loose life was not Jewish. And it was
-_really_ comic that he should have been trapped by a girl pretending to
-be an adventuress. Poor Eleanor, with all her English dreams; just
-_Rodkin_. But he was a Jew when he hesitated to marry a consumptive, and
-perfectly a Jew when he decided not to see the child lest he should love
-it; and also when he hurried down into Sussex the moment it came, to see
-it, with a huge armful of flowers, for her.... What a scene for the
-Bible-woman's Hostel. All Eleanor. Her triumph. What other woman would
-have dared to engage a cubicle and go calmly down without telling them?
-And a week later she was in the Superintendent's room and all those prim
-women sewing for her and hiding her and telling everybody she had
-rheumatic fever. And crying when she came away....
-
-She was right. She justified her actions and came through. And now she's
-a young married woman in a pretty villa, _near_ the church, and the
-vicar calls and she won't walk on Southend pier because "one meets one's
-butcher and baker and candlestick maker." But only because Rodkin is a
-child-worshipper. And she tolerates him and the child and he is a
-brow-beaten cowed little slave.... It is tempting to tell the story. A
-perfect recognisable story of a scheming unscrupulous woman; making one
-feel virtuous and superior; but only if one simply outlined the facts,
-leaving out all the inside things. Knowing a story like that from the
-inside, knowing Eleanor, changed all "scandalous" stories.... They were
-scandalous only when told? Never when thought of by individuals alone?
-Speech is technical. Every word. In telling things, technical terms must
-be used; which never quite apply.... To call Eleanor an adventuress does
-not describe her. You can only describe her by the original contents of
-her mind. Her own images; what she sees and thinks. She was an
-adventuress by the force of her ideals. Like Louise going on the street
-without telling her young man so that he would not have to pay for her
-trousseau....
-
-Exeter was another. Keeping the shapes of civilisation. Charming at tea
-parties.... Knowing all the worldly things, made of good style from her
-perfect brow and nose to the tip of her slender foot ... made to shine
-at Ascot. It was only because she knew so much about Mrs. Drake's secret
-drinking, that Mrs. Drake said suddenly in that midnight moment when
-Exeter had swept off to bed after a tiff, "_I_ don't go to hotels, with
-strange men." I was reading that book of Dan Leno's and thinking that if
-they would let me read it aloud their voices would be different; that
-behind their angry voices were real selves waiting for the unreal sounds
-to stop. Up and down the tones of their voices were individual
-inflexions, feminine, innocent of harm, incapable of harm, horrified
-since their girlhood by what the world had turned out to be.... It was
-an awful shock. But Exeter paid her young man's betting debts and kept
-him on his feet. And _he_ was divorced. And so _nice_. But weak. Still
-he had the courage to shoot himself. And then _she_ took to backing
-horses. And now married, in a cathedral, to a vicar; looking angelic in
-the newspaper photograph. He has only one regret ... their
-childlessness. "Er? Have _children_?" Yet Mrs. Drake would be staunch
-and kind to her if she were in need. Women are Jesuits....
-
-From the first, in Eleanor's mind, had shone, unquestioned, the shape of
-English life. Church and State and Family. God above. Her belief was
-perfect; impressive. In all her dealings she saw the working of a higher
-power, leading her to her goal. When her health failed and her vision
-receded, she clutched at the nearest material for making her picture. In
-all she had waded through, her courage had never failed. Nor her charm;
-the charm of her strength and her singleness of vision. Her God, an
-English-speaking gentleman, with English traditions, tactfully ignored
-all her contrivances and waited elsewhere, giving her time, ready to
-preside with full approval, over her accomplished aim.... Women are
-Jesuits.... The counterpart of all those Tansley Street women was little
-Mrs. Orly, innocently unscrupulous to save people from difficulty and
-pain....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-It was when Eleanor went away that autumn that I found I had been made a
-Lycurgan; and began going to the meetings ... in that small room in
-Anselm's Inn.... Ashamed of pride in belonging to a small exclusive
-group containing so many brilliant men. Making a new world. Concentrated
-intelligence and goodwill. Unanimous even in their differences. Able to
-joke together. Seeking, selflessly, only one thing. And because they
-selflessly sought it, all the things of fellowship added to them....
-From the first I knew I was not a real Lycurgan. Not wanting their kind
-of selfless seeking, yet liking to be within the stronghold of people
-who were keeping watch, understanding how social injustice came about,
-explaining the working of things, revealing the rest of the world as
-naturally unconsciously blind, urgently requiring the enlightenment that
-only the Lycurgans could bring, that could only be found by endless dry
-work on facts and figures.... At first it was like going to school.
-Eagerly drinking in facts; a new history. The history of the world as a
-social group. Realising the immensity of the problems crying aloud all
-over the world, not insoluble, but unsolved because people did not
-realise themselves as members of one group. The convincing little
-Lycurgan tracts, blossoming out of all their intense labour, were the
-foundation of a new social order; gradually spreading social
-consciousness. But the hope they brought, the power of answering all the
-criticisms and objections of ordinary people, always seemed ill-gained.
-Always unless one took an active share, like listening at a door.... She
-was always catching herself dropping away from the first eager gleaning
-of material to speculations about the known circumstances of the
-lecturer, from them into a trance of oblivion, hearing nothing,
-remembering afterwards nothing of what had been said, only the quality
-of the atmosphere--the interest or boredom of the audience, the secret
-preoccupations of unknown people sitting near....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Everyone was going. The restaurant was beginning to close. The west-end
-was driving her off. She rose to go through the business of paying her
-bill, the moment of being told that money, someone's need of profits,
-was her only passport into these central caverns of oblivion. Forever
-driven out. Passing on. To keep herself in countenance she paid briskly,
-with the air of one going purposefully. The sound of her footsteps on
-the little stairway brought her vividly before her own eyes, playing
-truant. She hurried to get out and away, to be walking along, by right,
-in the open, freed, for the remaining time, by the necessity of getting
-home, to lose herself once more....
-
-The treelit golden glow of Shaftesbury Avenue flowed through her; the
-smile of an old friend. The _wealth_ of swinging along up the bright
-ebb-way of the west-end, conscious of being, of the absence of desire to
-be elsewhere or other than herself. A future without prospects, the many
-doors she had tried, closed willingly by her own hand, the growing
-suspicion that nowhere in the world was a door that would open wide to
-receive her, the menace of an increasing fatigue, crises of withering
-mental pain, and then suddenly this incomparable sense of being plumb at
-the centre of rejoicing. Something always left within her that
-contradicted all the evidence. It compensated the failure of her efforts
-at conformity.... Yet to live outside the world of happenings, always to
-forget and escape, to be impatient, even scornful, of the calamities
-that moved in and out of it like a well-worn jest, was certainly wrong.
-But it could not be helped. It was forgetfulness, suddenly overtaking
-her in the midst of her busiest efforts ... memory ... a perpetual
-sudden blank ... and upon it broke forth this inexhaustible joy. The
-tappings of her feet on the beloved pavement were blows struck
-hilariously on the shoulder of a friend. To keep her voice from breaking
-forth she sang aloud in her mind, a soaring song unlimited by sound.
-
-The visit to the revolutionaries seemed already in the past, added to
-the long procession of events that broke up and scattered the moment she
-was awake at this lonely centre.
-
-Speech came towards her from within the echoes of the night; statements
-in unfamiliar shape. Years falling into words, dropping like fruit. She
-was full of strength for the end of the long walk; armed against the
-rush of associations waiting in her room; going swift and straight to
-dreamless sleep and the joy of another day.
-
-The long wide street was now all even light, a fused misty gold, broken
-close at hand by the opening of a dark byway. Within it was the figure
-of an old woman bent over the gutter. Lamplight fell upon the sheeny
-slopes of her shawl and tattered skirt. Familiar. Forgotten. The last,
-hidden truth of London, spoiling the night. She quickened her steps,
-gazing. Underneath the forward-falling crushed old bonnet shone the
-lower half of a bare scalp ... reddish ... studded with dull, wartlike
-knobs.... Unimaginable horror quietly there. Revealed. Welcome. The head
-turned stealthily as she passed and she met the expected side-long
-glance; naked recognition, leering from the awful face above the
-outstretched bare arm. It was herself, set in her path and waiting
-through all the years. Her beloved hated secret self, known to this old
-woman. The street was opening out to a circus. Across its broken lights
-moved the forms of people, confidently, in the approved open pattern of
-life, and she must go on, uselessly, unrevealed; bearing a semblance
-that was nothing but a screen set up, hiding what she was in the depths
-of her being.
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER II
-
-
-At the beginning of the journey to the east-end the Lintoffs were as far
-away as people in another town. When the east-end was reached they were
-too near. Their brilliance lit up the dingy neighbourhood and sent out a
-pathway of light across London. Their eyes were set on the far distance.
-It seemed an impertinence to rise suddenly in their path and claim
-attention.
-
-But Michael lost his way and the Lintoffs were hidden, erupting just out
-of sight. The excitement of going to meet them filtered away in the din
-and swelter of the east-end streets.
-
-They came upon the hotel at last, suddenly. A stately building with a
-wide pillared porch. As they went up its steps and into the carpeted
-hall, cool and clean and pillared, giving on to arched doorways and the
-distances of large rooms, she wished the Russians could be spirited
-away, that there were nothing but the strange escape from the midst of
-squalor into this cool hushed interior.
-
-But they appeared at once, dim figures blocking the path, closing up all
-the distances but the one towards which they were immediately obliged to
-move and that quickly ended in a bleak harshly lit room. And now here
-they were, set down, meekly herded at the table with other hotel people.
-
-No strange new force radiated from them across the chilly expanse of
-coarse white tablecloth. They were able to be obliterated by their
-surroundings; lost in the onward-driving tide of hotel-life; responding
-murmuringly to Michael's Russian phrases, like people trying to throw
-off sleep.
-
-Her private converse with them the day before, made it impossible even
-to observe them now that they were exposed before her. And a faint hope,
-refusing to be quenched, prevented her casting even one glance across at
-them. If the hope remained unwitnessed there might yet be, before they
-separated, something that would satisfy her anticipations. If she could
-just see what he was like. There was, even now, an unfamiliar force
-keeping her eyes averted from all but the vague sense of the two
-figures. Perhaps it came from him. Or it was the harvest growing from
-the moment in the hotel entrance.
-
-A dispiriting conviction was gathering behind her blind attention. If
-she looked across, she would see a man self-conscious, drearily living
-out the occasion, with an assumed manner. After all, he was now just a
-married man, sitting there with his wife, a man tamed and small and the
-prey of known circumstances, meeting an old college friend. This drop on
-to London was the end of their wonderful adventure. A few weeks ago she
-had still been his fellow student, his remembered companion, in a
-Russian prison for her daring work, ill with the beginnings of her
-pregnancy. Now, he was with her for good, inseparably married, no longer
-able to be himself in relation to anyone else.... She felt herself
-lapsing further and further into isolation. Something outside herself
-was drowning her in isolation.
-
-Something in Michael.... That, at least, she could escape now that she
-was aware of it. She leaned upon his voice. At present there was no sign
-of his swift weariness. He was radiant, sitting host-like at the head of
-the table between her and his friends, untroubled by his surroundings,
-his glowing Hebrew beauty, his kind, reverberating voice expressing him,
-untrammelled, in the poetry of his native speech. But he was aware of
-her through his eager talk. All the time he was tacitly referring to her
-as a proud English possession.... It was something more than his way of
-forgetting, in the presence of fresh people, and falling again into his
-determined hope. Her heart ached for him as she saw that away in
-himself, behind the brave play he made, in his glance of the
-deliberately naughty child relying on its charm to obtain forgiveness,
-he held the hope of her changing under the influence of seeing him thus,
-at his fullest expansion amongst his friends. He was purposely excluding
-her, so that she might watch undisturbed; so that he might use the
-spaces of her silence to persuade her that she shared his belief. She
-was helplessly supporting his illusion. It would be too cruel to freeze
-him in mid-career, with a definite message. She sat conforming;
-expanding, in spite of herself, in the role he had planned. He must make
-his way back through his pain, later on, as best he could. No one was to
-blame; neither he for being Jew, nor she for her inexorable
-Englishness....
-
-Across the table, supporting him, were living examples of his belief in
-the possibility of marriage between Christians and Jews. Lintoff was
-probably as much and as little Greek Orthodox as she was Anglican, and
-as pure Russian as she was English, and he had married his little
-Jewess.
-
-Michael would eagerly have brought any of his friends to see her. But
-she understood now why he had been so cautiously, carelessly determined
-to bring about this meeting.... They would accept his reading, and had
-noted her, superficially, in the intervals of their talk, in the light
-of her relationship to him. She was wasting her evening in a hopeless
-masquerade. She felt her face setting in lines of weariness as she
-retreated to the blank truth at the centre of her being. Narrowly there
-confined, cold and separate, she could glance easily across at their
-irrelevant forms. They could be made to understand her remote
-singleness; in one glance. Whatever they thought. They were nothing to
-her, with their alien lives and memories. She was English; an English
-spectacle for them, quite willing, an interested far-off spectator of
-foreign ways and antics. No, she would not look, until she was forced;
-and then some play of truth, springing in unexpectedly, would come to
-her aid. Reduced by him to a mere symbol she would not even risk
-encountering their unfounded conclusions.
-
-She heard their voices, animated now in an eager to and fro, hers
-contralto, softly modulated, level and indifferent in an easy swiftness
-of speech; his higher, dry and chippy and staccato; the two together a
-broken tide of musical Russian words, rich under the cheerless hotel
-gas-light. It would flow on for a while and presently break and die
-down. Michael's social concentration would not be equal to a public
-drawing-room, a prolonged sitting on sofas. Coffee would come. They
-would linger a little over it, eagerness would drop from their voices,
-the business of reflecting over their first headlong communications
-would be setting in for each one of them, separating them into
-individualities, and suddenly Michael would make a break. For she could
-hear they were not talking of abstract things. Revolutionary ideas would
-be, between him and Lintoff, an old battlefield they had learned to
-ignore. They were just listening, in excited entrancement, to the sounds
-of each other's voices, their eyes on old scenes, explaining, repeating
-themselves, in the turmoil of their attentiveness ... each ready to stop
-halfway through a sentence to catch at an outbreaking voice. Michael's
-voice was still rich and eager. His years had fallen away from him; only
-now and again the memory of his settled surrounding and relentless daily
-work caught at his tone, levelling it out.
-
-Coffee had come. Someone asked an abrupt question and waited in a
-silence. She glanced across. A tall narrow man, narrow slender height,
-in black, bearded, a narrow straw-gold beard below bright red lips.
-Unsympathetic; vaguely familiar. Him she must have observed in the dim
-group in the hall during Michael's phrases of introduction.
-
-"Nu; da;" Michael was saying cordially, "Lintoff suggests we go
-upstairs," he continued, to her, politely. He looked pleased and easy;
-unfatigued.
-
-She rose murmuring her agreement, and they were all on their feet,
-gathering up their coffee-cups. Michael made some further remark in
-English. She responded in the vague way he knew and he watched her eyes,
-standing near, taking her coffee-cup with a sturdy quiet pretence of
-answering speech, leaving her free to absorb the vision of Madame
-Lintoff, a small dark form risen sturdily against the cheap dingy
-background, all black and pure dense whiteness; a curve of gleaming
-black hair shaped against her meal-white cheek; a small pure profile,
-firmly beautiful, emerging from the high close-fitting neck-shaped
-collar of her black dress; the sweep of a falling fringed black shawl
-across the short closely sleeved arm, the fingers of the hand stretched
-out to carry off her coffee, half covered by the cap-like extension of
-the long black sleeve. She might be a revolutionary, but her sense of
-effect was perfect. Every line flowed, from the curve of her skull, left
-free by the beautiful shaping of her thick close hair, to the tips of
-her fingers. There was no division into parts, no English destruction of
-lines at the neck and shoulders, no ugly break where the dull stuff
-sleeve joined the wrist. In the grace of her small sturdy beauty there
-seemed only scornful womanish triumph, weary; a suggestion of
-unspeakable ennui. She was utterly different from English Jewesses....
-
-Without breaking the rhythm of her smooth graceful movement, she turned
-her head and glanced across at Miriam; a faint slight radiance,
-answering Miriam's too-ready irrecoverable beaming smile, and fading
-again at once as she moved towards the door. Too late--already they were
-moving, separated, in single file up the long staircase, Madame Lintoff
-now a little squarish dumpy Jewish body, stumping up the stairs ahead of
-her--Miriam responded to the gleam she had caught in the deep _wehmuetig_
-Hebrew eyes, of something in her that had escaped from the confines of
-her tribe and sex. She was not one of those Jewesses, delighting in
-instant smiling familiarity with women, immediate understanding, banding
-them together. She had not a trace of the half affectionate, half
-obsequious envy, that survived the discovery of their being more
-intelligent or better-informed than Englishwomen. She had looked
-impersonally, and finding a blankness would not again enquire. She had
-gone back into the European world of ideas into which somehow since her
-childhood she had emerged. But she was weary of it; of her idea-haunted
-life; of everything that had so far come into her mind and her
-experience. Did the man leading the way upstairs know this? Perhaps
-Russian men could read these signs? In any case a Russian would not have
-Michael's physiological explanations of everything; even if they proved
-to be true....
-
-"I forgot to tell you, Miriam, that of course Lintoffs both speak
-French. Lintoff has also a little English."
-
-It was his bright _beginning_ voice. They were to spend the _evening_
-... shut in a small cold bedroom ... resourceless, shut in with this
-slain romance ... and the way already closed for communication between
-herself and the Russians before she had known that they could exchange
-words that would at least cast their own brief spell. Between herself
-and Madame Lintoff nothing could pass that would throw even the thinnest
-veil over their first revealing encounter. To the unknown man anything
-she might say would be an announcement of her knowledge of his reduced
-state....
-
-The coming upstairs had stayed the tide of reminiscences. There was
-nothing ahead but obstructive conversation, perhaps in French; but
-steered all the time by Michael's immovable European generalisations;
-his clear, swiftly manoeuvring, encyclopaedic Jewish mind....
-
-With her eyes on the fatiguing vista she agreed that of course Monsieur
-and Madame Lintoff would know French; letting her English voice sound at
-last. The instant before she spoke she heard her words sound in the dim
-street-lit room, an open acknowledgment of the death of her
-anticipations. And when the lame words came forth, with the tone of the
-helplessly insulting, polite, superfluous English smile, she knew that
-it was patent to everyone that the evening was dimmed, now, for them
-all. It was not her fault that she had been brought in amongst these
-clever foreigners. Let them think what they liked, and go. If even
-anarchists had their world linked to them by strands of clever easy
-speech, had she not also her world, away from speech and behaviour?
-
-Lintoff was lighting a candle on the chest of drawers. The soft
-reflected glare coming in at the small square windows, was quenched by
-its gleam. He was standing quite near, in profile, his white face and
-bright beard lit red from below. The bent head full of expression, yet
-innocent, was curious, neither English nor foreign. He was a Doctor of
-Philosophy. But not in the way any other European man would have been.
-His figure had no bearing of any kind. Yet he did not look foolish. A
-secret. There was some secret power in him ... Russia. She was seeing
-Russia; far-away Michael blessedly there in the room; keeping her there.
-He had sat down in his way, in a small bedroom chair, his head thrust
-forward on his chest, his hands in his pockets, his legs stretched out
-across the thread-bare carpet, his coffee on the floor at his side. He
-was at home in Russia after his English years. Madame Lintoff in the
-small corner beside the bed was ferreting leisurely in a cupboard with
-her back to the room. Lintoff was holding a match to the waxy wick of
-the second candle. No one was speaking. But the cold dingy room, with
-its mean black draperies and bare furniture, was glowing with life.
-
-There was no pressure in the room; no need to buy peace by excluding all
-but certain points of view. She felt a joyful expansion. But there was a
-void all about her. She was expanded in an unknown element; a void,
-filled by these people in some way peculiar to themselves. It was not
-filled by themselves or their opinions or ideas. All these things they
-seemed to have possessed and moved away from. For they were certainly
-animals; perhaps intensely animal, and cultured. But principally they
-seemed to be movement, free movement. The animalism and culture, so
-repellent in most people, showed, in them, rich jewels of which they
-were not aware. They were moving all the time in an intense joyous
-dreamy repose. It centred in him and was reflected, for all her
-weariness, upon Madame Lintoff. It was into this moving state, that she
-had escaped from a Jewish family life.
-
-If the right question could be found and addressed to him, the secret
-might be plumbed. It might rest on some single unacceptable thing that
-would drop her back again into singleness; just the old familiar
-inexorable sceptical opposition....
-
-His second candle was alight. Michael spoke, in Russian, and arrested
-him standing in the middle of the floor with his back to her. She heard
-his voice, no longer chippy and staccato as it had been in the midst of
-their intimate talk downstairs, but again dim, expressionless, the voice
-of a man in a dream. Madame Lintoff had hoisted herself on to the bed.
-She had put on a little black ulster and a black close-fitting astrakhan
-cap. Between them her face shone out suddenly rounded, very pretty and
-babyish. From the deep Hebrew eyes gleamed a brilliant vital serenity.
-An emancipated Jewish girl, solid, compact, a rounded gleaming beauty
-that made one long to place one's hands upon it; but completely herself,
-beyond the power of admiration or solicitude; a torch gleaming in the
-strange void.... But so _solidly_ small and pretty. It was absurd how
-pretty she was, how startling the rounded smooth firm blossom of her
-face between the close dead black of her ulster and little cap. Miriam
-smiled at her behind the to and fro of dreamy Russian sentences. But she
-was not looking.
-
-It was glorious that there had been no fussing. No one had even asked
-her to sit down. She could have sung for relief. She wanted to sing the
-quivering alien song that was singing itself in the spaces of the room.
-There was a chair just at hand against the wall, beside a dilapidated
-wicker laundry basket. But her coffee was where Michael had deposited
-it, on the chest of drawers at his side. She must recover it, go round
-in front of Lintoff to get it before she sat down. She did not want the
-coffee, but she would go round for the joy of moving in the room. She
-passed him and stood arrested by the talk flowing to and fro between her
-and her goal. Michael rose and stood with her, still talking. She waited
-a moment, weaving into his deep emphatic tones the dreamy absent voice
-of Lintoff.
-
-Michael moved away with a question to Madame Lintoff sitting alone
-behind them on her bed. She was left standing, turned towards Lintoff,
-suddenly aware of the tide that flowed from him as he stood, still
-motionless, in the middle of the room. He stood poised, without
-stiffness, his narrow height neither drooping nor upright; as if held in
-place by the surrounding atmosphere. Nothing came to trouble the space
-between them as she moved towards him, drawn by the powerful tide. She
-felt she could have walked through him. She was quite near him now, her
-face lifted towards the strange radiance of the thin white face, the
-glow of the flaming beard; a man's face, yielded up to her, and free
-from the least flicker of reminder.
-
-"What do you think? What do you _see_?" she heard herself ask. Words
-made no break in the tide holding her there at rest.
-
-His words followed hers like a continuation of her phrase:
-
-"Mademoiselle, I see the _People_." His eyes were on hers, an intense
-blue light; not concentrated on her; going through her and beyond in a
-widening radiance. She was caught up through the unresisting eyes; the
-dreamy voice away behind her. She saw the wide white spaces of Russia;
-motionless dark forms in troops, waiting....
-
-She was back again, looking into the eyes that were now upon her
-personally; but not in the Englishman's way. It was a look of remote
-intense companionship. She sustained it, helpless to protest her
-unworthiness. He did not know that she had just flown forward from
-herself out and away; that her faint vision of what he saw as he spoke
-was the outpost of all her experience. He was waiting to speak with an
-equal, to share.... He had no social behaviour. No screen of adopted
-voice or manner. There was evil in him; all the evils that were in
-herself, but unscreened. He was careless of them. She smiled and met his
-swift answering smile; it was as if he said, "I know; isn't everything
-wonderful." ... They moved with one accord and stood side by side before
-the gleaming candles. Across the room the two Russian voices were
-sounding one against the other; Michael's grudging sceptical bass and
-the soft weary moaning contralto.
-
-"Do you like Maeterlinck?" she asked, staring anxiously into the flame
-of the nearest candle. He turned towards her with eager words of assent.
-She felt his delighted smile shining through the sudden enthusiastic
-disarray of his features and gazed into the candle summoning up the
-vision of the old man sitting alone by his lamp. The glow uniting them
-came from the old man's lamp ... this young man was a revolutionary and
-a doctor of philosophy; yet the truth of the inside life was in him,
-nearer to him than all his strong activities. They could have nothing
-more to say to each other. It would be destruction to say anything more.
-She dropped her eyes and he was at once at an immense distance. Behind
-her closed door she stood alone grappling her certainties, trying to
-answer the voice that cried out within her against the barriers between
-them of language and relationships. Lintoff began to walk about the
-room. Every time his movements brought him near he stood before her in
-eager discourse. She caught the drift of the statements he flung out in
-a more solid, more flexible French, mixed with struggling, stiff,
-face-stiffening scraps of English. The people, alive and one and the
-same all over the world, crushed by the half-people, the educated
-specialists, and by the upper classes dead and dying of their luxury.
-She agreed and agreed, delighting in the gentleness of his unhampered
-movements, in his unself-conscious, uncompeting speech. If what he said
-were true, the people to pity were the specialists and the upper
-classes; clean sepulchres.... How would he take opposition?
-
-"Isn't it weird, etrange," she cried suddenly into a pause in his
-struggling discourse, "that Christians are just the very people who make
-the most fuss about death?"
-
-He had not understood the idiom. Sunned in his waiting smile she glanced
-aside to frame a translation.
-
-"N'y a rien de plus drole," she began. How cynical it sounded; a cynical
-French voice striking jests out of the surface of things; neighing them
-against closed nostrils, with muzzles tight-crinkled in Mephistophelian
-mirth. She glanced back at him, distracted by the reflection that the
-contraction of the nostrils for French made _everything_ taut....
-
-"Isn't it funny that speaking French banishes the inside of everything;
-makes you see only _things_?" she said hurriedly, not meaning him to
-understand; hoping he would not come down to grasp and struggle with the
-small thought; yet longing to ask him suddenly whether he found it
-difficult to trim the nails of his right hand with his left.
-
-He was still waiting unchanged. Yet not waiting. There was no waiting in
-him. There would be, for him, no more dropping down out of life into the
-humble besogne de la pensee. That was why she felt so near to him, yet
-alive, keeping the whole of herself, able to say anything, or nothing.
-She smiled her delight. There was no sheepishness in his answering
-radiance, no grimace of the lips, not the least trace of any of the ways
-men had of smiling at women. Yet he was conscious, and enlivened in the
-consciousness of their being man and woman together. His eyes, without
-narrowing from that distant vision of his, yet looked at her with the
-whole range of his being. He had known obliterating partialities, had
-gone further than she along the pathway they forge away from life, and
-returned with nothing more than the revelation they grant at the outset;
-his further travelling had brought him nothing more. They were equals.
-But the new thing he brought so unobstructively, so humbly identifying
-and cancelling himself that it might be seen, was his, or was
-Russian....
-
-Looking at him she was again carried forth, out into the world. Again
-about the whole of humanity was flung some comprehensive feeling she
-could not define.... It filled her with longing to have begun life in
-Russia. To have been made and moulded there. Russians seemed to begin,
-by nature, where the other Europeans left off....
-
-"The educated _specialists_," she quoted to throw off the spell and
-assert English justice, "are the ones who have found out about the
-people; not the people themselves." His face dimmed to a mask ... dead
-white Russian face, crisp, savage red beard, opaque china blue eyes,
-behind which his remembered troops of thoughts were hurrying to range
-themselves before her. Michael broke in on them, standing near, glowing
-with satisfaction, making a melancholy outcry about the last 'bus. She
-moved away leaving him with Lintoff and turned to the bedside unprepared
-with anything to say.
-
-Where could she get a little close-fitting black cap, and an enveloping
-coat of that deep velvety black, soft, not heavy and tailor--made like
-an English coat, yet so good in outline, expressive; a dark moulding for
-face and form that could be worn for years and would retain, no matter
-what the fashions were, its untroublesome individuality? Not in London.
-They were Russian things. The Russian woman's way of abolishing the mess
-and bother of clothes; keeping them close and flat and untrimmed.
-Shining out from them full of dark energy and indifference. More
-oppressively than before, was the barrier between them of Madame
-Lintoff's indifference. It was not hostility. Not personal at all; nor
-founded on any test, or any opinion.
