Dorothy M. Richardson

“ Hancock laughed, a little final crushing laugh that turned away sceptical of further enlightenment.
Miriam sat silent, busily searching for something to express the effect she felt. But she could not tell him what she felt. There was something in this intense hard rich colour like something one sometimes saw when it wasn’t there, a sudden brightening and brightening of all colours till you felt something must break if they grew any brighter—or in the dark, or in one’s mind, suddenly, at any time, unearthly brilliance. He would laugh and think one a little insane ”

“ Nearing London shivering and exhausted she recalled Sunday morning and the strangeness of it being just as it had promised to be. Happy waking with a clear refreshed brain in a tired drowsy body, like the feeling after a dance; making the next morning part of the dance, your mind full of pictures and thoughts and the evening coming up again and again, one great clear picture in the foreground of your mind. The evening in the room as you sat propped on your pillows drinking the clear pale curiously refreshing tea left by the maid on a little wooden tray by your bedside ”

“ Miriam paused with her hand on a “Navy League,” absorbed in the low sweet even tone. She found herself standing reverently, pulled up a few inches from the dark figure. Suddenly she was alight with the radiance of an uncontrollable smile. Her downcast eyes were fixed upon a tall slender figure in a skimpy black dress, tendrils of fine gold hair dancing in the rough wind under a cornflower blue toque, a clear living rose-flush.... Something making one delicate figure more than the open width of the afternoon, the blue afternoon sea and sky. She looked up. ”

“ Miriam’s heart beat rebelliously in the silence of the consulting-room. She sat waiting stifled with apprehension, her thoughts on Miss Dear’s familiar mysterious figure. In an unendurable impatience she waited for more, her eye smiting the tall averted figure on the hearthrug, following his movements ... small framed coloured pictures—very brilliant—photographs?—of dark and fair women, all the same, their shoulders draped like the Soul’s Awakening, their chests bare, all of them with horrible masses of combed out waving hair like the woman in the Harlene shop only waving naturally. ”

“ Come in sang a voice from within and Miriam heard the sound of a hammer on metal as the maid opened the door. She flew to the surgery. Amidst the stillness of heavy oak furniture and dark Turkey carpet floated the confirming smell. There it was all about the spittoon and the red velvet covered chair and the bracket table, a horrible confusion—and blood stains, blood blotted serviettes, forceps that made her feel sick and faint. Summoning up her strength she gathered up the serviettes and flung them into a basket behind the instrument cabinet. ”

“ The fourth cup of creamy tea; Harriett’s firm ringed hand; the gleaming serene world; the sunlit flower-filled garden shaded at the far end by the large tree the other side of the fence coming in, one with the room; the sun going to set and bring the evening freshness and rise to-morrow. Twenty-eight leisurely teas, twenty-eight long days; a feeling of strength and drowsiness. Nothing to do but clean the bicycle and pump up the tyres on the lawn, to-morrow. Nothing—after carrying the bicycle from the coal cellar up the area steps and through the house into the Tansley Street back yard. ”

“ The great studios opening out within the large garden-draped Hampstead houses rich and bright with colour in a golden light, their fur rugs and tea services on silver trays, and velvet coated men, wives with trailing dresses and the people standing about, at once conspicuous and lost, were like Academy pictures. It was all real now, the pictures on the great easels, scraps of the Academy blaze; the studio with the bright light, and marble, and bright clear tiger skins on the floor, the big clean fresh tiger almost filling the canvas ... ”

“ The window space was a little square wooden room, the long low double lattice breaking the roof, the ceiling and walls warmly reflecting its oblong of bright light. Close against the window was a firm little deal table covered with a thin brightly coloured printed cotton tablecloth. When Miriam drew her eyes from its confusion of rich fresh tones the bedroom seemed very dark. The bed drawn in under the slope showed an expanse of greyish white counterpane, the carpet was colourless in the gloom. She opened the door. Silence came in from the landing. The blue and gold had gone from the skylight. ”

“ Hancock leading Miriam along from the landing at the top of the wide red-carpeted staircase. It seemed a vast room—rooms leading one out of the other, lit with soft red lights and giving a general effect of redness, dull crimson velvet in a dull red glow and people, standing in groups and walking about—a quite new kind of people. Miriam glanced at her companion. He looked in place; he was in his right place; these were his people; people with gentle enlightened faces and keen enlightened faces. ”

“ When they sat down to play halfpenny nap after supper Miriam recovered her cigarette from its hiding place. She did not know the game. She sat at Harriett’s new card-table wrapped in the unbroken jesting of the Bollingdons and the Ducaynes, happily learning and smoking and feeling happily wicked. The Bollingdons taught her simply with a complete trustful friendliness, Mrs. Bollingdon leaning across in her pink satin blouse, her clear clean bulging cheeks and dark velvet hair like a full blown dark rose. ”

“ The sound of the violin from the house down the street that had been a half-heard obbligato to her vision of last night came in drearily, filling the space whence the vision had departed, with uneasy questions. She turned to her letter to recapture the impulse with which she had sat down.... If she turned it into a letter to Eve, all the description of the evening would have to be changed; Eve knew all about grandeurs, with the Greens’ large country house and their shooting-boxes and visits to London hotels; the bright glories must go—overwhelming and unexpressed. ”

“ Miriam’s restive anger would not allow her to attend fully to the long story. She wandered off with the dreadful idea of nursing a “semi-mental” sitting in a deck-chair in a country garden, the hopeless patient, the nurse half intent on a healthy life and fees for herself, and recalled the sprinkling of uniformed figures amongst the women crowded at the table, all in this dilemma, all eagerly intent; all overworked by associations claiming part of their fees or taking the risks of private nursing, all getting older; all anyhow as long as they went on nursing bound to live on illness ”

