Chapter I · (continued 2)

Suddenly it struck her that the life of men was pitiful. They hovered about the doors of freedom, returning sooner or later to the hearth, where even if they were autocrats they were not free; but passing guests, never fully initiated into the house-life, where the real active freedom of the women resided behind the noise and tumult of meetings. Man’s life was bandied to and fro ... from word to word. Hemmed in by women, fearing their silence, unable to enter its freedom—being himself made of words—cursing the torrents of careless speech with which its portals were defended.

And all the time unselfconscious thoughtless little men, with neat or shabby sets of unconsidered words for everything, busily bleating through cornets, blaring through trombones and euphoniums, thrumming undertones on double-basses. She summoned Harriett and shrieked with laughter at the cheerful din. It was cheerful, even in a funeral march. There would certainly be music in heaven; but not books.

The shock of meeting Tommy had brought the grey of tomorrow morning into the gold-lit streets. There was a fresh breeze setting down Shaftesbury Avenue. Here, still on the Circus, was that little coffee-place. Tommy was going home. She was rescuing the last scrap of a London evening here at the very centre and then going home, on foot, still well within the charmed circle.

The spell of the meeting with Tommy broke as she went down the little flight of steps. Here was eternity, the backward vista indivisible, attended by throngs of irreconcilable interpretations. Years ago, a crisis of loneliness, this little doorway, a glimpse, from the top of the steps, of a counter and a Lockhart urn, a swift descent, unseen people about her, companions; misery left behind, another little sanctuary added to her list. The next time, coming coldly with Michael Shatov, in a unison of escape from everlasting conflict; people clearly visible, indifferent and hard; the moment of catching, as they sat down, the flicker of his mobile eyelid, the lively unveiled recognising glance he had flung at the opposite table, describing its occupants before she saw them; the rush of angry sympathy; a longing to blind him; in some way to screen them from the intelligent unseeing glance of all the men in the world.

“You don’t see them; they are not there in what you see.”

“These types are generally quite rudimentary; there is no question of a soul there.”

“If you could only have seen your look; the most horrible look I have ever seen; alive with interest.”

“There is always a certain interest.”

The strange agony of knowing that in that moment he had been alone and utterly spontaneous; simple and whole; that it had been, for him, a moment of release from the evening’s misery; a sudden plunge into his own eternity, his unthreatened and indivisible backward vista. The horrible return, again and again, in her own counsels, to the fact that she had seen, that night, for herself, more than he had ever told her; that the pity he had appealed to was unneeded; his appeal a bold bid on the strength of his borrowed conviction that women do not, in the end, really care. How absolutely men are deceived by a little cheerfulness....

And now she herself was interested; had attained unawares a sort of connoisseurship, taking in, at a glance, nationality, type, status, the difference between inclination and misfortune. Was it he who had aroused her interest? Was this contamination or illumination?

And Michael’s past was a matter of indifference.... Only because it no longer concerned her? Then it had been jealousy? Her new calm interest in these women was jealousy. Jealousy of the appeal to men of their divine simplicity?

“... which women don’t understand.

And them as sez they does is not the marryin’ brand.”

Oh, the hopeless eternal inventions and ignorance of men; their utter cleverness and ignorance. Why had they been made so clever and yet so fundamentally stupid?

She ordered her coffee at the counter and stood facing upstairs towards the oblong of street. The skirts of women, men’s trousered legs, framed for an instant in the doorway, passed by, moving slowly, with a lifeless intentness.... Is the absence of personality original in men? Or only the result of their occupations? Original. Otherwise environment is more than the human soul. It is original. Belonging to maleness; to Adam with his spade; lonely in a universe of things. It causes them to be moulded by their occupations, taking shape, and status, from what they do. A barrister, a waiter, recognisable. Men have no natural rank. A woman can become a waitress and remain herself. Yet men pity women, and think them hard because they do not pity each other.

It is man, puzzled, astray, always playing with breakable toys, lonely and terrified in his universe of chaotic forces who is pitiful. The chaos that torments him is his own rootless self. The key, unsuspected, at his side.

In women like Eleanor Dear? Calm and unquestioning. Perfectly at home in life. With a charm beyond the passing charm of a man. She was central. All heaven and earth about her as she spoke. Illiterate, hampered, feeling her way all the time. And yet with a perfect knowledge. Perfect comprehension in her smile. All the maddening moments spent with her, the endless detail and fussing, all afterwards showing upon a background of gold.

Men weave golden things; thought, science, art, religion upon a black background. They never are. They only make or do; unconscious of the quality of life as it passes. So are many women. But there is a moment in meeting a woman, any woman, the first moment, before speech, when everything becomes new; the utter astonishment of life is there, speech seems superfluous, even with women who have not consciously realised that life is astonishing. It persists through all the quotations and conformities, and is there again, the one underlying thing that women have to express to each other, at parting. So that between women, all the practical facts, the tragedies and comedies and events, are but ripples on a stream. It is not possible to share this sense of life with a man; least of all with those who are most alive to “the wonders of the universe.” Men have no present; except sensuously.... That would explain their ambition ... and their doubting speculations about the future.

