it was strange that it should be the house that had always caught her eye, as she crossed the square; one of the spots that always made the years of her london life show as a continuous communion with the rich brightness of the west-end. the houses round about it were part of the darker colour of london, creating even in sunlight the beloved familiar london atmosphere of dun-coloured mist and grime. but this house was a brilliant white, its windows fringed, during the season, with the gentle deep velvet pink of ivy-leaf geraniums and having, across the lower half of its fa?ade, a fine close trellis of green painted wood, up which a green creeper clambered, neat and sturdy, with small bright polished leaves making a woodland blur across the diamond patterned mesh of white and green. there were other creepers in the square, but they hung in festoons, easily shabby, spoiled at their brightest by the thought of their stringy bare tendrils hung with shrivelled leaves. these small green leaves faded and dried and fell crisply, leaving a network of clean twigs to gleam in the rain, and the trellis bright green against the white house-front, suggesting summer all the year around.
she went eagerly towards this permanent summer created by wealth, warmed by the imagined voice
of a power that could transform all difficulties, setting them in a beauty that lived by itself.
the little leaves, seen from the doorstep, shone like bright enamel in the misty twilight; but their beautiful wild clean-cut shapes, so near, suddenly seemed helpless, unable to escape, forced to drape the walls, life-fevered within, to which their stems were pinned..... but there was a coming in and out...... all people in houses had a coming in and out, those moments of coming, anew out into endless space. and everywhere at moments, in houses, was the sense of the life of the whole world flowing in. even jewish houses were porous to the life of the world, and to have a house, however strangely shaped one’s life, would be to have a vantage point for breathing in the life of the world...... she stood in a lull, reprieved, her endlessly revolving problem left behind, the future in abeyance, perhaps to be shown her by the woman waiting within, set in surroundings that now called to her jubilantly, proclaiming themselves to be the only object of her visit. for a moment she found herself back in her old sense of the marvel of existence, gazing at the miraculous spectacle of people and things, existing; herself, however, perplexed and resourceless, within it, everything sinking into insignificance beside the fact of being alive, having lived on to another moment of unexplainable glorious happiness. light-heartedly she rang the bell. the small movement of her lifted hand was supported, a permitted part of the whole tremendous panorama; and in that whole she was england, a link in the world-wide being of england and english life.
the bell, grinding out its summons within the house, brought her back within the limits of the occasion, but she could not drive away the desire to go forward without return, claiming welcome and acceptance, in a life permanently set in beauty.
the door flew open revealing a tall resentfully handsome butler past whom she went confidently announcing her appointment, into an immense hall, its distances leading in every direction to doors, suggesting a variety of interiors beyond her experience. she was left standing. someone who had come up the steps as the door opened, was being swiftly conveyed, a short squat polished wealthy old english jew with curly grey hair and an eager busy plunging gait, across the hall to the centremost door. it opened on a murmur of voices and the light from within fell upon a table just outside, its surface crowded with gleaming top-hats. some kind of men’s meeting was in progress. the woman was not in it...... had she anticipated, before she married, what it would be, however she might fortify herself with scorn, to breathe always the atmosphere of the jewish religious and social oblivion of women? had she had any experience of jewesses, their sultry conscious femineity, their dreadful acceptance of being admitted to synagogue on sufferance, crowded away upstairs in a stuffy gallery, while the men downstairs, bathed in light, draped in the symbolic shawl, thanked god aloud for making them men and not women? had she thought what it must be to have always at her side a jewish consciousness, unconscious of her actuality, believing in its own positive existence,
seeing her as human only in her consecration to relationships?
the returning butler ushered her unannounced through a doorway near at hand into a room that spread dimly about her in a twilight deepened by a single core of rosy light at the centre of the expanse. through a high curtain-draped archway she caught a glimpse, as she came forward, of a further vastness, shadowy in undisturbed twilight.
mrs. bergstein had risen to meet her, her head obscured in the gloom above the lamplight, so that only her gown met miriam’s first sally of investigation; a refined middle-class gown of thin dull black whose elbow sleeves and little vee neck were softened at the edge with a ruche of tulle; the party dress of a middle-aged spinster schoolmistress. miriam braced herself in vain against its seductions; it called her so powerfully to come forth and rejoice. she revelled off, licensed and permitted, the free deputy of this chained presence, amongst the enchantments of the great house; the joy of her escapade leaping bright against the dark certainty that there was no help awaiting her. it was no longer to be feared that an unscrupulous, successful, brightly cajoling woman would persuade her that her problem did not exist; but neither from this woman to whom the fact of life as a thing in itself never had time to appear, could she hope for support in her own belief in the unsoundness of compromise.
mrs. bergstein bowed, murmured a greeting and indicated a little settee near the low chair into which she immediately subsided, her face still in
shadow, the shape of her coiffure so much in keeping with the dress that miriam could hardly refrain from departing then and there. she sat down, a schoolgirl waiting for judgment against which she was armed in advance, and yet helpless through her unenvious, scornful admiration.
“i was much interested by your letter” said mrs. bergstein.
the interview was at an end. there was no opening in the smooth close surface represented by the voice, through which questions could be driven home. she was smitten into silence where the sound of the voice echoed and re-echoed, whilst she fumbled for a suitable phrase, clinging to the memory of the statement, still somewhere, which she had come, so desperately, to hear and carry away and set down, a ray of light in the darkness of her revolving thoughts. a numb forgetfulness assailed her, threatening the disaster of irrelevance of speech or behaviour coming from the tides of expression she felt beating below it. she forced a murmured response from her lips, and the tumult was stilled to an echo that flung itself to and fro within, answering the echo of the woman’s voice on the air. she had caught hold and contributed. it was now the turn of the other to go on and confirm what she had revealed......
