“Regular field-day, eh Miss Hens’n? Look here——” Mr. Orly turned towards the light coming in above the front door to exhibit his torn waistcoat and broken watch-chain. “Came for me like a fury. They’ve got double strength y’know when they’re under. Ever seen anything like it?”

Miriam glanced incredulously at the portly frontage.

“Fancy breaking the chain” she said, sickened by the vision of small white desperately fighting hands. He gathered up the hanging strings of bright links, his powerful padded musicianly hands finding the edges of the broken links and holding them adjusted with the discoloured ravaged fingers of an artizan. “A good tug would do it,” he said kindly. “A chain’s no stronger than the weakest link” he added with a note of dreamy sadness, drawing a sharp sigh.

“Did you get the tooth out” clutched Miriam automatically making a mental note of the remark that flashed through the world with a sad light, a lamp brought into a hopeless sick-room ... keeping up her attitude of response to show that she was accepting the apology for the extremities of rage over the getting of the anÆsthetist. Mrs. Orly appearing in the hall at the moment, still flushed from the storm, joined the group and outdid Miriam’s admiring amazement, brilliant smiles of relief garlanding her gentle outcry. “Hancock busy?” said Mr. Orly in farewell as he turned and swung away to the den followed by Mrs. Orly, her unseen face busy with an interrupted errand. He would not hear that her voice was divided.... No one seemed to be aware of the divided voices ... no men. Life went on and on, a great oblivious awfulness, sliding over everything. Every moment things went that could never be recovered ... on and on, and it was always too late, there was always some new thing obliterating everything, something that looked new, but always turned out to be the same as everything else, grinning with its sameness in an awful blank where one tried to remember the killed things ... if only everyone would stop for a moment and let the thing that was always hovering be there, let it settle and intensify. But the whole of life was a conspiracy to prevent it. Was there something wrong in it? It could not be a coincidence the way life always did that ... she had reached the little conservatory on the half landing, darkened with a small forest of aspidistra. The dull dust-laden leaves identified themselves with her life. What had become of her autumn of hard work that was to lift her out of her personal affairs and lead somewhere? Already the holiday freshness and vigour had left her; and nothing had been done. Nothing was so strong as the desire that everything would stop for a moment and allow her to remember ... wearily she mounted the remaining stairs to Mr. Hancock’s room. “I think” said a clear high confident voice from the chair and stopped. Miriam waited with painful eagerness while the patient rinsed her mouth; “that that gentleman thinks himself a good deal cleverer than he is,” she resumed sitting back in the chair.

“I am afraid I’m not as familiar with his work as I ought to be, but I can’t say I’ve been very greatly impressed as far as I have gone.”

“Don’t go any further. There’s nothing there to go for.”

Who are you speaking of? How do you know? What have you got that makes you think he has nothing?—Miriam almost cried aloud. Could she not see, could not both of them see that the quiet sheen of the green-painted window-frame cast off their complacent speech? Did they not hear it tinkle emptily back from the twined leaves and tendrils, the flowers and butterflies painted on the window in front of them? The patient had turned briskly to the spittoon again after her little speech. She would have a remark ready when the brisk rinsing was over. There could be no peace in her presence. Even when she was gagged there would be the sense of her sending out little teasing thoughts and comments. They could never leave anything alone ... oh it was that woman ... the little gold knot at the back of the cheerful little gold head; hair that curled tightly about her head when she was a baby and that had grown long and been pinned up, as the clever daughter of that man; getting to know all he had said about women. If she believed it she must loathe her married state and her children ... how could she let life continue through her? Perhaps it was the sense of her treachery that gave her that bright brisk amused manner. It was a way of carrying things off, that maddening way of speaking of everything as if life were a jest at everybody’s expense ... all “clever” women seemed to have that, never speaking what they thought or felt, but always things that sounded like quotations from men; so that they always seemed to flatter or criticise the men they were with according as they were as clever as some man they knew, or less clever. What was she like when she was alone and dropped that bright manner.... “Have you made any New Year resolutions? I don’t make any. My friends think me godless, I think them lacking in common sense” ... exactly like a man; taking up a fixed attitude ... having a sort of prepared way of taking everything ... like the Wilsons ... anything else was ‘unintelligent’ or ‘absurd’ ... their impatience meant something. Somehow all the other people were a reproach. If some day everyone lived in the clear light of science, “waiting for the pronouncements of science in all the affairs of life,” waiting for the pronouncements of those sensual dyspeptic men with families who thought of women as existing only to produce more men ... admirably fitted by Nature’s inexorable laws for her biological rÔle ... perhaps she agreed or pretended to think it all a great lark ... the last vilest flattery ... she had only two children ... si la femme avait plus de sensibilitÉ elle ne retomberait pas si facilement dans la grossesse.... La femme, c’est peu galant de le dire, est la femelle de l’homme. The Frenchman at any rate wanted to say something else. But why want to be gallant ... and why not say man; it is not very graceful to say it, is the male of woman. If women had been the recorders of things from the beginning it would all have been the other way round ... Mary. Mary, the Jewess, write something about Mary the Jewess; the Frenchman’s Queen of Heaven.

