Chapter III (2)

“That is a nonsense. You are most English. No, but it is really most wonderful,” his voice dropped again to reverence and she listened eagerly, “how in your best aristocracy and in the best types of professional men, your lawyers and clerics and men of science, is to be read so strikingly this history of your nation. There is a something common to them all that shines out, _durchleuchtend_, showing, sometimes, understand me, with almost a naivety, the centuries of your freedom. Ah it is not for nothing that the word gentleman comes from England.”

“I know, I know what you mean” said Miriam in contemplation, they _were_ naïve; showing their thoughts, in sets, readable, with shapes and edges, but it was the Tories and clerics who had the roomiest, most sympathetic expressions, liberals and nonconformists had no thoughts at all, only ideas. Lawyers had no ideas even ...

“You would like my father; he hasn’t a scrap of originality, only that funny old-fashioned English quality from somewhere or other Heaven knows” ... and they could play chess together!.... “But lawyers are not gentlemen. They are perfectly awful.”

“That is a prejudice. Your English law is the very basis of your English freedom.”

“They are awful. The others look Christians. They _don’t_.” Fancy defending Christianity ...

“The thing you are seeing,” she said, “is Christianity. I don’t mean that there is anything in it; but Christian ideas have made English civilisation; that’s what it is. But how can you say all these things when you believe we are grabbing diamond mines?” Haw, _what_? Champagne and Grand pianos. Nice, jolly prejudiced _simpletons_; not even able to imagine that England ought not to have everything there was to be had, everywhere. Quite right, better for everybody .... but ... wir reiten, Pieter, reiten .... oh Lord ... _who_ was right?

“Stop a bit, stop a bit. Christianity will not explain. There are other Christian countries where there is no sign of this thing that is in England. No. The explanation is very simple. It is that you have had in England through a variety of causes, not the least of which is your Protestant Reformation, a relatively very rapid and unrestricted _secular_ development.”

“What about Germany and Holland?”

“Both quite different stories. There was in England a specially favourable gathering of circumstances for rapid secularistic development.”

“Then if we have been made by our circumstances it is no credit to us.”

“I have not said anything about _credit_.”

“But there are people now who think we are dying of the Reformation; not the break with Rome; but with Catholic history and tradition. No, wait a minute, it’s interesting. They have discovered, _proved_, that there was Christianity in Britain, and British Christian Churches, long before the Romans came. That means that we are as old, and as direct as Rome. The Pope is nothing but a Roman Bishop. I feel it is an immense relief, to know we go right back, _ourselves_; when I think of it.”

“All these clericalisms are immaterial to _life_.”

“Then there were two Popes at one time, and there is the Greek church. I wonder Newman didn’t think of that. Now _he_ is one of your fine English types, although he looks scared, as if he had seen a ghost. If he had known about the early British church perhaps he would not have gone over to Rome.”

“I cannot follow all this. But what is indisputable is, that in every case of religious authority, secular development has been held back. Buckle has completely demonstrated this in a most masterly exhaustive consideration of the civilisations of Europe. Ah it is _marvellous_, this book, one of your finest decorations; and without any smallest touch of fanaticism; he is _indeed_ perhaps one of your greatest minds of the best English type, full of sensibility and fine gentleness.”

Miriam was back, as she listened, in the Chiswick villa, in bed in the yellow lamplight with a cold, the pages of the Apologia reading themselves without effort into her molten mind, as untroubled beauty and happiness, making what Newman sought seem to be at home in herself, revealing deep inside life a whole new strange place of existence that was yet familiar, so that the gradual awful gathering of his trouble was a personal experience, and the moment of conviction that schism was a deliberate death, a personal conviction. She wondered why she always forgot that the problem had been solved. Glancing beyond the curve of her umbrella she caught, with his last words, the sudden confident grateful shining of Mr. Shatov’s lifted face and listened eagerly.

“It is this one thing,” she lifted the umbrella his way in sudden contrition, shifting it so that it sheltered neither of them; “Thank you I am quite well. It is hardly now raining” he muttered at his utmost distance of foreign intonation and bearing. She peered out into the air, shutting her umbrella. They had come out of their way, away from the streets into a quietness. It must be the Inner Circle. They would have to walk right round it.

“It is this one thing” again it was as if her own voice were speaking, “this thesis of the _conditions_ of the development of peoples,” Anglican priests _married_; but not the highest high-Anglican. But they were always going over to Rome ... “that has made your Buckle so precious to the Russian intelligentsia. In England he is scarcely now read, though I have seen by the way his works in this splendid little edition of World Classics, the same as your Emerson, why did you take only Emerson? There is a whole row, the most fascinating things.”

“My Emerson was given to me. I didn’t know it came from anywhere in particular.”

