Interim: Pilgrimage, Volume 5

by Dorothy M. Richardson

They all went busily upstairs. Even Grace did not linger.—Let me come and help make my bed said Miriam going with her to the door—No, you’re to rest——I don’t want to rest——Then you can run round the room—She turned back towards the silent disarray. Busy sounds came from upstairs. A hurried low reproving voice emerged on to the landing ...—and light the drawing-room fire as soon as you’ve finished clearing and when the postman comes leave the letters in the box—Christine came downstairs without answering. In a moment she would be coming in. Moving away from the attraction of the blouse Miriam wandered to the fireside. Her eyes turned towards the chair in the corner half-hidden by the large armchair. There they were, on the top of the pile of newspapers and magazines. Dare’s Annual lay uppermost its cover bright with holly. Her hands went out ... to look at them now would be to anticipate the afternoon. But there would be at least two Windsors that she had not seen. She drew one out and stood turning over the leaves. It would be impossible to look round and say a Happy Christmas and then go on reading, and just as bad to stop reading and not say anything more. She planted herself in the middle of the hearthrug with her face to the room. Why should she stand advantageously there while Christine unwillingly laboured? Why should Christine be pleased to be spoken to? She thought a happy Christmas in several different voices. They all sounded insulting. Christine was still making noises in the kitchen. There was time to escape. The drawing-room door would be bolted and that meant getting one of the hall chairs and telling the whole house of an extraordinary impulse. Upstairs her bed would still be being made or her room dusted. She drew up the little stool and sat dejectedly, close over the fire as if with a heavy cold in her head and anxiously deep in the pages of the magazine. Perhaps Christine would think she did not hear her come in ... she guessed the story from the illustrations and dropped into the text half-way through the narrative. No woman who did typewriting from morning till night and lived in a poor lodging could look like that ... perhaps some did ... perhaps that was how clerks ought to look ... she skimmed on; moving automatically to make room for boots that were being put down in the fender; ready to speak in a moment if whoever it was did not say anything; the figure turned to the table. It was Christine. If she blew her nose and coughed Christine would know she knew she was there. She turned a page swiftly and wrapped herself deeply in the next. When Christine had gone away with a trayful she resumed her place on the hearthrug ready to see her for the first time when she came in again and catch her eye and say Good morning, I wish you a happy Christmas. Christine came shapelessly in and began collecting the remaining things with sullen hands. Her face was closed and expressionless and her eyes downcast. Miriam’s eyes followed it, waiting for the eyes to lift, her lips powerless. It was too late to say good morning. Sadness came growing in the room. Her thoughts went homelessly to and fro between her various world and the lumpy figure moving sullenly along the edge of an unknown life. Stepping observantly in through the half-open door with a duster bunched carefully in her hand came Florrie. Miriam flung out a greeting that swept round Christine and out into a shining world. It brought Florrie to her side, shy and eager. Christine taking her final departure looked up. Miriam flushed through her laughter, steadily meeting the expressionless brown glitter of Christine’s eyes. Hullo Madam O’Hara she defended, collecting herself for the question that would follow Florrie’s encirclement of her waist—Hullo Little Miriam; you are happy ground out Florrie shyly—are you rested?—Yes said Miriam formally, I think I am—They turned, Florrie withdrawing her arm, and stood looking into the fire—Oooch isn’t it cold said Grace from the doorway—have you done the hall chairs?—No, I came in here to get warm first—It is cold said Grace coming to the hearthrug—are you warm Miriam darling?—I’m so warm that I think I ought to run upstairs for a constitutional and scrub my teeth said Miriam briskly, preparing to follow Florrie from the room.—Grace dropped her duster and put her arms upon her, raising an anxious pleading face—stay here while I dust sweetheart. You can scrub your teeth when we’re gone. Dear pink-face. How are you my sweet? Are you rested? she asked between gentle kisses dabbed here and there—Never berrer old chap. I tell you never berrer—Grace laughed gently into her face and stood holding her, smiling her anxious pleading solicitous smile.—I tell you never berrer repeated Miriam. Dear sweet pink face smiled Grace and turned carefully away to her dusting. Miriam sank into an armchair, listening to the soft smooth flurring of the duster over the highly polished surfaces—Well she asked presently—how are things in general?—Grace rose from her knees and carefully shut the door. She came back with fear darkening the velvet lustre of her eyes—Oh I don’t know Miriam dear she murmured kneeling on the hearthrug near Miriam’s knees and holding her hands out towards the fire. It’s all over thought Miriam, she’s failed.—I’ve got ever so many things to tell you. I want to ask your advice—Remember I’ve never even seen him argued Miriam automatically, figuring the surroundedness, the sudden realization and fear, the recapturing of liberty, the hidden polite determined retreat.—Oh, but you always understand. Wait till we can talk she sighed rising from her knees, and kissing Miriam’s forehead. It was all over. Grace was clinging to some “reasonable” explanation of some final thing. She cast about in her mind for something from her own scattered circumstances to feed their talk when it should come. She would have to induce Grace to turn away and go on ... the end of the long history of faithfully remembered details would be a relief ... the delicate depths of their intercourse would come back ... its reach backwards and forwards; and yet without anything in the background ... it seemed as if always something were needed in the background to give the full glow to every day ... she must be made to see the real face of the circumstance and then to know and to feel that she was not forlorn; that the glow was there ... first to brush away the delusion ruthlessly ... and then let the glow come back, begin to come back, from another source.

