Interim: Pilgrimage, Volume 5

by Dorothy M. Richardson

1

Sitting down almost the moment Mr. Mendizabal brought him into the room and playing Wagner. With many wrong notes and stumbling phrases, but self-forgetfully, in the foreign way. Keeping bravely on, making the shape come even in the most difficult parts. He was hearing the Queen’s Hall Orchestra all the time, and he knew that anyone who knew it could hear it too. He was one of those people who stand in the arena and talk about the music and know that there are piano scores and get them and play them. It was amazing that there should be piano scores of Wagner. Did he play because he wanted to remember the orchestra; without thinking of the people who were listening. He did not know the Baileys and their boarders. He could not imagine how extraordinary it was to hear Wagner in the room, suddenly offered to the Baileys. They knew something important was going on; sitting close round the piano surprised and attentive, busily speculating, in scraps, hampered by the need to appear to be listening. Afterwards they would talk to him arching and laughing, Mr. Mendizabal’s friend. Perhaps he would come and play Wagner again; there would be music in the room undisturbed by their forced attention. This was only a beginning.

At the end of the overture he sat quite still, making no movement of turning towards the room. The group about the piano were taken by surprise, waiting for him to turn. When they began making exclamations his hands were on the piano again. The room was silenced by strange little sentences of music. He played short fragments, unfamiliar things with strange phrasing, difficult to trace, unmelodious, but haunted by suggested melody; a curious flattened wandering abrupt intimate message in their phrases; perhaps Russian or Brahms. Not Wagner writing down the world in sound nor Beethoven speaking to one person. Other foreign musicians, set apart, glancing, and listening to strange single things, speaking in pain, just out of clear hearing, their speech unfinished. Russian or Hungarian. Dvor-tchak. I will ask him. Perhaps he plays Chopin.

