Interim: Pilgrimage, Volume 5

by Dorothy M. Richardson

1

Miriam came forward seeing nothing but the golden gaslight pouring over the white table-cloth. She sat down near Mrs. Bailey within the edge of its radiance. The depths of the light still held unchanged the welcome that had been there when she had come in and found Emile laying the table. There was no change and no disappointment. The smeary mirrors and unpolished furniture were bright in the gaslight, showing distances of interior and gleaming passages of light. In the spaces between the pictures the walls sent back sheeny reflections of the glow on the table. People coming in one by one saying good evening in different intonations and sitting down sending out waves of enquiry, left her undisturbed. There were five or six forms about the table besides Sissie sitting at the far end opposite her mother. They made sudden statements about the weather one after the other. They were waiting to have their daily experience of the meal changed by something she might do or say. Emile was handing round plates of soup. Presently they would all be talking and would have forgotten her. Then she could see them all one by one and get away unseen, having had dinner only with Mrs. Bailey. Mrs. Bailey was standing up carving the joint. When the sounds she made were all that was to be heard, she responded to the last remark about the weather or asked some fresh question about it as if no one had spoken at all. When she was not speaking every movement of her battle with the joint expressed her triumphant affectionate sense of Miriam’s presence. She had made no introductions. She was saying secretly there you are young lady. I told you so. Now you’re in your right place. It’s quite easy you see. The joint was already partly distributed. Emile was handing three piled dishes of vegetables. A generous plateful of well-browned meat and gravy appeared before Miriam with Mrs. Bailey’s strong small toil-disfigured hand firmly grasping its edge. She took it to pass it on. Everything was hurrying on.... That’s yorce my child said Mrs. Bailey. The low murmur was audible round the silent table. Asserting her independence with a sullen formality Miriam thanked her and looked about for condiments without raising her eyes to the range of those other eyes, all taking photographs now that she was forced into movements. Mrs. Bailey placed a cruet near her plate. Yorce she pondered getting angrily away into thought. Mrs. Bailey could not know that it might be said to be more correct than yourz. It was an affectation. She had picked it up somewhere from one of those people who carefully say off-ten instead of awfen and it gave her satisfaction to use it, linked rebukingly up with the complacent motherly patronage of which she had boasted to the whole table. The first of Emile’s dishes appeared over her left shoulder and she saw as she turned unprepared, raised heads turned towards her end of the table. She scooped her vegetables quickly and clumsily out of the dishes. In her awkward movements and her unprotected raised face she felt, and felt all the observers seeing, the marks of her disgrace. They saw her looking like Eve nervously helping herself to vegetables in the horrible stony cold dark restaurant of the hostel. They saw that she resented Mrs. Bailey’s public familiarity and could do nothing. She tried to look bored and murmured thank you when she had taken her third vegetable. It sounded out like a proclamation in the intense silence and she turned angrily to her plate trying to remember whether she had heard anyone else thank Emile for vegetables.... After all she was paying for the meal and her politeness to Emile was her own affair. Abroad people bowed or raised their hats going in and out of shops and said Monsieur to policemen. Her efforts to eat abstractedly and to appear plunged in thought made her feel more and more like a poor relation. The details of her meeting with Eve kept appearing in and out of her attempt to get back her sense of Mrs. Bailey’s house as a secret warmth and brightness added to the many resources of her life. Mrs. Bailey knew that her house had been transformed by the meeting with Eve and was trying to tell her that she was not as independent as she thought.

What were the exact things she had told Mrs. Bailey? She had talked excitedly and scrappily and all the time Mrs. Bailey had been gathering information and drawing her own conclusions about the Hendersons. Mrs. Bailey saw Eve’s arrival at the station and her weary resentment of having everything done for her in the London manner, her revenge in the cab, sitting back and making the little abstracted patronising sounds in response to everything that was said to her, taking no interest, and at last saying how you run on. She saw something of the hostel....

