wonder she had found herself a stranger with these people. Walking out to Highgate at night and getting up as usual the next morning. Magnificent strong hard thing to do. Horrible. Walking out to Highgate, “talking all the time” … they could never have a minute to realise anything at all; rushing along saying things that covered everything and never stopping to realise, talking
about people and things and never being or knowing anything, and perpetually coming to the blank emptiness of
Highgate … their unconsciousness of everything made them the right sort of people to have the trouble of living in Highgate. They probably walked about with knapsacks on Sunday. But to them even the real country could not be country. All “circles” must be like that in some way; doing things by agreement. The men talking confidently about them,
completely ignorant of any sort of reality. … She came out of her musings when they turned into the Euston Road and ironically watched the men keeping up their talk across the continual breaking up of the group by passing pedestrians.
You’ll have to walk
back she interrupted, suddenly turning to
Mr. Bowdoin; the buses will have stopped. I never ride in omnibuses frowned
Mr. Bowdoin. I shall be back by two. … Miriam waited a moment inside the door at Tansley Street listening for silence. The evening fell away from her with the departing footsteps of the two men. She opened the door upon the high quiet empty blue-lit street and moved out into a tranquil immensity. It was everywhere. Into her consciousness of the unpredictable incidents of tomorrow’s Wimpole Street day, over the sure excitement of Eve’s arrival in the evening flowed the light-footed leaping sense of a day new begun, an inexhaustible blissfulness, everything melted away into it. It seemed to smite her, calling for some spoken acknowledgment of its presence, alive and real in the heart of the London darkness. It was not her fault that Eve was not coming to stay at Tansley Street. It came out of the way life arranged itself as long as you did not try to interfere. Roaming along in the twilight she lost consciousness of everything but the passage of dark silent buildings, the drawing away under her feet of the varying flags of the pavement, the waxing and waning along the pavement of the streams of lamplight, the distant murmuring tide of sound passing through her from wide thoroughfares, the gradual approach of a thoroughfare, the rising of the murmuring tide to a happy symphony of recognisable noises, the sudden glare of yellow shop-light under her feet, the wide black road, the joy of the need for the understanding sweeping glance from right to left as she moved across it, the sense of being swept across in an easy curve drawn by the kindly calculable swing of the traffic, of being a permitted cooperating part of the traffic, the coming of the friendly curb and the strip of yellow pavement, carrying her on again into the lamplit greyness leading along to Donizetti’s.
VI
Miriam came forward seeing nothing but the golden gaslight pouring over the white tablecloth. She sat down near Mrs. Bailey within the edge of its radiance. The depths of the light still held unchanged the welcome that had been there when she had come in and found Emile laying the table. There was no change and no disappointment. The smeary mirrors and unpolished furniture were bright in the gaslight, showing distances of interior and gleaming passages of light. In the spaces between the pictures the walls sent back sheeny reflections of the glow on the table. People coming in one by one saying good evening in different intonations and sitting down sending out waves of enquiry, left her undisturbed. There were five or six forms about the table besides Sissie sitting at the far end opposite her mother. They made sudden statements about the weather one after the other. They were waiting to have their daily experience of the meal changed by something she might do or say. Emile was handing round plates of soup. Presently they would all be talking and would have forgotten her. Then she could see them all one by one and get away unseen, having had dinner only with Mrs. Bailey. Mrs. Bailey was standing up carving the joint. When the sounds she made were all that was to be heard, she responded to the last remark about the weather or asked some fresh question about it as if no one had spoken at all. When she was not speaking every movement of her battle with the joint expressed her triumphant affectionate sense of Miriam’s presence. She had made no introductions. She was saying secretly there you are young lady. I told you so. Now you’re in your right place. It’s quite easy you see. The joint was already partly distributed. Emile was handing three piled dishes of vegetables. A generous plateful of well-browned meat and gravy appeared before Miriam with Mrs. Bailey’s strong small toil-disfigured hand firmly grasping its edge. She took it to pass it on. Everything was hurrying on. … That’s yorce my child said Mrs. Bailey. The low murmur was audible round the silent table. Asserting her independence with a sullen formality Miriam thanked her and looked about for condiments without raising her eyes to the range of those other eyes, all taking photographs now that she was forced into movements. Mrs. Bailey placed a cruet near her plate. Yorce she pondered getting angrily away into thought. Mrs. Bailey could not know that it might be said to be more correct than yourz. It was an affectation. She had picked it up somewhere from one of those people who carefully say off-ten instead of awfen and it gave her satisfaction to use it, linked rebukingly up with the complacent motherly patronage of which she had boasted to the whole table. The first of Emile’s dishes appeared
