Interim: Pilgrimage, Volume 5

by Dorothy M. Richardson

The rosy gold was deepening and spreading.

Miriam found herself rested as if by sleep. It seemed as if she had been sitting in the stillness for a time that was longer than the whole of the working day. To recover like this every day ... to have at the end of every day a cool solid clear head and rested limbs and the feeling that the strain of work was so far away that it could never return. The tireless sense of morning and new day that came in moving from part to part of her London evenings, and strongest of all at the end of a long evening, going on from a lecture or a theatre to endless leisure, reading, the happy gaslight over her book under the sloping roof, always left her in the morning unwilling to get up, and made the beginning of the day horrible with languor and breakfast a scramble, taken to the accompaniment of guilty listening for the striking of nine o’clock from St. Pancras church, and the angry sense of Mr. Hancock already arriving cool and grey clad at the morning door of Wimpole Street. To-night, going strong and steady to her hot room, sleep would be silvery cool. She would wake early and fresh, and surprise them all at Wimpole Street arriving early and serene after a leisurely breakfast.

The rosy light shone into far-away scenes with distant friends. They came into her mind rapidly one by one, and stayed grouped in a radiance, sharper and clearer than in experience. She recalled scenes that had left a sting, something still to be answered. She saw where she had failed; her friends saw what she had meant, in some secret unconscious part of them that was turned away from the world; in their thoughts with themselves when they were alone. Her own judgments, sharply poised in memory upon the end of some small incident, reversed themselves, dropped meaningless, returned reinforced, went forward, towards some clearer understanding. Her friends drifted forward, coming too near, as if in competition for some central place. To every claim, she offered her evening sky as a full answer. The many forms remained, grouped, like an audience, confronted by the evening.

The gold was fading, a soft mistiness spreading through the deepening rose, making the leafage darker and more opaque. Presently the sky would be mother-of-pearl above a soft dark mass and then pure evening grey outlining the dark feathery tree tops of a London square turning to green below in the lamplight, sinking to sleep, deeply breathing out its freshness to meet the freshness pouring through the streets from the neighbouring squares. Freshness would steal over the outside walls of the houses already cool within. Only in the garrets would the sultry day remain under the slowly cooling roofs.

