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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..57cc754 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #56221 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56221) diff --git a/old/56221-0.txt b/old/56221-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fc8c822..0000000 --- a/old/56221-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7501 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Backwater, by Dorothy M. Richardson - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - - -Title: Backwater - Pilgrimage, Volume 2 - -Author: Dorothy M. Richardson - -Release Date: December 22, 2017 [EBook #56221] -[Last Updated: March 11, 2022] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Jens Sadowski, Mary Glenn Krause, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This file was -produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive. - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACKWATER *** - - - - - BACKWATER - - - - - BACKWATER - - - BY - DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON - AUTHOR OF “POINTED ROOFS” - - - LONDON - DUCKWORTH & CO. - 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN - - - First published 1916 - - - All rights reserved - - - TO - J. A. H. - - - - - BACKWATER - - - - - CHAPTER I - - - 1 - -A swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam from a tapestry screen standing -between her and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the bow of -the window. Consulting it at intervals as the afternoon wore on, she -found that it made very light of the quiet propositions that were being -elaborated within hearing of her inattentive ears. Looking beyond it she -could catch glimpses between the crowded fernery, when a tram was not -jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across the roadway and beyond -the palisade of a green level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The -trams seemed very near and noisy. When they passed by the window, the -speakers had to raise their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room -was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned quietness. It was full of -old things, like the Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts -of the ladies who were sitting and talking there. She and her mother had -seemed quite modern, fussy, worldly people when they had first come into -the room. From the moment the three ladies had come in and begun talking -to her mother, the things in the room, and the view of the distant row -of poplars had grown more and more peaceful, and now at the end of an -hour she felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson too, belonged -to the old-world room with its quiet green outlook shut in by the -poplars. Only the trams were disturbing. They came busily by, with their -strange jingle-jingle, plock-plock, and made her inattentive. Why were -there so many people coming by in trams? Where were they going? Why were -all the trams painted that hard, dingy blue? - -The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs in smooth gentle -voices, in small broken phrases, frequently interrupting and correcting -each other. Miriam heard dreamily that they wanted help with the lower -school, the children from six to eight years of age, in the mornings and -afternoons, and in the evenings a general superintendence of the four -boarders. They kept on saying that the work was very easy and simple; -there were no naughty girls--hardly a single naughty girl--in the -school; there should be no difficult superintendence, no exercise of -authority would be required. - -By the time they had reached the statement of these modifications Miriam -felt that she knew them quite well. The shortest, who did most of the -talking and who had twinkling eyes and crooked pince-nez and soft -reddish cheeks and a little red-tipped nose, and whose small coil of -sheeny grey hair was pinned askew on the top of her head--stray loops -standing out at curious angles--was Miss Jenny, the middle one. The very -tall one sitting opposite her, with a delicate wrinkled creamy face and -coal-black eyes and a peak of ringletted smooth coal-black hair, was the -eldest, Miss Deborah. The other sister, much younger, with neat smooth -green-grey hair and a long sad greyish face and faded eyes, was Miss -Haddie. They were all three dressed in thin fine black material and had -tiny hands and little softly moving feet. What did they think of the -trams? - -“Do you think you could manage it, chickie?” said Mrs. Henderson -suddenly. - -“I think I could.” - -“No doubt, my dear, oh, no doubt,” said Miss Jenny with a little sound -of laughter as she tapped her knee with the pince-nez she had plucked -from their rakish perch on the reddened bridge of her nose. - -“I don’t think I could teach Scripture.” - -An outbreak of incoherent little sounds and statements from all three -taught her that Miss Deborah took the Bible classes of the whole school. - -“How old is Miriam?” - -“Just eighteen. She has put up her hair to-day.” - -“Oh, poor child, she need not have done that.” - -“She is a _born_ teacher. She used to hold little classes amongst her -schoolfellows when she was only eight years old.” - -Miriam turned sharply to her mother. She was sitting with her tired -look--bright eyes, and moist flushed face. How had she heard about the -little classes? Had there been little classes? She could not remember -them. - -“She speaks French like a Parisienne.” - -That was that silly remark made by the woman in the train coming home -from Hanover. - -“Eh--we thought--it was in Germany she was----” - -“Yes, but I learned more French.” - -The sisters smiled provisionally. - -“She shared a room with the mademoiselle.” - -“Oh--er--hee--hay--perhaps she might speak French with the gels.” - -“Oh no, I couldn’t _speak_.” - -There was a tender little laugh. - -“I don’t know French conversation.” - -“Well, well.” - -The sisters brought the discussion to an end by offering twenty pounds a -year in return for Miriam’s services, and naming the date of the -beginning of the autumn term. - - - 2 - -On the way to the front door they all looked into the principal -schoolroom. Miriam saw a long wide dining-room table covered with brown -American cloth. Shelves neatly crowded with books lined one wall from -floor to ceiling. Opposite them at the far end of the room was a heavy -grey marble mantelpiece, on which stood a heavy green marble clock -frame. At its centre a gold-faced clock ticked softly. Opposite the -windows were two shallow alcoves. In one stood a shrouded blackboard on -an easel. The other held a piano with a high slender back. The prancing -outward sweep of its lid gave Miriam the impression of an afternoon -dress. - -Miss Deborah drew up one of the Venetian blinds. They all crowded to the -window and looked out on a small garden backed by trees and lying in -deep shadow. Beyond were more gardens and the brownish backs of small -old brick houses. Low walls separated the school garden from the gardens -on either side. - -“On our right we have a school for the deaf and dumb,” said Miss Perne; -“on the other side is a family of Polish Jews.” - - - 3 - -“Mother, why _did_ you pile it on?” - -They would soon be down at the corner of Banbury Park where the tram -lines ended and the Favorite omnibuses were standing in the muddy road -under the shadow of the railway bridge. Through the jingling of the -trams, the dop-dop of the hoofs of the tram-horses and the noise of a -screaming train thundering over the bridge, Miriam made her voice heard, -gazing through the spotted veil at her mother’s quivering features. - -“They might have made me do all sorts of things I can’t do.” - -Mrs. Henderson’s voice, breathless with walking, made a little sound of -protest, a narrowed sound that told Miriam her amusement was half -annoyance. The dark, noisy bridge, the clatter and rattle and the mud -through which she must plunge to an omnibus exasperated her to the limit -of her endurance. - -“I’d got the post,” she said angrily; “you could see it was all settled -and then you went saying those things.” - -Glancing at the thin shrouded features she saw the faint lift of her -mother’s eyebrows and the firmly speechless mouth. - -“Piccadilly--jump on, chickie.” - -“Let’s go outside now it’s fine,” said Miriam crossly. - -Reaching the top of the omnibus she hurried to the front seat on the -left hand side. - -“That’s a very windy spot.” - -“No it isn’t, it’s quite hot. The sun’s come out now. It’s rained for -weeks. It won’t rain any more. It’ll be hot. You won’t feel the wind. -Will you have the corner, mother?” - -“No, chick, you sit there.” - -Miriam screwed herself into the corner seat, crossing her knees and -grazing the tips of her shoes. - -“This is the only place on the top of a bus.” - -Mrs. Henderson sat down at her side. - -“I always make Harriett come up here when we go up to the West End.” - -“Of course it’s the only place,” she insisted in response to her -mother’s amused laugh. “No one smoking or talking in front; you can see -out in front and you can see the shops if there are any, and you’re not -falling off all the time. The bus goes on the left side of the road and -tilts to the left.” - -The seats were filling up and the driver appeared clambering into his -place. - -“Didn’t you ever think of that? Didn’t you ever think of the bus tilting -that way?” persisted Miriam to her mother’s inattentive face. “Fancy -never thinking of it. It’s beastly on the other side.” - -The omnibus jerked forward. - -“You ought to be a man, Mimmy.” - -“I liked that little short one,” said Miriam contentedly as they came -from under the roar of the bridge. “They were awfully nice, weren’t -they? They seemed to have made up their mind to take me before we -went.... So I think they like us. I wonder why they like us. Didn’t you -think they liked us? Don’t you think they are awfully nice?” - -“I do. They are very charming ladies.” - -“Yes, but wasn’t it awfully rum their liking us in that funny way?” - -“I’m sure I don’t see why they should not.” - -“Oh, mother, you know what I mean. I like them. I’m perfectly sure I -shall like them. D’you remember the little one saying all girls ought to -marry? Why did she say that?” - -“They are dear funny little O.M.’s,” said Mrs. Henderson merrily. She -was sitting with her knees crossed, the stuff of her brown canvas dress -was dragged across them into an ugly fold by the weight of the velvet -panel at the side of the skirt. She looked very small and resourceless. -And there were the Pernes with their house and their school. They were -old maids. Of course. What then? - -“I never dreamed of getting such a big salary.” - -“Oh, my chickie, I’m afraid it isn’t much.” - -“It is, mother, it’s lovely.” - -“Oh--eh--well.” - -Miriam turned fiercely to the roadway on her left. - - - 4 - -She had missed the first swing forward of the vehicle and the first -movements of the compact street. - -They were going ahead now at a steady even trot. Her face was bathed in -the flow of the breeze. - -Little rivulets played about her temples, feeling their way through her -hair. She drew off her gloves without turning from the flowing roadway. -As they went on and on down the long road Miriam forgot her companion in -the tranquil sense of being carried securely forward through the air -away from people and problems. Ahead of her, at the end of the long -drive, lay three sunlit weeks, bright now in the certainty of the shadow -that lay beyond them ... “the junior school” ... “four boarders.” - - - 5 - -They lumbered at last round a corner and out into a wide thoroughfare, -drawing up outside a newly-built public-house. Above it rose row upon -row of upper windows sunk in masses of ornamental terra-cotta-coloured -plaster. Branch roads, laid with tram lines led off in every direction. -Miriam’s eyes followed a dull blue tram with a grubby white-painted -seatless roof jingling busily off up a roadway where short trees stood -all the way along in the small dim gardens of little grey houses. On the -near corner of the road stood a wide white building, bulging into heavy -domes against the sky. Across its side, large gilt letters standing far -apart spelled out “Banbury Empire.” - -“It must be a theatre,” she told herself in astonishment. “That’s what -they call a suburban theatre. People think it is really a theatre.” - -The little shock sent her mind feeling out along the road they had just -left. She considered its unbroken length, its shops, its treelessness. -The wide thoroughfare, up which they now began to rumble, repeated it on -a larger scale. The pavements were wide causeways reached from the -roadway by stone steps, three deep. The people passing along them were -unlike any she knew. There were no ladies, no gentlemen, no girls or -young men such as she knew. They were all alike. They were.... She could -find no word for the strange impression they made. It coloured the whole -of the district through which they had come. It was part of the new -world to which she was pledged to go on September 18th. It was her world -already; and she had no words for it. She would not be able to convey it -to others. She felt sure her mother had not noticed it. She must deal -with it alone. To try to speak about it, even with Eve, would sap her -courage. It was her secret. A strange secret for all her life as Hanover -had been. But Hanover was beautiful, with distant country through the -saal windows with its colours misty in the sunlight, the beautiful, -happy town and the woodland villages so near. This new secret was -shabby, ugly and shabby. The half-perceived something persisted -unchanged when the causeways and shops disappeared and long rows of -houses streamed by, their close ranks broken only by an occasional cross -road. They were large, high, flat-fronted houses with flights of grey -stone steps leading to their porchless doors. They had tiny railed-in -front gardens crowded with shrubs. Here and there long narrow strips of -garden pushed a row of houses back from the roadway. In these longer -plots stood signboards and show-cases. “Photographic Studio,” -“Commercial College,” “Eye Treatment,” “Academy of Dancing.” ... She -read the announcements with growing disquietude. - -Rows of shops reappeared and densely crowded pavements, and then more -high straight houses. - - - 6 - -She roused herself at last from her puzzled contemplation and turned to -glance at her mother. Mrs. Henderson was looking out ahead. The -exhausted face was ready, Miriam saw, with its faintly questioning -eyebrows and tightly-held lips, for emotional response. She turned away -uneasily to the spellbound streets. - -“Useless to try to talk about anything.... Mother would be somehow -violent. She would be overpowering. The strange new impressions would be -dissolved.” - -But she must do something, show some sign of companionship. She began -humming softly. The air was so full of clamour that she could not hear -her voice. The houses and shops had disappeared. Drab brick walls were -passing slowly by on either side. A goods’ yard. She deepened her -humming, accentuating her phrases so that the sound might reach her -companion through the reverberations of the clangour of shunting trains. - - - 7 - -The high brick walls were drawing away. The end of the long roadway was -in sight. Its widening mouth offered no sign of escape from the -disquieting strangeness. The open stretch of thoroughfare into which -they emerged was fed by innumerable lanes of traffic. From the islands -dotted over its surface towered huge lamp standards branching out thin -arms. As they rattled noisily over the stone setts they jolted across -several lines of tramway and wove their way through currents of traffic -crossing each other in all directions. - -“I wonder where we’re going--I wonder if this is a Piccadilly bus,” -Miriam thought of saying. Impossible to shout through the din. - - - 8 - -The driver gathered up his horses and they clattered deafeningly over -the last open stretch and turned into a smooth wide prospect. - -“Oh bliss, wood-paving,” murmured Miriam. - -A mass of smoke-greyed, sharply steepled stone building appeared on the -right. Her eyes rested on its soft shadows. - -On the left a tall grey church was coming towards them, spindling up -into the sky. It sailed by, showing Miriam a circle of little stone -pillars built into its spire. Plumy trees streamed by, standing large -and separate on moss-green grass railed from the roadway. Bright -white-faced houses with pillared porches shone through from behind them -and blazed white above them against the blue sky. Wide side streets -opened showing high balconied houses. The side streets were feathered -with trees and ended mistily. - -Away ahead were edges of clean bright masonry in profile, soft tufted -heads of trees, bright green in the clear light. At the end of the vista -the air was like pure saffron-tinted mother-of-pearl. - -Miriam sat back and drew a deep breath. - - - 9 - -“Well, chickie?” - -“What’s the matter?” - -“Why, you’ve been very funny!” - -“How?” - -“You’ve been so dummel.” - -“No, I haven’t.” - -“Oh--eh.” - -“How d’you mean I’ve been funny?” - -“Not speaking to poor old mum-jam.” - -“Well, you haven’t spoken to me.” - -“No.” - -“I shan’t take any of my summer things there,” said Miriam. - -Mrs. Henderson’s face twitched. - -“Shall I?” - -“I’m afraid you haven’t very much in the way of thick clothing.” - -“I’ve only got my plaid dress for every day and my mixy grey for best -and my dark blue summer skirt. My velveteen skirt and my nainsook blouse -are too old.” - -“You can wear the dark blue muslin blouse with the blue skirt for a long -time yet with something warm underneath.” - -“My grey’s very grubby.” - -“You look very well in it indeed.” - -“I don’t mean that. I mean it’s all gone sort of dull and grubby over -the surface when you look down it.” - -“Oh, that’s your imagination.” - -“It isn’t my imagination and I can see how Harriett’s looks.” - -“You both look very nice.” - -“That’s not the point.” - -“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, my chick.” - -“I’m not making anything. The simple fact is that the grey dresses are -piggy.” - -Mrs. Henderson flushed deeply, twining and untwining her silk-gloved -fingers. - -“She thinks that’s ‘gross exaggeration.’ That’s what she wants to say,” -pondered Miriam wearily. - -They turned into Langham Place. - -She glanced to see whether her mother realised where they were. - -“Look, we’re in the West End, mother! Oh, I’m not going to think about -Banbury Park till it begins!” - - - 10 - -They drew up near the Maison Nouvelle. - -“_Stanlake_ is,” said a refined emphatic voice from the pavement. - -Miriam did not look for the speaker. The quality of the voice brought -her a moment’s realisation of the meaning of her afternoon’s adventure. -She was going to be shut up away from the grown-up things, the sunlit -world, and the people who were enjoying it. She would be shut up and -surrounded in Wordsworth House, a proper schooly school, amongst all -those strange roadways. It would be cold English pianos and dreadful -English children--and trams going up and down that grey road outside. - -As they went on down Regent Street she fastened, for refuge from her -thoughts, upon a window where softly falling dresses of dull olive stood -about against a draped background of pale dead yellow. She held it in -her mind as shop after shop streamed by. - -“These shops are extremely récherché.” - -“It’s old Regent Street, mother,” said Miriam argumentatively. “Glorious -old Regent Street. Ruby wine.” - -“Ah, Regent Street.” - -“We always walk up one side and down the other. Up the dolls’ hospital -side and down Liberty’s. Glory, glory, ruby wine.” - -“You _are_ enthusiastic.” - -“But it’s so glorious. Don’t you think so?” - -“Sit back a little, chickie. One can’t see the windows. You’re such a -solid young woman.” - -“You’ll see our A B C soon. You know. The one we go to after the -Saturday pops. You’ve been to it. You came to it the day we came to -Madame Schumann’s farewell. It’s just round here in Piccadilly. Here it -is. Glorious. I must make the others come up once more before I die. I -always have a scone. I don’t like the aryated bread. We go along the -Burlington Arcade too. I don’t believe you’ve ever been along there. -It’s simply perfect. Glove shops and fans and a smell of the most -exquisite scent everywhere.” - -“Dear me. It must be very captivating.” - -“Now we shall pass the parks. Oh, isn’t the sun A1 copper bottom!” - -Mrs. Henderson laughed wistfully. - -“What delicious shade under those fine old trees. I almost wish I had -brought my _en-tout-cas_.” - -“Oh no, you don’t really want it. There will be more breeze presently. -The bus always begins to go quicker along here. It’s the Green Park, -that one. Those are clubs that side, the West End clubs. It’s -fascinating all the way along here to Hyde Park Corner. You just see -Park Lane going up at the side. Park Lane. It goes wiggling away, -straight into heaven. We’ve never been up there. I always read the name -at the corner.” - -“You ridiculous chick--ah, there is the Royal Academy of Arts.” - -“Oh yes, I wonder if there are any Leightons this year.” - -“Or Leader. Charles Leader. I think there is nothing more charming than -those landscape scenes by Leader.” - -“I’ve got three bally weeks. I can see Hyde Park. We’ve got ages yet. It -goes on being fascinating right down through Kensington and right on up -to the other side of Putney Bridge.” - -“Dear me. Isn’t it fascinating after that?” - -“Oh, not all that awful walk along the Upper Richmond Road--not until -our avenue begins--” - - - 11 - -Miriam fumbled with the fastening of the low wide gate as her mother -passed on up the drive. She waited until the footsteps were muffled by -the fullness of the may trees linking their middle branches over the -bend in the drive. Then she looked steadily down the sunflecked -asphalted avenue along which they had just come. The level sunlight -streamed along the empty roadway and the shadows of the lime trees lay -across the path and up the oak palings. Her eyes travelled up and down -the boles of the trees, stopping at each little stunted tuft of -greenery. She could no longer hear her mother’s footsteps. There was a -scented coolness in the shady watered garden. Leaning gently with her -breast against the upper bars of the gate she broke away from the sense -of her newly-made engagement. - -She scanned the whole length of the shrouded avenue from end to end and -at last looked freely up amongst the interwoven lime trees. Long she -watched, her eyes roaming from the closely-growing leaves where the -green was densest to the edges of the trees where the light shone -through. “Gold and green,” she whispered, “green and gold, held up by -firm brown stems bathed in gold.” - -When she reached the open garden beyond the bend she ran once round the -large centre bed where berberus and laurestinus bushes stood in a clump -ringed by violas and blue lobelias and heavily scented masses of -cherry-ripe. Taking the shallow steps in two silent strides she reached -the shelter of the deep porch. The outer door and the door of the -vestibule stood open. Gently closing the vestibule she ran across the -paved hall and opened the door on the right. - -Harriett, in a long fawn canvas dress with a deep silk sash, was -standing in the middle of the drawing-room floor with a large pot of -scented geraniums in her arms. - - - 12 - -“Hullo!” said Miriam. - -Putting down her pot Harriett fixed brown eyes upon her and began -jumping lightly up and down where she stood. The small tips of her fawn -glacé kid shoes shone together between the hem of her dress and the pale -green of the carpet. - -“What you doing?” said Miriam quietly shutting the door behind her and -flushing with pleasure. - -Harriett hopped more energetically. The blaze from the western window -caught the paste stone in the tortoise-shell comb crowning her little -high twist of hair and the prisms of the lustres standing behind her on -the white marble mantelpiece. - -“What you doing, booby?” - -“Old conservatory,” panted Harriett. - -Miriam looked vaguely down the length of the long room to where the -conservatory doors stood wide open. As she gazed at the wet tiling -Harriett ceased hopping and kicked her delicately. “Well, gooby?” - -Miriam grinned. - -“You’ve got it. I knew you would. The Misses Perne have engaged Miss -Miriam Henderson as resident teacher for the junior school.” - -“Oh yes, I’ve got it,” smiled Miriam. “But don’t let’s talk about that. -It’s just an old school, a house. I don’t know a bit what it’ll be like. -I’ve got three bally blooming weeks. Don’t let’s talk about it.” - -“Awri.” - -“What about Saturday?” - -“It’s all right. Ted was at the club.” - -“Was he!” - -“Yes, old scarlet face, he were.” - -“I’m _not_.” - -“He came in just before closing time and straight up to me and ast where -you were. He looked sick when I told him, and so fagged.” - -“It was awfully hot in town,” murmured Miriam tenderly. - -She went to the piano and struck a note very softly. - -“He played a single with the duffer and lost it.” - -“Oh, well, of course, he was so tired.” - -“Yes, but it wasn’t that. It was because you weren’t there. He’s simply -no good when you’re not there, now. He’s perfectly different.” - -Miriam struck her note again. - -“Listen, that’s E flat.” - -“Go on.” - -“That’s a chord in E flat. Isn’t it lovely? It sounds perfectly -different in C. Listen. Isn’t it funny?” - -“Well, don’t you want to know why it’s all right about Saturday?” - -“Yes, screamingly.” - -“Well, that’s the perfectly flabbergasting thing. Ted simply came to say -they’ve got a man coming to stay with them and can he bring him.” - -“My dear! What a heavenly relief. That makes twelve men and fourteen -girls. That’ll do.” - -“Nan Babington’s hurt her ankle, but she swears she’s coming.” Harriett -sniffed and sank down on the white sheepskin, drawing her knees up to -her chin. - -“You shouldn’t say ‘swears.’” - -“Well, you bet. She simply loves our dances.” - -“Did she say she did?” - -“She sat on the pavilion seat with Bevan Seymour all the afternoon and I -was with them when Ted was playing with the duffer. She told Bevan that -she didn’t know anywhere else where the kids arranged the dances, and -everything was so jolly. It’s _screaming_, my dear, she said.” - -“It’s horrid the way she calls him ‘my dear.’ Your ring is simply -dazzling like that, Harry. D’you see? It’s the sun.” - -“Of course it’ll mean she’ll sit out in a deck chair in the garden with -Bevan all the time.” - -“How disgusting.” - -“It’s her turn for the pavilion tea on Saturday. She’s coming in her -white muslin and then coming straight on here with two sticks and wants -us to keep her some flowers. Let’s go and have tea. It’ll be nearly -dinner time.” - -“Has Mary made a cake?” - -“I dunno. Tea was to be in the breakfast-room when you came back.” - -“Why not in the conservatory?” - -“Because, you silly old crow, I’m beranging it for Saturday.” - -“Shall we have the piano in there?” - -“Well, don’t you think so?” - -“Twenty-six of us. Perhaps it’ll be more blissful.” - -“If we have the breakfast-room piano in the hall it’ll bung up the -hall.” - -“Yes, but the Erard bass is so perfect for waltzes.” - -“And the be-rilliant Collard treble is so all right in the vatoire.” - -“I thought it was Eve and I talked about the Collard treble.” - -“Well, I was there.” - -“Anyhow we’ll have the grand in the conservatory. Oh, Bacchus! -Ta-ra-ra-boom-deay.” - -“_Tea_,” said a rounded voice near the keyhole. - -“Eve!” shouted Miriam. - -The door opened slightly. “I know,” said the voice. - -“Come _in_, Eve,” commanded Miriam, trying to swing the door wide. - -“I know,” said the voice quivering with the effort of holding the door. -“I know all about the new Misses Perne and the new man--Max -Sonnenheim--Max.” - -“This way out,” called Harriett from the conservatory. - -“Eve,” pleaded Miriam, tugging at the door, “let me get at you. Don’t be -an idiot.” - -A gurgle of amusement made her loosen her hold. - -“I’m not trying, you beast. Take your iron wrists away.” - -A small white hand waggled fingers through the aperture. - -Miriam seized and covered it. “Come in for a minute,” she begged. “I -want to see you. What have you got on?” - -“_Tea._” - -The hand twisted itself free and Eve fled through the hall. - -Miriam flung after her with a yell and caught at her slender body. “I’ve -a great mind to drag down your old hair.” - -“Tea,” smiled Eve serenely. - -“All _right_, I’m coming, damn you, aren’t I?” - -“Oh, Mimmy!” - -“Well, damn _me_, then. Somebody in the house must swear. I say, Eve?” - -“What?” - -“Nothing, only I _say_.” - -“Um.” - - - - - CHAPTER II - - - 1 - -Miriam extended herself on the drawing-room sofa which had been drawn up -at the end of the room under the open window. - -The quintets of candles on the girandoles hanging on either side of the -high overmantel gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the centre of -the large room the chandelier, pulled low, held out in all directions -bulbs of softly tinted light. - -In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pouring from a tall standard -lamp across the sheepskin hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle under -her arm fluttering pages on a music stand. The family sat grouped -towards her in a circle. - -On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant light, Miriam was a -retreating loop in the circle of seated forms, all visible as she lay -with her eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and pilfer her own. -The darkness brimmed in from the window on her right. She could touch -the rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy stillness of the -garden. - -“What shall I play?” said the guest. - -“What have you there?” - -“Gluck ... Klassische Stücke ... Cavatina.” - -“Ah, Gluck,” said Mr. Henderson, smoothing his long knees with outspread -fingers. - -“Have you got that Beethoven thing?” asked Sarah. - -“Not here, Sally.” - -“I saw it--on the piano--with chords,” said Sarah excitedly. - -“Chords,” encouraged Miriam. - -“Yes, I think so,” muttered Sarah taking up her crochet. “I daresay I’m -wrong,” she giggled, throwing out a foot and hastily withdrawing it. - -“I can find it, dear,” chanted the guest. - -Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crimsoned oval of Eve’s face -appeared inverted above her own. She poked a finger into one of the dark -eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whispered voicelessly, “Make her -play the Romance first and _then_ the Cavatina without talking in -between....” - -Eve’s large soft mouth pursed a little, and Miriam watched steadily -until dimples appeared. “Go on, Eve,” she said, removing her hand. - -“Shall I play the Beethoven first?” enquired the guest. - -“Mm--and then the Cavatina,” murmured Miriam, as if half asleep, turning -wholly towards the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano scores. - - - 2 - -She seemed to grow larger and stronger and easier as the thoughtful -chords came musing out into the night and hovered amongst the dark -trees. She found herself drawing easy breaths and relaxing completely -against the support of the hard friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was -listening.... - -After a while, everything was dissolved, past and future and present and -she was nothing but an ear, intent on the meditative harmony which stole -out into the garden. - - - 3 - -When the last gently strung notes had ceased she turned from her window -and found Harriett’s near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling -slowly up the forehead. - -“Wow,” mouthed Miriam. - -Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and strained her eyebrow higher. - -The piano introduction to the Cavatina drowned the comments on the -guest’s playing and the family relaxed once more into listening. - -“Pink anemones, eh,” suggested Miriam softly. - -Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approvingly. - -“Pink anemones,” sighed Miriam, and turned to watch Margaret Wedderburn -standing in her full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a radiance -of red and golden light. Her heavily waving fair hair fell back towards -its tightly braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as death. -From between furry eyelashes her eyes looked steadfastly out, robbed of -their everyday sentimental expression. - -As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the fine gold down covering -the cheeks and upper lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin and -firm large mouth and the steady arm that swept out in rich ‘cello-like -notes the devout theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity of -happiness. - - - 4 - -... To-morrow the room would be lit and decked and clear. Amongst the -crowd of guests, he would come across the room, walking in his way.... -She smiled to herself. He would come “sloping in” in his way, like a -shadow, not looking at anyone. His strange friend would be with him. -There would be introductions and greetings. Then he would dance with her -silently and not looking at her, as if they were strangers, and then be -dancing with someone else ... with smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes -and talking and answering and all the time looking about the room. And -then again with her, cool and silent and not looking. And presently she -would tell him about going away to Banbury Park. - - - 5 - -Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable again as he had done when -they were alone by the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany.... -“Play ‘Abide with me,’ Miriam; play ‘Abide with me.’” ... - -To-morrow there would be another moment like that. He would say her name -suddenly, as he had done last week at the Babingtons’ dance, very low, -half-turning towards her. She would be ready this time and say his name -and move instead of being turned to stone. Confidently the music assured -her of that moment. - - - 6 - -She lay looking quietly into his imagined face till the room had gone. -Then the face grew dim and far off and at last receded altogether into -darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was his own life. She would -never know it. However well they got to know each other they would -always be strangers. Probably he never thought about her when he was -alone. Only of Shakespeare and politics. What would he think if he knew -she thought of him? But he thought of her when he saw her. That was -utterly certain; the one thing certain in the world.... That day, coming -along Putney Hill with mother, tired and dull and trying to keep her -temper, passing his house, seeing him standing at his window, alone and -pale and serious. The sudden lightening of his face surprised her again, -violently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole world from end to -end. He did not know that he had looked like that. She had turned -swiftly from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow on her heart, that -one day he would kiss her. Not for years and years. But one day he would -bend his head. She wrenched herself from the thought, but it was too -late. She thanked heaven she had looked; she wished she had not; the -kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not touched her, it was like -the breath of the summer. Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt -the pavement. She remembered walking on, exulting with hanging head, -cringing close to the ivy which hung from the top of the garden wall, -sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and everyone who would never stand -first with Ted. - - - 7 - -... There were girls who let themselves be kissed for fun.... Playing -“Kiss in the Ring,” being kissed by someone they did not mean to always -be with, all their life ... how sad and dreadful. Why did it not break -their hearts? - - - 8 - -Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug, being thanked and praised. -Her brown violin hung amongst the folds of her skirt. - -“People _do_ like us,” mused Miriam, listening to the peculiar sympathy -of the family voice. - -Meg was there, away from her own home, happy with them, the front door -shut, their garden and house all round her and her strange luggage -upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice Meg.... - - - 9 - -After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat in a low carpet chair at a -window in the long bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a morning of -blazing sunlight and bright blue. She had just come up through the cool -house from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with Harriett. A little -bunch of pink anemones she had picked for herself were set in a tumbler -on the wash-hand-stand. - -She had left the door open to hear coming faintly up from the far-away -drawing-room the tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and Eve were -stretching the drugget. - -On her knee lay her father’s cigarette-making machine and a parcel of -papers and tobacco. An empty cigarette tin stood upon the window-sill. - -She began packing tobacco into the groove of the machine, distributing -and pressing it lightly with the tips of her fingers, watching as she -worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and the shining of their -green stalks through the water. They were, she reflected, a little too -much out. In the sun they would have come out still more. They would -close up at night unless the rooms grew very hot. Slipping the paper -evenly into the slot she shut the machine and turned the roller. As the -sound of the loosely working cogs came up to her she revolted from her -self-imposed task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It would use up -her happiness too stupidly. - -She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that she should smoke the -single cigarette herself. Why not? Why had she never yet smoked one? She -glanced at the slowly swinging door. No one would come. She was alone on -the top floor. Everyone was downstairs and busy. The finished cigarette -lay on her knee. Taking it between her fingers she pressed a little -hanging thread of tobacco into place. The cigarette felt pleasantly -plump and firm. It was well made. As she rose to get matches the mowing -machine sounded suddenly from the front lawn. She started and looked out -of the window, concealing the cigarette in her hand. It was the gardener -with bent shoulders pushing with all his might. With some difficulty she -unhitched the phosphorescent match-box from its place under the -gas-bracket and got back into her low chair, invisible from the lawn. - -The cool air flowed in garden-scented. She held the cigarette between -two fingers. The match hissed and flared as she held it carefully below -the sill, and the flame flowed towards her while she set the paper -alight. Raising the cigarette to her lips she blew gently outwards, down -through the tobacco. The flame twisted and went out, leaving the paper -charred. She struck another match angrily, urging herself to draw, and -drew little panting breaths with the cigarette well in the flame. It -smoked. Blowing out the match she looked at the end of the cigarette. It -was glowing all over and a delicate little spiral of smoke rose into her -face. Quickly she applied her lips again and drew little breaths, -opening her mouth wide between each breath and holding the cigarette -sideways away from her. The end glowed afresh with each breath. The -paper charred evenly away and little flecks of ash fell about her. - - - 10 - -A third of the whole length was consumed. Her nostrils breathed in -smoke, and as she tasted the burnt flavour the sweetness of the -unpolluted air all around her was a new thing. The acrid tang in her -nostrils intoxicated her. She drew more boldly. There was smoke in her -mouth. She opened it quickly, sharply exhaling a yellow cloud oddly -different from the grey spirals wreathing their way from the end of the -cigarette. She went on drawing in mouthful after mouthful of smoke, -expelling each quickly with widely-opened lips, turning to look at the -well-known room through the yellow haze and again at the sky, which drew -nearer as she puffed at it. The sight of the tree-tops scrolled with her -little clouds brought her a sense of power. She had chosen to smoke and -she was smoking, and the morning world gleamed back at her.... - - - 11 - -The morning gleamed. She would choose her fate. It should be amongst -green trees and sunshine. That daunted lump who had accepted the post at -Banbury Park had nothing to do with her. Morning gladness flooded her, -and her gladness of the thought of the evening to come quickened as it -had done last night into certainty. - -She burned the last inch of the cigarette in the grate, wrapped with -combings from the toilet-tidy in a screw of paper. When all was consumed -she carefully replaced the summer bundle of ornamental mohair behind the -bars. - -Useless to tell anyone. No one would believe she had not felt ill. She -found it difficult to understand why anyone should feel sick from -smoking. Dizzy perhaps ... a little drunk. Pater’s tobacco was very -strong, some people could not smoke it.... She had smoked a whole -cigarette of strong tobacco and liked it. Raising her arms above her -head she worked them upwards, stretching every muscle of her body. No, -she was anything but ill. - -Leaving the window wide she went on to the landing. The smell of tobacco -was everywhere. She flung into each room in turn, throwing up windows -and leaving doors propped ajar. - -Harriett coming up the garden with a basket of cut flowers saw her at -the cook’s bedroom window. - -“What on earth you doing thayer!” she shrieked putting down her basket. - -Hanging from the window Miriam made a trumpet of her hands. - -“Something blew in!” - - - 12 - -All preparations for the evening were made and the younger members of -the household were having a late tea in the breakfast-room. “We’ve done -the alcoves,” said Sarah explosively, “in case it rains.” - -Nan Babington sat up in her long chair to bring her face round to the -deep bay where Sarah stood. - -“My _dear_! Seraphina! And she’s doing the pink bows! Will some saint -take my cup? Ta.... My dear, how _perfectly_ screaming.” - -Miriam raised her head from the petal-scattered table, where she lay -prone side by side with Harriett, to watch Nan sitting up in her firm -white dress beaming at Sarah through her slanting eye. - -“What flowers you going to wear, Nan?” - -Nan patted her sleek slightly Japanese-looking hair. “_Ah_ ... splashes -of scarlet, my dear. Splashes of scarlet. One in my hair and one here.” -She patted the broad level of her enviable breast towards the left -shoulder. - -“Almost _on_ the shoulder, you know--arranged flat, _can’t_ be squashed -and showing as you dance.” - -“Geraniums! Oom. You’ve got awfully good taste. What a frightfully good -effect. Bright red and bright white. Clean. Go on, Nan.” - -“_Killing_,” pursued Nan. “Tom said at breakfast with his mouth -absolutely _full_ of sweet-bread, ‘it’ll rain’--growled, you know, with -his mouth _crammed_ full. ‘Never mind, Tommy,’ said Ella with the -_utmost_ promptitude, ‘they’re sure to have the alcoves.’ ‘Oomph,’ -growled Tommy, pretending not to care. _Naughty_ Tommy, naughty, -_naughty_ Tommy!” - -“Any cake left?” sighed Miriam, sinking back amongst her petals and -hoping that Nan’s voice would go on. - -“You girls are the most adorable individuals I ever met.... Did anybody -see Pearlie going home this afternoon?” - -Everyone chuckled and waited. - -“My _dears_! My _dears_!! Bevan _dragged_ me along to the end of the -pavilion to see him enter up the handicaps with his new automatic -pen--_awfully_ smashing--and I was just hobbling the last few yards past -the apple trees when we _saw_ Pearlie hand-in-hand with the Botterford -boys, prancing along the asphalt court--_prancing_, my dears!” - -Miriam and Harriett dragged themselves up to see. Nan bridled and swayed -from listener to listener, her wide throat gleaming as she sang out her -words. - -“Prancing--with straggles of grey hair sticking out and that _tiny_ -sailor hat cocked _almost_ on to her nose. My dear, you sh’d’ve _seen_ -Bevan! He put up his eyeglass, my dears, for a _fraction_ of a second,” -Nan’s head went up--“Madame Pompadour,” thought Miriam--and her slanting -eyes glanced down her nose, “and dropped it, clickety-click. You sh’d’ve -_seen_ the expression on his angelic countenance.” - -“I say, she _is_ an awful little creature, isn’t she?” said Miriam, -watching Eve bend a crimson face over the tea-tray on the hearthrug. -“She put her boots on the pavilion table this afternoon when all those -men were there--about a mile high they are--with tassels. Why _does_ she -go on like that?” - -“Men like that sort of thing,” said Sarah lightly. - -“Sally!” - -“They do.... I believe she drinks.” - -“Sally! My _dear_!” - -“I believe she _does_. She’s always having shandygaff with the men.” - -“Oh, well, perhaps she doesn’t,” murmured Eve. - -“Chuck me a lump of sugar, Eve.” - -Miriam subsided once more amongst the rose petals. - -“Bevvy thinks I oughtn’t to dance.” - -“Did he say so?” - -“Of course, my dear. But old Wyman said I could, every third, except the -Lancers.” - -“You sh’d’ve seen Bevvy’s face. ‘Brother Tommy doesn’t object,’ I said. -‘He’s going to look after me!’ ‘_Is_ he?’ said Bevvy in his _most_ -superior manner.” - -“What a fearful scrunching you’re making,” said Harriett, pinching -Miriam’s nose. - -“Let’s go and dress,” said Miriam, rolling off the table. - - - 13 - -“How many times has she met him?” asked Miriam as they went through the -hall. - -“I dunno. Not many.” - -“I think it’s simply hateful.” - -“Mimmy!” It was Nan’s insinuating voice. - -“Coming,” called Miriam. “And, you know, Tommy needn’t think he can -carry on with _Meg_ in an alcove.” - -“_What_ would she think? Let’s go and tell Meg she must dress.” - -“Mimmy!” - -Miriam went back and put her head round the breakfast-room door. - -“Let me see you when you’re dressed.” - -“Why?” - -“I want to kiss the back of your neck, my dear; love kissing people’s -necks.” - -Miriam smiled herself vaguely out of the room, putting away the -unpleasant suggestion. - -“I wish I’d got a dress like Nan’s,” she said, joining Harriett in the -dark lobby. - -“I say, somebody’s been using the ‘Financial Times’ to cut up flowers -on. It’s all wet.” Harriett lifted the limp newspaper from the -marble-topped coil of pipes and shook it. - -“Hang it up somewhere.” - -“Where? Everything’s cleared up.” - -“Stick it out of the lavatory window and pull the window down on it.” - -“Awri, you hold the door open.” - -Miriam laughed as Harriett fell into the room. - -“Blooming boot-jack.” - -“Is it all right in there? Are all the pegs clear? Is the washing-basin -all right?” - -A faint light came in as Harriett pushed up the frosted pane. - -“Here’s a pair of boots all over the floor and your old Zulu hat hanging -on a peg. The basin’s all right except a perfectly foul smell of -nicotine. It’s pater’s old feather.” - -“That doesn’t matter. The men won’t mind that. My old hat can stay. -There are ten pegs out here and all the slab, and there’s hardly -anything on the hall stand. That’s it. Don’t cram the window down so as -to cut the paper. That’ll do. Come on.” - -“I wish I had a really stunning dress,” remarked Miriam, as they tapped -across the wide hall. - -“You needn’t.” - -The drawing-room door was open. They surveyed the sea of drugget, dark -grey in the fading light. “_Pong_-pong-_pong_ de doodle, -_pong_-pong-_pong_ de doodle,” murmured Miriam as they stood swaying on -tiptoe in the doorway. - -“Let’s have the gas and _two_ candlesticks, Harry, on the dressing-table -under the gas.” - -“All right,” mouthed Harriett in a stage whisper, making for the stairs -as the breakfast-room door opened. - -It was Eve. “I say, Eve, I’m _scared_,” said Miriam, meeting her. - -Eve giggled triumphantly. - -“Look here. I shan’t come down at first. I’ll play the first dance. I’ll -get them all started with ‘Bitter-Sweet.’” - -“Don’t worry, Mim.” - -“My _dear_, I simply don’t know how to face the evening.” - -“You do,” murmured Eve. “You are proud.” - -“What of?” - -“You know quite well.” - -“What?” - -“He’s the nicest boy we know.” - -“But he’s not my boy. Of course not. You’re insane. Besides, I don’t -know who you’re talking about.” - -“Oh, well, we won’t talk. We’ll go and arrange your chignon.” - -“I’m going to have simply twists and perhaps a hair ornament.” - - - 14 - -Miriam reached the conservatory from the garden door and set about -opening the lid of the grand piano. She could see at the far end of the -almost empty drawing-room a little ruddy thick-set bearded man with a -roll of music under his arm talking to her mother. He was standing very -near to her, surrounding her with his eager presence. “Mother’s -wonderful,” thought Miriam, with a moment’s adoration for Mrs. -Henderson’s softly-smiling girlish tremulousness. Listening to the man’s -hilarious expostulating narrative voice she fumbled hastily for her -waltz amongst the scattered piles of music on the lid of the piano. - -As she struck her opening chords she watched her mother gently quell the -narrative and steer the sturdy form towards a group of people hesitating -in the doorway. “Have they had coffee?” she wondered anxiously. “Is Mary -driving them into the dining-room properly?” Before she had reached the -end of her second page everyone had disappeared. She paused a moment and -looked down the brightly lit empty room--the sight of the cold sheeny -drugget filled her with despair. The hilarious voice resounded in the -hall. There couldn’t be many there yet. Were they all looking after them -properly? For a moment she was tempted to leave her piano and go and -make some desperate attempt at geniality. Then the sound of the -pervading voice back again in the room and brisk footsteps coming -towards the conservatory drove her back to her music. The little man -stepped quickly over the low moulding into the conservatory. - -“Ah, Mariamne,” he blared gently. - -“Oh, Bennett, you angel, how _did_ you get here so early?” responded -Miriam, playing with zealous emphasis. - -“Got old Barrowgate to finish off the out-patients,” he said with a -choke of amusement. - -“I say, Mirry, don’t you play. Let me take it on. You go and ply the -light fantastic.” He laid his hands upon her shoulders and burred the -tune she was playing like a muted euphonium over the top of her head. -“No. It’s all right. Go and get them dancing. Get over the -awfulness--_you_ know.” - -“Get over the awfulness, eh? Oh, I’ll get over the awfulness.” - -“Ssh--are there many there?” - -They both looked round into the drawing-room. - -Nan Babington was backing slowly up and down the room supported by the -outstretched arms of Bevan Seymour, her black head thrown back level -with his, the little scarlet knot in her hair hardly registering the -smooth movements of her invisible feet. - -“They seem to have begun,” shouted Bennett in a whisper as Harriett and -her fiancé swung easily circling into the room and were followed by two -more couples. - -“Go and dance with Meg. She only knows Tommy Babington.” - -“Like the lid up?” - - - 15 - -Miriam’s rhythmic clangour doubled its resonance in the tiled -conservatory as the great lid of the piano went up. - -“Magnifique, Mirry, parfaitement magnifique,” intoned Tommy Babington, -appearing in the doorway with Meg on his arm. - -“Bonsoir, Tomasso.” - -“You are like an expressive metronome.” - -“Oh--nom d’un pipe.” - -“You would make a rhinoceros dance.” - -Adjusting his pince-nez he dexterously seized tall Meg and swung her -rapidly in amongst the dancers. - -“Sarah’ll say he’s had a Turkish bath,” thought Miriam, recalling the -unusual clear pallor of his rather overfed face. “Pleated shirt. That’s -to impress Meg.” - -She felt all at once that the air seemed cold. It was not like a summer -night. How badly the ferns were arranged. Nearly all of them together on -the staging behind the end of the piano; not enough visible from the -drawing-room. Her muscles were somehow stiffening into the wrong mood. -Presently she would be playing badly. She watched the forms circling -past the gap in the curtains and slowed a little. The room seemed fairly -full. - -“That’s it--perfect, Mim,” signalled Harriett’s partner, swinging her -by. She held to the fresh rhythm and passing into a tender old waltz -tune that she knew by heart gave herself to her playing. She need not -watch the feet any longer. She could go on for ever. She knew she was -not playing altogether for the dancers. She was playing to two hearers. -But she could not play that tune if they came. They would be late. But -they must be here now. Where were they? Were they having coffee? -Dancing? She flung a terrified glance at the room and met the cold eye -of Bevan Seymour. She would not look again. The right feeling for the -dreamy old tune came and went uncontrollably. Why did they not come? -Presently she would be cold and sick and done for, for the evening. She -played on, harking back to the memory of the kindly challenge in the -eyes of her brother-in-law to be, dancing gravely with a grave -Harriett--fearing her ... writing in her album: - - “She was his life, - The ocean to the river of his thoughts-- - Which terminated all.” - -... cold, calm little Harriett. Her waltz had swung soft and low and the -dancers were hushed. Only Tommy Babington’s voice still threaded the -little throng. - -Someone held back the near curtain. A voice said quietly, “Here she is.” - - - 16 - -Ted’s low, faintly-mocking voice filled the conservatory. - -He was standing very near her, looking down at her with his back to the -gay room. Yesterday’s dream had come more than true, at once, at the -beginning of the evening. He had come straight to her with his friend, -not dancing, not looking for a partner. They were in the little green -enclosure with her. The separating curtains had fallen back into place. - -Behind the friend who stood leaning against the far end of the piano, -the massed fernery gleamed now with the glow of concealed fairy lamps. -She had not noticed it before. The fragrance of fronds and moist warm -clumps of maidenhair and scented geraniums inundated her as she glanced -across at the light falling on hard sculptured waves of hair above a -white handsome face. - -Her music held them all, protecting the wordless meeting. Her last -night’s extremity of content was reality, being lived by all three of -them. It centred in herself. Ted stood within it, happy in it. The -friend watched, witnessing Ted’s confession. Ted had said nothing to him -about her, about any of them, in his usual way. But he was disguising -nothing now that he had come. - -At the end of her playing she stood up faintly dizzy, and held out -towards Max Sonnenheim’s familiar strangeness hands heavy with happiness -and quickened with the sense of Ted’s touch upon her arm. The swift -crushing of the strange hands upon her own, steadied her as the curtains -swung wide and a group of dancers crowded in. - - - 17 - -“Don’t tell N.B. we’ve scrubbed the coffin, Miriorama--she’ll sit there -all the evening.” - -“That was my sister and my future brother-in-law,” said Miriam to Max -Sonnenheim as Harriett and Gerald ran down the steps and out into the -dark garden. - -“Your sister and brother-in-law,” he responded thoughtfully. - -He was standing at her side at the top of the garden steps staring out -into the garden and apparently not noticing the noisy passers-by. If -they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not been dancing, would join -them. She did not want that. She would put off her dance with Ted until -later. The next dance she would play herself and then perhaps dance -again with Max. Once more from the strange security of his strongly -swinging arms she would meet Ted’s eyes, watching and waiting. She must -dance once more with Max. She had never really danced before. She would -go to Ted at last and pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not -yet. - -“I will show you the front garden,” she said, running down the steps. - -He joined her and they walked silently round the side of the house, -through the kitchen yard and out into the deserted carriage drive. She -thought she saw people on the front lawn and walked quickly, humming a -little tune, on down the drive. - -Max crunched silently along a little apart from her, singing to himself. - - - 18 - -Both sides of the front gate were bolted back and their footsteps -carried them straight out on to the asphalted avenue extending right and -left, a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps out in the -roadway. With a sudden sense of daring, Miriam determined to assume the -deserted avenue as part of the garden. - -The gate left behind, they made their way slowly along the high leafy -tunnel. - -They would walk to the end of the long avenue and back again. In a -moment she would cease humming and make a remark. She tasted a new sense -of ease, walking slowly along with this strange man without “making -conversation.” He was taking her silence for granted. All her experience -so far had been of companions whose uneasiness pressed unendurably for -speech, and her talking had been done with an irritated sense of the -injustice of aspersions on “women’s tongues,” while no man could endure -a woman’s silence ... even Ted, except when dancing; no woman could, -except Minna, in Germany. Max must be foreign, of course, German--of -_course_. She could, if she liked, talk of the stars to him. He would -neither make jokes nor talk science and want her to admire him, until -all the magic was gone. Her mood expanded. He had come just at the right -moment. She would keep him with her until she had to face Ted. He was -like a big ship towing the little barque of her life to its harbour. - -His vague humming rose to a little song. It was German. It was the -Lorelei. For a moment she forgot everything but pride in her ability to -take her share in both music and words. - -“You understand German!” he cried. - -They had reached the end of the avenue and the starlit roadway opened -ahead, lined with meadows. - -“Ach, wie schön,” breathed Max. - -“Wie schön.” Miriam was startled by the gay sound of her own voice. It -sounded as if she were alone, speaking to herself. She looked up at the -spangled sky. The freshening air streamed towards them from the meadows. - -“We _must_ go back,” she said easily, turning in again under the trees. - -The limes seemed heavily scented after their breath of the open. They -strolled dreamily along keeping step with each other. They would make it -a long quiet way to the gate. Miriam felt strangely invisible. It was as -if in a moment a voice would come from the clustering lime trees or from -the cluster of stars in the imagined sky. - -“Wie süss,” murmured Max, “ist treue Liebe.” - -“How dear,” she translated mentally, “is true love.” Yes, that was it, -that was true, the German phrase. Ted was dear, dear. But so far away. -Coming and going, far away. - -“Is it?” she said with a vague, sweet intonation, to hear more. - -“Wie süss, wie süss,” he repeated firmly, flinging his arm across her -shoulders. - -The wildly shimmering leafage rustled and seemed to sing. She walked on -horrified, cradled, her elbow resting in her companion’s hand as in a -cup. She laughed, and her laughter mingled with the subdued lilting of -the voice close at her side. Ted was waiting somewhere in the night for -her. Ted. Ted. Not this stranger. But why was he not bold like this? -Primly and gently she disengaged herself. - -She and Ted would walk along through the darkness and it would shout to -them. Day-time colours seemed to be shining through the night.... She -turned abruptly to her companion. - -“Aren’t the lime trees jolly?” she said conversationally. - -“You will dance again with me?” - -“Yes, if you like.” - -“I must go so early.” - -“Must you?” - -“To-morrow morning early I go abroad.” - - - 19 - -“Hullo!” - -“Where were _you_ all that last dance?” - -Nan Babington’s voice startled her as they came into the bright hall -through the open front door. - -She smiled towards Nan, sitting drearily with a brilliant smile on her -face watching the dancers from a long chair drawn up near the -drawing-room door, and passed on into the room with her hand on her -partner’s arm. They had missed a dance and an interval. It must have -been a Lancers and now there was another waltz. - -Several couples were whirling gravely about. Amongst them she noted -Bevan Seymour, upright and slender, dancing