There was a hansom waiting outside Miss Szigmondy’s garden gate. The afternoon would begin at once with a swift drive back into the world. Miss Szigmondy met her in the dark hall, with an outbreak of bright guttural talk, talking as she collected her things, breaking in with shouted instructions to an invisible servant. Her voice sounded very foreign in the excited upper notes, but it rang, a thin wiry ring, not shrieking and breaking like the voices of excited Englishwomen, perhaps that was “voice production.”
In the cab she sat sorting her cards, reading out names. Miriam thrilled as she heard them. Miss Szigmondy’s attention was no longer on her. Her mind slipped easily back; the intervening time fell away. She was going with her sisters along past the Burlington Arcade, she saw the pillar box, the old man selling papers, the old woman with the crooked black sailor hat and the fringed shawl, sitting on a box behind her huge basket of tulips and daffodils … the great grimed stone pillars, the courtyard beyond them blazing with sunshine, the wide stone steps at the far end of the courtyard leading up into cool shadow, the turnstile and great hall, an archway, and the sudden fresh blaze of colours. …
But the hansom had turned into the main road and was going north. They were going even further north than Miss Szigmondy’s … up a straight empty Sunday suburban road between rows of suburban houses with gardens that tried to look pretty … an open silly prettiness like suburban ladies coming up to town for matinées … if there were artists living up here it would not be worth while to go and see them. …
As the afternoon wore on it dawned upon Miriam that if Miss Szigmondy were to be at the poet’s house in evening dress by half past six, they had seen nearly all they were going to see. There could be no thought of Chelsea. But she answered with a swift negative when Miss Szigmondy enquired as they were shown into their hansom outside their eighth large Hampstead house whether she were tired. Her unsatisfied consciousness ran ahead, waiting; just beyond, round the next corner was something that would relieve the oppression. “I just want to rgun in and see that poor boy Gilbert Haze.” Then it was over and she must go on enduring whilst Miss Szigmondy paid a call; unable to get free because she was being paid for and could not afford to go back alone. They drove for some distance, the large houses disappeared, they were in amongst little drab roadways like those round about Mornington Road. Perhaps if she improvised an engagement she could find her way to Regent’s Park and get back. But they had come so far. They must be on the outskirts of N.W., perhaps even in N. They pulled up before a small drab villa. The sun had gone behind the clouds, the short street was desolate. No touch of life or colour anywhere, hardly a sign of spring in the small parched shrub-filled front gardens, uniformly enclosed by dusty railings. She dreaded her wait alone in the cab with her finery and her empty afternoon while Miss Szigmondy visited her sick friend.
“Come along,” said Miss Szigmondy from the little garden path, “poor cgeature you do look tired.” Miriam got angrily out of the cab. Whose fault was it that she was tired? Why did Miss Szigmondy go to these things? She had not cared and was not disappointed at not caring. She was just the same as when she had started out.
“I will wait in the garden,” she said hurriedly as the door opened on the house of sickness. A short young man with untidy dark hair and a shabby suit stood in the doorway. His brilliant dark eyes smiled sharply at Miss Szigmondy and shot beyond her towards Miriam as he stood aside holding the door wide. “Come along,” shouted Miss Szigmondy disappearing. Miriam came reluctantly forward and got herself through the door, reaping the second curious sharp smile as she passed. The young man had an extraordinary face, cheerful and grimy, like a street arab; he was rather like a street arab. Miss Szigmondy was talking loudly from a little room to the right of the door. Miriam’s embarrassment in the impossibility of explaining her own superfluous presence was not relieved when she entered the room. The young man was clearly not prepared. It was a most unwarrantable intrusion. She stood at a loss behind Miss Szigmondy who was planted, still eagerly talking, on the small clear space of bare boards—cracked and dusty, like a warehouse—in the middle of the room and tried not to see anything in particular; but her eyes already had the sense that there was nothing to sit upon, no corner to retire into, nothing but an extraordinary confusion of shabby dust-covered things laid bare by the sunlight that poured through the uncurtained window. Her eyes took refuge in the face of the young man confronting Miss Szigmondy, making replies to her volley of questions. He had no front teeth, nothing but blackened stumps; dreadful, one ought not to look, unless he were going to be helped. Perhaps Miss Szigmondy was going to help him. But he did not look ill. His bright glancing eyes shot about as if looking at something that was not there and he answered Miss Szigmondy’s sallies with a sort of cheerful convulsion of his whole frame. He seemed to be “on wires”; but not weak; strong and cheerful; happy; a kind of cheerfulness and happiness she had never met before. It was quiet. It came from him soundlessly making within his pleasant voice a gay
