The dining-room was a buzz of conversation. The table was packed save for two chairs on Mrs. Bailey’s right hand. Mrs. Bailey was wearing a black satin blouse cut in a V and a piece of black ribbon-velvet tied round her neck! She was in conversation, preening and arching as she ladled out the soup, with a little lady and a big old gentleman with a patriarch beard sitting on her right bowing and smiling, personally, towards Miriam and Miss Dear as they took their seats. Miriam bowed and gazed as they went on talking. The old gentleman had a large oblong head above a large expensive spread of smooth well-cut black coat; a huge figure, sitting tall, with easily moving head reared high, massy grey hair; unspectacled smiling glistening eyes and oblong fresh cheeked face wreathed in smiles revealing gleaming squares of gold stopping in his front teeth. His voice was vast and silky, like the beard that moved as he spoke, shifting about on the serviette tucked by one corner into his neck. His little wife was like a kind bird, soft curtains of greying black hair crimping down from a beautifully twisted top-knot on either side of a clear gentle forehead. Softly gleaming eyes shone through rimless pince-nez perched delicately on her delicate nose, no ugly straight bar, a little half-hoop to join them together and at the side a delicate gold chain tucked over one ear ... she was about as old as mother had been ... she was exactly like her ... girlishly young, but untroubled; the little white ringed left hand with strange unfamiliarly expressive finger-tips and curiously mobile turned-back thumb-tip was herself in miniature. It held a little piece of bread, peaked, expressively, as she ate her soup. She was utterly familiar, no stranger; always known. Miriam adored, seeking her eyes till she looked, and meeting a gentle enveloping welcome, making no break in her continuous soft animation. The only strange thing was a curious circular sweep of her delicate jaw as she spoke; a sort of wide mouthing on some of her many quiet words, thrown in through and between and together with the louder easily audible silky tones of her husband. Mrs. Bailey sat unafraid, expanding in happiness. You will have a number of things to see she was saying. We are counting on this laddie to be our guide, said the old gentleman turning hugely to his further neighbour. Miriam’s eyes followed and met the face of Dr. Hurd ... grinning; his intensest brick-red grin. He had not gone! These were his parents. He needs a holiday too, the dear lad, said the old gentleman laying a hand on his shoulder. Dr. Hurd grinned a rueful disclaimer with his eyes still on Miriam’s and said I shan’t be sorry, his face crinkling with his unexploded hysterically leaping laugh. Mrs. Hurd’s smiling little face flickered with quickly smothered sadness. They had come all the way from Canada to share his triumph and were here smoothing his defeat.... Canadian old people. A Canadian woman ... that circular jaw movement was made by the Canadian vowels. They disturbed a woman’s small mouth more than a man’s. It must affect her thoughts, the held-open mouth; airing them; making them circular, sympathetically balanced, easier to go on from than the more narrowly mouthed English speech.... Mr. Gunner, sitting beside your son is a violinist.... Ah. We shall hope to hear him. Mr. Gunner, small and shyly smiling, next to him an enormous woman with a large school-girl face, fair straight and school-girl hair lifted in a flat wave from her broad forehead into an angry peak, angrily eating with quickly moving brawny arms coming out of elbow sleeves with cheap cream lace frilling, reluctantly forced to flop against the brawny arms. Sallow good-looking husband, olive, furious, cocksure, bilious type, clubby and knowing, flat ignorance on the top of his unconscious shiny round black skull, both snatching at scraps of Scott and Sissie and Gunner chaff, trying to smile their way in to hide their fury with each other. Too poor to get further away from each other, accustomed to boarding house life, eating rapidly and looking for more. She had several brothers; a short aristocratic upper lip and shapely scornful nostrils, brothers in the diplomatic service or the army. There was someone this side of the table they recognised as different and were watching; a tall man beyond Mrs. Barrow, a strange fine voice with wandering protesting inflections; speaking out into the world, with practised polished wandering inflections, like a tired pebble worn by the sea, going on and on, presenting the same worn wandering curves wherever it was, always a stranger everywhere, always anew presenting the strange wandering inflections; indiscriminately. That end of the table was not aware of the Hurds. Its group was wandering outside the warm glow of Canadian society. Eleanor Dear was feeling at its doors, pathetic-looking with delicate appealing head and thoughtful baby brow downcast. Us’ll wander out this evening shall us, murmured Miriam in a lover-like undertone. It was a grimace at the wide-open door of Canadian life; an ironic kick à la Harriet. Her heart beat recklessly round the certainty of writing and posting her letter. If he cared he would understand. Mrs. Hurd had come to show her Canadian society, brushing away the tangles and stains of accidental contacts; putting everything right. Of course we will, bridled Miss Dear rebuking her vulgarity. Nothing mattered now but filling up the time.
