Deadlock: Pilgrimage, Volume 6

by Dorothy M. Richardson

“Billiards?”

Why should he look so astonished and impatiently explain so reproachfully and indulgently? She grasped the meaning of the movements of his hands. He was a chess-player “a game much older—uralt—and the most mental, the only true abstractive game.” How differently an English chess-player would have spoken. She regarded his eager contained liveliness. Russian chess players remained alive. Was chess mental? Pure tactics. Should she declare that chess was a dreadful boring indulgence, leading nowhere? Perhaps he would be able to show her that this was not so.... Why do the Germans call two people playing chess a chess-party? “I have met there a man, a Polish doctor. We have made party and have play until the Café close, when we go to his room and continue there to play till the morning. Ah, it was most-beautiful.”

“Had you met him before?”

“Oh no. He is in London; stewdye-ink medicine.”

“Studdying,” said Miriam impatiently, lost in incredulous contemplation. It could not be true that he had sat all night playing chess with a stranger. If it were true, they must both be quite insane ..... the door was opening. Sissie’s voice, and Mr. Shatov getting up with an eager polite smile. Footsteps crossing the room behind her; Mr. Shatov and a tall man shaking hands on the hearthrug; two inextricable voices; Mr. Shatov’s presently emerging towards her, deferentially, “I present you Dr. Veslovski.” The Polish doctor, gracefully bowing from a cold narrow height, Mr. Shatov, short, dumpy, deeply-radiant little friend, between them; making a little speech, turning from one to the other. The Polish head was reared again on its still cold grey height; undisturbed.... Perfect. Miriam had never seen anything so perfectly beautiful. Every line of the head and face harmonious; the pointed beard finishing the lines with an expressiveness that made it also a feature, one with the rest. Even the curious long narrow capless flatly lying foreign boots, furrowed with mud-stiffened cracks, and the narrowly cut, thin, shabby grey suit shared the distinction of the motionless reined-in head. Polish beauty. If that were Polish beauty the Poles were the most beautiful people in Europe. Polish; the word suggested the effect, its smooth liquid sheen, sinuous and graceful without weakness .... the whole word was at home in the eyes; horribly beautiful, abysses of fathomless foreign ... any kind of known happenings were unthinkable behind those eyes .... yet he was here; come to play chess with Mr. Shatov who had not expected him until Sunday, but would go now immediately with her permission, to fetch his set from upstairs. She lingered as he hurried away, glancing at the little books on the table. The Emerson was not among them. The invisible motionless figure on the hearthrug had brought her a message she had forgotten in her annoyance at his intrusion. Going from the room towards his dim reflection in the mirror near the door she approached the waiting thought—Mr. Shatov’s voice broke in, talking eagerly to Mrs. Bailey on the floor below. From the landing she heard him beg that it might be some large vessel, quite voll tea; some drapery to enfold it, and that the gazz might be left alight. They were going to play chess, through the night, in that cold room .... but the thought was gladly there. The Polish doctor’s presence had confirmed Mr. Shatov’s story. It had not been a young man’s tale to cover an escapade.

CHAPTER II

She hurried through her Saturday morning’s work, trying to keep warm. Perhaps it was nervousness and excitement about the afternoon’s appointment that made her seem so cold. At the end of her hour’s finicking work in Mr. Hancock’s empty fireless room, amongst cold instruments and chilly bottles of chemicals she was cold through. There was no one in the house but Mr. Leyton and the cousin; nothing to support her against the coming ordeal. Mr. Leyton had had an empty morning and spent it busily scrubbing and polishing instruments in his warm little room; retiring towards lunch time to the den fire with a newspaper. Shivering over her ledgers in the cold window space, she bitterly resented her inability to go out and get warm in an A.B.C. before meeting Mr. Shatov in the open. Impossible. It could not be afforded; though this morning all the absolutely essential work could be finished by one o’clock. It was altogether horrible. She was not sure that she was even supposed to stay for lunch on Saturday. The day ended at one o’clock; unless she were kept by some urgent business, there was no excuse. To-day she must have finished everything before lunch to keep her appointment. It could not be helped; and at least there was no embarrassment in the presence of Mr. Leyton and the boy. She would even lock up and put on her outdoor things and go down in them. It would not occur to them that she need not have stayed to lunch .... her spirits rose as she moved about putting things in the safe. She dressed in Mr. Leyton’s warm room, washing her hands in very hot water, thawing, getting warm .... the toque looked nice in his large mirror, quite stylish, not so home made ..... worldly people always had lunch in their outdoor things, even when they were staying in a house. Sarah said people ought always to wear hats, especially with evening dress ..... picture hats, with evening dress, made pictures. It was true, they would, when you thought of it. But Sarah had found it out for herself; without opportunities; it came, out of her mind through her artistic eyes. Miriam recalled smart middle-aged women at the Corries, appearing at lunch in extraordinary large hats, when they had not been out; that was the reason. It helped them to carry things off; made them talk well and quickly, with the suggestion that they had just rushed in from somewhere or were just going to rush off.... She surveyed herself once more. It was true; lunch even with Mr. Leyton and the cousin would be easier with the toque and her black coat open showing the white neckerchief. It gave an impression of hurry and gaiety. She was quite ready and looked about for entertainment for the remaining moments. Actually; a book lying open on Mr. Leyton’s table, a military drill-book of course. No. What was this. Wondrous Woman, by J. B. G. Smithson. Why so many similar English initials? Jim, Bill, George, a superfluity of mannishness ... an attack of course; she scanned pages and headings; chapter upon chapter of peevish facetiousness; the whole book written deliberately against women. Her heart beat angrily. What was Mr. Leyton doing with such a book? Where had it come from? She read swiftly, grasping the argument. The usual sort of thing; worse, because it was colloquial, rushing along in modern everyday language and in some curious way not badly written....

Because some women had corns, feminine beauty was a myth; because the world could do without Mrs. Hemans’ poetry, women should confine their attention to puddings and babies. The infernal complacent cheek of it. This was the kind of thing middle-class men read. Unable to criticise it, they thought it witty and unanswerable. That was the worst of it. Books of this sort were read without anyone there to point things out.... It ought to be illegal to publish a book by a man without first giving it to a woman to annotate. But what was the answer to men who called women inferior because they had not invented or achieved in science or art? On whose authority had men decided that science and art were greater than anything else? The world could not go on until this question had been answered. Until then, until it had been clearly explained that men were always and always partly wrong in all their ideas, life would be full of poison and secret bitterness... Men fight about their philosophies and religions, there is no certainty in them; but their contempt for women is flawless and unanimous. Even Emerson ... positive and negative, north and south, male and female .... why negative? Maeterlinck gets nearest in knowing that women can live, hardly at all, with men, and wait, have always been waiting, for men to come to life. How can men come to life; always fussing? How could the man who wrote this book? Even if it were publicly burned and he were made to apologise; he would still go about asquint .... lunch was going to be late, just to-day, of course....

“I say.”

“What do you say,” responded Miriam without looking up from her soup. Mr. Leyton had a topic; she could keep it going with half her attention and go restfully on, fortifying herself for the afternoon. She would attack him about the book one day next week.....