with Harriett with an air of -condescending vivacity, his bright teeth showing all the time. Her eyes -were ready for Ted. She was going to meet his for the first time--just -one look, and then she would fly for her life anywhere, to anybody. And -he would find her and make her look at him again. Ted. He was not there. -People were glancing at her, curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and -felt their radiance stream through her, flooding her with strength from -head to foot. How battered and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and -sick, stamped with a pallor of sickness. How she pitied them all. - -“Let us take a short turn,” said Max, and his arms came around her. As -they circled slowly down the length of the room she stared at his black -shoulder a few inches from her eyes. His stranger’s face was just above -her in the bright light; his strange black-stitched glove holding her -mittened hand. His arms steadied her as they neared the conservatory. - -“Let us go out,” she heard him say, and her footsteps were guided across -the moulding, her arm retained in his. Meg Wedderburn was playing and -met her with her sentimental smile. In the gloom at her side, just -beyond the shaded candle, stood Ted ready to turn the music, his -disengaged hand holding the bole of a tall palm. He dropped his hands -and turned as they passed him, almost colliding with Miriam. “Next dance -with me,” he whispered neatly. “Will you show me your coffin?” asked Max -as they reached the garden steps. - -“It’s quite down at the end beyond the kitchen garden.” - - - 20 - -“There are raspberry canes all along here, on both sides--trailing all -over the place; the gardener puts up stakes and things but they manage -to trail all over the place.” - -“Ah, yes.” - -“Some of them are that pale yellow kind, the colour of champagne. You -can just see how they trail. Isn’t it funny how dark they are, and yet -the colour’s there all the time, isn’t it? They are lovely in the day, -lovely leaves and great big fruit, and in between are little squatty -gooseberry bushes, all kinds, yellow and egg-shaped like plums, and -little bright green round ones and every kind of the ordinary red kind. -Do you know the little bright green ones, quite bright green when -they’re ripe, like bright green Chartreuse?” - -“No. The green Chartreuse of course I know. But green ripe gooseberries -I have not seen.” - -“I expect you only know the unripe green ones they make April fool of.” - -“April fool?” - -“I mean _gooseberry_ fool. Do you know why men are like green -gooseberries?” - -“No. Why are they? Tell me.” - -“Perhaps you would not like it. We are passing the apple trees now; -quarendens and stibbards.” - -“Tell me. I shall like what you say.” - -“Well, it’s because women can make fools of them whenever they like.” - -Max laughed; a deep gurgling laugh that echoed back from the wall in -front of them. - -“We are nearly at the end of the garden.” - -“I think you would not make a man a fool. No?” - -“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” - -“You have not thought much about men.” - -“I don’t know.” - -“But they, they have thought about you.” - -“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know.” - -“You do not care, perhaps?” - -“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Here’s the coffin. I’m afraid -it’s not very comfortable. It’s so low.” - -“What is it?” - -“It’s an overturned seedling box. There’s grass all round. I wonder -whether it’s damp,” said Miriam suddenly invaded by a general -uncertainty. - -“Oh, we will sit down, it will not be damp. Your future brother-in-law -has not scrubbed also the ivy on the wall,” he pursued as they sat down -on the broad low seat, “it will spoil your blouse.” - -Miriam leaned uncomfortably against the intervening arm. - -“Isn’t it a perfectly lovely night?” she said. - -“I feel that you would not make of a man a fool....” - -“Why not?” - -“I feel that there is no poison in you.” - -“What _do_ you mean?” People ... poisonous ... What a horrible idea. - -“Just what I say.” - -“I know in a way. I think I know what you mean.” - -“I feel that there is no poison in you. I have not felt that before with -a woman.” - -“Aren’t women awful?” Miriam made a little movement of sympathy towards -the strange definiteness at her side. - -“I have thought so. But you are not as the women one meets. You have a -soul serene and innocent. With you it should be well with a man.” - -“I don’t know,” responded Miriam. “Is he telling me I am a fool?” she -thought. “It’s true, but no one has the courage to tell me.” - -“It is most strange. I talk to you here as I will. It is simple and -fatal”; the supporting arm became a gentle encirclement and Miriam’s -heart beat softly in her ears. “I go to-morrow to Paris to the branch of -my father’s business that is managed there by my brother. And I go then -to New York to establish a branch there. I shall be away then, perhaps a -year. Shall I find you here?” - -A quick crunching on the gravel pathway just in front of them made them -both hold their breath to listen. Someone was standing on the grass near -Max’s side of the coffin. A match spat and flared and Miriam’s heart was -shaken by Ted’s new, eager, frightened voice. “Aren’t you _ever_ going -to dance with me again?” - -She had seen the whiteness of his face and his cold, delicate, upright -figure. In spirit she had leapt to her feet and faltered his name. All -the world she knew had fallen into newness. This was certainty. Ted -would never leave her. But it was Max who was standing up and saying -richly in the blackness left by the burnt-out match, “All in good time, -Burton. Miss Miriam is engaged to me for this dance.” Her faint “of -course, Ted,” was drowned in the words which her partner sang after the -footsteps retreating rapidly along the gravel path: “We’re just coming!” - -“I suppose they’ve begun the next dance,” she said, rising decisively -and brushing at her velvet skirt with trembling hands. - -“Our dance. Let us go and dance our dance.” - -They walked a little apart steadily along up through the kitchen garden, -their unmatched footsteps sounding loudly upon the gravel between -remarks made by Max. Miriam heard them and heard the voice of Max. But -she neither listened nor responded. - -She began to talk and laugh at random as they neared the lawn lit by the -glaring uncurtained windows. - -Consulting his scrutinising face as they danced easily in the as yet -half-empty room, he humming the waltz which swung with their movement, -she found narrow, glinting eyes looking into her own; strange eyes that -knew all about a big business and were going to Paris and New York. His -stranger’s face was going away, to be washed and shaved innumerable -times, keeping its assurance in strange places she knew nothing about. - -Here, just for these few hours, laughing at Ted. A phrase flashed -through her brain, “He’s brought Ted to his senses.” She flushed and -laughed vaguely and danced with a feeling of tireless strength and -gaiety. She knew the phrase was not her own. It was one Nan Babington -could have used. It excited her. It meant that real things were going to -happen, she could bear herself proudly in the room. She rippled -complacently at Max. The room was full of whirling forms, swelling and -shrinking as they crossed and recrossed the line between the clear -vision rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright confusion. -Swift, rhythmic movement, unbroken and unjostled, told her how well they -were dancing. She was secure, landed in life, dancing carelessly out and -out to a life of her own. - -“I go; I see you again in a year,” said Max suddenly, drawing up near -the door where Mrs. Henderson stood sipping coffee with Sarah and -Bennett. - -“Where is Burton?” he asked in the midst of his thanks and leave-taking. - -They all hesitated. Miriam suddenly found herself in the presence of a -tribunal. - -Bennett’s careless “Oh, he’s gone; couldn’t stay,” followed her as she -flung upstairs to Meg Wedderburn’s empty room. Why had her mother looked -so self-conscious and Sarah avoided her eye ... standing there like a -little group of conspirators. - -People were always inventing things. “Bother--damnational silliness,” -she muttered, and began rapidly calculating. Ted gone away. Little Ted -hurt and angry. To-morrow. Perhaps he wouldn’t come. If he didn’t she -wouldn’t see him before she went. The quiet little bead of ruby shaded -gas reproached her. Meg’s eyes would be sad and reproachful in this -quiet neatness. Terror seized her. She wouldn’t see him. He had finished -his work at the Institution. It was the big Norwich job next week. - - - - - CHAPTER III - - - 1 - -Miriam propped “The Story of Adèle” open against the three Bibles on the -dressing-table. It would be wasteful to read it upstairs. It was the -only story-book amongst the rows of volumes which filled the shelves in -the big schoolroom and would have to last her for tea-time reading the -whole term. The “Fleurs de l’Eloquence?” Shiny brown leather covered -with little gold buds and tendrils, fresh and new although the parchment -pages were yellow with age. The Fleurs were so short ... that curious -page signed “Froissart” with long s’s, coming to an end just as the -picture of the French court was getting clear and interesting. That -other thing, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” Fascinating. But it would take -so much reading, on and on forgetting everything; all the ordinary -things, seeing things in some new way, some way that fascinated people -for a moment if you tried to talk about it and then made them very -angry, made them hate and suspect you. Impossible to take it out and -have it on the schoolroom table for tea-time reading. What had made the -Pernes begin allowing tea-time reading? Being shy and finding it -difficult to keep conversation going with the girls for so long? They -never did talk to the girls. Perhaps because they did not see through -them and understand them. North London girls. So different from the -Fairchild family and the sort of girls they had been accustomed to when -they were young. Anyhow, they hardly ever had to talk to them. Not at -breakfast or dinner-time when they were all three there; and at tea-time -when there was only one of them, there were always the books. How -sensible. On Sunday afternoons, coming smiling into the schoolroom, one -of them each Sunday--perhaps the others were asleep--reading aloud; the -Fairchild family, smooth and good and happy, everyone in the book -surrounded with a sort of light, going on and on and on towards heaven, -tea-time seeming so nice and mean and ordinary afterwards--or a book -about a place in the north of England called Saltcoats, brine, and a -vicarage and miners; the people in the book horrible, not lit up, -talking about things and being gloomy and not always knowing what to do, -never really sure about Heaven like the Fairchild family, black brackish -book. The “Fairchild Family” was golden and gleaming. - -“The Anatomy of Melancholy” would not be golden like “The Fairchild -Family” ... “the cart was now come alongside a wood which was -exceedingly shady and beautiful”; “good manners and civility make -everybody lovely”; but it would be round and real, not just chilly and -moaning like “Saltcoats.” The title would be enough to keep one going at -tea-time. An_at_--omy of _Mel_--ancholy, and the look of the -close-printed pages and a sentence here and there. The Pernes would not -believe she really wanted it there on the table. The girls would stare. -When “The Story of Adèle” was finished she would have to find some other -book; or borrow one. Nancie Wilkie, sitting at tea with her back to the -closed piano facing the great bay of dark green-blinded window, reading -“Nicholas Nickleby.” Just the very one of all the Dickens volumes that -would be likely to come into her hands. Impossible to borrow it when -Nancie had finished with it. Impossible to read a book with such a -title. “David Copperfield” was all right; and “The Pickwick Papers.” -“Little Dorritt”--“A Tale of Two Cities”--“The Old Curiosity Shop.” -There was something suspicious about these, too. - - - 2 - -Adèle--the story of Adèle. The book had hard, unpleasant covers with -some thin cottony material--bright lobelia blue--strained over them and -fraying out at the corners. Over the front of the cover were little -garlands and festoons of faded gold, and in the centre framed by an oval -band of brighter gold was the word Adèle, with little strong tendrils on -the lettering. There was some secret charm about the book. The strong -sunlight striking the window just above the coarse lace curtains that -obscured its lower half, made the gilding shine and seem to move--a -whole wild woodland. The coarse white toilet-cover on the chest of -drawers, the three Bibles, the little cheap mahogany-framed -looking-glass, Nancie Wilkie’s folding hand-glass, the ugly gas bracket -sticking out above the mirror, her own bed in the corner with its coarse -fringed coverlet, the two alien beds behind her in the room, and the -repellant washstand in the far corner became friendly as the sun shone -on the decorated cover of the blue and gold book. - -She propped it open again and began tidying her hair. It must be nearly -tea-time. A phrase caught her eye. “The old château where the first -years of Adèle’s life were spent was situated in the midst of a -high-walled garden. Along one side of the château ran a terrace looking -out over a lovely expanse of flower-beds. Beyond was a little pleasaunce -surrounded by a miniature wall and threaded by little pathways lined -with rose trees. Almost hidden in the high wall was a little doorway. -When the doorway was open you could see through into a deep orchard.” -The first tea-bell rang. The figure of Adèle flitting about in an -endless summer became again lines of black print. In a moment the girls -would come rushing up. Miriam closed the book and turned to the dazzling -window. The sun blazed just above the gap in the avenue of poplars. A -bright yellow pathway led up through the green of the public cricket -ground, pierced the avenue of poplars and disappeared through the -further greenery in a curve that was the beginning of its encirclement -of the park lake. Coming slowly along the pathway was a little figure -dressed bunchily in black. It looked pathetically small and dingy in the -bright scene. The afternoon blazed round it. It was something left over. -What was the explanation of it? As it came near it seemed to change. It -grew real. It was hurrying eagerly along, quite indifferent to the -afternoon glory, with little rolling steps that were like the uneven -toddling of a child, and carrying a large newspaper whose great sheets, -although there was no wind, balled out scarcely controlled by the small -hands. Its feathered hat had a wind-blown rakish air. On such a still -afternoon. It was thinking and coming along, thinking and thinking and a -little angry. What a rum little party, murmured Miriam, despising her -words and admiring the wild thought-filled little bundle of dingy -clothes. Beastly, to be picking up that low kind of slang--not real -slang. Just North London sneering. Goo--what a _rum_ little party, she -declared aloud, flattening herself against the window. Hotly flushing, -she recognised that she had been staring at Miss Jenny Perne hurrying in -to preside at tea. - - - 3 - -“We’ve been to Jones’s this afternoon, Miss Jenny.” - -Each plate held a slice of bread and butter cut thickly all the way -across a household loaf, and the three-pound jar of home-made plum jam -belonging to Nancie Wilkie was going the round of the table. It had -begun with Miriam, who sat on Miss Jenny’s right hand, and had Nancie -for neighbour. She had helped herself sparingly, unable quite to resist -the enhancement of the solid fare, but fearing that there would be no -possibility of getting anything from home to make a return in kind. -Things were so bad, the dance had cost so much. One of Mary’s cakes, big -enough for five people, would cost so much. And there would be the -postage. - -Piling a generous spoonful on to her own thick slice, Nancie coughed -facetiously and repeated her remark which had produced no result but a -giggle from Charlotte Stubbs who sat opposite to her. - -“Eh? Eh? What?” - -Miss Jenny looked down the table over the top of her newspaper without -raising her head. Her pince-nez were perched so that one eye appeared -looking through its proper circle, the other glared unprotected just -above a rim of glass. - -“Miss Haddie took us to Jones’s this afternoon,” said Nancie almost -voicelessly. Miriam glanced at the too familiar sight of Nancie’s small -eyes vanishing to malicious points. She was sitting as usual very solid -and upright in her chair, with her long cheeks pink flushed and her fine -nose white and cool and twitching, her yellow hair standing strongly -back from her large white brow. She stabbed keenly in her direction as -Miriam glanced, and Miriam turned and applied herself to her bread and -jam. If she did not eat she would not get more than two slices from the -piled dishes before the others had consumed four and five apiece and -brought tea to an end. - -“Eh? What for? Why are ye laughing, Nancie?” - -“I’m not laughing, Miss Jenny.” Nancie’s firm lips curved away from her -large faultless teeth. “I’m only smiling and telling you about our visit -to Jones’s.” - -Miss Jenny’s newspaper was lowered and her pince-nez removed. - -“Eh? What d’ye say? Nonsense, Nancie, you know you were laughing. Why do -you say you weren’t? What do you mean? Eh?” - -“I’m sorry, Miss Jennie. Something tickled me.” - -“Yes. Don’t be nonsensical. D’ye see? It’s nonsensical to say no when -you mean yes. D’ye understand what I mean, Nancie? It’s bad manners.” -Hitching on her pince-nez, Miss Jenny returned to her paper. - -Miriam gave herself up to the luxury of reading Adèle to the -accompaniment of bread and jam. She would not hurry over her bread and -jam. As well not have it. She would sacrifice her chance of a third -slice. She reflected that it would be a good thing if she could decide -never to have more than two slices, and have them in peace. Then she -could thoroughly enjoy her reading. But she was always so hungry. At -home she could not have eaten thick bread and butter. But here every -slice seemed better than the last. When she began at the hard thick edge -there always seemed to be tender places on her gums, her three hollow -teeth were uneasy and she had to get through worrying thoughts about -them--they would get worse as the years went by, and the little places -in the front would grow big and painful and disfiguring. After the first -few mouthfuls of solid bread a sort of padding seemed to take place and -she could go on forgetful. - -“They’d got,” said Trixie Sanderson in a velvety tone, “they’d got some -of their Christmas things out, Miss Jenny.” She cleared her throat -shrilly on the last word and toned off the sound with a sigh. Inaudible -laughter went round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced -fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best dress, a loosely -made brown velveteen with a deep lace collar round her soft brown neck. -Her neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by lively silky brown -curls. She held her small head sideways from her book with a questioning -air. One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered serenely with its -thin lid. - -She uttered a second gentle sigh and once more cleared her throat, -accompanying the sound with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid. - -Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye which tried to search her, -hating the sudden, sharp dimpling which came high up almost under -Trixie’s cheek bones in answer to her own expression. - -“Miss Jenny,” breathed Trixie in a high tone, twirling one end of the -bow of black ribbon crowning her head. - -Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table opposite the tea-tray, -giggled aloud. - -“Eh? What? Did somebody speak?” said Miss Jenny, looking up with a -smile. “Are ye getting on with yer teas? Are ye ready for second cups?” - -“Beadie spoke,” murmured Trixie, glancing at Beadie whose neat china -doll’s face was half hidden between her cup and the protruding edge of -her thatch of tight gold curls. - -Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong the irritating comedy by -choking over her tea. - -It was some minutes before the whole incident was made clear to Miss -Jenny. Reading was suspended. Everyone watched while Charlotte Stubbs, -going carefully backwards, came to the end at last of Miss Jenny’s -questions, and when Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating--_well!_ you’re all -very naughty children. I can’t think what’s the matter with you? Eh? Ye -shouldn’t do it. I can’t think what possesses you. What is it, eh? Ye -shouldn’t do it. D’you see?--and having dispensed the second allowance -of tea with small hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to her -newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking guilty. Miriam stole a -glance at the breadth of her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she -hung over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with her tea-drinking, and -her shock of coarse brown-gold hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck -out bushily on either side, its edges lit by the afternoon glow from the -garden behind her. The others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the -muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly active. She and -Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of -her book with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered on their -final competition for the last few slices. - -Miriam returned to her book. The story of Adèle had moved on through -several unassimilated pages. “My child,” she read, “it is important to -remember”--she glanced on gathering a picture of a woman walking with -Adèle along the magic terrace, talking--words and phrases that fretted -dismally at the beauty of the scene. Examining later chapters she found -conversations, discussions, situations, arguments, “fusses”--all about -nothing. She turned back to the early passage of description and caught -the glow once more. But this time it was overshadowed by the promise of -those talking women. That was all there was. She had finished the story -of Adèle. - -A resounding slam came up from the kitchen. - -“Poor cook--another tooth,” sighed Trixie. - -Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb. Her thwarted expectations -ranged forth beyond control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for -succour where she had learned there was none.... Nancie, her parents -abroad, her aunt’s house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin from -South Africa coming home to Cromer, taking her out in a dog-cart, -telling her she was his guiding star, going back to South Africa; -everything Nancie said and did, even her careful hair-brushing and her -energetic upright walk, her positive brave way of entering a room, -coming out through those malicious pin-points--things she said about the -Misses Perne and the girls, things she whispered and laughed, little -rhymes she sang with her unbearable laugh. - -... Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent servile glancing -laughter, her stepmother, her little half-brother who had fits, her -holidays at Margate, “you’d look neat, on the seat, of a bicyka made for -two”--Beadie brought Miriam the utmost sense of imprisonment within the -strange influence that had threatened her when she first came to Banbury -Park. Beadie was in it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that -she could in some way, in some one tint or tone, realise the whole -fabric of Beadie’s life on and on to the end, no matter what should -happen to her. But she turned from the attempt--any effort at full -realisation threatened complete despair. Trixie too, with a home just -opposite the Banbury Empire.... Miriam slid over this link in her rapid -reflections--a brother named Julian who took instantaneous photographs -of girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was sometimes “tight.” ... - -Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint suggestion of relief. Miriam -fled to her as she sat with the garden light on her hair, her lingering -flush of distress rekindled by her amusement, her protective responsible -smile beaming out through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind her -painstaking life at the school was a country home, a farm somewhere far -away. Of course it was dreadful for her to be a farmer’s daughter. She -evidently knew it herself and said very little about it. But her large -red hands, so strange handling school-books, were comforting; and her -holland apron with its bib under the fresh colouring of her face--do you -like butter? A buttercup under your chin--brought to Miriam a picture of -the farm, white amidst bright greenery, with a dairy and morning -cock-crow and creamy white sheep on a hillside. It was all there with -her as she sat at table reading “The Lamplighter.” The sound of her -broad husky voice explaining to Miss Jenny had been full of it. But it -was all past. She too had come to Banbury Park. She did not seem to mind -Banbury Park. She was to study hard and be a governess. She evidently -thought she was having a great chance--she was fifteen and quite -“uncultured.” How could she be turned into a governess? A sort of -nursery governess, for farms, perhaps. But farms did not want books and -worry. Miriam wanted to put her back into her farm, and sometimes her -thoughts wearily brushed the idea of going with her. Perhaps, though, -she had come away because her father could not keep her? The little -problem hung about her as she sat sweetly there, common and good and -strong. The golden light that seemed to belong specially to her came -from a London garden, an unreal North London garden. Resounding in its -little spaces were the blatterings and shouts of the deaf and dumb next -door. - - - 4 - -Miss Jenny left “The Standard” with Miriam after tea, stopping suddenly -as she made her uncertain way from the tea-table to the door and saying -absently, “Eh, you’d better read this, my dear. There’s a leader on the -Education Commission. Would ye like to? Yes, I think you’d better.” -Miriam accepted the large sheets with hesitating expressions of thanks, -wondering rather fearfully what a leader might be and where she should -find it. She knew the word. Her mother read “the leaders” in the -evening--“excellent leader” she sometimes said, and her father would put -down his volume of “Proceedings of the British Association,” or Herbert -Spencer’s “First Principles,” and condescendingly agree. But any -discussion generally ended in his warning her not to believe a thing -because she saw it in print, and a reminder that before she married she -had thought that everything she saw in print was true, and quite often -he would go on to general remarks about the gullibility of women, -bringing in the story of the two large long-necked pearly transparent -drawing-room vases with stems and soft masses of roses and leaves -painted on their sides that she had given too much for at the door to a -man who said they were Italian. Brummagem, Brummagem, he would end, -mouthing the word and turning back to his book with the neighing laugh -that made Miriam turn to the imagined picture of her mother in the first -year of her married life, standing in the sunlight at the back door of -the Babington house, with the varnished coach-house door on her right -and the cucumber frames in front of her sloping up towards the bean-rows -that began the kitchen garden; with her little scallopped bodice, her -hooped skirt, her hair bunched in curls up on her high pad and falling -round her neck, looking at the jugs with grave dark eyes. And that -neighing laugh had come again and again all through the years until she -sat meekly, flushed and suffering under the fierce gaslight, feeling -every night of her life winter and summer as if the ceiling were coming -down on her head, and read “leaders” cautiously, and knew when they were -written in “a fine chaste dignified style.” But that was “The Times.” -“The Standard” was a penny rag and probably not worth considering at -all. In any case she would not read it at evening study. She had never -had a newspaper in her hand before as far as she could remember. The -girls would see that she did not know how to read it, and it would be -snubby towards them to sit there as if she were a Miss Perne, scrumpling -a great paper while they sat with their books. So she read her -text-books, a page of Saxon Kings with a ten-line summary of each reign, -a list of six English counties with their capitals and the rivers the -capitals stood on and the principal industries of each town, devising -ways of remembering the lists and went on to “Bell’s Standard -Elocutionist.” She had found the book amongst the school books on the -schoolroom shelves. It was a “standard” book and must therefore be about -something she ought to know something about if she were to hold her own -in this North London world. There had been no “standard” books at school -and the word offended her. It suggested fixed agreement about the things -people ought to know and that she felt sure must be wrong, and not only -wrong but “common” ... standard readers ... standard pianoforte tutors. -She had learned to read in “Reading without Tears,” and gone on to -“Classical Poems and Prose for the Young,” her arithmetic book instead -of being a thin cold paper-covered thing called Standard I, had been a -pleasant green volume called “Barnard Smith,” that began at the -beginning and went on to compound fractions and stocks. There was no -Morris’s Grammar at Banbury Park, no Wetherell or English Accidence, no -bits from “Piers Plowman” and pages of scraps of words with the way they -changed in different languages and quotations, just sentences that had -made her long for more ... “up-clomb” ... “the mist up-clomb.” She -opened “Bell’s Standard Elocutionist” apprehensively, her mind working -on possible meanings for elocutionist. She thought of ventriloquist and -wondered dismally whether it was a