Englishmen; the English were “the leading race.” “England and America together—the Anglo-Saxon peoples—could govern the destinies of the world.” What world? ... millions and millions of child-births ... colonial women would keep it all going ... and religious people ... and if religion went on there would always be all the people who took the Bible literally ... and if religion were not true then there was only science. Either way was equally abominable ... for women.

2

The far end of the ward was bright sunlight ... there she was enthroned, commanding the whole length of the ward, sitting upright, her head and shoulders already conversational, her hands busy with objects on the bed towards which her welcoming head was momentarily bent; like a hostess moving chairs in a small drawing room ... chrysanthemums all down the ward—massed on little tables ... a parrot sidling and bobbing along its perch, great big funny solemn French grey, fresh clean living French grey pure in the sunlight, a pure canary coloured beak ... clean grey and yellow ... in the sun ... a curious silent noise in the stillness of the ward. “I couldn’t hear; I wasn’t near enough.”

“Better late than never, I said.”

“D’you know I thought you’d only been here a few days and to-day when I looked at your letter I was simply astounded. You’re sitting up.”

“I should hope I am. They kept me on my back, half starving for three weeks.”

“You look very pink and well now.”

“That’s what Dr. Ashley Densley said. You ought to have seen me when I came in. You see I’m on chicken now.”

“And you feel better.”

“Well,—you can’t really tell how you are till you’re up.”

“When are you going to get up?”

“Tomorrow I hope dear. So you see you’re just in time.”

“Do you mean you are going away?”

“They turn you out as soon as you’re strong enough to stand.”

“But—how can you get about?”

“Dr. Ashley Densley has arranged all that. I’m going to a convalescent home.”

“Oh, that’s very nice.”

“Poor Dr. Ashley Densley, he was dreadfully upset.”

“You’ve had some letters to cheer you up.” Miriam spoke impatiently, her eyes rooted on the pale leisurely hands mechanically adjusting some neatly arranged papers.

“No de-er. My friends have all left me to look after myself this time but since I’ve been sitting up, I’ve been trying to get my affairs in order.”

“I thought of bringing you some flowers but there was not a single shop between here and Wimpole Street.”

“There’s generally women selling them outside. But I’m glad you didn’t; I’ve too much sympathy with the poor nurses.”

Miriam glanced fearfully about. There were so many beds with forms seated and lying upon them ... but there seemed no illness or pain. Quiet eyes met hers; everything seemed serene; there was no sound but the strange silent noise of the sunlight and the flowers. Half way down the ward stood a large three-fold screen covered with dark American cloth.

“She’s unconscious today,” said Miss Dear; “she won’t last through the night.”

“Do you mean to say there is someone dying there?”

“Yes de-er.”

“Do you mean to say they don’t put them into a separate room to die?”

“They can’t dear. They haven’t got the space” flashed Miss Dear.

Death shut in with one lonely person. Brisk nurses putting up the screen. Dying eyes cut off from all but those three dark surrounding walls, with death waiting inside them. Miriam’s eyes filled with tears. There, just across the room, was the end. It had to come somewhere; just that; on any summer’s afternoon ... people did things; hands placed a screen, people cleared you away.... It was a relief to realise that there were hospitals to die in; worry and torture of mind could end here. Perhaps it might be easier with people all round you than in a little room. There were hospitals to be ill in and somewhere to die neatly, however poor you were. It was a relief ... “she’s always the last to get up; still snoring when everybody’s fussing and washing.” That would be me ... it lit up the hostel. Miss Dear liked that time of fussing and washing in company with all the other cubicles fussing and washing. To be very poor meant getting more and more social life with no appearances to keep up, getting up each day with a holiday feeling of one more day and the surprise of seeing everybody again; and the certainty that if you died somebody would do something. Certainly it was this knowledge that gave Miss Dear her peculiar strength. She was a nurse and knew how everything was done. She knew that people, all kinds of people were people and would do things. When one was quite alone one could not believe this. Besides no one would do anything for me. I don’t want anyone to. I should hate the face of a nurse who put a screen round my bed. I shall not die like that. I shall die in some other way, out in the sun, with—yes—oh yes—Tah-dee, t’dee, t’dee—t’dee.

