The Tunnel · Chapter 6 (2/4)

“Why not write an article about a lamppost?” said one of the young men suddenly in a gruff voice in answer to a gradually growing murmur of communications from one of his companions. Miriam breathed easier air. The shameful irritating tension was over. It was as if fresh wonderful life-giving things that were hovering in the room, driven back into corners, pressing up and away against the angles of the ceiling and about the window-door behind the young men and against the faraway door of the room, came back, flooding all the spaces of the room. Mr. Wilson moved in his chair, using his handkerchief towards the young men with an eye on the speaker. “Or a whole book,” murmured the young man farthest from Miriam in an eager cockney voice. The two young men were speaking towards Mr. Wilson, obviously trying to draw him in, bringing along one of his topics; something that had been discussed here before. There would be talk, men’s talk, argument and showing off; but there would be something alive in the room. In the conflict there would be ideas, wrong ideas, men taking sides, both right and both wrong; men showing off; but wanting with all their wrongness to get at something. Perhaps somebody would say something. She regretted her shy refusal of a cigarette from Mr. Wilson’s large full box. It stood open now by the side of the tea-tray. He would not offer it again. Cigarettes and talk.⁠ ⁠… What would Mr. Hancock think? “People do not meet together for conversation, nowadays.”⁠ ⁠… There was going to be conversation, literary conversation and she was going to hear it⁠ ⁠… be in it. Clever literary people trying to say things well; of course they were all literary; they were all the same set, knowing each other, all calling Mr. Wilson “Hypo”; talk about books was the usual Saturday afternoon thing here; and she was in it and would be able to be in it again, any week. It was miraculous. All these people were special people, emancipated people. Probably they all wrote, except the women. There were too many women. Somehow or other she must get a cigarette. Life, suddenly full of new things made her bold. Presently, when the conversation was general she would beg one of the young man at her side. Mr. Wilson would not turn to her again. She had failed twice already in relation to him; but after her lame refusal of the cigarette which he had accepted instantly and sat down with, he had glanced sharply at her in a curious personal way, noticing the little flat square of white collarette⁠—the knot of violets upon it, the long-sleeved black nun’s-veiling blouse, the long skirt of her old silkette evening dress. These items had made her sick with anxiety in their separate poverty as she put them on for the visit; but his eyes seemed to draw them all together. Perhaps there in the dark corner they made a sort of whole. She rejoiced gratefully in the memory of Mag’s factory girl, in her own idea of having the sleeves gauged at the wrists in defiance of fashion, to make frills extending so as partly to cover her large hands; over the suddenly realised possibility of wearing the silkette skirt as a day skirt. She must remain in the corner, not moving, all the afternoon. If she moved in the room the bright light would show the scrappiness of her clothes. In the evening it would be all right. She sat back in her corner, happy, and forgetful. She had not had so much tea as she wanted. She had refused the cigarette against her will. Now she was alive. These weak things would not happen again, and next time she would bring her own cigarettes. To take out a cigarette and light it here, at home amongst her own people. These were her people. There was something here in the exciting air that she did not understand; something that was going to tax her more than she had ever been taxed before. She had found her way to it through her wanderings; it had come; it was her due. It corresponded to something in herself, shapeless and inexpressible; but there. She knew it by herself, sitting in her corner; her own people would know it, if they could see her here; but no one here would find it out. Everyone here was doing something; or the wife of somebody who did something. They were like a sort of secret society⁠ ⁠… all agreed about something⁠ ⁠… about what? What was it Mr. Wilson was so sure about?⁠ ⁠… They would despise everybody who was living an ordinary life, or earning a living in anything but something to do with books. Seeing her there they would take for granted that she too, was somebody⁠ ⁠… and she was somehow, within herself somewhere; although she had made herself into a dentist’s secretary. She was better qualified to be here and to understand the strange secret here, in the end, than anyone else she knew. But it was a false position, unless they all knew what she was. If she could say clever things they would like her; but she would be like Alma and Mrs. Binkley; pretending; and without any man to point to as giving her the right to be about here. It was a false position. It was as if she were there as a candidate to become an Alma or a Mrs. Binkley; imitating the clever sayings of men, or flattering them.

