CHAPTER IV

1

Swaggering along the middle of the empty pavement, the long cape of his short overcoat swinging like the cloak of a stage villain. With bent head he is playing his part to an imagined audience. He knows nothing of the contrast between the small figure and the big arrogance.

He swung round into Flaxman’s Court, and Miriam, following, paused for joy, mentally summoning heralds to precede and a brass band to follow him, so stately with head held high and plunging gait controlled to a military strut, was his entry into the humble street. He stopped just as she moved aside to gain her door, swung right about and bore down upon her, bowing, slouch hat in hand.

“_Allow_ me!” a deep hollow stage voice.

She halted surprised. He was close by her side, his hat replaced with a flourishing movement that released from his person the thick odour of stale smoke, the permanent smell of the ground floor. The grotesque figure, now crouching, all dilapidated cape and battered sombrero, over the keyhole, was the owner of the windowful of stone and marble.

“Enter madam,” he declaimed, flinging open the door. Thanking him, she moved into the passage and was going on towards the stairs, but the hollow tones broke forth again, reverberating in the narrow space made dark by the closing of the door:

“I am greatly honoured,” he was saying, “by this event.”

She turned perforce. He was again profoundly bowing. She could just discern the dim outlines, the cape winged out by his deep obsequiousness.

“You will, I trust,” the voice was meditative, suggesting words ahead to be delivered with care: “not deem me intrewsive in expressing in your gracious presence,” indeed, Miriam felt, her presence was gracious compared to this exhalation of concentrated odours stifling and making her long to be away and up the stairs, “my respect and furthermore the great and happy en’ancement arriving upon this house by your coming, with your lady friend, _also_ most gracious, to abide beneath the roof that shelters my spouse and myself.”

“We like being here,” said Miriam, politely, smiling into the darkness.

“Lady, I thank you for your graciousness.”

“Not at all,” she said, and felt him silent for an instant before an evidently unexpected lapse from gracious ladyhood.

This was all most dreadful. His tone had been deep and broken; touching. Behind his bombast was something genuine, making high demands upon her, including her with Miss Holland, crowning her as a châtelaine. She had undeceived him, spoken brusquely, revealed her different state.

“I am glad,” she added quickly, in Miss Holland’s most stately manner, reflecting that a gracious aloofness was an excellent protection, “that you find us pleasant neighbours.”

“More than that,” came the low broken voice, and her eyes, used now to the dim light, saw that he bowed more deeply than ever. “No poor words of mine could avail to express the felicity experienced in the presence of beauty and graciousness. I would have you to know:” he reared his head and spoke upwards to the staircase, “that I am a repairer of statoos.”

Ah, here was the secret, the real origin of the attack. But it was interesting. A queer trade.

“You have made all those things in your window,” she said to encourage him, and standing a little nearer to the stairs composed herself to endure and listen.

“I am a repairer of statoos. But let not that mislead you. These hands,” he upheld and waved them in the air, “recall to pristine loveliness _only_ the classic. In preference, the _Greek_.” He was breathing quickly, angrily. Poor man, without an audience. In his whole circumstances, no audience. Her interest in his work changed to a desire to give him freedom from minding.

“It would be dreadful to waste your time repairing rubbish,” she said quickly and added, suddenly feeling that he was strong enough for an attempted truth, “only people sometimes love rubbish _very_ much. For them it is not rubbish.”

“Let them love their rubbish, gracious lady, let them love—mistake me not. I have no quarrel with love. The love of the Saviour, the greatest of all lovers, redeems the statoo badly made to honour it. But not to Perrance, not to _Perrance_ let them come if their rubbish be broken. The classical, the Greek, that alone of the work of man’s hands can command the love of Perrance.

“So great a love that he has,” he drew a deep breath, “it may surprise you but it is nevertheless trew, he has mastered the characters of the Greek tongue it_self_.”

“Greek is very difficult,” said Miriam.

“He can, in the rendering of an account for ’Ermes repaired, equally as well use the original _Greek_.” He threw open the door leading to his little shop, but with no air of inviting her to enter. He wanted to provide a clearer light for her contemplation of the marvel he represented?

The light revealed weakness. Large watery eyes fierce with self-conceit, grown old in unchallenged self-conceit. An angry mouth, tremulous beneath branching buccaneer moustachios. He was waiting for responsive wonder, ready the moment it should be spoken to break forth again. His violence calmed her pity. He was proof against the whole world. Determined to escape she smiled approval and remarked in the voice of departure on the amount of industry represented by the house as a whole.