Where’s Mr. Mendizzable? demanded Sissie.... The Girls’ Friendly; that was the name of that other thing. But that was for servants. The Young Women’s Bible Association was the worst disgrace that could happen to a gentlewoman.... Eve had liked it. She had suddenly begun going about with an interested revived face eagerly doing what she was told. She was there now, it was her only home, and she must have all her meals there for cheapness; there would be no outside life for her. Her life was imprisoned by those women, consciously goody conscientious servants with flat caps, dominating everything, revelling in the goody atmosphere; the young women in the sitting-room all looking raw, as if they washed very early in the morning in cold water and did their shabby hair with cold hands; the superintendent, the watchful official expression on her large well-fed elderly high-school-girl face, the way she sat on a footstool with her arms round her knees pretending to be easy and jolly while she recited that it was a privilege and a joy for sisters to be so near to each other ... as if she were daring us to deny it. I shan’t see very much of Eve. She won’t want me to. She will strike up a friendship with one of those young women.... Miriam found herself glancing up the table towards the centre of a conflict. They were all joined in conflict over some common theme. No one was outside it; the whole table was in an uproar of voices and laughter.... It was nothing but Miss Scott saying things about Mr. Mendizabal and everyone watching and throwing in remarks.... Miss Scott was neighing across the table at something that had been said and was preparing to speak again without breaking into her laughter. All faces were turned her way. “What’s that Mr. Joe-anzen says?” laughed Mrs. Bailey towards the last speaker. The invisible man opposite Miss Scott was not even Mr. Helsing; only the younger fainter Norwegian, and this side of him an extraordinary person ... an abruptly bulging coarse fringe, a coarse-grained cheek bulging from under an almost invisible deep-sunken eye, and abruptly shelving bust under a coarse serge bodice.

“Mr. Yo-hanson says Mr. Mendy-zahble like n-gaiety.” Miriam glanced across the table. That was all. That little man with an adenoid voice and a narrow sniggering laugh that brought a flush and red spots all over his face, and shiny straight Sunday school hair watered and brushed flat, made up the party. Next to him was only Polly. Then came Miss Scott on Sissie’s left; then Sissie and round the corner the Norwegian. Everyone looked dreadful in the harsh light, secret and secretly hostile to everyone else, unwilling to be there; and even here though there was nothing and no one there was that everlasting conversational fussing and competition.

“Quite right,” hooted the bulky woman in a high pure girlish voice, “I doan blame ’im.”

Miriam turned towards the unexpectedness of her voice and sat helplessly observing. The serge sleeves were too short to cover her heavy red wrists; her pudgy hands held her knife and fork broadside, like salad servers. Her hair was combed flatly up over her large skull and twisted into a tiny screw at the top just behind the bulge of her fringe. Could she possibly be a boarder? She looked of far less consequence even than the Baileys. Her whole person was unconsciously ill at ease, making one feel ashamed.

“Mrs. m-Barrow is another of ’em,” said the little man with his eyebrows raised as he sniggered out the words.

“I am Mr. Gunna, I doan believe in go-an abate with a face like a fiddle.”

Mr. Gunner’s laughter flung back his head and sat him upright and brought him back to lean over his plate shaking noiselessly with his head sunk sideways between his raised shoulders as if he were dodging a blow. The eyes he turned maliciously towards Mrs. Barrow were a hard opaque pale blue. His lips turned outwards as he ate and his knife and fork had an upward tilt when at rest. Some of his spots were along the margin of his lips, altering their shape and making them look angry and sore. The eating part of his face was sullen and angry, not touched by the laughter that drew his eyebrows up and wrinkled his bent forehead and sounded only as a little click in his throat at each breath.

“There’s plenty of glum folks abate,” scolded Mrs. Barrow.

Miriam was aware that she was recoiling visibly, and tried to fix her attention on her meal. Mrs. Bailey was carving large second helpings and Emile’s vegetable dishes had been refilled. None of these people thought it extraordinary that there should be all this good meal and a waiter, every day ... it would be shameful to come again for the sake of the meal, feeling hostile. Besides, it would soon be unendurable; they would be aware of criticisms and would resent them. The only way to be able to come would be to pretend to laugh at remarks about people and join in discussions on opinions about cheerfulness and seriousness and winter and summer. They would not know that one was not sincere. They were perfectly sincere in their laughter and talk. They all had some sort of common understanding, even when they disagreed. It was the same everlasting problem again, the way people took everything for granted. They would be pleased, would turn and like one if one could say heartily isn’t he a funny little man, mts, my word, or well I don’t see anything particularly funny about him, or oh, give me the summer. But if one did that one would presently be worn and strained with lying, left with an empty excitement, while they went serenely on their way, and the reality that was there when one first sat down with them would have gone. Always and always in the end there was nothing but to be alone. And yet it needed people in the world to make the reality when one was alone. Perhaps just these uninterfering people, when one had forgotten their personal peculiarities and had only the consciousness of them in the distance.... One might perhaps then wonder sometimes longingly what they were saying about the weather. But to be obliged to meet them daily.... She chided herself for the scathing glance she threw at the unconscious guests. Gunner was smiling sideways down the table again prepared to execute his laugh when he should have caught an eye and sent his grin home. Miriam almost prayed that nothing should provoke him again to speech. During a short silence she cleared her throat elaborately to cover the sound of his eating. Several voices broke out together, but Mrs. Bailey was suddenly saying something privately to her. She raised her head towards the bright promise and was aware of Mr. Gunner thoughtful and serene. There was a pleasant intelligence somewhere about his forehead. If only she could think his head clear and cool and not have to hear again the hot dull hollow resonance of his voice how joyfully she would be listening to Mrs. Bailey. I’ve got a very special message for you young lady she had said and now went on with her eye on the conflict at the end of the table into which Mr. Gunner was throwing comments and exclamations from afar. The room beamed softly in its golden light. From the heart of the golden light Mrs. Bailey was hurrying towards her with good tidings.

