Chapter I (2)

Taking her share in the remarks that followed, Miriam marvelled. Unqualified and unprepared, utterly undeserving as she felt, she was aware, within the controlled tone of her slight words, of something that moved her, as she listened, to a strange joy. It was within her, but not herself; an unknown vibrating moulding force.....

When Sissie went away with the tea-things, Mr. Gunner came to the bedside to take leave. Sitting on the edge of the bed near Miriam’s chair he bent murmuring; Miriam rose to go; Mrs. Bailey’s hand restrained her. “I think you know” whispered Mr. Gunner, “what we are to each other.” Miriam made no reply; there was a golden suffusion before her eyes, about the grey pillow. Mrs. Bailey was clutching her hand. She bent and kissed the hollow cheek, receiving on her own a quick eager mother’s kiss, and turned to offer her free hand to Mr. Gunner who painfully wrung it in both his own. Outside in the darkness St. Pancras clock was striking. She felt a sudden sadness. What could they know of each other? What could any man and woman know of each other?

When Mr. Gunner had gone and she was alone with Mrs. Bailey, the trouble lifted. It was Mrs. Bailey who had permitted it, she who would steer and guide, and she was full of wisdom and strength. She could unerringly guide anyone through anything. But how had she arrived at permitting such an extraordinary thing?

“Poor boy,” sighed Mrs. Bailey.

“Why poor boy? Nothing of the sort,” said Miriam.

“Well, it’s a comfort to me you think that; I’ve worried meself ill over him. I’ve been keeping him off for over a twelvemonth.”

“Well, it’s all settled now so you needn’t worry any more.”

“It’s his age I look to; he’s only two and twenty,” flushed Mrs. Bailey.

“He looks older than that.”

“He does look more than his age, I allow; he never had any home; his father married a second time; he says this is the first home he’s had; he’s never been so happy.” All the time he had been halting about in the evenings in the dining-room, never going out and seeming to have nothing to do but a sort of malicious lying-in-wait to make facetious remarks, he had been feeling at home, happy at home, and growing happier and happier. Poor little man, at home in nothing but the dining-room at Tansley Street.... Mrs. Bailey..... Was he good enough for her? She had not always liked or even approved of him.

“Well; that’s lovely. Of course he has been happy here.”

“That’s all very well for the past; but there’s many breakers ahead. He wants me to give up and have a little home of our own. But there’s my chicks. I can’t give up till they’re settled. I’ve told him that. I can’t do less than my duty by _them_.”

“Of course not. He’s a dear. I think he’s splendid.” But how generously glowing the struggling house seemed now; compared to a life alone, in some small small corner, with Mr. Gunner.....

“Bless ’im. He’s only a clurk, poor boy, at thirty-five weekly.”

“Of course clerks don’t make much; unless they have languages. He ought to learn one or two languages.”

“He’s not over strong. It’s not money I’m thinking of--” she flushed and hesitated and then said with a girlish rush, “I’d manage; once I’m free; I’d manage. I’d work my fingers to the bone for ’im.” Marvellous, for a little man who would go on writing yours of yesterday’s date to hand as per statement enclosed; nothing in his day but his satisfaction in the curves and flourishes of his handwriting ... and then home comforts, Mrs. Bailey always there, growing more worn and ill and old; an old woman before he was thirty.

“But that won’t be for a long time yet; though Polly’s doing splendid.”

“Is she?”

“Well, I oughtn’t to boast. But they’ve wrote me she’s to be pupil-teacher next year.”

“_Polly?_”

“Polly,” bridled Mrs. Bailey and laughed with shining eyes. “The chahld’s not turned fifteen yet, dear little woman blesser.” Miriam winced; poor little Polly Bailey, to die so soon, without knowing it.

“Oh, that’s magnificent.” Perhaps it was magnificent. Perhaps a Bailey would not feel cheated and helpless. Polly would be a pupil-teacher, perkily remaining her same self, a miniature of Mrs. Bailey, already full of amused mysterious knowledge and equal to every occasion.