“This Richards must be a most enlightened publisher. I should wish to possess all those volumes. The Buckle I will certainly take at once and you shall see. He is of course out of date in the matter of exact science and this is no doubt part reason why in England he is no more read. It is a great pity. His mind is perhaps greater than even your Darwin, certainly with a far wider philosophical range, and of _far_ greater originality. What is wonderful is his actual anticipation, in idea, without researches, of a large part of what Darwin discovered more accidentally, as a result of his immense naturalistic researches.”

“Someone will discover some day that Darwin’s conclusions were wrong, that he left out some little near obvious thing with big results, and his theory, which has worried thousands of people nearly to death, will turn out to be one of those everlasting mannish explanations of everything which explain nothing. I know what you are going to say; a subsequent reversal of a doctrine does not invalidate scientific method. I know. But these everlasting theories, and men are so ‘eminent’ and important about them, are appalling; in medicine, it is simply _appalling_, and people are just as ill as ever; and when they know Darwin was mistaken, there will be an end of Herbert Spencer. There’s my father, really an intelligent man, he has done scientific research himself and knew Faraday, and he thinks First Principles the greatest book that was ever written. I have argued and argued but he says he is too old to change his cosmos. It makes me simply ill to think of him living in a cosmos made by Herbert Spencer.”

“_Wait._ Excuse me but that is all too easy. In matter of science the conclusions of Darwin will _never_ be displaced. It is as the alphabet of biology, as Galilei is of Astronomy. More. These researches even need not be made again. They are for all time verified. Herbert Spencer I agree has carried too far in too wholesale a manner conclusions based on Darwin’s discoveries; conclusions may lead to many inapplicable theories, that is immaterial; but Darwin himself made no such theories. There is no question of _opinion_ as to his discoveries; he supplies simply unanswerable _facts_.”

“I think it’s Huxley who makes me angry with Darwinism. He didn’t find it out, and he went swaggering about using it as a weapon; _frightfully_ conceited about it. That Thomas Henry Huxley should come off best in an argument was quite as important to him as spreading the Darwinian theory. I _never_ read anything like his accounts of his victories in his letters.”

“That is most certainly not the spirit of Darwin, who was a most gentle creature...... But you really surprise me in your attitude towards the profession of law.”

“I don’t know anything whatever about laws; but I have met lawyers, barristers and solicitors, and I think they are the most ignorant, pig-headed people in the world. They have no minds at all. They don’t affect _me_. But if I were ever before a judge I should shoot him. They use cases to show off their silly wit, sitting thinking of puns; and people are put to death.”

“You are in this matter both prejudiced and unjust, believe me. You cannot in any case make individuals responsible in this matter of capital punishment. That is for all humanity. I see you are like myself, a dreamer. But it is bad to let what might be, blind you to _actuality_. To the great actuality, in this case, that in matters of justice between man and man _England_ has certainly led the civilised world. In France, it is true, there is a certain special generosity towards certain types of provoked crime; but France has not the large responsibilities of England. The idea of abstract justice, is stronger in England than anywhere. But what you do not see is that in confessing ignorance of your law you pay it the highest possible tribute. You do not know what individual liberty is because you know nothing of any other condition. Ah you cannot conceive what strangeness and wonder there is for a Russian in this spectacle of a people so free that they hold their freedom as a matter of course.”

_Decked._ Distinguished. Marked among the nations, for unconscious qualities. What _is_ England? What do the qualities mean?

“I’m not interested in laws. If I knew what they were I should like to break them. Trespassers will be prosecuted always makes me furious.”

“That is merely a technical by-law. That is just one of your funny English high-churchishnesses this trespassers ...... ah I must tell you I was just now in the Hyde Park. There was a meeting, ah it was indeed wonderful to me all these people freely gathered together! There was some man addressing them, I could not hear, but suddenly a man near me on the outskirt of the crowd shouted in full voice “Chamberlain is a damned _liar_!” Yes, but wait for your English laughter. That is not the whole. There was also quite near me, a very big John Bull _bobby_. He turned to pass on, with a _smile_. Ah that indeed for a Russian was a most _wonderful_ spectacle.”

“We ought to be hurrying,” said Miriam, burning with helpless pity and indignation, “you will be late for dinner.”

“That is true. Shall you not also take dinner? Or if you prefer we can dine elsewhere. The air is most pure and lovely. We are in some Park?”

