The Tunnel

I

Miriam paused with her heavy bag dragging at her arm. It was a disaster. But it was the last of Mornington Road. To explain about it would be to bring Mornington Road here.

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Mrs. Bailey as she dropped her bag and fumbled for her purse.

“Oh, I’d better settle it at once or I shall forget about it. I’m so glad the things have come so soon.”

When Mrs. Bailey had taken the half-crown they stood smiling at each other. Mrs. Bailey looked exactly as she had done the first time. It was exactly the same; there was no disappointment. The light coming through the glass above the front door made her look more shabby and worn. Her hair was more metallic. But it was the same girlish figure and the same smile triumphing over the badly fitting teeth. Miriam felt like an inmate returning after an absence. The smeariness of the marble-topped hall table did not offend her. She held herself in. It was better to begin as she meant to go on. Behind Mrs. Bailey the staircase was beckoning. There was something waiting upstairs that would be gone if she stayed talking to Mrs. Bailey.

Assuring Mrs. Bailey that she remembered the way to the room she started at last on the journey up the many flights of stairs. The feeling of confidence that had come the first time she mounted them with Mrs. Bailey returned now. She could not remember noticing anything then but a large brown dinginess, one rich warm even tone everywhere in the house; a sharp contrast to the cold harshly lit little bedroom in Mornington Road. The day was cold. But this house did not seem cold and when she rounded the first flight and Mrs. Bailey was out of sight the welcome of the place fell upon her. She knew it well, better than any place she had known in all her wanderings—the faded umbers and browns of the stair carpet, the gloomy heights of wall, a patternless sheen where the staircase lights fell upon it and in the shadowed parts a blurred scrolling pattern in dull madder on a brown background; the dark landings with lofty ceilings and high dark polished doors surmounted by classical reliefs in grimed plaster, the high staircase windows screened by long smoke grimed lace curtains. On the top landing the ceiling came down nearly level with the tops of the doors. The light from above made the little grained doors stare brightly. Patches of fresh brown and buff shone here and there in the threadbare linoleum. The cracks of the flooring were filled with dust and dust lay along the rim of the skirting. Two large tin trunks standing one upon the other almost barred the passageway. It was like a landing in a small suburban lodging-house, a small silent afternoon brightness, shut in and smelling of dust. Silence flooded up from the lower darkness. The hall where she had stood with Mrs. Bailey was far away below and below that were basements deep in the earth. The outside of the house with its first-floor balcony, the broad shallow flight of steps leading to the dark green front door, the little steep flight running sharply down into the railed area seemed as far away as yesterday.