7

Left alone with silence all along the street, Christine inaudible in the kitchen, dead silence in the house, Miriam gathered up her blouse and ran upstairs. As she passed through the changing lights of the passage, up the little dark staircase past the turn that led to the little lavatory and the little bathroom and was bright in the light of a small uncurtained lattice, on up the four stairs that brought her to the landing where the opposing bedroom doors flooded their light along the strip of green carpet between the polished balustrade and the high polished glass-doored bookcase, scenes from the future, moving in boundless backgrounds came streaming unsummoned into her mind, making her surroundings suddenly unfamiliar ... the past would come again.... Inside her room—tidied until nothing was visible but the permanent shining gleaming furniture and ornaments; only the large box of matches on the corner of the mantlepiece betraying the movement of separate days, telling her of nights of arrival, the lighting of the gas, the sudden light in the frosted globe preluding freedom and rest, bringing the beginning of rest with the gleam of the fresh quiet room—she found the nearer past, her years of London work set in the air, framed and contemplable like the pictures on the wall, and beside them the early golden years in snatches, chosen pictures from here and there, communicated, and stored in the loyal memory of the Brooms. Leaping in among these live days came to-day ... the blouse belonged to the year that was waiting far off, invisible behind the high wall of Christmas. She dropped it on the bed and ran downstairs to the little drawing-room. The fire had not yet conquered the mustiness of the air. The room was full of strange dim lights coming in through the stained glass door of the little greenhouse. She pushed open the glass door turning the light to a soft green and sat sociably down in a low chair her hands clasped upon her knees, topics racing through her mind in a voice thrilling with stored up laughter. In her ears was the rush of spring rain on the garden foliage, and presently a voice saying where are we going this summer?... By the time they came back she would be too happy to speak. Better perhaps to go out into the maze of little streets and in wearying of them be glad to come back. As she moved to the door she saw the garden in late summer fulness, the holidays over, their heights gleaming through long talks on the seat at the end of the garden, the answering glow of the great blossoms of purple clematis hiding the north London masonry of the little conservatory, the great spaces of autumn opening out and out running down rich with happenings to where the high wall of Christmas again rose and shut out the future. She ran busily upstairs casting away sight and hearing and hurried thoughtlessly into her outdoor things and out into the street. She wandered along the little roads turning and turning until she came to a broad open thoroughfare lined with high grey houses standing back behind colourless railed-in gardens. Trams jingled up and down the centre of the road bearing the names of unfamiliar parts of London. People were standing about on the terminal islands and getting in and out of the trams. She had come too far. Here was the wilderness, the undissembling soul of north London, its harsh unvarying all-embracing oblivion.... Innumerable impressions gathered on walks with the schoolgirls or in lonely wanderings; the unveiled motives and feelings of people she had passed in the streets, the expression of noses and shoulders, the indefinable uniformity, of bearing and purpose and vision, crowded in on her, oppressing and darkening the crisp light air. She fought against them, rallying to the sense of the day. It was Christmas Day for them all. They were keeping Christmas in their homes, carrying it out into the streets, going about with parcels, greeting each other in their harsh ironic voices. Long ago she had passed out of their world for ever, carrying it forward, a wound in her consciousness unhealed, but powerless to re-inflict itself, powerless to spread into her life. They and their world were still there, unchanged. But they could never touch her again, ensconced in her wealth. It did not matter now that they went their way just in the way they went their way. To hate them for past suffering now that they were banished and powerless was to allow them to spoil her day.... They were even a possession, a curious thing apart, unknown to anyone in her London life ... dear north Londoners. She paused a moment, looking boldly across at the figures moving on the islands. After all they did not know that it was cold and desolate and harsh and dreadful to be going about on Christmas Day in a place that looked as this place looked, in trams. They did not know what was wrong with their clothes and their bearing and their way of looking at things. That was what was so terrible though. What could teach them? There were so many. They lived and died in amongst each other. What could change them?... Her face felt drawn and weariness was coming upon her limbs ... a group was approaching her along the wide pavement, laughing and talking, a blatter of animated voices; she turned briskly for the relief of meeting and passing close to them ... too near, too near ... prosperity and kindliness, prosperous fresh laughing faces, easily bought clothes, the manner of the large noisy house and large secure income, free movement in an accessible world, all turned to dangerous weapons in wrong hands by the unfinished, insensitive mouths, the ugly slur in the speech, the shapelessness of bearing, the naïvely visible thoughts, circumscribed by business, the illustrated monthly magazines, the summer month at the seaside; their lives were exactly like their way of walking down the street, a confident blind trampling. Speech was not needed to reveal their certainties; they shed certainty from every angle of their unfinished persons. Certainty about everything. Incredulous contempt for all uncertainty. Impatient contempt for all who could not stand up for themselves. Cheerful uncritical affection for each other. And for all who were living or trying to live just as they did ... The little bushes of variegated laurel grouped in railed-off oblongs along the gravelled pathway between the two wide strips of pavement, drew her gaze. They shone crisply, their yellow and green enamel washed clean by yesterday’s rain. She hurried along feeling out towards them through downcast eyes. They glinted back at her unsunned by the sunlight, rootless sapless surfaces set in repellent clay, spread out in meaningless air. To and fro her eyes slid upon the varnished leaves ... she saw them in a park set in amongst massed dark evergreens, gleaming out through afternoon mist, keeping the last of the light as the people drifted away leaving the slopes and vistas clear ... grey avenues and dewy slopes drifted before her in the faint light of dawn, the grey growing pale and paler; the dew turned to a scatter of jewels and the sky soared up high above the growing shimmer of sunlit green and gold. Isolated morning figures hurried across the park, aware of its morning freshness, seeing it as their own secret garden, part of their secret day....