-
-In the colourless moaning voice with which she agreed that there was
-much for her to see in London and that she had many things she wished
-particularly not to miss, in the way she put her foreigner's questions,
-there was an over-whelming indifference. It went right through. She sat
-there, behind her softly moulded beauty, dreadfully full of clear hard
-energy; yet immobile in perfect indifference. Not expecting speech; yet
-filching away the power to be silent. No breath from Lintoff's wide
-vistas had ever reached her. She had driven along, talking, teaching,
-agitating; had gone through her romance without once moving away from
-the dark centre of indifference where she lay coiled and beautiful....
-_Her_ sympathy with the proletarians was a fastidious horror of all they
-suffered. Her cold clear mind summoned it easily, her logical brain
-could find sharp terse phrases to describe it. She cared no more for
-them than for the bourgeois people from whom she had fled with equal
-horror, and terse phrases, into more desperate activities than he. He
-loved and _wanted_ the people. He felt separation from them more as his
-loss than as theirs. He wanted the whole vast multitude of humanity. The
-men came strolling. Lintoff asked a question. They all flung sentences
-in turn, abruptly, in Russian, from unmoved faces. They were making
-arrangements for tomorrow.
-
-Lintoff stood flaring in the lamplit porch, speeding them on their way
-with abrupt caressing words.
-
-"Well?" said Michael before they were out of hearing--"Did you like
-them?"
-
-"Yes or no as the case may be." Michael's recovered London manner was a
-support against the prospect of sustaining a second meeting tomorrow,
-with everything already passed that could ever pass between herself and
-them.
-
-"You have made an _immense_ impression on Bruno Feodorovitch."
-
-"How do you know?"
-
-"He finds you the type of the Englishwoman. Harmonious. He said that
-with such a woman a man could all his life be perfectly happy. Ah,
-Miriam, let us at once be married." His voice creaked pathetically;
-waiting for the lash. The urgent certainty behind it was not his own
-certainty. Nothing but a too dim, too intermittent sense of something he
-gathered in England. She stood still to laugh aloud. His persistent
-childish naughtiness assured her of the future and left her free to
-speak.
-
-"You _know_ we can't; you _know_ how separate we are. You have seen it
-again and again and agreed. You see it now; only you are carried away by
-this man's first impression. Quite a wrong one. I know the sort of woman
-he means. Who accepts a man's idea and leaves him to go about his work
-undisturbed; sure that her attention is distracted from his full life by
-practical preoccupations. It's _perfectly_ easy to create that
-impression, on any man. Of bright complacency. All the busy married
-women are creating it all the time, helplessly. Men see them looking out
-into the world, practical, responsible, quite certain about everything,
-going from thing to thing, too active amongst things to notice men's
-wavering self-indulgence, their slips and shams. Men lean and feed and
-are kept going, and in their moments of gratitude they laud women to the
-skies. At other moments, amongst themselves, they call them
-materialists, animals, half-human, imperfectly civilised creatures of
-instinct, sacrificed to sex. And all the time they have no suspicion of
-the individual life going on behind the surface." ... To marry would be
-actually to become, as far as the outside world could see, exactly the
-creature men described. To go into complete solitude, marked for life as
-a segregated female whose whole range of activities was known; in the
-only way men have of knowing things.
-
-"Lintoff of course is not quite like that. But then in these
-revolutionary circles men and women live the same lives.... It's like
-America in the beginning, where women were as valuable as men in the
-outside life. If the revolution were accomplished they would separate
-again." ...
-
-She backed to the railings behind her, and leant, with a heel on the low
-moulding, to steady herself against the tide of thought, leaving Michael
-planted in the middle of the pavement. A policeman strolled up, narrowly
-observing them, and passed on.
-
-"No one on earth knows whether these Russian revolutionaries are right
-or wrong. But they have a thing that none of their sort of people over
-here have--an effortless sense of humanity as one group. The _men_ have
-it and are careless about everything else. I believe they think it worth
-realising if everybody in the world died at the moment of realisation.
-The women know that humanity is two groups. And they go into revolutions
-for the freedom from the pressure of this knowledge."
-
-"Revolution is by no means the sole way of having a complete sense of
-humanity. But what has all this to do with _us_?"
-
-"It is not that the women are heartless; that is an appearance. It is
-that they know that there are no _tragedies_...."
-
-"Listen, Mira. You have taught me much. I am also perhaps not so
-indiscriminating as are some men."
-
-"In family life, all your Jewish feelings would overtake you. You would
-slip into dressing-gown and slippers. You have said so yourself. But I
-am now quite convinced that I shall never marry." She walked on.
-
-He ran round in front of her, bringing her to a standstill.
-
-"You think you will never marry ... with _this_"--his ungloved hands
-moved gently over the outlines of her shoulders. "Ah--it is
-most--musical; you do not know." She thrilled to the impersonal
-acclamation; yet another of his many defiant tributes to her forgotten
-material self; always lapsing from her mind, never coming to her aid
-when she was lost in envious admiration of women she could not like. Yet
-they contained an impossible idea; the idea of a man being consciously
-attracted and won by universal physiological facts, rather than by
-individuals themselves....
-
-If Michael only knew, it was this perpetual continental science of his
-that had helped to kill their relationship. With him there could never
-be any shared discovery.... She grudged the formal enlightenment he had
-brought her; filching it from the future. There could never now be a
-single harmonious development in relation to one person. Unless in
-relation to him.... For an instant marriage, with him, suggested itself
-as an accomplished fact. She saw herself married and free of him; set
-definitely in the bright resounding daylight of marriage ... free of
-desires ... free to rest and give away to the tides of cheerfulness
-ringing in confinement within her. She saw the world transformed to its
-old likeness; and walked alone with it, in her old London, as if
-awakened from a dream. But her vision was disturbed by the sense and
-sound of his presence and she knew that her response was not to him....
-
-The necessity of breaking with him invaded her from without, a
-conviction, coming from the radiance on which her eyes were set, and
-expanding painlessly within her mind. She recognised with a flush of
-shame at the continued association of these two separated people, that
-there was less reality between them now than there had been when they
-first met. There was none.... She was no longer passionately attached to
-him, but treacherously since she was hiding it, to someone hidden in the
-past, or waiting in the future ... or _anyone_; any chance man might be
-made to apprehend ... so that when his man's limitations appeared, that
-past would be there to retreat to....
-
-_He_ had never for a moment shared her sense of endlessness.... More
-sociably minded than she ... but not more sociable ... more quickly
-impatient of the cessations made by social occasions, _he_ had no
-visions of waiting people.... His personal life was centred on her
-completely. But the things she threw out to screen her incommunicable
-blissfulnesses, or to shelter her vacuous intervals from the unendurable
-sound of his perpetual circling round his set of ideas, no longer
-reached him. She could silence and awaken him only in those rare moments
-when she was lifted out of her growing fatigues to where she could grasp
-and state in all its parts any view of life that was different from his
-own. Since she could not hold him to these shifting visions, nor drop
-them and accept his world, they had no longer anything to exchange....
-
-At the best they were like long-married people, living, alone, side by
-side; meeting only in relation to outside things. Any breaking of the
-silence into which she retreated while keeping him talking, every pause
-in her outbursts of irrepressible cheerfulness, immediately brought her
-beating up against the bars of his vision of life as uniform experience,
-and gave her a fresh access of longing to cut out of her consciousness
-the years she had spent in conflict with it.
-
-Always until tonight her longing to escape the unmanageable burden of
-his Jewishness had been quenched by the pain of the thought of his going
-off alone into banishment. But tonight the long street they were in
-shone brightly towards the movement of her thought. Some hidden barrier
-to their separation had been removed. She waited curbed, incredulous of
-her freedom to breathe the wide air; unable to close her ears to the
-morning sounds of the world opening before her as the burden slipped
-away. Drawing back, she paused to try upon herself the effect of his
-keenly imagined absence. She was dismantled, chill and empty handed,
-returning unchanged to loneliness. But no thrill of pain followed this
-final test; the unbelievable severance was already made. Even whilst
-looking for words that would break the shock, she felt she had spoken.
-
-His voice breaking his silence, came like an echo. She went like a ghost
-along the anticipated phrases, keenly aware only of those early moments
-when she had first gathered the shapes and rhythms of his talk.
-
-Freedom; and with it that terrible darkness in his voice. Words must be
-said; but it was cruel to speak from far away; from the midst of joy.
-The unburdened years were speeding towards her; she felt their breath;
-the lifting of the light with the presence, just beyond the passing
-moments, of the old companionship that for so long had been hers only
-when she could forget her surrounded state.... His resonant cough
-brought her again the sound of his voice ... how could the warm kind
-voice disappear from her days ... she felt herself quailing in
-loneliness before the sharp edges of her daily life.
-
-Glancing at him as they passed under a lamp she saw a pale, set face.
-His will was at work; he was facing his future and making terms with it.
-He would have a phrase for his loss, as a refuge from pain. That was
-comforting; but it was a base, social comfort; far away from the truth
-that was loading her with responsibility. He did not know what he was
-leaving.... There was no conscious thought in him that could grasp and
-state the reality of his loss; nor what it was in him that even now she
-could not sever from herself. If he knew, there would be no separation.
-He had actually moved into his future; taken of his own freewill the
-first step away from the shelter she gave. Perhaps a better, kinder
-shelter awaited him. Perhaps he was glad in his freedom and his manner
-was made from his foreigner's sense of what was due to the occasion. He
-did not know that there would be no more stillness for him.
-
-Yet he _did_ dimly know that part of his certainty about her was this
-mysterious _youth_; the strange everlasting sense of being, even with
-servants and young children, with _any_ child, in the presence of adult
-cynical social ability, comfortably at home in the world.... Perhaps he
-would be better off without such an isolated, helpless personality in
-the life he must lead. But letting him go was giving him up to cynicism,
-or to the fixed blind sentiments of all who were not cynics. No one
-would live with him in his early childhood, and keep it alive in him. He
-would leave it with her, without knowing that he left it.
-
-All the things she had made him contemplate would be forgotten.... He
-would plunge into the life he used to call normal.... That was jealousy;
-flaming through her being; pressing on her mind. For a moment she faced
-the certainty that she would rather annihilate his mind than give up
-overlooking and modifying his thoughts. Here alone was the root of her
-long delay ... it held no selfless desire for his welfare ... then he
-would be better off with _anyone_. He and the cynics and the
-sentimentalists were human and kindly, however blind.... They were not
-cruel; ready to wreck and destroy in order to impose their own
-certainties.... Even as she gazed into it, she felt herself drawn
-powerfully away from the abyss of her nature by the pain of anticipating
-his separated future; the experiences that would obliterate and vanquish
-her; justifying as far as he would ever again see, his original
-outlook.... She battled desperately, imploring the power of detachment,
-and immediately found words for them both.
-
-"It is weak to go on; it will only become more difficult."
-
-"You are right, it is a weakness;" his voice broke on a gusty breath;
-"tomorrow we will spend as we have promised, the afternoon with
-Lintoffs. On Monday I will go."
-
-The street swayed about her. She held on, forcing her limbs; passing
-into emptiness. The sounds of the world were very far away; but within
-their muffled faintness she heard her own free voice, and his, cheerful
-and impersonal, sounding on through life. With the breath of this
-release she touched the realization that some day, he would meet, along
-a pathway unknown to her and in a vision different from her own, the
-same truth.... What truth? God? The old male prison, whether men were
-atheists or believers?... The whole of the truth of which her joy and
-her few certainties were a part, innocently conveyed to him by someone
-with a character that would win him to attend. Then he would remember
-the things they had lost in speech. The enlightener would not argue.
-Conviction would come to him by things taken for granted.
-
-Clear demonstration is at once fooled.... All _men_ in explanatory
-speech about _life_, have at once either in the face, or in the
-unconscious rest of them, a look of shame. Because they are not living,
-but calculating.... Women who are not living ought to spend all their
-time cracking jokes. In a rotten society women grow witty; making a
-heaven while they wait....
-
-But if from this far cool place where she now was, she breathed deep and
-let mirth flow out, he would _never_ go.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-At the very beginning of the afternoon Miriam was isolated with Madame
-Lintoff. Forced to walk ahead with her, as if companionably, between the
-closed shop-fronts and the dismal gutter of Oxford Street, while her
-real place, at Michael's side, with Lintoff beyond, or side by side with
-Lintoff, and Michael beyond, was empty, and the two men walked alone,
-exchanging, without interference, one-sided, masculine views.
-
-She listened to Madame's silence. For all her indifference, she must
-have had some sort of bright anticipation of her first outing in London.
-And this was the outing. A walk, along a grey pavement, in raw grey air,
-under a heavy sky, with an Englishwoman who had no conversation.
-
-Most people began with questions. But there was no question she wanted
-to ask Madame Lintoff.... She knew her too well. During the short night
-she had become a familiar part of the picture of life; one of the
-explanations of the way things went.... Yet it was inhospitable to leave
-her with no companion but the damp motionless air.
-
-Relaxing her attention, to make an attempt at bold friendliness, she
-swung gaily along, looking independently ahead into the soft grey murk.
-But hopelessness seized her as a useless topic sprang eagerly into her
-mind and she felt herself submerged, unable to withstand its private
-charm. Helplessly she explained, in her mind, to the far-off woman at
-her side that this bleak day coming suddenly in the midst of July was
-one of the glorious things in the English weather.... Only a few people
-find English weather glorious.... Clever people think it contemptible to
-mention weather except in jest or with a passing curse. Madame Lintoff
-would have just that same expression of veiled scorn that means people
-are being kept from their topics.... For a few seconds, as she skirted a
-passing group, she looked back to an unforgettable thing, that would
-press for expression, now that she had thought of it, through anything
-she might try to say ... a wandering in twilight along a wide empty
-pavement at the corner of a square of high buildings, shutting out all
-but the space of sky above the trees.... That lovely line about
-Beatrice, bringing bright, draped, deep-toned figures, with the grave
-eyes of intensest eternal happiness, and heads bent in an attitude of
-song, about her in the upper air; the way they had come down, as she had
-lowered her eyes to the gleaming, wet pavement to listen again and again
-into the words of the wonderful line; how they had closed about her; a
-tapestry of intensifying colour, making a little chamber filled with
-deep light, gathering her into such a forgetfulness that she had found
-herself going along at a run, and when she had wakened to recall the
-sense of the day and the season, had looked up and seen November in the
-thick Bloomsbury mist, the beloved London lamplight glistening on the
-puddles of the empty street, and spreading a sheen of gold over the wet
-pavements; the jewelled darkness of the London winter coming about her
-once more; and then the glorious shock of remembering that August and
-September were still in hand, waiting hidden beyond the dark weather....
-
-She came back renewed and felt for a moment the strange familiar uneasy
-sense of being outside and indifferent to the occasion, the feeling that
-brought again and again, in spite of experience, the illusion that
-everyone was merely playing a part, distracting attention from the
-realities that persisted within. That all the distortions of speech and
-action were the whisperings and postures of beings immured in a bright
-reality they would not or could not reveal. But acting upon this belief
-always brought the same result. Astonishment, contempt, even affronted
-dignity were the results of these sudden outbreaks....
-
-But a Russian idealist ... would not be shocked, but would be
-appallingly clever and difficult. All the topics which now came tumbling
-into her mind shrank back in silence before Madame Lintoff's
-intellectual oblivion. It was more oppressive than the oblivion of the
-intellectual English. Theirs was a small, hard, bright circle. Within it
-they were self-conscious. Hers was an impersonal spreading darkness....
-
-They were nearing Oxford Circus. There were more people strolling along
-the pavement. For quite a little time they were separated by the passing
-of two scattered groups, straggling along, with hoarse cockney shouting,
-the women yodelling and yelling at everything they saw. The reprieve
-brought them together again, Miriam felt, with something rescued; a
-feeling of accomplishment. Madame Lintoff's voice came hurriedly--Was
-she noticing the Salvation Army Band, thumping across the Circus; or
-this young man getting into a hansom as if the whole world were watching
-him being importantly headlong?--mournfully came a rounded little
-sentence deploring the Sunday closing of the theatres.... She would have
-neatly deplored September.... Je trouve cela _triste_, l'automne.
-
-But thrilled by the sudden sounding of the little voice, Miriam tried
-eagerly to see London through her eyes; to find it a pity that the
-theatres were not open. She agreed, and turned her mind to the plays
-that were on at the moment. She could not imagine Madame Lintoff at any
-one of them. But their bright week-day names lost meaning in the Sunday
-atmosphere; drew back to their own place, and insisted that she should
-find a defence for its quiet emptiness. They themselves defended it,
-these English theatre names, gathering much of their colour and
-brightness from the weekly lull. But the meaning of the lull lay much
-deeper than the need for contrast; deeper than the reasons given by
-sabbatarians, whom it was a joy to defy, though they were right. It was
-something that was as difficult to defend as the qualities of the
-English weather.
-
-This Russian woman was also a continental, sharing the awful continental
-demand that the week-day things should never cease; dependent all the
-time on revolving sets of outside things ... and the modern English were
-getting more and more into the same state. In a few years Sunday would
-be "bright"; full of everyday noise. Unless someone could find words to
-explain the thing all these people called _dullness_; what it was they
-were so briskly smothering. Without the undiscoverable words, it could
-not be spoken of. An imagined attempt brought mocking laughter and the
-sound of a Bloomsbury voice: "Vous n'savez pas quand vous vous rasez,
-hein?" Madame Lintoff would not be vulgar; but she would share the
-sentiment....
-
-Miriam turned to her in wrath, feeling an opportunity. Here, for all her
-revolutionary opinions, was a representative of the talkative oblivious
-world. She would confess to her that she dared not associate closely
-with people because of the universal capacity for being bored, and the
-_hurry_ everyone was in. Her anger began to change into interest as
-words framed themselves in her mind.... But as she turned to speak she
-was shocked by the pathos of the little cloaked figure; the beautifully
-moulded, lovely disc of face, shining out clasped by the cap, above the
-close black draperies, and withdrew her eyes to contemplate in silence
-the individual life of this being; her moments of solitary dealing with
-the detail of the day when she would be forced to think _things_; not
-thoughts; and did not know how marvellous things were. That lonely one
-was the person to approach, ignoring everything else. She would protest,
-make some kind of defence; but if the ground could be held, they would
-presently be together in a bright world. But there was not enough
-_time_, between here and Hyde Park. Then later.
-
-Behind, near or far, the two dry men were keeping their heads,
-exchanging men's ready-made remarks....
-
-"Est-ce qu'il y a en Angleterre le grand drame psychologique?"
-
-What on earth did she mean?
-
-"Oh yes; here and there," said Miriam firmly.
-
-She sang over in her mind the duet of the contrasting voices as she
-turned in panic to the region within her, that was entrenched against
-England. Some light on the phrase would be there, if anywhere.... Shaw?
-Were his things great psychological dramas?
-
-"_Galumphing_ about like an _ele_phant." ... The sudden bright English
-voice reverberated through her search.... Sudermann? She saw eager,
-unconscious faces, well-off English people, seeing only their English
-world, translating everything they saw into its language; strayed into
-Oxford Street to remind her. She wanted to follow them, and go on
-hearing, within the restricted jargon of their English voices, the
-answer to questions they never dreamed of putting. The continentals put
-questions and answered them by theories. These people answered
-everything in person; and did not know it.
-
-The open spaces of the Park allowed them to line up in a row, and for
-some time they hovered on the outskirts of the crowd gathered nearest to
-the gates. Michael, in Russian, was delightedly showing off his Hyde
-Park crowds, obviously renewing his own first impression of these
-numbers of people casually gathered together--looking for his friends to
-show that they were impressed in the same way. They were impressed. They
-stood side by side, looking small and wan; making little sounds of
-appreciation, their two pairs of so different eyes wide upon the massed
-people. He could not wait; interrupted their contemplation in his ironic
-challenging way.
-
-Lintoff answered with an affectionate sideways movement of the head; two
-short Russian words pouching his red lips in a gesture of denial. But he
-did not move, as an Englishman would have done after he thought he had
-settled a debateable point; remaining there gently, accessible and
-exposed to a further onslaught. He held his truths carelessly, not as a
-personal possession, to be fought over with every other male.
-
-It was Michael who made the first movement away from his summed-up
-crowd.... They drifted in a row towards the broad pathway lined with
-seated forms looking small and misty under the high trees, but presently
-to show clearly, scrappy and inharmonious, shreds of millinery and
-tailoring, no matter how perfect, reduced to confusion, spoiling the
-effect of the flower beds brightly flaring under the grey sky and the
-wide stretch of grass, brilliant emerald until it stopped without
-horizon where the saffron distances of the mist shut thickly down. She
-asked Michael what Lintoff had said.
-
-"He says quite simply that these people are not free."
-
-"Nor are they," she said, suddenly reminded of a line of thought. "They
-are," she recited, clipping her sentences in advance as they formed, to
-fit the Russian intonation, with carelessly turned head and Lintoff's
-pout of denial on her lips, "docile material; an inexhaustible _supply_.
-An employer must husband; his horses and machinery; his people he uses
-up; as-cheaply-as-possible-always-quite-sure-of-_more_."
-
-"That has been so. But employers begin to understand that it is a sound
-economic to care for their workers."
-
-"A few. And that leads only to blue canvas."
-
-"_What_ is this?"
-
-"Wells's hordes of uniformed slaves, living in security, with all sorts
-of material enjoyments."
-
-"It surprises me that still you quote this man."
-
-"He makes phrases and pictures."
-
-"Of what service are such things from one who is incapable of
-unprejudiced thought?"
-
-"Everybody is."
-
-"Pardon me; you are _wrong_."
-
-"Thought _is_ prejudice."
-
-"That is most-monstrous."
-
-"Thought is a secondary human faculty, and can't _lead, anyone,
-anywhere_."
-
-He turned away to the Lintoffs with a question. His voice was like a
-cracked bell. Lintoff's gentle, indifferent tones made a docile
-response.
-
-"I suggest we have _tea_," bellowed Michael softly, facing her with a
-cheerful countenance. "They agree. Is it not a good idea?"
-
-"Perfectly splendid," she murmured, smiling her relief. He could be
-trusted not to endure ... to be tired of an adventure before it had
-begun....
-
-"Certainly it is splendid if it bring dimples. Where shall we go?" He
-turned eagerly, to draw them back at once to the park gates, shouting
-gaily as he broke the group, "Na, na; _where_. What do you think,
-Miriam?"
-
-"There isn't anything near here," she objected. She pressed forward with
-difficulty, her strength ebbing away behind her. His impatience was
-drawing them away from something towards which they had all been moving.
-It was as if her real being were still facing the other way.
-
-"No--where really can we go?" In an instant he would remember the dark
-little Italian-Swiss cafe near the Marble Arch, and its seal would be
-set on the whole of the afternoon. The Lintoffs would not be aware of
-this. They were indifferent to surroundings in a world that had only one
-meaning for them. But the sense of them and their world, already, in the
-boundless immensity of Sunday, scattered into the past, would be an
-added misery amongst the clerks and shop-girls crowded in that stuffy
-little interior where so many of her Sunday afternoons had died. The
-place cancelled all her worlds, put an end to her efforts to fit Michael
-into them, led her always impatiently into the next week for
-forgetfulness of their recurring, strife-tormented leisure....
-
-Verandahs and sunlit sea; small drawing-rooms, made large by their
-wandering shapes; spaces of shadow and sunlight beautifying all their
-English Sunday contents; windowed alcoves reflecting the sky; spacious,
-silken, upstairs tea-rooms in Bond Street.... But these things were hers
-now, only through friends. Here, by herself, as the Lintoffs knew her,
-she belonged to the resourceless crowd of London workers....
-
-Michael ordered much tea and a lemonade, in a reproachful aside to the
-pallid grubby little waiter squeezing his way between the close-set
-tables with a crowded tray held high.
-
-"'Ow many?" he murmured over his shoulder, turning a low-browed anxious
-face. His tray tilted dangerously, sliding its contents.
-
-"You can count?" said Michael without looking at him.
-
-"Four tea, four limonade," murmured the poor little man huskily.
-
-"I have ordered _tea_," thundered Michael. "You can bring also one
-bottle limonade."
-
-The waiter pushed on, righting his noisy trayful. Michael subsided with
-elbows on the smeary marble table-top, his face propped on his hands,
-about to speak. The Lintoffs also; their gleaming pale faces set towards
-the common centre, while their eyes brooded outwards on the crowded
-little scene. Miriam surveyed them, glad of their engrossment, dizzy
-with the sense of having left herself outside in the Park.
-
-"Shall I tell the Lintoffs that you have dimples?" Michael asked
-serenely, shifting his bunched face round to smile at her.
-
-She checked him as he leaned across to call their attention.... It was
-in this very room that she had first told him he must choose between her
-company and violent scenes with waiters. He was utterly unconscious;
-aware only of his compatriots sitting opposite, himself before them in
-the pride of an international friendship. Yesterday's compact set aside,
-quite likely, later on, to be questioned.
-
-The Lintoffs' voices broke out together, chalkily smooth and toneless
-against the cockney sounds vibrating in the crowded space, _all_ harsh
-and strident, _all_ either facetious or wrangling. Their eyes had come
-back. But they themselves were absent, set far away, amongst their
-generalisations. Of the actual life of the passing moment they felt no
-more than Michael. Itself, its uniqueness, the deep loop it made, did
-not exist for them. They looked only towards the future. He only at a
-uniform pattern of humanity.
-
-Yet within the air itself was all the time the something that belonged
-to everybody; that could be universally recognised; disappearing at once
-with every outbreak of speech that sought only for distraction, from
-embarrassment or from tedium.... She sat lifeless, holding for comfort
-as she gathered once more, even with these free Russians, the proof of
-her perfect social incompatibility, to the thought that this endurance
-was the last. These were the last hours of wandering out of the course
-of her being.... She felt herself grow pale and paler, sink each moment
-more utterly out of life. The pain in her brow pressed upon her eyelids
-like a kind of sleep. She must be looking quite horrible. Was there
-anyone, anywhere, who suffered quite in this way, felt always and
-everywhere so utterly different?
-
-Tea came bringing the end of the trio of Russian phrases. Michael began
-to dispense it, telling the Lintoffs that they had discovered that the
-English did not know how to drink tea. Ardent replies surged at the back
-of her mind; but speech was a faraway mystery. She clung to Michael's
-presence, the sight of his friendly arm handing the cup she could not
-drink; to the remembered perfection of his acceptance of failures and
-exhaustions ... mechanically she was speaking French ... appearing
-interested and sincere; caring only for the way the foreign words gave a
-quality to the barest statement by placing it in far-off surroundings,
-giving it a life apart from its meaning, bearing her into a tide of
-worldly indifference....
-
-But real impressions living within her own voice came crowding upon her,
-overwhelming the forced words, opening abysses, threatening complete
-flouting of her surroundings. She snatched at them as they passed before
-her, smiled her vanishing thread of speech into inanity, and sat silent,
-half turned towards the leaping reproachful shapes of thought,
-inexpressible to these people waiting with faces set only towards swift
-replies. Madame Lintoff made a fresh departure in her moaning sweetly
-querulous voice ... a host of replies belonged to it, all contradicting
-each other. But there was a smooth neat way of replying to a thing like
-that, leading quickly on to something that would presently cancel it ...
-quite simple people.... Mrs. Bailey, saying wonderful things without
-knowing it.
-
-Answers given knowingly, admitted what they professed to demolish....
-She had forfeited her right to speak; disappeared before their eyes, and
-must yet stay, vulnerable, held by the sounds she had woven, false
-threads between herself and them. Her head throbbed with pain, a molten
-globe that seemed to be expanding to the confines of the room. Michael
-was inaccessible, carefully explaining to Madame Lintoff, in his way,
-why she had said what she had said; set with boyish intentness towards
-the business of opening his dreadful green bottle.
-
-Lintoff sat upright with a listening face; the lit brooding face of one
-listening to distant music. He was all lit, all the time, curiously
-giving out light that his thinly coloured eyes and flaming beard helped
-to flow forth. She could imagine him speaking to crowds; but he had not
-the unmistakable speaker's look, that lifted look and the sense of the
-audience; always there, even in converse with intimate friends.... But
-of course in Russia there were no crowds, none of that machinery of
-speaker and audience, except for things that were not going to end in
-action.... When Michael lifted his glass with a German toast, Lintoff's
-smile came without contracting his face, the light that was in him
-becoming a person. He was so far away from the thoughts provoked by
-speech that he could be met afresh in each thing that was said; coming
-down into it whole and serious from his impersonal distances; but only
-to go back. There was no permanent marvel for him in the present.... The
-room was growing dim. Only Michael's profile was clear, tilted as he
-tossed off his dreadful drink at one draught. His face came round at
-last, fresh and glowing with the effervescence. He exclaimed, in gulps,
-at her pallor and ordered hot milk for her, quietly and courteously from
-the hovering waiter. The Lintoffs uttered little condolences most
-tenderly, with direct homely simplicity.
