It’s not altogether personal..... Until it is understood and admitted, there is a darkness everywhere. The life of every man in existence, who does not understand and admit it, is perfectly senseless. Until they know they are all living in vain.
“What on earth did you mean?” she said as soon as the omnibus had started.
He turned a startled musing face. He had forgotten.
“What have I said?”
“Kindly think.”
“Really I am at a loss.”
“When that woman collided with me, crossing the road.”
“Ah, ah, I remember. Well?”
“You pronounced an opinion.”
“It is not my opinion. It is a matter of ascertained fact.”
“Facts are invented by people who start with their conclusions arranged beforehand.”
“Perhaps so.”
“Ah well; that is an admission.”
“The conclusion is amply verified.”
“Where?”
“I speak only of women in the mass. There are of course exceptions.”
“Go on, go on.”
“I see you are annoyed. Let us leave this matter.”
“Kindly go on.”
“There is nothing more to say.” He laughed. He was not even being aware that it was a matter of life and death. He could go on serenely living in an idea, that turned life into a nightmare.
“Oh if it amuses you.” He was silent. The moments went beating on. She turned from him and sat averted. She would go now onward and onward till she could get away over the edge of the world. There was nothing else to do. There were no thoughts or words in which her conviction could take shape. Even looking for them was a degradation. Besides, argument, if she could steady herself to face the pain of it, would not, whatever he might say, even dislodge his satisfied unconcern. He was uneasy; but only about herself, and would accept reassurance from her, without a single backward glance. But what did their personal fate matter beside a question so all-embracing? What future could they have in unacknowledged disagreement over central truth? And if it were acknowledged, what peace?
The long corridor of London imprisoned her. Far away beneath her tumult it was making its appeal, renewing the immortal compact. The irregular fa?ades, dull greys absorbing the light, bright buffs throwing it brilliantly out, dadoed below with a patchwork of shops, and overhead the criss-cross of telephone wires, shut her away from the low-hung soft grey sky. But far away, unfailing,
retreating as the long corridor telescoped towards them, an obliterating saffron haze filled the vista, holding her in her place.
The end of the journey brought them to grey streets and winding alleys where the masts and rigging that had loomed suddenly in the distance, robbing the expedition of its promise of ending in some strange remoteness with their suggestion of blind busy worlds beyond London, were lost to sight.
“This must be the docks,” she said politely.
With the curt permission of a sentinel policeman they went through a gateway appearing suddenly before them in a high grey wall. Miriam hurried forward to meet the open scene for one moment alone and found herself on a little quay surrounding a square basin of motionless grey water shut in by wooden galleries, stacked with mouldering casks. But the air was the air that moves softly on still days over wide waters and in the shadowed light of the enclosure, the fringe of green where the water touched the grey stone of the quay gleamed brilliantly in the stillness. She breathed in, in spite of herself, the charm of the scene; an ordered completeness, left to itself in beauty; its lonely beauty to be gathered only by the chance passer-by.
“This is a strange romantic place,” said Mr. Shatov conversationally by her side.
“There is nothing,” said Miriam unwillingly, feeling her theme weaken as she looked away from it to voice well-known words, “Nothing that reveals more completely the spiritual,” her voice gave over the word which broke into meaninglessness upon
the air, “the status of a man as his estimate of women.”
“I entirely agree. I was a feminist in my college days. I am still a feminist.”
Miriam pondered. The word was new to her. But how could anyone be a feminist and still think women most certainly inferior beings?
“Ah,” she cried “you are one of the Huxleys.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh well. He, impertinent schoolboy, graciously suggested that women should be given every possible kind of advantage, educational and otherwise; saying almost in the same breath that they could never reach the highest places in civilisation; that Nature’s Salic Law would never be repealed.”
“Well, how is it to be repealed?”
“I don’t know I’m sure. I’m not wise enough to give instruction in repealing a law that has never existed. But who is Huxley, that he should take upon himself to say what are the highest places in civilisation?”
“Miriam” he said, coming round to stand before her. “We are not going to quarrel over this matter.” She refused to meet his eyes.
“It is not a question of quarrelling, or even discussion. You have told me all I want to know. I see exactly where you stand; and for my part it decides, many things. I don’t say this to amuse myself or because I want to, but because it is the only thing I can possibly do.”
“Miriam. In this spirit nothing can be said at all. Let us rather go and have tea.”
Poor little man, perhaps he was weary; troubled
in this strange grey corner of a country not his own, isolated with an unexpected anger. They had tea in a small dark room behind a little shop. It was close packed with an odorous dampness. Miriam sat frozen, appalled by the presence of a negro. He sat near by, huge, bent snorting and devouring, with a huge black bottle at his side. Mr. Shatov’s presence was shorn of its alien quality. He was an Englishman in the fact that he and she could not sit eating in the neighbourhood of this marshy jungle. But they were, they had. They would have. Once away from this awful place she would never think of it again. Yet the man had hands and needs and feelings. Perhaps he could sing. He was at a disadvantage, an outcast. There was something that ought to be said to him. She could not think what it was. In his oppressive presence it was impossible to think at all. Every time she sipped her bitter tea it seemed that before she should have replaced her cup, vengeance would have sprung from the dark corner. Everything hurried so. There was no time to shake off the sense of contamination. It was contamination. The man’s presence was an outrage on something of which he was not aware. It would be possible to make him aware. When his fearful face, which she sadly knew she could not bring herself to regard a second time, was out of sight, the outline of his head was desolate, like the contemplated head of any man alive. Men ought not to have faces. Their real selves abode in the expressions of their heads and brows. Below, their faces were moulded by deceit......
While she had pursued her thoughts, advantage
had fallen to the black form in the corner. It was as if the black face grinned, crushing her thread of thought.
“You see, Miriam, if instead of beating me, you will tell me your thoughts, it is quite possible that mine may be modified. There is at least nothing of the bigot in me.”
“It is not what people may be made to see for a few minutes in conversations that counts. It is the conclusions they come to, instinctively, by themselves.” He wanted to try and think as she did ...... “chose attendrissante; il me ressemblaient” ..... life .. was different, to everybody, even to intellectual male vain-boasters, from everybody’s descriptions; there was nothing to point to anywhere that exactly corresponded to spoken opinions. But the relieving truth of this was only realised privately. The things went on being said. Men did not admit their private discoveries in public. It was not enough to see and force the admittance of the holes in a theory privately, and leave the form of words going on and on in the world perpetually parroted, infecting the sky. “Wise women know better and go their way without listening,” is not enough. It is not only the insult to women; a contempt for men is a bulwark against that, but introduces sourness into one............