“Regent’s Park” she said hastily, breathing in its whole circumference, her eyes passing, through the misty gloom, amongst daylit pictures of every part. He had not known even where he was; completely foreign, a mind from an unknown world, obliviously at her side. A headlong urgency possessed her; the coming back to London had not yet been; perhaps this time she would miss it; already she was tired with thought and speech. Incoherently improvising an appointment she hurried along, her mind set excitedly towards Tansley Street. There was always some new thing waiting there when she returned from an absence; she could hear about it and get over her greetings and out for an hour by herself. She increased her pace until Mr. Shatov panted for breath as he plunged along by her side. The random remarks she made to cover her thoughts hurtled about in the darkness, stabbing her with vindictive unhelpful comments on her English stiffness, embarrassing her gait and increasing her angry fatigue. He responded in breathless shouts as if they were already in the crowded streets. They reached pavement, big houses loomed up out of the mist, the gates were just ahead. We had better rather at once take an omnibus, he shouted as they emerged into the Euston Road and a blue umbrella bus passed heavily by. She hurried forward to catch it at the corner. That goes only to _Gower_ Street, thundered his following voice. She was in amongst the crowd at the corner and as again the bus lumbered off, inside it in the one remaining seat.

In the dimly lit little interior, moving along through the backward flowing mist-screened street lights, she dropped away from the circling worlds of sound, and sat thoughtless gazing inward along the bright kaleidoscopic vistas that came unfailing and unchanged whenever she was moving, alone and still, against the moving tide of London. When the bus pulled up for a moment in a block, she searched the gloom-girt forms within her view. The blue light of the omnibus lamp lit up faces entangled in visible thoughts, unwillingly suffering the temporary suspension of activity, but in the far corner there was one, alive and aware, gazing untrammelled at visions like her own, making them true, the common possession of all who would be still. Why were these people only to be met in omnibuses and now and again walking sightless along crowded streets? Perhaps in life they were always surrounded with people with whom they did not dare to be still. In speech that man would be a little defensive and cynical. He had a study, where he went to get away from everything, to work; sometimes he only pretended to work. He did not guess that anyone outside books, certainly not any _women_ anywhere .... the bus rumbled on again; by the time it reached Gower Street she had passed through thoughtless ages. The brown house and her room in it called to her recreated. Once through the greetings awaiting her, she would be free upstairs amongst its populous lights and shadows; perhaps get in unseen and keep her visions untouched through the evening. She would have an evening’s washing and ironing. Mr. Shatov would not expect her to-night.

Mrs. Bailey, hurrying through the hall to dinner, came forward dropping bright quiet cries of welcome from the edge of her fullest mood of excited serenity, gently chiding Miriam’s inbreaking expectant unpreparedness with her mysterious gradual way of imparting bit by bit, so that it was impossible to remember how and when she had begun, the new thing; lingering silently at the end of her story to disarm objections before she turned and flitted, with a reassuring pleading backward smile, into her newly crowded dining-room. A moment later Miriam was in the drawing-room, swiftly consulting the profile of a tweed-clad form bent busily writing at the little table under the gas. The man leapt up and faced her with a swift ironic bow, strode to the hearth-rug and began to speak. She remained rooted in the middle of the room amplifying her impression as his sentence went on, addressed not to her, though he occasionally flung a cold piercing glance her way, but to the whole room, in a high, narrowly-rounded, fluting tone as if he were speaking into a cornet. His head had gone up above the level of the brighter light but it looked even more greyish yellow than before, the sparse hair, the eyes, the abruptly branching moustache moving most remarkably with his fluting voice, the pale tweed suit, all one even yellowish grey, and his whole reared up, half soldierly form, at bay, as if the room were full of jeering voices. His long declamation contained all that Mrs. Bailey had said and told her also that the lecture was about Spanish literature. London was extraordinary. A Frenchman, suddenly giving a lecture in English on Spanish literature; at the end of next week. He wound up his tremendous sentence by telling her that she was a secretary, and must excuse his urgency, that he required the services of an English secretary and would now, with her permission read the first part of the lecture that she might tell him whenever his intonation was at fault. That would be _immensely_ interesting and easy she thought, and sat down on the music stool while he gathered up his sheaf of papers and explained that foreign intonation was the always neglected corner-stone of the mastery of a foreign tongue.

In a moment he was back again on the hearth-rug, beginning his lecture in a tone that was such an exaggeration of his conversational voice, so high-pitched and whistlingly rounded, so extremely careful in enunciation that Miriam could hear nothing but a loud thin hooting, full of the echoes of the careful beginnings and endings of English words.

The first sentence was much longer than his address to her and when it ended she did not know how or where to begin. But he had taken a step forward on the hearth-rug and begun another sentence, on a higher pitch, with a touch of anger in his voice. She checked a spasm of laughter and sat tense, trying to ignore the caricature of his style that gambolled in her mind. The sentence, even longer than the first, ended interrogatively with a fling of the head. It was _tragic_. She was quick, quicker than anyone she knew, in catching words or meanings through strange disguises. An audience would be either furious or hysterical.

“You don’t want to _threaten_ your audience” she said very quietly in a low tone, hoping by contrast to throw up his clamour.

“I dew not threaten,” he said with suave patience, “doubtless hew are misled. It is a great occasion; and a great subject; of hwich I am master; in these circumstances a certain bravura is imperative. Hew du not propose that I should _plead_ for Cervantes for example? I will continue.”