“It must be funny for a nurse to be in a hospital.”

“It’s a little too funny sometimes dear—you know too much about what you’re in for.”

“Ilikeyourredjacket. Good Heavens!”

“That’s nothing dear. He does that all the afternoon.”

“How can you stand it?”

“It’s Hobson’s choice, madam.”

The parrot uttered three successive squawks fuller and harsher and even more shrill than the first.

“He’s just tuning up; he always does in the afternoon just as everybody is trying to get a little sleep.”

“But I never heard of such a thing! It’s monstrous, in a hospital. Why don’t you all complain.”

“’Sh dear; he belongs to Matron.”

“Why doesn’t she have him in her room? Shut up, polly.”

“He’d be rather a roomful in a little room.”

“Well—what is he here? It’s the wickedest thing of its kind I’ve ever heard of; some great fat healthy woman ... why don’t the doctors stop it?”

“Perhaps they hardly notice it dear. There’s such a bustle going on in the morning when they all come round.”

“But hang it all she’s here to look after you, not to leave her luggage all over the ward.”

3

The ripe afternoon light ... even outside a hospital ... the strange indistinguishable friend, mighty welcome, unutterable happiness. Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? The light has no end. I know it and it knows me, no misunderstanding, no barrier. I love you—people say things. But nothing that anybody says has any meaning. Nothing that anybody says has any meaning. There is something more than anything that anybody says, that comes, first, before they speak ... vehicles travelling along through heaven; everybody in heaven without knowing it; the sound the vehicles made all together, sounding out through the universe ... life touches your heart like dew; that is true ... the edge of his greasy knowing selfish hair touches the light; he brushes it; there is something in him that remembers. It is in everybody; but they won’t stop. How maddening. But they know. When people die they must stop. Then they remember. Remorse may be complete; until it is complete you cannot live. When it is complete something is burned away ... ou-agh, flows out of you, burning, inky, acid, flows right out ... purged ... though thy sins are as scarlet they shall be white as snow. Then the light is there, nothing but the light, and new memory, sweet and bright; but only when you have been killed by remorse.

This is what is meant by a purple twilight. Lamps alight, small round lights, each in place, shedding no radiance, white day lingering on the stone pillars of the great crescent, the park railings distinct, the trees shrouded but looming very large and permanent, the air wide and high and purple, darkness alight and warm. Far far away beyond the length of two endless months is Christmas. This kind of day lived for ever. It stood still. The whole year, funny little distant fussy thing stood still in this sort of day. You could take it in your hand and look at it. Nobody could touch this. People and books and all those things that men had done, in the British Museum were a crackling noise, outside.... Les yeux gris, vont au paradis. That was the two poplars standing one each side of the little break in the railings, shooting up; the space between them shaped by their shapes, leading somewhere. I must have been through there; it’s the park. I don’t remember. It isn’t. It’s waiting. One day I will go through. Les yeux gris, vont au paradis. Going along, along, the twilight hides your shabby clothes. They are not shabby. They are clothes you go along in, funny; jolly. Everything’s here, any bit of anything, clear in your brain; you can look at it. What a terrific thing a person is; bigger than anything. How funny it is to be a person. You can never not have been a person. Bouleversement. It’s a fait bouleversant. Christ-how-rummy. It’s enough. Du, Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurÜck, ich habe genossen dass irdische GlÜck; ich habe geleibt und gelebet.... Oh let the solid earth not fail beneath my feet, until I am quite quite sure.... Hullo, old Euston Road, beloved of my soul, my own country, my native heath. There’ll still be a glimmer on the table when I light the lamp ... how shall I write it down, the sound the little boy made as he carefully carried the milk jug ... going along, trusted, trusted, you could see it, you could see his mother. His legs came along, little loose feet, looking after themselves, pottering, behind him. All his body was in the hand carrying the milk jug. When he had done carrying the milk jug he would run; running along the pavement amongst people, with cool round eyes not looking at anything. Where the crowd prevented his running he would jog up and down as he walked, until he could run again, bumping solemnly up and down amongst the people; boy.

4

The turning of the key in the latch was lively with the vision of the jumping boy. The flare of the match in the unlit hall lit up eternity. The front door was open, eternity poured in and on up the stairs. At one of those great staircase windows where the last of the twilight stood a sudden light of morning would not be surprising. Of course a letter; curly curious statements on the hall-stand. That is mother-of-pearl, nacre; twilight nacre; crÉpuscule nacre; I must wait until it is gone. It is a visitor; pearly freshness pouring in; but if I wait I may feel different. With the blind up the lamp will be a lamp in it; twilight outside, the lamp on the edge of it, making the room gold, edged with twilight.

