Miriam let herself cautiously in. The whole house was hers; she was a boarder; but the right to linger freely in any part of it was bought by Sissie’s French lessons and being Sissie’s teacher meant that the Baileys could approach familiarly at any moment ...... all her privileges were bought with a heavy price, here and at Wimpole Street ..... it’s us; our family; always masquerading. But the lessons made opportunities of being affable to the Baileys; removing the need for seeking them out purposely from time to time. Cut and dried. I’ve patriotic ballads cut and dried. I’m cut and dried, everybody thinks. Moving and speaking stiffly, the stamp of my family, the minute anything is expected of me. Nobody knows me. I grow more and more unknown and more and more like what people think of me.... But I know; and things go on coming; scraps of other people’s things. No one in the world could imagine what it is to me to have this house; the fag-end of the Baileys’ stock-in-trade. God couldn’t know, completely. There’s something wrong about it; but damn, I can’t help it. In my secret self I should love a prison. Walls. What are walls?

If she scuffed her muddy shoes too cheerfully someone would appear at the dining-room door. Beyond the gaslight pouring down on to the smeary marble of the hall table and glimmering against the threatening dining-room door the dim staircase beckoned her up into darkness. A few steps and she would be going upstairs. Where? What for? Hgh—HEE! at the far end of the passage beyond the hall..... There was a line of bright light there, coming through the chink of the little door usually hidden in the darkness beyond where the Baileys disappeared down the basement stairs. Then there was a room there...... The little door was pushed open and a man’s figure stood outlined against the bright light and disappeared, shutting the door. There had been a table and a lamp upon it .... the sound of the laugh rang in her head; a single lively deep-chested note followed by a falsetto note that curved hysterically up. Men; gentlemen. How long had they been there? They would not stay. How had they come? Where had Mrs. Bailey found them? Had they already found out that it was not their sort of house? Whom were they afraid of shocking with their refinement and freedom? They were making a bright little world in there by feeling themselves surrounded by people who would be shocked. They did not know there was someone there they could not shock.... She imagined herself in the doorway .... hullo! Fancy you here.... The dining-room door had opened and Mrs. Bailey was standing in the hall with the door open behind her. Miriam was not prepared with a refusal of the invitation to come in. She glanced over Mrs. Bailey’s shoulder and saw the two girls sitting at the fireside. Two letters on the hall-table addressed to the Norwegian told her that the Baileys were alone. She yielded to Mrs. Bailey’s delighted manner and went in. She would stay, keeping on her outdoor things, long enough to hear about the new people. The close sickly sweet air of the room closed oppressively round her heavy garments—Here you are young lady sit here—said Mrs. Bailey piloting her to a chair in front of the fire. There was a stranger sitting at the fireside. Mr. Mendizabble murmured Mrs. Bailey as Miriam sat down. Miriam’s affronted eyes took in the figure of a man sitting on the wooden stool crowded in between the mantelpiece and the easy chair occupied by Sissie; a man from a cafÉ ..... a foreign waiter in his best clothes, sheeny stripy harsh pale grey, a crimson waistcoat showing up the gleam of a gold watch-chain, and crimson cloth slippers; an Italian, a Frenchman, a French-Swiss. He was sitting bent conversationally forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped; quite at home. They had evidently been sitting there all the evening. The air was thick with their intercourse. Miriam received an abrupt nod in answer to her murmur and her stiff bow and followed with resentful curiosity the little foreign tune the man began humming far away in his head. He had not even glanced her way and the tune was his response to Mrs. Bailey’s introduction. The remains of a derisive smile seemed to snort from the firmly sweeping white nostrils above his tiny trim bushily upward curving black moustache. It moulded the strong closed lips and shone behind the whole of his curiously square evenly modelled face. The Bailey girls were watching him with shiny flushed cheeks and bright eyes. His skin was white and clean ..... mat; like felt ..... untouched and untried in the exhausted air of the shabby room. An insolent waiter. He had turned away towards the fire after his nod. From under a firm black-lashed white lid a bright dark eye gazed derision into the flames.

Go on Mr. Mendizzable smiled Mrs. Bailey brushing at her skirt with her handkerchief—we are most interested.

Hay, madame that is all, he laughed derisively in rich singing swaying tones towards the middle of the hearthrug—I skate from one end of their canal to another, faster than them all. I win their prize. Je m’en fiche—

You skated all the way along the canal.—

Ieeea skate their canal. That was Amsterdam. I do many things there. I edit their newspaper. I conduct a cafÉ.

Mts. You have had some adventures—

That was not adventures in Amsterdam mon dieu! He swayed drumming from foot to foot in time to his shouts. Had he really beaten those wonderful skaters? Perhaps he had not. She glanced at his brow calm, firm, dead white under the soft crisply ridged black hair. Perhaps he was Dutch; and that was why he looked common and also refined.