Mrs. Bailey smiled shyly, “She’s like her poor mother; she’s got a will of her own.” Miriam sat at ease within the tide .... where did women find the insight into personality that gave them such extraordinary prophetic power? She herself had not an atom of it. Perhaps it was matronhood; and Mary hid all these things in her heart. No; aunts often had it, even more than matrons; Mrs. Bailey was so splendidly controlled that she was an aunt as well as a mother to the children. She contemplated the sharply ravaged little head, reared and smiling above the billows of what people called ‘misfortunes’ by her conscious and self-confessed strength of will; yes, and unconscious fairness and generosity, reflected Miriam and an immovable sense of justice. All these years of scraping and contrivance had not corrupted Mrs. Bailey; she ought to be a judge, and not Mr. Gunner’s general servant.... Justice is a woman; blindfolded; seeing from the inside and not led away by appearances; men invent systems of ethics, but they cannot weigh personality; they have no individuality, only conformity or non-conformity to abstract systems; yet it was impossible to acknowledge the power of a woman, of any woman she had ever known, without becoming a slave; or to associate with one, except in a time of trouble; but in her deliberate excursion into this little room she was free; all her life lay far away, basking in freedom; spreading out and out, illimitable; each space and part a full cup on which no hand might be laid .... that little man was just a curious foreign voice, which would presently rouse her impatience .... and just now he had seemed so near.... Was she looking at him with Mrs. Bailey’s eyes? Mrs. Bailey would say, “oh yes, I think he’s a very nice little man.” Beyond his distinction as a well-to-do boarder, he would have, in her eyes, nothing to single him out; she would respect his scholarship, but regarding it as a quality peculiar to certain men; and without the knowledge that it was in part an accident of circumstance. She would see beyond it; she would never be prostrate before it.

But the distant vision of the free life was not Mrs. Bailey’s vision; there was something there she could not be made to understand, and would in any way there were words that tried to express it, certainly not approve. Yet why did it come so strongly here in her room? The sense of it was here, somewhere in their intercourse, but she was unconscious of it..... Miriam plumbed about in the clear centre--where without will or plan or any shapely endeavour in her life, she was yet so strangely accepted and indulged. Mrs. Bailey was glancing back at her from the depths of her abode, her face busy in control of the rills of laughter sparkling in her eyes and keeping, Miriam knew, as she moved, hovering, and saw the fostering light they shed upon the world, perpetual holiday; the reassuring inexhaustible substance of Mrs. Bailey’s being.

“It’s Sissie I worry about,” said Mrs. Bailey. Miriam attended curiously. “She’s like her dear father; keeps herself to herself and goes on; she’s a splendid little woman in the house; but I feel she ought to be doing something more.”

“She’s awfully capable” said Miriam.

“She is. There’s nothing she can’t turn her hand to. She’ll have the lock off a door and mend it and put it on again and put in a pane of glass neater than a workman and no mess or fuss.” Miriam sat astonished before the expanding accumulation of qualities.

“I don’t know how I should spare her; but she’s not satisfied here; I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t manage to put her into the typing.”

“There isn’t much prospect there” recited Miriam, “the supply is bigger than the demand.”

“That is so” assented Mrs. Bailey; “but I see it like this; where there’s a will there’s a way and one has to make a beginning.” Mrs. Bailey had made up her mind. Quite soon Sissie would know typewriting; a marketable accomplishment; she would rank higher in the world than a dental secretary; a lady typist with a knowledge of French. That would be her status in an index. No doubt in time she would learn shorthand. She would go capably about, proud of her profession; with a home to live in, comfortably well off on fifteen shillings a week; one of the increasing army of confident illiterate young women in the city; no, Sissie would not be showy; she would bring life into some office, amongst men as illiterate as herself; as soon as she had picked up “yours to hand” she would be reliable and valuable..... Sissie, with a home, and without putting forth any particular effort, would have a place in the world.....

