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Miriam let herself cautiously in. The whole house was hers; she was a boarder; but the right to linger freely in any part of it was bought by Sissie’s French lessons and being Sissie’s teacher meant that the Baileys could approach familiarly at any moment ... all her privileges were bought with a heavy price, here and at Wimpole Street ... it’s us; our family; always masquerading. But the lessons made opportunities of being affable to the Baileys; removing the need for seeking them out purposely from time to time. Cut and dried. I’ve patriotic ballads cut and dried. I’m cut and dried, everybody thinks. Moving and speaking stiffly, the stamp of my family, the minute anything is expected of me. Nobody knows me. I grow more and more unknown and more and more like what people think of me.... But I know; and things go on coming; scraps of other people’s things. No one in the world could imagine what it is to me to have this house; the fag-end of the Baileys’ stock-in-trade. God couldn’t know, completely. There’s something wrong about it; but damn, I can’t help it. In my secret self I should love a prison. Walls. What are walls?
If she scuffed her muddy shoes too cheerfully someone would appear at the dining-room door. Beyond the gaslight pouring down on to the smeary marble of the hall table and glimmering against the threatening dining-room door the dim staircase beckoned her up into darkness. A few steps and she would be going upstairs. Where? What for? Hgh—HEE! at the far end of the passage beyond the hall.... There was a line of bright light there, coming through the chink of the little door usually hidden in the darkness beyond where the Baileys disappeared down the basement stairs. Then there was a room there.... The little door was pushed open and a man’s figure stood outlined against the bright light and disappeared, shutting the door. There had been a table and a lamp upon it ... the sound of the laugh rang in her head; a single lively deep-chested note followed by a falsetto note that curved hysterically up. Men; gentlemen. How long had they been there? They would not stay. How had they come? Where had Mrs. Bailey found them? Had they already found out that it was not their sort of house? Whom were they afraid of shocking with their refinement and freedom? They were making a bright little world in there by feeling themselves surrounded by people who would be shocked. They did not know there was someone there they could not shock.... She imagined herself in the doorway ... hullo! Fancy you here.... The dining-room door had opened and Mrs. Bailey was standing in the hall with the door open behind her. Miriam was not prepared with a refusal of the invitation to come in. She glanced over Mrs. Bailey’s shoulder and saw the two girls sitting at the fireside. Two letters on the hall table addressed to the Norwegian told her that the Baileys were alone. She yielded to Mrs. Bailey’s delighted manner and went in. She would stay, keeping on her outdoor things, long enough to hear about the new people. The close sickly sweet air of the room closed oppressively round her heavy garments—Here you are young lady sit here—said Mrs. Bailey piloting her to a chair in front of the fire. There was a stranger sitting at the fireside. Mr. Mendizabble murmured Mrs. Bailey as Miriam sat down. Miriam’s affronted eyes took in the figure of a man sitting on the wooden stool crowded in between the mantelpiece and the easy chair occupied by Sissie; a man from a café ... a foreign waiter in his best clothes, sheeny stripy harsh pale grey, a crimson waistcoat showing up the gleam of a gold watch-chain, and crimson cloth slippers; an Italian, a Frenchman, a French-Swiss. He was sitting bent conversationally forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped; quite at home. They had evidently been sitting there all the evening. The air was thick with their intercourse. Miriam received an abrupt nod in answer to her murmur and her stiff bow and followed with resentful curiosity the little foreign tune the man began humming far away in his head. He had not even glanced her way and the tune was his response to Mrs. Bailey’s introduction. The remains of a derisive smile seemed to snort from the firmly sweeping white nostrils above his tiny trim bushily upward curving black moustache. It moulded the strong closed lips and shone behind the whole of his curiously square evenly modelled face. The Bailey girls were watching him with shiny flushed cheeks and bright eyes. His skin was white and clean ... mat; like felt ... untouched and untried in the exhausted air of the shabby room. An insolent waiter. He had turned away towards the fire after his nod. From under a firm black-lashed white lid a bright dark eye gazed derision into the flames.
Go on Mr. Mendizzable smiled Mrs. Bailey brushing at her skirt with her handkerchief—we are most interested.
Hay, madame that is all, he laughed derisively in rich singing swaying tones towards the middle of the hearthrug—I skate from one end of their canal to another, faster than them all. I win their prize. Je m’en fiche—
You skated all the way along the canal.—
Ieeea skate their canal. That was Amsterdam. I do many things there. I edit their newspaper. I conduct a café.
Mts. You have had some adventures—
That was not adventures in Amsterdam mon dieu! He swayed drumming from foot to foot in time to his shouts. Had he really beaten those wonderful skaters? Perhaps he had not. She glanced at his brow calm, firm, dead white under the soft crisply ridged black hair. Perhaps he was Dutch; and that was why he looked common and also refined.