“music is so beautiful—so elevating.” “that depends upon the music.” never said. kept treacherously back for the sake of things that might be lost in a clashing of opinions ... the things they never thought of in exercising their benevolence, and demanding in return acceptance of their views
... the light of a whole world condensed in the bright old town, the sweet chiming sound of it, coming in at the windows, restoring childhood, the expanses of leisure made by their small hard circle, a world of thoughtless ideas, turning a short week-end into a life, lived before, familiar, building out in the nerves a glorious vitality.....
it was the same voice, the english lady’s voice, bringing all christendom about her, all the traditions within which, so lately, she had felt herself committed steadfastly to tread. but there was something left out of it, a warmth was missing, it had not in it the glow that was in those other women’s voices, of kindliness towards the generous things they had secretly, willingly renounced. it had, instead, something that was like a cold clean blade thrusting into an intelligible future, something inexorable, founded not upon fixed ideas, but upon ideas, single and cold. this woman would not make concessions; she would always stand, uncompromisingly, in face of everyone, men and women, for the same things, clear cut, delicate and narrowly determining as her voice.
“you are considering the possibility of embracing the jewish faith?”
“well, no,” said miriam startled into briskness by the too quickly developing accumulation of speech. “i heard that you had done so; and wondered, how it was possible, for an englishwoman.”
“you are a christian?”
“i don’t know. i was brought up in the anglican church.”
“much depends upon the standpoint from which one approaches the very definite and simple creed of judaism. i myself was a unitarian, and therefore able to take the step without making a break with my earlier convictions.”
“i see,” said miriam coldly. fate had deceived her, holding in reserve the trick of this simple explanation. she gazed at the seated figure. the glow of her surroundings was quenched by the chill of a perpetually active reason.... science, ethics, withering common-sense playing over everything in life, making a harsh bareness everywhere, seeing nothing alive but the cold processes of the human mind; having tennyson read at services because poetry was one of the superior things produced by humanity...... she wondered whether this woman, so exactly prepared to meet a jewish reform movement, had been helplessly born into unitarianism, or had taken it up as she herself had nearly done.
“much of course depends upon the synagogue through which one is admitted.” ah; she had felt the impossibilities. she had compromised and was excusing her compromise.
“of course i have heard of the reform movement.” .. the silence quivered with the assertion that the reformers were as much cut off from judaism as unitarianism from anglican christianity. to enter a synagogue that made special arrangements for the recognition of women was to admit that women were dependent on recognition. the silence admitted the dilemma. mrs. bergstein had passed through these thoughts, suffering? though
she had found a way through, following her cold clear reason, she still suffered?
“i think i should find it impossible to associate with jewish women.”
“that is a point you must consider very carefully indeed.” the room leapt into glowing reality. they were at one; englishwomen with a common incommunicable sense. outcasts...... far away, within the warm magic circle of english life, sounded the careless easy slipshod voices of englishmen, she saw their averted talking forms, aware in every line, and protective, of something that englishwomen held in their hands.
“don’t you find” she began breathlessly, but calm even tones drove across her eagerness: “what is your fiancé’s attitude towards religion?”
“he is not exactly religious and not fully in sympathy with the reform movement because he is a zionist and thinks that the old ritual is the only link between the persecuted jews and those who are better placed; that it would be treachery to break with it as long as any are persecuted........ nevertheless, he is willing to renounce his judaism.”
the queen, who is religious, puts love before religion, for woman. her protestantism. he for god only, she for god in him and able to change her creed when she marries. a catholic couldn’t. and she would call catholics idolators. she is an idolator; of men.
mrs. bergstein was amazed at his willingness. envious...... i am a jew, a ‘head’ man incapable of ‘love’...... it is your eyes. i
must see them always...... i know now what is meant by love...... i am even willing to renounce my judaism...... michael to think and say that. i am crowned, for life; by a sacrifice i cannot accept. he must keep his judaism...... you must marry me...... the discovery, flowing through the grey noisy street, of the secret of the ‘mastery’ idea; that women can only be sure that a man is sure when——
“there is then no common religious feeling between you?”
she had moved. the light fell upon her. she was about forty. she had come forth, so late, from the secret numbness of her successful independent life, and had not found what she came to seek. she was still alone in her circling day. at the period of evening dress she put on a heavy gold bracelet, ugly, a heavy ugly shape. her face was pinched and drawn; before her lay the ordeal of belated motherhood. vulgarly violating her refined endurance had come this incident. dignified condemnation spoke from her averted eyes. she had said her say and was desiring that there should be no further waste of time.
miriam made no sound. in the stillness that followed the blow she faced the horrible summary, stricken to her feet, her strength ebbing with her thoughts into the gathering swirling darkness. she waited for a moment. but mrs. bergstein made no sign. imponderable, conscious only of the weight of her body about her holding her to the ground beneath her feet, she went away from the room and the house. in the lamplit darkness her
feet carried her joyously forward into the freshness of the tree-filled air. the large square lying between her and the street where he was waiting seemed an immensity. she recovered within it the strange unfailing freedom of solitude in the sounding spaces of london and hurried on to be by his side generally expressive of her rejoicing. the world’s condemnation was out of sight behind her. but he would ask, and whatever she said, the whole problem would be there afresh, insoluble. he would never see that it had been confirmed, never admit anything contemptible in their association...... it was because there was no contempt in him that she was hurrying. but alone again with him, the troubled darkness behind her would return with its maddening influence. she was fleeing from it only towards its darkest centre.