“I’ll make some inquiries” said Miriam cheerfully. Mrs. Bailey thanked her with weary eagerness; she was flushed and flagging; the evening’s work was being cancelled by the fascination which had allowed her to go on talking. She admitted a return of her neuralgia and Miriam, remorseful and weary, made her lie down again. She looked dreadfully ill; like someone else; she would go off to sleep looking like someone else, or lie until the morning, with plans going round and round in her head and get up, managing to be herself until breakfast was over. But all the time, she had a house to be in. She was Mrs. Bailey; a recognised centre. Miriam sat alone, the now familiar little room added to the strange collection of her inexplicable life; its lamplit walls were dear to her, with the extraordinary same dearness of all walls seen in tranquillity. She seemed to be responding to their gaze. Had she answered Mrs. Bailey’s murmur about going to bed? It seemed so long ago. She sat until the lamp began to fail and Mrs. Bailey appeared to be going to sleep. She crept out at last into the fresh still darkness of the sleeping house. On the first floor there was a glimmer of blue light. It was the street lamp shining in through Mr. Shatov’s wide-open empty room. When she reached her own room she found that it was one o’clock. _Already_ he had found his way to some horrible haunt. She wrapped her evening round her, parrying the thought of him. There should be no lesson to-morrow. She would be out, having left no message.

* * * * *

When she came in the next evening he was in the hall. He came forward with his bearded courteous emphatically sweeping foreign bow; a foreign professor bowing to an audience he was about to address. Bitte verzeihen Sie, he began, his rich low tones a little breathless; the gong blared forth just behind him; he stood rooted, holding her with respectful melancholy gaze as his lips went on forming their German sentences. The clangour died down; people were coming downstairs drawing Miriam’s gaze as he moved from their pathway into the dining-room, still facing her with the end of his little speech lingering nervously on his features. He was in his frock-coat and shone richly black and white under the direct lamplight; he was even more handsome than she had thought, solidly beautiful, glowing in shapely movement as he stood still and gestureless before her, set off by the shapelessly moving, dinner drawn forms passing into the dining-room. She smiled in response to whatever he may have said and wondered, having apologised for yesterday, in what way he would announce to her the outside engagement for this evening for which he was so shiningly prepared. “Zo,” he said gravely, “if you are now free, I will almost immediately come up; we shall not wait till eight o’clock.” Miriam bowed in response to the sweeping obeisance with which he turned into the dining-room, and ran upstairs. He came up before the end of the first course, before she had had time to test in the large overmantel the shape of her hair that had seemed in the little mirror upstairs, accidentally good, quite like the hair of someone who mysteriously knew how to get good effects.

“I have been sleeping,” he said in wide cheerful tones as he crossed the room, “all day until now. I am a little stupid; but I have very many things to say you. First I must say you,” he said more gravely and stood arrested with his coat tails in his hands, in front of the chair opposite to hers at a little table, “that your Emerson is _most_-wonderful.”

Miriam could not believe she had heard the deep-toned emphatic words. She stared stupidly at his unconscious thoughtful brow; for a strange moment feeling her own thoughts and her own outlook behind it. She felt an instant’s pang of disappointment; the fine brow had lost something, seemed familiar, almost homely. But an immense relief was surging through her. “No--Ree--ally, most-wonderful,” he reiterated with almost reproachful emphasis, sitting down with his head eagerly forward between his shoulders, waiting for her response. “Yes, _isn’t_ he?” she said encouragingly and waited in a dream while he sat back and drew little volumes from his pocket, his white eyelids downcast below his frowning brow. Would he qualify his praise? Had he read enough to come upon any of the chills and contradictions? However this might be, Emerson had made upon this scholarly foreigner, groping in him with his scanty outfit of language, an overwhelming impression. Her own lonely overwhelming impression was justified. The eyes came up again, gravely earnest. “No,” he said, “I find it most difficult to express the profound impression this reading have made on me.”

“He isn’t a bit original,” said Miriam surprised by her unpremeditated conclusion, “when you read him you feel as if you were following your own thoughts.”

“That is so; he is not himself philosophe; I would call him rather, poète; a most remarkable quality of English, _great_ dignity and with at the same time a most perfect simplicity.”

“He understands everything; since I have had that book I have not wanted to read anything else .... except Maeterlinck” she murmured in afterthought, “and in a way he is the same.”

“I do not know this writer” said Mr. Shatov, “and what you say is perhaps not quite good. But in a manner I can have some sympa-thaytic apprysiacion with this remark. I have read yesterday the whole day; on different omnibuses. Ah. It was for me _most_-wonderful.”

“Well, I always feel, all the time, all day, that if people would only read Emerson they would understand, and not be like they are, and that the only way to make them understand what one means would be reading pieces of Emerson.”

“That is true; why should you not do it?”