book of conjuring tricks. It was -poems, poems and prose, all mixed up together anyhow. The room was very -still, the girls all sitting reading with their backs to the table so -that nobody “poked.” She could not go on vaguely fluttering pages, so -she read a solid-looking poem that was not divided up into verses. - -“Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond Emperor of -Allemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a -knight and squire, On St. John’s eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard -the priests chant the Magnificat.” Should she go on? It was like the -pieces in Scott’s novels, the best bits, before the characters began to -talk. - -... “and bay the moon than such a Roman and bay the moon than such a -Roman,” muttered Nancie rapidly, swinging her feet. It would not be fair -to read a thing that would take her right away and not teach her -anything whilst the girls were learning their things for Monday. She -hesitated and turned a page. The poem, she saw, soon began to break up -into sentences with quotation signs; somebody making a to-do. Turning -several pages at once, she caught sight of the word Hanover. “Hamelin -Town’s in Brunswick, by famous Hanover city.” That was irresistible. But -she must read it one day away from the gassy room and the pressure of -the girls. The lines were magic; but the rush that took her to the -German town, the sight and smell and sound of it, the pointed houses, -wood fires, the bürgers, had made her cheeks flare and thrown her out of -the proper teacher’s frame of mind. She wanted to stand up and pull up -the blinds hiding the garden and shout the poem aloud to the girls. They -would stare and giggle and think she had gone mad. “The mountain has -gone mad,” Nancie would mutter. “There is a mountain in Banbury Park, -covered over with yellow bark,” Nancie’s description of herself. That -was how the girls saw her stiff hair--and they thought she was “about -forty.” Well, it was true. She was, practically. She went on holding -Bell up before her face, open at a page of prose, and stared at the -keyboard of the piano just beyond her crossed knees. It aroused the -sight and sense of the strangely moving hands of the various girls whose -afternoon practice it was her business to superintend, their intent -faces, the pages of bad unclassical music, things with horrible names, -by English composers, the uselessness of the hours and terms and years -of practice. - - - 5 - -Presently the bread and butter and milk came up for the girls, and then -there was prayers--the three servants lined up in front of the -bookshelves; cook wheezing heavily, tall and thin and bent, with a -sloping mob cap and a thin old brown face with a forehead that was like -a buttress of shiny bone and startling dark eyes that protruded so that -they could be seen even when she sat looking down into her lap; and -Flora the parlourmaid, short and plump and brown with an expression of -perfectly serene despair, this was part of Miriam’s daily bread; and -Annie the housemaid, raw pink and gold and grinning slyly at the -girls--Miss Perne, sitting at the head of the table with the shabby -family Bible and the book of family prayers, Miss Jenny and Miss Haddie -one on each side of the fireplace, Miss Jenny’s feet hardly reaching the -floor as she sat bunched on a high schoolroom chair, Miss Haddie in her -cold slate-grey dress sitting back with her thin hands clasped in her -lap, her grey face bent devotionally so that her chin rested on her thin -chest, her eyes darting from the servants to the girls who sat in their -places round the table during the time it took Miss Perne to read a -short psalm. Miriam tried to cast down her eyes and close her ears. All -that went on during that short interval left her equally excluded from -either party. She could not sit gazing at Flora, and Miss Perne’s polite -unvarying tone brought her no comfort. She sometimes thought longingly -of prayers in Germany, the big quiet saal with its high windows, its -great dark doors, its annexe of wooden summer-room, Fräulein’s clear, -brooding undertone, the pensive calm of the German girls; the strange -mass of fresh melodious sound as they all sang together. Here there -seemed to be everything to encourage and nothing whatever to check the -sudden murmur, the lightning swift gesture of Nancie or Trixie. - -The moment Miss Perne had finished her psalm they all swung round on to -their knees. Miriam pressed her elbows against the cane seat of her -chair and wondered what she should say to Miss Jenny at supper about the -newspaper, while Miss Perne decorously prayed that they might all be fed -with the sincere milk of the Word and grow thereby. - -After the Lord’s Prayer, a unison of breathy mutterings against closed -fingers, they all rose. Then the servants filed out of the room followed -by the Misses Perne. Miss Perne stopped in the doorway to shake hands -with the girls on their way to bed before joining her sisters in the -little sitting-room across the hall. One of the servants reappeared -almost at once with a tray, distributed its contents at the fire-place -end of the long table and rang the little bell in the hall on her way -back to the kitchen. The Misses Perne filed back across the hall. - - - 6 - -“Eh, Deborah, are ye sure?” said Miss Jenny, getting into her chair at -Miss Perne’s right hand. - -Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned after all. If it were she -would simply say she had been preparing for Monday and was going to read -it after supper. Anyhow there was never any threat with the Pernes of -anything she would not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what -there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie’s eye from across the -table, assumed an air of interested abstraction to cover her -disappointment. Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished with -prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream cheese on a green-edged -dessert plate, a box of plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice -and the red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and nice--the -blancmange would be flavoured with laurel--prussic acid--and the prunes -would be sweet in the wrong sort of way--wholesome, just sweet fruit. -Cheese--how could people eat cheese? - -“Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw with my own eyes--Polly Allen -and Eunice Dupont running about in the park without their hats.” - -“Ech,” syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her delicate green-grey eyebrows -sharply towards the deep line in the middle of her forehead. She did not -look up but sat frowning sourly into her bowl of bread and milk, ladling -and pouring the milk from the spoon. - -Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. No one had seen the -behaviour of her own face, how one corner of her mouth had shot up so -sharply as to bring the feeling of a deeply denting dimple in her cheek. -She sat regulating her breathing and carefully extracting the stone from -a prune. - -“Did ye speak to them?” asked Miss Jenny, fixing her tall sister over -her pince-nez. - -Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black eyes blinking rapidly at the -far-off bookshelves. - -“I did _not_ speak to them----” - -“Eh, Deborah, why not?” scolded Miss Jenny as Miss Perne drew breath. - -“I did _not_ speak to them,” went on Miss Deborah, beaming delightedly -at the bookcase, “for the very good reason that I was not sufficiently -near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt pathway surrounding the -lake and had just become engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell, -who had stopped me for the purpose of giving me further details with -regard to Constance’s prolonged absence from school, when I saw Polly -and Eunice apparently chasing one another across the recreation ground -in the condition I have described to you.” - -Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie’s scorn-filled eyes playing watchfully -over her, sat pressing the sharp edge of her high heel into her ankle. - -“Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn’t speak to them. They’ve no -business at all in the recreation ground where the rough boys go.” - -“Well, I have described to you the circumstances, my dear, and the -impossibility of my undertaking any kind of intervention.” - -“Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should have done something. Don’t -you think you ought? Eh? Called someone perhaps--eh?--or managed to get -at the gels in some way--dear, dear, what is to be done? You see it is -hardly of any use to speak to them afterwards. You want to catch them -red-handed and make them feel ashamed of themselves.” - -“I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny, the justice of all that -you say. But I can only repeat that in the circumstances in which I -found myself I was entirely unable to exercise any control whatever upon -the doings of the gels. They were running; and long before I was free -from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of sight.” - -Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative tone that seemed each -moment on the point of delighted laughter, her delicate head held high, -her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained pleasure. Miriam saw -vividly the picture in the park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the -sad asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London greenery, the -October wind rushing through it, Miss Perne’s high stylish arrowy figure -fluttered by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. Brinkwell’s -story, the dreadful asphalt playground away to the left, its gaunt -swings and bars--gallows.... Ingoldsby--the girls rushing across it, and -held herself sternly back from a vision of Miss Perne chasing the -delinquents down the wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triumphantly? As -much as to say There, my dear Jenny, there’s a problem you can’t answer. -She enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset about the girls. -She spoke exactly as if she were reading aloud from “Robinson Crusoe.” -Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her eyes about as she gently -spooned up her bread and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether Miss -Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen gravely. She was evidently -angry and disgusted. But still she could watch. - -“Did ye go that way at all afterwards--the way the girls went?” - -“I did not,” beamed Miss Perne, turning to Miss Jenny as if waiting for -a judgment. - -“Well, eh, I’m sure, really, it’s most diffikilt. What is one to do with -these gels? Now, Miriam, here’s something for you to exercise your wits -upon. What would ye do, eh?” - -Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb. Of course she had never rushed -about in a common park where rough boys came. At the same time--if the -girls wanted to rush about and scream and wear no hats nobody had any -right to interfere with them ... they ought to be suppressed though, -North London girls, capable of anything in the way of horridness ... the -Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls were in themselves, -common and knowing and horrid. “Dear, funny little O.M.’s” ... they were -something much more than that. They were wrong about the hats, but it -was good, heavenly to be here like this with them. She turned to Miss -Jenny, her mind in a warm confusion, and smiled into the little red face -peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon loops. - -“Well?” - -“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie’s soft hollow voice, “how should the -child judge?” - -Miriam’s heart leapt. She smiled inanely and eagerly accepted a second -helping of blancmange suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was drawing -little panting breaths and blinking sharply at her. - -“Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear, it’s a chance for you. Come -along.” - -“Tomboys,” said Miss Haddie indignantly. - -Miriam drew a breath. It was wrong, they were not tomboys--she knew they -had not run like tomboys--they had scuttled, she was sure--horrid girls, -that was what they were, nothing the Pernes could understand. The Pernes -ought not to be bothered with them. - -“Well,” she said, feeling a sudden security, “are we responsible for -them out of school hours?” - -Miss Haddie’s eyebrows moved nervously, and Miss Perne’s smile turned to -a dubious mouthing. - -“Eh, there you are. D’ye see, Deborah. That’s it. That’s the crucial -point. Are we responsible? I’m sure I can’t say. That places the whole -difficulty in a nutshell. Here are these gels, not even day boarders. -How far can we control their general behaviour? Eh? I’m sure I don’t -know.” - -“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie quickly, her hollow voice -reverberating as if she were using a gargle, “it’s quite obvious that we -can’t have gels known to belong to the school running about in the park -with nothing on.” - -“I agree, my dear Haddie. But, as Jenny says, how are we to prevent such -conduct?” - -“Don’t let us lose sight of Miriam’s point. _Are_ we responsible for -their play-times? I suppose we’re _not_, you know, Deborah, really after -all. Not directly, perhaps. But sheerly we are _indirectly_ responsible. -Sheerly. We ought to be able to make it impossible for them to carry on -in this unseemly fashion.” - -“Yes, yes,” said Miss Deborah eagerly, “sheerly.” - -“Is it education?” suggested Miriam. - -“That’s it, my dear. It is education. That’s what’s wanted. That’s what -these gels want. I don’t know, though. All this talk of education. It -ought to be the thing. And yet look at these two gels. Both of them from -Miss Cass’s. There’s her school now. Famous all over London. Three -hundred gels. We’ve had several here. And they’ve all had that -objectionable noisy tone. Eh, Deborah? I don’t know. How is it to be -accounted for? Eh?” - -“I’ve never heard of Miss Cass’s,” said Miriam. - -“My _dear_ child! It’s not possible! D’ye mean to say ye don’t know Miss -Cass’s high school?” - -“Oh, if it’s a high school, of _course_.” - -All three ladies waited, with their eyes on her, making a chorus of -inarticulate sounds. - -“Oh well, high schools are simply fearful.” - -Miriam glowed in a tide of gentle cackling laughter. - -“Well, you know, I think there’s something in it,” giggled Miss Jenny -softly. “It’s the number perhaps. That’s what I always say, Deborah. -Treating the gels like soldiers. Like a regiment. D’ye see? No -individual study of the gels’ characters----” - -“Well. However that may be, I am sure of one thing. I am sure that on -Monday Polly and Eunice must be reprimanded. Severely reprimanded.” - -“Yes. I suppose they must. They’re nice gels at heart, you know. Both of -them. That’s the worst of it. Well, I hardly mean that. Only so often -the naughty gels are so thoroughly--well--nice, likable at bottom, ye -know, eh? I’m sure. I don’t know.” - - - 7 - -Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper with the newspaper spread -out on the brown American cloth table cover under the gas. She found a -long column headed “The Royal Commission on Education.” The Queen, then, -was interesting herself in education. But in England the sovereign had -no power, was only a figurehead. Perhaps the Queen had been advised to -interest herself in education by the Privy Council and the -Conservatives, people of leisure and cultivation. A commission was a -sort of command--it must be important, something the Privy Council had -decided and sent out in the Queen’s name. - -She read her column, sitting comfortlessly between the window and the -open door. As she read the room grew still. The memory of the talking -and clinking supper-table faded, and presently even the ticking of the -clock was no longer there. She raised her head at last. No wonder people -read newspapers. You could read about what was going on in the country, -actually what the Government was doing at that very moment. Of course; -men seemed to know such a lot because they read the newspapers and -talked about what was in them. But anybody could know as much as the men -sitting in the armchairs if they chose; read all about everything, -written down for everybody to see. That was the freedom of the -Press--Areopagitica, that the history books said so much about and was -one of those new important things, more important than facts and dates. -Like the Independence of Ireland. Yet very few people really talked like -newspapers. Only angry men with loud voices. Here was the free Press -that Milton had gone to prison for. Certainly it made a great -difference. The room was quite changed. There was hardly any pain in the -silent cane-seated chairs. There were really people making the world -better. Now. At last. Perhaps it was rather a happy fate to be a teacher -in the Banbury Park school and read newspapers. There were plenty of -people who could neither read nor write. Someone had a servant like that -who did all the marketing and never forgot anything or made any mistake -over the change--none the worse for it, pater said, people who wanted -book-learning could get it, there must always be hewers of wood and -drawers of water, _laissez faire_. But Gladstone did not believe that. -At this moment Gladstone was saying that because the people of England -as a whole were uneducated their “condition of ignorance” affected the -whole of the “body politic.” That was Gladstone. He had found that out -... with large moist silky eyes like a dog and pointed collars seeing -things as they were and going to change them.... Miriam stirred uneasily -as she felt the beating of her heart.... If only she were at home how -she could rush up and down the house and shout about it and shake Mary -by the shoulders. She shrank into herself and sat stiffly up, suddenly -discovering she was lounging over the table. As she moved she reflected -that probably Gladstone’s being so very dark made him determined that -things should not go on as they were. In that case Gladstonians would be -dark--perhaps not musical. Someone had said musical people were a queer -soft lot. _Laissez faire_. Lazy fair. But perhaps it was possible to be -fair and musical and to be a Gladstonian too. You can’t have your cake -and eat it. No. It was a good thing, one’s best self knew it was a good -thing that someone had found out why people were so awful; like a -dentist finding out a bad tooth however much it hurt. Only if education -was going to be the principal thing and all teachers were to be -‘qualified’ it was no use going on. Miss Jenny had said private schools -were doomed. - - - 8 - -For a long time she sat blankly contemplating the new world that was -coming. Everyone would be trained and efficient but herself. She was not -strong enough to earn a living and qualify as a teacher at the same -time. The day’s work tired her to death. She must hide somewhere.... She -would not be wanted.... If you were not wanted.... If you knew you were -not wanted--you ought to get out of the way. Chloroform. Someone had -drunk a bottle of carbolic acid. The clock struck ten. Gathering up the -newspaper she folded it neatly, put it on the hall table and went slowly -upstairs, watching the faint reflection of the half-lowered hall gas -upon the polished balustrade. The staircase was cold and airy. Cold -rooms and landings stretched up away above her into the darkness. She -became aware of a curious buoyancy rising within her. It was so strange -that she stood still for a moment on the stair. For a second, life -seemed to cease in her and the staircase to be swept from under her -feet.... “I’m alive.” ... It was as if something had struck her, struck -right through her impalpable body, sweeping it away, leaving her there -shouting silently without it. I’m alive.... I’m alive. Then with a thump -her heart went on again and her feet carried her body warm and happy and -elastic easily on up the solid stairs. She tried once or twice -deliberately to bring back the breathless moment standing still on a -stair. Each time something of it returned. “It’s me, _me;_ this is _me_ -being alive,” she murmured with a feeling under her like the sudden drop -of a lift. But her thoughts distracted her. They were eagerly talking to -her declaring that she had had this feeling before. She opened her -bedroom door very quietly. The air of the room told her that Nancie and -Beadie were asleep. Going lightly across to the chest of drawers -dressing-table by the window as if she were treading on air, she stood -holding its edge in the darkness. Two forgotten incidents flowed past -her in quick succession; one of waking up on her seventh birthday in the -seaside villa alone in a small dark room and suddenly saying to herself -that one day her father and mother would die and she would still be -there, and after a curious moment when the darkness seemed to move -against her, feeling very old and crying bitterly, and another of -standing in the bow of the dining-room window at Barnes looking at the -raindrops falling from the leaves through the sunshine and saying to -Eve, who came into the room as she watched, “D’you know, Eve, I feel as -if I’d suddenly wakened up out of a dream.” The bedroom was no longer -dark. She could see the outlines of everything in the light coming from -the street lamps through the half-closed Venetian blinds. Beadie sighed -and stirred. Miriam began impatiently preparing for bed without lighting -the gas. “What’s the use of feeling like that if it doesn’t stay? It -doesn’t change anything. Next time I’ll make it stay. It might whisk me -right away. There’s something in me that can’t be touched or altered. -Me. If it comes again. If it’s stronger every time.... Perhaps it goes -on getting stronger till you die.” - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - - 1 - -Wheezing, cook had spread a plaster of dampened ashy cinders upon the -basement schoolroom fire and gone bonily away across the oilcloth in her -heelless boots. As the door closed Miriam’s eye went up from her book to -the little slope of grass showing above the concrete wall of the area. -The grass gleamed along the edge of a bank of mist. In the mist the area -railings stood hard and solid against the edge of empty space. Several -times she glanced at the rich green, feeling that neither ‘emerald,’ -‘emerald velvet,’ nor ‘velvety enamel’ quite expressed it. She had not -noticed that there was a mist shutting in and making brilliant the -half-darkness of the room at breakfast-time, only feeling that for some -reason it was a good day. “It’s fog--there’s a sort of fog,” she said, -glowing. The fog made the room with the strange brilliant brown light on -the table, on the horsehair chairs, on the shabby length of brown and -yellow oilcloth running out to the bay of the low window, seem to be -rushing through space, alone. It was quite safe, going on its -journey--towards some great good. - -The back door, just across the little basement hall, scrooped inwards -across the oilcloth, jingling its little bell, and was banged to. The -flounter-_crack_ of a rain-cloak smartly shaken out was followed by a -gentle scrabbling in a shoe-box,--the earliest girl, peaceful and calm, -a wonderful sort of girl, coming into the empty basement quietly getting -off her things, with all the rabble of the school coming along the -roads, behind. The jingling door was pushed open again just as her -slippered feet ran upstairs. “Khoo--what a filthy day!” said a -vibrating hard mature voice. Miriam glanced at her time-table, -history--dictation--geography--sums--writing--and shrank to her utmost -air of preoccupation lest either of the elder girls should look in. - -Sounds increased in the little hall, loud abrupt voices, short rallying -laughs, the stubbing and stamping of feet on the oilcloth. At the -expected rattling of the handle of her own door she crouched over her -book. The door opened and was quietly closed again. A small figure flung -itself forward. Miriam was clutched by harsh serge-clad arms. As she -moved, startled, firm cracked lips were pressed against her cheekbone. -“Good morning, Burra,” she said, turning to put an arm round the child. -She caught a glimpse of broad cheeks bulging firmly against a dark bush -of short hair. Large fierce bloodshot eyes glared close to her own. -“Hoo--angel.” The little gasping body stiffened against her shoulder, -pinning down her arm. The crimson face tried to reach her breast. “Have -you changed your boots,” said Miriam coldly. “Hoo--hoo.” The short hard -fingers hurt her. “Go and get them off at once.” Head down Burra rushed -at the door, colliding with the incoming figure of a neat little girl -dressed in velvet-trimmed red merino, with a rose and white face and -short gentle gold hair. She put a little pile of books on the table and -stood still near to Miriam, with her hands behind her. They both looked -down the room out of the window, with quiet unsmiling faces. “What have -you been doing since Friday, Gertie?” Miriam said presently. “We went -for a walk,” said Gertie in a neat liquid little voice, dimpling and -faintly raising her eyebrows. - -The eight little girls who made up the upper class of the junior school -stood in a close row as near as possible to Miriam’s chair at the head -of the table. They were silent and fresh and eagerly crowded, waiting -for her to begin. She kept them silent for a few moments for the -pleasure of having them there with her. She knew that Miss Perne, -sitting in the window space with the youngest class drawn up in a -half-circle for their Scripture lesson, was an approving presence, -keeping her own little class at a level of quiet question and answer -that made a background rather than a disturbance for the adventure of -the elder girls. “Not too close together,” said Miriam at last, -gathering herself with a deep breath; “throw back your shoulders and -stand straight. Don’t lump down on your heels. Let your weight come on -the ball of your feet. Are you all all right? Don’t poke your heads -forward.” As the girls eagerly manoeuvred themselves, wilfully carrying -out her instructions even to turning their heads to face the opposite -wall, she caught most of the eyes in turn smiling their eager -affectionate conspiracy, and restraining her desire to get up then and -there and clasp the little figures one by one, began the lesson. Four of -the girls, two square-built Quakeresses with straight brown frocks, deep -slow voices and dreamy eyes, a white-faced, tawny-haired, thin child -with an eager stammer, and a brilliant little Jewess knew the “principal -facts and dates” of the reign of Edward I by rote backwards and forwards -in response to any form of question. Burra hung her head and knew -nothing. Beadie Featherwell, dreadfully tall, a head taller, with her -twelve years, than the tallest child in the lower school, knew no more -than Burra and stood staring at the wall and biting her lips. A stout -child with open mouth and snoring breath answered with perfect -exactitude from the book, but her answers bore no relationship to the -questions, and Gertie could only pipe replies if the questions were so -put as to contain part of the answer. The white-faced girl was beginning -to gnaw her fingers by the time the questioning was at an end. - -“Well now, what is the difficulty,” said Miriam, “of getting hold of the -events of this queer little reign?” Everybody laughed and was silent -again at once because Miriam’s voice went on, trying to interest both -herself and the successful girls in inventing ways of remembering all -the things that had to be “hooked on to the word Edward.” In less than -ten minutes even the stout snoring girl could repeat the reign -successfully, and for the remainder of their time they talked aimlessly. - -The children standing at ease, saying whatever occurred to them, even -the snoring girl secured from ridicule by Miriam’s consideration of -whatever was offered. Their adventure took them away from their subject -into what Miriam knew “clever” people would call “side issues.” “Nothing -is a side issue,” she told herself passionately with her eyes on the -green glare beyond the window. The breaking up of Miss Perne’s class -left the whole of the lower school on her hands for the rest of the -morning. - - - 2 - -By half-past twelve she was sitting alone and exhausted with aching -throat at her place at the head of the table. - -“Khoo, _isn’t_ it a filthy day!” Polly Allen, a short heavy girl with a -sallow pitted face, thin ill-nourished hair and kind swiftly moving grey -eyes, marched in out of the dark hall with flapping bootlaces. In the -bay she sat down and began to lace up her boots. The laces flicked -carelessly upon the linoleum as she threaded, profaning the little -sanctuary of the window space. “Oh me bones, me poor old bones,” she -muttered. “Eunice!” her hard mature voice vibrated through the room. -“Eunice Dupont!” - -“What’s the jolly row?” said a slow voice at the door. “Wot’s the bally -shindy, beloved?” - -“Like a really beautiful Cheshire cat,” Miriam repeated to herself, -propped studiously on her elbows shrinking, and hoping that if she did -not look round, Eunice’s carved brown curls, her gleaming slithering -opaque oval eyes and her short upper lip, the strange evil carriage of -her head, the wicked lines of her figure, would be withdrawn. “Cheshire, -Cheshire,” she scolded inwardly, feeling the pain in her throat -increase. - -“Nothing. Wait for me. That’s all. Oh, my lungs, bones _and_ et ceteras. -It’s old age, I suppose, Uncle William.” - -“Well, hurry your old age up, that’s all. I’m ready.” - -“Well, don’t go away, you funny cuckoo, you can wait, can’t you?” - -A party of girls straggled in one by one and drifted towards Polly in -the window space. - -“It’s the parties I look forward to.” - -“Oh, look at her tie!” - -“My tie? Six-three at Crisp’s.” - -The sounds of Polly’s bootlacing came to an end. She sat holding a -court. “Doesn’t look forward to parties? She must be a funny cuckoo!” - -“Dancing’s divine,” said a smooth deep smiling voice. “Reversing. Khoo! -with a fella. Khooo!” - -“You surprise me, Edie. You do indeed. Hoh. Shocking.” - -“Shocking? Why? What do you mean, Poll?” - -“Nothing. Nothing. Riang doo too.” - -“I don’t think dancing’s shocking. How can it be? You’re