“Stay,” he cried, “yet one moment,” and disappeared into the shop, to return in an instant with some small object clasped, hidden by his cape, to his breast.

“I have here,” he patted his breast with a free hand, “a small work, a work of my own hands, dedicated as is seeming and suitable, to _womankind_. Deign, gracious lady, to accept the same as a token of gratitude and esteem for your presence under this roof.” With a deft movement he flung back the cape and presented the hidden object. It was the alabaster finger.

“Oh, no!” Miriam cried. “You must not give me _that_.” But he was embarrassed, holding it forth, his head bent, his voice once more low and broken.

“Take, take,” he said, “I will not sell it and I shall find no recipient more worthy. Take, I beg you.”

The heavy little block came into her hands. She gazed at it murmuring appreciations, trying to thank him in the way he wanted to be thanked. His eloquence was at an end. He bowed silently at each phrase, saying only, when at last she turned to go, “Lady, I thank you.”

He had said his say.

But what of the future chance meetings? What could she give in return for the burden of this gift, so much heavier than its weight in her hands?

2

On her way upstairs, pondering this disquieting confirmation of her half-hearted candidature for the estate of dignified ladyhood, she saw that the first floor rooms were open and the luggage disappeared from the landing. Passing the door of the front room she caught a glimpse of a young woman, her head pillowed on arms outstretched upon a small bare table, talking and sobbing in a strangled cockney voice. The light from the large window fell bright amongst the coiled masses of her brown hair, shone through their upper fluffiness, making a nimbus. She was young and slight; an air of refinement in the set of her black dress. Come to live _here_. Seeking now, of course, stranded alone in two rooms of this dingy aged house, her old self, life as she had known it before she was isolated with him. The absent him she was so fully revealing.

This was marriage, thought Miriam, going on up the stairs, a bright young couple welcomed by Sheffield for being so nice and respectable. Tragedy; the beginnings before its dry-eyed acceptance, of womanly tragedy, the loss of self in the procession of unfamiliar unwanted things. In the company of a partner already reimmersed in his own familiar life.

There was weakness in such public careless abandonment. And subject for the mirth of cynics. But strength, too, strength of which cynics, comfortable well-fed people in armchairs, had no inkling. The strength was broken for a moment against the walls of a man’s massive unconsciousness. Upon that the woman would be avenged; breaking fiercely through in her search for something in the world about her to respond to her known self with its all-embracing radiance. That strange indestructible _radiance_, discoverable in all women, even in those who professed the utmost callousness....

3

How bright, how unfairly upon a gay and sunlit peak seemed the lives on the top floor compared to those being lived below! How mean it seemed to be going eagerly up to talk to Miss Holland, with an evening ahead full of varied enchantments. Miss Holland to come back to when it was over; for more talk.

The door of her room stood open, twilight within. Miss Holland was at home. In the sitting-room. There would be lamplight, heralding the brighter radiances ahead.

The sitting-room was almost dark. The light of a guttering candle set on a chair struck dimly upwards over Miss Holland in her flannel dressing-gown; mending an ancient skirt. Her hair in wisps round a face harshly lit from below, and heavy with shadows. The reek of spilt paraffin came from the small stove in the fireplace. It was only an instant’s vision, rapidly erased by Miss Holland’s surprised greeting and eager rearrangements. But the picture of her intense private concentration on gloomy economies had added itself to the scene downstairs.

While Miss Holland cleared away, Miriam retreated to her bedroom and set Perrance’s gift down in several places in turn. Everywhere it refused to harmonise. The delicate elegant finger suggested a life moving in refined paths towards extinction; an effigy of that conscious refinement that speaks more clearly than anything else of the ugliness of dissolution. In this room so warm with life there was no place for a hint from the tomb.

“Ah, mon enfant, tout cela _pourrira_.” “Oui, mon père, mais ce n’est pas encore pourri.”

She went back to the gloomy sitting-room eager to communicate to Miss Holland the newly revealed life of the household.

“M’no,” said Miss Holland, “the man Perrance I have not so far seen. His wife I fear is a poor thing. A countrywoman, from Devonshire. London conditions, though I gather she has lived here ever since her marriage, are too much for her. And it is only too evident that she does not recognise the necessity for hygiene. Everything in their quarters is, I fear, most unwholesome. And to make matters worse, they keep, like so many childless Londoners of that class, innumerable _cats_. I fear she rarely bestirs herself. He, I understand, brings in all foods. And requires a great deal of cookery. She complains in a mopy, resigned way, about _that_. I fear they do not agree any too well. There are, very frequently, loud discussions going on when I come in at night.”