“Do it Gowry,” said Mr. Wilson⁠ ⁠… “a book”⁠ ⁠… he made his little sound behind his nose as he felt for the phrases that were to come after his next words⁠ ⁠… “a⁠—er⁠—book; about a lamppost. You ser,” he held up his minatory finger to keep off an onslaught and quench an eager monologue that began pouring from Miriam’s nearest neighbour, and went on in his high weak husky voice. The young men were quiet. For a few moments the red lady and Alma made bright conversation as if nothing were happening; but with a curious hard emptiness in their voices, like people rehearsing and secretly angry with each other. Then they were silent, sitting posed and attentive, with uneasy intelligent smiling faces; their costumes and carefully arranged hair useless on their hands. Mrs. Binkley did not suffer so much as Alma; her corsetless eager crouch gave her the appearance of intentness, her hair waved naturally, had tendrils and could be left to look after itself; her fresh easy strength was ready for the next opportunity. It was only something behind her face that belied her happy pose. Alma was waiting in some curious fixed singleness of tension; her responses hovered fixed about her mouth, waiting for expression, she sat fixed in a frozen suspension of deliberate amiability and approval, approval of a certain chosen set of things; approval which excluded everything else with derision⁠ ⁠… it was Alma’s old derision, fixed and arranged in some way by Mr. Wilson.

“There will be books⁠—with all that cut out⁠—him and her⁠—all that sort of thing. The books of the future will be clear of all that.”

Miriam sat so enclosed in her unarmed struggle with the new definition of a book that the entry of the newcomers left her unembarrassed. Two rotund ruddy men in mud-spotted tweeds, both fair, one with a tuft like a cockatoo standing straight up from his forehead above a smooth pink face, the other older than anybody in the room, with a shaggy head and a small pointed beard. They came in talking aloud and stumped about the room, making their greetings. Miriam bowed twice and twice received a sturdy handclasp and the kindly gleam of blue eyes, one pair large, mild and owl-like behind glasses; the other fierce and glinting, a shaft of whimsical blue light. The second pair of eyes surely would not agree with what Mr. Wilson had been saying. But their coming in had broken a charm; the overwhelming charm of the way he put things; so that even while you hated what he was saying and his way of stating things as if they were the final gospel and no one else in the world knew anything at all, you wanted him to go on; only to go on and to keep on going on. It was wrong somehow; he was all wrong; “though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”; it was wrong and somehow wicked; but it caught you, it had caught Alma and all these people; and in a sense he despised them all, and was talking to something else; the thing he knew; the secret that made him so strong, even with his weak voice and weak mouth; strong and fascinating. It was wrong to be here; it would be wrong to come again; but there was nothing like it anywhere else; no other such group of things; and thought and knowledge of things. More must be heard. It would be impossible not to risk everything to hear more.