“Quotations are feeble; you always regret making them.”

“No; I do not agree,” said Mr. Shatov devoutly smiling, “you are wrong.”

“Oh, but think of the awful people who quote Shakespeare.”

“Ach-ma. People are, in general, silly. But I must tell you you should not cease to read until you shall have read at least some Russian writers. If you possess sensibility for language you shall find that Russian is _most_-beautiful; it is perhaps the most beautiful European language; it is, indubitably, the most rich.”

“It can’t be richer than English.”

“Certainly, it is richer than English. I shall prove this to you, even with dictionary. You shall find that it occur, over and over, that where in English is one word, in Russian is six or seven different, all synonyms, but all with _most_ delicate individual shades of nuance .... the abstractive expression is there, as in all civilised European languages, but there is also in Russian the most immense _variety_ of natural expressions, coming forth from the strong feeling of the Russian nature to all these surrounding influences; each word opens to a whole aperçu in this sort .... and what is most significant is, the great richness, in Russia, of the people-language; there is no other people-language similar; there is in no one language so immense a variety of tender diminutives and intimate expressions of all natural things. None is so rich in sound or so marvellously powerfully colourful..... _That_ is Russian. Part of the reason is no doubt to find in the immense paysage; Russia is zo _vast_; it is inconceivable for any non-Russian. There is also the ethnological explanation, the immense vigour of the people.”

Miriam went forward in a dream. As Mr. Shatov’s voice went on, she forgot everything but the need to struggle to the uttermost against the quiet strange attack upon English; the double line of evidence seemed so convincing and was for the present unanswerable from any part of her small store of knowledge; but there must be an answer; meantime the suggestion that the immense range of English was partly due to its unrivalled collection of technical terms, derived from English science, commerce, sports, “all the practical life-manoeuvres” promised vibrating reflection, later.

But somewhere outside her resentful indignation, she found herself reaching forward unresentfully towards something very far-off, and as the voice went on, she felt the touch of a new strange presence in her Europe. She listened, watching intently, far-off, hearing now only a voice, moving on, without connected meaning.... The strange thing that had touched her was somewhere within the voice; the sound of Russia. So much more strange, so much wider and deeper than the sound of German or French or any of the many tongues she had heard in this house, the inpouring impression was yet not alien. It was not _foreign_. There was no barrier between the life in it and the sense of life that came from within. It expressed that sense; in the rich, deep various sound and colour of its inflections, in the strange abruptly controlled shapeliness of the phrases of tone carrying the whole along, the voice _was_ the very quality he had described, here, alive: about her in the room. It was, she now suddenly heard, the disarming, unforeign thing in the voice of kind commercial little Mr. Rodkin. Then there was an answer. There was something in common between English and this strange language that stood alone in Europe. She came back and awoke to the moment, weary. Mr. Shatov had not noticed her absence. He was talking about Russia. Unwillingly she gave her flagging attention to the Russia already in her mind; a strip of silent sunlit snow, just below Finland, St. Petersburg in the midst of it, rounded squat square white architecture piled solidly beneath a brilliant sky, low sledges smoothly gliding, drawn by three horses, bell-spanned, running wildly abreast, along the silent streets or out into the deeper silence of dark, snow-clad wolf-haunted forests that stretched indefinitely down the map; and listened as he drew swift pictures, now north, now south. Vast outlines emerged faintly, and here and there a patch remained, vivid. She saw the white nights of the northern winter, felt the breaking through of spring in a single day. Whilst she lingered at Easter festivals in churches, all rich deep colour blazing softly through clouds of incense, and imagined the mighty sound of Russian singing, she was carried away to villages scattered amongst great tracts of forest, unimaginable distances of forest, the vast forests of Germany small and homely ..... each village a brilliant miniature of Russia, in every hut a holy image; brilliant colouring of stained carved wood, each peasant a striking picture, filling the eye in the clear light, many “most-dignified”; their garments coloured with natural dyes, “the most pure plant-stain colours,” deep and intense. She saw the colours, mat and sheenless, yet full of light, taking the light in and in, richly, and turned grievously to the poor cheap tones in all the western shops, clever shining chemical dyes, endless teasing variety, without depth or feeling, cheating the eye of life; and back again homesick to the rich tones of reality...... She passed down the winding sweep of the Volga, a consumptive seeking health, and out into the southern plains where wild horses roamed at large, and stayed at a lodge facing towards miles and miles of shallow salt water, sea-gull haunted, and dotted with floating islands of reeds, so matted and interwoven that one could get out from the little shallow leaky fishing-boat and walk upon them; and over all a crystal air so life-giving that one recovered. She heard the peasants in the south singing in strong deep voices, dancing by torchlight a wild dance with a name that described the dance....