2

At ten o’clock the youngest girl was sent to bed. Miriam scornfully watched herself miss her opportunity of getting away. She sat fascinated, resenting the interruption; enviously filching the gay outbreaking kindness that robbed the departure of humiliation and sent the girl away counting on to-morrow. He went out of his way to make Polly Bailey happy .... and sat on by the dying fire unwearied, freshly humming to himself towards the dingy hearth scattered thinly with sparse dusty ash. Mrs. Bailey returned, raked together the remains of the fire and settled herself in her chair with a shiver. In a moment she would begin her questionings and the voice would sound again.—You cold mother darling? Come nearer the fire—Mrs. Bailey pulled her chair a few inches forward arching her neck and smiling her bright sweet smile—Oogh, its parky upstairs—Miriam implored herself to go. Parky, reiterated Mrs. Bailey uncertainly, glancing daintily from side to side and smiling away a yawn behind her small rough reddened hand—Parky? What is parky?—Parky, said Mrs. Bailey, cold; like a park—Ah, I see. That is good. When I go upstairs I go to Hyde Park.... I shall have in my bedroom a band and a mass meeting, and a policeman. Salvation Army Band. Miriam sat stiffly through the laughter of the Baileys. Her refusal to join brought the discomforting realisation of having laughed, several times during the past hour. She had laughed in spite of herself, flinging her laughter out across the hearthrug towards the dying fire, leading the laughter of the Baileys, holding them off and herself apart. Now suddenly by refusing to share their laughter when they led the way she had openly separated herself from them. Then they knew she stayed on under a charm. They had witnessed her theft from the wealth they had provided, her gratitude to him for the store of memories she had gathered. It was the price. It stung and tried to humiliate her. She sat steadily on, flouting it. The grouping would not recur. Why did not Mrs. Bailey make him go on talking? A cold gloom spread sideways from the polished arch of the grate, encroaching on the corner where he sat drumming and humming. She drew her eyes with an air of absorption towards the dying fire. Its aspect was unendurably bleak. Her mind shrank from it, only to meet the sense of the cold darkness waiting upstairs. Mrs. Bailey’s voice bridged the emptiness. Some inner link was restored. Somewhere in her voice was something that rang restoringly round the world. The disconnected narrative was flowing again. The chilly hearth glowed with a small dull brilliance.... The foreign voice went on and on, narrative dialogue commentary running flowing leaping, in the voice that rang whatever it said in bright sunshine. She listened openly, apologising in swift affectionate glances for her stiff middle-class resentment of his vulgar appearance. Was he vulgar? She tried in vain to recall her first impression. That curious blending of sturdy strength and polished refinement in the handsome head was something well-known in the head of a friend. She forced her friends to apologise and submit to the charm.....

3

It was nearly midnight. The grey of to-morrow morning kept pressing on her attention. She gathered herself together to go, and rose reluctantly. The outer chill came down to meet her rising form. The glow of life was left there at the heart of the circle by the fire. The little man leapt up—Hah, good night all—and pushed past her and out of the room. Mrs. Bailey had made some remark towards her as she neared the door. She professed not to hear and went slowly on in the wake of the footsteps leaping up the dark flights. They crossed the landing next below hers and ceased. When she rounded the stairs light blazed from a wide-open door and a little melody sounded for an instant in a smooth swaying falsetto. As soon as she had passed, the door was violently slammed .... all those stories were true. And the first one about the skating. She imagined the white brow under a fur cap and the square short strong well-knit form swaying strongly from side to side, on and on, ironically winning.

4

Sissie read her set of phrases in heavy docility. Her will and the shapeless colourless voice murmuring from the back of her throat were given to the lesson; but the kindly sullen profile smouldered in slumber. Miriam pondered at ease, contrasting the two voices as they placed one after the other the little trite sentences upon the empty air. That Sissie should speak her French in the worst kind of English way did not really matter. But why was it? What did it mean? They all had something in common—all the people who spoke French like that .... a slender young man darted noiselessly into the room and began busily dusting the sideboard. He was wearing a striped cotton jacket. Mrs. Bailey had engaged a manservant.... It was impossible. He would not be able to be kept. It was like a play. He was like a character in a farce, rushing on and whisking things about. It was a play; amateur theatricals, Mrs. Bailey rushing radiantly about, stage-managing. It was pretending things were different when they were not; breaking up the atmosphere of the house. Where did she get her ideas? ..... Coming back to her surveillance she listened intently. Wait a minute, she said, we will begin all over again. I see exactly what it is. There’s no difficulty. You can learn all about pronunciation in a few minutes. Sissie had started. Controlling herself she took her attention from the book long enough to give Miriam a sympathetic glancing smile. Let the words ring in your head, into your nose and against your forehead. Sissie sat back smiling, and sat watching Miriam’s face. It’s we who speak through the nose. And mouth. In gusts, whoof, whoof, from the chest all sound and no enunciation. Sissie’s eyes were roving intently about Miriam’s face. They stop the breath at the lips and in the nose. Bong. That’s through the nose. Bon! D’you hear; like a little explosion. Hold the lips tight before the b and explode the word up into the nose partly closing the back of the throat and mouth. It’s all like that and the pronunciation does not vary. When you know the few rules and get the vowels pure and explode the consonants, that’s all there is. Sissie waited, controlling an apologetic smile. She had realised nothing but the violent outburst and was secretly laughing over the idea of explosions.... Say matin, suggested Miriam patiently. Mattong, murmured Sissie. Say mattah, persisted Miriam. The youth came flourishing in with the coal box. That’s right. Now try forcing the ah up into your nose and shutting your nose on it. It’s time to lay the table Emyou, stated Sissie reprovingly towards the hearthrug. Pliz?—The young man reared a mild fair crested head above the rim of the table. Lay the table, tarb, paw dinnay snapped Sissie. I shall have to go Miss Henderson she added, getting gently up and ambling to the door. The young man shot murmuring from the room. They appeared to collide in the hall. Miriam found herself in the midst of a train of thought that had distracted her during her morning’s work. Cosmopolis, she scribbled in her note-book. The world of science and art is the true cosmopolis. Those were not the words in “Cosmopolis” but it was the idea. Perhaps no one had thought of it before the man who thought of having the magazine in three languages. It would be one of the new ideas. Tearing off the page she laid it on the sofa-head and sat contemplating an imagined map of Europe with London Paris and Berlin joined by a triangle, the globe rounding vaguely off on either side. All over the globe, dotted here and there were people who read and thought, making a network of unanimous culture. It was a tiring reflection; but it brought a comfortable assurance that somewhere beyond the hurrying confusion of everyday life something was being done quietly in a removed real world that led the other world. People arrived independently at the same conclusions in different languages and in the world of science they communicated with each other. That made Cosmopolis. Yet it was an awful thought that the world might gradually become all one piece; perhaps with one language; perhaps English if those people were right who talked about Anglo-Saxon supremacy. “England and America together could rule the world.” It sounded secure and comforting, like a police-station; it would be wonderful to belong to the race whose language was spoken all over the world. All the foreigners would simply have to become English. But that brought a dreadful sense of loss. Foreign languages had a beauty that could not be found in English, and the world would be ruled by the kind of English people who could never get the sound of a foreign word and who therefore had all sorts of appalling obliviousness.