The sentences grew in length, each one climbing, through a host of dependent clauses, small sharp hammer blows of angry assertion, and increasing in tone to a climax of defiance flung down from a height that left no further possibility but a descent to a level quiet deduction ... and _now_ dear brethren ...... but the succeeding sentence came fresh to the attack, crouching, gathering up the fury of its forerunner, leaping forward, dipping through still longer dependent loops, accumulating, swelling and expanding to even greater emphasis and volume. She gave up all hope of gathering even the gist of the meaning; he seemed to be saying one thing over and over again. You protest too much ..... don’t _protest_; don’t _gesticulate_ ...... the English don’t gesticulate ...... but he used no gesticulations; he was aware; that was a deliberate attempt to be English. But his whole person was a gesture, expanding, vibrating.

“You mean by intonation only the intonation of single words, not of the whole?”

“Precisely. Correctness of accent and emphasis is my aim. But you imply a criticism” he fluted, unshaken by his storm.

“Yes. First you must not pronounce each word quite so carefully. It makes them _echo_ into each other. Then of course if you want to be quite English you must be less emphatic.”

“I must assume an air of indifference?”

“An English audience will be more likely to understand if you are slower and more quiet. You ought to have gaps now and then.”

“Intervals for yawning. Yew shall indicate suitable moments. I see that I am fortunate to have met-hew. I will take lessons, for this lecture, in the true frigid English dignity.”

The door opened, admitting Mr. Shatov.

“Mr.--a--Shatov; will be so good; as to grant five minutes; for the conclusion of this interview.” He walked forward bowing with each phrase, hiding the intruder and bowing him out of the room. The little dark figure reappeared punctually, and he rose with a snap of the fingers. “The English” he declaimed at large, “have an excellent phrase; hwich says, time is money. This phrase, good though it is, might be improved. Time is let out on usury. So, for the present, I shall leave yew.” He turned on the sweeping bow that accompanied his last word and stepped quickly with a curious stiff marching elegance down the room towards Mr. Shatov as though he did not see him, avoiding him at the last moment by a sharp curve. Outside the closed door he rattled the handle as if to make sure it was quite shut.

Miriam sought intently for a definition of what had been in the room .... a strange echoing shadow of some real thing ... there was something real ... just behind the empty sound of him ... somewhere in the rolled up manuscript so remarkably in her hands, making a difference in the evening brought in by Mr. Shatov. Hunger and fatigue were assailing her; but the long rich day mounting up to an increasing sense of incessant life crowding upon her unsought, at her disposal, could not be snapped by retirement for a solitary meal. He walked quickly to the hearth-rug, bent forward and spat into the empty grate.

“_What_ is this fellow?”

She broke through her frozen astonishment, “I have just undertaken a perfectly frightful thing” she said, quivering with disgust.

“I find him insufferable.”

“The French sing their language. It is like a recitative, the tone goes up and down and along and up and down again with its own expression; the words have to fit the tune. They have no single abrupt words and phrases, the whole thing is a _shape_ of _tones_. It’s extraordinary. All somehow arranged; in a pattern; different patterns for the expression of the different emotions. In their English it makes the expression swallow up the words, a wind driving through them continuously ... liaison.”

“It is a musical tongue certainly.”

“That’s it; music. But the individual is not there; because the tunes are all arranged for him and he sings them, according to rule. The Academy. The purity of the French language. I’m getting so interested.”

“I find this Lahitte a most _pretentious_ fellow.”

“He is not in the least what I expected a Frenchman to be like. I can’t understand his being so fair.”

“What is it you have undertaken?”

He was suddenly grave and impressed by the idea of the lecture ...... why would it be such good practice for her to read and correct it?

Her answer plunged him into thought from which he branched forth with sudden eagerness ... a French translation of a Russian book revealing marvellously the interior, the self life, of a doctor, through his training and experience in practice. It would be a revelation to English readers and she should translate it; in collaboration with him; if she would excuse the intimate subjects it necessarily dealt with. He was off and back again with the book and reading rapidly while she still pondered his grave enthusiasm over her recent undertaking. In comparison with this idea of translating a book, it seemed nothing. But that was only one of his wild notions. It would take years of evenings of hard work. Meanwhile someone else would do it. They would work at it together. With Saturdays and Sundays it would not take so long ..... it would set her standing within the foreign world she had touched at so many points during the last few years, and that had become, since the coming of Mr. Shatov, more and more clearly a continuation of the first beginnings at school..... alors un faible chuchotement se fit entendre au premier ..... à l’entrée de ce bassin, des arbres .... se fit entendre .... alors un faible chuchotement se fit entendre ... all one word on one tone ... it must have been an extract from some dull mysterious story with an explanation or deliberately without an explanation; then a faint whispering was audible on the first floor; that was utterly different. It was the shape and sound of the sentences, without the meaning that was so wonderful--alors une faible parapluie se fit entendre au premier--Jan would scream, but it was just as wonderful ...... there must be some meaning in having so passionately loved the little book without having known that it was selections from French prose; in getting to Germany and finding there another world of beautiful shape and sound, apart from people and thoughts and things that happened ... Durch die ganze lange Nacht, bis tief in den Morgen hinein ..... it was opening again, drawing her in away from the tuneless shapeless--

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, but it hasn’t begun.”