Yet it would be easier to make all this clear to a man than to a woman. The very words expressing it have been made by men.

It was just after coming back from the Wilsons, in the midst of the time round about Leyton’s wedding, that Eleanor had suddenly appeared on the Tansley Street doorstep.... I was just getting to know the houseful of Orly relations ... Mrs. Sloan-Paget, whisking me encouragingly into everything.... “my dear you’ve got style, and taste; stunning hair and a good complexion. Look at my girls. Darlings, I know. But what’s the good of putting clothes on figures like that?” ... Daughterless Mrs. Orly looked pleased like a mother when Mrs. Paget said “S’Henderson’s got to come down to Chumleigh.” ... I almost gave in to her reading of me; feeling whilst I was with her, back in the conservative, church point of view. I could have kept it up, with good coats and skirts and pretty evening gowns. Playing games. Living hilariously in roomy country houses, snubbing “outsiders,” circling in a perpetual round of family events, visits to town, everything fixed by family happenings, hosts of relations always about, everything, even sorrow, shared and distributed by large rejoicing groups; the warm wide middle circle of English life ... secure. And just as the sense of belonging was at its height, punctually, Eleanor had come, sweeping everything away. As if she had been watching. Coming out of the past with her claim.... Skimpier and more beset than ever. Yet steely with determination. Deepening her wild-rose flush and her smile. It was all over in a moment. Wreckage. Committal to her and her new set of circumstances.... She would not understand that a sudden greeting is always wonderful; even if the person greeted is not welcome. But Andrew Lang did not know what he was admitting. Men greet only themselves, their own being, past, present or future.... I am a man. The more people put you at your ease, the more eagerly you greet them.... That is why we men like “ordinary women.” And always disappoint them. They mistake the comfort of relaxation for delight in their society.

Eleanor swept everything away. By seeming to know in advance everything I had to tell, and ignore it as not worth consideration. But she also left her own circumstances unexplained; sitting about with peaceful face, talking in hints, telling long stories about undescribed people, creating a vast leisurely present, pitting it against the whole world, with graceful condescending gestures.

It was part of her mystery that she should have come back just that very afternoon. Then she was in the right. If you are in the right everything works for you. The original thing in her nature that made her so beautiful, such a perpetually beautiful spectacle, was right. The moment that had come whilst she must have been walking, brow modestly bent, with her refined, conversational little swagger of the shoulders, aware of all the balconies, down the street, had worked for her....

The impulses of expansive moments always make things happen. Or the moments come when something is about to happen? How can people talk about coincidence? How not be struck by the inside pattern of life? It is so obvious that everything is arranged. Whether by God or some deep wisdom in oneself does not matter. There is something that does not alter. Coming up again and again, at long intervals, with the same face, generally arresting you in midway, offering the same choice, ease or difficulty. Sometimes even a lure, to draw you back into difficulty. Determinists say that you choose according to your temperament, even if you go against your inclinations. But what is temperament?... Uniqueness ... something that has not existed before. A free edge.... Contemplation is freedom. The way you contemplate is your temperament. Then action is slavery?

There is something always plucking you back into your own life. After the first pain there is relief, a sense of being once more in a truth. Then why is it so difficult to remember that things deliberately done, with a direct movement of the will, always have a falseness? Never meet the desire that prompted the action. The will is really meant to prevent deliberate action? That is the hard work of life? The Catholics know that desire can never be satisfied. You must not desire God. You must love. I can’t do that. I can’t get clear enough about what he wants. Yet even without God I am not lonely; or ever completely miserable. Always in being thrown back from outside happiness, there seem to be two. A waiting self to welcome me.

It can’t be wrong to exist. In those moments before disaster existence is perfect. Being quite still. Sounds come presently from the outside world. Your mind moving about in it without envy or desire, realises the whole world. The future and the past are all one same stuff, changing and unreal. The sense of your own unchanging reality comes with an amazement and sweetness too great to be borne alone; bringing you to your feet. There must be someone there, because there is a shyness. You rush forward, to share the wonder. And find somebody engrossed with a cold in the head. And are so emphatic and sympathetic that they think you are a new friend and begin to expand. And it is wonderful until you discover that they do not think life at all wonderful.... That afternoon it had been a stray knock at the front door and a sudden impulse to save Mrs. Bailey coming upstairs. And Mrs. Bailey, after all she had said, also surprised into a welcome, greeting Eleanor as an old friend, taking her in at once. And then the old story of detained luggage, and plans prevented from taking shape. The dreadful slide back, everything disappearing but her and her difficulties, and presently everything forgotten but the fact of her back in the house. Afterwards when the truth came out, it made no difference but the relief of ceasing to be responsible for her. But this time there had been no responsibility. She had made no confidences, asked for no help. Was it blindness, or flattered vanity, not to have found out what she was going through?