“You write that miss?”

Yes, said Miriam leaping through surprise and indignation to delight. Sissie and Emile were back again in the room hurrying and angry. The little man bid them a loud good-evening; a tablecloth was flountering out across the large table. Miriam returned to her note-book. He was writing, with a scrap of pencil taken from his pocket, on her piece of paper, held against the wall. There miss he shouted gruffly, handing it to her. Lies, she read; scribbled in a rounded hand across her words, and underneath—there is NO Cosmopolis. Bernard Mendizabal.

Oh yes, there is a cosmopolis argued Miriam looking up and out from a whirl of convincing images. He was walking about in the window space in his extraordinary clothes, short and somehow too square for his clothes, making his clothes look square. His square roundly modelled head was changeably sculptured by the gaslight as he paced up and down. His distinction seemed to be sharpened by her words as she said vous avez tort monsieur. She had a sense of Emile and Sissie glancing and affronted while she slid down her sentence to leap, flouting them, forsaking her crowding thoughts, and catch at any cost, the joy of saying and hearing no matter what, in foreign speech. She would pay for the moment any price to make it sound and keep it sounding in the room. The spaces of her separate life in the house became a background for this familiar forgotten joy so unexpectedly renewed. “No miss!” shouted Mr. Mendizabal. She cast a fierce general scowl towards his promenading figure. He was another of those foreigners who care for nothing in England but practising English. Then she would fight her theory.

“Je n’ai pas tort” he thundered, standing before her with his hands in his pockets. He was taking her French for granted. In her thankfulness she sat docile before a torrent of words taking in nothing of their meaning, throwing out provisional phrases according to his tone of question or assertion. The Baileys coming in and out of the room would see “an animated French conversation” and Sissie and Emile would forget her desperate onslaught in their admiration of the spectacle. The more she kept it glowing and emphatic and alive the further she was redeemed. She gave no glance their way. Dinner must be almost ready. Soon she would have to go. The gong would tell her. Till then she could remain immersed in the tide of words. The little man was earnest and enraged. He used his French easily and fluently. It was not wonderful to him suddenly to become French, to feel the things he expressed change, become clear neat patterns, lose some of their meaning, fall open to attack; the pain of the failure of words so set out, was made bearable by the wonder of the journey from speech to speech. He remained himself, apparantly unaware of the change of environment, or indifferent to it.... En dÉche what did that mean? Vous devez me voir en dÉche. You ought to see me en dÉche. That seemed to be his summing up, the basis of his denial of a cosmopolis. She attended. The only way he declared, as if recalling an earlier assertion, of proving the indifference of everyone to everyone else is to be en dÉche. Smiling comprehensively just before he turned on his heel and swung round, she drifted out of the room amidst the clangour of the gong .... en dÉche .... dÉchÉance? .... somehow at a disadvantage. She thought her written phrases in French. They sounded a little grandiloquent. Someone seemed to be declaiming them from a platform. He probably had not realised what she was trying to say. But he was a cosmopolitan, and he denied that there was any cosmopolis, any sympathy between races, even between individuals. He was a pessimist. With all his charm and zest he believed in nothing and nobody. And he spoke from experience. Perhaps it was only in thoughts not in life that these things existed. People talked about cosmopolis because they wanted to believe it. Had he said that?