From the sunlit white facade of a large London house the laurels looked down through a white stone-pillared balustrade. They appeared coming suddenly with the light of a street lamp, clumped safely behind the railings of a Bloomsbury square ... the opening of a side street led her back into the maze of little roads. The protective presence of the little house was there and she sauntered happily along through channels of sheltered sunlit silence.... What was she doing here? At Christmas-time one should be where one belonged. Gathering and searching about her came the claims of the firesides that had lain open to her choice, drawing her back into the old life, the only life known to those who sat round them. They looked out from that life, seeing hers as hardship and gloom, pitying her, turning blind eyes unwillingly towards her attempts to unveil and make it known to them. She saw herself relinquishing efforts, putting on a desperate animation, professing interests and opinions and talking as people talk, while they watched her with eyes that saw nothing but a pitiful attempt to hide an awful fate, lonely poverty, the absence of any opening prospect, nothing ahead but a gloom deepening as the years counted themselves off. Those were the facts—as almost anyone might see them. They made those facts live; they tugged at the jungle of feelings that had the power to lead one back through any small crushing maiming aperture.... In their midst lived the past and the thing that had ended it and plunged it into a darkness that still held the threat of destroying reason and life. Perhaps only thus could it be faced. Perhaps only in that way. What other way was there? Forgetfulness blotted it out and let one live on. But it was always there, impossible, when one looked back.... The little house brought forgetfulness and rest. It made no break in the new life. The new life flowed through it, sunlit. It was a flight down strange vistas, a superfluity of wild strangeness, with a clue in one’s hand, the door of retreat always open; rest and forgetfulness piling up within one into strength.