The table was breaking up; the Hurds retiring in a backward-turning group talking to Mrs. Bailey, towards the door. The others were standing about the room. The Hurds had gone. Oh-no, that’s all right, Mrs. Bailey; I’ll be all right. It was the wandering voice.... It went on, up and down, the most curious different singing tones, the sentences beginning high and dropping low and ending on an even middle tone that sounded as if it were going on. It had a meaning without the meaning of the words. Mrs. Bailey went on with some explanation and again the voice sent out its singing shape; up and down and ending on a waiting tone. Miriam looked at the speaker; a tall grey clad man, a thin pale absent-minded face, standing towards Mrs. Bailey, in a drooping lounge, giving her all his attention, several people were drifting out of the room, down-bent towards her small form; Eleanor Dear was waiting, sitting docile, making no suggestion, just right, like a sister; but his eyes never met Mrs. Bailey’s; they were fixed, burning, on something far away; his thoughts were far away, on something that never moved. There was a loud rat-tat on the front door, more than a telegram and less than a caller; a claim, familiar and peremptory. Mrs. Bailey looked sharply up. Sissie was ambling hurriedly out of the room. Oh dear, chirruped Eleanor softly, someone wants to come in. Well; I’ll say goodnight, said the grey figure and turned easily with a curious waiting halting lounge, exactly like the voice, towards the door. It could stop easily, if anyone were coming in, and wander on again in an unbroken movement. The grey shoulders passing out through the door with the gaslight on them had no look of going out of the room, desolate, they looked desolate. The room was almost empty. Mrs. Bailey was listening undisguisedly towards the hall. Sissie came in looking watchfully about. It’s Mr. Rodkin, mother dear she said sullenly. Rodkin? ’Im? gasped Mrs. Bailey, transfigured. Can I come in? asked a deep hollow insinuating voice at the door, how do you do Mrs. Bailey? Mrs. Bailey had flung the door wide and was laughing and shaking hands heartily up and down with a small swarthy black moustached little man with an armful of newspapers and a top hat pushed back on his head. Well, he said uncovering a small bony sleek black head and sliding into a chair, his hat sticking out from the hand of the arm clasping the great bundle of newspapers. How grand you are. Moy word. What’s the meaning of it? His teeth gleamed brilliantly. He had small high prominent cheek-bones, yellow beaten-in temples and a yellow hollow face; yet something almost dimpling about his smile. Aren’t we? chuckled Mrs. Bailey taking his hat. Mr. Rodkin drew his hand over his face, yawning Well I’ve been everywhere since I left; Moscow, Petersburg, Batoom, Harr-bin, everywhere. Moy wort. Miss Sissie you are a grown-up grand foine young lady. What is it all about? No joke; tell me I say. Mrs. Bailey sat at ease smiling triumphantly. A grand foine dinner.... Well you wouldn’t have me starve my boarduz. Boarders murmured Mr. Rodkin, My God. He jerked his head back with a laugh and jerked it down again. Well it’s good business anyhow. Bless my heart! They talked familiarly on, two tired worn people in a little blaze of mutual congratulation. Mr. Rodkin had come to stay at once without going away. He noticed no one but the Baileys and questioned on and on yawning and laughing with sudden jerks of his head.