-
-Sitting exempted, sipping her milk while the others talked, lounging, in
-smooth gentle tones, three forces ... curbed to gentleness ... she felt
-the room about her change from gloom to a strange blurred brightness, as
-if she were seeing it through frosted glass.... A party of young men
-were getting up to go, stamping their feet and jostling each other as
-they shook themselves to rights, letting their jeering, jesting voices
-reach street level before they got to the door. They filed past. Their
-faces, browless under evilly flattened cloth caps, or too large under
-horrible shallow bowlers set too far back, were all the same, set
-towards the street with the look, even while they jested, of empty
-finality; choiceless dead faces. They were not really gay. They had not
-been gay as they sat. Only defiantly noisy, collected together to
-banish, with their awful ritual of jeers and jests, the closed-in view
-that was always before their eyes; giving them, even when they were at
-their rowdiest, that look of lonely awareness of something that would
-never change. That was _why_ they jeered? Why their voices were always
-defensive and defiant? What else could they do when they could alter
-nothing and never get away? The last of the file was different; a dark
-young man with a club-footed gait. His face was pursed a little with the
-habit of facetiousness, but not aggressively; the forehead that had just
-disappeared under his dreadful cap was touched with a radiance, a
-reflection of some individual state of being, permanently independent of
-his circumstances; very familiar, reminding her of something glad ...
-she found it as she brought her eyes back to the table; the figure of a
-boy, swinging in clumsy boots along the ill-lit tunnel of that new tube
-at Finsbury Park on a Saturday night, playing a concertina; a frightful
-wheezing and jangling of blurred tones, filling the passage, bearing
-down upon her, increasing in volume, detestable. But she had taken in
-the leaping unconscious rhythmic swinging of his body and the joy it was
-to him to march down the long clear passage, and forgiven him before he
-passed; and then his eyes as he came, rapt and blissfully grave above
-the hideous clamour.
-
-"Listen, Miriam. Here is something for you." She awoke to scan the three
-busy faces. It had not been her fault that she had failed and dropped
-away from them. Had it been her fault? The time was drawing to an end.
-Presently they would separate for good. The occasion would have slipped
-away. With this overwhelming sense of the uniqueness of occasions, she
-yet forgot every time, that every occasion was unique, and limited in
-time, and would not recur.... She sat up briskly to listen. There was
-still time in hand. They had been ages together. She was at home. She
-yawned and caught Lintoff's smiling eye. There was a brightness in this
-little place; all sorts of things that reflected the light ... metal and
-varnished wood, upright; flat surfaces; the face of the place; its
-features certainly _sometimes_ cleansed, perhaps by whistling waiters in
-the jocund morning, for her. She did not dust ... she could talk and
-listen, in prepared places, knowing nothing of their preparations....
-She belonged to the leisure she had been born in, to the beauty of
-things. The margins of her time would always be glorious.
-
-"Lintoff says that he understands not at all the speech of these young
-men who were only now here. I have not listened; but it was of course
-simply cockney. He declares that one man used repeatedly to the waiter
-making the bill, one expression, sounding to him like a mixture of Latin
-and Chinese--_Ava-tse_. I confess that after all these years it means to
-me absolutely nothing. Can you recognise it?"
-
-She turned the words over in her mind, but could not translate them
-until she recalled the group of men and the probable voice. Then she
-recoiled. Lintoff and Michael did not know the horror they were handling
-with such light amusement.
-
-"I know," she said, "it's appalling; fearful"--even to think the words
-degraded the whole spectacle of life, set all its objects within reach
-of the transforming power of unconscious distortion....
-
-"Why fearful? It is just the speech of London. Certainly this tame boor
-was not swearing?" railed Michael. Lintoff's smile was now all personal
-curiosity.
-
-"It's not Cockney. It's the worst there is. London Essex. He meant
-_I've_; _had_; _two_; buns or something. Isn't it _perfectly_ awful?"
-Again the man appeared horribly before her, his world summarised in
-speech that must, _did_ bring everything within it to the level of its
-baseness.
-
-"Is it possible?" said Michael with an amused chuckle. Lintoff was
-murmuring the phrase that meant for him an excursion into the language
-of the people. He could not see its terrible menace. The uselessness of
-opposing it.... Revolutionaries would let all these people out to spread
-over everything.... But the people themselves would change? But it would
-be too late to save the language....
-
-"English is being destroyed," she proclaimed. "There _is_ a relationship
-between sound and things.... If you heard a Canadian reading
-Tennyson.... 'Come into the goiden, Mahd.' But that's different. And in
-parts of America a very beautiful rich free English is going on; more
-vivid than ours, and taking things in all the time. It is only in
-England that deformed speech is increasing--is being _taught_ in
-schools. It shapes these people's mouths and contracts their throats and
-makes them hard-eyed."
-
-"You have no ground _whatever_ for these wild statements."
-
-"They are not wild; they are tame, when you really think of it." Lintoff
-was watching tensely; deploring wasted emotion ... probably.
-
-"Do you think Lintoff...." They moved on in their talk, unapprehensive
-foreigners, leaving the heart of the problem untouched. It was difficult
-to keep attached to a conversation that was half Michael's, with the
-Lintoffs holding back, acquiescing indulgently in his topics. An
-encyclopaedia making statements to people who were moving in a dream;
-halting and smiling and producing gestures and kindly echoes.... Michael
-like a rock for most things as they were and had been in the past, yet
-knowing them only in one way; clear as crystal about ordered knowledge,
-but never questioning its value.
-
-She wanted, now, to talk again alone with Lintoff ... anything would do.
-The opposition that was working within her, not to his vision, but to
-his theory of it, and of the way it should be realised, would express
-itself to him through any sort of interchange. Something he brought with
-him would be challenged by the very sound on the air of the things that
-would be given her to say, if she could be with him before the mood of
-forgetful interest should be worn away. She sat waiting for the homeward
-walk, surrounded by images of the things that had made her; not hers,
-England's, but which she represented and lived in, through something
-that had been born with her. If there was anyone she had ever met to
-whom these things could be conveyed without clear speech or definite
-ideas, it was he. But when they left the restaurant they walked out into
-heavy rain and went to the place of parting, separated and silent in a
-crowded 'bus.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Michael was going to keep his word.
-
-Michael alone. With more than the usual man's helplessness.... Getting
-involved. At the mercy of his inability to read people.
-
-The torment of missing his near warm presence would grow less, but the
-torment of not knowing what was happening to him would increase.
-
-This stillness creeping out from the corners of the room was the opening
-of a lifetime of loneliness. It would grow to be far more dreadful than
-it was tonight. Tonight it was alive, between the jolly afternoon with
-the Lintoffs--_jolly_; the last bit of shared life--and the agony of
-tomorrow's break with Michael. But a day would come when the silence
-would be untormented, absolute, for life; echoing to all her movements
-in the room; waiting to settle as soon as she was still.
-
-She resisted, pitting against it the sound of London. But in the distant
-voice there was a new note; careless dismissal. The busy sound seemed
-very far away; like an echo of itself.
-
-She moved quickly at the first sinking of her heart, and drew in her
-eyes from watching her room, the way its features stood aloof, separate
-and individual; independent of her presence. In a moment panic would
-have seized her, leaving no refuge. She asserted herself, involuntarily
-whistling under her breath, a cheerful sound that called across the
-night to the mistaken voice of London and blended at once with its
-song.... She would tell Michael he must communicate with her in any dire
-necessity.... Moving about unseeing she broke up the shape of her room
-and blurred its features and waited, holding on. Attention to these wise
-outside threats would drive away something coming confidently towards
-her, just round the corner of this vast, breathless moment.... She
-paused to wait for it as for a person about to speak aloud in the room,
-and drew a deep breath sending through her a glow from head to foot ...
-it was there; independent, laughing, bubbling up incorrigibly, golden
-and bright with a radiance that spread all round her; her _profanity_
-... but if incurable profanity was incurable happiness, how could she
-help believing and trusting it against all other voices ... if the last
-deepest level of her being was joy ... a hilarity against which
-_nothing_ seemed to be able to prevail ... able, in spite of herself, in
-spite of her many solemn eager expeditions in opposition to it, to be
-always there, not gone; always waiting behind the last door. It was
-simply _rum_. Her limbs stirred to a dance ... how _slowly_ he had
-played that wild Norwegian tune; making it like an old woman singing to
-a fretful child to cheat it into comfort; a gay quavering.
-
-Its expanded gestures carried her slowly and gently up and down the
-room, dipping, swaying, with wooden clogs on her feet, her arms swinging
-to balance the slow movements of her body, the surrounding mountain
-landscape gleaming in the joy of the festival, defying the passing of
-the years. She could not keep within the slow rhythm. Her feet flung off
-the clogs and flew about the room until she was arrested by the flying
-dust and escaped to the window while it settled behind her on the
-subdued furniture. A cab whistle was sounding in the street and the
-voices, coming up through the rain-moist air, of people grouped waiting
-on a doorstep ... come out into the deep night, out again into endless
-space, from a room, and still keeping up the sound of carefully
-modulated speech and laughter. The jingling of a hansom sounded far away
-in the square. It would be years before it would get to them. They would
-have to go on fitting things into the shape of their carefully made
-tones. She was tempted to call down to them to stop; tell them they were
-not taking anyone in....
-
-A puff of wind brought the rain against her face, inviting her to stay
-with the night and find again, as she had done in the old days of
-solitude, the strange wide spaces within the darkness. But she was drawn
-back by a colloquy set in, behind her, in the room. Warmly the little
-shabby enclosure welcomed her, given back, eager for her to go on
-keeping her life in it; showing her the time ahead, the circling scenes;
-all the undeserved, unsought, extraordinary wealth of going on being
-alive. She stood with the rain-drops on her face, tingling from head to
-foot to know why; why; _why_ life should exist....
-
-Going back into the room she found that her movement about it had all
-its old quality; she was once more in that zone of her being where all
-the past was with her unobstructed; not recalled, but present, so that
-she could move into any part and be there as before. She felt her way to
-sit on the edge of her bed, but gently as she let herself down, the
-bedstead creaked and gave beneath her, jolting her back into today,
-spreading before her the nothingness of the days she must now pass
-through, bringing back into her mind the threats and wise sayings. She
-faced them with arguments, flinching as she recognised this
-acknowledgment of their power.
-
-Lifelong loneliness is a _phrase_. With no evidence for its meaning, but
-the things set down in books.... People who _record_ loneliness, bare
-their wounds, and ask for pity, are not wholly wounded. For others, no
-one has any right to speak.... What is "a lonely figure"? If it knows it
-is lonely it is not altogether lonely. If it does not know, it is not
-lonely. Books about people are lies from beginning to end. However
-sincere, they cannot offer any evidence about _life_. Even lifelong
-loneliness is life; too marvellous to express. Absolutely, of course.
-But relatively? Relative things are forgotten when you are alone....
-
-The thought, at this moment, of the alternative of any sort of social
-life with its trampling hurry, made her turn to the simple single sense
-of her solitude with thankfulness that it was preserved. Social
-incompatibility thought of alone, brought a curious boundless promise, a
-sense of something ahead that she must be alone to meet, or would miss.
-The condemnation of social incompatibility coming from the voices of the
-world roused an impatience which could not feel ashamed; an angry demand
-for time, and behind it a sense of companionship for which there was no
-name....
-
-Single, detached figures came vividly before her, all women. Each of
-them had spoken to her with sudden intimacy, on the outskirts of groups
-from which she had moved away to breathe and rest. They had all
-confessed their incompatibility; a chosen or accepted loneliness. But it
-was certain they never felt that human forms about them crushed, with
-the sets of unconsidered assumptions behind their talk, the very sense
-of existence. They were either cynical, not only seeing through people,
-but not caring at all to be alive, never assuming characters in order to
-share the fun ... or they were "misjudged" or "resigned." The cynical
-ones were really alone. They never had any sense of being accompanied by
-themselves. They had a strange hard strength; unexpected hobbies and
-interests. Those who were resigned were usually religious.... They lived
-in the company of their idea of Christ ... but regretfully ... as if it
-were a second best.... "And I who hoped for only God, found _thee_." ...
-Mrs. Browning could never have realised how fearfully funny that was ...
-from a churchwoman.... And Protestant churchwomen believe that only men
-are eligible to associate with God. Thinking of Protestant husbands the
-idea was suffocating. It made God intolerable; and even Heaven simply
-_abscheulich_.... Buddhism.... "Buddhism is the only faith that offers
-itself to men and women alike on equal terms ..." and then, "women are
-not encouraged to become priests" ... _Thibet_.... The whole world would
-be Thibet if the people were evenly distributed. Only the historic
-centuries had given men their monstrous illusions; only the crowding of
-the women in towns. But the Church will go on being a Royal Academy of
-Males....
-
-She called back her thoughts from a contemplation that would lead only
-to anger, and was again aware of herself waiting, on the edge of her
-bed, just in time. In spite of her truancy the gay tumult was still
-seething in her mind; the whole of her past happinesses close about her,
-drawing her in and out of the years. Fragments of forgotten experience
-detached themselves, making a bright moving patchwork as she watched,
-waiting, while she passed from one to another and fresh patches were
-added drawing her on. Joy piled up within her; but while she savoured
-again the quality all these past things had held as she lived them
-through, she suddenly knew that they were there only because she was on
-her way to a goal. Somewhere at the end of this ramble into the past,
-was a release from wrath. She rallied to the coolness far away within
-her tingling blood. How astoundingly good life was; generous to the
-smallest effort.... The scenes gathered about her, called her back,
-acquired backgrounds that spread and spread. She watched single figures
-going on into lives in which she had no part; into increasing incidents,
-leaving them, as they had found them, unaware. They never stopped, never
-dropped their preoccupation with people and the things that happened, to
-notice the extraordinariness of the world being there and they on it ...
-and so it was, everywhere....
-
-She seemed to be looking with a hundred eyes, multitudinously, seeing
-each thing from several points at once, while through her mind flitted
-one after another all the descriptions of humanity she had ever culled.
-There was no goal here. Only the old familiar business of suspended
-opinions, the endless battling of thoughts. She turned away. She had
-gone too far. Now there would be lassitude and the precipice that
-waited.... Her room was clear and hard about her as she moved to take
-refuge near the friendly gas, the sheeny patch of wall underneath it.
-
-As she stood within the radiance, conscious only of the consoling light,
-the little strip of mantelshelf and the small cavernous presence of the
-empty grate, a single scene opened for a moment in the far distance,
-closing in the empty vista, standing alone, indistinct, at the bottom of
-her ransacked mind. It was gone. But its disappearance was a gentle
-touch that lingered, holding her at peace and utterly surprised.
-
-This forgotten thing was the most deeply engraved of all her memories?
-The most powerful? More than any of the bright remembered things that
-had seemed so good as they came, suddenly, catching her up and away,
-each one seeming to be the last her lot would afford?
-
-It was. The strange faint radiance in which it had shone cast a soft
-grey light within the darkness concealing the future....
-
-Oldfield. It had come about through Dr. Salem Oldfield. She could not
-remember his arrival. Only suddenly realising him, one evening at dinner
-when he had been long enough in the house to chaff Mrs. Bailey about
-some imaginary man. Sex-chaff; that was his form of humour; giving him
-away as a nonconformist. But so handsome, sitting large and square, a
-fine massive head, well shaped hair, thick, and dinted with close
-cropped waves; talking about himself in the eloquent American way. It
-was that night he had told the table how he met his fiancee. He was a
-charlatan, stagey; but there must have been something behind his clever
-anecdotal American piety. Something remained even after the other
-doctors' stories about his sharing their sitting-room and books, without
-sharing expenses; about his laziness and self-indulgence.
-
-Mr. Chadband. But why shouldn't people on the way to Heaven enjoy
-buttered toast? A hypocrite is all the time trying to be something, or
-he wouldn't be a hypocrite.... And the story he told was _true_.... Dr.
-Winchester knew. It was with his friends at Balham that the girl had
-been staying. Wonderful. His lonely despair in Uganda; the way he had
-forced himself in the midst of his darkness to visit the sick convert
-... and found the answer to his trouble in a leaflet hymn at the
-bedside; and come to London for his furlough and met the authoress in
-the very first house he visited. Things like that don't happen unless
-people are real in some way. And the way he had admired Michael; and
-liked him.
-
-It had been Michael he had taken to the Quaker meeting. But there must
-have been some talk with him about religion, to lead up to that sudden
-little interview on the stairs, he holding a book in one large hand and
-thumping it with the other.... "You'll find the basic realities of
-religious belief set forth _here_; in this small volume. Your George Fox
-was a marvellous man." There was an appealing truth in him at that
-moment, and humility.... But before his footsteps had died away she knew
-she could not read the book. Even the sight of it suggested his
-sledge-hammer sentimental piety. Also she had felt that the religious
-opinions of a politician could not clear up the problems that had
-baffled Emerson. It was only after she had given back the book that she
-remembered the other George Fox and the Quaker in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.
-But she had said she had read it and that it was wonderful, to silence
-his evangelistic attacks, and also for the comfort of sharing, with
-anybody, the admission that there was absolute wonderfulness.
-
-After that there was no memory of him until the Sunday morning when
-Michael had come panting upstairs to ask her to go to this meeting. He
-was incoherent, and she had dressed and gone out with them, into the
-high bright Sunday morning stillness; without knowing whither. Finding
-out, somewhere on the way, that they were going to see Quakers waiting
-to be moved by the spirit.... A whitewashed room, with people in Quaker
-dress sitting in a circle? Shocking to break in on them.... Startling
-not to have remembered them in all these years of hoping to meet someone
-who understood silence; and now to be going to them as a show; because
-Dr. Oldfield admired Michael, and being American, found out the unique
-things in London....
-
-In amongst the small old shops in St. Martin's Lane, gloomy, iron-barred
-gates, a long bleak corridor, folding doors; and suddenly inside a large
-room with sloping galleries and a platform, like a concert room, a row
-of dingy modern people sitting on the platform facing a scattered
-"chapel" congregation; men and women sitting on different sides of the
-room ... being left standing under the dark gallery, while Dr. Oldfield
-and Michael were escorted to seats amongst the men; slipping into a
-chair at the back of the women's side; stranded in an atrocious emphasis
-of sex. But the men were on the _left_ ... and numbers of them; not the
-few of a church congregation; and young; modern young men in overcoats;
-really religious, and _not_ thinking the women secondary.... But there
-were men also on the women's side; here and there. Married men? Then
-those across the way were bachelors.... That young man's profile; very
-ordinary and with a _walrus_ moustache; but stilled from its maleness,
-deliberately divested and submitted to silence, redeeming him from his
-type....
-
-To have been born amongst these people; to know at home and in the
-church a _shared_ religious life.... They were in Heaven already.
-Through acting on their belief. Where two or three are gathered
-together. Nearer than thoughts; nearer than breathing; nearer than hands
-and feet. The church knew it; but put the cart before the horse; the
-surface before the reality. The beautiful surroundings, the bridge of
-music and then, the moment the organ stopped a booming or nasal voice at
-top speed, "T' th' _Lord_our God b'long _mah_cies 'n f'giveness." ...
-Anger and excited discovery and still more time wasted, in glancing
-across to find Michael, small and exposed at the gangway end, his head
-decorously bent, the Jew in him paying respect, but looking up and
-keenly about him from under his bent brows, observing on the only terms
-he knew, through eye and brain....
-
-Michael was a determinist.... But to assume the presence of the holy
-spirit was also determinism?... Beyond him Dr. Oldfield, huge and
-eagerly bowed, conforming to Quaker usages, describing the occasion in
-his mind as he went. It was just then, turning to get away from his
-version, that the quality of the silence had made the impression that
-had come back to her now.
-
-Dr. McHibbert said pure being was nothing. But there is no such thing as
-nothing ... being in the silence was being in something alive and
-positive; at the centre of existence; being there with others made the
-sense of it stronger than when it was experienced alone. Like lonely
-silence it drove away the sense of enclosure. There had been no
-stuffiness of congregated humanity; the air, breathed in, had held
-within it a freshness, spreading coolness and strength through the
-secret passages of the nerves.
-
-It had felt like the beginning of a life that was checked and postponed
-into the future by the desire to formulate it; and by the nudging of a
-homesickness for daily life with these people who lived from the centre,
-admitted, in public, that life brims full all the time, away below
-thoughts and the loud shapes of things that happen.... And just as she
-had longed for the continuance of the admission, the spell had been
-broken. Suddenly, not in continuance, not coming out of the stillness,
-but interrupting it, an urbane, ingratiating voice. Standing up in the
-corner of the platform, turned towards the congregation, as if he were a
-lecturer facing an audience, a dapper little man in a new spring suit,
-with pink cheeks and a pink rose in his buttonhole.... Afterwards it had
-seemed certain that he had broken the silence because the time was
-running out. Strangers were present and the spirit must move....
-
-It had been a little address, a thought-out lecture on natural history,
-addressed by a specialist to people less well informed. He had talked
-his subject not with, but at them.... While his voice went on, the
-gathering seemed to lose all its religious significance. His informing
-air; his encouraging demonstrator's smiles; his obvious relish of the
-array of facts. They fell on the air like lies, losing even their own
-proper value, astray and intruding in the wrong context. When he sat
-down the silence was there again, but within it were the echoes of the
-urbane, expounding, professorial voice. Then, just afterwards, the
-breaking forth of that old man's muffled tones; praying; quietly, as if
-he were alone. No one to be seen; a humbled life-worn old voice, coming
-out of the heart of the gathering, carrying with it, gently, all the
-soreness and groaning that might be there. No whining or obsequiousness;
-no putting on of a special voice; patient endurance and longing;
-affection and confidence. And far away within the indistinct aged tones,
-a clarion note; the warm glow of sunlight; his own strong certainty
-beating up unchanged beneath the heavy weight of his years. A gentle,
-clean, clear-eyed old man, with certainly a Whitman beard. Beautiful.
-For a moment it had been perfectly beautiful.
-
-If he had stopped abruptly.... But the voice cleared and swelled. Life
-dropped away from it; leaving a tiresome old gentleman in full blast;
-thoughts coming in to shape carefully the biblical phrases describing
-God; to God. In the end he too was lecturing the congregation, praying
-at them, expressing his judgment.... Bleakness spread through the air.
-It was worse than the little pink man, who partly knew what he was doing
-and was ashamed. But this old chap was describing, at awful length,
-without knowing it, the secret of his own surface misery, the fact that
-he had never got beyond the angry, jealous, selfish, male God of the
-patriarchate.
-
-Almost at once after that, the stirring and breaking up; and those
-glimpses, as people moved and turned towards each other, shaking hands,
-of the faces of some of the women, bringing back the lost impression.
-The inner life of the meeting was more fully with the women? It was they
-who spread the pure, live atmosphere? But they were obviously related.
-They had a household look, but not narrowly; none of the air of
-isolation that spread from churchwomen; the look of being used up by men
-and propping up a man's world with unacknowledged, or simply unpondered,
-private reservations. Nor any of the jesting air of those women who
-'make the best of things.' They looked enviably, deeply, richly alive,
-on the very edge of the present, representing their faith in their own
-persons, entirely self-centred and self-controlled; poised and serene
-and withdrawn, yet not withholding. They had no protesting competing
-eagerness, and none of the secret arrogance of churchwomen. Their
-dignity was not dignified. Seen from behind they had none of the
-absurdity of churchwomen, devoutly uppish about the status of an
-institution which was a standing insult to their very existence.... It
-was they, the shock of the relief, after the revealed weakness of the
-men, of their perfect poise, their personality, so strong and intense
-that it seemed to hold the power of reaching forth, impersonally, in any
-thinkable direction, that had finally confirmed the impression that had
-been so deep and that yet had not once come up into her thoughts since
-the day it was made....
-
-The poorest, least sincere type of Anglican priest had a something that
-was lacking in Dr. Oldfield and the pink man. The absence of it had been
-the most impressive part of seeing them talking together. He had
-introduced Michael first. And the feeling of being affronted had quickly
-changed to thankfulness at representing nothing in the eyes of the suave
-little man. He had given only half his attention, not taking up the fact
-that Michael was a Zionist; his eyes wandering about; the proprietary
-eyes of a churchwarden....
-
-St. Pancras clock struck two. But there was no sense of night in the
-soft wide air; pouring in now more strongly at the open casement,
-rattling its fastening gently, rhythmically, to and fro, sounding its
-two little notes. It was the _west_ wind. Of _course_ she was not tired
-and there was no sense of night. She hurried to be in bed in the
-darkness, breathing it in, listening to the little voice at the window.
-Here was part of the explanation of her evening. Again and again it had
-happened; the escape into the tireless unchanging centre; when the wind
-was in the west. Michael had been hurt when she had told him that the
-west wind brought her perfect happiness and always, like a sort of
-message, the certainty that she must remain alone. But it was through
-him that she had discovered that it transformed her. It was an augury
-for tomorrow. For the way of the wind tonight, its breath passing
-through her, recalled, seeming exactly to repeat, that wonderful night
-of restoration when, for the only time, he had been away from London. It
-was useless to deplore the seeming cruelty. The truth was forced upon
-her, wafted through her by this air that washed away all the
-circumstances of her life.
-
-
-
-
-                              CHAPTER III
-
-
-She was inside the dark little hall, her luggage being set down in the
-shadows by the brisk silent maid. At the sight of the wide green
-staircase ascending to the upper world, the incidents of the journey,
-translated as she drove to the house into material for conversation,
-fell away and vanished.
-
-The thud of the swing door, the flurry of summer skirts threshed by
-flying footsteps; Alma hurrying to meet her.... It was folly; _madness_;
-to flout the year's fatigue by coming here to stay, instead of going
-away with friends also tired and seeking holiday....
-
-With the first step on the yielding pile of the stair-carpet she forgot
-everything but the escape from noise and gloom and grime. She was going
-up for four endless weeks into the clean light streaming down from
-above. This time there should be no brisk beginning. She would act out
-Alma's promise to accept her as an invalid deaf mute. There was so much
-time that fatigue was an asset, the shadow against which all this
-brightness shone out.
-
-But Alma was not welcoming an invalid. There she stood, at the end of
-her rush, daintily jigging from foot to foot, in a delicate frilly
-little dress; heading the perspective of pure white and green, surfaces
-and angles sharp in the east light coming through the long casement. She
-checked the bright perspective with the thought in her dress, the
-careful arrangement of her softly woven pile of bright hair, the
-afternoon's excitement, from which she had rushed forth, shining through
-her always newly charming little pointed square face.
-
-"Shall I labour up the rest of the stairs, or sit down here and burst
-into tears?"
-
-"Oh, come up, dear ole fing," she cried with tender irony; but _irony_.
-"Paw fing. Is it _very_ tired?" But her gentle arms and hands were
-perfectly, wonderfully understanding; though her face withdrawn from her
-gentle kiss still mocked; always within the limpid brown eyes that
-belabouring, rallying, mocking spirit. She held her smile radiantly,
-against a long troubled stare, and then it broke into her abrupt gurgle
-of laughter.
-
-"_Come_ along," she cried and carried a guest at a run along the passage
-and through the swing door.
-
-It was the downstairs spare room.... Miriam had expected the winding
-stair, the room upstairs, where all her shorter visits were stored up.
-She was to be down here at the centre of the house, just behind low
-casements, right on the garden, touched by the sound of the sea. And
-within the curtain-shaded sound-bathed green-lit space there was a
-deeper remoteness than even in the far high room, so weirdly shaped by
-the burning roof; its orange light always full of a strange listening
-silence....
-
-"_Alma._ How _perfectly_ glorious." She stood still, turned away, as
-Alma closed the door, contemplating the screened light falling
-everywhere on spaces of pure fresh colour, against which the deep tones
-of single objects shone brightly.
