The Tunnel · Chapter 6 (3/4)

The earlier part of the afternoon looked a bright happy world behind the desolation of this conflict; the husband and wife and the young men and Mrs. Binkley and the bright afternoon light, dear far-off friends⁠ ⁠… withstanding in their absence the chilly light of Mr. Wilson’s talk. Who was Mr. Wilson? But he was so certain that men had created God⁠ ⁠… life in that thought was a nightmare. Nothing that could happen could make it anything but a nightmare henceforth⁠ ⁠… it did not matter what happened, and yet he seemed pleased, amused about everything and eager to go on and “do” things and get things done.⁠ ⁠… His belief about life was worse than agnosticism. There was no doubt in it. “Mr. G” was an invention of man. There was nothing but man; man, coming from the ape, some men a little cleverer than others, men had discovered science, science was the only enlightenment, science would put everything right; scientific imagination, scientific invention. Man. Women were there, cleverly devised by nature to ensnare man for a moment and produce more men; to bring scientific order out of primeval chaos; chaos was decreasing order increasing; there was nothing worth considering before the coming of science; the business of the writer was imagination, not romantic imagination, but realism, fine realism, the truth about “the savage” about all the past and present, the avoidance of cliché⁠ ⁠… what was cliché?⁠ ⁠…

“Well my dear man you’ve got the Duke of Argyll to keep you company,” sighed Mr. Wilson with a smothered giggle, getting to his feet.

Miriam went from the sitting room she had entered in another age with the bedroom violets pinned against her collarette, stripped and cold and hungry into the cold of the brightly-lit little dining room. The gay cold dishes, the bright jellies and fruits, the brown nuts, the pretty Italian wine in thin white long-necked decanters⁠ ⁠… Chianti⁠ ⁠… Chianti⁠ ⁠… they all seemed familiar with the wine and the word; perhaps it was a familiar wine at the Wilson supper-parties; they spoke of it sitting at the little feast amongst the sternness of nothing but small drawings and engravings on walls that shone some clear light tone against the few pieces of unfamiliar grey-brown furniture like people clustering round a fire. But it was a feast of death; terrible because of their not knowing that it was a feast of death. The wife of the cockatoo had come in early enough to hear nearly the whole of the conversation and had sat listening to it with a quiet fresh talkative face under her fresh dark hair; the large deep furrow between her eyebrows was nothing to do with anything here, it was permanent, belonging to her life. She had brought her life in with her and kept it there, the freshness and the furrow; she seemed now, at supper to be out for the evening, to enjoy herself⁠—at the Wilsons’⁠ ⁠… coming to the Wilsons’⁠ ⁠… for a jolly evening, just as anybody would go anywhere for a jolly evening. She did not know what was there, what it all meant. Perhaps because of the two little boys. She, with two little unseen boys and the big house so near, big and full of her and noise and things, and her freshness and the furrow of her thought about it prevented anything from going on; the dreadful thing had to be dropped where it was, leaving the big man who had fought to pretend to be interested and amused, leaving Mr. Wilson with the last word and his quiet smothered giggle.

Alma tried to answer Mrs. Pinner’s loud fresh talking in the way things had been answered earlier in the afternoon before the departure of all the other people. Everything she said was an attempt to beat things up. Every time she spoke Miriam was conscious of something in the room that would be there with them all if only Alma would leave off being funny; something there was in life that Alma had never yet known, something that belonged to an atmosphere she would call “dull.” Mr. Wilson knew that something⁠ ⁠… had it in him somewhere, but feared it and kept it out by trying to be bigger, by trying to be the biggest thing there was. Alma went on and on, sometimes uncomfortably failing, her thin voice sounding out like a corkscrew in a cork without any bottle behind it, now and again provoking a response which made things worse because it brought to the table the shamed sense of trying to keep something going.⁠ ⁠… The clever excitements would not come back. Mrs. Binkley would have helped her.⁠ ⁠… Miriam sat helpless and miserable between her admiration of Alma’s efforts and her longing for the thing Alma kept out. Her discomfiture at Alma’s resentment of her dullness and Alma’s longing for Mrs. Binkley was made endurable by her anger over Alma’s obstructiveness. Mr. Pinner and the big man were busily feeding. Mrs. Pinner laughed and now and again tried to imitate Alma; as if she had learned how it was done by many visits to the Wilsons’, and then forgot and talked in her own way, forgetting to try to say good things. Alma grew smaller as supper went on and Mr. and Mrs. Pinner larger and larger. Together they were too strong in their sense of some other life and some other way of looking at things to give the Wilson way a clear field. Mr. Wilson began monologues in favourable intervals, but they tailed off for lack of nourishing response. Miriam listened eagerly and suspiciously; lost in admiration and a silent, mentally wordless opposition. She felt the big man was on her side and that the Pinners would be if they could understand. They only saw the jokes⁠ ⁠… the⁠—the, higher facetiousness⁠ ⁠… good phrase, that was the Chianti. And they were getting used to that; perhaps they were secretly a little tired of it.