8

The incidents Grace had described went in little disconnected scenes in and out of the caverns of the dying fire. She was waiting tremulously for a verdict. They seemed to Miriam so decisive that she found it difficult to keep within Grace’s point of view. She stood in the picturesque suburb, saw the distant glimpse of Highgate Woods, the pretty corner house standing alone in its garden, the sisters in the dresses they had worn at the dance talking to their mother indoors, waited on by their polite admiring brother; their unconsciousness, their lives as they looked to themselves. Everything fitted in with the leghorn hats they had worn at the league garden party in the summer. She could have warned Grace then if she had heard about the hats.... Grace had not yet found out that people were arranged in groups.... The only honest thing to say now would be—oh well of course with a mother and sisters like that; don’t you see—what they are? Her mind drew a little circle round the family group. It spun round them on and on as they went through life. She frowned her certainty into the fire, ranging herself with the unknown people she knew so well. If she did not speak Grace would see in her something of the quality that was the passport into that smooth-voiced world ... she imagined herself further and further into it, seeing everyday incidents, hearing conversations slide from the surfaces of minds that in all their differences made one even surface, unconscious unbroken and maddeningly unquestioning and unaware.... They were unaware of anything, though they had easy fluent words about everything ... underneath the surface that kept Grace off they were ... amœbæ, awful determined unconscious ... octopi ... frightful things with one eye, tentacles, poison-sacs ... the surface made them, not they the surface; rules ... they were civilisation. But they knew the rules; they knew how to do the surface ... they held to them and lived by them. It was a sort of game.... They were martyrs; with empty lives ... always awake, day and night, with unrelaxed wills ... she turned and met frank eyes still waiting for a verdict. All the strength of Grace’s personality was quivering there; all the determined faith in reason and principle. Perhaps if she had a clear field she could disarm them ... anyone, everyone. If she could get near enough they would find out her reality and her strength. But they would not want to be like her. They would run in the end from their apprehension of her, back to the things she did not see.... They had done so. He had; it was clear. Or she could not have spoken of him. If you can speak of a thing, it is past ... Speaking makes it glow with a life that is not its own.—There’s a lot more to tell you—said Grace pressing her hand. Miriam turned from the fire; Grace was looking as she had done when she began her story. Miriam sat back in her chair searching her face and form trying to find and express the secret of her indomitable conviction. Being what she was, why could she not be sufficient to herself? Entrenched in uncertainty she seemed less than herself. Her careful good clothes, so exquisitely kept, the delicate old gold chain, the little pearled cross, the old fine delicate rings, the centuries of shadowy ecclesiasticism in her head and face, the look of waiting, gazing from grey stone framed days upon a jewelled splendour, grew with her uncertainty small and limited. It was unbearable that they should have no meaning ... Grace was ready to take all she possessed into a world where it would have no meaning; ready to disappear and be changed. She was changed already. She could not get back and there was nothing to go forward to. Miriam dropped her eyes and sat back in her chair. The tide of her own life flowed fresh all about her; the room and the figure at her side made a sharply separated scene, a play watched from a distance, the end visible in the beginning to be read in the shapes and tones and folds of the setting, the intentions and statements nothing but impotent irrelevance, only bearable for the opportunities they offered here and there, involuntarily, for sudden escape into the reality that nothing touched or changed. If only Grace could be forced to see the unchanging reality.... Oh Miriam darling, breathed Grace in an even, anxious tone. Miriam suppressed a desire to whistle;—Oh well of course that may make a difference she said hurriedly, checking the thrill in her voice. Far back in the caverns of the fire life moved sunlit. She dropped her eyes and drew away the hand that Grace had clasped. Life danced and sang within her; shreds of song; the sense of the singing of the wind; clear bright light streaming through large houses, quickening on walls and stairways and across wide rooms. Along clear avenues of light radiating from the future, pouring from behind her into the inner channels of her eyes and ears came unknown forms moving in a brilliance, casting a brilliance across the visible past, warming its shadows, bathing its bright levels in sparkling gold. Her free hands lifted themselves until only the tips of her fingers rested on her knees and her hair strove from its roots as if the whole length would stand and wave upright.—You see—she said to gain a moment. Suddenly her mind became a blank. Her body was heavy on her chair, ill-clothed, too warm, peevishly tingling with desires. She stirred, shrinking from her ugly, inexorable cheap clothes, her glasses, the mystery of her rigid stupidly done hair; how how how did people get expression into their hair consciously and not by accident? Why did Grace like her in spite of all these things, in spite of the evil thoughts which must show. She did. She had felt nothing, seen nothing. She dissembled her face and turned towards Grace, gazing past her into the darkness beyond the range of the firelight. Just outside the rim of her glasses Grace’s firelit face gleamed on the edge of the darkness half turned towards her. Leaping into her mind came the realisation that she was sitting there talking to someone ... Marvellous to speak and hear a voice answer. Astounding; more marvellous and astounding than anything they could discuss. Grace must know this, even if she were unconscious of it ... some little sound they could both hear, a little mark upon the stillness, scattering light and relief. She turned her eyes and met Grace’s, velvety, deeply sparkling, shedding admiration and tyrannous love, patiently waiting—Well,—said Miriam, sleepily feeling for a thread of connected thought.—D’you mean a difference about my taking aunt to call, asked Grace with fear in her eyes.—No, my dear, said Miriam impatiently.—Can’t you see you can’t do that anyhow?——They’ve only been there five years, said Grace in a low determined recitative—We’ve lived in what’s almost the same neighbourhood, fifteen. So it’s our place to call first—Miriam sighed harshly.—That doesn’t make a scrap of difference she retorted flushing with anger.—I wish I had your grasp of things Miriam dear, said Grace with gentle weariness.—Well—we’ve got to-morrow and Monday said Miriam getting up with an appearance of briskness and striking random notes on the piano. Grace laughed.—I suppose we ought to light the gas she said getting up?—Why?——Oh well—Florrie will be coming in and asking why we’re sitting in the dark——What if she does?——Oh, I think I’ll light it Miriam. Miriam sat down again and stared into the fire. After supper they would all sit, harshly visible, round the hot fire, enduring the stifling unneeded gaslight.