-
-Alma neighed gently and with little gurgles of laughter put her hands
-about her and gently shook her. "It _is_ rather a duck of a room. It
-_is_ rather a duck of a room." Another little affectionate, clutching
-shake. Her face was crinkled, her eyes twinkling with mirth; as if she
-gave the room a little sportive push that left it bashed amusingly
-sideways. In just this way had she jested when they walked, wearing long
-pigtails, down the Upper Richmond Road. If she could have echoed the
-words and joined in Alma's laughter, she would have been, in Alma's
-eyes, suitably launched on her visit. But she couldn't. _Amused_
-approval was an outrage on something. Yet the kind of woman who would be
-gravely pleased and presently depart to her own quarters proud and
-possessive, would also leave everything unexpressed. But that kind of
-person would not have achieved this kind of room ... and to Alma the
-wonder of it was of course inseparable from the adventure of getting it
-together. It was something in the independent effect of things that was
-violated by regarding them merely as successful larks.... Yet Alma's
-sense of beauty, her recognition of its unfamiliar forms was keener,
-more experienced, more highly-wrought than her own.
-
-"I shall spend the whole of my time in here, doing absolutely nothing."
-
-"You shall! You shall! _Dear_ old Mira." She was laughing again. "But
-you'll come out and have tea. Sometimes. Won't you, for instance, come
-out and have tea _now_? In a few minutes? There'll be tea; in _ever_
-such a few minutes. Wouldn't that be a bright idea?" How dainty she was;
-how pretty. A Dresden china shepherdess, without the simper; a
-sturdiness behind her sparkling mirth. If only she would stop trying to
-liven her up. It seemed always when they were alone, as if she were
-still brightly in the midst of people keeping things going....
-
-"Tea! Bright idea! Tea!" A little parting shake and a brisk whirling
-turn and she was sitting away on the side of the bed, meditatively, with
-both hands, using a small filmy handkerchief, having given up hope of
-galvanising; saying gravely, "Take off your things and tell me really
-how you are."
-
-"I'm at my last gasp," said Miriam sinking into a chair. It was clear
-now that she would not be alone with the first expressiveness of the
-room. Returning later on she would find it changed. The first, already
-fading, wonderful moment would return, painfully, only when she was
-packing up to go. After all it was Alma's home. But it was no use trying
-to fight this monstrous conviction that the things she liked of other
-people, were more hers than their own. The door opened again upon a
-servant with her pilgrim baskets.
-
-"I nearly always _am_ at my last gasp nowadays." Clean, strong neatly
-cuffed hands setting the dusty London baskets down to rest in the quiet
-freshness.
-
-Alma spoke formally; her voice a comment on expressiveness in the
-presence of the maid; and an obliteration of the expressiveness of the
-room; making it just a square enclosure set about with independent
-things, each telling, one against the other, a separate history.... When
-the maid was gone the air was parched with silence. Miriam felt
-suspended; impatient; eager to be out in whatever grouping Alma had come
-from, to recover there in the open the sense of life that had departed
-from the sheltering room.
-
-"How is Sarah?" Alma felt the strain. But for her it was the difficulty
-of finding common ground for interchange with anyone whose life was
-lacking in brilliant features. She was behaving, kindly trying for
-topics; but also, partly, underlining the featurelessness, as a
-punishment for bad behaviour.
-
-"Oh--flourishing--I think." She rose, unpinning her stifling veil. She
-would have to brace herself to reach out to something with which to
-break into the questions Alma's kind patience would one by one produce.
-A catechism leading her thoughts down into a wilderness of unexamined
-detail that would unfit her for the coming emergence.
-
-"And Harriett?"
-
-"Harriett's simply _splendid_. You know, if she only had a little
-capital she could take another house. She's sending people away all the
-time."
-
-"Oh yes?" Alma did not want to spend time over Harriett's apartment
-house, unless it was brightly described. It was too soon for bright
-descriptions. The item had been dragged in and wasted, out of place. A
-single distasteful fact. The servants, hidden away beyond the velvet
-staircase, seemed to be hearing the unsuitable disclosure. She sought
-about in her mind for something that would hold its own; one of the
-points of conflict that had cleared, since she was last here, to single
-unanswerable statements. But Alma forestalled her, attacking the silence
-with her gayest voice. "Oh Miriam, what _do_ you think. I saw a Speck;
-yesterday; on the Grand Esplanade. _Do_ you remember the Specks?"
-
-Miriam beamed and agreed, breathing in reminiscences. But they would be
-endless; and would not satisfy them, or bring them together. She could
-not, with Alma alone, pretend that those memories were merely amusing.
-It was a treachery. The mere mention of a name sent her back to the
-unbearable happiness of that last school summer, a sunlit flower-filled
-world opening before her, the feeling of being herself a flower,
-expanding in the sunlight. She could not regard it as a past. All that
-had happened since was a momentary straying aside, to be forgotten. To
-that other world she was still going forward. One day she would suddenly
-come upon it, as she did in her dreams. The flower-scented air of it was
-in her nostrils as she sat reluctantly rousing herself to take Alma's
-cue. "There were millions of them." It had never occurred to her that
-they were funny. Alma, even then, outside her set of grave romantic
-friendships, had seen almost everything as a comic spectacle and had no
-desire to go back. "Yes, _weren't_ they innumerable! And so _large_! It
-was a large one I saw. The very biggest Speck of all I think it must
-have been."
-
-"I expect it was Belinda."
-
-"Oh, my _dear_! _Could_ you tell them apart?"
-
-"Belinda was one of the middle ones. Absolutely _square_. I liked her
-for that and her deep bass voice and her silence."
-
-"Oh, but Miriam, such a _heavy_ silence."
-
-"That was _why_. Perhaps because she made me feel sylph like and
-elegant. Me, Susan.... Or it might have been _Mehetabel_; the eldest of
-the younger ones. I once heard her answer in class...."
-
-"My _dear_! Could a Speck really speak?"
-
-"Hetta did. In a boo; like the voice of the wind."
-
-She contemplated her thoughtless simile. It was exactly true. First a
-sound, breathy and resonant, and then words _blown_ on it.... Alma's
-amused laughter was tailing off into little snickers; repeated while she
-looked for something else. But the revived Specks marshalled themselves
-more and more clearly, playing their parts in the crowded scene.
-
-"And you know the eldest, Alathea, was quite willowy. Darker than the
-others. They were all mid-brown."
-
-"Oh Miriam; doesn't that express them?"
-
-"I wonder what they are all doing?"
-
-"Nothing, my dear. Oh _nothing_. Now _can_ you imagine a Speck doing
-anything whatever?"
-
-"All sitting about in the big house; going mad; on their father's
-money."
-
-"Yes," said Alma simply, gathering her face into gravity. "It's rather
-terrible, you know." A black shadow bearing slowly down upon the golden
-picture.... But they were so determined to see women's lives in that way
-... yet there was Miss Lane, and Mildred Gaunt and Eunice Bradley ...
-three of their own small group; all gone mad.
-
-"Well," said Alma rising, her hands moving up to her bright hair,
-adjusting it, with delicate wreathing movements, "I'm so glad you've
-come, old fing." She hummed herself to the door with a little tune to
-which Miriam listened standing in the middle of the room in a numb
-suspension. The door was opened. Alma would be gliding gracefully out.
-Her song ceased, and she cleared her throat with that little sound that
-was the sound of her voice in quiet comment.
-
-"Wow. Old brown-study." She turned to look. Alma's pretty head was
-thrust back into the room. To shake things off, to make one shake things
-off.... She smiled, groaning in spirit at her accentuated fatigue. One
-more little amused gurgle, and Alma was gone.
-
-She went into her own room. Next door. Opposite to it was Hypo's room.
-Opposite to her own door, the door of the bathroom, and just beyond, the
-swing door leading to the landing and the rooms grouped about it.
-Outside the low curtained windows was the midst of the garden. She was
-set down at the heart of the house. Sounds circled about her instead of
-coming faintly up.... She drew back the endmost curtain an inch or two.
-Bright light fell on her reflection in the long mirror. She was
-transformed already. It would be impossible to convince anyone that she
-was a tired Londoner. Here was already the self that no one in London
-knew. The removal of pressure had relaxed the nerves of her face,
-restoring its contours. Her mushroom hat had crushed the mass of her
-hair into a good shape. The sharp light called out its bright golds,
-deepened the colour of her eyes and the clear tints of her skin. The
-little old washed out muslin blouse flatly defining her shoulders and
-arms, pouched softly above the pale grey skirt.... I _do_ understand
-colour ... that tinge of lavender in such a pale, pale grey; just
-warming it ... and belonging perfectly to Grannie's spidery old Honiton
-collar.... The whole little toilet was quite good; could be forgotten,
-and would keep fresh, bleached by the dry bright air to paler grey and
-whiter white, while the notes of bright living colour in her face and
-hair intensified from day to day. She hunted out her handglass and
-consulted her unknown eyes. It was true. They were brown; not grey. In
-the bright light there was a web, thorny golden brown, round the iris.
-She gazed into its tangled depths. So strange. So warm and bright; her
-unknown self. The self she was meant to be, living in that bright, goldy
-brown filbert tint, irradiating the grey into which it merged. It was a
-discovery. She was a goldy brown person, not cold grey. With half a
-chance, goldy brown and rose. And the whites of her eyes were pearly
-grey-blue. What a number of strange live colours, warmly asserting
-themselves; independently. But only at close quarters.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-She followed Alma back through the swing door. Alma hummed a little
-song; an overture; its low tones filled the enclosed space, opened all
-the doors, showed her the whole of the interior in one moment and the
-coming month in an endless bright panorama passing unbroken from room to
-room, each scene enriched by those accumulated behind it, and those
-waiting ahead; the whole, for her, perpetually returning upon its own
-perfection. Alma paused before a scatter of letters on the table below
-the long lattice. Links with their other world; with things she would
-hear of, stated and shaped in their way, revealing a world to which they
-alone seemed to have an interpreting key; making it hold together; but
-inacceptable ... but the _statement_ was forever fascinating.... Through
-the leaded panes she caught a glimpse of the upper slope of the little
-town. A row of grey seaside boarding-houses slanting up-hill. A
-ramshackle little omnibus rumbling down the steep road.
-
-"Edna Prout's with us for the week-end." Alma's social tone,
-deliberately clear and level. It made a little scene, the beginning of a
-novel, the opening of a play, warning the players to stand off and make
-a good shape, smoothly moving without pause or hitch, playing and saying
-their parts, always with an eye to the good shape, conscious of a
-critical audience. There would be no expansive bright beginning, alone
-with Alma and Hypo, the centre of their attention.
-
-"Who is Edna Prout?" she demanded jealously.
-
-Alma turned with a little bundle of the letters in her hand, speaking
-thoughtfully away through the window. "She writes; rather wonderful
-stuff."
-
-Away outside the window stood the wonderful stuff, being written, rolled
-off; the vague figure of a woman, cleverly dressed, rising pen in hand
-from her work to be socially brilliant. Popular. Divided between
-mysteriously clever work and successful femineity. Alma glanced,
-pausing, and looked away again.
-
-"She has a most amazing sense of the past," she murmured reflectively.
-As if it had just occurred to her. But it must be the current
-description. His description.
-
-"The Stone Age?"
-
-"Oh _no_, my dear!" She shrieked gently; wheeling round to share her
-mirth. "The Past. _'Istry._ The Mediterranean past."
-
-"Her stones are precious stones." From this beginning, to go on looking
-only at things, ignoring surroundings....
-
-"That's it! Come along!" Alma went blithely forward, again humming her
-tune. But there was a faint change in her confident manner. She too, was
-conscious of going to meet an ordeal.
-
-Through the still, open-windowed brightness of the brown-green room, out
-into the naked blaze. Rocky dryness and sea freshness mingled in the
-huge air. The little baked pathway ribboning the level grass,
-disappearing round the angle of the enclosing edge, the perfect sharp
-edge, irises feathering along it, sharp green spikes and deep blue hoods
-of filmy blossom patterned against the paler misty blueness of the sea.
-Perfect. Hidden beyond the sharp edge, the pathway winding down the
-terraced slope of the cliff to the little gate opening from the tangled
-bottom on to the tamarisk-trimmed sea road. Seats set at the angles of
-the winding path. The sea glinting at your side between the leaf
-patterns of the creeper covered pergola. The little roughstone shelter,
-trapping the sunblaze. The plain bench along the centre of a piece of
-pathway, looking straight out to the midmost sea; sun-baked gravel under
-your feet, clumps of flowers in sight. Somewhere the rockery, its face
-catching the full blaze of the light, green bosses clumped upon it, with
-small pure-toned flowers, mauvy pink and tender eastern blue. On the
-level just below it, a sudden little flat of grass, small flowered
-shrubs at its edge towards the sea.
-
-All waiting for tomorrow, endless tomorrows, in the morning, when the
-sunlight poured from the other side of the sky and the face of the cliff
-was cool and coloured. For tonight when the blaze had deepened into
-sunset and afterglow, making a little Naples of the glimpse of white
-town, winding street and curve of blue bay visible in the distance
-beyond the shoulder of the sidemost clump of shrubs along the end of the
-sunk lawn.
-
-Alma had halted, just behind, letting her gaze her fill. There was no
-one to be seen. No sound. Nothing to break the perfect expressiveness.
-
-"We've taken refuge at the back," suggested Alma into her arm-stretching
-groan of contentment. Down across the lawn into the little pathway
-between the shrubs. There they were, in the cool shadows under the small
-trees. Large bamboo chairs, a cushioned hammock, tea going on, Hypo
-rising in the middle of a sentence. Miss Prout sitting opposite,
-upright, posed, knee over knee, feet shod in peacock blue, one pointing
-downwards in the air, exactly above the other pointing on to the gravel.
-A wide silky gown, loose; held flat above the chest by brilliant bold
-embroidery; a broad dark head; short wide tanned face.
-
-The eyes were not brown but wide starry blue; unseeing; contradicting
-her matronly shape. Now that the arrival was over and Hypo had begun
-again, she still had the look of waiting, apart. As if she were sitting
-alone. Yet her clever clothes and all her outlines diffused
-companionship.
-
-The lizards must have looked perfect, darting and basking on the
-rockery. But why have his heart won only by the one that quickly
-wriggled out of the box?... Paying attention only to the people who were
-strong enough to fuss all the time. Not seeing that half their animation
-was assumed.... "Do you still," the bells of the blue flowers in the
-deepest shadow were like lanterns hung on little trees crowded upon the
-brown earth. The sound of grass and flowers in blissful shade poured
-into the voices, making agreement, giving them all the quality of
-blossoming in the surrounding coolness, aware of it, aware of the outer
-huge splintering sunlight that made it perfect, fled away from, left to
-itself to prepare another perfection ... "divide people into those who
-like 'The Reading Girl' and those who prefer the Dresden teapot?"
-
-"_Sudden_ Miriam. Miriam, Edna, is ... is _terrifying_...." He turned
-full round to hand the buns, both firm neatly moulded hands holding the
-dish ironically-carefully. The wide blue eyes looked across. Where was
-she all the time; so calm and starry.... "She comes down from London,
-into our rustic solitude, primed...."
-
-"She's a fighter," said Miss Prout roundly, as if she had not spoken.
-
-"Fighting is too mild for Miriam. She crushes. She demolishes. When
-words fail her," the lifting, descriptive, outlining laughter coming
-into the husky voice, filling out its insistence, "she uses her fists.
-Then she departs; back to London; fires off not so much letters as
-reinforcements of the prostrating blow." _Kind_ Hypo. Doing his best for
-her. Launching her on her holiday with approval; knowing how little was
-to be expected of her.... Ages already she had been here blissful.
-Getting every moment more blissful. And this was only the first tea. The
-four weeks of long days, each day in four long bright separate pieces,
-spread out ahead, enclosed; a long unbroken magic. Poor Miss Prout with
-her short week-end.... But she went from country-house to country-house.
-Certainly. Her garments, even on this languid afternoon, were electric
-with social life. Then hostesses were a necessary part of her
-equipment.... She must fear them, like a man. She herself could not be
-imagined as a hostess. There was no look of strain about her. Only that
-look of insulated waiting. Boredom if her eyes had been the thing-filled
-eyes of a man, bored in the intervals between meals and talk and events.
-
-"Yes, but _do_ you?" Lame. But Hypo turned, accepting, not departing
-afresh to tone up the talk. The ringed, lightning-quick grey eyes
-glanced again, as when she had arrived, taking in the detail and the
-whole of her effect, but this time directly messaging approval. The
-luminous clouded grey, clear ringed, the voice husky and clear, the
-strange repellent mouth below the scraggly moustache, kept from weakness
-only by the perpetually hovering disclaiming ironic smile ...
-fascination that could not be defined; that drove its way through all
-the evidence against it.... Married, yet always seeming nearer and more
-sympathetic than other men.... Her cup brimmed over. She saw herself as
-she had been this morning, in dingy black, pallid, tired to death,
-hurriedly finishing off at Wimpole Street. And now an accepted
-harmonious part of this so different scene. But this power of blossoming
-in response to surroundings was misleading. Beneath it she was utterly
-weary. Tomorrow she would feel wrecked, longing for silence.
-
-"Any more tea, anybody? More _tea_, Miriam." Alma waved the teapot. The
-little scene gleamed to the sound of her voice, a bright, intense
-grouping in the green shade, with the earth thrilling beneath and the
-sky arching down over its completeness.
-
-"Yes," said Hypo, on his feet. "She'll have, just one more cup. Let me
-see," he went on, from the tea-table, "you liked; the Girl. Yes.... No.
-The teapot. I accuse you of the teapot."
-
-"I liked both." Not true. But the answer to the wrongness of the
-division.
-
-"Catholic Miriam. That's quite a feat. Even for you, Miriam, that is, I
-think ..."
-
-"But she didn't! She called my teapot messy!"
-
-"It's true. I _do_ think Dresden china messy. But I mean that it's
-possible----" She spoke her argument through his answer, volleyed over
-his shoulder as he brought back her cup, to a remark from Miss Prout.
-The next moment he was away in the hammock near Miss Prout's low chair,
-throwing cushions out on to the grass, gathering up a sheaf of printed
-leaves; leaving her classed with the teapot people....
-
-"Buoyed up by _tea_, Edna," he chuckled, flinging away the end of a
-cigarette; propping the pages against his knee. "By the way who is
-Olga?"
-
-"The eldest Featherstonhaugh." She spoke carelessly; sat half turned
-away from him serenely smoking; a small buff cigarette in a long amber
-tube; but her voice vibrated.
-
-He was _reading_, in her presence, a book she had written.... Those
-pages were _proofs_.... My arrival was an interruption in a
-companionship that made conversation superfluous.... What need for her
-to talk when she could put into his hands, alive and finished, something
-that she had made; that could bring into his face that look of attention
-and curiosity. How not sit suspended, and dreaming, through the small
-break in her tremendous afternoon? Yet he was getting the characters
-mixed up....
-
-"And Cyril. Do I know Cyril?"
-
-She had put _people_ in.... People he knew of. They joked about it.
-Horrible.... She gazed, revolted and fascinated, at the bundle of pages.
-Someone ought to prevent, destroy.... This peaceful beauty.... Life
-going so wonderfully on. And people being helplessly picked out and put
-into books.
-
-"This is the episode of the _greenhouse_!" His voice broke on the word
-into its utmost wail of amusement.
-
-_That_ was 'writing'; from behind the scenes. People and things from
-life, a little altered, and described from the author's point of view.
-Easy; if your life was amongst a great many people and things and you
-were hard enough to be sceptical and superior. But an impossibly mean
-advantage ... a cheap easy way. Cold clever way of making people look
-seen-through and foolish; to be laughed at, while the authors remained
-admired, special people, independent, leading easy airy sunlit lives,
-supposed, by readers who did not know where they got their material, to
-be _creators_. He was reading on steadily now, the look of amused
-curiosity gone.
-
-Alma came over with a box of cigarettes and a remark; kindly thinking
-she might be feeling left; offering distraction. Or wishing to make her
-behave, launch out, with pretended interest upon a separate
-conversation, instead of hanging upon theirs. Of course she was sitting
-staring, without knowing it.... And already she had taken a cigarette
-and murmured an answer obliviously, and Alma had gone, accepting her
-engrossment, humming herself about amongst the trees, missing his
-remarks. Deliberately asserting a separate existence? Really loving her
-garden and enjoying the chance of being alone? Or because she knew all
-he had to say about _everything_. She came back and subsided in a low
-chair near Miss Prout just as he dropped his pages and looked out on to
-the air with a grave unconscious face. Lost in contemplation. This
-woman, so feminine and crafty, was a great writer. Extraordinary.
-Impossible. In a second he had turned to her.
-
-"How do you do it, Edna? You do it. It's _shattering_, that
-chapter-end."
-
-Miss Prout was speechless, not smiling. Crushed with joy.... Alma, at
-her side, smiled in delight, genuine sympathetic appreciation.
-
-"I'm done in, Edna," he wailed, taking up the leaves to go on, "shan't
-write another line. And the worst of it is I know you'll keep it up.
-That I've got to make; before dinner; my--my _via dolorosa_; through
-your abominably good penultimate and final chapters."
-
-"Am I allowed to read?" Miriam said rising and going with hands
-outstretched for the magic leaves.
-
-"Yes," he chuckled, gathering up and handing. "Let's try it on Miriam. I
-warn you she's deadly. And of a voracity. She reads at a gulp; spots
-everything; _more_ than everything; turns on you and lays you out."
-
-Miriam stood considering him. Happy. He had really noticed and
-remembered the things she had said from time to time. But they were
-expecting a response.
-
-"I shan't understand. I know I shan't. May I really take them away?"
-
-"Now don't, Miriam ..." taking his time, keeping her arrested before
-them, with his held-up minatory finger and mocking friendly smile,
-"don't under-rate your intelligence."
-
-"May I really take them," she flounced, ignoring him; holding herself
-apart with Miss Prout. The air danced between them sunlit from between
-branches. A fresh perspective opened. She was to meet her. See her
-unfold before her eyes in the pages of the book.
-
-"Yes, _do_," she smiled, a swift nice look, not scrutinising.
-
-"How _alive_ they look; much more alive than a book in its suit of neat
-binding."
-
-"Are we _all_ literary?"
-
-"We're all literary," joined his quick voice. She blushed with pleasure.
-Included; with only those ghastly little reviews. Not mocking. Quite
-gravely. She beamed her gratitude and turned away blissful.
-
-"Is Miriam going?"
-
-"I've got to unpack." He wanted an audience, an outsider, for the scene
-of the reading. Alma had disappeared.
-
-"Won't _they_ do all that for you?"
-
-"Still I think I'll go.... Addio." She backed along the little pathway
-watching him seek and find his words, crying each one forth in a
-thoughtful falsetto, while he turned conversationally towards Miss
-Prout. The scene was cut off by the bushes, but she could still hear his
-voice, after the break-down of his Italian into an ironic squeal, going
-on in charge of it. She sped across the lawn and up on to the open above
-the unexplored terraces. They could wait. For the moment, unpeopled,
-they were nothing. They would be the background of further scenes, all
-threaded by the sound of Hypo's voice, lit by the innumerable things she
-would hear him say, obliterating the surroundings, making far-off things
-seem more real.... Mental liveliness _did_ obliterate surroundings, stop
-their expressiveness. Already the first expressiveness had gone from the
-garden. She did not want to create it afresh. There was hurry and
-pressure now in the glances she threw. A wrongness. Something left out.
-There was something left out, left behind, in his scheme of things. She
-wandered as far as the horizon row of irises to look out over the sea,
-chased and pulled back as she went. Until the distant prospect opened
-and part of the slope of the garden lay at her feet. The light had
-ripened. The sun no longer towered, but blazed across at her from above
-the rightmost edge of the picture. Short shadows jutted from the feet of
-every standing thing. The light was deepening in perfect stillness. Wind
-and rain had left the world for good. _This_ was her holiday. Everything
-behind her broke down into irrelevance.... How go back to it.... How not
-stay and live through the changing of the light in this perfect
-stillness....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-There was no feeling of Sunday in the house. But when Miriam wandered
-into her room during the after breakfast lull, she found it waiting for
-her; pouring into the room from afar, from all over the world, breaking
-her march, breaking up the lines of the past and of the future,
-isolating her with itself. The openings of the long lattice framed wide
-strips of morning brilliance between short close-drawn folds of flowered
-chintz. Everything outside was sharp and near, but changed since
-yesterday. The flowers stood vivid in the sunlight; very still. The
-humming of the bees sounded careful and secret; not wishing to disturb.
-The sea sparkled to itself, refusing to call the eye. Yet outside there,
-as in the room, something called. She leaned out. Into the enlarged
-picture the sky poured down. The pure blue moved within itself as you
-looked, letting you through and up. An unbroken fabric of light, yet
-opening all over, taking you up into endless light....
-
-Sunday is in the sky....
-
-Hypo, coming round the corner from the terrace, his arms threshing the
-air to the beat of his swift walk; knitting up the moment, casting kind
-radiance as he came. Married, but casting radiance. He was making for
-the house. Then Miss Prout was somewhere down there alone.... She
-hurried to be out, seeking her. On the landing she ran into Hypo.
-
-"Hullo, Miriametta. Going out?"
-
-"I think so. Where's everybody?"
-
-"Everybody, and chairs, is down on the terrace. But you'll want a
-_hat_."
-
-"I shan't." He had often admired her ability to go without. He had been
-talking to Miss Prout for the last half hour and was now abstractedly
-making a shapely thing of a chance meeting with a stranger.... His words
-had carried him to the study door. He began inventing his retort, the
-unfelt shape of words that would carry him on undisturbed, facing the
-door with his back to her, hand on the doorknob. The end of it would
-find him within. She cried out at random into the making of his phrase
-and escaped into the dining-room to the sound of his voice. In the empty
-dining-room she found again the listening presence of Sunday and hurried
-to be through it and away at whatever centre had formed down there in
-the open. Going down the steps and along the paths she entered the
-movement of the day, the beginning of the sense of tomorrow, that would
-strengthen with the slow shifting of the sabbath light. Miss Prout came
-into view round the first bend, a sunlit figure in a tub chair on the
-grassy level at the end of the terrace. _She_ had no hat. Her dark head
-was bent over the peak made in her flowing draperies by her crossed
-knees. She was _sewing_. Here. In public, serenely, the first thing in
-the morning.
-
-Strolling to join her Miriam saw her as she had been last night, set
-like a flower, unaccented and harmonious, in her pleated gown of old
-rose silk, towards the oval of dinner-table, an island of softly bright
-silk-shaded radiance in the midst of the twilit room; under the
-brightest of the central light, filmy flowers massed low in a wide
-shallow bowl ... a gentleness about her, touching the easy beginnings of
-talk, each phrase pearly, catching the light, expanding; expressing a
-secret joy. Then the gathering and settling of the flow of talk between
-him and her, lifting, shaking itself out, flashing into sharp clear
-light; the fabric of words pierced by his wails of amusement as he
-looked, still talking, at the pictures they drew.... People they knew
-passing to and fro; _all_ laughable, all brought to their strange shared
-judgment. The charm of the scene destroyed by the surrounding vision of
-a wit-wrecked world.
-
-After dinner that moment when she had drawn herself up before him,
-suddenly young, with radiant eyes; looking like a flower in her petaled
-gown. He had responded standing very upright, smiling back at her,
-admiring her deliberate effect....
-
-The break away across the landing, white and green night brightness
-under the switched-on lights, into the dusk of the study, ready peopled
-with its own stillness; the last of the twilight glimmering outside the
-open windows. Each figure changed by the gloom into an invisible,
-memorable presence. Hypo moving in and out of the cone of soft light
-amongst the shadows at the far end.
-
-"We'll try the contralto laugh on the lady in the window-seat."
-
-The fear of missing the music in looking for his discovery. And then
-into the waiting stillness _Bach_. Of all people. He found a contralto
-laugh in _Bach_. There were no people, no women, in Bach. Looking for
-the phrase. Forgetting to look for it. The feeling of the twilight
-expanding within itself, too small. The on-coming vast of night held
-back, swirling, swept away by broad bright morning light running through
-forest tracery. Shining into a house. The clean cool poise of everyday
-morning. The sounds of work and voices, separate, united by surroundings
-greeted by everyone from within. The secret joy in everyone pouring
-through the close pattern of life, going on forever, the end in the
-first small phrase, every phrase a fresh end and a beginning. Going on
-when the last chord stood still on the air.... And if he liked Bach, how
-not believe in people? How not be certain of God?... And then remarks,
-breaking thinly against the vast nearness.
-
-"What does the lady in the window think?"
-
-"She's asleep." Miss Prout had really thought that....
-
-"Oh no she _isn't_."
-
-Miss Prout looked up as she approached but kept on with her sewing and
-held her easy silence as she dropped into one of the low chairs. She was
-working a pattern of bright threads on a small strip of saffron-coloured
-silk ... looking much older in the blaze of hard light. But far-off, not
-minding, sitting there as if enthroned, for the morning, placid and
-matronly and indifferent. The heavenly morning freshness was still here.