The Baileys were growing weary of listening. They were becoming strangers in their own dining-room, with a wonderful important evening going on all round them. Miriam consulted Sissie, probing enviously for the dark busy sulkily hidden thoughts going to and fro behind her attitude of listening. Her eyes were drawing pictures of Mr. Bowdoin’s back view and noting his movements. Mrs. Bailey was still smiling her pride. Her tired eyes were strained brightly towards the performance with the proper expression of delighted appreciation. But now and again they moved observantly across the slender shabby form and revealed her circling thoughts. When she looked at the back of the thatch of soft fine fair hair she was seeing that officeful of men painting posters, the first arrival of Mr. Mendizabal, their resentment of his quick work, the poster he thought of in the night, here, and worked out at the office in an hour, the musician playing so gravely not knowing that he was being seen as the man who was forced by Mr. Mendizabal to play a Beethoven Sonata on the typewriter with his hair in curl-papers. If Mrs. Bailey went too deeply into her speculations she would be too confused to ask him to come again. Perhaps Mr. Mendizabal would bring him anyhow. He was lounging back in his chair with his hands in his pockets. His face seemed to be laughing ironically behind a proud smile. He respected music. He admired Bowdoin for his talent. He was showing him off. It was charming ... like Trilby. Men laughing at each other and admiring each other.... She had left off listening. Mr. Bowdoin was sitting there at her side, separate from his music, sitting there English, a little altered by going out into foreign music. A sort of foreigner with an English expression. Her glance had shown her an English profile, a blunted irregular aquiline, a little defaced about the mouth and chin by the influence on the muscles of a common way of speaking. But the back of his head was foreign, the outline of his skull fine and delicate, a delicate arch at the top and the back flattened a little under the soft fall of hair. He was stopping. He sat still, facing the piano. There were stirrings and murmurs and uncertain attempts at applause. Mr. Mendizabal rose and stood over him, as if to smite him on the shoulder. What do you think about when you play Beethoven?—said Miriam hastily. His face came round and Mr. Mendizabal turned hilariously away to the room.—By-toven himself I think said Mr. Bowdoin quietly.—If I get a Beethoven’s Sonatas would you play one?—I will play one for you. But not this evening I think—He turned back to the piano and Miriam gazed at his indrawn profile. He was quite English and had all the English thoughts and feelings about the little group gathered behind him in the room. But there was something besides. He was a musician and that made him understand. He knew the room was impervious to music and was ill at ease after the first joy of playing, and could not convince his hearers by vitality and exuberance as a foreigner would do even with quite fragile subdued delicately controlled music. If you care about music he said towards the piano, will you come one evening and let me play to you on my own piano? I should like it more than anything said Miriam, quivering, and clenching her clasped hands. It will be an honour and a great pleasure to me if you will come he said in his quiet weary voice. I will take the liberty of writing to suggest an evening. Miriam’s abrupt rising and blind movement left her standing opposite the lady-help, who was standing with a foot on the fender and an elbow on the mantelpiece, on the other side of the hearthrug. After only two days in the house she seemed already more at home than the Baileys; talking derisively across at Mr. Mendizabal who was marching up and down the far side of the room with his hands in pockets shouting raillery and snorting. D’you like London Miss Scott? said Miriam uncontrollably to her averted talking face. Miss Scott completed her sally; the Baileys were talking to Mr. Bowdoin, just behind at the piano. Perhaps no one had witnessed her wild attack. But she could not take her eyes off Miss Scott’s face. It turned towards her still wearing its derisive smile. What was that you said Miss Henderson I beg your pardon, she stated encouragingly. She was not in the least impressed by being spoken to. Her swift amused glance was all she could manage without breaking into shouts of laughter. Her laughter-shaken person was the front of a barricade of derision. Miriam repeated her question, fearfully consulting the small sheeny satin dress, with the lace collar, the neat slipper on the fender, the heavy little fringe stopping abruptly at the hollow temples above high cheekbones and slightly hollow cheeks and leading back to a tiny knot at the top of the head. Perhaps she was a lady. Ye see so little of it unless yerra wealthy, she said in curious tonguey tones, standing upright on the hearthrug and flinging back her head with every other word; backing away with a balancing movement from foot to foot. She laughed on her last word and stood shaking with laughter, her elbow on the far corner of the mantelshelf and her foot once more on the fender. Perhaps she was still laughing at some jest of Mr. Mendizabal’s. Arrya fond of London Miss Henderson, she chuckled and went on without waiting for an answer, with rhythmically flinging head,—it’s ahl very well if ya can go out to theeaturras and consurruts and out and about; but when the season comes and the people are in the parruk and in thayre grand houses having parrties and gaities and yew’ve just got to do nothing I think its draydefle.—She laughed consumedly, throwing back her head. Miriam got herself across the room and outside the door. On the hall table lay a letter; from Eve; witnessing her discomfort; soothing, and reproaching.... Eve would have stayed and talked to the musician.

Up in her cold room everything vanished into the picture of Eve, deciding away down in green Wiltshire, to leave off teaching; smiling, stretching out her firm small hands and taking hold of London. London changed as she read. She sat stupefied. It seemed impossible, terrifying, that Eve penniless, with her uncertain health should leave the wealthy comfort of the Greens after all these years. Too excited to read word by word she scanned the pages and learned that Madame Leroy a friend of Mrs. Green who had a flower shop in Bruton Street had engaged her.... I decorated the table for dinner each night when she was here at Christmas ... the Greens have been charming, quite excited about the plans ... coming up next week.... Miriam leapt to her feet and began hastily putting on her things. “Eve is coming to London for a six months’ course in floral decorations. She is putting up at a hostel.” She pulled on her cold sodden shoes. “Eve is going to be an assistant in a flower shop at fifteen shillings a week. She has taken a cubicle at a branch of the Young Women’s Bible Association.” By the time she was ready she felt she must have dreamed the news. Eve, not a governess, free, in London, just as she was herself. Another self, in London. Eve being led about and taught London, going about under the same skies, in the streets, feeling exactly as she felt. Nothing would have changed before she came. The rain gently thudding on the roof and rattling against the landing skylight was Eve’s rain. She was listening to it and hearing it in exactly the same way....

The girls did not realise the news at all. They kept going off into questions about details until the fact of Eve’s coming disappeared altogether and only Eve’s point of view and Eve’s courage and her difficulties remained.... One had told it the wrong way. Better not to have given any facts at all but just to have said Eve’s coming to London; isn’t it weird? But then they would have said is she coming to London to see the Queen? The Queen. That would have been true. She was coming to London partly to see the Queen. Perhaps the trouble was that they had been cheated by not being told exactly how Eve was only just managing to come at all and how scraped everything would be. But at least they realised that one had people belonging to one who made up their minds and did definite things, like other people. It was amazing to decide to come to London and be a florist; Napoleon. They realised that and nothing else. She would be able to tell Mr. Hancock on Monday; first him, first thing in the morning and the Orlys during the day.

