“You mean by intonation only the intonation of single words, not of the whole?”
“Precisely. Correctness of accent and emphasis is my aim. But you imply a criticism,” he fluted, unshaken by his storm.
“Yes. First you must not pronounce each word quite so carefully. It makes them echo into each other. Then of course if you want to be quite English you must be less emphatic.”
“I must assume an air of indifference?”
“An English audience will be more likely to understand if you are slower and more quiet. You ought to have gaps now and then.”
“Intervals for yawning. Yew shall indicate suitable moments. I see that I am fortunate to have met-hew. I will take lessons, for this lecture, in the true frigid English dignity.”
The door opened, admitting Mr. Shatov.
“Mr.—a—Shatov; will be so good; as to grant five minutes; for the conclusion of this interview.” He walked forward bowing with each phrase, hiding the intruder and bowing him out of the room. The little dark figure reappeared punctually, and he rose with a snap of the fingers. “The English,” he declaimed at large, “have an excellent phrase; hwich says, time is money. This phrase, good though it is, might be improved. Time is let out on usury. So, for the present, I shall leave yew.” He turned on the sweeping bow that accompanied his last word and stepped quickly with a curious stiff marching elegance down the room towards Mr. Shatov as though he did not see him, avoiding him at the last moment by a sharp curve. Outside the closed door he rattled the handle as if to make sure it was quite shut.
Miriam sought intently for a definition of what had been in the room … a strange echoing shadow of some real thing … there was something real … just behind the empty sound of him … somewhere in the rolled up manuscript so remarkably in her hands, making a difference in the evening brought in by Mr. Shatov. Hunger and fatigue were assailing her; but the long rich day mounting up to an increasing sense of incessant life crowding upon her unsought, at her disposal, could not be snapped by retirement for a solitary meal. He walked quickly to the hearthrug, bent forward and spat into the empty grate.
“What is this fellow?”
She broke through her frozen astonishment, “I have just undertaken a perfectly frightful thing,” she said, quivering with disgust.
“I find him insufferable.”
“The French sing their language. It is like a recitative, the tone goes up and down and along and up and down again with its own expression; the words have to fit the tune. They have no single abrupt words and phrases, the whole thing is a shape of tones. It’s extraordinary. All somehow arranged; in a pattern; different patterns for the expression of the different emotions. In their English it makes the expression swallow up the words, a wind driving through them continuously … liaison.”
“It is a musical tongue certainly.”
“That’s it; music. But the individual is not there; because the tunes are all arranged for him and he sings them, according to rule. The Academy. The purity of the French language. I’m getting so interested.”
“I find this Lahitte a most pretentious fellow.”
“He is not in the least what I expected a Frenchman to be like. I can’t understand his being so fair.”
“What is it you have undertaken?”
He was suddenly grave and impressed by the idea of the lecture … why would it be such good practice for her to read and correct it?
Her answer plunged him into thought from which he branched forth with sudden eagerness … a French translation of a Russian book revealing marvellously the interior, the self life, of a doctor, through his training and experience in practice. It would be a revelation to English readers and she should translate it; in collaboration with him; if she would excuse the intimate subjects it necessarily dealt with. He was off and back again with the book and reading rapidly while she still pondered his grave enthusiasm over her recent undertaking. In comparison with this idea of translating a book, it seemed nothing. But that was only one of his wild notions. It would take years of evenings of hard work. Meanwhile someone else would do it. They would work at it together. With Saturdays and Sundays it would not take so long … it would set her standing within the foreign world she had touched at so many points during the last few years, and that had become, since the coming of Mr. Shatov, more and more clearly a continuation of the first beginnings at school … alors un faible chuchotement se fit entendre au premier … à l’entrée de ce bassin, des arbres … se fit entendre … alors un faible chuchotement se fit entendre … all one word on one tone … it must have been an extract from some dull mysterious story with an explanation or deliberately without an explanation; then a faint whispering was audible on the first floor; that was utterly different. It was the shape and sound of the sentences, without the meaning that was so wonderful—alors une faible parapluie se fit entendre au premier—Jan would scream, but it was just as wonderful … there must be some meaning in having so passionately loved the little book without having known that it was