-But the remarks about the day had all been made on the lawn after
-breakfast.... She admired the close bright work. Miss Prout's voice came
-at once, a little eagerly, explaining. She was really keen about her
-lovely work.
-
-She was saying something about Paris. Miriam attended swiftly, not
-having grasped the beginning, only the fact that she was talking and the
-curious dry level of her voice. Beginning on something as everyone did,
-ignoring the present, leaving herself sitting there outside life.... She
-made a vague response, hoping to hear about Paris. Only to be startled
-by the tone and colour of her own voice. Miss Prout would imagine that
-her life had been full. In any case could not imagine....
-
-"How long are you staying?" The question shot across at her. She did not
-know as she answered whether she had seen the swift hot glance of the
-blue eyes, or heard it in the voice. But she had found the woman who
-wrote the searing scenes, the strange abrupt phrases that lashed out
-from the page.
-
-"Tomorrow I shall be grilling in my flat," went on Miss Prout. Alma's
-laughter tinkled from above. She was coming this way. Miss Prout's voice
-hurried on incisive, splitting the air, ending with a rush of low words
-as Alma appeared round the corner. Miriam watched their little scene,
-smooth, unbroken by a single pause or hesitation, saw them go away
-together, still talking.
-
-"My hat," she murmured to the thrilled surroundings, and again "My
-_hat_." She clutched at the fading reverberations, marvelling at her own
-imperviousness, at the way the drama had turned, even while it touched
-her, to a painted scene, leaving her unmoved. Miss Prout's little London
-eyrie. A distasteful refuge between visits.... Had it been a flattering
-appeal, or an insult?
-
-She is like the characters in her book, direct, swift, ruthless, using
-any means.... She saw me as a fool, offered me the role of one of the
-negligible minor characters, there to be used by the successful ones.
-She is one with her work, with her picture of life.... But it is not a
-true picture. The glinting sea, all the influences pouring in from the
-garden denied its existence. It was just a fuss, the biggest drama in
-the world was a fuss in which people competed, gambling, everyone losing
-in the end. Dead, empty loss, on the whole, because there was always the
-commission to be paid. Life in the world is a vice; to which those who
-take it up gradually became accustomed.... Her eyes clung to the
-splinters of gold on the rippling blue sea. Dropped them, and she was
-confined in the hot little rooms of a London flat. If Miss Prout was not
-enviable, so _feared_ her lonely independence, then no one was enviable.
-
-"Hullo, Miriametta! All alone?"
-
-"They've gone to look at an enormous book; too big to lift."
-
-"Yes. And what's Miriam doing?"
-
-"Isn't it a perfect morning?"
-
-"It's a good day. It'll be a _corker_ later on. Very pleasant here till
-about lunch time. You camping here for the morning?" She looked up.
-
-He was standing in profile, listening, with his head inclined; like a
-person suffering from deafness; and pointing towards her his upheld
-questioning finger; a German classmaster.
-
-"I don't know."
-
-"Then you will. That's settled?" She murmured a speculative promise,
-lazily, a comment on his taut, strung-up bearing. What, to him, if she
-did or didn't?
-
-"That's agreed then. You camp here," he dropped neatly into the chair
-between hers and Miss Prout's, his face hidden behind the frill of its
-canopy, "for the morning." He looked out and round at her, flushed and
-grinning. "I want you to," he murmured, "now don't you go and forget."
-
-"All right," she beamed ... the _hours_ he was wasting spinning out his
-mysterious drama ... "wild horses shan't move me." He did not want her
-society. But it was miles more than wildly interesting enough that he
-wished to avoid being alone with Miss Prout. But then why not dump her
-as he always did guests he had run through, on to Alma? He left her a
-moment for reflections, wound them up with a husky chuckle and began on
-one of his improvisations; paying her in advance ... putting in time....
-She listened withheld, drawing the weft of his words through the
-surrounding picture, watching it enlivened, with fresher colours and
-stronger outlines ... a pause, the familiar lifting tone and the drop,
-into a single italic phrase; one of his destructive conclusions. His
-voice went on, but she had seized the hard glittering thread, rending
-it, and watched the developing bright pattern coldly, her opposition
-ready phrased for the next break. She could stay forever like this,
-watching his thought; thrusting in remarks, making him reconsider. But
-Miss Prout was coming. There would be a morning of improvisations with
-no chance of arresting him. It was only when they were alone that he
-would take opposition seriously, not turning it into materials for
-spirals of wit, where nobody could stand against him. The whole morning,
-hearing him and Miss Prout chant their duet about people ... helped out
-no doubt by the presence of an apparently uncritical audience.... I'm
-hanged if I will....
-
-"I must have a book or something. I'll get a book," she said, rising. He
-peeped out, as if weighing her suggestion.
-
-"All right.... Get a book.... But come back?"
-
-"Eurasians _are_ different," she said. "Have you ever _known_ any;
-really _well_."
-
-"Never known _anybody_, Miriam. Take back everything I ever said. Get
-your book and come out with it."
-
-On her way back she heard his voice, high; words broken and carried
-along by a squeal of laughter. They were at it already, reducing
-everything to absurdity. Turning the corner she found them engrossed,
-sitting close at right angles, Miss Prout leaning forward, her
-embroidery neglected on her knee. It was monstrous to break in.... She
-wandered up and down the terrace, staring at the various views, catching
-his eye upon her as she went to and fro; almost deciding to depart and
-leave him to his fate. If he was engrossed he was engrossed. If not, he
-shouldn't pretend to be. When she was at a distance their voices fell,
-low short sentences, sounding set and colourless; but _intimate_.
-
-"Found your book, Miriam?" he cried, as she came near.
-
-"No. I couldn't see anything. So I shut my eyes and whirled round and
-pointed."
-
-"Your shameless superstitions, Miriam."
-
-"I _am_. I've got a lovely one I hadn't seen."
-
-"A lovely one. A----"
-
-"I'm not going to tell you what it is."
-
-"You're just going to sit down and munch it up. Miriam's a paradox.
-She's the omnivorous _gourmet_."
-
-"Can I have a cigarette?"
-
-"Her authors--we'll _get_ you a cigarette, Miriam, no, alright, here
-they are--her authors, the only authors she allows, can be counted
-rather more than twice, on the fingers of one hand."
-
-She took two cigarettes, lighting one from his neatly struck match and
-retired to a distant chair.
-
-"You'll have the sun in your eyes there."
-
-"I like it." Their voices began again, his social and expansive, hers
-clipped and solitary ... the bank of blazing snapdragon grew prominent,
-told of nothing but the passing of time. What was the time? How much of
-the morning had gone? There was a moment of clear silence....
-
-"Is Miriam there?"
-
-"She is indeed; very _much_ there." Again silence, filled with the echo
-of his comprehensive little chuckle. Miss Prout knew now that it was not
-the stupidity of a fool that had spoiled her morning. But, if she could
-go so far, why not carry him off to talk unembarrassed, or talk, here,
-freely, as she wanted to, like those women in her book?
-
-A servant, coming briskly through the sunlight, stopping half way along
-the terrace.
-
-"Mr. Simpson."
-
-"Yes. What have you done with him?"
-
-"He's in the study."
-
-"Fetch him out of the study. Bring him here. And bring, lemonade and
-things." But he rose as the maid wheeled round and departed. "I'd better
-get him, I think. He's Nemesis."
-
-Miriam rose to escape. "Now don't you go, Miriam. You stay and see it
-out. You haven't met Simpson, Edna. I haven't. _No_ one has."
-
-"What is he?"
-
-"He's--he's a postscript. The letter came this morning. Now don't either
-of you desert." He disappeared, leaving the terrace stricken. The rest
-of the morning, lunch, perhaps the whole day ... Simpson. His voice
-returned a moment later, encouraging, as if shepherding an invalid,
-across the garden and round the angle. A very tall young man, in a blue
-serge suit, a _pink_ collar and a face sunburnt all over, an even red.
-
-He was sitting upright in a headlong silence, holding on to the thoughts
-with which he had come. But they were being scattered. He had held them
-through the introductions and Hypo's witty distribution of drinks. But
-now the bright air rang with the rapid questions, volleyed swiftly upon
-the beginnings of the young man's meditative answers, and he was sitting
-alone in the circle in a puzzled embarrassment, listening, but not won
-by Hypo's picture of Norwich, not joining in the expansion and the
-laughter, aware only of the scattering of his precious handful of
-thoughts. Towards lunch-time Hypo carried him off to the study.
-
-"Exit the postscript," said Miss Prout. Charmingly ... dropping back
-into her pose, but talkatively, a kindliness in the blue eyes gazing out
-to sea. Again she bemoaned her return to London, but added at once a
-little picture of her old servant; the woman's gladness at getting her
-back again.
-
-"Only until the end of the week," said Miriam seeing the old servant,
-perpetually left alone, getting older. Sad. Left out. But what an awful
-way of living in London; alone with one old servant. A brilliant light
-came into Miss Prout's eyes. She was looking fixedly along the terrace.
-
-"He wouldn't stay to lunch." Hypo, alone and gay "He's _done_ with me.
-Given me up. Gone away a wise young man."
-
-"He was _appalling_."
-
-"You didn't hear him, Miriam."
-
-"I saw him."
-
-"You didn't hear him on the subject of his guild."
-
-"He's founded a _guild_?"
-
-"It's much worse than that. He's gone about, poor dear, in sublime, in
-the most _sublime_ faith, collecting all the young men in Norfolk, under
-my banner. I have heard this morning all I might become if I could
-contrive to be ... as wooden as he is. Come along. Let's have lunch. You
-know, Edna, there's a great work to be done on you. _You've_ got to be
-turned into a socialist." He turned as they walked, to watch her face.
-She was looking down, smiling, withdrawn, revealing nothing. Seething
-with anticipation. She would be willing. For the sake of the long
-conversations. They would sit apart talking, for the rest of her time.
-There would be long argumentative letters. No. She would not argue. She
-would be another of those women in the Lycurgan, posing and dressing and
-consciously shining at soirees. Making havoc and complications. Worse
-than they. How could he imagine her a socialist with her view of
-humanity and human motives.
-
-"No. We _won't_ make you a socialist, Edna. You're too good as you are."
-Beautiful, different; too good for socialism? Then he really thought her
-wonderful. In some way beyond himself....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Turning just in time to be caught by the sun dipping behind the cliff.
-Perfect sudden moment. No sunset effects. No radiance. Clean dull
-colours. Mealy grey-blue sky, dull gold ball, half hidden, tilted by the
-slope of the green cliff. Feeling him arrested, compelled to receptive
-watching; watching a sunset, like anyone else.... The last third of the
-disc, going, bent intently, asserting the moment, asserting uniqueness;
-unanswerable mystery of beauty.
-
-"God, reading a newspaper."
-
-"The way to see a sunset is to be _indoors_. Oblivious. Then ... just a
-ruddy glow, reflected from a bright surface.... The indirect method's
-the method. Old Conrad."
-
-"Madeleine has no use for this storm-rent sky. She wants untroubled
-blue, one small pink cloud, and presently, a single star." Then he must
-have wanted these things himself once. Why did he try to jest young
-people into his disillusionment?
-
-Yet tonight the sun had set without comment. With his approval. He was
-openly sharing the unspoken response to the scene of its magnificent
-departure.
-
-The reproachful, watching eye of Sunday disappeared, drawn down over the
-horizon with the setting sun. Leaving a blissful refreshment, the
-strange unearned sense falling always somewhere in the space between
-Sunday and Monday, of a test survived, leaving one free to go forward to
-the cheerful cluster of oncoming days.
-
-The afterglow faded to a bright twilight, deepening in the garden to a
-violet dusk. The sea glimmered in the remaining light that glared along
-its further rim like a yawn, holding up the lid of the sky. The figures
-in the chairs had grown dim, each face a pale disc set towards the
-falling light. The talk died down to small shreds, simple and slow,
-steeped in the beauty of the evening, deferring to it, as to a host.
-
-They were still the guests of the evening while they sat grouped round
-the lamplit verandah supper-table that turned the dusk into night. But
-the end was coming. The voices in the lamplight were growing excited and
-forgetful. Indoors and separation were close at hand.
-
-He was oblivious. Given up to his jesting ... she watched his jesting
-face, shiny now and a little loose, the pouching of his lips as he
-spoke, the animal glimmer of teeth below the scraggy moustache,
-repellent, yet part of the fascination of his smile, and perpetually
-redeemed by the charm of his talk, the intense charm of the glancing
-eyes, seeing and understanding, comforting even when they mistook, and
-yet all the time withheld, preoccupied behind their clean rings and
-filmy sightless grey--fixed always on the shifting changing mass of
-obstructive mannish knowledge, always on _science_, the only thing in
-the world that could get his full attention.... She felt her voice pour
-out suddenly, violently quenching a flicker of speech. He glanced,
-attentive, healing her despair with his quick interest. The women awoke
-from their conspiring trance, alert towards her, watching.
-
-"Yes." His voice followed hers without a break, cool, a comment on her
-violence. He turned, looking into the night. His shaggy intelligent
-gaze, the reflective slight lift of his eyebrows gave him the look of an
-old man lost. The rosy scene was chilled. Cold light and harsh black
-shadow, his averted form in profile, helpless, making empty the deeps of
-the thing that was called a summer night. Her desire beat no longer
-towards the open scene. She hated it. For its sake she had pulled him
-up, brought down this desolation.
-
-"It's a good night. It's about the human optime in nights. We ought to
-sleep out." He turned back to the table, gathering up expressions,
-radiating his amusement at the disarray caused by his absence.
-
-"Let's sleep out. Miriam will. Unless we lock her in." He was on his
-feet, eagerly halted, gathering opinions. His eyes came to rest on Alma.
-"Let's be dogs. Be driven, by Miriam, into fresh fields of experience."
-
-Would it happen? Would she agree? He was impatient, but deferring. Alma
-sat considering, in the attitude Mr. Stoner had called a pretty snap,
-her elbows meeting on the table, her chin on her slender hands; just its
-point, resting on the bridge they made laid flatly one upon the other.
-It was natural in her. But by now she knew that men admired natural
-poses. _He_ was admiring, even through his impatience.
-
-"I didn't suggest it. I've never slept out in my life."
-
-"You suggested it, Miriam. My death, all our little deaths from
-exposure, will lie at your door." The swift personal glance he dealt her
-from the midst of his watching swept round to Miss Prout and flashed
-into admiration as he turned, still sideways surveying her, to bend his
-voice on Alma.
-
-"It's quite manageable, eh, Susan?" Miriam followed his eyes. Miss Prout
-had risen and was standing away from the table posed like a
-Gainsborough; challenging head, skirts that draped and spread of
-themselves, gracefully, from the slenderness of her body. She was
-waiting, indifferent, interpreting the scene in her way, interpreting
-the other women for him, united with him in interpreting them....
-
-Alma relaxed and looked up, holding the matter poised, deliberately
-locating the casting vote before breaking into enthusiasm. He paid
-tribute, coming round the table companionably to her side, but still
-looking from face to face, claiming audience.
-
-"We'll break out. Each bring its little mattress and things. After
-they've retired. Yes, I think, _after_ they've retired." Why the
-conspirator's smile? The look of daring? What of the servants? They were
-bound, anyhow, to know in the morning.
-
-It was glorious to rush about in the lit house, shouting unnecessary
-remarks. People shouting back. Nobody attending. Shouting and laughing
-for the sake of the jolly noise. Saying more than could be said in talk.
-Admitting.
-
-And then just to lie extinguished in the darkness wondering what point
-there was in sleeping out if you went to sleep at once. All that jolly
-tumult. And he had been so intent on the adventure that he had let Miss
-Prout change her mind without protest, _only_ crying out from the midst
-of busily arranging his bed on the lawn.... "Have you seen Miriam's
-pigtails?"
-
-And suddenly everything was prim; the joy of being out in the night
-surging in the air, waiting for some form of expression. They didn't
-_know_ how to be joyful; only how to be clever.... She hummed a little
-song and stopped. It wreathed about her, telling off the beauties of the
-night, a song sung by someone else, heard, understood, a perfect
-agreement.
-
-"What is she doing?"
-
-"She's sitting up, waving her banana in the air; conducting an
-orchestra, I think."
-
-"Tell her to _eat_ the banana and lie down." Alma, Rose Gauntlett, Mrs.
-Perry and me, starting off just after I came, to paddle in the
-moonlight.... "Don't, _don't_ do anything that would make a cabman
-laugh." Why not? Why should he always imagine someone waiting to be
-shocked? Damn the silly cabman if he _did_ laugh. Who need care? As soon
-as her head was on the pillow, nothing visible but the huge night and
-the stars, she spoke quietly to herself, flouting them. He should see,
-hear, that it was wicked to simmer stuffily down as if they were in the
-house. He didn't want to. She was making his sounds for him.
-
-"Tell Miriam this is not a conversazione."
-
-His voice was actually sleepy. Kindly, long-suffering, but simply
-wanting to go to sleep. There was to be no time of being out in the
-night with him. He was too far off. She imagined herself at his side, a
-little space of grass between. Silent communication, understanding and
-peace. All the things that were lost, obliterated by his swift speech,
-communicated to him at leisure, clear in the night. Here under the
-verandah, with its roof cutting off a part of the sky, they were still
-attached to the house. Alma had been quietly posed for sleep from the
-first moment. They were all more separated than in their separate rooms
-indoors.
-
-The lingering faint light reflected the day, the large open space of
-misunderstandings, held off the cloak of darkness in which things grew
-clear. She lay watching for the night to turn to night.
-
-But the light seemed to grow clearer as the stillness went on. The
-surrounding objects lost their night-time mystery. Teased her mind with
-their names as she looked from point to point. Drove up her eyes to
-search for night in the sky. But there was no night there. Only a wide
-high thinness bringing an expansion of sight that could not be recalled;
-drawing her out, beyond return, into a wakefulness that was more than
-day-time wakefulness; a breathless feeling of being poised untethered in
-the thin blue-lit air, without weight of body; going forward, more and
-more thinly expanded, into the pale wide space....
-
-There is no night.... Compared to this expanse of thin, shadowless,
-boundless light the sunlit sky is a sort of darkness.... Even in a
-motionless high midday the sky is small, part of it invisible,
-obliterated by light. After sunset it is hidden by changing colours....
-
-_This_ is the real sky, in full power, stripping away sleep. Time,
-visible, pouring itself out. Day, not night, is forgetfulness of time.
-Its movement is a dream. Only in its noise is real silence and peace.
-This awful stillness is made of sound; the sound of time, _pouring_
-itself out; ceaselessly winding off short strips of life, each life a
-strip of sleepless light, so much, no more, lessening all the time.
-
-What rubbish to talk about the stars. Vast suns, at immense distances,
-and beyond them, more. What then? If you imagine yourself at any point
-in space or wafting freely about from star to star you are not changed.
-Like enlarging the circle of your acquaintance. And finding it, in the
-end, the same circle, yourself. A difference in degree is also a
-difference in kind. Yes. But the _same_ difference. Relations remain the
-same however much things are changed. Interest in the stars is like
-interest in your neighbours before you get to know them. A way of
-running away from yourself.
-
-What is there to do? How know what is anyone's best welfare?
-
-To be alive, and to know it, makes a selfless life impossible. Any kind
-of life accompanied by that stupendous knowledge, is selfish.
-
-Christ? But all the time he was alone with a certainty. Today thou shalt
-be with me.... He was booked for Paradise from the beginning ... like
-the man in No. 5 John Street going to live in a slum, imagining he was
-experiencing a slum, with the latchkey of his west-end house in his
-pocket.... Now if he had sacrificed Paradise. But he couldn't. Then
-where was selflessness?
-
-Yet if Christ had never been, the sky would look different. A Grecian or
-a Jewish sky. Awful. If the personal delight that the sky showed to be
-nothing were put away? Nothing held on to but the endless pouring down
-of time? Till an answer came.... Get up tomorrow showing indifference to
-everything, refusing to be bewitched. There _is_ an answer or there
-would be no question. Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep.
-To avoid clear sight and torment.
-
-Tomorrow, certainly, gloriously, the daytime scenes, undeserved,
-uncontributed to, would go forward again in the sunlight. Forgetfulness
-would come of itself. Even the thought of the bright scenes, the scenes
-that did not matter and were nothing, spread over the sky the sense of
-the dawn it would be obliged to bring; ... the permitted postponement of
-the problems set by night. Dawn stole into the heart. With a sudden
-answer. That had no words. An answer that lost itself again in the day.
-But there would be no dawn; only the pitiless beginning of a day spoiled
-by the fever of a sleepless night. Torment, for nothing. The sky gazed
-down mocking at fruitless folly. She turned away. She must, would,
-sleep. But her eyes were full of the down-bent stars. Condemnation, and
-the communication that would not speak; stopping short, poised, probing
-for a memory that was there....
-
-A harsh hissing sigh, far away; gone. The unconscious sea. Coming back.
-Bringing the morning tide. The sound would increase. The sky would
-thicken and come near, fill up with increasing blind light, ignoring
-unanswered pain.
-
-"You can put tea in the bedrooms."
-
-Alma, folded in her dressing-gown, disappearing into the house. The
-tumbled empty bed on the lawn, white in the open stare of the
-morning....
-
-"Edna wants to know how we're getting on." Duplication in light and
-darkness, of memories of the night.... Their two figures, side by side,
-silhouetted against dark starry blue. Dismantled voices. His
-_simplicity_. His sharp turn and toga'd march towards the house. A
-memory of dawn; a deep of sleep ending in faint light tinting the
-garden? "Edna wants to know how we're getting on." _Then_ starlit
-darkness? Angry sleep leading direct to this open of morning.
-
-Everyone in the house had plunged already into new beginnings. Panoplied
-in advantages; able to feel in strong refreshed bodies the crystal
-brightness of the morning; not worn out as if by long illness.
-
-It was Miss Prout, coming from her quiet night indoors, who was reaping
-the adventure. She had some strange conscious power. She knew that it
-was she who was the symbol of morning. Her look of age was gone. She had
-dared to come out in a wrapper of mealy white, folded softly; and with
-bare feet that gleamed against the green of the flat grass. Consciously
-using the glow of adventure left over from the night to engrave her
-triumphant effect upon the adventurers; of marvellous youth that was not
-hers but belonged to some secret living in her stillness.... It was not
-an illusion. He saw it too; let her stand for the morning; was crowning
-her all the time, preoccupied in everything he said with the business of
-rendering half-amused approval of her miracle. The talk was hampered, as
-if, by common consent, prevented from getting far enough to interfere
-with the set shape of spectacle and spectators; yet easy, its quality
-heightened by the common recognition of an indelible impression. For a
-moment it made her power seem almost innocent of its strange horror.
-
-When she had left the day was stricken. Evil had gone from the air,
-leaving it empty. Everything that happened seemed to be a conspiracy to
-display emptiness. The daily life of the house came into view, visible
-as it was, when no guests were there, going bleakly on its way. Hypo
-appeared and disappeared. Rapt and absent, though still swiftly
-observant and between whiles his unchanged talking self; falling back,
-with his chuckling unspoken commentary, for lack of kindred brilliance;
-escaping to his study as if to a waiting guest.
-
-Miriam came to dinner silently raging; invisible, yet compelled to be
-seen. Reduced to nonentity by his wrongly directed awareness, his
-everlasting demand for bright fussy intelligence. It was her own fault.
-The result of having been beguiled by joy into a pretence of conformity.
-For the rest of the visit she would be roughly herself. To shreds she
-would tear his twofold vision of women as bright intelligent response or
-complacently smiling audience. Force him to see the evil in women who
-made terms with men, the poison there was in the trivial gaiety of those
-who accepted male definitions of life and the world. Somehow make him
-aware of the reality that fell, all the time, in the surrounding
-silence, outside his shapes and classifications.
-
-Sunk away into separation, she found herself gliding into communion with
-surrounding things, shapes gleaming in the twilight, the intense
-thrilling beauty of the deep, lessening colours.... She passed into
-association with them, feeling him fade, annihilated, while her eased
-breathing released the strain of battle. He was spending the seconds of
-silence that to him were a void, in observation, misinterpretations. The
-air was full of his momentary patience. She turned smiling and caught
-his smile halting between amused contemplation of vacuity and despairing
-sympathy with boredom. He had not heard the shouts of repudiation with
-which she had plunged down into her silence. He dropped her and let his
-testing eye, which he knew she followed, rest on Alma. Two vacuities ...
-watched by empty primitive eyes, savage eyes, under shaggy brows,
-staring speculatively out through a forest of eyelash. Having thus made
-his statement and caught Alma's attention he made a little drama of
-childish appeal, with plaintive brows, pleading for rescue.
-
-"Let's have some light. We're almost in darkness," said Alma.
-
-"We are, we are," he wailed, and Miriam caught his eyes flashed upon her
-to collect her acceptance of his judgment. The central light Alma had
-risen to switch on, flashed up over the silk-clad firm little column of
-her body winged on either side by the falling drapery of her extended
-arms, and revealed as she sat down the triangle of pendant-weighted
-necklace on her white throat, the soft squareness of her face, peaked
-below by the delicate sharp chin and above by her piled gold hair. The
-day had gone; quenched in the decoration of the night set there by Alma,
-like the first scene of a play into whose speech and movement she was,
-with untroubled impersonal bearing, already steadily launched, conscious
-of the audience, untroubled by their anticipation.
-
-"It's _awful_. The evenings are already getting short," cried Miriam,
-her voice thrilling in conversation with the outer living spaces beyond
-the shut-in play. His swiftly flashed glance lingered a moment;
-incredulous of her mental wandering? In stupefaction that was almost
-interest, over her persistence, after diagnosis, in anachronism, in
-utter banality?
-
-Alma's voice, strangely free, softly lifted a little above its usual
-note, but happy and full, as it was with outsiders with whom she was at
-her best, took possession of the set scene. His voice came in answer,
-deferring, like that of a delighted guest. Presently they were all in an
-enchantment. From some small point of departure she had carried them off
-abroad, into an Italian holiday. He urged her on with his voice, his
-eyes returning perpetually from the business of his meal to rest in
-admiring delight upon her face. It was lovely, radiant, full of the joy
-of the theme she had set in the midst and was holding there with bright
-reflective voice, unattained by the little bursts of laughter, piling up
-her monologue, laughing her own laughter in its place, leading on little
-bridges of gay laughter that did not break her speech, to the points of
-her stories. All absurd. All making the places she described
-pathetically absurd, and mysterious strangers, square German housewives
-and hotel people, whom Miriam knew she would forever remember as they
-looked in Alma's tales, and love, absurd. But vivid; each place, the
-look and the sound and the very savour of it, each person....
-
-By the end of dinner, in the midst of eating a peach, Alma was
-impersonating a fat shiny Italian opera star, flinging out without
-losing her dainty charm, a scrap of a rolling cadence, its swift final
-run up and up in curling trills to leap clear at the end to a single
-note, terrifically high, just touched and left on the air, the fat
-singer silent below it, unmoved and more mountainous than before.
-
-Hypo was wholly won by the enchantment she had felt and cast. His face
-was smooth with the pleasure that wreathed it whenever he passed,
-listening, from laughter that was not of his own making, to more
-laughter. He carried Alma off to the study with the bright eagerness he
-gave to an entertaining guest, but intimately, with his arm through
-hers.
-
-They sat side by side on the wide settee. There was to be no music. He
-did not want to go away by himself to the other end of the room and make
-music. Sitting forward with his hands clasped, towards Alma enthroned,
-he suddenly improvised a holiday abroad.... "We'll go mad, stark staring
-mad. Switzerland. Your ironmongery in my rucksack and off we'll go."
-
-To go away, not the wonderful eventful holiday life here; to go away,
-with Alma, was reward and holiday for him.... This life, with its
-pattern of guests was the hard work of everyday? These times abroad were
-the bright points of their long march together? Then if this life and
-its guests were so little, she was once more near to them. She had
-shared their times abroad, by first unconsciously kindling them to go.
-And presently they were deferring to her. It was strange that having
-preceded them, created, even with them, the sense of advantage
-persisting so long after they had outdone in such wide sweeps the scope
-of her small experience.
-
-She had never deliberately "gone abroad." Following necessity she had
-found herself in Germany and in Belgium. Pain and joy in equal balance
-all the time and in memory only joy. So that all going abroad by other
-people seemed, even while envy rose at the ease and quantity of their
-expeditions, their rich collection of notorious beauty, somehow slight.