After supper Mr. Pinner sang very neatly in a small clear tenor voice an English translation of “Es war ein König im Thule.” Miriam longed for the German words; Mr. Pinner cancelled even the small remainder of the German sentiment by his pronunciation of the English rendering; “there was a king of old tame,” he declared and so on throughout the song. Alma followed with a morsel of Chopin. The performance drove Miriam into a rage. Mr. Pinner had murdered his German ballad innocently, his little Oxford voice and his false vowels did not conceal the pleasure he took in singing his unimagined little song, Alma played her piece at her audience, every line of her face and body proclaiming it fine music, the right sort of music, and deprecating all the compositions that were not “music.” It was clear that her taste had become cultivated, that she knew now, that the scales had fallen from her eyes as they had fallen from Miriam’s eyes in Germany; but the result sent Miriam back with a rush to cheap music, sentimental “obvious” music, shapely waltzes, the demoralising chromatics of Gounod, the demoralising descriptive passion pieces of Chaminade, those things by Liszt whom somebody had called a charlatan who wrote to make your blood leap and your feet dance and made your blood leap and your feet dance⁠ ⁠… why not?⁠ ⁠…

Her mind went on amazed at the rushing together of her ideas on music, at the amount of certainty she had accumulated. Any of these things she declared to herself played, really played, would be better than Alma’s Chopin. The Wilsons had discovered “good” music, as so many English people had, but they were all wrong about music; nearly all English people were. Only in England would either the song or the solo have been possible. The song was innocent, the solo was an insult. The player’s air of superiority to other music was insufferable; her way of playing out bar by bar of the rain on the roof as if she were giving a lesson was a piece of intellectual snobbery. Chopin she had never met, never felt or glimpsed. Chopin was a shape, an endless delicate stern rhythm as stern as anything in music; all he was came through that, could come only through it and she played tricks with the shape, falsified all the values, outdid the worst trickery of the music she was deprecating. At the end of the performance which was applauded with a subdued reverence, Miriam eased her agony by humming the opening phase of the motive again and again in her brain and very nearly aloud, it was such a perfect rhythmic drop. For long she was haunted and tortured by Alma’s horrible holding back of the third note for emphasis where there was no emphasis⁠ ⁠… it was like⁠ ⁠… finding a wart at the dropping end of a fine tendril, she was telling herself furiously while she fended off Alma’s cajoling efforts to make her join in a game of cards. She felt too angry and too suffering⁠—what was this wrong thing about music in all English people⁠—even if she had not been too shy to exhibit her large hands and her stupidity at cards. So they were going to play cards, actually cards. The room felt cold to her in her long suppressed anger and misery. She began to wish the Pinners would go. Sitting by the fire shivering and torpid she listened to Mrs. Pinner’s outcries and the elaboration between the rounds of jests that she felt were weekly jests. Sitting there dully listening she began to have a sort of insight into the way these jests were made, it was a thing that could be cultivated. Her tired brain experimented. Certain things she heard she knew she would remember; she felt she would repeat them⁠—with an air of originality. They would seem very brilliant in any of her circles⁠—though the girls did that sort of thing rather well; but in a less “refined” way; that was true! This was the sort of thing the girls did; only their way was not half so clever⁠ ⁠… if she did, everyone would wonder what was the matter with her; and she would not be able to keep it up, without a great deal of practice; and it would keep out something else⁠ ⁠… but perhaps for some people there was something in it; it was their way. It had always been Alma’s way a little. Only now she did it better. Perhaps⁠ ⁠… it was like Chopin’s shape.⁠ ⁠… They do not know how angry I have been⁠ ⁠… they are quite amiable. I am simply horrid⁠ ⁠… wanting Alma to know I know she’s wrong quite as much as I care for Chopin; perhaps more⁠ ⁠… no; if anybody had played, I should be happy; perfectly happy⁠ ⁠… what does that mean⁠ ⁠… because real musicians are not at all nice people⁠ ⁠… “a queer soft lot.” But why are the English so awful about music? They are poets. Why are they not musicians? I hope I shall never hear Alma play Beethoven. As long as she plays Chopin like that I shall never like her.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps English people ought never to play, only to listen to music. They are not innocent enough to play. They cannot forget themselves.