There was still a pale light flowing into the dusk of the garret. It must be only about nine o’clock ... the gas flared out making a winter brilliance ... Four sermons on Dante.... Kuenen’s Life of Dante ... Gemma Donati, Gemma, busily making puddings in the world lit by the light of the Mystic Rose; swept away by the rush of words ... a stout Italian woman ... Gemma; Bayatrichay ... they were bound to reach music ... a silent Italian woman in a hot kitchen scolding, left out of the mystic rose ... Lourdes ... Le Nabab ... atroce comédie de bonheur conjugale sans relâche ... the Frenchman expressing what the Englishman only thinks ... “the wife” ... I met my WIFE! ... red nose and check trousers, smoky self-indulgent married man, all the self-indulgent married men in the audience guffawing ... “You must be ready to face being taken for granted, you must hide your troubles, learn to say nothing of your unnoticed exhausting toil, wear a smile above the heart that you believe is breaking; stand steady in face of the shipwreck of all your dreams. Remember that although he does not know it, in spite of all his apparent oblivion and neglect, if you fail, his universe crumbles” ... men live their childish ignorant lives on a foundation of pain and exhaustion. Down in the fevered life of pain and exhaustion there is a deep certainty. There is no deep certainty in the lives of men. If there were they would not be forever talking with conceited guilty lips as if something were waiting if they stopped, to spring on them from behind.... The evolution of the Idea of God.... I have forgotten what that is about ... a picture of a sort of Madonna ... corn goddess, with a child and sheaves of corn.... The Mechanism of Thought.... Thirty Sane Criticisms.... Critique de la Pensée Moderne; traduit par H. Navray, Mercure de France.... How did he begin? Where was he when he came out and began saying everybody was wrong? How did he get to know about it all? She took down a volume unwillingly ... there was something being lost, something waiting within the quiet air of the room that would be gone if she read. It was not too late. Why did men write books? Modern men? The book was open. Her eyes scanned unwillingly. Fabric. How did he find his words. No one had ever said fabric about anything. It made the page alive ... a woven carpet, on one side a beautiful glowing pattern, on the other dull stringy harshness ... there is a dangerous looseness ... her heart began beating apprehensively. The room was dead about her. She sat down tense, and read the sentence through. There is a dangerous looseness in the fabric of our minds. She imagined the words spoken, looseness was ugly, making the mouth ugly in speech. There is a looseness in the fabric of our minds. That is what he would have said in conversation, looking nowhere and waiting to floor an objection. There is a dangerous, he had written. That introduced another idea. You were not supposed to notice that there were two statements, but to read smoothly on, accepting. It was deliberate. Put in deliberately to frighten you into reading more. Dangerous. The adjective in the sentence, personal, a matter of opinion. People who read the books do not think about adjectives. They like them. Conversation is adjectives! ... all the worry of conversation is because people use adjectives and rush on.... But you can’t describe ... but dangerous is not a descriptive adjective ... there is a twisted looseness, that describes ... that is Saxon ... Abendmahl ... dangerous, French ... the Prince of Wales uses the elegant Norman idiom ... dangerous is an idea, the language of ideas. It expresses nothing but an opinion about life ... a threat daring you to disagree. Dangerous to what?... Man is a badly made machine ... an oculist could improve upon the human eye ... and the mind wrong in some way too ... logic is a cheap arithmetic. Imagination. What is imagination? Is it his imagination that has found out that mind is loose? Is not imagination mind? It is his imaginative mind. A special kind of mind. But if mind discovers that mind is unreliable, its conclusion is also unreliable. That’s logic ... Barbara. All Mind is unreliable. Man is mind, therefore man is unreliable.... Then it is useless to try and know anything ... books go on ... he has invented imagination. Images. Fabric. But he did not invent dangerous. That is cheek. By this sin fell the angels. Perhaps he is a fallen angel. I was right when I told Eve I had sold my soul to the devil.... “Quite a good afterglow” and then wheeling alertly about to capture and restate some thread ... and then later, finding you still looking. “M’yes; a fine ... fuliginous ... pink ... God’s had a strawberry ice for supper” ... endless inexhaustible objections ... a cold grim scientific world ... Alma knew it. In that clear bright house with the satisfying furniture ... now let’s all make Buddhas. Let’s see who can make the best Buddha.... Away from them you could forget; but it was going on all the time ... somehow ahead of everything else that was going on.... She got up and replaced the book. It was on her shelf; a signed copy; extraordinary. It was an extraordinary privilege. No one else could write books like that; no one else knew so much about everything. Right or wrong it was impossible to give up hearing all he had to say ... and they were kind, alive to one’s life in a way other people were not....

She strolled to the window, finding renewal in the familiar creaking of her floor in the house, here.... She went back across the happy creaking and turned out the gas and came again to the window. The sky was dark enough to show a brilliant star; here and there in the darkness of the opposite house fronts was an oblong of golden light. The faint blue light coming up from the street lit up the outer edges of the grey stone window-sills. The air under the wooden roof of the window space was almost as close as it was under the immense height of upper coolness.... Down at the end of the road were the lamplit green trees; plane-tree shadows on the narrow pavement. She put on her hat in the dark.