Throughout the recital were vivid words, each a picture of the thing it expressed. She would never forget them. Russia was _recognisable_. So was every language .... but no foreign sound had brought her such an effect of strength and musical beauty and expressiveness combined. That was it. It was the strange number of things that were together in Russian that was so wonderful. In the end, back again in England, sitting in the cold dilapidated room before the table of little books, weary, opposite Mr. Shatov comfortably groaning and stretching, his eyes already brooding in pursuit of something that would presently turn into speech, she struggled feebly with a mournful uneasiness that had haunted the whole of the irrevocable expansion of her consciousness. A _German_, not a Russian ethnologist, and therefore without prejudice, had declared that the Russians were the strongest kinetic force in Europe. He proved himself disinterested by saying that the English came next. The English were “simple and fundamentally sound.” Not intelligent; but healthy in will, which the Russians were not. Then why were the Russians more forceful? What was kinetic force? And ... mystery .... the Russians themselves knew what they were like. “There is in Russia except in the governing and bourgeois classes almost no hypocrisy.” What was kinetic... And religion was an “actual force” in Russia! “What is ki----”

“Ah but you shall at least read some of our great Russian authors .... at least Tourgainyeff and Tolstoy.”

“Of course I have heard of Tolstoy.”

“Ah, but you shall read. He has a most profound knowledge of human psychology; the most marvellous touches. In that he rises to universality. Tourgainyeff is more pure Russian, less to understand outside Russia; more academical; but he shall reveal you most admirably the Russian aristocrat. He is cynic satirical.”

“Then he can’t reveal _anything_,” said Miriam. Here it was again; Mr. Shatov, too, took satire quite unquestioningly; thought it a sort of achievement, worthy of admiration. Perhaps if she could restrain her anger, she would hear at least in some wonderful explanatory continental phrase, what satire really was, and be able to settle with herself why she knew it was in the long run, waste of time; _why_ the word satirist suggested someone with handsome horns and an evil clever eye and thin cold fingers. Thin. Swift was probably fearfully thin. Mr. Shatov was smiling incredulously. If he went on to explain she would miss the more important worrying thing. Novels. It was extraordinary that he should....

“I don’t care for novels... I can’t see what they are about. They seem to be an endless fuss about nothing.”

“That may apply in certain cases. But it is a too extreme statement.”

“It is extreme. Why not? How can a statement be too extreme if it is true?”

“I cannot express an opinion on English novelistic writings. But of Tolstoy it is certainly not true. _No_; it is not in general true that in fictional representations there is no actuality. I have read with my first English teacher in Moscow a story of your Myne-Reade. There was in this story a Scotch captain who remained for me most typical British. He was _very_ fine this chap. This presentation here made me the more want what I have want always since a boy; to come to England.” Was Mayne Reade a novelist? Those boys’ stories were glorious. But they were about the sea; and the fifth form ... “a noble three-bladed knife, minus the blades”.....

“There’s a thing called the Ebb-Tide,” she began, wondering how she could convey her impression of the tropical shore; but Mr. Shatov’s attention, though polite, was wandering, “I’ve read some of Gorki’s short stories,” she finished briskly. They were not novels; they were alive in some way English books were not. Perhaps all Russian books were...

“Ah _Gorrrki_. He is come out direct from the peasantry; very powerfully strange and rough presentations. He may be called the apostle of misère.”

... the bakery and the yard; the fighting eagles, the old man at the prow of the boat with his daughter-in-law.... All _teaching_ something. How did people find it out?

“But really I must tell you of yesterday” said Mr. Shatov warmly. “I have made a Schach-Partei. That was for me _very good_. It include also a certain exploration of London. That is for me I need not say most _fascinatink_.” Miriam listened eagerly. The time was getting on; they had done no work. She had not once corrected him and he was plunging into his preliminary story as if their hour had not yet begun. She was to share...