At ten o’clock they trooped into the kitchen. Miriam, half asleep and starving for food, eagerly ate large biscuits too hungry to care much for Alma’s continued resentment of her failure to join the card party and her unconcealed contempt of her sudden return to animation at the prospect of nourishment. She had never felt so hungry.

Going at last to her room Miriam found its gleaming freshness warm and firelit. Warm fresh deeps of softly coloured room that were complete before she came in with her candle. She stood a moment imagining the emptiness. The April night air was streaming gently in from meadows. Going across to the window she hesitated near the flowered curtain. It stirred gently; but not in that way as if moved by ghostly fingers. The meadows here were different. They might grow the same again. But woods and meadows were always there, away from London. One could go to them. They were going on all the time. All the time in London spring and summer and autumn were passing unseen. But this was not the time. They were different here. She pulled a deep wicker chair close up to the exciting white ash-sprinkled hearth. The evening she had left in the flames downstairs was going on up here. Tomorrow, today, in a few hours she would be sitting with them again, facing flames; no one else there. She sat with her eyes on the flames. A clock struck two.⁠ ⁠… I’ve got to them at last, the people I ought to be with. The books in the corner showed their bindings and opened their pages here and there. They made a little sick patch on her heart. They approved of them. Other people approved of things. Nothing had been done yet that anybody could approve of⁠ ⁠… the something village of Grandpré⁠ ⁠… und dann sagte darauf, die gute vernünftige Hausfrau.⁠ ⁠… It all floated in the air. They would see it if somebody showed it. They would be angry and amused if anybody tried to show it. It was wrong in some way to try and show the things you were looking at. Keep quiet about them. Then somebody else expressed them; and those other people turned to you and demanded your admiration⁠—and wondered why you were furious. It’s too long to wait, until the things come up of themselves. You must attend to them.⁠ ⁠…

How the fragrance of the cigarette stood out upon the fresh warm air⁠ ⁠… that was perique, that curious strong flavour. They were very strong, he had said so; but downstairs, talking like that they had had no particular flavour, just cigarettes, bringing the cigarette mood⁠ ⁠… no wonder he had been surprised, really surprised, at her smoking so many⁠ ⁠… but then he had been surprised at her eating a hard apple at midnight⁠ ⁠… the sitting room had suddenly looked familiar going into it alone while they were seeing out the Pinners and the big man. Strange unknown voices that perhaps she would not hear again, going out into the night⁠ ⁠… their voices jesting the last jests as the guests went down the garden, sounding in the hall, familiar and homely, well known to her, presently coming back into the sitting room; the fire burning brightly like any other fire, the exciting deep pinkness of the shaded lamplight like nothing else in the world. Alma knew it, rushing in⁠ ⁠… whirling about with Alma in that room with that afternoon left in it; the sounds of bolting and locking coming in from the hall.

… “You looked extraordinarily pretty.⁠ ⁠…”

“You have come through it all remarkably well”⁠ ⁠… remarkable had a k in it in English, and German, merkwürdig, and perhaps in Scandinavian languages; but not in other languages; it was one of the things that separated England from the south⁠ ⁠… remarkable⁠ ⁠… hard and chilly.

“You know you’re awfully good stuff. You’ve had an extraordinary variety of experience; you’ve got your freedom; you ought to write.”

“That is what a palmist told me at Newlands. It was at a big afternoon ‘at home’; there was a palmist in a little dark room sitting near a lamp; she looked at nothing but your hands; she kept saying whatever you do, write. If you haven’t written yet, write, if you don’t succeed go on writing.”

“Just so, have you written?”

“Ah, but she also told me my self-confidence had been broken; that I used to be self-confident and was so no longer. It’s true.”

“Have you written anything?”

“I once sent in a thing to Home Notes. They sent it back but asked me to write something else and suggested a few things.”

“If they had taken your stuff you would have gone on and learnt to turn out stuff bad enough for Home Notes and gone on doing it for the rest of your life.”

“But then an artist, a woman who had a studio in Bond Street and knew Leighton, saw some things I had tried to paint and said I ought to make any sacrifice to learn painting, and a musician said the same about music.”

“You could work in writing quite well with your present work.”

… “Pieces of short prose; anything; a description of an old woman sitting in an omnibus⁠ ⁠… anything. There’s plenty of room for good work. There’s the Academy always ready to consider well-written pieces of short prose. Write something and send it to me.”