“Wicked!”
“Certainly she is young.”
Miss Holland hesitated. She was evidently still full of communications about the Wheelers, but suddenly unwilling to continue. She was guarding them. Miriam saw plainly that her interest was not to go too far. That, she felt, was all to the good. Here was the beginning of an understanding that their interests were to be independent. But the possessiveness and the mystery was making her dislike these Wheelers. They had Miss Holland’s interest in a way she was sure she would never do, and Miss Holland was admitting it and saying too, with her honest embarrassment, that she believed these wonderful people would not be interested in her fellow-lodger.
She was her fellow-lodger. Now that personal depths had been revealed, that strange fact remained; an achievement.
II
Miriam sat through the evening reading by lamplight in the disorderly little room. Unsatisfactorily. Her attention wandered to Miss Holland lecturing in the East End, and to the thoughts in Miss Holland’s mind as she stood confronted by the roomful of dilapidated people.
The shaded lamplight left everything in gloom but the page whose words, yesterday so potent, brought tonight only a sense of the gulf between life and the expression of it. She had reached the conclusion that fiction was at worst a highly flavoured drug and at best as much an abstraction as metaphysics, when Miss Holland came back.
She stood in the doorway tall and dim; silent and dubious with fatigue. But when Miriam suggested going out in search of coffee she came to life in horrified resistance, announced her belief in the restorative power of weak tea, and vowed that not on any account would she issue forth without good cause at such an hour.
And out in the blue-lit gloom of the Euston Road, hurrying timidly along, she still protested. But behind her woeful protests was delight. And once they were safely inside the heavily frosted inner doors and the little padrone, as Miriam had predicted, came forward to welcome them, and waving away a hovering waiter, himself found them places and took their small order, she sat back upon her red velvet sofa evidently enjoying the adventure. But beyond a single comprehensive glance, she had not noticed her surroundings. She remarked upon the cleanliness, the cheerful Alpine oleographs. Of all the rest she was unaware.
To have her here, disarmed of her fears, was not enough. But even if they came again and again there would never be more than that. She would never expand to the atmosphere. Would always sit as she was doing now, upright and insulated, making formal conversation; decorously busy with the small meal.
The place was not crowded. Everyone there was distinctly visible—the lonely intent women in gaudy finery, the old men fêting bored, laughing girls who glanced about; the habitués, solitary figures in elderly bondage to the resources of the place.
“Of course,” said Miriam at last, “there are all sorts of queer people here.”
She sat back, unwilling to go, looking out into the room as if unaware of Miss Holland’s preparations to depart, following immediately on her last sip of the excellent coffee. But supposing Miss Holland should even for a moment sit back and contemplate her surroundings? She would see only material for pity or disgust. See only morally. Her interest in individuals would be an uninteresting interest. That young man, with his pose of careful conscious detachment would not for her be any kind of epitome, but just a young man—“probably some sort of student.”
“It is now,” said Miss Holland, glancing at her wristwatch, “well past midnight. This has been a unique experience. And, just for this once, I do not object to it. But it must certainly not be repeated.”
Miriam gazed at her. She was blushing. She had seen all that there was to see. Miriam remembered her own first horror. But that had been alone and in youthful ignorance.
“I’m sorry you don’t like my little haunt.”
“It is scarcely that. The place is clean and pleasant and doubtless a great convenience to many people. But, dear me, dear me, I can only imagine the horror of my chief in beholding me sitting here, and at such an hour.”
Astonishment kept Miriam dumb and passed into resentment. Having delivered her judgment, Miss Holland now sat contemptuously drawing on her gloves. The episode over and escape at hand, she released a scorn that was almost venomous. It lingered about her politely smiling relief, an abominable look of triumph. Of personal triumph.
Miriam clung to her silence. She felt the advantage fall to her own side as she saw Miss Holland’s acceptance of her unspoken thoughts.
“It is different for yourself,” she said in answer to them. “You are free from the necessity of considering appearances.”
“I’m a guttersnipe, thank Heaven,” said Miriam.
Miss Holland laughed. A small sound incapable of reaching the next table. She was really amused.
“You are anything but that. And in certain respects you may consider yourself fortunate.”
Donizetti’s had been insulted. At sight of Miss Holland hurrying with bent head, as if weathering a gale of contamination, down the aisle between the rows of little tables, Miriam hated her. Hated her refusal to place herself outside the pale of feminine dignity. The narrow pale. Deep. But were they deep, these people who went about considering their dignity? “Dignity is absurdity,” she vowed, keeping step with Miss Holland’s light swift walk.
There is one thing worse than a dignified man and that is an undignified woman. Chesterton. It sounded so respectful; chivalrous. Made me try to remember to be dignified for a whole day. I tried to crush Hypo by quoting it.
“Just so,” he said. “Dignity is the privilege of the weak.”
She tried to imagine Miss Holland undignified. Rushing about and babbling inconsequently. Tiresome, men called those women, but were glad of them if they had kind hearts. Mrs. Orly has no dignity. But she is neither weak nor tiresome. Her heart is a … er … domesticated