“That is true. We can really omit all this introduction and at once begin.”

As the pages succeeded each other her hunger and fatigue changed to a fever of anxious attention.

“Well? Is not that a masterly analysis? You see. That should be translated for your Wimpole Street.”

“I don’t know. We are not like that. It would never occur to an English doctor to write for the general public anything that could shake its confidence in doctors. Foreigners are different. They think nothing of revealing and discussing the most awful things. It’s pessimism. They _like_ pessimism.”

“It is a serious mistake to regard enlightenment as pessimism.”

“I don’t believe in Continental luminaries.”

“Your prejudices are at least frank.”

“I had forgotten the author was Russian. That idea of the rush of mixed subjects coming to the medical student too quickly one after the other for anything to be taken in, is awful, and perfectly true. Hosts of subjects, hosts of different theories about all of them; no general ideas ..... Doctors have to specialise when they are boys and they remain ignorant all their lives.”

“This is not only for doctors. You have touched the great problem of modern life. No man can, to-day, see over the whole field of knowledge. The great Leibnitz was the last to whom this was possible.”

To be ignorant always, knowing one must die in ignorance. What was the use of going on? Life looked endless. Suddenly it would seem short. “Wait till you’re fifty and the years pass like weeks.” You would begin to see clearly all round you the things you could never do. Never go to Japan. Already it was beginning. No college. No wanderjahre...... Translating books might lead to wanderjahre.

“It’s certainly a book that ought to be translated.” At least there could be no more “Eminent men.” There might always be someone at work somewhere who would suddenly knock him down like a ninepin.

“Well you shall see. I will read you a passage from later, that you may judge whether you will care. I must tell you it deals of intimate matters. You must excuse.”

It was not only that he thought she might object. He also realised that the English reserves between them were being swept away. It was strange that a free Russian should have these sensibilities. He read his extract through, bringing it to a close in shaken tones, his features sensitively working.

Everyone ought to know...... It ought to be shouted from the house-tops that a perfectly ordinary case leaves the patient sans connaissance et nageant dans le sang.

“It’s very interesting,” she said hurriedly, “but in English it would be condemned as unsuitable for general reading.”

“I thought that possible.”

“The papers would solemnly say that it deals with subjects that are better veiled.”

“Indeed it is remarkable. John Bull is indeed the perfect ostrich.”

“Oh those men who write like that don’t want them veiled from _themselves_.”

“I will tell you more than that. The Paris pornographia _lives_ on its English patrons.”

“Oh no; I’m sure it doesn’t.”

“On the contrary I assure you this is a fact. Any French bookseller will tell you. I see that this distresses you. It is not perhaps in every case so base as would appear. There is always even in quite deliberate French obscenity a certain _esprit_. These subjects lend themselves.”

“Oh they don’t care about the esprit. It’s because they think they are being improper. They like to be what they call men of the world, in possession of a fund of things they think can’t be talked about; you can see their silly thoughts by the way they glance at each other; it’s all about nothing. What _is_ obscenity? And the other half of them is _ladies_, who shout things by always carefully avoiding them; or, if they are “racey,” flatter men’s topics by laughing in a pretended hilarious embarrassment, hitting them as it were, and rushing on to something else, very animated by a becoming blush. I never realised that before. But that’s the secret. What _is_ obscenity?”

“You have touched a most interesting problem of psychology.”

“Besides Paris is full of Americans.”

“It is the same proposition. They are the cousins of the English.”

“I think the American ‘man of the world’ is much more objectionable. He is so horribly raw that he can’t help boasting openly, and the American woman flatters him, openly. It’s extraordinary. I mean the kind of heavy-featured fat middle-aged American woman who doesn’t smoke and thinks that voting would be unseemly for women. It used to make me simply ill with fury..... Dr. Bunyan Hopkinson’s brother came over for July and August two years ago. He was appalling. With a bright fair beard, and a most frightful twang; the worst I’ve ever heard. He used to talk incessantly, as if the whole table were waiting for his ideas. And knew everything, in the most awful superficial newspaper way. They have absolutely no souls at all. I never saw an American soul. The Canadians have. The Americans, at least the women, have reproachful ideals that they all agree about. So that they are all like one person; all the same effect. But wasn’t it _screaming_, Bunyan Hopkinson’s brother was called _Bacchus_. Yes. Did you ever hear anything so screaming? Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t it explain everything? He was a doctor too. He sat next to an elderly woman who was always scolding and preaching. She had an enormous American figure, and Guelph eyelids and Guelph cheeks coming down below her chin making great lengthways furrows on either side of it. But when Dr. Bacchus began to talk about Paris she would listen respectfully. He used always to be offering to show other men round Paris. There’s no-one alive, he would say, can show me anything in Parrus night-life I’ve not seen. _Ah_, she would say, anyone can see you’re a man of the _world_, doctor. It spoils the very idea of those little cabarets and whatever awful haunts there may be in Paris to think of Americans there, seeing _nothing_.”