Coming back from sitting flirting with Eleanor at Donizetti’s, Miriam wandered impatiently into the dark dining-room. Eleanor was not her guest. Why didn’t she go up to her room and leave her to the dim street-lit dining-room and the nightly journey up through the darkness to her garret in freedom. Bed-time she hinted irritably, tugging at the tether. Bed-time echoed Eleanor, her smooth humouring nurse’s voice bringing in her world of watchful diplomatic manœuvring, scattering the waiting population of the familiar dim room. I’m going to bed stated Miriam advancing towards the windows. On the table under the window that was the most brightly lit by the street-lamps was a paper, a pamphlet ... coloured; blue. She took it up. It hung limply in her hand, the paper felt pitted and poor, like very thin blotting paper. Young Ireland she read printed in thick heavy black lettering across the top of the page. The words stirred her profoundly, calling to something far away within her, long ago. Underneath the thick words two short columns side by side began immediately. They went on for several pages and were followed by short paragraphs with headings; she pressed close to the lit window, peering; there were blotchy badly printed asterisks between small groups of lines. Heavy black headings further on, like the title, but smaller, and followed by thick exclamation signs. It was a sort of little newspaper, the angry print too heavy for the thin paper. Green. It was green all through ... Ireland; home-rule. I say she exclaimed eagerly. That was the grey man. Irish. That’s all going on still she said solicitously to a large audience. What dear asked Eleanor’s figure close to her side. Ireland, breathed Miriam. We’ve got a home-ruler in the house. Look at this; green all through. It’s some propaganda, in London, very angry. I ’ope the home-ruler isn’t green all through chuckled Eleanor smoothly. It’s the wearin’ o’ the green scolded Miriam. The Emerald Isle. We’re so stupid. An Irish girl I knew told me she ‘just couldn’t bear to face thinking’ of the way we treat our children.
Leaving Eleanor abruptly in darkness in her bedroom she shut the door and stepped into freedom. The cistern gurgled from the upper dark freshness. Her world was uninvaded. Klah-rah Buck, in reverent unctuousness, waiting for responsive awe from those sitting round. He meant Clara Butt. Then she had been to Canada. He had expected.... Little Mrs. Hurd had sat birdlike at a Morning Musical hearing the sweep of the tremendous voice. I have never heard it, but I know how it rolls tremendously out and sweeps. I can hear it by its effect on them. They would not believe that. Rounding the sweep of the little staircase she was surprised by a light under the box-room door. Mrs. Bailey, at midnight, busy in the little box-room? How could she find room to have the door shut? Her garret felt fresh and free. Summer rain pattering on the roof in the darkness. The Colonisation of Ulster. Her mind turned the pages of a school essay, page after page, no red-ink corrections, the last page galloping along one long sentence; “until England shall have recognised her cruel folly.” 10; excellent, E.B.R. A fraud and yet not a fraud. Never having thought of Ireland before reading it up in Green, and then some strange indignation and certainty, coming suddenly while writing; there for always. I had forgotten about it. A man’s throat was cleared in the box-room. The tone of the wandering voice.... Mrs. Bailey had screwed him into that tiny hole. I’ll be all right.... What a shame. He must not know anyone knew he was there. He did not know he was the first to disturb the top landing.... He did not disturb it. There were no English thoughts in there, nothing of the downstairs house. Julia Doyle, Dublin Bay, Clontarf; fury underneath, despairing of understanding, showing how the English understood nothing, themselves nor anyone else. But the Irish were not people ... they did not care for anything. Meredith was partly Celtic. That was why his writing always felt to be pointing in some invisible direction. He wrote so much because he did not care about anything. Novelists were angry men lost in a fog. But how did they find out how to do it? Brain. Frontal development. But it was not certain that that was not just the extra piece wanted to control the bigger muscular system. Sacrificed to muscle. Going about with more muscles and a bit more brain, if size means more, doing all kinds of different set pieces of work in the world, each in a space full of problems none of them could agree about.
5
“Gracious. You’ll ave to be up early in the morning to say all those names dear.”
CHAPTER X
Eleanor’s cab rumbled away round the corner. Mrs. Bailey was still standing at the top of the steps. Miriam ran up the steps looking busily ahead. It’s going to be a lovely evening she said as she passed Mrs. Bailey. She was safely in the hall. But the front door was closed and Mrs. Bailey was in the hall just behind her. She turned abruptly, almost colliding with her, into the dining-room. Mrs. Bailey’s presence was there waiting for her in the empty room. Behind her just inside the door was Mrs. Bailey, blocking the way to the untrammelled house. There’s quite a lot of August left she quoted from the thoughts that had poured down to meet her as she stood facing the stairs. The clock on the mantelpiece was telling the time of Mrs. Bailey’s day. The empty room was waiting for the next event, a spread meal, voices sounding towards a centre, distracting attention from its increasing shabbiness ... there was never long for it to remain sounding its shabbiness, the sound of dust, into the empty space. Events going on and on, giving no time to get in, behind the dusty shabbiness to the sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing....
“What a jolly big room this is, isn’t it?” she demanded, turning towards Mrs. Bailey’s shapely skimpy form. Mrs. Bailey knew she was chafing in the airless shabby room. The windows closed to keep the dust out made the dust smell.
“Isn’t it?” agreed Mrs. Bailey cordially.