-Envy was incomplete. She could not by stern reasoning and close effort
-of imagination persuade herself that they had been so deeply abroad as
-she. That they had ever utterly lost themselves in foreign things. She
-forgot perpetually, in this glad moment she again found that she had
-forgotten, having been abroad. She forgot it when she read and thought
-by herself of other parts of the world. Yet when, as now, anyone
-reminded her, she was at once alight, weighed down by the sense of
-accomplishment, of rich deeps of experience that would never leave her.
-Others were bright and gay about their wanderings. But even while pining
-for their free movement she was beside herself with longing to convey to
-them the clear deep sense they seemed to lack of what they were doing.
-The wonder of it. She talked to them about Switzerland, where they had
-already been. It was for her the unattainable ideal of a holiday. She
-resented it when he belittled the scenery, gathered it up in a few
-phrases and offered any good gorge in the Ardennes as an alternative. It
-was not true. He _was_ entranced with Switzerland. It was the
-protuberance of the back of his head that made him oppose. And his
-repudiation of any form of expression that did not jest. She sought and
-found a weapon. To go to Switzerland in the summer was not to go. She
-had suddenly remembered all she had heard about Swiss winters.
-Switzerland in the summer was an oleograph. In winter an engraving. That
-impressed him. And when she had described all she remembered, she had
-forgotten she had not been. They had forgotten. They had come into her
-experience as it looked to herself. Their questions went on, turned to
-her life in London. She was besieged by things to communicate, going on
-and on, wondering all the time where the interest lay, in remote people,
-most of them perceived only once and remembered once as speech, yet
-feeling it, and knowing that they felt it. There was a clue, some clue
-to some essential thing, in her mood. Suddenly she awoke to see them
-sitting propped close against each other, his cheek cushioned on her
-crown of hair, both of them blinking beseechingly towards her.
-
-"_How_ long," she raged, "have you been sitting there cursing me?"
-
-"Not been cursing, Miriam. You've been interesting, no end. But there's
-a thing, Miriam, an awful thing called tomorrow morning."
-
-"Is it late?" The appalling, the utter and everywhere appalling
-scrappiness of social life....
-
-"Not for you, Miriam. We're poor things. We envy. We can't compete with
-your appetite, your disgraceful young appetite for late hours."
-
-"Things always end just as they're beginning."
-
-"Things end, Miriam, so that other things may begin."
-
-She roused herself to give battle. But Alma drifted between, crying
-gaily that there was tomorrow. A good strong tomorrow. Warranted to
-stand hard wear.
-
-"And turn; and take a dye when you're tired of the colour."
-
-He laughed, really amused? Or crediting her with an attempt to talk in a
-code?
-
-"A tomorrow that will wear forever and make a petticoat afterwards."
-
-He laughed again. Quite simply. He had not heard that old jest. Seemed
-never to have heard the old family jests. Seemed to have grown up
-without jests.... Tomorrow, unless no one came, would not be like today.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The morning offered a blissful eternity before lunch. She had wakened
-drowsy with strength and the apprehension of good, and gone through
-breakfast like a sleepwalker, playing her part without cost, independent
-of sight and hearing and thought. Successful. Dreamily watching a play,
-taking a part inaudibly dictated, without effort, seeing it turn into
-the chief part, more and more turned over to her as she lay still in the
-hands of the invisible prompter; withdrawn in an exploration of the
-features of this state of being that nothing could reach or disturb. If,
-this time, she could discover its secret, she would be launched in it
-forever.
-
-Back in her room she prepared swiftly to go out and meet the day in the
-open; all the world, waiting in the happy garden.... Through the
-house-stillness sounded three single downward-stepping notes ... the
-first phrase of the seventh symphony.... Perfect. Eternity stating
-itself in the stillness. He knew it, choosing just this thing to play to
-himself, alone; living in space alone, at one with everybody, as
-everyone was, the moment life allowed. Beethoven's perfect expression of
-the perfection of life, first thing in the morning. Morning stillness;
-single dreaming notes that blossomed in it and left it undisturbed;
-moved on into a pattern and then stood linked together in a single
-perfect chord. Another pattern in the same simple notes and another
-chord. Dainty little chords bowing to each other; gentle gestures that
-gradually became an angelic little dance through which presently a song
-leapt forth, the single opening notes brought back, caught up and swept
-into song pealing rapturously out.
-
-He was revealing himself as he was when alone, admitting Beethoven's
-vision of life as well as seeing the marvellous things Beethoven did
-with his themes? But he liked best the slamming, hee-hawing rollick of
-the last movement.... Because it did so much with a theme that
-was almost nothing.... _Bang_, toodle-oodle-oodle, _Bang_,
-toodle-_oodle_-oodle, _Bang_ toodle-oodle-oodle-_oo_. A lumpish phrase;
-a Clementi finger exercise played suddenly in startling fortissimo by an
-impatient schoolboy; smashed out with the full force of the orchestra,
-taken up, slammed here and there, up and down, by a leaping, plunging,
-heavy hoofed pantaloon, approving each variation with loud guffaws....
-The sly swift dig-in-the-ribs of the sudden pianissimos....
-
-To watch a shape adds interest to listening. But something disappears in
-listening with the form put first. Hearing only form is a kind of
-perfect happiness. But in coming back there is a reproach; as if it had
-been a kind of truancy.... People who care only for form think
-themselves superior. Then there is something wrong with them.
-
-On the landing table a letter lay waiting for the post. She passed by,
-gladly not caring to glance. But a tingling in her shoulders drew her
-back. She had reached the garden door. The music now pouring busily
-through from the next room urged her forward. But once outside she would
-have become a party to bright reasonableness, a foolish frontage,
-caricatured from behind. She fled back along her path to music that was
-once more the promise of joy ... to read the address of one of Alma's
-tradespeople, a distasteful reminder of the wheels of dull work
-perpetually running under the surface of beauty. But this morning it
-would not attain her.... It was not Alma's hand, but the small running
-shape like a scroll, each part a tiny perfection. She bent over it.
-_Miss Edna Prout...._ This, then, was what she had come back to find;
-poison for the day. The house was silent as a desert; empty, swept clear
-of life. The roomful of music was in another world. Alone in it, he had
-written to her and then sat down, thinking of her, to his music.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Complications are enlivening.... Within the sunlight, in the great
-spread of glistening sea, in the touch of the free air and the look of
-the things set down on the bench there was a lively intensity. A demand
-for search; for a thought that would obliterate the smear on the blue
-and gold of the day. The thought had been there even at the moment of
-shock. The following tumult was the effort to find it. To get round
-behind the shock and slay it before it could slay. To agree. That was
-the answer. Not to care. To show how much you care by deliberately not
-caring? People show disapproval of their own actions by defending them.
-By deliberately not hiding or defending them, they show off a version of
-their actions. That they don't themselves accept.
-
-Meantime everything passes. There are always the powerful intervals.
-Meetings, and then intervals in which other things come up and life
-speaks directly, to the individual.... Except for married people. Who
-are all a little absurd, to themselves and to all other married people.
-That is why they always talk so hard when two couples are together? To
-cover the din of their thoughts.... Their marriage was a success without
-being an exception to the rule that all marriages are failures, as he
-said. Why are they failures? Science, the way of thinking and writing
-that makes everybody seem small, in all these new books. Biology,
-_Darwin_. The way men, who have no inner convictions, no self, fasten
-upon an idea and let it describe life for them. Always a new idea.
-Always describing and destroying, filtering down, as time goes on to
-quite simple people, poisoning their lives, because men must have a
-formula. Men are gossips. Science is ... cosmic scandalmongering.
-
-Science is Cosmic Scandalmongering. Perhaps that might do for the House
-of Lords. But those old fogies are not particularly scientific. They
-quote the Classics. The same thing. Club gossip. Centuries of unopposed
-masculine gossip about the universe.
-
-Years ago he said there will be no more him and her, the novels of the
-future will be clear of all that.... Poetry nothing. Religion nothing.
-Women a biological contrivance. And now. Women still a sort of
-attachment to life, useful, or delightful ... the "civilised women of
-the future" to be either bright obedient assistants or providers of
-illusion for times of leisure. Two kinds, neatly arranged, each having
-only one type of experience, while men have both, _and_ their work, into
-which women can only come as Hindus, obediently carrying out tasks set
-by men, dressed in uniform, deliberately sexless and deferential. How
-can anyone feel romantic about him? Alma. But that is the real
-old-fashioned romance of everyday, from her girlhood. Hidden through
-loyalty to his shifting man's ideas? Half convinced by them? How can
-people be romantic impermanently, just now and again?
-
-Romance is solitary and permanent. Always there. In everybody. That is
-why the things one hears about people are like stories, not referring to
-life. Why I always forget them when the people themselves are there. Or
-believe, when they talk of their experiences, that they misread them. I
-can't believe even now in the reality of any of his experiences. But
-then I don't believe in the experiences of anyone, except a few people
-who have left sayings I know are true.... Everything else, all the
-expressions, history and legend and novels and science and everybody's
-talk, seems irrelevant. That's why I don't want experience, not to be
-caught into the ways of doing and being that drive away solitude, the
-marvellous quiet sense of life at first hand.... But he knows that too.
-"Life drags one along by the hair shrieking protests at every yard."
-
-"Hullo! What is she doing all alone?"
-
-The surrounding scene that had gradually faded, leaving her eyes
-searching in the past for the prospect she could never quite recall,
-shone forth again.
-
-"I've got to do a review."
-
-"What's the book?"
-
-"When you are in France, does a French river look different to you;
-_French_?"
-
-"No, Miriam. It--doesn't look different."
-
-He glanced for a moment shaggily from point to point of the sunlit scene
-and sat companionably down, turned towards her with a smile at her
-discomfiture. "What's the book, Miriam? It's jolly down here. We'll have
-some chairs. Yes? You can't write on a bench."
-
-He was gone. Meaning to come back. In the midst of the morning; in the
-midst of his preoccupations sociably at leisure. She felt herself sink
-into indifference. The unique opportunity was offering itself in vain.
-He came back just as she had begun to imagine him caught, up at the
-house, by a change of impulse. Or perhaps an unexpected guest.
-
-"What's the review?"
-
-"The House of Lords."
-
-"Read it?"
-
-"I can't. It's all post hoc."
-
-"Then you've read it."
-
-"I haven't read it. I've only sniffed the first page."
-
-"That's enough. Glance at the conclusion. Get your statement, three
-points; that'll run you through a thousand words. Look here--shall I
-write it for you?"
-
-"I've got _fifty_ ideas," she said beginning to write.
-
-"That's too many, Miriam. That's the trouble with you. You've got too
-many ideas. You're messing up your mind, quite a good mind, with too
-swift a succession of ideas." She wrote busily on, drinking in his
-elaboration of his view of the state of her mind. "H'm," he concluded,
-stopping suddenly; but she read in the sound no intention of breaking
-away because she had nothing to say to him. He was watching, in some way
-interested. He sat back in his chair; sympathetically withheld. Actually
-deferring to her work....
-
-She tore off the finished page and transfixed it on the grass with a
-hatpin. Her pencil flew. The statement was finished and leading to
-another. Perhaps he was right about three ideas. A good shape. The last
-must come from the book. She would have to consult it. No. It should be
-left till later. Her second page joined the first. It was incredible
-that he should be sitting there inactive, obliterated by her work.
-
-She tore off the third sheet and dropped her pencil on the grass.
-
-"Finished? Three sheets in less than twenty minutes. How do you do it,
-Miriam?"
-
-"It'll do. But I shall have to copy it. I've resisted the temptation to
-say what _I_ think about the House of Curmudgeons. Trace it back to the
-First Curmudgeon. Yet it seems somehow wrong to write in the air, so
-_currently_. The first time I did a review, of a bad little book on
-Whitman, I spent a fortnight of evenings reading."
-
-"You began at the Creation. Said everything you had to say about the
-history of mankind."
-
-"I went nearly mad with responsibility and the awfulness of discovering
-the way words express almost nothing at all."
-
-"It's not quite so bad as that. You've come on no end though, you know.
-The last two or three have been astonishingly good. You're not creative.
-You've got a good sound mind, a good style and a curious intense
-critical perception. You'll be a critic. But writing, Miriam, should be
-done with a pen. Can't call yourself a writer till you do it _direct_."
-
-"How can I write with a pen, in bed, on my knee, at midnight or dawn?"
-
-"A fountain pen?"
-
-"No one can write with a fountain pen."
-
-"Quite a number of us do. Quite a number of not altogether unsuccessful
-little writers, Miriam."
-
-"Well, it's wrong. How can thought or anything, well thought perhaps
-can, which doesn't matter and nobody really cares about, wait a minute,
-nothing _else_ can come through a hand whose fingers are held stiffly
-apart by a fat slippery barrel. A writing machine. A quill would be the
-thing, with a fine flourishing tail. But it is too important. It squeaks
-out an important sense of _writing_, makes people too objective, so that
-it's as much a man's pen, a mechanical, see life steadily and see it
-whole (when nobody knows what life _is_) man's view sort of implement as
-a fountain pen. A pen should be thin, not disturbing the hand, and the
-nib flexible and silent, with up and down strokes. Fountain pen writing
-is like ... democracy."
-
-"Why not go back to clay tablets?"
-
-"Machine-made things are dead things."
-
-"You came down here by _train_, Miriam."
-
-"I ought to have flown."
-
-"You'll fly yet. No. Perhaps you won't. When your dead people have
-solved the problem, you'll be found weeping over the rusty skeleton of a
-locomotive."
-
-"I don't mean Lilienfeld and Maxim. I can be fearfully interested in all
-that when I think of it. But to the people who do not see the beginning
-of flying it won't seem wonderful. It won't change anything."
-
-"It'll change, Miriam, pretty well everything. And if you don't mean
-Lilienfeld and Maxim what _do_ you mean?"
-
-"Well, by inventing the telephone we've damaged the chances of
-telepathy."
-
-"Nonsense, Miriam. You're suffering from too much Taylor."
-
-"The most striking thing about Taylor is that he does not want to
-develop his powers."
-
-"What powers?"
-
-"The things in him that have made him discover things that you admit are
-true; that make you interested in his little paper."
-
-"They're not right you know about their phosphoric bank; energy is not a
-simple calculable affair."
-
-"Now here's a strange thing. That time you met them, the first thing you
-said when they'd gone, was what's _wrong_ with them? And the next time I
-met them they said there's something _wrong_ with him. The truth is you
-are polar opposites and have everything to learn from each other."
-
-"Elizabeth Snowden Poole."
-
-"Yes. And without him no one would have heard of her. No one understood.
-And now psychology is going absolutely her way. In fifty years' time her
-books will be as clear as daylight."
-
-"Damned obstructive classics. That's what all our books will be. But
-I'll give you Mrs. Poole. Mrs. Poole is a very wonderful lady. She's the
-unprecedented."
-
-"There you are. Then you must admit the Taylors."
-
-"I'm not so sure about your little Taylors. There's nothing to be said,
-you know, for just going about not doing things."
-
-"They _are_ wonderful. Their atmosphere is the freest I know."
-
-"I envy you your enthusiasms, Miriam. Even your misplaced enthusiasms."
-
-"You go there, worn out, at the end of the day, and have to walk, after
-a long tram-ride through the wrong part of London, along raw new roads,
-dark little houses on either side, solid, without a single break,
-darkness, a street-lamp, more darkness, another lamp; and something in
-the air that lets you down and down. Partly the thought of these streets
-increasing, all the time, all over London. Yet when someone said walking
-home after a good evening at the Taylors' that the thought of having to
-settle down in one of those houses made him feel suicidal, I felt he was
-wrong; and saw them, from inside, bright and big; people's homes."
-
-"They're not big, Miriam. You wanted to marry him."
-
-"Good Heavens. An Adam's apple, sloping shoulders and a Cockney accent."
-
-"_I_ have a Cockney accent, Miriam."
-
-"..."
-
-"Don't go about classifying with your ears. People, you know, are very
-much alike."
-
-"They're utterly different."
-
-"Your vanity. Go on with your Taylors."
-
-"They are very much like other people."
-
-"With _my_ Taylors. I'm interested; really."
-
-"Well, suddenly you are in their kitchen. White walls and aluminium and
-a smell of fruit. Do you know the smell of root vegetables cooking
-slowly in a casserole?"
-
-"I'll imagine it. Right. Where are the Taylors?"
-
-"You are all standing about. Happy and undisturbed. None of that feeling
-of darkness and strangeness and the need for a fresh beginning.
-Tranquillity. As if someone had gone away."
-
-"The devil; exorcised, poor dear."
-
-"No but glorious. Making everyone move like a song. And talk. You are
-all, at once, bursting with talk. All over the flat, in and out of the
-rooms. George washing up all the time, wandering about with a dish and a
-cloth and Dora probably doing her hair in a dressing-gown, and cooking.
-It's the only place where I can talk exhausted and starving."
-
-"What do you talk about?"
-
-"Everything. We find ourselves sitting in the bathroom, engrossed--long
-speeches--they talk to each other, like strangers talking intimately on
-a 'bus. Then something boils over and we all drift back to the kitchen.
-Left to herself Dora would go on forever and sit down to a few walnuts
-at midnight."
-
-"Mary."
-
-"But she is an absolutely perfect cook. An artist. She invents and
-experiments. But he has a feminine consciousness, though he's a most
-manly little man with a head like Beethoven. So he's practical. Meaning
-he feels with his nerves and has a perfect sympathetic imagination. So
-presently we are all sitting down to a meal and the evening begins to
-look short. And yet endless. With them everything feels endless; the
-present I mean. They are so immediately alive. Everything and everybody
-is abolished. We _do_ abolish them I assure you. And a new world is
-there. You feel language changing, every word moving, changed, into the
-new world. _But_, when their friends come in the evening, weird people,
-real cranks, it disappears. They all seem to be attacking things they
-don't understand. I gradually become an old-fashioned Conservative. But
-the evening is wonderful. None of these people mind how far or how late
-they walk. And it goes on till the small hours."
-
-"You're getting your college time with these little people."
-
-"No. I'm easily the most stupidly cultured person there."
-
-"Then you're feeding your vanity."
-
-"I'm not. Even the charlatans make me feel ashamed of my sham advantage.
-No; the thing that is most wonderful about those Tuesdays is waking up
-utterly worn out, having a breakfast of cold fruit in the cold grey
-morning, a rush for the train, a last sight of the Taylors as they go
-off into the London Bridge crowd and then suddenly feeling utterly
-refreshed. They do too. It's an effect we have on each other."
-
-"How did you come across them?"
-
-"Michael. Reads _Reynolds's_. A notice of a meeting of London
-Tolstoyans. We rushed out in the pouring rain to the Edgware Road and
-found nothing at the address but a barred up corner shop-front. Michael
-wanted to go home. I told him to go and stood staring at the shop
-waiting for it to turn into the Tolstoyans. I knew it would. It did.
-Just as Michael was almost screaming in the middle of the road, I turned
-down a side street and found a doorway, a bead of gas shining inside
-just showing a stone staircase. We crept up and found a bare room,
-almost in darkness, a small gas jet, and a few rows of kitchen chairs
-and a few people sitting scattered about. A young man at a piano picked
-out a few bars of Grieg and played them over and over again. Then the
-meeting began. Dora, reading a paper on Tolstoy's ideas. Well, I felt I
-was hearing the whole truth spoken aloud for the first time.... But oh
-the discussion.... A gaunt man got up and began to rail at everything,
-going on till George gently asked him to keep to the subject. He raved
-then about some self-help book he had read. Quite incoherent; and
-convincing. Then the young man at the piano made a long speech about
-hitching your waggon to a star and at the end of it a tall woman, so old
-that she could hardly stand, stood up and chanted, in a deep laughing
-voice, Waggons and Stars. Waggons and stars. Today I am a waggon.
-Tomorrow a star. I'm reminded of the societies who look after young
-women. Meet them with a cup of tea, call a cab, put the young woman and
-the cup of tea into the cab. Am I to watch my brother's blunderings? No.
-I am his lover. Then he becomes a star. And I am a star. Then an awful
-man, very broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a low forehead and a
-sweeping moustache bounded up and shouted; I am a God! You, madam, are a
-goddess! Tolstoy is over-civilised! That's why he loves the godlike
-peasant. All metaphysicians, artists and pious people are sensualists.
-All living in unnatural excesses. The Zulu is a god. How many women in
-filthy London can nurse their children? What is a woman? _Children._
-What is the glory of man? Unimaginable to town slaves. They go through
-life ignorant of manhood, and the metaphysicians wallow in pleasures.
-Men and women are divine. There is no other divinity. Let them not sell
-their godhead for filthy food and rotting houses and moloch factories.
-What stands in the way? The pious people, the artists and the
-metaphysicians.... Then a gentleman, in spectacles at the back, quietly
-said that Tolstoy's ideas were eclectic and could never apply
-generally.... Of course he was right, but it doesn't make Tolstoy any
-the less true. And you know when I hear all these convincing socialists
-planning things that really would make the world more comfortable, they
-always in the end seem ignorant of _humanity_; always behind them I see
-little Taylor, unanswerable, standing for more difficult deep-rooted
-individual things. It's _individuals_ who must change, one by one."
-
-"Socialism will give the individual his chance."
-
-"Yes, I know. I agree in a way. You've shown me all that. I know
-environment and ways of thinking _do_ partly make people. But Taylor
-makes socialism, even when its arguments floor him, look such a
-feathery, passing thing."
-
-"You stand firm, Miriam. Socialism isn't feathery. _You're_ feathery.
-One thinks you're there and suddenly finds you playing on the other side
-of the field."
-
-"It's the fact that socialism is a _side_ that makes it look so shaky.
-And then there's Reich; an absolute blaze of light ... on the outside
-side of things."
-
-"Not a blaze of anything, my dear Miriam ... a poor, hard-working,
-popular lecturer."
-
-"Everybody in London is listening. Hearing the most illuminating
-things."
-
-"What do they illuminate?"
-
-"Ourselves. The English. Continuing Buckle. He's got a clear cool hard
-unprejudiced foreign mind."
-
-"Your foreigners, Miriam. They haven't the monopoly of intelligence."
-
-"I know. You think the English are _the_ people. But so does Reich.
-Really he would interest you. You _must_ let me tell you his idea. Just
-the shape of it. Badly. He puts it so well that you know he has
-something up his sleeve. He has. He's a Hungarian patriot. That is his
-inspiration. That England shall save Europe, and therefore Hungary, from
-the Germans. You must let me just tell you without interrupting. Two
-minutes."
-
-"_I'm_ intelligent, Miriam. _You're_ intelligent. You have distinction
-of mind. But a really surprising lack of expression you know. You
-misrepresent yourself most tremendously."
-
-"You mean I haven't a voice, that way of talking about things that makes
-one know people don't believe what they say and are thinking most about
-the way they are talking. Bah."
-
-"Clear thought makes clear speech."
-
-"Well. Reich says that history so far is always one thing. The
-Hellenisation of Europe.... The Greeks were the first to evolve
-universal ideals. Which were passed on. Through two channels. Law-giving
-Rome. And the Roman church; Paul, who had made Christianity a universal
-working scheme. So Europe has been Hellenised. And the Hellenisation of
-the _rest_ of the world will be through its Europeanisation. The enemy
-to this is the rude materialistic modern Germany. The only hope,
-England. Which he calls a nation of ignorant specialists, ignorant of
-history; believing only in race, which doesn't exist--a blindfold
-humanitarian giant, utterly unaware that other people are growing up in
-Europe and have the use of their eyes. The French don't want to do
-anything outside their large pleasant home. They are the sedentary
-Greeks; townspeople. The English are Romans, official, just, inartistic.
-Good colonists, not intrinsically, but because they send so much of
-their best away from their little home. A child can see that the English
-and Americans care less for money than any people in the western world,
-are adventurous and wandering and improvident; the only people with
-ideals and a sense of the future. Inartistic...."
-
-"Geography he calls the ground symphony of history, but nothing more, or
-Ireland would play first fiddle in Great Britain. The rest is having to
-fight for your life and being visited by your neighbours. England has
-attracted thousands of brilliant foreigners, who have made her,
-including the Scotch, who until they became foreigners in England were
-nothing. And the foreigner of foreigners is the permanently alien Jew.
-And the genius of all geniuses Loyola, because he made all his followers
-permanent aliens. Countries without foreigners are doomed. Like Hungary.
-Doomed to extinction if England does not beat Germany. That's all."
-
-"There won't, if we can help it, be any need for England to beat
-Germany. There are, you know, possibly unobserved by your rather wildly
-rocketting Reich, a few eyes in England. That war can be written away;
-by journalists and others, written into absurdity."
-
-"Oh, I'm so glad. Listening to Reich makes one certain that the things
-that seem to be happening in the world are illusions and the real result
-of the unseen present movement of history is war with Germany. I don't
-like Reich. His idea of making everything begin with Greece. His awful
-idea that art follows only on pressure and war. Yet it is true that the
-harassed little seaboard peoples who lived insecurely _did_ have their
-art periods after they had fought for their lives. Then no more wars no
-more Art.... _Well_; perhaps Art like war is just male ferocity!"
-
-"Nonsense, Miriam."
-
-"Do you really think the war can be written away? There are so many
-opinions, and reading keeps one always balanced between different sets
-of ideas."
-
-"You're too omnivorous, Miriam. You get the hang of too many things.
-You're scattered."
-
-"The better you hear a thing put, the more certain you are there's
-another view. And then there are _motives_."
-
-"Ah, now you're talking.... Motives; can be used. Almost any sort of
-motive can be roped in; and directed. You ought to write up that little
-meeting by the way. You're lucky you know, Miriam, in your opportunities
-for odd experience. Write it up. Don't forget."
-
-"You weren't there. It wasn't a joke. I don't want to be facetious about
-it."
-
-"You're too near. But you will. Save it up. You'll see all these little
-excursions in perspective when you're round the next corner."
-
-"Oh I _hate_ all these written up things; 'Jones always wore a battered
-cricket cap, a little askew.' They simply drive me _mad_. You know the
-whole thing is going to be lies from beginning to end."
-
-"You're a romantic, Miriam."
-
-"I'm not. It's the 'always wore.' Trying to get at you, just as much as
-'Iseult the Fair.' Just as unreal, just as much in an assumed voice. The
-amazing thing is the way men go prosing on for ever and ever, admiring
-each other, never suspecting."
-
-"You've got to create an illusion you know."
-
-"Why illusion? Life isn't an illusion."
-
-"We don't know what life is. You don't know what life is. You think too
-much. Life's got to be lived. The difference between you and me is that
-you think to live and I live to think. You've made a jolly good start.
-Done things. Come out and got your economic independence. But you're
-stuck."
-
-"Now _there's_ somebody who's writing about life. Who's shown what has
-been going on from the beginning. Mrs. Stetson. It was the happiest day
-of my life when I read _Women and Economics_."
-
-"It's no good, you know, that idea of hers. Women have got to
-specialise. They are specialists from the beginning. They can't run
-families, and successful careers at the same time."
-
-"They could if life were differently arranged. They will. It's not that
-so much. Though it's a relief to know that homes won't be always a
-tangle of nerve-racking heavy industries which ought to be done by men.
-But the blaze of light she brings is by showing that women were social
-from the first and that _all_ history has been the gradual socialisation
-of the male. It is partly complete. But the male world is still savage."
-
-"The squaw, Miriam, was--"
-
-"Absolutely social and therefore civilised, compared to the hunting
-male. She went out of herself. Mother and son was society. _He_ had no
-chance. Everyone, even his own son, was an enemy and a rival."
-
-"That's old Ellis's idea. There's _been_ a matriarchate all right,
-Miriam, for your comfort."
-
-"I don't want comfort, I want truth."
-
-"Oh you _don't_, Miriam. One gives you facts and you slide away from
-them."
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Household life breaks everything up. Comes crashing down on moments that
-cannot recur.... Thought runs on, below the surface to conclusions,
-arriving distractingly at the wrong moment.
-
-It always seems a deliberate conspiracy to suppress conclusions. Lunch,
-grinning like a Jack-in-the-box, in a bleak emptiness. People ought not
-to meet at lunch time. If the bleakness is overcome it is only by
-borrowing from the later hours. And the loan is wasted by the absence of
-after-time, the business of filling up the afternoon with activities;
-leaving everything to be begun all over again later on.
-
-How can guests _allow_ themselves to arrive to lunch? The smooth young
-man had come primed for his visit. Carefully talking in the Wilson way;
-carefully finding everything in the world amusing. And he was not
-amused. He was a cold selfish baffled young man, lost in a set. Welcomed
-here as a favoured emissary from a distant potentate....