barmy, my son.” - -“Ever heard of Lottie Collins?” - -“Ssh. Don’t be silly.” - -“I don’t see what Lottie Collins has got to do with it. My mother thinks -dancing’s all right. That’s good enough for me.” - -“Well--I’m not your mother.” - -“Nor anyone else’s.” - -“Khoo, _Mabel_.” - -“Who wants to be anyone’s mother?” - -“Not me. Ug. Beastly little brats.” - -“Oh shut _up_. Oh you _do_ make me tired.” - -“Kids are jolly. A1. I hope I have lots.” - -Surprised into amazement, Miriam looked up to consult the face of Jessie -Wheeler, the last speaker--a tall flat-figured girl with a strong -squarish pale face, hollow cheeks, and firm colourless lips. Was it -being a Baptist that made her have such an extraordinary idea? Miriam’s -eyes sought refuge from the defiant beam of her sea-blue eyes in the -shimmering cloud of her hair. The strangest hair in the school; negroid -in its intensity of fuzziness, but saved by its fine mesh. - -“Don’t you adore kiddies, Miss Henderson?” - -“I think they’re rather nice,” said Miriam quickly, and returned to her -book. - -“I should jolly well think they were,” said Jessie fervently. - -“Hope your husband’ll think so too, my dear,” said Polly, getting up. - -“Oh, of course, I should only have them if the fellow wanted me to.” - -“You haven’t got a fella yet, madam.” - -“Of course not, cuckoo. But I shall.” - -“Plenty of time to think about that.” - -“Hoo. Fancy never having a fellow. I should go off my nut.” - -When they had all disappeared Miriam opened the windows. There was still -someone moving about in the hall, and as she stood in the instreaming -current of damp air looking wearily at the concrete--a girl came into -the room. “Can I come in a minute?” she said, advancing to the window. -“I want to speak to you,” she pursued when she reached the bay. She -stood at Miriam’s side and looked out of the window. Half-turning, -Miriam had recognized Grace Broom, one of the elder first-class girls -who attended only for a few subjects. She was a dark short-necked girl -with thick shoulders; a receding mouth and boldly drawn nose and chin -gave her a look of shrewd elderliness. The heavy mass of hair above the -broad sweep of her forehead, her heavy frame and flat-footed walk added -to this appearance. She wore a high-waisted black serge pinafore dress -with black crape vest and sleeves. - -“Do you mind me speaking to you?” she said in a hot voice. Her -black-fringed brown eyes were fixed on the garden railings where people -passed by and Miriam never looked. - -“No,” said Miriam shyly. - -“You know why we’re in mourning?” - -Miriam stood silent with beating heart, trying to cope with the -increasing invasion. - -“Our father’s dead.” - -Hurriedly Miriam noted the superstitious tone in the voice.... This is a -family that revels in plumes and hearses. She glanced at the stiff -rather full crape sleeve nearest to her and sought about in her mind for -help as she said with a blush, “Oh, I see.” - -“We’ve just moved.” - -“Oh yes, I see,” said Miriam, glancing fearfully at the heavy scroll of -profile and finding it expressive and confused. - -“We’ve got a house about a quarter as big as where we used to live.” - -Miriam found it impossible to respond to this confession and still tried -desperately to sweep away the sense of the figure so solidly planted at -her side. - -“I’ve asked our aunt if we can ask you to come to tea with us.” - -“Thank you very much,” said Miriam in one word. - -“When could you come?” - -“Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t come. It would be impossible.” - -“Oh no. You must come. I shall ask Aunt Lucy to write to Miss Perne.” - -“I really couldn’t come. I shouldn’t be able to ask you back.” - -“That doesn’t matter,” panted the relentless voice. “I’ve wanted to -speak to you ever since you came.” - - - 3 - -When next Miriam saw the black-robed Brooms and their aunt file past the -transept where were the Wordsworth House sittings, she felt that to -visit them might perhaps not be the ordeal she had not dared to picture. -It would be strange. Those three heavy black-dressed women. Their small -new house. She imagined them sitting at tea in a little room. Why was -Grace so determined that she should sit there too? Grace had a life and -a home and was real. She did not know that things were awful. Nor did -Florrie Broom, nor the aunt. But yet they did not look like ‘social’ -people. They were a little different. Not worldly. Not pious either. Nor -intellectual. What could they want with her? She had soon forgotten them -and the congregation assumed its normal look. As the service went on the -thoughts came that came every Sunday. An old woman with a girl at her -side were the only people whose faces were within Miriam’s line of -vision from her place at the wall end of the Wordsworth House pew. The -people in front of them were not even in profile, and those behind were -hidden from her by the angle of the transept wall. To her right she -could just see rising above the heads in the rows of pews in front of -her the far end of the chancel screen. The faces grouped in the transept -on the opposite side of the church were a blur. The two figures sat or -knelt or stood in a heavy silence. They neither sang nor prayed. Their -faces remained unaltered during the whole service. To Miriam they were -its most intimate part. During the sermon she rarely raised her eyes -from the circle they filled for her as they sat thrown into relief by -the great white pillar. Their faces were turned towards the chancel. -They could see its high dim roof and distant altar, the light on the -altar, flowers, shining metal, embroideries, the maze of the east -window, the white choir. They showed no sign of seeing these things. The -old woman’s heavy face with its heavy jaw-bone seemed to have been dead -for years under its coffin-shaped black bonnet. Her large body was -covered by a mantle of thickly ribbed black material trimmed with braid -and bugles. That bright yellow colour meant liver. Whatever she had she -was dying of it. People were always dying when they looked like that. -But it was a bad way to die. The real way was the way of that lady -trailing about over the Heath near Roehampton, dying by inches of an -internal complaint, with her face looking fragile--like the little -alabaster chapelle in the nursery with a candle alight inside. She was -going to die, walking about alone on the Heath in the afternoons. Her -family going on as usual at home; the greengrocer calling. She knew that -everybody was alone and that all the fuss and noise people made all day -was a pretence.... What to _do_? To be walking about with a quiet face -meeting death. Nothing could be so alone as that. The pain, and -struggle, and darkness.... That was what the old woman feared. She did -not think about death. She was afraid and sullen all the time. Stunned, -sitting there with her cold common daughter. She had been common herself -as a girl, but more noisy, and she had married and never thought about -dying, and now she was dying and hating her cold daughter. The daughter, -sitting there with her stiff slatey-blue coat and skirt, her indistinct -hat tied with a thin harsh veil to her small flat head--what a home with -her in it all the time. She would never laugh. Her poor-looking cheeks -were yellowish, her fringe dry, without gloss. She would move her mouth -when she spoke, sideways with a snarling curl of one-half of the upper -lip and have that resentful way of speaking that all North Londoners -have, and the maddening North London accent. The old woman’s voice would -be deep and hollow.... The girl moving heavily about the house wearing -boots and stiff dresses and stiff stays showing their outline through -her clothes. They would be bitter to their servant and would not trust -her. What was the good of their being alive ... a house and a water -system and drains and cooking, and they would take all these things for -granted and grumble and snarl ... the gas meter man would call there. -Did men like that resent calling at houses like that? No. They’d just -say, “The ole party she sez to me.” How good they were, these men. Good -and kind and cheerful. Someone ought to prevent the extravagance of -keeping whole houses and fires going for women like that. They ought to -be in an institution. But they never thought about that. They were -satisfied with themselves. They were self-satisfied because they did not -know what they were like.... _Why_ should you have a house, and -tradesmen calling? - -“_Jehoiakin!_” The rush of indistinct expostulating sound coming from -the pulpit was accompanied for a moment by reverberations of the one -clearly bawled word. The sense of the large cold church, the great stone -pillars, the long narrow windows faintly stained with yellowish green, -the harsh North London congregation stirred and seemed to settle down -more securely. She saw the form of the vicar in the light grey stone -pulpit standing up short and neat against the cold grey stone wall, -enveloped in fine soft folds, his small puckered hands beautifully -cuffed, his plump crumpled little face, his small bald head fringed with -little saffron-white curls, his pink pouched busy mouth. What was it all -about? Pompous pottering, going on and on and on--in the Old Testament. -The whole church was in the Old Testament.... _Honour_ thy father and -thy mother. How horribly the words would echo through the great cold -church. _Why_ honour thy father and thy mother? What had they done that -was so honourable? Everybody was dying in cold secret fear. Christ, the -son of God, was part of it all, the same family ... vindictive. -Christmas and Easter, hard white cold flowers, no real explanation. “I -came not to destroy but to fulfil.” The stagnant blood flushed in her -face and tingled in her ears as the words occurred to her. Why didn’t -everybody die at once and stop it all? - - - 4 - -Miss Haddie paused at the door of her room and wheeled suddenly round to -face Miriam who had just reached the landing. - -“You’ve not seen my little corner,” she tweedled breathlessly, throwing -open her door. - -Miriam went in. “Oh how nice,” she said fearfully, breathing in the -freshness of a little square sun-filled muslin-draped, blue-papered -room. Taking refuge at the white-skirted window, she found a narrow view -of the park, greener than the one she knew. The wide yellow pathway -going up through the cricket ground had shifted away to the right. - -“It’s really a--a--a dressing-room from your room.” - -“Oh,” said Miriam vivaciously. - -“There’s a door, a--a--a door. I daresay you’ve noticed.” - -“Oh! _That’s_ the door in our cupboard!” The dim door behind the hanging -garments led to nothing but to Miss Haddie’s room. She began unbuttoning -her gloves. - -Miss Haddie was hesitating near a cupboard, making little sounds. - -“I suppose we must all make ourselves tidy now,” said Miriam. - -“I thought you didn’t look very happy in church this morning,” cluttered -Miss Haddie rapidly. - -Miriam felt heavy with anger. “Oh,” she said clumsily, “I had the most -frightful headache.” - -“Poor child. I thought ye didn’t look yerself.” - -The window was shut. But the room was mysteriously fresh, far away from -the school. A fly was hovering about the muslin window blind with little -reedy loops of song. The oboe ... in the quintet, thought Miriam -suddenly. “I don’t know,” she said, listening. The flies sang like this -at home. She had heard them without knowing it. She moved in her place -by the window. The fly swept up to the ceiling, wavering on a deep note -like a tiny gong.... Hot sunny refined lawns, roses in bowls on -summerhouse tea-tables, refined voices far away from the Caledonian -Road. - -“Flies don’t _buzz_,” she said passionately. “They don’t _buzz_. Why do -people say they buzz?” The pain pressing behind her temples slackened. -In a moment it would be only a glow. - -Miss Haddie stood with bent head, her face turning from side to side, -with its sour hesitating smile, her large eyes darting their strange -glances about the room. - -“Won’t you sit down a minute? They haven’t sounded the first bell yet.” -Miriam sat down on the one little white-painted, cane-seated chair near -the dressing-table. “Eh--eh,” said Miss Haddie, beginning to unfasten -her veil. “She doesn’t approve of general conversation,” thought Miriam. -“She’s a female. Oh well, she’ll have to see I’m not.” - -“What gave you yer headache?” - -“Oh well, I don’t know. I suppose I was wondering what it was all -about.” - -“I don’t think I quite understand ye.” - -“Well, I mean--what that old gentleman was in such a state of mind -about.” - -“D’ye mean Mr. La Trobe!” - -“Yes. Why do you laugh?” - -“I don’t understand what ye mean.” - -Miriam watched Miss Haddie’s thin fingers feeling for the pins in her -black toque. “Of course not,” she thought, looking at the unveiled -shrivelled cheek.... “thirty-five years of being a lady.” - -“Oh well,” she sighed fiercely. - -“What is it ye mean, my dear?” - ---‘couldn’t make head or tail of a thing the old dodderer said’--no ‘old -boy,’ no--these phrases would not do for Miss Haddie. - -“I couldn’t agree with _anything_ he said.” - -Miss Haddie sat down on the edge of the little white bed burying her -face in her hands and smoothing them up and down with a wiping movement. - -“One can always criticise a sermon,” she said reproachfully. - -“Well, why not?” - -“I mean to say ye _can_,” said Miss Haddie from behind her fingers, -“but, but ye shouldn’t.” - -“You can’t help it.” - -“Oh yes, ye can. If ye listen in the right spirit,” gargled Miss Haddie -hurriedly. - -“Oh, it isn’t only the sermon, it’s the whole thing,” said Miriam -crimsoning. - -“Ye mustn’t think about the speaker,” went on Miss Haddie in faint -hurried rebuke. “That’s wrong. That sets people running from church to -church. You must attend your own parish church in the right spirit, let -the preacher be who--who--what he may.” - -“Oh, but I think that’s positively _dangerous_,” said Miriam gravely. -“It simply means leaving your mind open for whatever they choose to say. -Like Rome.” - -“Eh, no--o--o,” flared Miss Haddie dropping her hands, “nonsense. Not -like Rome at all.” - -“But it _is_. It’s giving up your conscience.” - -“You’re very determined,” laughed Miss Haddie bitterly. - -“I’m certainly not going to give my mind up to a parson for him to do -what he likes with. That’s what it is. That’s what they do. I’ve seen it -again and again. I’ve heard people talking about sermons,” finished -Miriam with vivacious intentness. - -Miss Haddie sat very still with her hands once more pressed tightly -against her face. - -“Oh, my dear. This is a dreadful state of affairs. I’m afraid you’re all -wrong. That’s not it at all. If you listen only for the good, the good -will come to you.” - -“But these men don’t know. How should they? They don’t agree amongst -themselves.” - -“Oh, my dear, that is a very wrong attitude. How long have ye felt like -this?” - -“Oh, all my life,” responded Miriam proudly. - -“I’m very sorry, my dear.” - -“Ever since I can remember. Always.” - -There were ivory-backed brushes on the dressing-table. Miriam stared at -them and let her eyes wander on to a framed picture of an agonised -thorn-crowned head. - -“Were you--have ye--eh--have ye been confirmed?” - -“Oh yes.” - -“Did ye discuss any of your difficulties with yer vicar?” - -“Not I. I knew his mind too well. Had heard him preach for years. He -would have run round my questions. He wasn’t capable of answering them. -For instance, supposing I had asked him what I’ve _always_ wanted to -know. How can people, ordinary people, be expected to be like Christ, as -they say, when they think Christ was supernatural? Of course, if he was -supernatural it was easy enough for him to be as he was; if he was not -supernatural, then there’s nothing in the whole thing.” - -“My _dear_ child! I’m dreadfully sorry ye feel like that. I’d no idea ye -felt like that, poor child. I knew ye weren’t quite happy always; I mean -I’ve thought ye weren’t quite happy in yer mind sometimes, but I’d no -idea--eh, eh, have ye ever consulted anybody--anybody able to give ye -advice?” - -“There you are. That’s exactly the whole thing! _Who_ can one consult? -There isn’t anybody. The people who are qualified are the people who -have the thing called faith, which means that they beg the whole -question from the beginning.” - -“Eh--dear--me--Miriam--child!” - -“Well, I’m made that way. How can I help it if faith seems to me just an -abnormal condition of the mind with fanaticism at one end and -agnosticism at the other?” - -“My dear, ye believe in God?” - -“Well, you see, I see things like this. On one side a prime cause with a -certain object unknown to me, bringing humanity into being; on the other -side humanity, all more or less miserable, never having been consulted -as to whether they wanted to come to life. If that is belief, a South -Sea Islander could have it. But good people, people with faith, want me -to believe that one day God sent a saviour to rescue the world from sin -and that the world can never be grateful enough and must become as -Christ. Well. If God made people he is responsible and ought to save -them.” - -“What do yer parents think about yer ideas?” - -“They don’t know.” - -“Ye’ve never mentioned yer trouble to them?” - -“I did ask Pater once when we were coming home from the Stabat Mater -that question I’ve told you about.” - -“What did he say?” - -“He couldn’t answer. We were just by the gate. He said he thought it was -a remarkably reasonable dilemma. He laughed.” - -“And ye’ve never had any discussion of these things with him?” - -“No.” - -“Ye’re an independent young woman,” said Miss Haddie. - -Miriam looked up. Miss Haddie was sitting on the edge of her bed. A -faint pink flush on her cheeks made her eyes look almost blue. She was -no longer frowning. ‘I’m something new--a kind of different world. She -is wondering. I must stick to my guns,’ mused Miriam. - -“I’ll not ask ye,” said Miss Haddie quietly and cheerfully, “to expect -any help from yer fellow creatures since ye’ve such a poor opinion of -them. But ye’re not happy. Why not go straight to the source?” - -Miriam waited. For a moment the sheen on Miss Haddie’s silk sleeves had -distracted her by becoming as gentle and unchallenging as the light on -her mother’s dresses when there were other people in the room. She had -feared the leaping out of some emotional appeal. But Miss Haddie had a -plan. Strange secret knowledge. - -“I should like to ask ye a question.” - -“Yes?” - -“Well, I’ll put it in this way. While ye’ve watched the doings of yer -fellow creatures ye’ve forgotten that the truth ye’re seeking is a--a -Person.” - -Miriam pondered. - -“That’s where ye ought to begin. And how about--what--what about--I -fancy ye’ve been neglecting the--the means of grace.... I think ye -have.” Miss Haddie rose and crossed the room to a little bookshelf at -the head of her bed, talking happily on. ‘Upright as a dart,’ commented -Miriam mentally, waiting for the fulfilment of the promise of Miss -Haddie’s cheerfulness. Against the straight lines of the wall-paper Miss -Haddie showed as swaying slightly backwards from the waist as she moved. - -The first bell rang and Miriam got up to go. Miss Haddie came forward -with a small volume in her hands and held it out, standing close by her -and keeping her own hold on the volume. “Ye’ll find no argument in it. -Not but I think a few sound arguments would do ye good. Give it a try. -Don’t be stiff-necked. Just read it and see.” The smooth soft leather -slipped altogether into Miriam’s hands and she felt the passing contact -of a cool small hand and noted a faint fine scent coming to her from -Miss Haddie’s person. - -In her own room she found that the soft binding of the book had rounded -corners and nothing on the cover but a small plain gold cross in the -right-hand corner. She feasted her eyes on it as she took off her -things. When the second bell rang she glanced inside the cover. -“Preparation for Holy Communion.” Hurriedly hiding it in her long drawer -under a pile of linen, she ran to the door. Running back again she took -it out and put it, together with her prayer book and hymn book, in the -small top drawer. - - - 5 - -The opportunity to use Miss Haddie’s book came with Nancie’s departure -for a week-end visit. Beadie was in the deeps of her first sleep and the -room seemed empty. The book lay open on her bed. She noted as she placed -it there when she began preparing for bed that it was written by a -bishop, a man she knew by name as being still alive. It struck her as -extraordinary that a book should be printed and read while the author -was alive, and she turned away with a feeling of shame from the idea of -the bishop, still going about in his lawn sleeves and talking, while -people read a book that he had written in his study. But it was very -interesting to have the book to look at, because he probably knew about -modern people with doubts and would not think about them as -‘infidels’--‘an honest agnostic has my sympathy,’ he might say, and it -was possible he did not believe in eternal punishment. If he did he -would not have had his book printed with rounded edges and that -beautiful little cross.... “Line upon Line” and the “Pilgrim’s Progress” -were not meant for modern minds. Archbishop Whateley had a “chaste and -eloquent wit” and was a “great gardener.” A witty archbishop fond of -gardening was simply aggravating and silly. - -Restraining her desire to hurry, Miriam completed her toilet and at last -knelt down in her dressing-gown. Its pinked neck-frill fell heavily -against her face as she leant over the bed. Tucking it into her neck she -clasped her outstretched hands, leaving the book within the circle of -her arms. The attitude seemed a little lacking in respect for the -beautifully printed gilt-edged pages. Flattening her entwined hands -between herself and the edge of the bed, she read very slowly that just -as for worldly communion men cleanse and deck their bodies so for -attendance at the Holy Feast must there be a cleansing and decking of -the spirit. She knelt upright, feeling herself grow very grave. The cold -air of the bedroom flowed round her carrying conviction. Then that -dreadful feeling at early service, kneeling like a lump in the pew, too -late to begin to be good, the exhausted moments by the altar rail--the -challenging light on the shining brass rod, on the priest’s ring and the -golden lining of the cup, the curious bite of the wine in the -throat--the sullen disappointed home-coming; all the strange failure was -due to lack of preparation. She knelt for some moments, without -thoughts, breathing in the cleansing air, sighing heavily at intervals. -What she ought to do was clear. A certain time for preparation could be -taken every night, kneeling up in bed with the gas out if Nancie were -awake, and a specially long time on Saturday night. The decision took -her back to her book. She read that no man can cleanse himself, but it -is his part to examine his conscience and confess his sins with a prayer -for cleansing grace. - -The list of questions for self-examination as to sins past and present -in thought, word, and deed brought back the sense of her body with its -load of well-known memories. Could they be got rid of? She could cast -them off, feel them sliding away like Christian’s Burden. But was that -all? Was it being reconciled with your brother to throw off ill-feeling -without letting him know and telling him you were sorry for unkind deeds -and words? Those you met would find out the change; but all the -others--those you had offended from your youth up--all your family? -Write to them. A sense of a checking of the tide that had seemed to flow -through her finger-tips came with this suggestion, and Miriam knelt -heavily on the hard floor, feeling the weight of her well-known body. -The wall-paper attracted her attention and the honeycomb pattern of the -thick fringed white counterpane. She shut the little book and rose from -her knees. Moving quickly about the room, she turned at random to her -washhand basin and vigorously rewashed her hands in its soapy water. The -Englishman, she reflected as she wasted the soap, puts a dirty shirt on -a clean body, and the Frenchman a clean shirt on a dirty body. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - - 1 - -Miriam felt very proud of tall Miss Perne when she met her in the hall -at the beginning of her second term. Miss Perne had kissed her and held -one of her hands in two small welcoming ones, talking in a gleeful -voice. “Well, my dear,” she said at the end of a little pause, “you’ll -have a clear evening. The gels do not return until to-morrow, so you’ll -be able to unpack and settle yerself in comfortably. Come and sit with -us when ye’ve done. We’ll have supper in the sitting-room. M’yes.” -Smiling and laughing she turned eagerly away. “Of course, Miss Perne,” -said Miriam in a loud wavering voice, arresting her, “I enjoyed my -holidays; but I want to tell you how glad I am to be back here.” - -“Yes, yes,” said Miss Perne hilariously, “we’re all glad.” - -There was a little break in her voice, and Miriam saw that she would -have once more taken her in her arms. - -“I like being here,” she said hoarsely, looking down, and supported -herself by putting two trembling fingers on the hall table. She was -holding back from the gnawing of the despair that had made her sick with -pain when she heard once more the jingle-jingle, plock-plock of the -North London trams. This strong feeling of pride in Miss Perne was -beating it down. “I’m very glad, my dear,” responded Miss Perne in a -quivering gleeful falsetto. ‘If you can’t have what you like you must -like what you have,’ said Miriam over and over to herself as she went -with heavy feet up the four flights of stairs. - - - 2 - -A candle was already burning in the empty bedroom. “I’m back. I’m back. -It’s all over,” she gasped as she shut the door. “And a jolly good thing -too. This is my place. I can keep myself here and cost nothing and not -interfere with anybody. It’s just as if I’d never been away. It’ll -always be like that now. Short holidays, gone in a minute, and then the -long term. Getting out of touch with everything, things happening, -knowing nothing about them, going home like a visitor, and people -talking to you about things that are only theirs, now and not wanting to -hear about yours ... not about the little real everyday things that give -you an idea of anything but only the startling things that are not -important. You have to think of them though to make people -interested--awful, awful, awful, really only putting people further away -afterwards when you’ve told the thing and their interest dies down and -you can’t think of anything else to say. ‘Miss Perne’s hair is -_perfectly_ black--as black as coal, and she’s the eldest, just -_fancy_.’ Then everybody looks up. ‘My room’s downstairs, the room where -I teach, is in the basement. Directly breakfast is over----’ - -“‘Basement? What a pity! Basement rooms are awfully bad,’ and by the -time you have stopped them exclaiming and are just going to begin, you -see that they are fidgetting and thinking about something else.” ... Eve -had listened a little; because she wanted to tell everything about her -own place and had agreed that nobody really wanted to hear the -details.... The landscapes from the windows of the big country house, -all like pictures by Leader, the stables and laundry, a “laundry-maid” -who was sixty-five, the eldest pupil with seven muslin dresses in the -summer and being scolded because she swelled out after two helpings of -meat and two of pie and cream, and the youngest almost square in her -little covert coat and with a square face and large blue eyes and the -puppies who went out in a boat in Weston-super-Mare and were -sea-sick.... Eve did not seem to mind the family being common. Eve was -changing. “They are so jolly and strong. They enjoy life. They’re like -other people.” ... “D’you think that’s jolly? Would you like to be like -that--like other people?” “Rather. I mean to be.” “Do you?” “Of course -it can’t be done all at once. But it’s good for me to be there. It’s -awfully jolly to be in a house with no worry about money and plenty of -jolly food. Mrs. Green is so strong and clever. She can do anything. -She’s good for me, she keeps me going.” “Would you like to be like her?” -“Of course. They’re all so jolly--even when they’re old. Her sister’s -forty and she’s still pretty; not given up hope a bit.” “_Eve!_” - -Eve had listened; but not agreed about the teaching, about making the -girls see how easy it was to get hold of the things and then letting -them talk about other things. “I see how you do it, and I see why the -girls obey you, of course.” Funny. Eve thought it was hard and inhuman. -That’s what she really thought. - -Two newly purchased lengths of spotted net veiling were lying at the top -of her lightly packed trunk partly folded in uncrumpled tissue paper. -She took the crisp dye-scented net very gently into her hands, getting, -sitting alone on the floor by her trunk, the full satisfaction that had -failed her in the shop with Harriett’s surprise at her sudden desire -flowing over the counter and infecting the charm of baskets full of -cheap stockings and common bright-bordered handkerchiefs some of which -had borders so narrow and faint as really hardly to show when they were -scrumpled up. “Veiling, moddom? Yes, moddom,” the assistant had retorted -when she had asked for a veil. “Wot on _earth_ fower?” ... Without -answering Harriett she had bought two. There was no need to have bought -two. One could go back in the trunk as a store. They would be the -beginning of gradually getting a ‘suitable outfit,’ ‘things convenient -for you.’ She got up to put a veil in the little top drawer very -carefully; trying it across her face first. It almost obliterated her -features in the dim candle-light. It would be the greatest comfort on -winter walks, warm and like a rampart. ‘You’ve no idea how warm it keeps -you,’ she could say if anybody said anything. She arranged her clothes -very slowly and exactly in her half of the chest of drawers. “My -appointments ought to be an influence in the room--until all my things -are perfectly refined I shan’t be able to influence the girls as I -ought. I must begin it from now. At the end of the term I shall be -stronger. From strength to strength.” She wished she could go to bed at -once and prepare for to-morrow lying alone in the dark with the trams -going up and down outside as they would do night by night for the rest -of her life. - - - 3 - -The nine o’clock post brought a letter from Harriett. Miriam carried it -upstairs after supper. Placing it unopened on a chair by the head of her -bed under the gas bracket she tried to put away the warm dizzy feeling -it brought her in an elaborate toilet that included the placing in -readiness of everything she would need for the morning. When all was -complete she was filled with a peace that promised to remain -indefinitely as long as everything she had to do should be carried out -with unhurried exactitude. It could be made to become the atmosphere of -her life. It would come nearer and nearer and she would live more and -more richly into it until she had grown like those women who were called -blessed.... She looked about her. The plain room gave her encouragement. -It became the scene of adventure. She tip-toed about it in her -night-gown. All the world would come to her there. Flora knew. Flora was -the same, sweeping the floors and going to bed in an ugly room with two -other servants; but she was in it alone sometimes and knew.... - -“One verse to-night will be enough.” Opening her Bible at random she -read, “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that -tribulation worketh patience.” Eagerly closing the volume she knelt down -smiling. “Oh do let tribulation work patience in me,” she murmured, -blushing, and got up staring gladly at the wall behind her bed. Shaking -her pillow lengthwise against the ironwork head of the bed, she -established herself with the bed-clothes neatly arranged, sitting up to -read Harriett’s letter before turning out the gas: - -“Toosday morning--You’ve not gone yet, old tooral-ooral, but I’m writing -this because I know you’ll feel blue this evening, to tell you not to. -Becos, it’s _no_ time to Easter and becos here’s a great piece of news. -The last of the Neville Subscription Dances comes in the Easter holidays -and _you’re to come_. D’ye ’_ear_, Liza? Gerald says if you can’t stump -up he’s going to get you a ticket, and anyhow you’ve got to come. You’ll -enjoy it just as much as you did the first and probably more, because -most of the same people will be there. So Goodni’. Mind the lamp-post. -Harry. P.S.--Heaps of love, old silly. You’re just the same. It’s no -bally good pretending you’re not.” - -Miriam felt her heart writhe in her breast. “Get thee behind me, Harry,” -she said, pushing the letter under the pillow and kneeling up to turn -out the gas. When she lay down again her mind was rushing on by -itself.... - - - 4 - -Harry doesn’t realise a bit how short holidays are. Easter--nothing. -Just one dance and never seeing the people again. I was right just now. -I was on the right track then. I must get back to that. It’s no good -giving way right or left; I must make a beginning of my own life.... I -wish I had been called “Patience” and had thin features.... Adam Street, -Adelphi.... “Now do you want to be dancing out there with one of those -young fellows, my dear girl--No? That’s a very good thing for me. I’m an -old buffer who can’t manage more than every other dance or so. But if -you do me the honour of sitting here while those young barbarians romp -their Lancers?... Ah, that is excellent--I want you to talk to me. You -needn’t mind me. Hey? What? I’ve known that young would-be -brother-in-law of yours for many years and this evening I’ve been -watching your face. Do you mind that, dear girl, that I’ve watched your -face? In all homage. I’m a staunch worshipper of womanhood. I’ve seen -rough life as well as suave. I’m an old gold-digger--Ustralia took many -years of my life; but it never robbed me of my homage for women.... - -“That’s a mystery to me. How you’ve allowed your young sister to -overhaul you. Perhaps you have a Corydon hidden away somewhere--or don’t -think favourably of the bonds of matrimony? Is that it? - -“You are not one to be easily happy. But that is no reason why you -should say you pity anyone undertaking to pass through life at your -side. Don’t let your thoughts and ideas allow you to miss happiness. -Women are made to find and dispense happiness. Even intense women like -yourself. But you won’t find it an easy matter to discover your mate. - -“Have you ever thought of committing your ideas to paper? There’s a book -called ‘The Confessions of a Woman.’ It had a great sale and its -composition occupied the authoress for only six weeks. You could write -in your holidays. - -“Think over what I’ve told you, my dear, dear girl. And don’t forget old -Bob Greville’s address. You’re eighteen. He’s only eight; eight Adam -Street. The old Adam. Waiting to hear from the new Eve--whenever she’s -unhappy.” - -He would be there again, old flatterer, with his steely blue eyes and -that strong little Dr. Conelly--Conelly who held you like a vice and -swung you round and kept putting you back from him to say things. “If -only you knew the refreshment it is to dance with a girl who can talk -sense and doesn’t _giggle_.... Yes yes yes, women are _physically_ -incapable of keeping a secret.... Meredith, he’s the man. He understands -woman as no other writer----” And the little dark man--De Vigne--who -danced like a snake.... Tired? Divinely drowsy? That’s what I like. -Don’t talk. Let yourself go. Little snail, Harriett called him. And that -giant, Conelly’s friend, whirling you round the room like a gust, with -his eyes fixed far away in the distance and dropping you with the -chaperones at the end of the dance. If _he_ had suddenly said “Let -yourself go” ... He too would have become a snail. God has made life -ugly. - -Dear Mr. Greville, dear _Bob_. Do you know anything about a writer -called Meredith? If you have one of his books I should like to read it. -No. Dear Bob, I’m simply wretched. I want to talk to you. - - - 5 - -Footsteps sounded on the stairs--the servants, coming upstairs to bed. -No dancing for them. Work, caps and aprons. And those strange rooms -upstairs to sleep in that nobody ever saw. Probably Miss Perne went up -occasionally to look at them and see that they were all right; clean and -tidy.... They had to go up every night, carrying little jugs of water -and making no noise on the stairs, and come down every morning. They -were the servants--and there would never be any dancing. Nobody thought -about them.... They could not get away from each other, and cook.... - -To be a general servant would be very hard work. Perhaps impossible. But -there would be two rooms, the kitchen at the bottom of the house, and a -bedroom at the top, your own. It would not matter what the family was -like. You would look after them, like children, and be alone to read and -sleep.... Toothache. Cheap dentists; a red lamp “painless extractions” -... having to go there before nine in the morning, and be alone in a -cold room, the dentist doing what he thought best and coming back to -your work crying with pain, your head wrapped up in a black shawl. -Hospitals; being quite helpless and grateful for wrong treatment; coming -back to work, ill. Sinks and slops ... quinsey, all alone ... growths -... consumption. - -Go to sleep. It would be better to think in the morning. But then this -clear first impression would be gone and school would begin and go on -from hour to hour through the term, mornings and afternoons and -evenings, dragging you along further and further and changing you, -months and months and years until it was too late to get back and there -was nothing ahead. - -The thing to remember, to keep in mind all the time was to save -money--not to spend a single penny that could be saved, to be determined -about that so that when the temptation came you could just hang on until -it was past. - -No fun in the holidays, no money spent on flowers and gloves and -blouses. Keeping stiff and sensible all the time. The family of the two -little Quaker girls had a home library, with lists, an inventory, -lending each other their books and talking about them, and albums of -pressed leaves and flowers with the Latin names, and went on wearing the -same plain clothes.... You had to be a certain sort of person to do -that. - -It would spoil the holidays to be like that at home. Every penny must be -spent, if only on things for other people. Not spending would bring a -nice strong secret feeling and a horrid expression into one’s eyes. - -The only way was to give up your family and stay at your work, like -Flora, and have a box of half-crowns in your drawer.... Spend and always -be afraid of “rainy days”--or save and never enjoy life at all. - -But going out now and again in the holidays, feeling stiff and -governessy and just beginning to learn to be oneself again when it was -time to go back was not enjoying life ... your money was spent and -people forgot you and you forgot them and went back to your convent to -begin again. - -Save, save. Sooner or later saving must begin. Why not at once. Harry, -it’s no good. I’m old already. I’ve got to be one of those who have to -give everything up. - -I wonder if Flora is asleep? - -That’s settled. Go to sleep. Get thee behind me. Sleep ... the dark cool -room. Air; we breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Everybody has air. -Manna. As much as you want, full measure, pressed down and running -over.... Wonderful. There is somebody giving things, whatever goes ... -something left.... Somebody seeing that things are not quite unbearable, -... but the pain, the pain all the time, mysterious black pain.... - -Into thy hands I commit my spirit. _In manus_ something.... You -understand if nobody else does. But _why_ must I be one of the ones to -give everything up? _Why_ do you make me suffer so? - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - - 1 - -Piecemeal statements in her letter home brought Miriam now and again a -momentary sense of developing activities, but she did not recognise the -completeness of the change in her position at the school until half-way -through her second term she found herself talking to the new pupil -teacher. She had heard apathetically of her existence during -supper-table conversations with the Misses Perne at the beginning of the -term. She was an Irish girl of sixteen, one of a large family living on -the outskirts of Dublin, and would be a boarder, attending the first -class for English and earning pocket money by helping with the lower -school. As the weeks went on and Miriam grew accustomed to hearing her -name--Julia Doyle--she began to associate it with an idea of charm that -brought her a sinking of heart. She knew her position in the esteem of -the Pernes was secure. But this new young teacher would work strange -miracles with the girls. She would do it quite easily and unconsciously. -The girls would be easy with her and would laugh and one would have to -hear them. - -However, when at last her arrival was near and the three ladies -discussed the difficulty of having her met, Miriam plied them until they -reluctantly gave her permission to go, taking a workman’s train that -would bring her to Euston station at seven o’clock in the morning. - -At the end of an hour spent pacing the half-dark platform exhausted with -cold and excitement and the monotonously reiterated effort to imagine -the arrival of one of Mrs. Hungerford’s heroines from a train journey, -Miriam, whose costume had been described in a letter to the girl’s -mother, was startled wandering amidst the vociferous passengers at the -luggage end of the newly arrived train by a liquid colourless intimate -voice at her elbow. “I think I’ll be right to say how d’you do.” - -She turned and saw a slender girl in a middle-aged toque and an ill-cut -old-fashioned coat and skirt. What were they to say to each other, two -dowdy struggling women both in the same box? She must get her to Banbury -Park as quickly as possible. It was dreadful that they should be seen -together there on the platform in their ragbag clothes. At any rate they -must not talk. “Oh, I’m very pleased to see you. I’m glad you’ve come. I -suppose the train must have been late,” she said eagerly. - -“Ah, we’ll be late I dare venture. Haven’t an idea of the hour.” - -“Oh, yes,” said Miriam emphatically, “I’m sure the train’s _late_.” - -“Where’ll we find a core?” - -“What?” - -“We’ll need a core for the luggage.” - -“Oh yes, a cab. We must get a cab. We’d better find a porter.” - -“Ah, I’ve a man here seeking out my things.” - -Inside the cab Julia’s face shone chalky white, and Miriam found that -her eyes looked like Weymouth Bay--the sea in general, on days when -clouds keep sweeping across the sun. When she laughed she had dimples -and the thick white rims of her eyelids looked like piping cord round -her eyes. But she was not pretty. There were lines in her cheeks as well -as dimples, and there was something apologetic in her little gusty -laugh. She laughed a good deal as they started off, saying things, -little quiet remarks that Miriam could not understand and that did not -seem to be answers to her efforts to make conversation. Perhaps she was -not going the right way to make her talk. Perhaps she had not said any -of the things she thought she had said. - -She cleared her throat and looked out of the window thinking over a -possible opening. - -“I’ve never been so glad over anything in my life as hearing you’re one -of the teachers,” said Julia presently. - -“The Pernes call me by my name, so I suppose you will too as you’re a -teacher,” said Miriam headlong. - -“That’s awfully sweet of you,” replied Julia laughing and blushing a -clear deep rose. “It makes anyone feel at home. I’ll be looking out till -I hear it.” - -“It’s----” Miriam laughed. “Isn’t it funny that people don’t like saying -their own names.” - -“I wish you’d tell me about your teaching. I’m sure you’re awf’ly -clever.” - -Miriam gave her a list of the subjects she taught in the lower school. - -“You know all there is to know.” - -“Oh well, and then I take the top girls now for German and the second -class for French reading, and two arithmetic classes in the upper -school, and a ‘shell’ of two very stupid girls to help with their -College of Preceptors.” - -“You’re frightening me.” - - - 2 - -Miriam looked out of the cab window, hardly hearing Julia’s next remark. -The drab brick walls of King’s Cross station were coming towards them. -When they had got themselves and Julia’s luggage out of the cab and into -the train for Banbury Park she was still pondering uneasily over her own -dislike of appearing as a successful teacher. This stranger saw her only -as a teacher. That was what she had become. If she was really a teacher -now, just that in life, it meant that she must decide at once whether -she really meant to teach always. Everyone now would think of her as a -teacher; as someone who was never going to do anything else, when really -she had not even begun to think about doing any of the things that -professional teachers had to do. She was not qualifying herself for -examinations in her spare time as her predecessor had done. Supposing -she did. This girl Julia would certainly expect her to be doing so. What -then? If she were to work very hard and also develop her character, when -she was fifty she would be like Miss Cramp; good enough to be a special -visiting teacher, giving just a few lectures a week at several schools, -talking in a sad voice, feeling ill and sad, having a yellow face and -faded hair and not enough saved to live on when she was too old to work. -Prospect, said the noisy train. That was it, there was no prospect in -it. There was no prospect in teaching. What was there a prospect in, -going along in this North London train with this girl who took her at -her word? - -She turned eagerly to Julia who was saying something and laughing -unconcernedly as she said it. “If you’d like to know what it is I’ve -come over for I’ll tell you at once. I’ve come over to learn Chopang’s -Funeral March. It’s all I think about. When I can play Chopang’s Funeral -March I’ll not call the Queen me aunt.” - - - 3 - -“Well, my dear child, I’m sure I wish I could arrange your life for ye,” -said Miss Haddie that evening. She was sitting on the edge of the -schoolroom table, having come in at ten o’clock to turn out the gas and -found Miriam sitting unoccupied. The room was cold and close with the -long-burning gas, and Miriam had turned upon her with a scornful half -laugh when she had playfully exclaimed at finding her there so late. -Miss Haddie was obviously still a little excited. She had presided at -schoolroom tea and Julia had filled the room with Dublin--the bay, the -streets, the jarveys and their outside cars, her journey, the channel -boat, her surprise at England. - -“Eh, what’s the matter, Miriam, my dear?” For some time Miriam had -parried her questions, fiercely demanding that her mood should be -understood without a clue. Presently they had slid into an irritated -discussion of the respective values of sleep before and sleep after -midnight, in the midst of which Miriam had said savagely, “I wish to -goodness I knew what to do about things.” - -Miss Haddie’s kindly desire gave her no relief. What did she mean but -the hopelessness of imagining that anybody could do anything about -anything. Nobody could ever understand what anyone else really wanted. -Only some people were fortunate. Miss Haddie was one of the fortunate -ones. She had her share in the school and many wealthy relatives and the -very best kind of good clothes and a good deal of strange old-fashioned -jewelry. And whatever happened there was money and her sisters and -relatives to look after her without feeling it a burden because of the -expense. And there she sat at the table looking at what she thought she -could see in another person’s life. - -“If only one knew in the least what one _ought_ to do,” said Miriam -crossly. - -Miss Haddie began speaking in a halting murmur, and Miriam rushed on -with flaming face. “I suppose I shall have to go on teaching all my -life, and I can’t think how on earth I’m going to do it. I don’t see how -I can work in the evenings, my eyes get so tired. If you don’t get -certificates there’s no prospect. And even if I did my throat is simply -agonies at the end of each morning.” - -“Eh! my dear child! I’m sorry to hear that. Why have ye taken to that? -Is it something fresh?” - -“Oh no, my throat always used to get tired. Mother’s is the same. We -can’t either of us talk for ten minutes without feeling it. It’s -perfectly awful.” - -“But, my dear, oughtn’t ye to see someone--have some advice? I mean ye -ought to see a doctor.” - -Miriam glanced at Miss Haddie’s concerned face and glanced away with a -flash of hatred. “Oh no. I s’pose I shall manage.” - -“D’ye think yer wise--letting it go on?” - -Miriam made no reply. - -“Well now, my dear,” said Miss Haddie, getting down off the table, “I -think it’s time ye went to bed.” - -“Phm,” said Miriam impatiently, “I suppose it is.” - -Miss Haddie sat down again. “I wish I could help ye, my dear,” she said -gently. - -“Oh, no one can do that,” said Miriam in a hard voice. - -“Oh yes,” murmured Miss Haddie cheerfully, “there’s One who can.” - -“Oh yes,” said Miriam, tugging a thread out of the fraying edge of the -table cover. “But it’s practically impossible to discover what on earth -they mean you to do.” - -“N--aiche, my dear,” she said in an angry guttural, “ye’re always led.” - -Miriam tugged at the thread and bit her lips. - -“Why do ye suppose ye’ll go on teaching all yer life? Perhaps ye’ll -marry.” - -“Oh no.” - -“Ye can’t tell.” - -“Oh, I never shall--in any case now.” - -“Have ye quarrelled with him?” - -“Oh, well, _him_,” said Miriam roundly, digging a pencil point between -the grainings of the table-cover. “It’s _they_, I think, goodness knows, -I don’t know; it’s so perfectly extraordinary.” - -“You’re a very funny young lady.” - -“Well, I shan’t marry _now_ anyhow.” - -“Have ye refused somebody?” - -“Oh well--there was someone--who went away--went to America--who was -coming back to see me when he came back----” - -“Yes, my dear?” - -“Well, you see, he’s handed in his checks.” - -“Eh, my dear--I don’t understand,” said Miss Haddie thwarted and -frowning. - -“Aw,” said Miriam, jabbing the table, “kicked the bucket.” - -“My dear child, you use such strange language--I can’t follow ye.” - -“Oh well, you see, he went to America. It was in New York. I heard about -it in January. He caught that funny illness. You know. Influenza--and -died.” - -“Eh, my poor dear child, I’m very sorry for ye. Ye _do_ seem to have -troubles.” - -“Ah well, yes, and then the queer thing is that he was really only the -friend of my real friend. And it was my real friend who told me about it -and gave me a message he sent me and didn’t like it, of course. -Naturally.” - -“Well _really_, Miriam,” said Miss Haddie, blushing, with a little laugh -half choked by a cough. - -“Oh yes, then of course one meets people--at dances. It’s appalling.” - -“I wish I understood ye, my dear.” - -“Oh well, it doesn’t make any difference now. I shall hardly ever meet -anybody now.” - -Miss Haddie pondered over the table with features that worked slightly -as she made little murmuring sounds. “Eh no. Ye needn’t think that. Ye -shouldn’t think like that.... Things happen sometimes ... just when ye -least expect it.” - -“Not to me.” - -“Oh, things will happen to ye--never fear.... Now, my dear child, trot -along with ye off to bed.” - -Miriam braced herself against Miss Haddie’s gentle shaking of her -shoulders and the quiet kiss on her forehead that followed it. - - - 4 - -The strengthening of her intimacy with Miss Haddie was the first of the -many changes brought to Miriam by Julia Doyle. At the beginning of the -spring term her two room mates were transferred to Julia’s care. The two -back rooms became a little hive of girls over which Julia seemed to -preside. She handled them all easily. There was rollicking and laughter -in the back bedrooms, but never any sign that the girls were “going too -far,” and their escapades were not allowed to reach across the landing. -Her large front room was, Miriam realised as the term went on, being -secretly and fiercely guarded by Julia. - -The fabric of the days too had changed. All day--during the midday -constitutional when she often found Julia at her side walking in her -curious springy lounging way and took the walk in a comforting silence -resting her weary throat, during the evenings of study and the -unemployed intervals of the long Sundays--Julia seemed to come between -her and the girls. She mastered them all with her speech and laughter. -Miriam felt that when they were all together she was always in some -hidden way on the alert. She never jested with Miriam but when they were -alone, and rarely then. Usually she addressed her in a low tone and as -if half beside herself with some overpowering emotion. It was owing too -to Julia’s presence in the school that an unexpected freedom came to -Miriam every day during the hour between afternoon school and tea-time. - -Persuaded by the rapid increase towards the end of the winter term of -the half-feverish exhaustion visiting her at the end of each day she had -confided in her mother, who had wept at this suggestion of an attack on -her health and called in the family doctor. “More air,” he said testily, -“air and movement.” Miriam repeated this to Miss Perne, who at once -arranged that she should be free if she chose to go out every afternoon -between school and tea-time. - -At first she went into the park every day. It was almost empty during -the week at that hour. The cricket green was sparsely decked with -children and their maids. A few strollers were left along the poplar -avenue and round the asphalt-circled lake; but away on the further -slopes usually avoided in the midday walks because the girls found them -oppressive, Miriam discovered the solitary spring air. Day by day she -went as if by appointment to meet it. It was the same wandering eloquent -air she had known from the beginning of things. Whilst she walked along -the little gravel pathways winding about over the clear green slopes in -the flood of afternoon light it stayed with her. The day she had just -passed through was touched by it; it added a warm promise to the hours -that lay ahead--tea-time, the evening’s reading, the possible visit of -Miss Haddie, the quiet of her solitary room, the coming of sleep. - -One day she left the pathways and strayed amongst pools of shadow lying -under the great trees. As she approached the giant trunks and the detail -of their shape and colour grew clearer her breathing quickened. She felt -her prim bearing about her like a cloak. The reality she had found was -leaving her again. Looking up uneasily into the forest of leaves above -her head she found them strange. She walked quickly back into the -sunlight, gazing reproachfully at the trees. There they were as she had -always known them; but between them and herself was her governess’ veil, -close drawn, holding them sternly away from her. The warm comforting -communicative air was round her, but she could not recover its secret. -She looked fearfully about her. To get away somewhere by herself every -day would not be enough. If that was all she could have, there would -come a time when there would be nothing anywhere. For a day or two she -came out and walked feverishly about in other parts of the park, -resentfully questioning the empty vistas. One afternoon, far away, but -coming towards her as if in answer to her question, was the figure of a -man walking quickly. For a moment her heart cried out to him. If he -would come straight on and, understanding, would walk into her life and -she could face things knowing that he was there, the light would come -back and would stay until the end--and there would be other lives, on -and on. She stood transfixed, trembling. He grew more and more distinct -and she saw a handbag and the outline of a bowler hat; a North London -clerk hurrying home to tea. With bent head she turned away and dragged -her shamed heavy limbs rapidly towards home. - - - 5 - -Early in May came a day of steady rain. Enveloped in a rain-cloak and -sheltered under her lowered umbrella she ventured down the hill towards -the shops. Near the railway arch the overshadowed street began to be -crowded with jostling figures. People were pouring from the city trams -at the terminus and coming out of the station entrance in a steady -stream. Hard intent faces, clashing umbrellas, the harsh snarling -monotone of the North London voice gave her the feeling of being an -intruder. Everything seemed to wonder what she was doing down there -instead of being at home in the schoolroom. A sudden angry eye above a -coarse loudly talking mouth all but made her turn to go with instead of -against the tide; but she pushed blindly on and through and presently -found herself in a quiet side street just off the station road looking -into a shop window.... “1 lb. super cream-laid boudoir note--with -envelopes--1s.” Her eyes moved about the window from packet to packet, -set askew and shining with freshness. If she had not brought so much -note-paper from home she could have bought some. Perhaps she could buy a -packet as a Christmas present for Eve and have it in her top drawer all -the time. But there was plenty of note-paper at home. She half turned to -go, and turning back fastened herself more closely against the window -meaninglessly reading the inscription on each packet. Standing back at -last she still lingered. A little blue-painted tin plate sticking out -from the side of the window announced in white letters “Carter -Paterson.” Miriam dimly wondered at the connection. Underneath it hung a -cardboard printed in ink, “Circulating Library, 2d. weekly.” This was -still more mysterious. She timidly approached the door and met the large -pleasant eye of a man standing back in the doorway. - -“Is there a library here?” she said with beating heart. - -She stood so long reading and re-reading half familiar titles, “Cometh -up as a Flower,” “Not like other Girls,” “The Heir of Redcliffe,” books -that she and Harriett had read and books that she felt were of a similar -type, that tea was already on the schoolroom table when she reached -Wordsworth House with an unknown volume by Mrs. Hungerford under her -arm. Hiding it upstairs, she came down to tea and sat recovering her -composure over her paper-covered “Cinq Mars,” a relic of the senior -Oxford examination now grown suddenly rich and amazing. To-day it could -not hold her. “The Madcap” was upstairs, and beyond it an unlimited -supply of twopenny volumes and Ouida. Red-bound volumes of Ouida on the -bottom shelf had sent her eyes quickly back to the safety of the upper -rows. Through the whole of tea-time she was quietly aware of a -discussion going on at the back of her mind as to who it was who had -told her that Ouida’s books were bad; evil books. She remembered her -father’s voice saying that Ouida was an extremely able woman, quite a -politician. Then of course her books were all right, for grown-up -people. It must have been someone at a dance who had made her curious -about them, someone she had forgotten. In any case, whatever they were, -there was no one now to prevent her reading them if she chose. She would -read them if she chose. Write to Eve about it first. No. Certainly not. -Eve might say “Better not, my dear. You will regret it if you do. You -won’t be the same.” Eve was different. She must not be led by Eve in any -case. She must leave off being led by Eve--or anybody. The figures -sitting round the table, bent over their books, quietly disinclined for -conversation or mischief under the shrewd eye of Miss Haddie, suddenly -looked exciting and mysterious. But perhaps the man in the shop would be -shocked. It would be impossible to ask for them; unless she could -pretend she did not know anything about them. - - - 6 - -For the last six weeks of the summer term she sat up night after night -propped against her upright pillow and bolster under the gas jet reading -her twopenny books in her silent room. Almost every night she read until -two o’clock. She felt at once that she was doing wrong; that the secret -novel-reading was a thing she could not confess, even to Miss Haddie. -She was spending hours of the time that was meant for