“They have certainly a most remarkable naivety.”

“I’ve to-day seen your Queen. She’s just a vurry _hoamely_ little old lady.”

“What? What is that?”

“Then they _were_ funny.” She searched her memory to make him go on giggling. It was extraordinary too, to discover what impressions she had gathered without knowing it, never considering or stating them to herself. He was getting them. If she ever stated them again they would be stale; practised clever talk; _that_ was how talk was done ... saying things over and over again to numbers of people, each time a little more brilliantly and the speaker a little more dead behind it. Nothing could be repeated.

“That was the same year. Mrs. Bailey had a splendid August. Eighteen Americans. I used to go down to meals just to be in the midst of the noise. You never heard anything like it in your life. If you listened without trying to distinguish anything it was _marvellous_, in the bright sunshine at breakfast. It sent you up and up, into the sky, the morning stars singing together. _No._ I mean there was something _really_ wonderful about it. It reminded me of the effect that almost comes when people decide to have a Dutch concert. You know. All singing different songs at the same time. It’s _always_ spoilt. People begin it prepared not to hear the whole effect. I did. I did not realise there would be a wonderful whole. And always just as the effect is beginning, two or three people break down because they cannot hold their songs, and some laugh because they are prepared only to laugh, and the unmusical people put their fingers to their ears, because they can never hear _sound_, never anything but a tune. Oh it would be so wonderful, if only it could be really _held_, everyone singing for all they were worth.”

“Have you heard that the Shah preferred of a whole concert, only the tuning of the orchestra?”

“I know. That’s always supposed to be a joke. But the tuning of an orchestra, if there is enough of it at once, _is_ wonderful. Why not _both_? It’s the appalling way people have of liking only one thing. Liking ‘good’ music and disapproving of waltzes. The Germans don’t.”

“But when I thought of one of my sisters, I used to want to die. If she had been there we should both have yelled, without moving a muscle of our faces. Harriett is perfect for that. We learnt it in church. But when she used to twist all the fingers of her gloves into points, under the seat, and then show them to me suddenly, in the Litany” ....

“What? What is this? No. Tell me. You were very happy with your sisters.”

“That’s all. She waggled them, suddenly.”

“A happy childhood is perhaps the _most_-fortunate gift in life.”

“You don’t know you’re happy.”

“That is not the point. This early surrounding lingers and affects all the life.”

“It’s not quite true that you don’t know. Because you know when you are quite young how desperately you love a place. The day we left our first home I remember putting marbles in my pocket in the nursery, not minding, only thinking I should take them out again by the _sea_, and downstairs in the garden I suddenly realised, the sun was shining on to the porch and bees swinging about amongst the roses, and I ran back and kissed the warm yellow stone of the house, sobbing most bitterly and knowing my life was at an end.”

“But you were six years old. That is what is important. You do not perhaps realise the extent of the remaining of this free life of garden and woods with you.”

“I know it is there. I often dream I am there and wake there, and for a few minutes I could draw the house, the peaked shapes of it, and the porches and french windows and the way the lawns went off into the mysterious parts of the garden; and I feel then as if going away were still to come, an awful thing that had never happened. Of course after the years in the small house by the sea, I don’t remember the house, only the sea and the rocks, the house at Barnes grew in a way to be the same, but I never got over the suddenness of the end of the garden and always expected it to branch out into distances, every time I ran down it. I used to run up and down to make it more.......” He was no longer following with such an intentness of interest. There ought to have been more about those first years. Now, no one would ever know what they had been......

“But you know, although nothing the Americans say is worth hearing, there is something wonderful about the way they go on. The way they all talk at once, nobody listening. It’s because they all know what they are going to say and everyone wants to say it first. They used to talk in parties; a set of people at one part of the table all screaming together towards a set at another part, and other people screaming across them at another set. The others began screaming back at once, endless questions, and if two sets had seen the same thing they all screamed together as soon as it was mentioned. I never heard one person talking alone; not in that August set. And there was one woman, a clergyman’s wife, with a little pretty oval face and the most perfect muslin dresses which she did not appreciate, who used to begin as soon as she came in and go on right through the meal, filling up the gaps in her talk with gasps and exclamations. Whenever any place was mentioned she used to turn and put her hand over her husband’s mouth till she had begun what she wanted to say, jumping up and down in her chair.”