She spoke with disdainful rapidity, as if eager to make way for other themes.

“He’s a freak, from a circus, the perfect mountebank. But there’s something, as there always is in a charlatan.”

“I fear I’m no psychologist. I’ve not seen the man as yet, but I fear, I _fear_ his voice sounds suspiciously _thick_. M—— you’ve seen him?”

“He’s given me that finger from the window. I suppose it’s a paper-weight.”

Miss Holland was transformed. Flushed and frowning with incredulous approval.

“But what a _charming_ tribute!” she cried. “_Indeed_, I am surprised. Most certainly I should not have credited Perrance with so much perception.”

“I wish he hadn’t. _I_ can’t live up to graceful attentions.”

“No need, no need.” She was speaking meditatively towards the shaded lamp. “You have the secret of charm, an enchanting possession. Is it not enough?”

“That’s an illusion. I haven’t.” She described the scene on the first floor.

“Yes, yes, dear, dear,” interrupted Miss Holland, waving it away. “We are in _strange_ surroundings. Those poor things are _not_ married. That odious Sheffield who made their arrival an excuse for calling on me—I did not tell you. Eh, he is odious,” she shook her head, childishly screwing up her features. “_Odious_—believes, of course, that they _are_. They are both hotel employés. It is one of those unfortunate cases. And they are _quite_ without circumspection, talking loudly, with open doors. The young man is a presentable fellow, nice-looking and respectful in manner. He intends, I gather, to marry her. There is, of course, an infant on the way.” Without waiting for response she waved her glasses towards the mantelshelf.

4

“I have been looking at your books. That Shoppenore is an abominable fellow.”

“Oh, those old essays——”

“He permits himself the most unpardonable insolences.”

The châtelaine’s response to Schopenhauer. Yet since she had not simply cut him and turned away, since she had read on and been disturbed, he was not quite disposed of. Evidently, even for her, the bare fact of his being no gentleman was not enough. She had thrown an indignant glance and was waiting.

What would she do, if he were sturdily defended, wondered Miriam, smiling at the thought of herself as champion of this man whose very name brought a pang out of the past. For years she had forgotten him, together with the reflections that had exorcised him. It would be a weary business to recall the steps of that furious battle.

“He was most frightfully sincere.”

Miss Holland’s face turned a dull red. She had really suffered, then, under the lash of those rhythmic phrases; a little believing. This was an abyss. Here indeed was the worst Schopenhauer could do. His least pardonable outrage. She felt the shock of it reflected along her own nerves. It roused her to battle.

But as she felt her way back to the centre of the fray she found herself once more siding with the man, fearing and hating the mere semblance of woman. Its soft feebleness, its helpless blind strength in keeping life going. Felt again all her old horror and loathing of femininity, still faintly persisting. What was the answer to Schopenhauer? Swiftly seeking she passed again the point where she had first realised the collapse of the Lady, the absurdity, in the face of ordered thought, of oblivious dignity and refinement.

“He was a Weary Willy. That is to say a pessimist. A man who attends, by the way the schoolboy was right, only to the _feet_. Feet being, of course, always of clay. He saw life for everybody, going from gold to black, no escape, and each generation in turn fooled by nature, through woman, into going on.”

“How beautiful upon the mountains,” whispered Miss Holland, “are the feet——”

“Peace. Yes. But the staggering thing about all these men, the Hamlets and the Schopenhauers, is that they don’t notice that people are _miserable_ about being miserable. And uncomfortable, in varying degrees, in wrong-doing. When they make up their philosophies of life they leave out _themselves_. Like the people who talk of the vastness of space and the ant-like smallness of humanity. If _one_ man, say Schopenhauer, _sees_ quite clearly all the misery of life, and that it ends, for everybody, in disease and pain and death, then there is something in mankind that is not corruption.

“Then again all these thought-system people must have an illogical as well as a logical side. A side where they don’t believe their own systems. If they quite believed, instead of making a living out of their bitterness they would make an end of _themselves_. But you know it’s popular. There are lots of people who revel in it. Men particularly. It makes them feel superior.

“And there’s another thing in these people. By the way they generally have long _thin_ noses. Perhaps they don’t breathe properly. But the great thing is that you must consider life _obscene_. You must look at it from the outside, as shapes, helplessly writhing in the dark. If you _see_ all this, and Schopenhauer did, you grin and snort and stand aside. Women, he proves, don’t see it. And so they _are_ obscenity, blind servants of obscenity, forever.”

“Horrible. Horrible.”

“That doesn’t matter. It isn’t true. It’s words. Nothing can ever be expressed in words.”