Yet if the facts had been stated, Eleanor would not have been able to forget them. In those evenings and week-ends she had forgotten, and been happy. The time had been full of reality; memorable. It stood out now, all the going about together, drawn into a series of moments when they had both seen with the same eyes. Experiencing identity as they laughed together. Her recalling of their readings in the little Marylebone room, before the curate came, had not been a pretence. Mr. Taunton was the pretence. There had been no space even for curiosity as to the end of his part of the story. Eleanor, too, had not wished to break the charm by letting things in. She had been taking a holiday, between the desperate past and the uncertain future. In the midst of overwhelming things she had stood firm, her power of creating an endless present at its height. A great artist.

To Michael, a poor pitiful thing; Rodkin’s victim. She, of course, had given Michael that version. Little Michael, stealing to her room night by night, towards the end, to sleep at her side and say consoling things; never guessing that her threat of madness was an appeal to his Jewish kindness, a way of securing him. What a story for proper English people ... the best revelation in the whole of her adventure. And Mrs. Bailey too; true as steel. Serenely warding off the women boarders ... gastric distension.

Rodkin ... poor little Rodkin with his weak dreadful little life. Weekdays; the unceasing charm of Anglo-Russian speculation, Sundays; boredom and newspapers. Then the week again, business and a City man’s cheap adventures. He had behaved well, in spite of Michael’s scoldings. It was wonderful, the way the original Jewish spirit came out in him, at every step. His loose life was not Jewish. And it was really comic that he should have been trapped by a girl pretending to be an adventuress. Poor Eleanor, with all her English dreams; just Rodkin. But he was a Jew when he hesitated to marry a consumptive, and perfectly a Jew when he decided not to see the child lest he should love it; and also when he hurried down into Sussex the moment it came, to see it, with a huge armful of flowers, for her.... What a scene for the Bible-woman’s Hostel. All Eleanor. Her triumph. What other woman would have dared to engage a cubicle and go calmly down without telling them? And a week later she was in the Superintendent’s room and all those prim women sewing for her and hiding her and telling everybody she had rheumatic fever. And crying when she came away....

She was right. She justified her actions and came through. And now she’s a young married woman in a pretty villa, near the church, and the vicar calls and she won’t walk on Southend pier because “one meets one’s butcher and baker and candlestick maker.” But only because Rodkin is a child-worshipper. And she tolerates him and the child and he is a brow-beaten cowed little slave.... It is tempting to tell the story. A perfect recognisable story of a scheming unscrupulous woman; making one feel virtuous and superior; but only if one simply outlined the facts, leaving out all the inside things. Knowing a story like that from the inside, knowing Eleanor, changed all “scandalous” stories.... They were scandalous only when told? Never when thought of by individuals alone? Speech is technical. Every word. In telling things, technical terms must be used; which never quite apply.... To call Eleanor an adventuress does not describe her. You can only describe her by the original contents of her mind. Her own images; what she sees and thinks. She was an adventuress by the force of her ideals. Like Louise going on the street without telling her young man so that he would not have to pay for her trousseau....

Exeter was another. Keeping the shapes of civilisation. Charming at tea parties.... Knowing all the worldly things, made of good style from her perfect brow and nose to the tip of her slender foot ... made to shine at Ascot. It was only because she knew so much about Mrs. Drake’s secret drinking, that Mrs. Drake said suddenly in that midnight moment when Exeter had swept off to bed after a tiff, “I don’t go to hotels, with strange men.” I was reading that book of Dan Leno’s and thinking that if they would let me read it aloud their voices would be different; that behind their angry voices were real selves waiting for the unreal sounds to stop. Up and down the tones of their voices were individual inflexions, feminine, innocent of harm, incapable of harm, horrified since their girlhood by what the world had turned out to be.... It was an awful shock. But Exeter paid her young man’s betting debts and kept him on his feet. And he was divorced. And so nice. But weak. Still he had the courage to shoot himself. And then she took to backing horses. And now married, in a cathedral, to a vicar; looking angelic in the newspaper photograph. He has only one regret ... their childlessness. “Er? Have children?” Yet Mrs. Drake would be staunch and kind to her if she were in need. Women are Jesuits....

From the first, in Eleanor’s mind, had shone, unquestioned, the shape of English life. Church and State and Family. God above. Her belief was perfect; impressive. In all her dealings she saw the working of a higher power, leading her to her goal. When her health failed and her vision receded, she clutched at the nearest material for making her picture. In all she had waded through, her courage had never failed. Nor her charm; the charm of her strength and her singleness of vision. Her God, an English-speaking gentleman, with English traditions, tactfully ignored all her contrivances and waited elsewhere, giving her time, ready to preside with full approval, over her accomplished aim.... Women are Jesuits.... The counterpart of all those Tansley Street women was little Mrs. Orly, innocently unscrupulous to save people from difficulty and pain....

