1
Swaggering along the middle of the empty pavement, the long cape of his short overcoat swinging like the cloak of a stage villain. With bent head he is playing his part to an imagined audience. He knows nothing of the contrast between the small figure and the big arrogance.
He swung round into Flaxman’s Court, and Miriam, following, paused for joy, mentally summoning heralds to precede and a brass band to follow him, so stately with head held high and plunging gait controlled to a military strut, was his entry into the humble street. He stopped just as she moved aside to gain her door, swung right about and bore down upon her, bowing, slouch hat in hand.
“Allow me!” a deep hollow stage voice.
She halted surprised. He was close by her side, his hat replaced with a flourishing movement that released from his person the thick odour of stale smoke, the permanent smell of the ground floor. The grotesque figure, now crouching, all dilapidated cape and battered sombrero, over the keyhole, was the owner of the windowful of stone and marble.
“Enter madam,” he declaimed, flinging open the door. Thanking him, she moved into the passage and was going on towards the stairs, but the hollow tones broke forth again, reverberating in the narrow space made dark by the closing of the door:
“I am greatly honoured,” he was saying, “by this event.”
She turned perforce. He was again profoundly bowing. She could just discern the dim outlines, the cape winged out by his deep obsequiousness.
“You will, I trust,” the voice was meditative, suggesting words ahead to be delivered with care: “not deem me intrewsive in expressing in your gracious presence,” indeed, Miriam felt, her presence was gracious compared to this exhalation of concentrated odours stifling and making her long to be away and up the stairs, “my respect and furthermore the great and happy en’ancement arriving upon this house by your coming, with your lady friend, also most gracious, to abide beneath the roof that shelters my spouse and myself.”
“We like being here,” said Miriam, politely, smiling into the darkness.
“Lady, I thank you for your graciousness.”
“Not at all,” she said, and felt him silent for an instant before an evidently unexpected lapse from gracious ladyhood.
This was all most dreadful. His tone had been deep and broken; touching. Behind his bombast was something genuine, making high demands upon her, including her with Miss Holland, crowning her as a châtelaine. She had undeceived him, spoken brusquely, revealed her different state.
“I am glad,” she added quickly, in Miss Holland’s most stately manner, reflecting that a gracious aloofness was an excellent protection, “that you find us pleasant neighbours.”
“More than that,” came the low broken voice, and her eyes, used now to the dim light, saw that he bowed more deeply than ever. “No poor words of mine could avail to express the felicity experienced in the presence of beauty and graciousness. I would have you to know:” he reared his head and spoke upwards to the staircase, “that I am a repairer of statoos.”
Ah, here was the secret, the real origin of the attack. But it was interesting. A queer trade.
“You have made all those things in your window,” she said to encourage him, and standing a little nearer to the stairs composed herself to endure and listen.
“I am a repairer of statoos. But let not that mislead you. These hands,” he upheld and waved them in the air, “recall to pristine loveliness only the classic. In preference, the Greek.” He was breathing quickly, angrily. Poor man, without an audience. In his whole circumstances, no audience. Her interest in his work changed to a desire to give him freedom from minding.
“It would be dreadful to waste your time repairing rubbish,” she said quickly and added, suddenly feeling that he was strong enough for an attempted truth, “only people sometimes love rubbish very much. For them it is not rubbish.”
“Let them love their rubbish, gracious lady, let them love—mistake me not. I have no quarrel with love. The love of the Saviour, the greatest of all lovers, redeems the statoo badly made to honour it. But not to Perrance, not to Perrance let them come if their rubbish be broken. The classical, the Greek, that alone of the work of man’s hands can command the love of Perrance.
“So great a love that he has,” he drew a deep breath, “it may surprise you but it is nevertheless trew, he has mastered the characters of the Greek tongue itself.”
“Greek is very difficult,” said Miriam.
“He can, in the rendering of an account for ’Ermes repaired, equally as well use the original Greek.” He threw open the door leading to his little shop, but with no air of inviting her to enter. He wanted to provide a clearer light for her contemplation of the marvel he represented?
The light revealed weakness. Large watery eyes fierce with self-conceit, grown old in unchallenged self-conceit. An angry mouth, tremulous beneath branching buccaneer moustachios. He was waiting for responsive wonder, ready the moment it should be spoken to break forth again. His violence calmed her pity. He was proof against the whole world. Determined to escape she smiled approval and remarked in the voice of departure on the amount of industry represented by the house as a whole.
“Stay,” he cried, “yet one moment,” and disappeared into the shop, to return in an instant with some small object clasped, hidden by his cape, to his breast.
“I have here,” he patted his breast with a free hand, “a small work, a work of my own hands, dedicated as is seeming and suitable, to womankind. Deign, gracious lady, to accept the same as a token of gratitude and esteem for your presence under this roof.” With a deft movement he flung back the cape and presented the hidden object. It was the alabaster finger.
“Oh, no!” Miriam cried. “You must not give me that.” But he was embarrassed, holding it forth, his head bent, his voice once more low and broken.
“Take, take,” he said, “I will not sell it and I shall find no recipient more worthy. Take, I beg you.”
The heavy little block came into her hands. She gazed at it murmuring appreciations, trying to thank him in the way he wanted to be thanked. His eloquence was at an end. He bowed silently at each phrase, saying only, when at last she turned to go, “Lady, I thank you.”
He had said his say.
But what of the future chance meetings? What could she give in return for the burden of this gift, so much heavier than its weight in her hands?
2
On her way upstairs, pondering this disquieting confirmation of her half-hearted candidature for the estate of dignified ladyhood, she saw that the first floor rooms were open and the luggage disappeared from the landing. Passing the door of the front room she caught a glimpse of a young woman, her head pillowed on arms outstretched upon a small bare table, talking and sobbing in a strangled cockney voice. The light from the large window fell bright amongst the coiled masses of her brown hair, shone through their upper fluffiness, making a nimbus. She was young and slight; an air of refinement in the set of her black dress. Come to live here. Seeking now, of course, stranded alone in two rooms of this dingy aged house, her old self, life as she had known it before she was isolated with him. The absent him she was so fully revealing.
This was marriage, thought Miriam, going on up the stairs, a bright young couple welcomed by Sheffield for being so nice and respectable. Tragedy; the beginnings before its dry-eyed acceptance, of womanly tragedy, the loss of self in the procession of unfamiliar unwanted things. In the company of a partner already reimmersed in his own familiar life.
There was weakness in such public careless abandonment. And subject for the mirth of cynics. But strength, too, strength of which cynics, comfortable well-fed people in armchairs, had no inkling. The strength was broken for a moment against the walls of a man’s massive unconsciousness. Upon that the woman would be avenged; breaking fiercely through in her search for something in the world about her to respond to her known self with its all-embracing radiance. That strange indestructible radiance, discoverable in all women, even in those who professed the utmost callousness....