Dorothy M. Richardson

“ To go forward now, from this moment, alive, keeping alive, through the London summer. Even to go away for holidays would be to break up the wonder, to snap the secret clue and lose the secret life....
The rosy gold was deepening and spreading.
Miriam found herself rested as if by sleep. It seemed as if she had been sitting in the stillness for a time that was longer than the whole of the working day. To recover like this every day ... to have at the end of every day a cool solid clear head and rested limbs and the feeling that the strain of work was so far away that it could never return. ”

“ The house had been her own; waiting for her when she found it; the quiet road of large high grey mysterious houses, the two rows of calm balconied facades, the green squares at either end, the green door she waited for as she turned unseeing into the road from the quiet thoroughfare of Endsleigh Gardens, her triumphant faithful latchkey, the sheltered dimness of the hall, the great staircase, the many large closed doors, the lonely obscurity of her empty top floor. What had come now was the fulfilment of the apprehension she had had when Mrs. Bailey had spoken the word boarders. ”

“ Miriam found herself in the midst of a train of thought that had distracted her during her morning’s work. Cosmopolis, she scribbled in her note-book. The world of science and art is the true cosmopolis. Those were not the words in “Cosmopolis” but it was the idea. Perhaps no one had thought of it before the man who thought of having the magazine in three languages. It would be one of the new ideas. Tearing off the page she laid it on the sofa-head and sat contemplating an imagined map of Europe with London Paris and Berlin joined by a triangle, the globe rounding vaguely off on either side. ”

“ CHAPTER VI 1 Miriam came forward seeing nothing but the golden gaslight pouring over the white table-cloth. She sat down near Mrs. Bailey within the edge of its radiance. The depths of the light still held unchanged the welcome that had been there when she had come in and found Emile laying the table. There was no change and no disappointment. The smeary mirrors and unpolished furniture were bright in the gaslight, showing distances of interior and gleaming passages of light. In the spaces between the pictures the walls sent back sheeny reflections of the glow on the table. ”

“ The moment of realisation of spring had come by surprise; there lay all the spring days ahead leading on to summer spread out for anyone to see, calling to Eve or to anyone who might have come into the room to whom one could have said doesn’t the smell of mimosa make you realise the winter is over; and here within, lit up as if by a suddenly switched on electric light was one’s own real realisation going back and back; in pictures that grew clearer, each time something happened that switched on a light within the black spaces of your mind. ”

“ Sissie and Mrs. Bailey were mending near a lamp at the far end of the table. Miriam’s thoughts left her suddenly. The tide of life had swept away leaving an undisturbed stillness, a space swept clear. She was empty and nothing. In all the clamour that had passed she had no part. In all the noise that lay ahead, no part. Strong people came and went and never ceased, coming and going and acting ceaselessly, coming and going, and here, at her centre, was nothing, lifeless thoughtless nothingness. ”

“ Miriam’s stood alone at the end of the table. Mr. Bowdoin had taken it from her but without entering into conversation and she was left with her prepared remark about the piano and her plea for a performance of the Tannhäuser overture going unsaid round and round in her mind. She sat ashamed before the restrained impersonal enthusiasm that filled the room. Even Miss Rogers was sitting less stiffly. Her own stiffness must make it obvious that she was not in a musical circle. Musical circles had a worldly savoir-faire of their own, the thing that was to be found everywhere in the world. ”

“ She was waiting tremulously for a verdict. They seemed to Miriam so decisive that she found it difficult to keep within Grace’s point of view. She stood in the picturesque suburb, saw the distant glimpse of Highgate Woods, the pretty corner house standing alone in its garden, the sisters in the dresses they had worn at the dance talking to their mother indoors, waited on by their polite admiring brother; their unconsciousness, their lives as they looked to themselves. Everything fitted in with the leghorn hats they had worn at the league garden party in the summer. ”

“ Mrs. Bailey propped one elbow on the mantelpiece and brushed at her skirt. Miriam waited, watching her impatiently. The Tansley Street life was fading into the glow of the oncoming holiday season. Rain was cooling the July weather, skirmishy sunlit April rain and wind drawing her forward. There was leisure in cool uncrowded streets and restaurants and in the two cool houses, no pressure of work, the gay easy August that was almost as good as a holiday, and the certainty beyond the rain, of September brilliance. ”

“ Miriam wandered in solitude amidst jostling bodies. The exhausted air rang with lifeless strident voices in shoutings and heavy thick flattened unconcerned speech; even from above a weight seemed to press. Clearer space lay ahead; but it was the clear space of Oxford Street and pressed upon her without ray or break. Once it had seemed part of the golden west-end; but Oxford Street was not the west-end. It was more lifeless and hopeless than even the north of London; more endurable because life was near at hand. ”

“ Better perhaps to go out into the maze of little streets and in wearying of them be glad to come back. As she moved to the door she saw the garden in late summer fulness, the holidays over, their heights gleaming through long talks on the seat at the end of the garden, the answering glow of the great blossoms of purple clematis hiding the north London masonry of the little conservatory, the great spaces of autumn opening out and out running down rich with happenings to where the high wall of Christmas again rose and shut out the future. ”

“ Miriam remained bent low over her book. Only you had been in Norway, in a cottage up amongst the mountains and out in the open. She read a scene at random and another and began again and read the first scene through and then the last. It was all the same. You might as well begin at the end.... In Norway, up among the misty mountains, in farms and cottages looking down on fiords with glorious scenery about them all the time are people, sitting in the winter by fires and worrying about right and wrong. They wonder but more gravely and clearly than we do. ”