Crossing the roadway to reach the narrow strip of pavement running along under the trees she saw single dark figures standing at intervals against the brilliant lamplit green and swerved back to the wide pavement. She had forgotten they would be there. They stood like sentinels.... Behind them the lamplit green flared feverishly.... In the shadow of St. Pancras church there were others, small and black in a desert ... lost quickly in the great shadow where the passers-by moved swiftly through from light to light. Out in the Euston Road along the pavements shadowed by trees and left in darkness by the high spindling shaded candles of the lamps along the centre of the roadway, they came walking, a foreign walk, steadily slow and wavy and expressive, here and there amongst the shapeless expressionless forms of the London wayfarers. The high stone entrance of Euston Station shone white across the way. Anyone can go into a station. Within the entrance gravelled darkness opened out on either side. Silence all round and ahead where silent buildings had here and there a lit window. Where was the station? Immense London darkness and stillness alone and deserted like a country place at night, just beyond the noises of the Euston Road. A murder might happen here. The cry of an engine sounded, muffled and far away. Just ahead in the centre of the approaching wide mass of building was a wide dimly lit stone archway. The rattle of a hansom sounded from an open space beyond. Its light appeared swaying swiftly forward and lit the archway. The hansom bowled through in startling silence, nothing but the jingle and dumb leathery rattle of the harness, and passed, the plonking of the horse’s hoofs and the swift slur of the wheels sounding out again in the open space. The archway had little side pathways for passengers roofed by small arching extensions of the central arch ... indiarubber ... pavement to muffle ... the building was a hotel; Edwards daylight Family Hotel ... expensive people lodging just above the arch, travelling, coming to London, going away from London, with no thought of the dark secret neighbourhood. A courtyard opened out beyond the arch. It was not even yet the station. There was a road just ahead going right and left, with lamps; just in front to the left across the road a lit building with a frosted lower window and a clock ... a post office. Miriam went through the swing door into warm yellow gaslight. At the long counter people stood busily occupied or waiting their turn, with their backs to the dusty floor space, not noticing the grey space of dusty floor and the curious warm gleam of the light falling upon it from behind the iron grille along the counter. The clerks were fresh and serene and unhurried, making a steady quiet workaday feeling; late at night. It swung the day round, morning and evening together in the gaslit enclosure. She stood at the counter sharing the sense of affairs. She could be a customer for a penny stamp. Waiting outside was the walk back through the various darkness, the indiarubber pathway ... knowing her way.

She let herself into the hall with an air of returning from a hurried necessary errand. Beyond the mysterious Bailey curtains partly screening the passage to the front door she saw Dr. Hurd standing at the dining-room door; good night he laughed back into the room and turned, meeting her as she emerged into the light. He paused smiling. Here’s Miss Henderson he said into the room. Miriam was passing the door. Aren’t you coming in he urged smiling. Ho, I’ve just been to the post office said Miriam passing into the room. Ho, isn’t it a perfect evening she announced taking in Dr. Wayneflete standing tall with small bent pale face at the end of the table and the other two rising from their places by the fireside. Dr. Hurd closed the door and came and flopped down in the easy chair in front of the piano. I know you won’t sit here Miss Henderson. No Miss Henderson doesn’t care for cushions murmured Dr. von Heber at her side. Take this chair he pursued and sat near as she sat down in a little stiff chair facing the fireplace, Dr. Winchester subsiding a little behind her on the other side.

It’s a purfect evening murmured Dr. Wayneflete. Miriam turned and searched his white bent face. She had never seen him speaking in a room. The thought behind the white slightly bulging forehead was his own, Wayneflete, brilliant, keeping him apart; the little narrowing peak of livid white face, the green shadows about the small pale mouthing lips, the fact of his heart-disease and his Irish parentage were things that dared to approach and attach themselves to him; that people knew.

A purfect evening he repeated plucking gently at the threads of the table cloth. He would never originate a remark or ask a question except of patients or an engineer standing near some difficult machinery. He knew everything by just being about. He was head and shoulders above the other three. Delicate, of gentle blood and narrow fragile body; a strong spirit; impossible of approach by speech; everything she said would carry her away from him; perhaps he was already planning his escape. One day he would suddenly fall down, dead; young and unknown to anyone in the world, carrying away his mystery.