It was when Eleanor went away that autumn that I found I had been made a Lycurgan; and began going to the meetings ... in that small room in Anselm’s Inn.... Ashamed of pride in belonging to a small exclusive group containing so many brilliant men. Making a new world. Concentrated intelligence and goodwill. Unanimous even in their differences. Able to joke together. Seeking, selflessly, only one thing. And because they selflessly sought it, all the things of fellowship added to them.... From the first I knew I was not a real Lycurgan. Not wanting their kind of selfless seeking, yet liking to be within the stronghold of people who were keeping watch, understanding how social injustice came about, explaining the working of things, revealing the rest of the world as naturally unconsciously blind, urgently requiring the enlightenment that only the Lycurgans could bring, that could only be found by endless dry work on facts and figures.... At first it was like going to school. Eagerly drinking in facts; a new history. The history of the world as a social group. Realising the immensity of the problems crying aloud all over the world, not insoluble, but unsolved because people did not realise themselves as members of one group. The convincing little Lycurgan tracts, blossoming out of all their intense labour, were the foundation of a new social order; gradually spreading social consciousness. But the hope they brought, the power of answering all the criticisms and objections of ordinary people, always seemed ill-gained. Always unless one took an active share, like listening at a door.... She was always catching herself dropping away from the first eager gleaning of material to speculations about the known circumstances of the lecturer, from them into a trance of oblivion, hearing nothing, remembering afterwards nothing of what had been said, only the quality of the atmosphere—the interest or boredom of the audience, the secret preoccupations of unknown people sitting near....

Everyone was going. The restaurant was beginning to close. The west-end was driving her off. She rose to go through the business of paying her bill, the moment of being told that money, someone’s need of profits, was her only passport into these central caverns of oblivion. Forever driven out. Passing on. To keep herself in countenance she paid briskly, with the air of one going purposefully. The sound of her footsteps on the little stairway brought her vividly before her own eyes, playing truant. She hurried to get out and away, to be walking along, by right, in the open, freed, for the remaining time, by the necessity of getting home, to lose herself once more....

The treelit golden glow of Shaftesbury Avenue flowed through her; the smile of an old friend. The wealth of swinging along up the bright ebb-way of the west-end, conscious of being, of the absence of desire to be elsewhere or other than herself. A future without prospects, the many doors she had tried, closed willingly by her own hand, the growing suspicion that nowhere in the world was a door that would open wide to receive her, the menace of an increasing fatigue, crises of withering mental pain, and then suddenly this incomparable sense of being plumb at the centre of rejoicing. Something always left within her that contradicted all the evidence. It compensated the failure of her efforts at conformity.... Yet to live outside the world of happenings, always to forget and escape, to be impatient, even scornful, of the calamities that moved in and out of it like a well-worn jest, was certainly wrong. But it could not be helped. It was forgetfulness, suddenly overtaking her in the midst of her busiest efforts ... memory ... a perpetual sudden blank ... and upon it broke forth this inexhaustible joy. The tappings of her feet on the beloved pavement were blows struck hilariously on the shoulder of a friend. To keep her voice from breaking forth she sang aloud in her mind, a soaring song unlimited by sound.

The visit to the revolutionaries seemed already in the past, added to the long procession of events that broke up and scattered the moment she was awake at this lonely centre.

Speech came towards her from within the echoes of the night; statements in unfamiliar shape. Years falling into words, dropping like fruit. She was full of strength for the end of the long walk; armed against the rush of associations waiting in her room; going swift and straight to dreamless sleep and the joy of another day.

The long wide street was now all even light, a fused misty gold, broken close at hand by the opening of a dark byway. Within it was the figure of an old woman bent over the gutter. Lamplight fell upon the sheeny slopes of her shawl and tattered skirt. Familiar. Forgotten. The last, hidden truth of London, spoiling the night. She quickened her steps, gazing. Underneath the forward-falling crushed old bonnet shone the lower half of a bare scalp ... reddish ... studded with dull, wartlike knobs.... Unimaginable horror quietly there. Revealed. Welcome. The head turned stealthily as she passed and she met the expected side-long glance; naked recognition, leering from the awful face above the outstretched bare arm. It was herself, set in her path and waiting through all the years. Her beloved hated secret self, known to this old woman. The street was opening out to a circus. Across its broken lights moved the forms of people, confidently, in the approved open pattern of life, and she must go on, uselessly, unrevealed; bearing a semblance that was nothing but a screen set up, hiding what she was in the depths of her being.