“Hah.”...

Mrs. Bailey looked round cloaking her vexation in a bridling smile as Mr. Mendizabal came in sturdily beaming. He sat down amidst the general outcry and Emile busied himself to lay him a place. He shouted answers to everyone, sitting with his elbows on the table. Putting her elbows on the table Mrs. Bailey applauded with little outbursts of laughter. She had dropped the idea of delivering her message. Miriam finished her pudding hurriedly. The din was increasing. No one was aware of her. Cautiously rising she asked Mrs. Bailey to excuse her. You go Miss? shouted Mr. Mendizabal suddenly looking her way. He looked extraordinary, not himself.

2

Eve’s shop was a west-end blaze of flowers. The window was blocked with flowers in jars, tied up in large bundles. In front were gilt baskets of hot-house flowers. Propped in the middle were a large flower anchor and a flower horseshoe, both trimmed with large bows of white satin ribbon—women in white satin evening dresses with trains, bowing from platforms—on either side were tight dance buttonholes pinned on to heart-shaped velvet mounts.

It was strange to be able to go in.... Going in to see an employee was not the right way to go into a west-end shop.... There was Eve; standing badly in a droopy black dress on a bare wet wooden floor. Cut flowers in stone jam pots, masses of greenery lying on a wet table. Hulloh aren’t your feet wet demanded Miriam irritably. Eve started and turned, looking. She was exhausted and excited, grappling dreamily with abrupt instructions with a conservatory smell competing with them; trying to become part of a clever arrangement to collect the conservatory smell for sale. She stepped slenderly forward; all her old Eve manner, but determined to guard against disturbance; making sounds without speaking, and the faint shape of a tired smile. She was worn out with the fatigue of trying to make herself into something else, but liking it and determined not to be reminded of other things. Even her hair seemed to be changed. Full of pictures of Eve, gracefully dressed and with piled brown hair Miriam’s eyes passed in fury over the skimpy untidy sham shop-assistant, beginning a failure defensively, imagining behind it that she was taking hold of London.... Won’t you catch cold? You get used to it mouthed Eve nervously turning her head away and waiting, fumbling a scattered spray of smilax. Eve had always loved smilax. Did it seem the same to her now? Fancy you said Miriam, in all this damp. They were both miserable and Eve was not going to put it right. All her strength and interest was for this new thing. Do you like it? said Miriam beginning again. Yes awfully flushed Eve looking as if she were going to cry. It was too late. I suppose its awfully interesting asked Miriam formally, opening a conversation with a stranger. Mps said Eve warmly I simply love it. It makes you frightfully tired at first, but I find I can do things I never dreamed I could. I don’t mind standing in the wet a bit now. You have to if you’re obliged to. Eve was liking hardness imposed by other people. Liking the prices of her new life. Accepting them without resentment. People would despise and like her for that. Perhaps she would succeed in staying on if her strength did not give way. Her graceful dresses and leisurely brown hair going further and further away.... Do you serve? Ssh. I’m learning to. Eve would not look, and wanted her to be gone. I’m free for lunch said Miriam snappily, holding to the disappearing glory of her first coming out into London in the middle of a week-day. Eve should have guessed and stopped being anything but Eve being taken out to lunch. We could go to an A.B.C. Oh I can’t come out murmured Eve ignoringly.