Alma ordered fresh tea; Mr. Wilson and the husband and the two new men were standing about. The elder man was describing in a large shouting voice a new mantelpiece⁠—a Tudor mantelpiece. What was a Tudor mantelpiece?⁠ ⁠… to buy a house to put round it. What a clever idea.⁠ ⁠… Little Mr. Wilson seemed to be listening; he squealed amendments of the jests between the big man’s boomings⁠ ⁠… buy a town to put round it.⁠ ⁠… What a lovely idea⁠ ⁠… buy a nation to put round it⁠ ⁠… there was a burst of guffaws. Mr. Wilson’s face was crimson; his eyes appeared to be full of tears. The big man went on. Mrs. Binkley kept uttering deep reedy caressing laughs. Two of the young men were leaning forward talking eagerly with bent heads. Miriam’s neighbour sat upright with his hands on his knees, his eyes glaring as if⁠ ⁠… as if he were just going to jump out of his skin. Hidden by the increased stir made by the reentry of the maid, and encouraged by the extraordinary clamour of hilarious voices Miriam ventured to ask him if he would perform an act of charity by allowing her to rob him of one of his cigarettes. She liked her unrecognisable voice. It was pitched deep, but strong; a little like Mrs. Binkley’s. The young man started and turned eagerly towards her, stammering and muttering and fumbling about his person. “I swear,” he brought out, “I could cut my throat⁠ ⁠… my God⁠ ⁠… oh here we are.” Seizing the open box from the tea-table he swung round with his crossed legs extended across her corner so that she was cut off from the rest of the room, and held the box eagerly towards her. They both took cigarettes and he lit them with matches obtained from his neighbour. “Thank you,” said Miriam blissfully drawing “that has saved my life.” Precipitately restoring the matches he swung round again leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, blocking out Miriam’s view. Before it was blocked out she had caught the eye of Mr. Wilson who was standing facing her in the little group of men about the tea-table and still interpolating their hubbub with husky squeals of jocularity, quietly observing the drama in her corner. For the moment she did not wish to listen; Alma’s appreciative squeals were getting strained and the big man was a bore. Seen sitting in profile taking his tea he reminded her of Mr. Staple-Craven; her eye caught and recoiled from weak patches, touches of frowsy softness here and there about the shaggy head. Cut off from the room safe in the extraordinary preoccupation of the young man whose eager brooding was moving now towards some imminent communication⁠—she had undisturbed knowledge of what she had done. Speech and action had launched her, for good or ill, into the strange tide running in this house. Its cold waters beat against her breast. She was no longer quite herself. There was something in it that quickened all her faculties, challenged all the strength she possessed. By speech and action she had accepted something she neither liked, nor approved nor understood; refusal would have left its secret unplumbed, standing aside in her life, tormenting it. The sense of the secret intoxicated her⁠ ⁠… perhaps I am selling my soul to the devil. But she was glad that Mr. Wilson had witnessed her launching.

“You are magnificent,” gasped the young man glaring at the wall. “I mean you are simply magnificent.” He flashed unconscious eyes at her⁠—he had no consciousness of the cold tide with its curious touch of evil; it was hand in hand with him and his simplicity that she had stepped down into the water⁠—and hurried on. “An angel of dreams. Dreams⁠ ⁠… you know⁠—I say,” he spluttered incoherently, “I must tell you.” His working preoccupied face turned to face hers with a jerk that brought part of the heavy sheaf of hair across one of his eyes. “I’ve been doing the best work this week I ever did in my life!” Red flooded the whole of his face and the faraway glare of his one visible eye became a blaze of light, near, and smiling a guilty delighted smile. He was demanding her approval, her sympathy, just on the strength of her being there. It was the moment of consenting to Alma that had brought this. However it had come she would have been unable to withstand it. He wanted approval and sympathy; someone here had some time or other shut him up; perhaps he was considered second-rate, perhaps he was second-rate; but he was innocent as no one else in the room was innocent. “Oh, I am glad,” she replied swiftly. Putting his cigarette on the edge of the piano he seized one of her hands and crushed it between his own. His face perspired and there were tears in his eye. “Do tell me about it,” she said with bold uneasy eagerness hoping he would drop her hand when he spoke. “It’s a play,” he shouted in a low whisper, a spray of saliva springing through his lips “a play⁠—it’s the finest stuff I ever rout.” Were all these people either cockney or with that very bland anglican cultured way of speaking⁠—like the husband and the man with the Tudor mantelpiece?

“I can of course admit that the growth of corn was, at first, accidental and unconscious, and that even after the succession of processes began to be grasped and the soil methodically cultivated the success of the crop was supposed to depend upon the propitiation of a god. I can see that the discovery of the possibility of growing food would enormously alter the savage’s conception of God, by introducing a new set of attributes into his consciousness of him; but in defining the God of the Christians as a corn deity you and Allen are putting the cart before the horse.”

That was it, that was it⁠—that was right somehow; there was something in this big red-faced man that was not in Mr. Wilson; but why did his talk sound so lame and dull, even while he was saving God⁠—and Mr. Wilson’s, while he made God from the beginning a nothing created by the fears and needs of man, so thrilling and convincing, so painting the world anew? He was wrong about everything and yet while he talked everything changed in spite of yourself.