CHAPTER II

1

Miriam rolled up the last pair of mended stockings....

She looked at her watch again. It was too late now even to go round to Kennett Street. She had spent New Year’s Eve alone in a cold bedroom. Why could one not be sure whether it was right or wrong? It was only by sitting hour after hour letting one’s fingers sew that the evening had come to an end. It could not be wrong to make up one’s mind to begin the new year with a long night’s rest in a tidy room with everything mended. But the feeling that the old year ought to be seen out with people had pricked all the time like conscience. It only stopped pricking now because it was too late. And there was a sadness left in the evening.... She lifted her coat from her knees and stood up. The room shone. In her throat and nostrils was the smell of dust coming from the floor and carpet and draperies. But the bright light of the gas and the soft light of the reading-lamp shone upon perfect order. Everything was mended and would presently be put away in tidy drawers. She was rested and strong, undisturbed by changes that would have come from social hours. No one had missed her. Many people scattered about in houses had thought of her. If they had, she had been there with them. She could not be everywhere, with all of them. That was certain. There was nothing to decide about that.... The Brooms had missed her ... they would have enjoyed their New Year’s Eve better if she had been there. It would have been jolly to have gone again so soon, after the short half week, and sat down by the fire where Christmas lingered and waited for the coming of the year with them. It would have been a loyalty to something. But it was too soon to be sitting about between comfortable meals talking, explaining things, making life stop, while reality went on far away.... One still felt rested from Christmas and wanting to begin doing things.... Perhaps it was not altogether through undecided waiting that the evening had come and gone by here in this room. Perhaps it was some kind of decision that could not be seen or expressed. Now that in solitude it had come to an end there was realisation. Quiet realisation of new year’s eve; just quiet realisation of new year’s eve. One would pass on into the new year in an unbroken peace with the resolutions for the new life distinct in one’s mind. She found an exercise book and wrote them down. There they stood, pitting the calm steady innermost part of her against all her other selves. Free desperate obedience to them would bring a revelation. No matter how the other selves felt as she kept them, if she kept them every moment of her life would go out from an inward calm.... The room was full of clear strength. There must always be a clear cold room to return to. There was no other way of keeping the inward peace. Outside one need do nothing but what was expected of one, asking nothing for oneself but freedom to return, to the centre. Life would be an endless inward singing until the end came. But not too much inward singing, spending one’s strength in song; the song must be kept down and low so that it would last all the time and never fail. Then a song would answer back from outside, in everything. She stepped lightly and powerfully about the room putting away her mended things.... One would move like the wind always, a steady human south-west wind, alive, without personality or speech. No more books. Books all led to the same thing. They were like talking about things. All the things in books were unfulfilled duty. No more interest in men. They shut off the inside world. Women who had anything whatever to do with men were not themselves. They were in a noisy confusion, playing a part all the time.... The only real misery in being alone was the fear of being left out of things. It was a wrong fear. It pushed you into things and then everything disappeared.... Not to listen outside, where there was nothing to hear. In the end you came away empty with time gone and lost.... To remember, whatever happened, not to be afraid of being alone.