“There was on one of these many omnibuses a gentleman who tell me where in London I shall obtain a genuine coffee. Probably you know it is at this Vienna Café, in Holeborne. You do not know this place? _Strange._ It is quite near to you all the time. Almost at your British Museum. Ah; this gentleman has told me too a most funny story of a German who go there proudly talking English. He was waiting; ach they are very slow in this place, and at last he shouts for everyone to hear, Vaiter! Venn shall I become a cup of coffee?”

Miriam laughed her delight apprehensively. “Ah, I like very much these stories,” he was saying, his eyes dreamily absent, she feared, on a memory-vista of similar anecdotes. But in a moment he was alive again in his adventure. “It was at London Bridge. I have come all the way, walkingly, to this Café. It is a strange place. Really glahnend; Viennese; very dirrty. But coffee most excellent; just as on the Continent. You shall go there; you will see. Upstairs it is most dreadful. More dirrty; and in an intense gloom of smoke, very many men, ah they are dreadful, I could not describe to you. Like monkeys; but all in Schach-parteis. That shall be very good for me. I am most enthusiastic with this game since a boy.”

“Billiards?”

Why should he look so astonished and impatiently explain so reproachfully and indulgently? She grasped the meaning of the movements of his hands. He was a chess-player “a game much older--uralt--and the most mental, the only true abstractive game.” How differently an English chess-player would have spoken. She regarded his eager contained liveliness. Russian chess players remained alive. Was chess mental? Pure tactics. Should she declare that chess was a dreadful boring indulgence, leading nowhere? Perhaps he would be able to show her that this was not so.... Why do the Germans call two people playing chess a chess-party? “I have met there a man, a Polish doctor. We have made party and have play until the Café close, when we go to his room and continue there to play till the morning. Ah, it was most-beautiful.”

“Had you met him before?”

“Oh no. He is in London; stewdye-ink medicine.”

“St_uddy_ing,” said Miriam impatiently, lost in incredulous contemplation. It could not be true that he had sat all night playing chess with a stranger. If it were true, they must both be quite insane ..... the door was opening. Sissie’s voice, and Mr. Shatov getting up with an eager polite smile. Footsteps crossing the room behind her; Mr. Shatov and a tall man shaking hands on the hearthrug; two inextricable voices; Mr. Shatov’s presently emerging towards her, deferentially, “I present you Dr. Veslovski.” The Polish doctor, gracefully bowing from a cold narrow height, Mr. Shatov, short, dumpy, deeply-radiant little friend, between them; making a little speech, turning from one to the other. The Polish head was reared again on its still cold grey height; undisturbed.... Perfect. Miriam had never seen anything so perfectly beautiful. Every line of the head and face harmonious; the pointed beard finishing the lines with an expressiveness that made it also a feature, one with the rest. Even the curious long narrow capless flatly lying foreign boots, furrowed with mud-stiffened cracks, and the narrowly cut, thin, shabby grey suit shared the distinction of the motionless reined-in head. Polish beauty. If that were Polish beauty the Poles were the most beautiful people in Europe. Polish; the word suggested the effect, its smooth liquid sheen, sinuous and graceful without weakness .... the whole word was at home in the eyes; horribly beautiful, abysses of fathomless foreign ... any kind of known happenings were unthinkable behind those eyes .... yet he was here; come to play chess with Mr. Shatov who had not expected him until Sunday, but would go now immediately with her permission, to fetch his set from upstairs. She lingered as he hurried away, glancing at the little books on the table. The Emerson was not among them. The invisible motionless figure on the hearthrug had brought her a message she had forgotten in her annoyance at his intrusion. Going from the room towards his dim reflection in the mirror near the door she approached the waiting thought--Mr. Shatov’s voice broke in, talking eagerly to Mrs. Bailey on the floor below. From the landing she heard him beg that it might be some _large_ vessel, quite voll tea; some drapery to enfold it, and that the gazz might be left alight. They were going to play chess, through the night, in that cold room .... but the thought was gladly there. The Polish doctor’s presence had confirmed Mr. Shatov’s story. It had not been a young man’s tale to cover an escapade.