“Is it _possible_?”

“I know now why they all have such high piercing voices. It comes from talking in sets. But I always used to wonder what went on behind; in their own minds.”

“Do not wonder. There is no arrière-boutique in these types. They are most simple.”

“They don’t like us. They think we are frigid; not cordial, is one of their phrases.”

“That is a most superficial judgment. Stay! I have a splendid idea. We will leave for the present this large book. But why should you not immediately translate a story of Andrayeff? They are quite short and most beautiful. You will find them unlike anything you have read. I have them here. We will at once read one.”

“I must go out; it will soon be too late.”

“You have had no dinner? Ach, that is _monstrous_. Why did you not tell me?...... It is half eleven. There is yet time. We will go to my dumme August in the East-end.”

In her room, Miriam glanced at the magic pages, hungrily gathering German phrases, and all the way to Aldgate, sitting back exhausted in her corner she clung to them, resting in a ‘stube’ with ‘Gebirge’ all round it in morning and evening light. When they reached their destination she had forgotten she was in London. But the station was so remote and unknown to her that it scarcely disturbed her detachment. The wide thoroughfare into which they emerged was still and serene within its darkness behind the spread veil of street sounds, filled with the pure sweet air of adventure. The restaurant across the road was a little square of approaching golden light. It was completely strange. There was a tang of coarse tobacco in the air, but not the usual restaurant smell. There were no marble-topped tables; little square wooden-legged tables, with table-covers of red and blue chequered cotton; pewter flagons, foreigners, Germans, sturdy confident Germans sitting about. It was Germany.

“Well? Is it not perfectly dumme August?” whispered Mr. Shatov as they took an empty corner table, commanding the whole room. There was a _wooden_ partition behind them, giving out life. Her fatigue left her.

“Für mich ist es absolut als wär ich in Hannover.”

“At least here you shall have an honest meal. Kellner!”

She did not want to eat; only to sit and hear the deep German voices all round her and take in, without observation, kindly German forms.

“Simply you are too tired. We will have at least some strong soup and Lager.”

The familiar smooth savoury broth abolished the years since she had left Germany. Once more she was finding the genuine honest German quality reflected in the completeness of their food; all of it even the bread, savoury and good through and through, satisfying in a way no English food was satisfying, making English food seem poor, ill-combined, either heavy and dull, or too exciting. She saw German kitchens, alles rein und sauber, blank poliert, large bony low-browed angry-voiced German servants in check dresses and blue aprons, everlastingly responsibly at work.

And here was Lager, the Lager of the booming musical German cafés. She was sure she would not like it. He was taking for granted that she was accustomed to beer, and would not know that she was having a tremendous adventure. To him it did not seem either shocking or vulgar. Protected by his unconsciousness she would get perhaps further than ever before into the secret of Germany. She took a small sip and shuddered. The foamy surface was pleasant; but the strange biting bitterness behind it was like some sudden formidable personal attack.

“That is the first time I’ve tasted beer,” she said, “I don’t like it.”

“You have not yet tasted it. You must swallow, not sip.”

“It makes your throat sore. It’s so bitter. I always imagined beer was sweet.”

“There is perhaps something a little acid in this imported Lager; but the bitterness is most good. It is this biting quality that is a most excellent apératif. We will have also honey cakes.”

The light, not too sweet, porous crisp mealiness of the little cakes was German altogether. Mr. Shatov was whispering busily. She feared he would be heard. There was not much conversation in the room; large deep solid sentences reverberated through it with a sound of thoughtfulness, as though the speakers were preoccupied, like travellers, talking with their eyes turned inward upon their destination. All of them appeared serious and sober.

“Just as we crossed the frontier one big fat German roused up and said in an _immense_ rolling voice. ‘Hier kann man wenigstens vernunftiges _Bier_ haben!’”

“Ssh! They will hear.”

“What then? They are here nearly all Jews.”

“Jews? But they are nearly all _fair_!”

“There may be a few Germans. But many Jews are fair. But you have not told me what you think of this story.”

“Oh I can _see_ the man and hear his voice” ...... Nearly all the people in the room were dark. It was the man sitting near, with the large fresh fair German face who had made her imagine the room was full of Germans. But there were no hooked noses; no one in the least like Shylock. What _were_ Jews? How did he know the room was full of them? Why did the idea cast a chill on the things she had brought in with her? She drew the little book from her pocket and took a long draught of Lager. It was still bitter, but the bitterness was only an astringent tang in the strange cool lively frothy tide; a tingling warmth ran through her nerves, expanding to a golden glow that flowed through the room and held her alight within itself, an elastic impalpable bodiless mind. Mr. Shatov was sitting far away at her side, in his eyes a serene communion with his surroundings. It was not his usual restaurant manner; it was strange ...... pewter was right; Lager was a bright tumult, frothing and flowing easily over the smooth dull metal.

