Backwater: Pilgrimage, Volume 2

by Dorothy M. Richardson

For the last six weeks of the summer term she sat up night after night propped against her upright pillow and bolster under the gas jet reading her twopenny books in her silent room. Almost every night she read until two o’clock. She felt at once that she was doing wrong; that the secret novel-reading was a thing she could not confess, even to Miss Haddie. She was spending hours of the time that was meant for sleep, for restful preparation for the next day’s work, in a “vicious circle” of self-indulgence. It was sin. She had read somewhere that sin promises a satisfaction that it is unable to fulfil. But she found when the house was still and the trams had ceased jingling up and down outside that she grew steady and cool and that she rediscovered the self she had known at home, where the refuge of silence and books was always open. Perhaps that self, leaving others to do the practical things, erecting a little wall of unapproachability between herself and her family that she might be free to dream alone in corners had always been wrong. But it was herself, the nearest most intimate self she had known. And the discovery that it was not dead, that her six months in the German school and the nine long months during which Banbury Park life had drawn a veil even over the little slices of holiday freedom, had not even touched it, brought her warm moments of reassurance. It was not perhaps a “good” self, but it was herself, her own familiar secretly happy and rejoicing self—not dead. Her hands lying on the coverlet knew it. They were again at these moments her own old hands, holding very firmly to things that no one might touch or even approach too nearly, things, everything, the great thing that would some day communicate itself to someone through these secret hands with the strangely thrilling finger-tips. Holding them up in the gaslight she dreamed over their wisdom. They knew everything and held their secret, even from her. She eyed them, communed with them, passionately trusted them. They were not “artistic” or “clever” hands. The fingers did not “taper” nor did the outstretched thumb curl back on itself like a frond—like Nan Babington’s. They were long, the tips squarish and firmly padded, the palm square and bony and supple, and the large thumb joint stood away from the rest of the hand like the thumb joint of a man. The right hand was larger than the left, kindlier, friendlier, wiser. The expression of the left hand was less reassuring. It was a narrower, lighter hand, more flexible, less sensitive and more even in its touch—more smooth and manageable in playing scales. It seemed to belong to her much less than the right; but when the two were firmly interlocked they made a pleasant curious whole, the right clasping more firmly, its thumb always uppermost, its fingers separated firmly over the back of the left palm, the left hand clinging, its fingers close together against the hard knuckles of the right.

It was only when she was alone and in the intervals of quiet reading that she came into possession of her hands. With others they oppressed her by their size and their lack of feminine expressiveness. No one could fall in love with such hands. Loving her, someone might come to tolerate them. They were utterly unlike Eve’s plump, white, inflexible little palms. But they were her strength. They came between her and the world of women. They would be her companions until the end. They would wither. But the bones would not change. The bones would be laid unchanged and wise, in her grave.

7

She began her readings with Rosa Nouchette Carey. Reading her at home, after tea by the breakfast-room fireside with red curtains drawn and the wind busy outside amongst the evergreen shrubs under the window, it had seemed quite possible that life might suddenly develop into the thing the writer described. From somewhere would come an adoring man who believed in heaven and eternal life. One would grow very good; and after the excitement and interest had worn off one would go on, with firm happy lips being good and going to church and making happy matches for other girls or quietly disapproving of everybody who did not believe just in the same way and think about good girls and happy marriages and heaven, keeping such people outside. Smiling, wise and happy inside in the warm; growing older, but that did not matter because the adored man was growing older too.

Now it had all changed. The quiet house and fireside, gravity, responsibility, a greying husband, his reading profile always dear, both of them going on towards heaven, “all tears wiped away,” tears and laughter of relief after death, still seemed desirable, but “women.” ... Those awful, awful women, she murmured to herself stirring in bed. I never thought of all the awful women there would be in such a life. I only thought of myself and the house and the garden and the man. What an escape! Good God in heaven, what an escape! Far better to be alone and suffering and miserable here in the school, alive....

Then there’ll be whole heaps of books, millions of books I can’t read—perhaps nearly all the books. She took one more volume of Rosa, in hope, and haunted its deeps of domesticity. “I’ve gone too far.” ... If Rosa Nouchette Carey knew me, she’d make me one of the bad characters who are turned out of the happy homes. I’m some sort of bad unsimple woman. Oh, damn, damn, she sighed. I don’t know. Her hands seemed to mock her, barring her way.

8

Then came a series of Mrs. Hungerford—all the volumes she had not already read. She read them eagerly, inspirited. The gabled country houses, the sunlit twilit endless gardens, the deep orchards, the falling of dew, the mists of the summer mornings, masses of flowers in large rooms with carved oaken furniture, wide staircases with huge painted windows throwing down strange patches of light on shallow thickly carpetted stairs. These were the things she wanted; gay house-parties, people with beautiful wavering complexions and masses of shimmering hair catching the light, fragrant filmy diaphanous dresses; these were the people to whom she belonged—a year or two of life like that, dancing and singing in and out the houses and gardens; and then marriage. Living alone, sadly estranged, in the house of a husband who loved her and with whom she was in love, both of them thinking that the other had married because they had lost their way in a thunderstorm or spent the night sitting up on a mountain-top or because of a clause in a will, and then one day both finding out the truth.... That is what is meant by happiness ... happiness. But these things could only happen to people with money. She would never have even the smallest share of that sort of life. She might get into it as a governess—some of Mrs. Hungerford’s heroines were governesses—but they had clouds of hair and were pathetically slender and appealing in their deep mourning. She read volume after volume, forgetting the titles—the single word ‘Hungerford’ on a cover inflamed her. Her days became an irrelevance and her evenings a dreamy sunlit indulgence. Now and again she wondered what Julia Doyle would think if she knew what she was reading and how it affected her—whether she would still watch her in the way she did as she went about her work pale and tired, whether she would go on guarding her so fiercely?

9

At last exasperated, tired of the mocking park, the mocking happy books, she went one day to the lower shelf, and saying very calmly, “I think I’ll take a Ouida,” drew out “Under Two Flags” with a trembling hand. The brown-eyed man seemed to take an interminable time noting the number of the book, and when at last she got into the air her limbs were heavy with sadness. That night she read until three o’clock and finished the volume the next night at the same hour, sitting upright when the last word was read, refreshed. From that moment the red-bound volumes became the centre of her life. She read “Moths” and “In Maremma” slowly word by word, with an increasing steadiness and certainty. The mere sitting with the text held before her eyes gave her the feeling of being strongly confronted. The strange currents which came whenever she was alone and at ease flowing to the tips of her fingers, seemed to flow into the book as she held it and to be met and satisfied. As soon as the door was shut and the gas alight, she would take the precious, solid trusty volume from her drawer and fling it on her bed, to have it under her eyes while she undressed. She ceased to read her Bible and to pray. Ouida, Ouida, she would muse with the book at last in her hands. I want bad things—strong bad things.... It doesn’t matter, Italy, the sky, bright hot landscapes, things happening. I don’t care what people think or say. I am older than anyone here in this house. I am myself.