Deadlock: Pilgrimage, Volume 6

by Dorothy M. Richardson

But the distant vision of the free life was not Mrs. Bailey’s vision; there was something there she could not be made to understand, and would in any way there were words that tried to express it, certainly not approve. Yet why did it come so strongly here in her room? The sense of it was here, somewhere in their intercourse, but she was unconscious of it..... Miriam plumbed about in the clear centre—where without will or plan or any shapely endeavour in her life, she was yet so strangely accepted and indulged. Mrs. Bailey was glancing back at her from the depths of her abode, her face busy in control of the rills of laughter sparkling in her eyes and keeping, Miriam knew, as she moved, hovering, and saw the fostering light they shed upon the world, perpetual holiday; the reassuring inexhaustible substance of Mrs. Bailey’s being.

“It’s Sissie I worry about,” said Mrs. Bailey. Miriam attended curiously. “She’s like her dear father; keeps herself to herself and goes on; she’s a splendid little woman in the house; but I feel she ought to be doing something more.”

“She’s awfully capable” said Miriam.

“She is. There’s nothing she can’t turn her hand to. She’ll have the lock off a door and mend it and put it on again and put in a pane of glass neater than a workman and no mess or fuss.” Miriam sat astonished before the expanding accumulation of qualities.

“I don’t know how I should spare her; but she’s not satisfied here; I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t manage to put her into the typing.”

“There isn’t much prospect there” recited Miriam, “the supply is bigger than the demand.”

“That is so” assented Mrs. Bailey; “but I see it like this; where there’s a will there’s a way and one has to make a beginning.” Mrs. Bailey had made up her mind. Quite soon Sissie would know typewriting; a marketable accomplishment; she would rank higher in the world than a dental secretary; a lady typist with a knowledge of French. That would be her status in an index. No doubt in time she would learn shorthand. She would go capably about, proud of her profession; with a home to live in, comfortably well off on fifteen shillings a week; one of the increasing army of confident illiterate young women in the city; no, Sissie would not be showy; she would bring life into some office, amongst men as illiterate as herself; as soon as she had picked up “yours to hand” she would be reliable and valuable..... Sissie, with a home, and without putting forth any particular effort, would have a place in the world.....

“I’ll make some inquiries” said Miriam cheerfully. Mrs. Bailey thanked her with weary eagerness; she was flushed and flagging; the evening’s work was being cancelled by the fascination which had allowed her to go on talking. She admitted a return of her neuralgia and Miriam, remorseful and weary, made her lie down again. She looked dreadfully ill; like someone else; she would go off to sleep looking like someone else, or lie until the morning, with plans going round and round in her head and get up, managing to be herself until breakfast was over. But all the time, she had a house to be in. She was Mrs. Bailey; a recognised centre. Miriam sat alone, the now familiar little room added to the strange collection of her inexplicable life; its lamplit walls were dear to her, with the extraordinary same dearness of all walls seen in tranquillity. She seemed to be responding to their gaze. Had she answered Mrs. Bailey’s murmur about going to bed? It seemed so long ago. She sat until the lamp began to fail and Mrs. Bailey appeared to be going to sleep. She crept out at last into the fresh still darkness of the sleeping house. On the first floor there was a glimmer of blue light. It was the street lamp shining in through Mr. Shatov’s wide-open empty room. When she reached her own room she found that it was one o’clock. Already he had found his way to some horrible haunt. She wrapped her evening round her, parrying the thought of him. There should be no lesson to-morrow. She would be out, having left no message.

When she came in the next evening he was in the hall. He came forward with his bearded courteous emphatically sweeping foreign bow; a foreign professor bowing to an audience he was about to address. Bitte verzeihen Sie, he began, his rich low tones a little breathless; the gong blared forth just behind him; he stood rooted, holding her with respectful melancholy gaze as his lips went on forming their German sentences. The clangour died down; people were coming downstairs drawing Miriam’s gaze as he moved from their pathway into the dining-room, still facing her with the end of his little speech lingering nervously on his features. He was in his frock-coat and shone richly black and white under the direct lamplight; he was even more handsome than she had thought, solidly beautiful, glowing in shapely movement as he stood still and gestureless before her, set off by the shapelessly moving, dinner drawn forms passing into the dining-room. She smiled in response to whatever he may have said and wondered, having apologised for yesterday, in what way he would announce to her the outside engagement for this evening for which he was so shiningly prepared. “Zo,” he said gravely, “if you are now free, I will almost immediately come up; we shall not wait till eight o’clock.” Miriam bowed in response to the sweeping obeisance with which he turned into the dining-room, and ran upstairs. He came up before the end of the first course, before she had had time to test in the large overmantel the shape of her hair that had seemed in the little mirror upstairs, accidentally good, quite like the hair of someone who mysteriously knew how to get good effects.

“I have been sleeping,” he said in wide cheerful tones as he crossed the room, “all day until now. I am a little stupid; but I have very many things to say you. First I must say you,” he said more gravely and stood arrested with his coat tails in his hands, in front of the chair opposite to hers at a little table, “that your Emerson is most-wonderful.”