“ Miriam followed him into a dark bare passage and down carpetless stairs into a large chilly twilit basement room. Nothing was visible but a long kitchen table lit by a low barred window at the far end of the room. I will light a lamp for you in a moment he murmured in his formal cockney monotone; my friends will be arriving soon and before they come I should like to show you my sketches. Miriam sat down silently. The feeling of the neighbourhood was in the room. A heavy blankness lay over everything. She felt nowhere. ”

“ Now that she was there, bearing and banishing all these heavy things, the squat green teapot on the table in the blaze of window-light, the Chinese lantern hanging from the hook in the ceiling, the little Madras muslin curtains at either end of the endmost lattices made a picture and set the room free from the challenge of the house accumulating as Miriam had come up through it and preventing the effect she had sought when she put out the green teapot on the sunlit table. She was receiving Mrs. Bailey as a guest, backed up by the summery little window-room. ”

“ There seemed to be no warmth anywhere in the world. Torpid and stupid, miserably realising the increasing glow of her nose and the numb clumsiness of her feet she put away the ledgers and got into her outdoor things. She resented the sight of the bound volume of The Dental Cosmos that she had put aside to take home. Her interest in it was useless; as useless as everything else in the freezing world. Sounds of dancing and chanting came up the basement stairs. When their work was done they could laugh and sing in a warm room. ”

“ The lean dark patients were like lizards, lively and darting and active even in the sweltering heat.
Miriam’s sunless room was cool all day. Through her grey window she could see the sunlight pouring over the jutting windows of Mr. Leyton’s small room and reflected in the grimy sheen of the frosted windows of the den. Her day’s work was unreal, as easy as a dream. All about her were open sunlit days that her summer could not bring, and that yet were hers as she moved amongst them ”

“ Anyone can go into a station. Within the entrance gravelled darkness opened out on either side. Silence all round and ahead where silent buildings had here and there a lit window. Where was the station? Immense London darkness and stillness alone and deserted like a country place at night, just beyond the noises of the Euston Road. A murder might happen here. The cry of an engine sounded, muffled and far away. Just ahead in the centre of the approaching wide mass of building was a wide dimly lit stone archway. The rattle of a hansom sounded from an open space beyond. ”

“ Bailey dimly knew, and screened it fearing to lose it. She had the wonderful voice all to herself. “Good evening.” The voice was in the room. Miriam turned instantly; a square strong-looking man a little over middle height with flat pale fair hair smooth on a squarish head above grave bluntly moulded features was moving easily forward from the door. They met at the end of the table standing one each side the angle of the fireside corner, smiling as if her murmured response to his greeting had been a speech in a play ready-made to bring them together. ”

“ She laid the blouse carefully on the sofa and heard in among the table sounds the greetings that had followed her arrival downstairs. The brown and green landscape caught her eye, old and still, holding all her knowledge of the Brooms back and back, fresh with another visit to them. She turned back to the table with a sigh. Someone chuckled. Perhaps at something that was happening on the table. She glanced about. The fragrant breakfast had arrived in front of her—Don’t let it get cold laughed Florrie drawing the mustard-pot from the cruet-stand and rapping it down before her. ”

“ Tansley Street life was more and more unreal to them the deeper it grew. It was unreal to them because things were kept back. They were still interested in stories of Wimpole Street, but even there now they only glanced in passing, their thoughts busy in the shared life they perpetually jested over. They listened with reservations; not always believing; sitting in dressing-gowns believing or not as they chose; because one knew one had lost touch and tried to make things interesting to get back into the old glow.... ”

“ In the twilit dining-room one’s body was like a hot sun throbbing in cool dark air, ringed by cool walls holding darkness in far corners; coolness poured out through the wide-open windows towards the rain-cool grey facades of the opposite houses, cool and cool until the throbbing ceased.
All the forms seated round the table were beautiful; far-away and secret and separate, each oneself set in the coming of summer, unconscious. One soul. Summer is the soul of man. Through all the past months they had been the waiting guests of summer. ”

“ If you can speak of a thing, it is past ... Speaking makes it glow with a life that is not its own.—There’s a lot more to tell you—said Grace pressing her hand. Miriam turned from the fire; Grace was looking as she had done when she began her story. Miriam sat back in her chair searching her face and form trying to find and express the secret of her indomitable conviction. Being what she was, why could she not be sufficient to herself? ”

“ One’s own evil genius. But how could it make you so blissful? What was one—what had one done to bring the feeling of goodness and beauty and truth into the patch on the wall and presently make all the look of the distant world and everything in experience sound like music in a dream? ”

“ Ruscino, in electric lights round the top of the little square portico, like the name of a play round the portico of a theatre, the sentry figure of the commissionaire, the passing glimpse of palm ferns standing in semi-darkness just inside the portico, the darkness beyond, suddenly became a place, separate and distinct from the vague confusion of it in her mind with the Oxford Music Hall; offering itself, open before her, claiming to range itself in her experience ”

“ It was a café! Mr. Mendizabal was evidently a habitué. She could be, by right of her happiness abroad. She was here as a foreigner, all her English friends calling her back from a spectacle she could not witness without contamination. Only Gerald knew the spectacle of Ruscino’s. “Lord, Ruscino’s; Lord”.... In a vast open space of light, set in a circle of balconied gloom, innumerable little tables held groups of people wreathed in a brilliancy of screened light, veiled in mist, clear in sharp spaces of light, clouded by drifting spirals of smoke. ”

“ The balcony of the next house was empty; there was nothing between her and the vista of green feathering up into the intense gold-rose glow.... She could come here every night ... filling her life with green peace; preparing for the stifling heat of the nights in her garret. This year, with dinner in the cool dining-room and the balcony for the evening, the summer would not be so unbearable. She sat still, lifted out into garden freshness.... ”