I can’t go to-night. It’s all here; I must stay here. Botheration. It’s Eve’s fault. Eve would rather go out and see that girl than stay here. Eve likes getting tied up with people. I won’t get tied up; it drives everything away. Now I’ve read the letter I must go. There’ll be afterwards when I get back. No one has any power over me. I shall be coming back. I shall always be coming back.

5

Perhaps it had been Madame Tussaud’s that had made this row of houses generally invisible; perhaps their own awfulness. When she found herself opposite them, Miriam recognised them at once. By day they were one high long lifeless smoke-grimed faÇade fronted by gardens colourless with grime, showing at its thickest on the leaves of an occasional laurel. It had never occurred to her that the houses could be occupied. She had seen them now and again as reflectors of the grime of the Metropolitan Railway. Its smoke poured up over their faces as the smoke from a kitchen fire pours over the back of a range. The sight of them brought nothing to her mind but the inside of the Metropolitan Railway; the feeling of one’s skin prickling with grime the sense of one’s smoke-grimed clothes. There was nothing in that strip between Madame Tussaud’s and the turning into Baker Street but the sense of exposure to grime ... a little low grimed wall surmounted by paintless sooty iron railings. On the other side of the road a high brown wall, protecting whatever was behind, took the grime in one thick covering, here it spread over the exposed gardens and faÇades turning her eyes away. To-night they looked almost as untenanted as she had been accustomed to think them. Here and there on the black expanse a window showed a blurred light. The house she sought appeared to be in total darkness. The iron gate crumbled harshly against her gloves as she set her weight against the rusty hinges. Gritty dust sounded under her feet along the pathway and up the shallow steps leading to the unlit doorway.

6

Her flight up through the sickly sweet-smelling murk of the long staircase ended in a little top back room brilliant with unglobed gaslight. Miss Dear got her quickly into the room and stood smiling and waiting for a moment for her to speak. Miriam stood nonplussed, catching at the feelings that rushed through her and the thoughts that spoke in her mind. Distracted by the picture of the calm tall, gold-topped figure in the long grey skirt and the pale pink flannel dressing-jacket. Miss Dear was smiling the smile of one who has a great secret to impart. There was a saucepan or frying pan or something—with a handle—sticking out.... “I’m glad you’ve brought a book” said Miss Dear. The room was closing up and up ... the door was shut. Miriam’s exasperation flew out. She felt it fly out. What would Miss Dear do or say? “I ’oped you’d come” she said in her softest most thoughtful tones. “I’ve been rushing about and rushing about.” She turned with her swift limber silent-footed movement to the thing on the gas-ring. “Sit down dear” she said, as one giving permission, and began rustling a paper packet. A haddock came forth and the slender thoughtful fingers plucked and picked at it and lifted it gingerly into the shallow steaming pan. Miriam’s thoughts whirled to her room, to the dark sky-domed streets, to the coming morrow. They flew about all over her life. The cane-seated chair thrilled her with a fresh sense of anger.

“I’ve been shopping and rushing about” said Miss Dear disengaging a small crusty loaf from its paper bag. Miriam stared gloomily about and waited.

“Do you like haddock, dear?”

“Oh—well—I don’t know—yes I think I do.”

The fish smelled very savoury. It was wonderful and astonishing to know how to cook a real meal, in a tiny room; cheap ... the lovely little loaf and the wholesome solid fish would cost less than a small egg and roll and butter at an A.B.C. How did people find out how to do these things?

“You know how to cook?”

“Haddock doesn’t hardly need any cooking” said Miss Dear, shifting the fish about by its tail.

7

“What is your book dear?”

“Oh—Villette.”

“Is it a pretty book?”

She didn’t want to know. She was saying something else.... How to mention it? Why say anything about it? But no one had ever asked. No one had known. This woman was the first. She of all people was causing the first time of speaking of it.

“I bought it when I was fifteen,” said Miriam vaguely, “and a Byron—with some money I had; seven and six.”

“Oh yes.”

“I didn’t care for the Byron; but it was a jolly edition; padded leather with rounded corners and gilt edged leaves.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been reading this thing ever since I came back from my holidays.”

“It doesn’t look very big.”

Miriam’s voice trembled. “I don’t mean that. When I’ve finished it I begin again.” “I wish you would read it to me.”