-
-And now with just the same air of reflected brilliance he was blithely
-playing tennis. Later on he would have to begin again with his talk;
-able parroting, screening hard coldness, the hard coldness of the pale
-yellow-haired Englishman with good features.... A blindfold humanitarian
-giant? Where are Reich's English giants? Blind. Amongst the
-old-fashioned, conservatives? Gentlepeople with fixed ideas who don't
-want to change anything? The Lycurgans are not humanitarians. Because
-they are humanitarians deliberately. Liberals and socialists are
-humanitarian intellectually, through anger. Humanitarian idealists. The
-giants are humanitarian unconsciously, through breeding. Reich said the
-strongest motives, the motives that made history, were _unconscious_....
-Consciousness is increasing. The battle of unconscious fixed ideas and
-conscious chosen fixed ideas. Then the conservatives must always win!
-They make socialists and then absorb them. The socialists give them
-ideas. Neither of them are quite true. Why doesn't God state truth once
-and for all and have done with it?
-
-And all the time, all over the western world, life growing more
-monstrous. The human head growing bigger and bigger. A single scientific
-fact, threatening humanity. Hypo's _amused_ answer to the claims of the
-feminists. The idea of having infants scooped out early on, and
-artificially reared. Insane. Science rushing on, more and more clear and
-mechanical.... "Life becomes more and more a series of surgical
-operations." How _can_ men contemplate the increasing awfulness of life
-for women and yet wish it to go on? The awfulness they have created by
-swaddling women up; regarding them as instruments of pleasure. Liking
-their cooking. _Stereotyping_ in their fixed mechanical men's way a
-standard of deadly cooking that is destroying everybody, teeth first.
-And they call themselves creators.... Knickers or gym skirts. A free
-stride from the hips, weight forward on toes pointing straight, like
-Orientals. Squatting, like a savage, keeping the pelvis ventilated and
-elastic instead of sitting, knees politely together, stuffy and
-compressed and unventilated. All the rules of ladylike deportment ruin
-the pelvis.... Ladies are awful. Deportment and a rigid overheated
-pelvis. In the kitchen they have to skin rabbits and disembowel fowls.
-Otherwise no keep. Polite small mouthfuls of squashy food and pyorrhoea.
-Good middleaged church people always suggest stuffy bodies and
-pyorrhoea. Somewhere in the east people can be divorced for flatulence.
-
-But the cranks are so uncultured; cut off from books and the past.
-Martyrs braving ridicule? The salt of the earth, making here and there a
-new world, unseen? Their children will not be cranks....
-
-A rose fell at her feet flung in through the window.
-
-"Come out and play!"
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-This is joy. To stand back from the court, fall slack, losing sight of
-the scatter of watching people round the lawn. Nothing but the clasp of
-the cool air and the firm little weight of the rough-coated ball in a
-slack hand. The loose-limbed plunge forward to toe the line. One
-measuring glance and the whole body a taut projectile driving the ball
-barely clear of the net, to swish furrowing along the ground.
-
-"The lady serves from the cliff and Hartopp volleys from the sky.
-They're invincible." The yellow young man was charming the other side of
-the net. Not yellow. His hair a red gold blaze when the sun was setting,
-loose about his pale eager sculptured face; and now dull gold. He had
-welcomed her wrangling rush to the net after the first set, rushing
-forward at once, wrangling, without hearing, Hypo coming too, squealing
-incoherent contributions. And then the young man had done it again, for
-her, to make a little scene for the onlookers. But the third time it had
-been a failure and Hypo had filled the gap with witty shoutings. And all
-the time the tall man with dense features had said not a word, only
-swung sympathetically about. Yet he was a friend. From the moment he
-came up through the garden from France with his bag, uninvited, and sat
-down and murmured gently in response to vociferous greetings. Ill, after
-a bad crossing. So huge and so gentle that it had been easy to go up to
-his chair as everyone else had done, and say lame things, instead of
-their bright ones, and get away with a sense of having had an immense
-conversation. He played the game, thinking of nothing else. Understood
-the style and rhythm of all the incidental movements. The others were
-different. They had learned their tennis; could remember a time when
-they did not play. Playing did not take them back to the beginning of
-life. Was not pure joy to them.
-
-He was wonderful. He altered the tone. The style and peace of his slow
-sentences. Half German. The best kind of German. Now _he_ could prevent
-war with Germany, if he could be persuaded to waft to and fro, for
-Reich's ten years, between the two countries, talking.
-
-He talked through the evening; keeping his hold of the simplest thread
-of speech with his still voice and bearing. Leaving a large, peaceful
-space when he paused, into which it was easy to drop any sort of
-reflection that might have arisen in one's mind. Hypo scarcely spoke
-except to question him and the smooth young man dramatically posed,
-smoked, in silence. The huge form was a central spectacle, until the
-light faded and the talk began to die down. Then Alma asked him to play.
-He rose gigantic in the half light and went to the piano murmuring that
-he would be pleased to improvise a little. Amazing. With all his foreign
-experience and his serene mind, his musical reflections would be
-wonderful. But they were not. His gentle playing was colourless. Vague
-and woolly. And it brought a silence in which his own silence stood out.
-He seemed to have retired, politely and gently, but definitely, into
-himself. The darkness surrounding the one small shaded light began to
-state the joy of the day. Everyone was beaming quietly with the sense of
-a glorious day. The tall man was at ease in stillness. In his large
-quiet atmosphere communication flowed, following serenely on the
-cessation of sound. Nun danket alle Gott.... How far was he a believer
-in the old things? His consciousness was the widest in the room; seemed
-to hold the balance between the old and the new, sympathetically, broad
-shouldered and rather weary with his burden. Speaking always in a frayed
-tired voice that would not give in to any single brisk idea. There was
-room and space and kind shelter in his mind for a woman to state
-herself, completely, unopposed. But he would not accept conclusions....
-His mild smooth shape of words would survive anything; persisting. It
-was his _style_. With it he carried himself through everything, making
-his way of talking a thing in itself.... No ideas, no convictions; but
-something in him that made a perfect manner. A blow between the eyes,
-flattening him out, would not break it. There was nothing there to
-break, nothing hard in him. A made mould, chosen, during his growing,
-filling itself up from life, but not living ... a gentleman, of course,
-that was it. Then there was an abyss beneath. Unstated things that lived
-in darkness.
-
-But the silence lasted only an instant. Before its test could reveal
-anything further than the sudden sharp division of the sitters into men
-and women, Alma made movements to break up the party. Hypo's voice came,
-enchanting, familiar and new, its qualities renewed by the fresh
-contacts. The thing to do he said rising, coming forward into the
-central light, not in farewell, into a self-made arena, with needless
-challenging sturdiness from one of the distances of his crowded mind. It
-would be one of his unanswerable fascinating misapprehensions. The thing
-to _do_ was to go out into the world; leave everything behind, wife, and
-child and things; go all over the world and come back; _experienced_.
-
-"And what about the wives?"
-
-"The wives, Miriam, will go to heaven when they die." He turned on his
-laugh to the men in the background; and gathered their amused agreement
-in a swift glance. They had both risen and were standing, exposed by the
-frankness of their spokesman, silent in polite embarrassment. They
-_really_ thought, these two nice men, that something had been said. The
-spell of the evening was broken up. The show had been given. Dream
-picture of moving life. Entertainment and warm forgetfulness. Everyone
-enchanted and alive. Now was the time for talk, exchange; beginning with
-the shattering of Hypo's silly idea. How could men have experience?
-Nothing would make them discover themselves. Either of them. Perhaps the
-tall man....
-
-"Men as they are," she began, trusting to the travelling power of her
-mental picture of him as an exception, "might go----"
-
-But her words were lost. Alma had come forward and was saying her good
-nights, hurriedly. They were to go, just as everything was beginning.
-All chance of truth was caught, in a social trap. The men were to be
-left, with their illusions, to talk their monstrous lies, unchecked.
-Imagining they were really talking, because there was no one to
-contradict. Unfair.
-
-She rose perforce and got through her part. It was idiotic, a shameful
-farce. Evening dress and the set scene, so beautifully arranged, were
-suddenly shameful and useless. Taken to bits; silly. She seemed to be
-taking leave of herself, three separate selves, united in the blessed
-relief of getting rid of the women. In the person of the tall man she
-strode gracefully across the room to open the door for Alma and herself,
-breaking out, with the two other men, at once, before the door was
-closed, with immeasurable relief, into the abrupt chummy phrases of old
-friends newly met.
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER IV
-
-
-The tiger stepping down his blue plaque. The one thing in the room that
-nothing could influence. All the other single beautiful things change.
-They are beautiful, for a moment, again and again; giving out their
-expression, and presently frozen stiff, having no expression. The blue
-plaque, intense fathomless eastern blue, the thick spiky grey-green
-sharply shaped leaves, going up forever, the heavy striped beast forever
-curving through, his great paw always newly set on the base of the
-plaque; inexhaustible, never looked at enough; always bringing the same
-joy.... If ever the memory of this room fades away, the blue plaque will
-remain.
-
-Mr. Hancock was coming upstairs. In a moment she would know whether any
-price had been paid; any invisible appointment irrevocably missed.
-
-"Good morning." The everyday tone. Not the tone of welcome after a
-holiday.
-
-"Good morning. I'm so sorry I could not get back yesterday."
-
-"Yes ... I suppose it could not be helped." He was annoyed. Perhaps even
-a little suspicious....
-
-"You see, my brother-in-law thought I was still on holiday and free to
-take my sister home."
-
-"I trust it is not anything serious."
-
-"It was just one of her attacks." Suppose Sarah should have one, at this
-moment? Suppose it was Sarah who was paying for her escapade? She
-summoned her despairingly, explaining ... saw her instant approval and
-her private astonishment at the reason for the deceit.
-
-Supported by Sarah she rounded off her story.
-
-"I see," said Mr. Hancock pleasantly; weighing, accepting. She stood
-before him seeing the incident as he would imagine it. It was growing
-true in her mind. Presently she would be looking back on it. This was
-how criminals got themselves mixed up....
-
-"I'm glad it was not anything serious," said Mr. Hancock gravely,
-turning to the scatter of letters on his table. He _was_ glad. And his
-kind sympathy was not being fooled. Sarah was always being ill. It was
-worth a lie to drag her out into the light of his sympathy. A breath of
-true life, born from a lie.
-
-The incident was at an end, safely through. He was satisfied and
-believing, gone on into his day. She gathered up his appointment book
-from under his nose. He was using it, making entries. But he knew this
-small tyranny was her real apology, a curse for the trouble she had been
-obliged to give him. While he sat bereft as she took in the items of his
-day, their silent everyday conversation was knitted up once more. She
-was there, not failing him. He knew she would always be there as long as
-he should really need her. She restored the book to its place and stood
-at his side affectionately watching him tackle his task, detached, aware
-of her affection, secure in its independence.
-
-They were so utterly far apart, foreigners in each other's worlds.
-Irreconcilable.... But for all these years she had had daily before her
-eyes the spectacle of his life work; the way and the cost of his
-undeviating, unsparing work. It must surely be a small comfort to him
-that there had been an understanding witness to the shapely building of
-his life....
-
-Understanding speech she could never have, with anyone ... except the
-Taylors, and she was as incompletely in their world as in his. The joy
-of being with him was the absence of the need for speech. She whisked
-herself to the door and went out shutting it behind her with a little
-slam, a last fling of holiday freedom, her communication to him of the
-store of joy she had brought back, the ease with which she was
-shouldering her more and more methodical, irrelevant work....
-
-There was nothing to pay. Then the moment over the telegram _had_ been a
-revelation....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-"You ought to see the Grahams. Stay another day and see the Grahams."
-
-I might have wired asking for another day. Impossible. The day would
-have been spoilt by the discomfort of knowing him thinking me ungrateful
-and insatiable.... Only being able to say when I came back that I waited
-to see a man dying of cancer. He would have thought that morbid. The
-minute the telegram was sent the feeling of guilt passed away. Whilst
-Hypo was chuckling over it at the top of the stairs there was nothing
-and no one. Only the feeling of having broken through and stepped
-forward into space. Strong happiness. All the next day was in space; a
-day taken out of life; standing by itself.
-
-Mr. Graham was old-fashioned ... and modern too. He seemed to have come
-from so far back, to see backwards, understanding, and to see ahead the
-things he had always known. Serene and interested, in absolutely
-everything. As much in the tiny story of the threepenny-bit as in
-anything else, making it seem worth telling, making me able to tell it.
-Seeing everything as _real_. Really finding life marvellous in the way
-no one else seemed to do.... Ill as he was he looked up my trains,
-carefully and thoughtfully.... The horror and fear of death was taken
-away from me while I watched him.... Perhaps he had always felt that the
-marvellousness of there being such a thing as life was the answer to
-everything.... And now that he was dying knew it more completely?
-
-They were both so serene. Everybody was lifted by being with them into
-that part of life that goes on behind the life that seems to be being
-lived....
-
-All the time it was as if they had witnessed that past fortnight and
-made it immaterial ... a part of the immaterial _story_ of life....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-That fortnight had the shape of an arranged story, something playing
-itself out, with scenes set and timed to come in in the right place.
-Upset by that one little scene that had come in of itself....
-
-The clear days after the two men had gone back to town. The long talks
-kept undisturbed.... All the long history of Gissing....
-
-Gissing's ideal women over-cultivated, self-important creatures, with
-low-pressure vitality and too little animal.... "You're rather like that
-you know." ...
-
-"Men would always rather be made love to than talked at."
-
-"Your life is a complex system of evasions. You are a mass of _health_,
-unused. You're not doing any thing with yourself...." "... Two kinds of
-women, the kind that come it over one, tremendously, and nurses."
-
-"Most good men are something like chimpanzees. The best man in those
-relationships is the accomplished rake ... that's the secret of old
-Grooge.... Yes; you'd hate him. He's one of the old school; expert
-knowledge about women. That's nonsense of course. There _is_ no expert
-knowledge about women. Men and women are very much alike. But there's
-the honest clean red-blooded people and the posers and rotters and
-anaemic people. And there are for your comfort a few genuine monogamists.
-Very few."
-
-"You're stuck, you know. Stuffed with romantic ignorance. You're a great
-chap. A gentleman. That's an insult, isn't it. You don't exploit
-yourself...."
-
-"I'm not sure about you. You've got an awfully good life up in town,
-jolly groups; various and interesting. One hesitates to disturb it....
-But we're old friends. And there's this silly barrier between us. There
-always is between people who evade what is after all only the
-development of the friendly handshake."
-
-"She's a very fine artist. Well, she, my dear Miriam, has lovers. They
-keep her going. Keep her creative. She's a woman one can talk to....
-There's no tiresome barrier...."
-
-"Your women are a sort of omnibus load."
-
-"There's always the box seat."
-
-"They all grin. Your one idea of women is a grin."
-
-"There's a great deal to be said for the cheerful grin. You know, a
-woman who has the grit to take things into her own hands, take the
-initiative, is no end of a relief. Women want to. They ought to. They're
-inhibited by false ideas. They want, nearly all women want all their
-corners taken for them."
-
-"This book'll be our brat. You've pulled it together no end. You ought
-to chuck your work, have a flat in town. Be general adviser to
-authors...."
-
-Queer old professor Bolly, pink and white and loud checks, standing
-outside the summer house in the brilliant sun.
-
-"Is this the factory?"
-
-"This is the factory."
-
-"Does he dictate to you?"
-
-"My _dear_ Bolly.... Have five minutes; have _half_ a minute's
-conversation with Miss Henderson and then, if you dare, try to imagine
-_anyone_ dictating to her."
-
-Pink and white. Two old flamingoes. Pulling the other way. Bringing all
-the old conservative world into the study ... sending it forward with
-their way of looking at the new things. Such a deep life in them that
-old age and artificial teeth and veined hands did not obscure their
-youth. Worldly happy religious musical Englishpeople.
-
-"The Barrie question turns solely upon the question of romance. You
-cannot, dear young lady, _hesitate_ over Barrie. You must either adore,
-or detest. With equal virulence. I am one of the adorers. _Romance_, for
-me, is the ultimate _reality_.... Seen through a glass darkly...."
-
-On the other side of the room Mrs. Bolly was telling her tales of
-Bayreuth. They were both untouched by the Wilson atmosphere. Not clever.
-They brought a glow like fire-light; as if the cold summer hearth were
-alight, as the scenes from their stories came into the room and stood
-clear.
-
-The second afternoon Hypo stretched out on the study lounge, asleep,
-compact and calm in the sunlight like a crusader on a tomb, till just
-before they went.
-
-"There's something unconquerable in them."
-
-"Yes, Miriam. Silliness _is_ unconquerable. Poor old Gourlay; went to
-Greenland to get away from it. _Died_ to get away from it."
-
-"Don't go away. Camp in here. I'm all to bits. You know you're no end of
-a comfort to me."
-
-"I can't be. You're hampered all the time I'm here by the silly things I
-say; the way I spoil your talk."
-
-"You've no idea how much I like having you about. Like the sound of your
-voice; the way your colour takes the sun, your laughter. I envy you your
-sudden laughter, Miriam; the way you lift your chin, and laugh. You're
-wasted on yourself, Miriam. You don't know the fine individual things in
-yourself. You've got all sorts of illusions, but you've no idea where
-you really score."
-
-"Can't get on with anybody."
-
-"You get on with me all right. But you never tell _me_ nice things about
-myself. You only laugh at my jokes."
-
-"I've never told you a hundredth part. There's never any time. But I'll
-tell you one nice thing. There's a way in which ever since I've known
-you, you obliterate other men. Yes. For me. It's most tiresome."
-
-"Oh, my dear! Is that true, Miriam?"
-
-"Oh yes. From the first time I saw you. There you were. I can't bear
-your ideas. But I always find myself testing other men, better men, by
-the way, by you."
-
-"I haven't any ideas, Miriam, and I'm a reformed character. There's
-heaps of time. You're here another ten days yet. You shall camp in here.
-We'll talk, devastatingly."
-
-"If I once began----"
-
-"Begin. We're going to explore each other's minds."
-
-"I should bore you to death."
-
-"You never bore me. Really. It does me good to quarrel with Miriam. But
-we're not going to quarrel. We're going to explore each other and stop
-nowhere. Agreed?"
-
-"I've seen you _ill_ with boredom. You hate silence and you hate
-opposition. You always think people's minds are blank when they are
-silent. It's just the other way round. Only of course there are so many
-kinds of silence. But the test of absolutely everything in life is the
-quality of the in-between silences. It's only in silence that you can
-judge of your relationship to a person."
-
-"You shall be silent. You shall deploy a whole regiment of silences ...
-but you'll fire off an occasional volley of speech?"
-
-"Real speech can only come from complete silence. Incomplete silence is
-as fussy as deliberate conversation."
-
-"One has to begin somewhere. Deliberate conversation leads to real
-conversation. You _can_ talk, you know, Miriam. You're not a woman of
-the world. You don't come off all the time. But when you do, you come
-off no end."
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-If _his_ mind could be tackled even though there were no words to answer
-him with, then anyone's mind could be tackled....
-
-Finding him simple and sad, able to be uncertain, took away the spell
-from the surroundings; leaving only him.... Seeing life as he saw it,
-being forced to admit some of his truths, hard and cruel even if
-rearranged or differently stated, made the world a nightmare, a hard
-solid daylight nightmare, the only refuge to be, and stay, with him. Yet
-the giving up of perpetual opposition brought a falseness.... Smiling
-agreement, with unstated differences and reservations piling up all the
-time.... Drifting on into a false relationship.
-
-The joy of being with him, the thing that made it worth while to flatter
-by seeming to agree was more than half the sense of triumphing over
-other women. Of being able to believe myself as interesting and charming
-and mysteriously wonderful as all these women we talked about, who lost
-their wonder as he stated their formula.
-
-By the time the Grimshaws came everything was sad.... That is why I was
-so successful with them. Gay with sadness, easy to talk to, practised in
-conversation. Without that they would not have sought me out and carried
-me off by themselves and shown me their world....
-
-"I've been through a terrific catechism."
-
-"You've impressed them, Miriam. I'm jealous. They come here; to see me;
-and go off with Miriam."
-
-"Bosh. They thought I was intelligent. They don't think so _now_.
-Besides they really were trying to interview you through me."
-
-"That's subtle of you, Miriam. Old James. You've no idea how you're
-coming on. Or coming out. Yes. I think there's always _been_ a subtle
-leap in Miriam. Without words. A song without words. Good formula for
-Miriam. What did they interview me about?"
-
-"I refused to be drawn. Suddenly, in the middle of lunch she asked me in
-her Cheltenham voice 'What do you do with your leishah?' I think she
-really wanted statistics; gutter-snipe statistics."
-
-"She's an enchantress. No end of a lark, really. She runs old Grimshaw.
-Runs everybody. You're rather like her you know. You've got the
-elements, with your wrist-watch. What did you say?"
-
-"Nothing. I haven't the faintest idea what I do with my leisure. Besides
-I can't talk about real things to a bayonet. She _is_ fascinating,
-though."
-
-"She's a gypsy. When she looks at one ... with that _brown_ smile ...
-one could do anything for her."
-
-"There you are. Your _smiles_.... But he's the most perfect darling.
-Absolutely sincere. A Breton peasant. I talked to him about some of your
-definitions. Not as yours. As mine."
-
-"Never mind. He knew where they came from."
-
-"Not at all. Only those I thought I agreed with. And he's given me quite
-a fresh view of the Lycurgans."
-
-"Now don't you go and desert."
-
-"Well he must be either right or wrong."
-
-"What a damned silly thing to say. Oh what a damned silly thing to say."
-
-Chill windy afternoon, grey tamarisks waving in a bleak wind, tea
-indoors and a fire bringing into the summery daylight the sudden message
-that summer was at an end. The changed scene chiming together with the
-plain outspoken anger. Again the enlivening power of anger, the relief
-of the clean cut, of everything brought to an end, of being once more
-single and clear, free of everyone, homesick for London....
-
-Mr. Hancock's showing-out bell sounded in the hall. The long sitting had
-turned into a short one. No need to go up yet. He'll come downstairs,
-pad-pad, flexible hand-made shoes on the thick stair carpet, the sharp
-turn at the stair-end, the quick little walk along the passage and soft
-neat clatter of leather heels down the stone stairs to the workshop.
-Always the same. The same occasion. Which occasion? That used to be so
-clear and so tremendous. Confused now, but living on in every sound of
-his footsteps.
-
-Homesick for London. For those people whose lives are set in a pattern
-with mine, leaving its inner edge free to range.
-
-Perhaps the set pattern is enough. The daily association. The mass of
-work. Its results unseen. At the end it might show as a complete whole,
-crowded with life. Life comes in; strikes through. Everything comes in
-if you are set in a pattern and always in one place. Changed
-circumstances bring quickly, but imperfectly, without a background, the
-things that would be discovered slowly and perfectly, on a background,
-in calm daily air. All lives are the same life. Only one discovery,
-coming to everybody.
-
-The little bell on the wall burred gently. Room free. No hurry.
-
-I'll wait till he's gone downstairs.
-
-"Nice Miriam. You really are a dear, you know. You've a ruddy, blazing
-temper. You can sulk too, abominably. Then one discovers an unsuspected
-streak of sweetness. You forget. You have a rare talent for
-forgetfulness and recovery. You're suddenly pillowy. You've no _idea_,
-Miriam, what a blessing that is to the creature called man. It's womanly
-you are. Now don't resent that. It's a fine thing to be. It makes one
-want you, quite desperately. The essential deeps of you. Like an
-absolution. I'm admitting your deeps, Miriam."
-
-"It's most inconvenient suddenly to be forgetting you are having a row
-with a person. It's really a weakness. Suddenly getting interested."
-
-"Your real weakness is your lack of direction, the instability of your
-controls. If I had you on my hands for six months you'd be no end of a
-fine chap. Now don't resent that. It's a little crude, I admit. Perhaps
-I ought to beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, Miriam."
-
-"I never think about myself. I remember once being told that I was too
-excitable. It made me stare, for a few minutes. And now you. I believe
-it. But I shall forget again. And you are all wrong about 'controls.' I
-don't mean mine. I mean your silly idea of women having feebler controls
-than men."
-
-"Not my idea. Tested fact."
-
-"Damn facts. Those arranged tests and their facts are utterly nothing at
-all. Women's controls appear to be feebler because they have so much
-more to control. I don't mean physically. Mentally. By seeing everything
-simultaneously. Unless they are the kind of woman who has been warped
-into seeing only one thing at a time. Scientifically. They are freaks.
-Women see in terms of life. Men in terms of things, because their lives
-are passed amongst scraps."
-
-"_Nice_ Miriam."
-
-"... Now we can begin to talk. It's easier, you know, to talk hand in
-hand."
-
-The touch of his hand bringing a perfect separation. Everything suddenly
-darkened. Two little people side by side in a darkness. Exactly alike.
-Hypo gone. His charm, quite gone.
-
-Alma crossing the end of the lawn. There was not any feeling of guilt.
-Only the sense of her isolation. Companionship with her isolation. Then
-the shock of his gay voice ringing out to her across the lawn.
-
-"Susan, if you have that day in town, awful things will happen." Her
-little pink-clad figure turning for a moment to wave a hand.
-
-"Of course they will! Rather!"
-
-"We're licensed!"
-
-"Susan doesn't like me."
-
-"She does. She likes you no end. Likes you currently. The way your hair
-goes back over your ears."
-
-... He misses nothing. That is his charm, his supremacy in charm over
-all other men. And misinterprets everything. That is his tragedy. The
-secret of his perpetual disappointments. He spoiled everything by the
-perpetual shock of his _deliberate_ guilt and _deliberate_ daring. That
-was driving me off all the time. The extraordinariness of his idea of
-frankness! His 'stark talk' is nothing compared to the untroubled
-outspokenness of the Taylors....
-
-The _burden_ of his simplicity. No one in the world could be more
-simple....
-
-He thought my silence meant attention and agreement, when I wanted only
-to watch the transformation going on all round me. That would have gone
-on; if he had given me time; not destroyed everything by his sudden
-trick of masterfulness; the silly application of a silly idea.... It's
-not only that coercion is wrong; that it's far better to die than to be
-coerced. It's the destructiveness of coercion. How long before men
-discover that violence drives women utterly away into cold isolation.
-Never, since the beginning of the world has a woman been mastered. I'm
-glad I know why. Why violence defeats itself....
-
-"You don't desert me completely? We're still friends? You'll go on being
-interested in my work?"
-
-He knew nothing of the life that went on of itself, afterwards. I had
-driven him away. I felt guilty then. Because I took my decision. And
-absolved myself. The huge sounding darkness, expanding, turned to a
-forest of moving green and gold. The feeling of immense deliberate
-strength going forward, breaking out through life.
-
-If it came again I should absolve myself. But it won't. It is something
-in him, and in his being an Englishman and not, like Michael, an alien
-mind.
-
-"_Alma._ I want a slice of life!"
-
-"Of course, my very dear! Take one, Miriam. Take a _large_ one. An oat.
-Not a vote. One woman, one oat...."
-
-"I want an oat _and_ a vote.... No. I don't want a vote. I want to have
-one and not use it. Taking sides simply annihilates me."
-
-"Don't be annihilated, old fing. Take an oat."
-
-"Give me one."
-
-"I will. I _do_!"
-
-Alma's revealed splendour ... lighting and warming the surrounding
-bleakness. In that moment her amazing gift that would move her so far
-from me seemed nothing. Herself, everything to me. Alma is a star. Her
-name should be Stella.... But I had already decided that it would not be
-him. And that marvellous beginning cannot come again.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-"Particularly jolly schoolgirls! You'll like them. They're free. They
-mean to be free. Now they, Miriam, _are_ the new woman." Posing,
-exploiting, deliberately uncatlike cats. _How_ could he be taken in?
-_Why_ were all her poses revealed to me? What brought me on the scene
-just at those moments? Why that strange little series of events placing
-me, alone, of the whole large party, innocently there just at that
-moment, to see the origin of his idea of a jolly smile and how he
-answers it?
-
-"You looked like a Silenus."
-
-"That sort of thing always looks foolish from the outside. It was
-nothing. I beg of you, I entreat you to think no more of it."
-
-Again the little bell. Clean. A steady little summons. He had not gone
-downstairs.
-
-He was washing his hands; with an air of communicativeness.
