Interim

Have they brought the sausages, asked Mrs. Philps acidly.

Yes, scowled Florrie.

Don’t forget to tell Christine how we like them done, said Grace frowning anxiously. Miriam took her eyes from the protruding eyes of the Shakespeare on the wall opposite, and shut away within her her sharp sense of the many things ranged below him on the mantelpiece behind Florrie, the landscape on one side of him, the picture of Queen Victoria leaning on a walking stick between two Hindu servants, receiving an address, on the other side, the Satsuma vases and bowls on the sideboard behind Mrs. Philps, the little sharp bow of narrow curtain-screened windows behind Grace, the clean gleam on everything.

Christine?

Oh yes, didn’t you know? She’s been with us a month⁠—

What became of Amelia?

Oh we had to let her go. She got fat and lazy.

They all do! they’re all the same⁠—Go on Miriam.

From under a firm black-lashed white lid a bright dark eye gazed derision into the flames.

Go on Mr. Mendizzable smiled Mrs. Bailey brushing at her skirt with her handkerchief⁠—we are most interested.

Hay, madame that is all, he laughed derisively in rich singing swaying tones towards the middle of the hearthrug⁠—I skate from one end of their canal to another, faster than them all. I win their prize. Je m’en fiche⁠—

You skated all the way along the canal.⁠—

Ieeea skate their canal. That was Amsterdam. I do many things there. I edit their newspaper. I conduct a café.

Mts. You have had some adventures⁠—

That was not adventures in Amsterdam mon dieu! He swayed drumming from foot to foot in time to his shouts. Had he really beaten those wonderful skaters? Perhaps he had not. She glanced at his brow calm, firm, dead white under the soft crisply ridged black hair. Perhaps he was Dutch; and that was why he looked common and also refined.

“You write that miss?”

Yes, said Miriam leaping through surprise and indignation to delight. Sissie and Emile were back again in the room hurrying and angry. The little man bid them a loud good evening; a tablecloth was flountering out across the large table. Miriam returned to her notebook. He was writing, with a scrap of pencil taken from his pocket, on her piece of paper, held against the wall. There miss he shouted gruffly, handing it to her. Lies, she read; scribbled in a rounded hand across her words, and underneath⁠—there is no Cosmopolis. Bernard Mendizabal.

Oh yes, there is a cosmopolis argued Miriam looking up and out from a whirl of convincing images. He was walking about in the window space in his extraordinary clothes, short and somehow too square for his clothes, making his clothes look square. His square roundly modelled head was changeably sculptured by the gaslight as he paced up and down. His distinction seemed to be sharpened by her words as she said vous avez tort monsieur. She had a sense of Emile and Sissie glancing and affronted while she slid down her sentence to leap, flouting them, forsaking her crowding thoughts, and catch at any cost, the joy of saying and hearing no matter what, in foreign speech. She would pay for the moment any price to make it sound and keep it sounding in the room. The spaces of her separate life in the house became a background for this familiar forgotten joy so unexpectedly renewed.

“No miss!” shouted Mr. Mendizabal. She cast a fierce general scowl towards his promenading figure. He was another of those foreigners who care for nothing in England but practising English. Then she would fight her theory.

There was someone in the hall. Mr. Mendizabal in a funny little short overcoat.

“You go out Miss?” he said cheerfully.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said eagerly, her eyes on the clear grey and black of the hat he was taking from the hall stand.

“I too go for a walk” he murmured cramming the soft hat on to his resisting hair and opening the door for her.

This was one of those mild February days; it is a mistake to imagine that the winter is gone; but it is gone in your mind; you can see ahead two summers and only one winter. I go with you was meant as a question.⁠ ⁠… It was on the tip of her tongue to turn and say you should have said shall I go with you; she was rebuked by a glimpse of Mr. Mendizabal swinging sturdily unconsciously along on the gutter side of the narrow width of pavement, swinging his stick, the strong modelling of his white face unconscious under his strong black hair and the jaunty sweep of his black banded grey hat. “Jaunty and debonair”; but without a touch of weakness. What a lovely mild evening; extraordinary for the time of year; he would be furious at being interrupted for that, thinking of her as a stiff formal institutrice and shouting something ironic that would bring the world about their ears. Quel beau temps; that was it.

“Quel beau temps.” They had reached the Gower Street curb and stood waiting to plunge through the passing traffic.