She disposed herself to walk unconcernedly past the row of lounging overalled figures. Sullen hostile staring would not satisfy them this morning. The song would rouse them to some open demonstration. They were endless; muttering motionlessly to each other in their immovable lounging. Surely he must feel them. “Go ’ome,” she heard, away behind. … “Blooming foreigner;” close by, the tall lean swarthy fellow, with the handsome grubby face. That he must have heard. She fancied his song recoiled, and wheeled sharply back, confronting the speaker, who had just spat into the middle of the pavement.
“Yes,” she said, “he is a foreigner, and he is my friend. What do you mean?” The man’s gazing face was broken up into embarrassed awkward youth. Mr. Shatov was safely ahead. She waited, her eyes on the black-rimmed expressionless blue of the eyes staring from above a rising flush. In a moment she would say, it is abominable and simply disgraceful, and sweep away and never come up this side of the road again. A little man was speaking at her side, his cap in his hand. They were all moving and staring. “Excuse me miss,” he began again in a quiet, thick, hurrying voice, as she turned to him. “Miss, we know the sight of you going up and down. Miss he ain’t good enough forya.”
“Oh,” said Miriam, the sky falling about her. She lingered a moment speechless, looking at no one, sweeping over them a general disclaiming smile, hoping she told them how mistaken they all were and how nice she thought them, she hurried away to meet Mr. Shatov waiting a few yards off. The darlings. In all these years of invisible going up and down. …
“Well?” he laughed, “what is this?”
“British workmen. I’ve been lecturing them.”
“On what?”
“In general. Telling them what I think.”
“Excellent. You will yet be a socialist.” They walked on, to the sound of his resumed singing. Presently the turning into Wimpole Street was in sight. His singing must end. Dipping at a venture she stumbled upon material for his arrest.
“It is nay-cessary; deere bruthren;” she intoned dismally in a clear interval “to obtain; the mAhstery; o‑ver-the Vile; bhuddy.”
“What? What?” he gurgled delightedly, slackening his pace. “Please say this once more.”
Summoning the forgotten figure, straining out over the edge of the pulpit she saw that there was more than the shape and sound of his abruptly ending whine. She saw the incident from Mr. Shatov’s point of view and stood still to laugh his laugh; but it was not her kind of joke.
“It was in a University church, presided over by a man they all say has a European reputation; it was in Lent; this other man was a visitor, for Lent. That was the beginning of his sermon. He began at once, with a yell, flinging half out of the pulpit, the ugliest person I have ever seen.”
“Hoh,” shouted Mr. Shatov from the midst of immense gusts of laughter, “that is a most supreme instance of unconscious ironic commentary. But really, please you shall say this to me once more.”
If she said, you know he was quite sincere, the story would be spoiled. This was the kind of story popular people told. To be amusing must mean always to be not quite truthful. But the sound. She was longing to hear it again. Turning to face the way they had come she gave herself up to howling the exhortation down the empty park-flanked vista.
“It is a chef d’œuvre,” he sighed.
He ought not to be here she irritably told herself, emerging as they turned and took the few steps to her street, tired and scattered and hopelessly late, into the forgotten chill of her day. It was all very well for him with his freedom and leisure to begin the first thing in the morning with things that belonged to the end of the day. … She took swift distracted leave of him at the corner and hurried along the length of the few houses to her destination. Turning remorsefully at the doorstep to smile her farewell, she saw the hurrying form of Mr. Hancock crossing the road with grave appraising glance upon the strange figure bowing towards her bareheaded in the wind from the top of the street. He had seen her loitering, standing still, had heard her howls. Mercifully the door opened behind her, and she fled within … the corner of the very street that made him, more than any other street, look foreign, and, in the distance, disgraceful. …
For days she read the first two stories in the little book, carrying it about with her, uneasy amongst her letters and ledgers unless it were in sight. The project of translation vanished in an entranced consideration at close quarters of some strange quality coming each time from the printed page. She could not seize or name it. Both stories were sad, with an unmitigated relentless sadness, casting a shadow over the spectacle of life. But some spell in their weaving, something abrupt and strangely alive, remaining alive, in the text, made