“ Life, suddenly full of new things made her bold. Presently, when the conversation was general she would beg one of the young man at her side. Mr. Wilson would not turn to her again. She had failed twice already in relation to him; but after her lame refusal of the cigarette which he had accepted instantly and sat down with, he had glanced sharply at her in a curious personal way, noticing the little flat square of white collarette—the knot of violets upon it, the long-sleeved black nun’s-veiling blouse, the long skirt of her old silkette evening dress. ”

“ What a wonderful way of living ... dropping a trunk full of things and going off with a portmanteau; starting life afresh in a new strange place. Miriam regarded the limber capable form outstretched on the narrow bed. This dark little enclosure, the forced companionship of the crowd of competing adventuresses, the sounds of them in the near cubicles, the perpetual sound filling the house like a sea of their busy calculations ... ”

“ It is just life going on and on. It is Miriam Henderson’s stream of consciousness going on and on. And in neither is there any grossly discernible beginning or middle or end.
In identifying herself with this life, which is Miriam’s stream of consciousness, Miss Richardson produces her effect of being the first, of getting closer to reality than any of our novelists who are trying so desperately to get close. No attitude or gesture of her own is allowed to come between her and her effect. ”

“ Miriam’s eyes went from the veinings on his flushed forehead to the violent soft rich red and blue and dull green covering the huge concave disc from side to side. It appeared to represent a close thicket of palm fronds, thin flat fingers, superimposed and splaying out in all directions over the deep blue background. In the centre appeared the head and shoulders of an enormous tiger, coming sinuously forward, one great paw planted on the greenery near the foremost middle edge of the plaque. ”

“ I am like a man in that, overbearing, bullying, blustering. I am something between a man and a woman; looking both ways. But to pretend one did not see through a man’s voice would be treachery. Nearly all men will hate me—because I can’t play up for long. Harshness must go; perhaps that was what Christ meant. But Portia only wanted to save Bassanio’s life; and did it by a trick. It was not a Daniel come to judgment; it showed the folly of law; pettifogging; the abuse of the letter of the law. She was harsh to Shylock. Which is most cruel, to take life or to torture the living? ”

“ It is a visitor; pearly freshness pouring in; but if I wait I may feel different. With the blind up the lamp will be a lamp in it; twilight outside, the lamp on the edge of it, making the room gold, edged with twilight.
I can’t go to-night. It’s all here; I must stay here. Botheration. It’s Eve’s fault. Eve would rather go out and see that girl than stay here. Eve likes getting tied up with people. I won’t get tied up; it drives everything away. ”

“ Clerks were, unless they lived in suburbs, the people who lived in St. Pancras and Bloomsbury and in Seven Dials and all round Soho and in all the slums and back streets everywhere were. She would be again soon ... not a woman ... a Londoner.
She rose from her chair feeling hardly able to stand. The long endurance in the cold room had led to nothing but the beginning of a day without strength—no one knowing what she had gone through. Three days and nights of nursing Eve had produced only a feverish gaiety. It was London that killed you. ”

“ A cup of tea and then the ’bus to Harriett’s. A ’bus somewhere just out there beyond the morning stillness of the street. What an adventure to go out and take a ’bus without having to face anybody. They were all out there, away somewhere, the very thought and sight of them, disapproving and deploring her surroundings. She listened. There they were. There were their very voices, coming plaintive and reproachful with a held-in indignation, intonations that she knew inside and out, coming on bells from somewhere beyond the squares—another church. ”

“ Hancock turned pages ruminatively.
“Those are good things” he said flattening the open page.
“Japanese flower Decorations” read Miriam looking at the reproduced squares of flowering branches arranged with a curious naturalness in strange flat dishes. They fascinated her at once—stiff and real, shooting straight up from the earth and branching out. They seemed coloured. She turned pages and gazed.
“How nice and queer.”
Mr. Hancock bent smiling. “They’ve got a whole science of this you know” he said; “it takes them years to learn it; they apprentice themselves and study for years....” ”

“ With a little chill sense of Mag in this wonderful room alone, living in the west country and herself coming in as an interruption, Miriam noted the name of the novelist in her mind ... there was something about it, she knew she would not forget it; soft and numb with a slight clatter and hiss at the end, a rain-storm, the atmosphere of Devonshire and the mill-wheel.
“Devonshire people are all consumptive,” she said decisively.
“Are they?”
“Yes, it’s the mild damp air. They have lovely complexions; like the Irish. There must be any amount of consumption in Ireland.” ”

“ Orly helping him. Miriam laboured with her jelly and glanced at the dish. People wolfed their food. It would seem so conspicuous to begin again when the fuss had died down; with Mr. Orly watching as if feeding were a contemptible self-indulgence.
“Had a beastly gold case half the morning” rapped Mr. Leyton and drank, with a gulp.
“Get any help?” said Mr. Orly glancing at Miriam.
“No” said Mr. Leyton in a non-committal tone, reaching across the table for the cheese.
“Hancock too busy?” asked Mr. Orly. “Have some more jelly, Miss Hens’n.” ”

“ She was strong with her own possessions. Wimpole Street held nothing but her contract of duties to fulfil. These she could see in a clear vexatious tangle, against the exciting on-coming of everybody’s summer; an excitement that was enough in itself. Patients were pouring out of town—in a fortnight the Orlys would be gone; all Mr. Orly’s accounts must be out by then. In a month Mr. Hancock would go. For a month before her own holiday there would be almost nothing to do. ”