Mr. Hancock understood at once, making no response at all at first and then standing quietly about near her as she busied herself with her dusting really giving himself to taking in the simple stupendous fact; and really realising it before asking any questions and asking them in a tone that showed he knew what it meant and going on showing all day in his manner that he knew what it was that kept her so brisk about her work. He was divine; he was a divine person. She would never forget being able to say just anyhow, h’m, I’ve got a sister coming to London; and his immediate silent approach across the room, drying his hands.... Of course the Orlys immediately said Oh how nice for you, you won’t be so lonely. What did people mean about loneliness? It was always the people arranged in groups and seeming so lost and isolated and lonely who said that.... To-night she would begin turning out her room for Eve’s reception. No. It was the Dante lecture.... The day Eve came she would buy some flowers. She understood now why people wanted to put flowers in their rooms when people were coming. She would be a hostess. Some people bought flowers and carried them home when they were alone.... It must be like inviting a guest to keep you company. Like saying you were alone and not liking being alone and putting flowers about to tell you all the time that you did not want to be alone but were. People talked about these things. “I always buy flowers when I am alone.” Like suddenly taking off all their things and showing that they had a crooked body. If they were really miserable about being alone they would be too miserable to buy flowers. If they really wanted the flowers enough to buy them they were already not alone. If they bought the flowers in that fussy excited thoughtless way people seemed to do things they were neither really ever alone or ever really with people ... they were in that sort of state that made social life a talkative nothingness sliding about on nothing....

At the end of the afternoon she wandered forgetfully into the warmth of the empty waiting-room. The house was silent. Her footsteps made no sound along the carpeted hall and were lost in the thick Turkey carpeting of the waiting-room floor. The room was lit only by the firelight. From its wide clear core striped by black bars a broad rose-gold shaft glowed out across the room reaching the copper vessels on the black oak sideboard and the lower part of the long mirror between the windows where the midmost piece of copper gleamed in reflection. She stood still, holding the warm air in her nostrils, everything was blotted out and then restored to its place ... what place, why was it good, what was she trying to remember?... In the familiar fire-lit winter darkness was a faint dry warm scent ... mimosa. It was a repetition.... It had been there last year, suddenly; drily fragrant in the winter darkness of the warm room preparing for the light and warmth of the evening. It had seemed then like some wealthy extravagance, bringing a sense of the freedom of wealth to have things out of season, and a keen sudden memory in the dark London room of the unspoken inexpressible beauty of Newlands ... its soft-toned softly carpeted and curtained effect, fragrant with clusters of winter flowers, standing complete somewhere in the secret black spaces of her mind.... But now here it was again, just at the same moment, just before the winter darkness began to give way. Perhaps mimosa came at this time of year suddenly in the shops, before the spring flowers, and careful people like Mrs. Orly could buy it ... then in London mimosa was the sign of spring. It was like the powdery fragrance of a clear warm midsummer evening, like petal-dust; pollen-dust; the whole summer circling in the glow of firelight. Then Eve would not come this winter. The darkest secret winter-time of London was over again. It would come again in single moments and groups of days, but its time was gone. The moment of realisation of spring had come by surprise; there lay all the spring days ahead leading on to summer spread out for anyone to see, calling to Eve or to anyone who might have come into the room to whom one could have said doesn’t the smell of mimosa make you realise the winter is over; and here within, lit up as if by a suddenly switched on electric light was one’s own real realisation going back and back; in pictures that grew clearer, each time something happened that switched on a light within the black spaces of your mind. Things that no one could share, coming again and again just as some outside thing was beginning to interest you, as if to remind you that the inmost reality comes to you when you are alone.... The prospect of Eve’s coming was changed. The pang of the mimosa came nearer than anything she could bring. Perhaps it would be possible to tell her about this moment? Perhaps her coming had made it more real. Yet now it did not seem to matter so much whether she came or not. In a way it seemed as though the fact of her coming threatened something.