sleep, for restful -preparation for the next day’s work, in a “vicious circle” of -self-indulgence. It was sin. She had read somewhere that sin promises a -satisfaction that it is unable to fulfil. But she found when the house -was still and the trams had ceased jingling up and down outside that she -grew steady and cool and that she rediscovered the self she had known at -home, where the refuge of silence and books was always open. Perhaps -that self, leaving others to do the practical things, erecting a little -wall of unapproachability between herself and her family that she might -be free to dream alone in corners had always been wrong. But it was -herself, the nearest most intimate self she had known. And the discovery -that it was not dead, that her six months in the German school and the -nine long months during which Banbury Park life had drawn a veil even -over the little slices of holiday freedom, had not even touched it, -brought her warm moments of reassurance. It was not perhaps a “good” -self, but it was herself, her own familiar secretly happy and rejoicing -self--not dead. Her hands lying on the coverlet knew it. They were again -at these moments her own old hands, holding very firmly to things that -no one might touch or even approach too nearly, things, everything, the -great thing that would some day communicate itself to someone through -these secret hands with the strangely thrilling finger-tips. Holding -them up in the gaslight she dreamed over their wisdom. They knew -everything and held their secret, even from her. She eyed them, communed -with them, passionately trusted them. They were not “artistic” or -“clever” hands. The fingers did not “taper” nor did the outstretched -thumb curl back on itself like a frond--like Nan Babington’s. They were -long, the tips squarish and firmly padded, the palm square and bony and -supple, and the large thumb joint stood away from the rest of the hand -like the thumb joint of a man. The right hand was larger than the left, -kindlier, friendlier, wiser. The expression of the left hand was less -reassuring. It was a narrower, lighter hand, more flexible, less -sensitive and more even in its touch--more smooth and manageable in -playing scales. It seemed to belong to her much less than the right; but -when the two were firmly interlocked they made a pleasant curious whole, -the right clasping more firmly, its thumb always uppermost, its fingers -separated firmly over the back of the left palm, the left hand clinging, -its fingers close together against the hard knuckles of the right. - -It was only when she was alone and in the intervals of quiet reading -that she came into possession of her hands. With others they oppressed -her by their size and their lack of feminine expressiveness. No one -could fall in love with such hands. Loving her, someone might come to -tolerate them. They were utterly unlike Eve’s plump, white, inflexible -little palms. But they were her strength. They came between her and the -world of women. They would be her companions until the end. They would -wither. But the bones would not change. The bones would be laid -unchanged and wise, in her grave. - - - 7 - -She began her readings with Rosa Nouchette Carey. Reading her at home, -after tea by the breakfast-room fireside with red curtains drawn and the -wind busy outside amongst the evergreen shrubs under the window, it had -seemed quite possible that life might suddenly develop into the thing -the writer described. From somewhere would come an adoring man who -believed in heaven and eternal life. One would grow very good; and after -the excitement and interest had worn off one would go on, with firm -happy lips being good and going to church and making happy matches for -other girls or quietly disapproving of everybody who did not believe -just in the same way and think about good girls and happy marriages and -heaven, keeping such people outside. Smiling, wise and happy inside in -the warm; growing older, but that did not matter because the adored man -was growing older too. - -Now it had all changed. The quiet house and fireside, gravity, -responsibility, a greying husband, his reading profile always dear, both -of them going on towards heaven, “all tears wiped away,” tears and -laughter of relief after death, still seemed desirable, but “women.” ... -Those awful, awful women, she murmured to herself stirring in bed. I -never thought of all the _awful_ women there would be in such a life. I -only thought of myself and the house and the garden and the man. What an -escape! Good God in heaven, what an escape! Far better to be alone and -suffering and miserable here in the school, alive.... - -Then there’ll be whole heaps of books, millions of books I can’t -read--perhaps nearly all the books. She took one more volume of Rosa, in -hope, and haunted its deeps of domesticity. “I’ve gone too far.” ... If -Rosa Nouchette Carey knew me, she’d make me one of the bad characters -who are turned out of the happy homes. I’m some sort of bad unsimple -woman. Oh, damn, damn, she sighed. I don’t know. Her hands seemed to -mock her, barring her way. - - - 8 - -Then came a series of Mrs. Hungerford--all the volumes she had not -already read. She read them eagerly, inspirited. The gabled country -houses, the sunlit twilit endless gardens, the deep orchards, the -falling of dew, the mists of the summer mornings, masses of flowers in -large rooms with carved oaken furniture, wide staircases with huge -painted windows throwing down strange patches of light on shallow -thickly carpetted stairs. These were the things she wanted; gay -house-parties, people with beautiful wavering complexions and masses of -shimmering hair catching the light, fragrant filmy diaphanous dresses; -these were the people to whom she belonged--a year or two of life like -that, dancing and singing in and out the houses and gardens; and then -marriage. Living alone, sadly estranged, in the house of a husband who -loved her and with whom she was in love, both of them thinking that the -other had married because they had lost their way in a thunderstorm or -spent the night sitting up on a mountain-top or because of a clause in a -will, and then one day both finding out the truth.... That is what is -meant by happiness ... happiness. But these things could only happen to -people with money. She would never have even the smallest share of that -sort of life. She might get into it as a governess--some of Mrs. -Hungerford’s heroines were governesses--but they had clouds of hair and -were pathetically slender and appealing in their deep mourning. She read -volume after volume, forgetting the titles--the single word ‘Hungerford’ -on a cover inflamed her. Her days became an irrelevance and her evenings -a dreamy sunlit indulgence. Now and again she wondered what Julia Doyle -would think if she knew what she was reading and how it affected -her--whether she would still watch her in the way she did as she went -about her work pale and tired, whether she would go on guarding her so -fiercely? - - - 9 - -At last exasperated, tired of the mocking park, the mocking happy books, -she went one day to the lower shelf, and saying very calmly, “I think -I’ll take a Ouida,” drew out “Under Two Flags” with a trembling hand. -The brown-eyed man seemed to take an interminable time noting the number -of the book, and when at last she got into the air her limbs were heavy -with sadness. That night she read until three o’clock and finished the -volume the next night at the same hour, sitting upright when the last -word was read, refreshed. From that moment the red-bound volumes became -the centre of her life. She read “Moths” and “In Maremma” slowly word by -word, with an increasing steadiness and certainty. The mere sitting with -the text held before her eyes gave her the feeling of being strongly -confronted. The strange currents which came whenever she was alone and -at ease flowing to the tips of her fingers, seemed to flow into the book -as she held it and to be met and satisfied. As soon as the door was shut -and the gas alight, she would take the precious, solid trusty volume -from her drawer and fling it on her bed, to have it under her eyes while -she undressed. She ceased to read her Bible and to pray. Ouida, Ouida, -she would muse with the book at last in her hands. I want bad -things--strong bad things.... It doesn’t matter, Italy, the sky, bright -hot landscapes, things happening. I don’t care what people think or say. -I am older than anyone here in this house. I am myself. - - - 10 - -... If you had loved, if you loved, you could die, laughing, gasping out -your life on a battlefield, fading by inches in a fever-swamp, or living -on, going about seamed and old and ill. Whatever happened to you, if you -had cared, fearing nothing, neither death nor hell. God came. He would -welcome and forgive you. Life, struggle, pain. Happy laughter with -twisted lips--all waiting somewhere outside, beyond. It would come. It -must be made to come. - - - 11 - -Who was there in the world? Ted had failed. Ted belonged to the Rosa -Nouchette Carey world. He would marry one of those women. Bob knew. Bob -Greville’s profile was real. Sitting on the wide stairs at the Easter -Subscription Dance, his soft fine white hair standing up, the straight -line of polished forehead, the fine nose and compressed lips, the sharp -round chin with the three firm folds underneath it, the point of his -collar cutting across them, the keen blue eyes looking straight out -ahead, across Australia. The whole face listening. He had been listening -to her nearly all the evening. Now and again quiet questions. She could -go on talking to him whenever she liked. Go to him and go on talking, -and talking, safely, being understood. Talking on and on. But he was -old. Living old and alone in chambers in Adam Street--Adelphi. - - - 12 - -One day just before the end of the summer term, Miss Perne asked Miriam -to preside over the large schoolroom for the morning. The first and -second-class girls were settled there at their written examination in -English history. Rounding the schoolroom door she stood for a moment in -the doorway. The sunlight poured in through the wide bay window and the -roomful of quiet girls seemed like a field. Jessie Wheeler’s voice broke -the silence. “It’s the Hen,” she shouted gently. “It’s the blessed Hen! -Oh, _come_ on. You going to sit with us?” - -“Yes. Be quiet,” said Miriam. - -“Oh, thank goodness,” groaned Jessie, supported by groans and murmurs -from all over the room. - -“Be quiet, girls, and get on with your papers,” said Miriam in a tone of -acid detachment from the top of her tide. She sat feeling that her arms -were round the entire roomful, that each girl struggling alone with the -list of questions was resting against her breast. “I’m going away from -them. I must be going away from them,” ran her thoughts regretfully. -“They can’t keep me. This is the utmost. I’ve won. There’ll never be -anything more than this, here.” It would always be the same--with -different girls. Certainty. Even the sunlight paid a sort of homage to -the fathomless certainty she felt. The sunlight in this little -schoolroom was telling her of other sunlights, vast and unbroken, -somewhere--coming, her own sunlights, when she should have wrenched -herself away. It was there; she glanced up again and again to watch it -breaking and splashing all over the room. It would come again, but how -differently. Quite soon. She might have spared herself all her -agonising. The girls did not know where she belonged. They were holding -her. But she would go away, to some huge open space. Leave them--ah, it -was unkind. But she had left them already in spirit. - -If they could all get up together now and sing, let their voices peal -together up and up, throw all the books out of the window, they might go -on together, forward into the sunshine, but they would not want to do -that. Hardly any of them would want to do that. They would look at her -with knowing eyes, and look at the door, and stay where they were. - -The room was very close. Polly Allen and Eunice Dupont, sitting together -at a little card-table in the darkest corner of the room, were -whispering. With beating heart Miriam got up and went and stood before -them. “You two are talking,” she said with her eyes on the thickness of -Polly’s shoulders as she sat in profile to the room. Eunice, opposite -her, against the wall, flashed up at her her beautiful fugitive grin as -from the darkness of a wood. History, thought Miriam. What has Eunice to -do with history, laws, Henry II, the English Constitution? “You don’t -talk,” she said coldly, feeling as she watched her that Eunice’s pretty -clothes were stripped away and she were stabbing at her soft rounded -body, “at examinations. Can’t you see that?” Eunice’s pale face grew -livid. “First because it isn’t fair and also because it disturbs other -people.” You can tell all the people who cheat by their smile, she -reflected on her way back. Eunice chuckled serenely two or three times. -“What have these North London girls to do with studies?” ... There was -not a single girl like Eunice at Barnes. Even the very pretty girls were -... refined. - - - 13 - -That afternoon Miriam spent her hour of leisure in calling on the Brooms -to enquire for Grace, who had been ill the whole of the term. She found -the house after some difficulty in one of a maze of little rows and -crescents just off the tram-filled main road. “She’s almost -perfect--almost perfection,” said Mrs. Philps, the Aunt Lucy Miriam had -heard of and seen in church. - -They had been together in the little drawing-room talking about Grace -from the moment when Miriam was shown in to Mrs. Philps sitting darning -a duster in a low chair by the closed conservatory door. The glazed -closed door with the little strips of window on either side giving on to -a crowded conservatory made the little room seem dark. To Miriam it -seemed horribly remote. Her journey to it had been through immense -distances. Threading the little sapling-planted asphalt-pavemented -roadways between houses whose unbroken frontage was so near and so bare -as to forbid scrutiny, she felt she had reached the centre, the home and -secret of North London life. Off every tram-haunted main road, there -must be a neighbourhood like this where lived the common-mouthed -harsh-speaking people who filled the pavements and shops and walked in -the parks. To enter one of the little houses and speak there to its -inmates would be to be finally claimed and infected by the life these -people lived, the thing that made them what they were. At Wordsworth -House she was held up by the presence of the Pernes and Julia Doyle. -Here she was helpless and alone. When she had discovered the number she -sought and, crossing the little tiled pathway separated from the pathway -next door by a single iron rail, had knocked with the lacquered knocker -against the glazed and leaded door, her dreams for the future faded. -They would never be realised. They were just a part of the radiance that -shone now from the spacious houses she had lived in in the past. The -things she had felt this morning in the examination room were that, too. -They had nothing to do with the future. All the space was behind. Things -would grow less and less. - - - 14 - -Admitted to the dark narrowly echoing tiled passage, she stated her -errand and was conducted past a closed door and the opening of a narrow -staircase which shot steeply, carpeted with a narrow strip of -surprisingly green velvet carpeting, up towards an unlit landing and -admitted to Mrs. Philps. - -“Wait a minute, Vashti,” said Mrs. Philps, holding Miriam’s hand as she -murmured her errand. “You’ll stay tea? Well, if you’re sure you can’t -I’ll not press you. Bring the biscuits and the sherry and two white -wine-glasses, Vashti. Get them now and bring them in at once. Sit down, -Miss Henderson. She’s little better than a step-girl. They’re all the -same.” Whilst she described her niece’s illness, Miriam wondered over -the immense bundle of little even black sausage-shaped rolls of hair -which stuck out, larger than her head and smoothed to a sphere by a -tightly drawn net, at the back of her skull. She was short and stout and -had bright red cheeks that shone in the gloom and rather prominent large -blue eyes that roamed as she talked, allowing Miriam to snatch -occasional glimpses of china-filled what-nots and beaded ottomans. -Presently Vashti returned clumsily with the wine, making a great bumping -and rattling round about the door. “You stupid thing, you’ve brought -claret. Don’t you know sherry when you see it? It’s at the back--behind -the Harvest Burgundy.” “I shall have to go soon,” said Miriam, relieved -at the sight of the red wine and longing to escape the sherry. Vashti -put down the tray and stood with open mouth. Even with her very high -heels she looked almost a dwarf. The room seemed less oppressive with -the strange long-necked decanter and the silver biscuit box standing on -a table in the curious greenish light. Mrs. Philps accepted the claret -and returned busily to her story, whilst Miriam sipped and glanced at a -large print in a heavy black frame leaning forward low over the small -white marble mantelpiece. It represented a young knight in armour -kneeling at an altar with joined and pointed hands held to his lips. An -angel standing in mid-air was touching his shoulder with a sword. “Why -doesn’t she kiss the top of his head,” thought Miriam as she sipped her -wine. The distant aisles and pillars of the church made the room seem -larger than it was. “I suppose they all look into that church when they -want to get away from each other,” she mused as Mrs. Philps went on with -her long sentences beginning “And Dr. Newman said--” And there was a -little mirror above a bulging chiffonier which was also an escape from -the confined space. Looking into it, she met Mrs. Philps’s glowing face -with the blue eyes widely staring and fixed upon her own, and heard her -declare, with her bunched cherry-coloured lips, that Grace was ‘almost -perfection.’ “Is she?” she responded eagerly, and Mrs. Philps elaborated -her theme. Grace, then, with her heavy body and strange hot voice, lying -somewhere upstairs in a white bed, was the most important thing in this -dark little house. “She was very near to death then,” Mrs. Philps was -saying tearfully, “very near, and when she came round from her delirium, -one of the first things she said to me as soon as she was strong enough -to whisper, was that she was perfectly certain about there being another -life.” Mrs. Philps’s voice faded and she sat with trembling lips and -eyes downcast. “_Did_ she!” Miriam almost shouted, half-rising from her -seat and turning from contemplating Mrs. Philps in the mirror to look -her full in the face. The dim green light streaming in from the -conservatory seemed like a tide that made everything in the room rock -slightly. A touch would sweep it all away and heaven would be there all -round them. “Did she,” whispered Miriam in a faint voice that shook her -chest. “‘Aunt,’ she said,” went on Mrs. Philps steadily, as the room -grew firm round Miriam and the breath she drew seemed like an early -morning breath, “‘I want to say something quickly,’ she said, ‘in case I -die. It’s that I know--for a positive fact, there is another life.’” - -“What a perfectly stupendous thing,” said Miriam. “It’s so important.” - -“I was much impressed. Of course, I knew she was nearly perfect. But -we’ve not been in the habit of talking about religion. I asked her if -she would like to see the vicar. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘there’s no need. He -knows.’ I doubt if he knows as much as she does. But I didn’t make a -point of it.” - -“Oh, but it’s simply wonderful. It’s much more important than anything a -vicar could say. It’s their business to say those things.” - -“I don’t know about that. But she was so weak that I didn’t press it.” - -“But it’s so important. What a wonderful thing to have in your family. -Did she say anything more?” - -“She hasn’t returned to the subject again. She’s very weak.” - -Wild clutching thoughts shook at Miriam. If only Grace could suddenly -appear in her night-gown, to be questioned. Or if she herself could stay -on there creeping humbly about in this little house, watering the -conservatory and darning dusters, being a relative of the Brooms, -devoting herself to Grace, waiting on her, hearing all she had to say. -What did it matter that the Brooms wore heavy mourning and gloated over -funerals if Grace upstairs in her room had really seen the white light -away in the distance far away beyond the noise of the world? - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - - 1 - -Harriett’s ringed fingers had finished dipping and drying the blue and -white tea-service. She sat for a moment staring ahead down-stream. -Sitting opposite her, Gerald watched her face with a half smile. Miriam -waited sitting at her side. It was the first moment of silence since she -had come home at midday. From the willow-curtained island against which -they were moored came little crepitations and flittings. Ahead of them -the river blazed gold and blue, hedged by high spacious trees. -“_Come_-to-tea, _come_-to-tea, hurryup-dear,” said a bird suddenly from -the island thicket. - -“D’you know what bird that is, Gerald?” asked Miriam. - -“Not from Adam,” breathed Gerald, swaying on his seat with a little -laugh. “It’s a bird. That’s all I know.” - -“We’d better unmoor, silly,” muttered Harriett briskly, gathering up the -tiller ropes. - -“Right, la reine.” - -“Look here, let me do something this time, pull or something.” - -“You sit still, my dear.” - -“But I should simply love to.” - -“You shall pull down-stream if you like later on when the bally sun’s -down. My advice to you now is to go and lounge in the bow.” - -“Oh yes, Mim, you try it. Lie right down. It’s simply heavenly.” - -The boat glided deliciously away up-stream as Miriam, relinquishing her -vision of Harriett sitting very upright in the stern in her white drill -dress, and Gerald’s lawn-shirted back and long lean arms grasping the -sculls, lay back on the bow cushions with her feet comfortably -outstretched under the unoccupied seat in front of her. Six hours ago, -shaking hands with a roomful of noisy home-going girls--and now nothing -to do but float dreamily out through the gateway of her six weeks’ -holiday. The dust of the school was still upon her; the skin of her face -felt strained and tired, her hands were tired and hot, her blouse dim -with a week of school wear, and her black skirt oppressed her with its -invisible burden of grime. But she was staring up at a clean blue sky -fringed with tree-tops. She stretched herself out more luxuriously upon -her cushions. The river smoothly moving and lapping underneath the boat -was like a cradle. The soft fingers of the air caressed her temples and -moved along the outlines of her face and neck. Forty-two days ... like -this. To-morrow she would wake up a new person ... sing, and shout with -Harriett. She closed her eyes. The gently lifting water seemed to come -nearer; the invading air closed in on her. She gave herself ecstatically -to its touch; the muscles of her tired face relaxed and she believed -that she could sleep; cry or sleep. - - - 2 - -It was Gerald who had worked this miraculous first day for her. -“Boating” hitherto had meant large made-up parties of tennis-club -people, a fixed day, uneasy anticipations as to the weather, the -carrying of hampers of provisions and crockery, spirit lamps and -kettles, clumsy hired randans, or little fleets of stupidly competing -canoes, lack of space, heavy loads to pull, the need for ceaseless -chaff, the irritating triumphs of clever “knowing” girls in smart -clothes, the Pooles, or really beautiful people, like Nan Babington and -her cousin. Everything they said sounding wonderful and seeming to -improve the scenery; the jokes of the men, even Ted always joked all the -time, the misery of large noisy picnic teas on the grass, and in the end -great weariness and disappointment, the beauty of the river and the -trees only appearing the next day or perhaps long afterwards. - -This boat was Gerald’s own private boat, a double-sculling skiff, -slender and gold-brown, beautifully fitted and with a locker containing -everything that was wanted for picnicking. They had arranged their -expedition at lunch-time, trained to Richmond, bought fruit and cakes -and got the boat’s water-keg filled by one of Redknap’s men. Gerald knew -how to do things properly. He had always been accustomed to things like -this boat. He would not care to have anything just anyhow. “Let’s do the -thing decently, la reine.” He would keep on saying that at intervals -until Harriett had learned too. How he had changed her since Easter when -their engagement had been openly allowed. The clothes he had bought for -her, especially this plain drill dress with its neat little coat. The -long black tie fastened with the plain heavy cable broach pinned in -lengthwise half-way down the ends of the tie, which reached almost to -her black belt. That was Gerald. Her shoes, the number of pairs of -light, expensive, beautifully made shoes. Her bearing, the change in her -voice, a sort of roundness about her old Harryish hardness. But she was -the same Harry, the Harry he had seen for the first time snorting with -anger over Mr. Marth’s sentimental singing at the Assembly Rooms -concert. “My hat, wasn’t la reine fuming!” He would forgive her all her -ignorance. It was her triumph. What an extraordinary time Harry would -have. Gerald was well-off. He had a private income behind his Canadian -Pacific salary. His grandfather had been a diplomatist, living abroad -nearly all the time, and his wealthy father and wealthy mother with a -large fortune of her own had lived in a large house in Chelsea, giving -dinner parties and going to the opera until nearly all the capital had -gone, both dying just in time to leave enough to bring Gerald in a small -income when he left Haileybury. And the wonderful thing was that Gerald -liked mouching about and giggling. He liked looking for hours in shop -windows and strolling on the Heath eating peppermints. - - - 3 - -Everything had disappeared into a soft blackness; only on the water a -faint light was left. It came and went; sometimes there was nothing but -darkness and the soft air. The small paper lantern swinging at the bow -made a little blot of light that was invisible from the stroke seat. The -boat went swiftly and easily. Miriam felt she could go on pulling for -hours at the top of her strength through the night. Leaning forward, -breasting the featureless darkness, sweeping the sculls back at the full -reach of her arms, leaning back and pressing her whole weight upwards -from the footboard against the pull of the water, her body became an -outstretched elastic system of muscles, rhythmically working against the -smooth dragging resistance of the dark water. Her sleeves were rolled -up, her collar-stud unfastened, her cool drowsy lids drooped over her -cool eyes. Each time she leaned backwards against her stroke, pressing -the footboard, the weight of her body dragged at a line of soreness -where the sculls pressed her hands, and with the final fling of the -water from the sculls a little stinging pain ran along the pads of her -palms. To-morrow there would be a row of happy blisters. - -“You needn’t put more beef into it than you like, Mirry.” Gerald’s voice -came so quietly out of the darkness that it scarcely disturbed Miriam’s -ecstacy. She relaxed her swing, and letting the sculls skim and dip in -short easy strokes, sat glowing. - -“I’ve never pulled a boat alone before.” - -“It shows you can’t be a blue-stocking, thank the Lord,” laughed Gerald. - -“Who said I was?” - -“I’ve always understood you were a very wise lady, my dear.” - -“Nobody told you she was a blue-stocking, silly. You invented the word -yourself.” - -“I? I invented blue-stocking?” - -“Yes, you, silly. It’s like your saying women never date their letters -just because your cousins don’t.” - -“Vive la reine. The Lord deliver me from blue-stockings, anyhow.” - -“All _right_, what _about_ it? There aren’t any here!” - -“You’re not one, anyhow.” - - - 4 - -The next day after tea Eve arrived home from Gloucestershire. - -Miriam had spent the day with Harriett. After breakfast, bounding -silently up and downstairs, they visited each room in turn, chased each -other about the echoing rooms and passages of the basement and all over -the garden. Miriam listened speechlessly to the sound of Harriett’s -heels soft on the stair carpet, ringing on the stone floors of the -basement, and the swish of her skirts as she flew over the lawn -following surrounding responding to Miriam’s wild tour of the garden. -Miriam listened and watched, her eyes and ears eagerly gathering and -hoarding visions. It could not go on. Presently some claim would be made -on Harriett and she would be alone. But when they had had their fill of -silently rushing about, Harriett piloted her into the drawing-room and -hastily began opening the piano. A pile of duets lay on the lid. She had -evidently gathered them there in readiness. Wandering about the room, -shifting the familiar ornaments, flinging herself into chair after -chair, Miriam watched her and saw that her strange quiet little snub -face was lit and shapely. Harriett, grown-up, serene and well-dressed -and going to be married in the spring, was transported by this new -coming together. When they had played the last of the duets that they -knew well, Harriett fumbled at the pages of a bound volume of operas in -obvious uncertainty. At any moment Miriam might get up and go off and -bring their sitting together on the long cretonne-covered duet stool to -an end. “Come on,” roared Miriam gently, “let’s try this”; and they -attacked the difficult pages. Miriam counted the metre, whispered it -intoned and sang it, carrying Harriett along with shouts “go _on_, go -_on_” when they had lost each other. They smashed their way along by -turns playing only a single note here and there into the framework of -Miriam’s desperate counting, or banging out cheerful masses of -discordant tones, anything to go on driving their way together through -the pages while the sunlight streamed half seen into the conservatory -and the flower-filled garden crowded up