-
-"I've a piece of news for you.... I have decided to leave Mr. Orly and
-set up, elsewhere, on my own account."
-
-"Really?" The beating of her heart shook the things she was holding in
-her hands.
-
-"Yes. It's a decision I've been approaching for some time. As you know,
-Mr. Leyton is about to be taken into partnership. I have come to the
-conclusion that it is best on the whole to move and develop my practice
-along my own lines."
-
-So calmly handing out desolation. Here was the counterpart of the
-glorious weeks. Her carelessly-made living was gone; or horribly
-reduced. The Orlys alone would not be able to give her a hundred a year.
-
-"When is it to be?"
-
-"Of course, whenever I go, I shall want help."
-
-"_Oh_ ..."
-
-He went very busily on with his handwashing. She knew exactly how he was
-smiling, and hidden in her corner smiled back, invisibly, and made
-unnecessary clatterings to hide the glorious embarrassment. Dismay
-struck across her joy, revealing the future as a grey, laborious working
-out of this moment's blind satisfaction. But joy had spoken first and
-left her no choice. Startling her with the revelation of the way the
-roots of her being still centred in him. Joy deeper and more powerfully
-stirring than the joy of the past weeks. They showed now a spread
-embroidery of sunlit scenes, powerless, fundamentally irrelevant,
-excursions off the main road of her life. Committed beyond recall, she
-faced the prospect of unvarying, grinding experience. The truth hidden
-below the surfaces of life was to yield itself to her slowly,
-imperceptibly, unpleasurably.
-
-She got through the necessary things at top speed, anyhow, to avoid
-underlining his need of her, and ran downstairs.
-
-A letter on the hall table, from _Hypo_.... _Dear Miriam--I've headed
-off that affair. You've pulled me out of it. You really have. When can I
-see you? Just to talk._
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                        A LIST OF THE LIBRARIES
-                        AND SERIES OF COPYRIGHT
-                           BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
-                            DUCKWORTH & CO.
-
-
-                   3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
-                             LONDON, W.C.2
-
-
-
-
-                           THE LIBRARY OF ART
-
-
-   Embracing Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, etc. Edited by Mrs
-   S. Arthur Strong, LL.D. Extra cloth, with lettering and design in
-   gold. Large cr. 8vo. (73/4 in. by 53/4 in.). 7s. 6d. net a volume.
-   Postage 7d.
-
-
-                            LIST OF VOLUMES
-
-   REMBRANDT. By G. Baldwin Brown, of the University of Edinburgh.
-   With 45 plates.
-
-   ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. By Maud Cruttwell. With 50 plates.
-
-   VERROCCHIO. By Maud Cruttwell. With 48 plates.
-
-   THE LIVES OF THE BRITISH ARCHITECTS. By E. Beresford Chancellor.
-   With 45 plates.
-
-   THE SCHOOL OF MADRID. By A. de Beruete y Moret. With 48 plates.
-
-   WILLIAM BLAKE. By Basil de Selincourt. With 40 plates.
-
-   GIOTTO. By Basil de Selincourt. With 44 plates.
-
-   FRENCH PAINTING IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. By L. Dimier. With 50
-   plates.
-
-   THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA. By Edmund G. Gardner. With 50 plates.
-
-   SIX GREEK SCULPTORS. (Myron, Pheidias, Polykleitos, Skopas,
-   Praxiteles, and Lysippos.) By Ernest Gardner. With 81 plates.
-
-   TITIAN. By Georg Gronau. With 54 plates.
-
-   CONSTABLE. By M. Sturge Henderson. With 48 plates.
-
-   PISANELLO. By G. F. Hill. With 50 plates.
-
-   MICHAEL ANGELO. By Sir Charles Holroyd. With 52 plates.
-
-   MEDIAEVAL ART. By W. R. Lethaby. With 66 plates and 120 drawings
-   in the text.
-
-   THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PAINTING. By William D. McKay, R.S.A. With
-   46 plates.
-
-   CHRISTOPHER WREN. By Lena Milman. With upwards of 60 plates.
-
-   CORREGGIO. By T. Sturge Moore. With 55 plates.
-
-   ALBERT DUeRER. By T. Sturge Moore. With 4 copperplates and 50
-   half-tone engravings.
-
-   SIR WILLIAM BEECHEY, R.A. By W. Roberts. With 49 plates.
-
-   THE SCHOOL OF SEVILLE. By N. Sentenach. With 50 plates.
-
-
-
-
-                       THE POPULAR LIBRARY OF ART
-
-
-   Pocket volumes of biographical and critical value, with very many
-   reproductions of the artists' works. Each volume averages 200
-   pages, 16mo, with from 40 to 50 illustrations, quarter-bound
-   cloth. Reduced price, 2s. 6d. net a volume. Postage 4d.
-
-
-                            LIST OF VOLUMES
-
-   BOTTICELLI. By Julia Cartwright.
-
-   RAPHAEL. By Julia Cartwright.
-
-   FREDERICK WALKER. By Clementina Black.
-
-   REMBRANDT. By Auguste Breal.
-
-   VELAZQUEZ. By Auguste Breal.
-
-   GAINSBOROUGH. By Arthur B. Chamberlain.
-
-   CRUIKSHANK. By W. H. Chesson.
-
-   BLAKE. By G. K. Chesterton.
-
-   G. F. WATTS. By G. K. Chesterton.
-
-   ALBRECHT DUeRER. By Lina Eckenstein.
-
-   THE ENGLISH WATER-COLOUR PAINTERS. By A. J. Finberg.
-
-   HOGARTH. By Edward Garnett.
-
-   LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Georg Gronau.
-
-   HOLBEIN. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-   ROSSETTI. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-   THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-   PERUGINO. By Edward Hutton.
-
-   MILLET. By Romain Rolland.
-
-   WATTEAU. By Camille Mauclair.
-
-   THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS. By Camille Mauclair.
-
-   WHISTLER. By Bernhard Sickert.
-
-
-
-
-                          MASTERS OF PAINTING
-
-
-                With many illustrations in photogravure.
-
-   A series which gives in each volume a large number of examples
-   reproduced in photogravure of the works of its subject. The first
-   series of books on art issued at a popular price to use this
-   beautiful method of reproduction.
-
-   The letterpress is the same as the volumes in the Popular Library
-   of Art, but it is reset, the size of the volumes being 83/4 ins. by
-   53/4 ins. There are no less than 32 plates in each book. Bound in
-   cloth with gold on side, gold lettering on back: picture wrapper,
-   5s. net a volume, postage 5d.
-
-   This is the first time that a number of photogravure
-   illustrations have been given in a series published at a popular
-   price. The process having been very costly has been reserved for
-   expensive volumes or restricted to perhaps a frontispiece in the
-   case of books issued at a moderate price. A new departure in the
-   art of printing has recently been made with the machining of
-   photogravures; the wonderfully clear detail and beautifully soft
-   effect of the photogravure reproductions being obtained as
-   effectively as by the old method. It is this great advance in the
-   printing of illustrations which makes it possible to produce this
-   series.
-
-   The volumes are designed to give as much value as possible, and
-   for the time being are the last word in popular book production.
-
-   It would be difficult to conceive of more concise, suggestive,
-   and helpful volumes than these. All who read them will be aware
-   of a sensible increase in their knowledge and appreciation of art
-   and the world's masterpieces.
-
-   The six volumes are:
-
-                  RAPHAEL. By Julia Cartwright.
-                  BOTTICELLI. By Julia Cartwright.
-                  G. F. WATTS. By G. K. Chesterton.
-                  LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Georg Gronau.
-                  HOLBEIN. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-                  ROSSETTI. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-
-
-
-                           THE CROWN LIBRARY
-
-
-   The books included in this series are standard copyright works,
-   issued in similar style at a uniform price, and are eminently
-   suited for the library. They are particularly acceptable as prize
-   volumes for advanced students. Demy 8vo, size 9 in. by 53/4 in.
-   Cloth gilt, gilt top. 7s. 6d. net. Postage 7d.
-
-   THE RUBA'IYAT OF 'UMAR KHAYYAM (Fitzgerald's 2nd Edition).
-   Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Edward Heron Allen.
-
-   FOLK-LORE OF THE HOLY LAND: Moslem, Christian, and Jewish. By J.
-   E. Hanauer. Edited by Marmaduke Pickthall.
-
-   BIRDS AND MAN. By W. H. Hudson. With a frontispiece in colour.
-
-   THE NOTE-BOOKS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. Edited by Edward McCurdy.
-   With 14 illustrations. [Temporarily out of Print.]
-
-   THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LESLIE STEPHEN. By F. W. Maitland. With a
-   photogravure portrait.
-
-   THE COUNTRY MONTH BY MONTH. By J. A. Owen and G. S. Boulger. With
-   notes on Birds by Lord Lilford. With 12 illustrations in colour
-   and 20 in black and white.
-
-   CRITICAL STUDIES. By S. Arthur Strong. With Memoir by Lord
-   Balcarres, M.P. Illustrated.
-
-
-
-
-                              MODERN PLAYS
-
-
-   Including the dramatic work of leading contemporary writers, such
-   as Andreyef, Bjoernson, Galsworthy, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Maeterlinck,
-   Eden Phillpotts, Strindberg, Sudermann, Tchekoff, and others.
-
-      In single volumes. Cloth, 3s. net; paper covers, 2s. 6d. net
-                         a volume; postage 3d.
-
-   THE GREAT WELL. By Alfred Sutro.
-
-   THE LAUGHING LADY. By Alfred Sutro.
-
-   THE RISK. By Andre Pascal.
-
-   THE WHEEL. By James Bernard Fagan.
-
-   THE REVOLT AND THE ESCAPE. By Villiers de L'Isle Adam. (Cloth
-   binding only.)
-
-   HERNANI. A Tragedy. By Frederick Brock. (Cloth binding only.)
-
-   PASSERS-BY. By C. Haddon Chambers.
-
-   THE LIKENESS OF THE NIGHT. By Mrs W. K. Clifford.
-
-   A WOMAN ALONE. By Mrs W. K. Clifford.
-
-   WINDOWS. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   LOYALTIES. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   A FAMILY MAN. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   THE SILVER BOX. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   JOY. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   STRIFE. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   JUSTICE. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   THE ELDEST SON. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   THE LITTLE DREAM. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   THE FUGITIVE. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   THE MOB. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   THE PIGEON. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   A BIT O' LOVE. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   LOVE'S COMEDY. By Henrik Ibsen. (Cloth binding only.)
-
-   THE DIVINE GIFT. By Henry Arthur Jones. With an Introduction and
-   a Portrait. (5s. net. Cloth binding only.)
-
-   THE WIDOWING OF MRS HOLROYD. A Drama. By D. H. Lawrence. With an
-   Introduction. (Cloth only, 5s. net.)
-
-   PETER'S CHANCE. A Play. By Edith Lyttelton.
-
-   THREE LITTLE DRAMAS. By Maurice Maeterlinck. (Cloth binding
-   only.)
-
-   THE HEATHERFIELD. By Edward Martyn.
-
-   MAEVE. By Edward Martyn.
-
-   THE DREAM PHYSICIAN. By Edward Martyn.
-
-   ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI. A Play in Five Acts. By J.-A. Peladan.
-   (Cloth only, 3s. 6d. net.)
-
-   THE MOTHER. A Play. By Eden Phillpotts.
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-   THE SHADOW. A Play. By Eden Phillpotts.
-
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-
-   THE FARMER'S WIFE. A Comedy. By Eden Phillpotts.
-
-   ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. A Play. By Eden Phillpotts.
-
-   CURTAIN RAISERS. One Act Plays. By Eden Phillpotts.
-
-   CREDITORS. PARIAH. Two Plays. By August Strindberg. (Cloth
-   binding only.)
-
-   THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES. By August Strindberg. (Cloth binding
-   only.)
-
-   FIVE LITTLE PLAYS. By Alfred Sutro.
-
-   THE TWO VIRTUES. A Play. By Alfred Sutro.
-
-   FREEDOM. A Play. By Alfred Sutro.
-
-   THE CHOICE. A Play. By Alfred Sutro.
-
-   THE DAWN (Les Aubes). By Emile Verhaeren. Translated by Arthur
-   Symons. (Cloth binding only.)
-
-   THE PRINCESS OF HANOVER. By Margaret L. Woods. (Cloth binding
-   only.)
-
-   PLAYS. By Leonid Andreyef. Translated from the Russian, with an
-   Introduction by F. N. Scott and C. L. Meader. Cr. 8vo, cloth
-   gilt. 7s. 6d. net. Postage 6d.
-
-   PLAYS. (First Series.) By Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson. (The Gauntlet,
-   Beyond our Power, The New System.) With an Introduction and
-   Bibliography. In one vol. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. Postage 6d.
-
-   PLAYS. (Second Series.) By Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson. (Love and
-   Geography, Beyond Human Might, Laboremus.) With an Introduction
-   by Edwin Bjoerkman. In one vol. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. Postage 6d.
-
-   MODERN PLAYS--continued [Postage 6d. unless otherwise stated]
-
-   THREE PLAYS. By Mrs W. K. Clifford (Hamilton's Second Marriage,
-   Thomas and the Princess, The Modern Way.) Sq. cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d.
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-   Strife, The Silver Box). Sq. cr. 8vo. 7s. net.
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-   PLAYS (Third Series). By John Galsworthy. Three Plays (The
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-   Man, Loyalties, Windows). Sq. cr. 8vo. 7s. net.
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-   cr. 8vo. 5s. net. Postage 5d.
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-   PLAYS. By Gwen John. (Outlaws, Corinna, Sealing the Compact, Edge
-   o' Dark, The Case of Theresa, In the Rector's Study.) With an
-   Introduction. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
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-   FOUR TRAGEDIES. By Allan Monkhouse. (The Hayling Family, The
-   Stricklands, Resentment, Reaping the Whirlwind.) Cr. 8vo. cloth
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-
-   PLAYS. By Eden Phillpots. (The Mother, The Shadow, The Secret
-   Woman.) Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
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-   Link, The Dance of Death, Part I.; The Dance of Death, Part II.)
-   Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
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-   There are Crimes and Crimes, Miss Julia, The Stronger.) 7s. 6d.
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-   Swan White, Debit and Credit, The Thunder Storm, After the Fire.)
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-   6d. net.
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-   The Three Sisters, The Bear, The Proposal, The Marriage, The
-   Anniversary, A Tragedian.) With an Introduction. Completing in
-   two volumes the Dramatic Works of Tchekoff. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
-
-
-
-
-                          THE READERS' LIBRARY
-
-
-        A new series of Copyright Works of Individual Merit and
-            Permanent Value--the work of Authors of Repute.
-
-       Library style. Cr. 8vo. Blue cloth gilt, round backs. 5s.
-                       net a volume; postage 5d.
-
-   AVRIL. By Hilaire Belloc. Essays on the Poetry of the French
-   Renaissance.
-
-   CALIBAN'S GUIDE TO LETTERS--LAMBKINS REMAINS. By Hilaire Belloc.
-
-   MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS: RES JUDICATAE. By Augustine Birrell.
-   Complete in one vol.
-
-   OBITER DICTA. By Augustine Birrell. First and Second Series in
-   one volume.
-
-   MEMOIRS OF A SURREY LABOURER. By George Bourne.
-
-   THE BETTESWORTH BOOK. By George Bourne.
-
-   LUCY BETTESWORTH. By George Bourne.
-
-   CHANGE IN THE VILLAGE. By George Bourne.
-
-   STUDIES IN POETRY. By Stopford A. Brooke, LL.D. Essays on Blake,
-   Scott, Shelley, Keats, etc.
-
-   COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN NURSERY RHYMES. By Lina Eckenstein. Essays
-   in a branch of Folk-lore.
-
-   ITALIAN POETS SINCE DANTE. Critical Essays. By W. Everett.
-
-   VILLA RUBEIN, AND OTHER STORIES. By John Galsworthy.
-
-   FAITH, AND OTHER SKETCHES. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
-
-   HOPE, AND OTHER SKETCHES. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
-
-   BROUGHT FORWARD. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
-
-   A HATCHMENT. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
-
-   SUCCESS, AND OTHER SKETCHES. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
-
-   TWENTY-SIX MEN AND A GIRL, AND OTHER STORIES. By Maxim Gorky.
-   Translated from the Russian.
-
-   EL OMBU. By W. H. Hudson.
-
-   GREEN MANSIONS. A Romance of the Tropical Forest. By W. H.
-   Hudson.
-
-   THE PURPLE LAND. By W. H. Hudson.
-
-   A CRYSTAL AGE: a Romance of the Future. By W. H. Hudson.
-
-   THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-   THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-   THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE. By Ford Madox Hueffer.
-
-   AFTER LONDON--WILD ENGLAND. By Richard Jefferies.
-
-   AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR. By Richard Jefferies.
-
-   BEVIS. The Story of a Boy. By Richard Jefferies.
-
-   RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Prince Kropotkin. New and revised edition.
-
-   ST AUGUSTINE AND HIS AGE. An Interpretation. By Joseph McCabe.
-
-   YVETTE, AND OTHER STORIES. By Guy de Maupassant. Translated by
-   Mrs John Galsworthy. With a Preface by Joseph Conrad.
-
-   BETWEEN THE ACTS. By H. W. Nevinson.
-
-   PRINCIPLE IN ART: RELIGIO POETAE. By Coventry Patmore.
-
-   PARALLEL PATHS. A Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art. By T. W.
-   Rolleston.
-
-   THE STRENUOUS LIFE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. By Theodore Roosevelt.
-
-   ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By Sir
-   Leslie Stephen.
-
-   STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER. First Series. Two Volumes. By Sir Leslie
-   Stephen.
-
-   THE BLACK MONK, AND OTHER TALES. By Anton Tchekoff.
-
-   THE KISS, AND OTHER STORIES. By Anton Tchekoff.
-
-   INTERLUDES. By Sir Geo. Trevelyan.
-
-   A WILTSHIRE VILLAGE. By Alfred Williams.
-
-   VILLAGE'S WHITE HORSE. By Alfred Williams.
-
-   LIFE IN A RAILWAY FACTORY. By Alfred Williams.
-
-
-
-
-                         THE ROADMENDER SERIES.
-
-
-   The additional volumes in the series are books with the same
-   tendency as Michael Fairless's remarkable work, from which the
-   series gets its name: books which express a deep feeling for
-   Nature, and render the value of simplicity in life. Fcap. 8vo,
-   with designed end papers. 3s. 6d. net. Postage 4d. * Coloured
-   Frontispiece 4s. 6d.
-
-   THE BROW OF COURAGE. By Gertrude Bone.
-
-   WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY. By Gertrude Bone.
-
-   THE SEA CHARM OF VENICE. By Stopford A. Brooke.
-
-   MAGIC CASEMENTS. By Arthur S. Cripps.
-
-   A MARTYR'S SERVANT. By Arthur S. Cripps.
-
-   A MARTYR'S HEIR. By Arthur S. Cripps.
-
-   * THE ROADMENDER. By Michael Fairless. Also in limp lambskin, 7s.
-   6d. net. Illustrated Edition with Illustrations in colour from
-   oil paintings by E. W. Waite, 7s. 6d. net. In Velvet Persian, 8s.
-   6d. net. Crown 4to, with 20 photographs by Will F. Taylor, 21s.
-   net.
-
-   * THE GATHERING OF BROTHER HILARIUS. By Michael Fairless.
-
-   * THE GREY BRETHREN. By Michael Fairless. Also limp lambskin, 7s.
-   6d. net.
-
-   MICHAEL FAIRLESS: LIFE AND WRITINGS. By W. Scott Palmer and A. M.
-   Haggard.
-
-   THE ROADMENDER BOOK OF DAYS. A Year of Thoughts from the
-   Roadmender Series. Selected and arranged by Mildred Gentle.
-
-   A MODERN MYSTIC'S WAY. By Wm. Scott Palmer.
-
-   FROM THE FOREST. By Wm. Scott Palmer.
-
-   PILGRIM MAN. By Wm. Scott Palmer.
-
-   WINTER AND SPRING. By Wm. Scott Palmer.
-
-   THOUGHTS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. Selected by Edward McCurdy.
-
-   THE PLEA OF PAN. By H. W. Nevinson, author of "Essays in
-   Freedom," "Between the Acts."
-
-   BEDESMAN 4. By Mary J. H. Skrine.
-
-   VAGROM MEN. By A. T. Story.
-
-   LIGHT AND TWILIGHT. By Edward Thomas.
-
-   REST AND UNREST. By Edward Thomas.
-
-   ROSE ACRE PAPERS: HORAE SOLITARIAE. By Edward Thomas.
-
-
-
-
-                          STUDIES IN THEOLOGY
-
-
-   A New Series of Handbooks, being aids to interpretation in
-   Biblical Criticism for the use of the Clergy, Divinity Students,
-   and Laymen. Cr. 8vo. 5s. net a volume. Postage 5d.
-
-   AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SOME LIVING RELIGIONS OF THE
-   EAST. By Sidney Cave, D.D., Principal of Cheshunt Lodge,
-   Cambridge.
-
-   CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS. By Archibald B. D. Alexander, M.A.,
-   D.D., author of "A Short History of Philosophy," "The Ethics of
-   St Paul."
-
-   THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. By Samuel Angus, Professor
-   of New Testament Historical Theology in St Andrew's College,
-   University of Sydney. Cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net.
-
-   HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY. By the late Charles Augustus
-   Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., of the Union Theological Seminary, New
-   York. Two Volumes.
-
-   THE CHRISTIAN HOPE. A Study in the Doctrine of the Last Things.
-   By W. Adams Brown, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Theology in the
-   Union College, New York.
-
-   CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. By William Cunningham, D.D.,
-   F.B.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Hon. Fellow of
-   Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Archdeacon of Ely,
-   formerly Lecturer on Economic History to Harvard University.
-
-   THE JUSTIFICATION OF GOD. By P. T. Forsyth, M.A., D.D., Principal
-   of the Hackney Theological College, University of London.
-
-   A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS. By A. E. Garvie, M.A., Hon.
-   D.D., Glasgow University, Principal of New College, Hampstead.
-
-   A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. By George Buchanan
-   Gray, M.A., D.Litt., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament
-   Exegesis in Mansfield College, Oxford.
-
-   GOSPEL ORIGINS. A Study in the Synoptic Problem. By William West
-   Holdsworth, M.A., Tutor in New Testament Language and Literature,
-   Handsworth College; author of "The Christ of the Gospels," "The
-   Life of Faith," etc.
-
-   FAITH AND ITS PSYCHOLOGY. By William R. Inge, D.D., Dean of St
-   Paul's, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, and
-   Bampton Lecturer, Oxford, 1899.
-
-   THE THEOLOGY OF THE EPISTLES. By H. A. A. Kennedy, D.D., D.Sc.,
-   Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Theology, New College,
-   Edinburgh.
-
-   CHRISTIANITY AND SIN. By Robert Mackintosh, M.A., D.D., Professor
-   of Apologetics in Lancashire Independent College; Lecturer in the
-   University of Manchester.
-
-   ORIGINALITY OF CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. By H. R. Mackintosh, of New
-   College, Edinburgh.
-
-   PROTESTANT THOUGHT BEFORE KANT. By A. C. McGiffert, Ph.D., D.D.,
-   of the Union Theological Seminary, New York.
-
-   THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS. By James Moffat, B.D., D.D., of the
-   U.F. Church of Scotland, sometime Jowett Lecturer, London, author
-   of "The Historical New Testament."
-
-   A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT. By Edward Caldwell
-   Moore, D.D., Parkman Professor of Theology in the University of
-   Harvard, U.S.A., author of "The New Testament in the Christian
-   Church," etc.
-
-   THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. By J. K. Mosley, M.A., Fellow and
-   Tutor of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
-
-   REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. By James Orr, D.D., Professor of
-   Apologetics in the Theological College of the United Free Church,
-   Glasgow.
-
-   A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Arthur Samuel
-   Peake, D.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis and Dean of the
-   Faculty of Theology, Victoria University, Manchester; sometime
-   Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
-
-   PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. By Hastings Rashdall, D.Litt. (Oxon.),
-   D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A., Dean of Carlisle.
-
-   THE HOLY SPIRIT. By Thomas Rees, M.A. (Lond.), Principal of Bala
-   and Bangor College.
-
-   PHARISEES AND JESUS. By A. T. Robertson, Professor of
-   Interpretation of the New Testament in the Southern Baptist
-   Theological Seminary.
-
-   THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By H. Wheeler Robinson,
-   M.A., Tutor in Rawdon College; sometime Senior Kennicott Scholar
-   in Oxford University.
-
-   TEXT AND CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Alexander Souter, M.A.,
-   D.Litt., Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen University.
-
-   CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION. By Herbert B. Workman,
-   M.A., D.Litt., Principal of the Westminster Training College.
-
-
-
-
-               DUCKWORTH & CO.'S TWO SHILLING NET SERIES
-
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-                  Stiff Covers, Crown 8vo. Postage 3d.
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-   BROKEN STOWAGE. By David W. Bone.
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-   THE HOUSE IN MARYLEBONE. By Mrs W. K. Clifford.
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-   WRACK: A TALE OF THE SEA. By Maurice Drake.
-
-   THE EXPLOITS OF DANBY CROKER. By R. Austin Freeman.
-
-   THE PRICE OF THINGS. By Elinor Glyn.
-
-   BEYOND THE ROCKS. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   HALCYONE. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   THE REASON WHY. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   THE REFLECTIONS OF AMBROSINE. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   THE VISITS OF ELIZABETH. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   GUINEVERE'S LOVER (THE SEQUENCE). By Elinor Glyn.
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-   THE VICISSITUDES OF EVANGELINE. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   WHEN THE HOUR CAME. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   THE CONTRAST AND OTHER STORIES. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   THE MAN AND THE MOMENT. By Elinor Glyn.
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-   WHERE BONDS ARE LOOSED. By Grant Watson.
-
-   THE OILSKIN PACKET. By Reginald Berkeley and James Dixon.
-
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-                            LIST OF VOLUMES
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-      1. SYNDICALISM
-      J. A. R. MARRIOTT, M.P. (Late Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford)
-
-      2. BRITISH ASPECTS OF WAR AND PEACE
-      SPENSER WILKINSON
-
-      3. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE
-      FREDERICK S. BOAS, M.A., LL.D.
-
-      4. THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY AT OXFORD
-      FALCONER MADAN (Hon. Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford)
-
-      5. TREATISE ON LAW
-      EDWARD JENKS
-
-      6. *THE STUDY OF ROMAN HISTORY
-      BERNARD W. HENDERSON (Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford)
-
-      7. THE LATIN CULTURE
-      E. A. BURROUGHS (Fellow and Tutor of Hertford College,
-      Oxford)
-
-      8. *OUTLINE-HISTORY OF GREEK RELIGION
-      L. R. FARNELL (Rector of Exeter College, Oxford)
-
-      9. ENGLISH HISTORY, 499-1914
-      ARTHUR HASSALL (Student of Christ Church, Oxford)
-
-   * These are also issued reset, on good paper, bound in cloth, at
-   6s. net each.
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-                                --------
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-                                                  Turnbull & Spears
-                                                Printers, Edinburgh
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-
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-
-                          Transcriber's Notes
-
-
-The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
-errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after
-consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after):
-
-   [p. 61]:
-   ... regarded her not with the adoration on half-pitying ...
-   ... regarded her not with the adoration or half-pitying ...
-
-   [p. 89]:
-   ... of the atmosphere--the interest of boredom ...
-   ... of the atmosphere--the interest or boredom ...
-
-   [p. 99]:
-   ... gleam she had caught in the deep wehrmuetig ...
-   ... gleam she had caught in the deep wehmuetig ...
-
-   [p. 107]:
-   ... of life into the humble besogne de la pensee. ...
-   ... of life into the humble besogne de la pensee. ...
-
-   [p. 167]:
-   ...  reflectively. As if it had just occurred to her. ...
-   ... she murmured reflectively. As if it had just occurred to her. ...
-
-   [p. 169]:
-   ... blue; unseeing; contradictng her matronly ...
-   ... blue; unseeing; contradicting her matronly ...
-
-   [p. 204]:
-   ... ironmongery in my ruecksack and off we'll ...
-   ... ironmongery in my rucksack and off we'll ...
-
-   [p. 224]:
-   ... they become foreigners in England were nothing. ...
-   ... they became foreigners in England were nothing. ...
-
-   [p. 238]:
-   ... tryanny was her real apology, a curse for the ...
-   ... tyranny was her real apology, a curse for the ...
-
-
-
-
-
-
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