Honeycomb: Pilgrimage, Volume 3

by Dorothy M. Richardson

7

She dreamed she was in the small music-room in the old Putney school, hovering invisible. Lilla was practising alone at the piano. Sounds of the girls playing rounders came up from the garden. Lilla was sitting in her brown merino dress, her black curls shut down like a little cowl over her head and neck. Her bent profile was stern and manly, her eyes and her bare white forehead manly and unconscious. Her lissome brown hands played steadily and vigorously. Miriam listened incredulous at the certainty with which she played out her sadness and her belief. It shocked her that Lilla should know so deeply and express her lonely knowledge so ardently. Her gold-flecked brown eyes that commonly laughed at everything, except the problem of free-will, and refused questions, had as much sorrow and certainty as she had herself. She and Lilla were one person, the same person. Deep down in everyone was sorrow and certainty. A faint resentment filled her. She turned away to go down into the garden. The scene slid into the large music-room. It was full of seated forms. Lilla was at the piano, her foot on the low pedal, her hands raised for a crashing chord. They came down, collapsing faintly on a blur of wrong notes. Miriam rejoiced in her heart. What a fiend I am ... what a fiend, she murmured, her heart hammering condemnation. Someone was sighing harshly; to be heard; in the darkness; not far off; fully conscious she glanced at the blind. It was dark. The moon was not round. It was about midnight. Her face and eyes felt thick with sleep. The air was rich with sleep. Her body was heavy with a richness of sleep and fatigue. In a moment she could be gone again.... “Shall I get the beef-tea, mother?” ... she heard herself say in a thin wideawake voice. “Oh no my dear,” sounded another voice patiently. Rearing her numb consciousness against a delicious tide of oncoming sleep she threw off the bed-clothes and stumbled to the floor. “You can’t go on like this night after night, my dear.” “Yes I can,” said Miriam in a tremulous faint tone. The sleepless even voice reverberated again in the unbroken sleeplessness of the room. “It’s no use ... I am cumbering the ground.” The words struck sending a heat of anger and resentment through Miriam’s shivering form. She spoke sharply, groping for the matches.

8

Hurrying across the cold stone floor of the kitchen she lit the gas from her candle. Beetles ran away into corners, crackling sickeningly under the fender. A mouse darted along the dresser. She braced herself to the sight of the familiar saucepan, Miss Meldrum’s good beef-tea brown against the white enamel—helpless ... waiting for the beef-tea to get hot she ate a biscuit. There was help somewhere. All those people sleeping quietly upstairs. If she asked them to they would be surprised and kind. They would suggest rousing her and getting her to make efforts. They would speak in rallying voices, like Dr. Ryman and Mrs. Skrine. For a day or two it would be better and then much worse and she would have to go away. Where? It would be the same everywhere. There was no one in the world who could help. There was something ... if she could leave off worrying. But that had been Pater’s advice all his life and it had not helped. It was something more than leaving off ... it was something real. It was not affection and sympathy. Eve gave them; so easily, but they were not big enough. They did not come near enough. There was something crafty and worldly about them. They made a sort of prison. There was something true and real somewhere. Mother knew it. She had learned how useless even the good kind people were and was alone, battling to get at something. If only she could get at it and rest in it. It was there, everywhere. It was here in the kitchen, in the steam rising from the hot beef-tea. A moon-ray came through the barred window as she turned down the gas. It was clear in the eye of the moon-ray; a real thing.

Some instinct led away from the New Testament. It seemed impossible to-night. Without consulting her listener Miriam read a psalm. Mrs. Henderson put down her cup and asked her to read it again. She read and fluttered pages quietly to tell the listener that in a moment there would be some more. Mrs. Henderson waited saying nothing. She always sighed regretfully over the gospels and Saint Paul, though she asked for them and seemed to think she ought to read them. They were so dreadful; the gospels full of social incidents and reproachfulness. They seemed to reproach everyone and to hint at a secret that no one possessed ... the epistles did nothing but nag and threaten and probe. St. Paul rhapsodised sometimes ... but in a superior way ... patronising; as if no one but himself knew anything....

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring” she read evenly and slowly. Mrs. Henderson sighed quietly.... “That’s Isaiah mother.... Isaiah is a beautiful name.” ... She read on. Something had shifted. There was something in the room.... If she could go droning on and on in an even tone it would be there more and more. She read on till the words flowed together and her droning voice was thick with sleep. The town clock struck two. A quiet voice from the other bed brought the reading to an end. Sleep was in the room now. She felt sure of it. She lay down leaving the candle alight and holding her eyes open. As long as the candle was alight the substance of her reading remained. When it was out there would be the challenge of silence again in the darkness ... perhaps not; perhaps it would still be there when the little hot point of light had gone. There was a soft sound somewhere ... the sea. The tide was up, washing softly. That would do. The sound of it would be clearer when the light was out ... drowsy, lazy, just moving, washing the edge of the beach ... cool, fresh. Leaning over she dabbed the candle noiselessly and sank back asleep before her head reached the pillow.

9

In the room yellow with daylight a voice was muttering rapidly, rapid words and chuckling laughter and stillness. Miriam grasped the bedclothes and lay rigid. Something in her fled out and away, refusing. But from end to end of the world there was no help against this. It was a truth; triumphing over everything. “I know,” said a high clear voice. “I know ... I don’t deceive myself” ... rapid low muttering and laughter.... It was a conversation. Somewhere within it was the answer. Nowhere else in the world. Forcing herself to be still she accepted the sounds, pitting herself against the sense of destruction. The sound of violent lurching brought her panic. There was something there that would strike. Hardly knowing what she did she pretended to wake with a long loud yawn. Her body shivered, bathed in perspiration. “What a lovely morning” she said dreamily, “what a perfect morning.” Not daring to sit up she reached for her watch. Five o’clock. Three more hours before the day began. The other bed was still. “It’s going to be a magnificent day” she murmured pretending to stretch and yawn again. A sigh reached her. The stillness went on and she lay for an hour tense and listening. Something must be done to-day. Someone else must know.... At the end of an hour a descending darkness took her suddenly. She woke from it to the sound of violent language, furniture being roughly moved, a swift angry splashing of water ... something breaking out, breaking through the confinements of this little furniture-filled room ... the best gentlest thing she knew in the world openly despairing at last.

10

The old homœopathist at the other end of the town talked quietly on ... the afternoon light shone on his long white hair ... the principle of health, God-given health, governing life. To be well one must trust in it absolutely. One must practise trusting in God every day.... The patient grew calm, quietly listening and accepting everything he said, agreeing again and again. Miriam sat wondering impatiently why they could not stay. Here in this quiet place with this quiet old man, the only place in the world where anyone had seemed partly to understand, mother might get better. He could help. He knew what the world was like and that nobody understood. He must know that he ought to keep her. But he did not seem to want to do anything but advise them and send them away. She hated him, his serene white-haired pink-faced old age. He told them he was seventy-nine and had never taken a dose in his life. Leaving his patient to sip a glass of water into which he had measured drops of tincture he took Miriam to look at the greenhouse behind his consulting room. As soon as they were alone he told her speaking quickly and without benevolence and in the voice of a younger man that she must summon help, a trained attendant. There ought to be someone for night and day. He seemed to know exactly the way in which she had been taxed and spoke of her youth. It is very wrong for you to be alone with her he added gravely.