Translating the phrases made them fall to pieces. She tried several renderings of a single phrase; none of them would do; the original phrase faded, and together with it just beyond her reach, the right English words. Scraps of conversation reached her from all over the room; eloquent words, fashioned easily, without thought, a perfect flowing of understanding, to and fro, without obstruction. No heaven could be more marvellous. People talked incessantly because in silence they were ghosts. A single word sounded the secret of the universe ...... there is a dead level of intelligence throughout humanity. She listened in wonder whilst she explained aloud that she had learned most of her French by reading again and again for the sake of the long even rhythm of its sentences, one book; that this was the only honest way to acquire a language. It was like a sea, each sentence a wave rolling in, rising till the light shone through its glistening crest, dropping, to give way to the next on-coming wave, the meaning gathering, accumulating, coming nearer with each rising falling rhythm; each chapter a renewed tide, monotonously repeating throughout the book in every tone of light and shade the same burden, the secret of everything in the world.

“I cannot appreciate these literary preciosities; but I am quite sure that you are wrong in confining yourself to this one French book. This mystical philosophy is énervant. There are many French books you should read before this man. Balzac for instance.”

She wanted to explain that she used to read novels but could not get interested in them after Emerson. They showed only one side of people, the outside; if they showed them alone, it was only to explain what they felt about other people. Then he would say Levin, Levin. But she could not attend to all this. What she had meant to say in the beginning, she now explained, was that her German, neglected so long, grew smaller and smaller, whilst, most inconveniently, her reputation for knowing German grew larger and larger. Mr. Wilson might have said that.....

“The Lager is doing you immensely much good.”

Speech did something to things; set them in a mould that was apt to come up again; repeated, it would be dead; but perhaps one need never repeat oneself? To say the same things to different people would give them a sort of fresh life; but there would be death in oneself as one spoke. Perhaps the same thing could be said over and over again, with other things with it, so that it had a different shape, sang a different song and laughed all round itself in amongst different things.

Intoxication ... a permanent intoxication in and out amongst life, all the time with an increasing store of good ideas about things; in time, about everything. A slight intoxication began it, making it possible to look at things from a distance, in separate wholes and make discoveries about them. It was being somewhere else, and suddenly looking up, out of completion, at distant things, that brought their meanings and the right words.

“But you must at once finish. They are closing. It is now midnight.”

It did not matter. Nothing was at an end. Nothing would ever come to an end again...... She passed, talking emphatically, out into the wide dimly-lit sky-filled east-end street, and walked unconscious of fatigue, carrying Mr. Shatov along at his swiftest plunge, mile after mile, in a straight line westward along the opening avenue of her new permanent freedom from occasions. From detail to detail, snatched swiftly by the slenderest thread of coherence, she passed in easy emphatic talk, covering the bright endless prospect of her contemplation, her voice alive, thrilling with joyful gratitude, quivering now and again as it moved, possessed and controlled by the first faint dawning apprehension of some universal password, from one bright tumultuously branching thing to another, with a gratitude that poured itself out within her in a rain of tears. Mr. Shatov followed her swift migrations with solid responsive animation; he seemed for the first time to find no single thing to object to or correct; even restatement was absent, and presently he began to sing......

“It is a Russian song with words of Poushkin and music of Rubinstein. Ah but it requires Chaliapin. A most profound bass. There is nothing in singing so profoundly moving as pure basso; you should hear him. He stands _alone_ in Europe.”

The thronging golden multitudes moved to the tones of this great Russian voice, the deepest in the world, singing out across Europe from beyond Germany. With faltering steps, just begun, whilst now and for ever she passionately brooded on distant things, she was one of this elect shining army..... “wandering amongst the mountains, the highest notes if they leap up pure and free, in soprano, touch the sky.”

“That is true. But in concerts, the strength and most profound moving quality come from the bass. Ah you should hear a Russian male choir. There is not in Europe such strength and flexibility and most particularly such marvel of unanimity, making one single movement of phrase in all these many voices together. There is singing in the great Russian churches, all colourful and with a splendour of ornate decoration, singing that the most infidel could not hear unmoved.”

The Russian _voice_ was melancholy poetry in itself; somewhere within the shapely rough strength of the words, was a pleading tender melancholy.

The Bloomsbury Squares were changed. It was like seeing them for the first time; before they had taken hold; and for the last time, for their spell was turning into memory. Already they were clearly seen backgrounds of which in the cold winter moonlight she could, as her feet, set in a pathway that spread throughout the world, swiftly measured them, coolly observe the varying proportions and character. Offence was removed from the tones of visitors who had in the past, in her dumb outraged presence, taken lightly upon their lips the sacred names. Within them the echo of her song mingled with the silent echoes of the footfalls and voices of these enchanted busy passengers.