Miriam recoiled. Anything would have done; Donovan or anything.... But something had sprung into the room. She gazed at the calm profile, the long slender figure, the clear grey and pink, the pink frill of the jacket falling back from the soft fair hair turned cleanly up, the clean fluffy curve of the skull, the serene line of the brow bent in abstracted contemplation of the steaming pan. “I believe you’d like it” she said brightly.

“I should love you to read to me when we’ve ’ad our supper.”

“Oh—I’ve had my supper.”

“A bit of haddock won’t hurt you dear.... I’m afraid we shall have to be very knockabout; I’ve got a knife and a fork but no plates at present. It comes of living in a box,” said Miss Dear pouring off the steaming water into the slop-pail.

“I’ve had my supper—really. I’ll read while you have yours.”

“Well, don’t sit out in the middle of the room dear.”

“I’m all right” said Miriam impatiently, finding the beginning of the first chapter. Her hands clung to the book. She had not made herself at home as Eve would have done and talked. Now, those words would sound aloud, in a room. Someone would hear and see. Miss Dear would not know what it was. But she would hear and see something.

“It’s by a woman called Charlotte BrontË” she said and began headlong with the gaslight in her eyes.

The familiar words sounded chilly and poor. Everything in the room grew very distinct. Before she had finished the chapter Miriam knew the position of each piece of furniture. Miss Dear sat very still. Was she listening patiently like a mother, or wife, thinking of the reader as well as of what was read, and with her own thoughts running along independently, interested now and again in some single thing in the narrative, something that reminded her of some experience of her own or some person she knew? No, there was something different. However little she saw and heard, something was happening. They were looking and hearing together ... did she feel anything of the grey ... grey ... grey made up of all the colours there are; all the colours, seething into an even grey ... she wondered as she read on almost by heart, at the rare freedom of her thoughts, ranging about. The book was cold and unreal compared to what it was when she read it alone. But something was happening. Something was passing to and fro between them, behind the text; a conversation between them that the text, the calm quiet grey that was the outer layer of the tumult, brought into being. If they should read on, the conversation would deepen. A glow ran through her at the thought. She felt that in some way she was like a man reading to a woman, but the reading did not separate them like a man’s reading did. She paused for a moment on the thought. A man’s reading was not reading; not a looking and a listening so that things came into the room. It was always an assertion of himself. Men read in loud harsh unnatural voices, in sentences, or with voices that were a commentary on the text, as if they were telling you what to think ... they preferred reading to being read to; they read as if they were the authors of the text. Nothing could get through them but what they saw. They were like showmen....

“Go on, dear.”

“My voice is getting tired. It must be all hours. I ought to have gone; ages ago,” said Miriam settling herself in the little chair with the book standing opened on the floor at her side.

“The time does pass quickly, when it is pleasantly occupied.”

A cigarette now would not be staying on. It would be like putting on one’s hat. Then the visit would be over; without having taken place. The incident would have made no break in freedom. They had been both absent from the room nearly all the time. Perhaps that was why husbands so often took to reading to their wives, when they stayed at home at all; to avoid being in the room listening to their condemning silences or to their speech, speech with all the saucepan and comfort thoughts simmering behind it.

“I haven’t had much time to attend to study. When you’ve got to get your living there’s too much else to do.”

Miriam glanced sharply. Had she wanted other things in the years of her strange occupation? She had gone in for nursing sentimentally and now she knew the other side; doing everything to time, careful carrying out of the changing experiments of doctors. Her reputation and living depended on that; their reputation and living depended on her. And she had to go on, because it was her living.... Miss Dear was dispensing little gestures with bent head held high and inturned eyes. She was holding up the worth and dignity of her career. It had meant sacrifices that left her mind enslaved. But all the same she thought excuses were necessary. She resented being illiterate. She had a brain somewhere, groping and starved. What could she do? It was too late. What a shame ... serene golden comeliness, slender feet and hands, strange ability and knowledge of the world, and she knew, knew there was something that ought to be hers. Miriam thrilled with pity. The inturned eyes sent out a challenging blue flash that expanded to a smile. Miriam recoiled battling in the grip of the smile.

“I wish you’d come round earlier to-morrow dear, and have some supper here.”

“How long are you going to stay here?” ... to come again and read further and find that strange concentration that made one see into things. Did she really like it?

“Well dear you see I don’t know. I must settle up my affairs a little. I don’t know where I am with one thing and another. I must leave it in the hands of an ’igher power.” She folded her hands and sat motionless with inturned eyes, making the little movements with her lips that would lead to further speech, a flashing forth of something....

“Well, I’ll see” said Miriam getting up.

“I shall be looking for you.”