But a Russian idealist ... would not be shocked, but would be appallingly clever and difficult. All the topics which now came tumbling into her mind shrank back in silence before Madame Lintoff’s intellectual oblivion. It was more oppressive than the oblivion of the intellectual English. Theirs was a small, hard, bright circle. Within it they were self-conscious. Hers was an impersonal spreading darkness....
They were nearing Oxford Circus. There were more people strolling along the pavement. For quite a little time they were separated by the passing of two scattered groups, straggling along, with hoarse cockney shouting, the women yodelling and yelling at everything they saw. The reprieve brought them together again, Miriam felt, with something rescued; a feeling of accomplishment. Madame Lintoff’s voice came hurriedly—Was she noticing the Salvation Army Band, thumping across the Circus; or this young man getting into a hansom as if the whole world were watching him being importantly headlong?—mournfully came a rounded little sentence deploring the Sunday closing of the theatres.... She would have neatly deplored September.... Je trouve cela triste, l’automne.
But thrilled by the sudden sounding of the little voice, Miriam tried eagerly to see London through her eyes; to find it a pity that the theatres were not open. She agreed, and turned her mind to the plays that were on at the moment. She could not imagine Madame Lintoff at any one of them. But their bright week-day names lost meaning in the Sunday atmosphere; drew back to their own place, and insisted that she should find a defence for its quiet emptiness. They themselves defended it, these English theatre names, gathering much of their colour and brightness from the weekly lull. But the meaning of the lull lay much deeper than the need for contrast; deeper than the reasons given by sabbatarians, whom it was a joy to defy, though they were right. It was something that was as difficult to defend as the qualities of the English weather.
This Russian woman was also a continental, sharing the awful continental demand that the week-day things should never cease; dependent all the time on revolving sets of outside things ... and the modern English were getting more and more into the same state. In a few years Sunday would be “bright”; full of everyday noise. Unless someone could find words to explain the thing all these people called dullness; what it was they were so briskly smothering. Without the undiscoverable words, it could not be spoken of. An imagined attempt brought mocking laughter and the sound of a Bloomsbury voice: “Vous n’savez pas quand vous vous rasez, hein?” Madame Lintoff would not be vulgar; but she would share the sentiment....
Miriam turned to her in wrath, feeling an opportunity. Here, for all her revolutionary opinions, was a representative of the talkative oblivious world. She would confess to her that she dared not associate closely with people because of the universal capacity for being bored, and the hurry everyone was in. Her anger began to change into interest as words framed themselves in her mind.... But as she turned to speak she was shocked by the pathos of the little cloaked figure; the beautifully moulded, lovely disc of face, shining out clasped by the cap, above the close black draperies, and withdrew her eyes to contemplate in silence the individual life of this being; her moments of solitary dealing with the detail of the day when she would be forced to think things; not thoughts; and did not know how marvellous things were. That lonely one was the person to approach, ignoring everything else. She would protest, make some kind of defence; but if the ground could be held, they would presently be together in a bright world. But there was not enough time, between here and Hyde Park. Then later.
Behind, near or far, the two dry men were keeping their heads, exchanging men’s ready-made remarks....
“Est-ce qu’il y a en Angleterre le grand drame psychologique?”
What on earth did she mean?
“Oh yes; here and there,” said Miriam firmly.
She sang over in her mind the duet of the contrasting voices as she turned in panic to the region within her, that was entrenched against England. Some light on the phrase would be there, if anywhere.... Shaw? Were his things great psychological dramas?