against the windows, anything to -come out triumphantly together at the end and to stop satisfied, the -sounds of the house, so long secretly known to them both, low now around -them, heard by them together, punctuating their joy. The gong sounded -for lunch. “Eve,” Miriam remembered suddenly, “Eve’s coming this -afternoon.” The thought set gladness thundering through her as she rose -from the piano. “Let’s go for a walk after lunch,” she muttered. -Harriett blushed. - -“Awri,” she responded tenderly. - - - 5 - -The mile of gently rising roadway leading to the Heath was overarched by -huge trees. Shadowy orchards, and the silent sunlit outlying meadows and -park land of a large estate streamed gently by them beyond the trees as -they strode along through the cool leaf-scented air. They strode -speechlessly ahead as if on a pilgrimage, keeping step. Harriett’s -stylish costume had a strange unreal look in the great lane, under the -towering trees. Miriam wondered if she found it dull and was taking it -so boldly because they were walking along it together. Obviously she did -not want to talk. She walked along swiftly and erect, looking eagerly -ahead as if, when they reached the top and the Heath and the windmill, -they would find something they were both looking for. Miriam felt she -could glance about unnoticed and looked freely, as she had done so many -hundreds of times before, at the light on the distant meadows and lying -along the patches of undergrowth between the trunks of the trees. They -challenged and questioned her silently as they had always done and she -them, in a sort of passionate sulkiness. They gave no answer, but the -scents in the cool tree-filled air went on all the time offering steady -assurance, and presently as walking became an unconscious rhythm and the -question of talk or no talk had definitely decided itself, the challenge -of the light was silenced and the shaded roadway led on to paradise. Was -there anyone anywhere who saw it as she did? Anyone who looking along -the alley of white road would want to sit down in the roadway or kneel -amongst the undergrowth and shout and shout? In the north of London -there were all those harsh street voices infesting the trees and the -parks. No! they did not exist. There was no North London. Let them die. -They did not know the meaning of far-reaching meadows, park-land, deer, -the great silent Heath, the silent shoulders of the windmill against the -far-off softness of the sky. Harsh streetiness ... cunning, knowing ... -do you _blame_ me? ... or charwomanishness, smarmy; churchy or chapelish -sentimentality. Sentimentality. No need to think about them. - -“Never the time and the place and the loved one all together.” Who said -that? Was it true? Dreadful. It couldn’t be. So many people had seen -moonlit gardens, together. All the happy people who were sure of each -other. “I say, Harriett,” she said at the top of her voice, bringing -Harriett curvetting in the road just in front of her. “I say, listen.” -Harriett ran up the remaining strips of road and out on to the Heath. It -was ablaze with sunlight--as the river and the trees had been -yesterday--a whole day of light and Eve on her way home, almost home. -Harriett must not know how she was rushing to Eve; with what tingling -fingers. “Oh, what I was going to ask you was whether you can see the -moonlight like it is when you are alone, when Gerald is there.” - -“... It isn’t the same as when you are alone,” said Harriett quietly, -arranging the cuff of her glove. - -“Do explain what you mean.” - -“Well, it’s different.” - -“I see. You don’t know how.” - -“It’s quite different.” - -“Does Gerald like the moonlight?” - -“_I_ dunno. I never asked him.” - -“Fancy the Roehampton people living up here all the time.” - -“There’s their old washing going flip-flap over there.” - -Harriett was finding out that she was back in the house with Eve. - -“Let’s rush to the windmill. Let’s sing.” - -“Come on; only we can’t rush and sing too.” - -“Yes we can, come on.” Running up over hillocks and stumbling through -sandy gorse-grown hollows they sang a hunting song, Miriam leading with -the short galloping phrases, Harriett’s thinner voice dropping in, -broken and uncertain, with a strange brave sadness in it that went to -Miriam’s heart. - - - 6 - -“Eve, you look exactly like Dudley’s gracious lady in these things. -Don’t you feel like it?” Eve stopped near the landing window and stood -in her light green canvas dress with its pale green silk sleeves -shedding herself over Miriam from under her rose-trimmed white chip hat. -Miriam was carrying her light coat and all the small litter of her -journey. “Go on up,” she said, “I want to talk,” and Eve hurried on, -Miriam stumblingly following her, holding herself in, eyes and ears wide -for the sight and sound of the slender figure flitting upstairs through -the twilight. The twilight wavered and seemed to ebb and flow, -suggesting silent dawn and full midday, and the house rang with a -soundless music. - -“It was Mrs. Wallace who suggested my _wearing_ all my best things for -the journey,” panted Eve; “they don’t get crushed with packing and they -needn’t get dirty if you’re careful.” - -“You look exactly like Dudley’s gracious lady. You know you do. You know -it perfectly well.” - -“They do seem jolly now I’m back. They don’t seem anything down there. -Just ordinary with everybody in much grander things.” - -“How do you mean, grander? What sort of things?” - -“Oh, all sorts of lovely white dresses.” - -“It is extraordinary about all those white dresses,” said Miriam -emphatically, pushing her way after Eve into Sarah’s bedroom. “Can I -come in? I’m coming in. Sarah says it’s because men like them and she -gets simply sick of girls in white and cream dresses all over the place -in the summer, and it’s a perfect relief to see anyone in a colour in -the sun. They have red sunshades sometimes, but Sarah says that’s not -enough; you want people in colours. I wonder if there’s anything in it?” - -“Of course there is,” said Sarah, releasing the last strap of Eve’s -trunk. - -“They’d _all_ put on coloured things if it weren’t for that.” - -“Men tell them.” - -“Do they?” - -“The engaged men tell them--or brothers.” - -“I can’t think how you get to know these things, sober Sally.” - -“Oh, you can tell.” - -“Well, then, _why_ do men like silly white and cream dresses, pasty, -whitewashy clothes altogether?” - -“It’s something they want; it looks different to them.” - -“Sarah knows all sorts of things,” said Miriam excitedly, watching the -confusion of the room from the windows. “She says she knows why the -Pooles look down and smirk; their dimples and the line of their chins; -that men admire them looking down like that. _Isn’t_ it frightful. -Disgusting. And men don’t seem to see through them.” - -“It’s those kind of girls get on best.” - -Miriam sighed. - -“Oh well, don’t let’s think about them. Not to-night, anyhow,” cooed -Eve. - -“Sarah says there are much more awful reasons. I can’t think how she -finds them all out. Sober Sally. I know she’s right. It’s too utterly -sickening somehow, for words.” - -“Mim.” - -“_Pooh_--barooo, _baroooo_.” - -“Mim----” - -“Damnation.” - -“Mimmy--Jim.” - -“I said DAMNATION.” - -“Oh, it’s all right. What have we got to do with horrid knowing people.” - -“Well, they’re there, all the time. You can’t get away from them. -They’re all over the place. Either the knowing ones or the simpering -ones. It’s all the same in the end.” - -Eve quietly began to unpack. “Oh well,” she smiled, “we’re _all_ -different when there are men about to when we’re by ourselves. We all -make eyes in a way.” - -“Eve! What a perfectly beastly thing to say.” - -“It isn’t, my dear,” said Eve pensively. “You should see yourself; you -do.” - -“Sally, _do_ I?” - - - 7 - -“Of course you do,” giggled Eve quietly, “as much as anybody.” - -“Then I’m the most crawling thing on the face of the earth,” thought -Miriam, turning silently to the tree-tops looming softly just outside -the window; “and the worst of it is I only know it at moments now and -again.” The tree-tops serene with some happy secret cast her off, and -left her standing with groping crisping fingers unable to lift the -misery that pressed upon her heart. “God, what a filthy world! God what -a filthy world!” she muttered. “Everyone hemmed and hemmed and hemmed -into it.” Harriett came in and stepped up on to the high canopied bed. -“Ullo,” she said in general, sitting herself up tailor-fashion in the -middle of the bed so that the bright twilight fell full upon her head -and the breast and shoulders of her light silk-sleeved dress. Humming -shreds of a violin obligato, Eve rustled out layer after layer of -paper-swathed garments, to be gathered up by Sarah moving solidly about -between the wardrobe and the chest of drawers in her rather heavy boots. -There would not be any talk. But silently the room filled and -overflowed. Turning at last from her window, Miriam glanced at her -sisters and let her thoughts drop into the flowing tide. Harry, sitting -there sharp and upright in the fading light, coming in to them with her -future life streaming out behind her spreading and shining and rippling, -herself the radiant point of that wonderful life, actually there, neatly -enthroned amongst them, one of them, drawing them all with her out -towards its easy security; Eve, happy with her wardrobe of dainty -things, going fearlessly forward to some unseen fate, not troubling -about it. Sarah’s strange clean clear channel of wisdom. Where would it -lead? It would always drive straight through everything. - -All these things meant that the mere simple awfulness of things -at home had changed. These three girls she had known so long as -fellow-prisoners, and who still bore at moments in their eyes, their -movements, the marks of the terrors and uncertainties amongst which -they had all grown up, were going on, out into life, scored and -scarred, but alive and changeable, able to become quite new. Memories -of strange crises and the ageing deadening shifts they had invented -to tide them over humiliating situations were here crowded in the -room together with them all. But these memories were no longer as -they had so often been, the principal thing in the room whenever they -were all gathered silently together. If Eve and Harriett had got away -from the past and now had happy eyes and mouths.... Sarah’s solid -quiet cheerfulness, now grown so large and free that it seemed even -when she was stillest to knock your mind about like something in a -harlequinade.... Why had they not all known in the past that they would -change? Why had they been so oppressed whenever they stopped to think? - -Those American girls in “Little Women” and “Good Wives” made fun out of -everything. But they had never had to face real horrors and hide them -from everybody, mewed up. - - - 8 - -When it was nearly dark Sarah lit the gas. Harriett had gone downstairs. -Miriam lowered the Venetian blinds, shutting out the summer. To-morrow -it would be there again, waiting for them when they woke in the morning. -In her own and Harriett’s room the daylight would be streaming in -through the Madras muslin curtains, everything in the room very silent -and distinct; nothing to be heard but the little flutterings of birds -under the eaves. You could listen to it for ever if you kept perfectly -still. When you drew back the curtains the huge day would be standing -outside clear with gold and blue and dense with trees and flowers. - -Sarah’s face was uneasy. She seemed to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes. -Presently she faced them, sitting on a low rocking chair with her -tightly clasped hands stretched out beyond her knees. She glanced -fearfully from one to the other and bit her lips. “What now,” thought -Miriam. The anticipated holidays disappeared. Of course. She might have -known they would. For a moment she felt sick, naked and weak. Then she -braced herself to meet the shock. I must sit tight, I must sit tight and -not show anything. Eve’s probably praying. Oh, make haste, Sally, and -get it over. - -“What’s the matter, Sally?” said Eve in a low voice. - -“Oh, Eve and Mim, I’m awfully sorry.” - -“You’d better tell us at once,” said Eve, crimsoning. - -“Haven’t you noticed anything?” - -Miriam looked at Sarah’s homely prosperous shape. It couldn’t be -anything. It was a nightmare. She waited, pinching her wrist. - -“What is it, Sally?” breathed Eve, tapping her green-clad knee. Clothes -and furniture and pictures ... houses full of things and people talking -in the houses and having meals and pretending, talking and smiling and -pretending. - -“It’s mother.” - -“What on earth do you mean, Sarah?” said Miriam angrily. - -“She’s ill. Bennett took her to a specialist. There’s got to be--she’s -got to have an operation.” - -Miriam drew up the blind with a noisy rattle, smiling at Eve frowning -impatiently at the noise. Driving the heavy sash up as far as it would -go, she leaned her head against the open frame. The garden did not seem -to be there. The tepid night air was like a wall, a black wall. For a -moment a splintered red light, like the light that comes from a violent -blow on the forehead, flashed along it. Sarah and Eve were talking in -strange voices, interrupting each other. It would be a relief to do -something, faint or something selfish. But she must hear what they were -saying; listen to both the voices cutting through the air of the hot -room. Propped weak-limbed against the window open-mouthed for air she -forced herself to hear, pressing her cold hands closely together. The -gas light that had seemed so bright hardly seemed to light the room at -all. Everything looked small, even Grannie’s old Chippendale bedstead -and the double-fronted wardrobe. The girls were little monkey ghosts -babbling together beside Eve’s open trunk. Did they see that it was -exactly like a grave? - - - 9 - -The sun shone through the apple trees, making the small half-ripe apples -look as though they were coated with enamel. - -It was quite clear that if they did go away together, the four of them, -she, Eve, Gerald and Harriett to Brighton or somewhere, they would be -able to forget. You could tell that from the strange quiet easy tone of -Harriett’s and Gerald’s voices. There would be the aquarium. She -supposed they would go to the aquarium with its strange underground -smell of stagnant sea air and stare into the depths of those strange -green tanks and watch the fish flashing about like shadows or skimming -by near the front of the tank with the light full on their softly tinted -scales. Harriett sat steadily at her side on the overturned seed-box, -middle-aged and responsible, quietly discussing the details of the plan -with Gerald, cross-legged at their feet on the grass plot. They had not -said anything about the reasons for going; but of course Gerald must -know all that. He knew everything now, all about the money troubles, all -the awful things, and it seemed to make no difference to him. He made -light of it. It was humiliating to think that he had come just as things -had reached their worst, the house going to be sold, Pater and mother -and Sarah going into lodgings in September, and the maddening helpless -worry about mother and all the money for that. And yet it was a good -thing he had known them all in the old house and seen them there, even -pretending to be prosperous. And yet the house and garden was nothing to -him. Just a house and garden. Harriett’s house and garden, and he was -going to take Harriett away. The house and garden did not matter. - -She glanced at the sunlit fruit trees, the thickets of the familiar -kitchen garden, the rising grass bank at the near end of the distant -lawn, the eloquent back of the large red house. He could not see all the -things there were there, all the long years, or know what it was to have -that cut away and nothing ahead but Brighton aquarium with Harriett and -Eve, and then the school again, and disgraceful lodgings in some strange -place, no friends and everybody looking down on them. She met his eyes -and they both smiled. - -“Keep her perfectly quiet for the next few weeks, that’s the idea, and -when it’s all over she’ll be better than she’s ever been in her life.” - -“D’you think so?” - -“I don’t think, I know she will; people always are. I’ve known scores of -people have operations. It’s nothing nowadays. Ask Bennett.” - -“Does he think she’ll be better?” - -“Of course.” - -“Did he say so?” - -“Of _course_ he did.” - -“Well, I s’pose we’d really better go.” - -“Of course, we’re going.” - -“I’m going to look for a place in a family after next term. I shall give -notice when I get back. You get more money in a family Eve says, and -home life, and if you haven’t a home they’re only too glad to have you -there in the holidays too.” - -“You take my advice, my dear girl. Don’t go into a family. Eve’ll find -it out before she’s much older.” - -“I must have more money.” - -“Mirry’s so silly. She insists on paying her share of Brighton. Isn’t -she an owl?” - -“Oh well, of course, if she’s going to make a point of spending her cash -when she needn’t she’d better find a more paying job. That’s certain -sure.” - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - - 1 - -“You know I’m funny. I never talk to young ladies.” - -Miriam looked leisurely at the man walking at her side along the -grass-covered cliff; his well-knit frame, his well-cut blue serge, the -trimness of collar and tie, his faintly blunted regular features, clean -ruddy skin and clear expressionless German blue eyes. Altogether he was -rather like a German, with his red and white and gold and blue colouring -and his small military moustache. She could imagine him snapping -abruptly in a booming chest voice, “Mit Frauen spreche ich über_haupt_ -nicht.” But he spoke slowly and languidly, he was an Englishman and -somehow looked like a man who was accustomed to refined society. It was -true he never spoke at the boarding-house meals, excepting an occasional -word with his friend, and he had been obliged to join their Sunday walk -because his friend was so determined to come. Still he was not awkward -or clumsy either at table or now. Only absolutely quiet, and then saying -such a startling rather rude thing quite suddenly. One could stare at -him to discover the reason of his funny speech, because evidently he was -quite common, not a bounder but quite a common young man, speaking of -women as ‘young ladies.’ Then how on earth did he manage to look -distinguished. Oppressed and ill at ease she turned away to the -far-reaching green levels and listened to the sea tumbling heavily far -below against the cliffs. Away ahead Eve and her little companion -walking jauntily along, his tight dust-coloured curls exposed to the -full sunlight, his cane swinging round as he talked and laughed, seemed -to be turning inland towards the downs. They had seen Ovingdean in the -distance, stupid Ovingdean that everybody had talked about at breakfast, -and were finding the way. How utterly silly. They did not see how -utterly silly it was to make up your mind to “go to Ovingdean” and then -go to Ovingdean. How utterly silly everybody and everything was. - -Eve looked very straight and slim and was walking happily, bending her -head a little as she always did when she was listening. Their backs -looked happy. And here she was forced to walk with this nice-looking -strange solid heavyish man and his cold insulting remark; almost the -only thing he had said since they had been alone together. It had been -rather nice walking along the top of the cliff side by side saying -nothing. They walked exactly in step and his blunted features looked -quite at ease; and she had gone easily along disposing of him with a -gentle feeling of proprietorship, and had watched the gentle swing and -movement of the landscape as they swung along. It seemed secure and -painless and was gradually growing beautiful, and then suddenly she felt -that he must have his thoughts, men were always thinking, and would be -expecting her to be animated and entertaining. Lumpishly she had begun -about the dullness of the beach and promenade on Sundays and the need to -find something to do between dinner and tea--lies. All conversation was -a lie. And somehow she had led him to his funny German remark. - -“How do you mean?” she said at last anxiously. It was very rude -intruding upon him like that. He had spoken quite simply. She ought to -have laughed and changed the conversation. But it was no laughing -matter. He did not know what he was saying or how horribly it hurt. A -worldly girl would chaff and make fun of him. It was detestable to make -fun of men; just a way of flirting. But Sarah said that being rude to -men or talking seriously to them was flirting just as much. Not true. -Not true. And yet it was true, she did want to feel happy walking along -with this man, have some sort of good understanding with him, him as a -man with her as a woman. Was that flirting? If so she was just a more -solemn underhand flirt than the others, that was all. She felt very sad. -Anyhow she had asked her question now. She looked at his profile. -Perhaps he would put her off in some way. Then she would walk slower and -slower until Harriett and Gerald caught them up and come home walking -four in a row, taking Harriett’s arm. His face had remained quite -expressionless. - -“Well,” he said at length in his slow well-modulated tone, “I always -take care to get out of the way when there are any young ladies about.” - -“When do you mean?” _I_ didn’t ask you to come, _I_ don’t want to talk -to you you food-loving, pipe-loving, comfort-loving beast, she thought. -But it would be impossible to finish the holiday and go back to the -school with this strange statement uninvestigated. - -“Well, when my sisters have young ladies in in the evening I always get -out of the way.” - -Ah, thought Miriam, you are one of those men who flirt with servants and -shop-girls ... perhaps those awful women.... Either she must catch Eve -up or wait for Harriett ... not be alone any longer with this man. - -“I see. You simply run away from them,” she said scornfully; “go out for -a walk or something.” A small Brixton sitting-room full of Brixton -girls--Gerald said that Brixton was something too chronic for words, -just like Clapham, and there was that joke about the man who said he -would not go to heaven even if he had the chance because of the strong -Clapham contingent that would be there--after all ... - -“I go and sit in my room.” - -“Oh,” said Miriam brokenly, “in the winter? Without a fire?” - -Mr. Parrow laughed. “I don’t mind about that. I wrap myself up and get a -book.” - -“What sort of book?” - -“I’ve got a few books of my own; and there’s generally something worth -reading in ‘Tit-Bits.’” - -How did he manage to look so refined and cultured? Those girls were -quite good enough for him, probably too good. But he would go on -despising them and one of them would marry him and give him beef-steak -puddings. And here he was walking by the sea in the sunlight, confessing -his suspicions and fears and going back to Brixton. - -“You’ll have to marry one of those young ladies one day,” she said -abruptly. - -“That’s out of the question, even if I was a marrying man.” - -“Nonsense,” said Miriam, as they turned down the little pathway leading -towards the village. Poor man, how cruel to encourage him to take up -with one of those giggling dressy girls. - -“D’you mean to say you’ve been never specially interested in anybody?” - -“Yes. I never have.” - - - 2 - -Ovingdean had to be faced. They were going to look at Ovingdean and then -walk back to the boarding-house to tea. Now that she knew all about his -home-life she would not be able to meet his eyes across the table. Two -tired elm trees stood one on either side of the road at the entrance to -the village. Here they all gathered and then went forward in a strolling -party. - -When they turned at last to walk home and fell again into couples as -before, Miriam searched her empty mind for something to say about the -dim, cool musty church, the strange silent deeps of it there amongst the -great green downs, the waiting chairs, the cold empty pulpit and the -little cold font, and the sunlit front of the old Grange where King -Charles had taken refuge. Mr. Parrow would know she was speaking -insincerely if she said anything about these things. There was a long, -long walk ahead. For some time they walked in silence. “D’you know -anything about architecture?” she said at last angrily ... cruel silly -question. Of course he didn’t. But men she walked with ought to know -about architecture and be able to tell her things. - -“No. That’s a subject I don’t know anything about.” - -“D’you like churches?” - -“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it.” - -“Then you probably don’t.” - -“Oh, well, I don’t know about that. I don’t see any objection to them.” - -“Then you’re probably an atheist.” - -“I don’t know, I’m sure.” - -“Do you go to church?” - -“I can’t say I do in the usual way, unless I’m on a holiday.” - -“Perhaps you go for walks instead?” - -“Well, I generally stay in bed and have a rest.” - -That dreadful room with the dreadful man hiding in it and reading -“Tit-Bits” and staying in bed in it on bright Sunday mornings. - -How heavily they were treading on the orange and yellow faces of the Tom -Thumbs scattered over the short green grass. - -“How much do you think people could marry on?” said Mr. Parrow suddenly -in a thin voice. - -“Oh well, that depends on who they are.” - -“I suppose it does do that.” - -“And where they are going to live.” - -“D’you think anyone could marry on a hundred and fifty?” - -“Of course,” said Miriam emphatically, mentally shivering over the -vision of a tiresome determined cheerful woman with a thin pinched -reddish nose, an everlasting grey hat and a faded ulster going on year -after year; two or three common children she would never be able to -educate, with horribly over-developed characters. It was rather less -than the rent of their house. “Of course, everything would depend on the -woman,” she said wisely. After all a hundred and fifty, with no doubt -and anxiety about it was a very wonderful thing to have. Probably -everybody was wasteful, buying the wrong things and silly things, -ornaments and brooches and serviette rings; ... and not thinking things -out and not putting things down in books and not really enjoying -managing the hundred and fifty and always wanting more. It ought to be -quite jolly being thoroughly common and living in a small way and having -common neighbours doing the same. - -“But you think if a man could find a young lady who could agree about -prices it would be possible.” - -“Of course it would.” - -The houses on the eastern ridges of Brighton came into sight in the -distance and stood blazing in the sunlight. There was a high half -broken-down piece of fencing at the edge of the cliff to their left a -little ahead of them, splintered and sunlit. - -“How much a week is a hundred and fifty a year?” - -“Three pound.” - -They gravitated towards the fence and stood vaguely near it looking out -across the unruffled glare of the open sea. Why had she always thought -that the bright blue and gold ripples seen from the beach and the -promenade on jolly weekdays was the best of the sea? It was much more -lovely up there, the great expanse in its quiet Sunday loneliness. You -could see and think about far-off things instead of just dreaming on the -drowsy hot sands, seeing nothing but the rippling stripes of bright blue -and bright gold. She put her elbows on the upper bar. Mr. Parrow did the -same and they stood gazing out across the open sea--Mr. Parrow was -probably wondering how long they were going to stand silently there and -thinking about his tea ... of course; let him stand--until Eve’s voice -sounded near them in a dimpling laugh. They walked home in a row, Eve -and Mr. Green in the centre, asking riddles one against the other. Every -time Miriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made some little responsive -sound. - - - 3 - -When Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow went back to London at the end of the week -Eve and Miriam saw them off at the station. The four went off boldly -together down the flight of white stone steps and made their way up into -the town. - -“Good-bye,” called Miss Meldrum affectionately from the doorway. “I -shall send both of you a copy of the photograph.” - -“It’s most generous of Miss Meldrum to go to all that expense to give us -a pleasant memento,” said Mr. Green in his small ringing voice as they -all swung out into the clean bare roadway. Miriam felt as if they were a -bit of the photograph walking up the hill, and went freely and -confidently along with a sense of being steered and guided by Miss -Meldrum. Why had she had the group taken--so odd and bold of her, having -the photographer waiting in the garden for them before they had finished -breakfast, and then laughing and talking and pushing them all about as -if they were her dearest friends. It was whilst they were all out in the -garden together, hanging about and being arranged, with the -photographer’s voice like the voice of a ventriloquist, knocking them -coldly about, that Gerald and Mr. Green had arranged about the evening -at the Crystal Palace on the last day of Miriam’s holiday. Miriam had -held back from the group, feeling nervous about her hair, there had been -no time to go to their rooms, and had forced Eve to do the same. -Harriett, with a cheerful shiny face, was sitting on the grass with -Gerald in a line with the traveller from Robinson and Cleaver’s, and his -thin-voiced sheeny-haired mocking fiancée. They all looked very small -and bald. The fiancée kept clearing her throat and rearranging her smart -feet and rattling her bangles. The traveller’s heavy waxed moustache was -crooked and his slippery blue eyes looked like the eyes of an old man. -Next to him were two newly arrived restively sneering young men, one on -either side of the saintly-faced florist’s assistant from Wigmore -Street, who sat in an easy pose with her skirt draping gracefully over -her feet and her long white chin propped on her hands. She looked -reproachfully about amongst the laughing and talking and seemed to feel -that they were all in church. - -Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald Scotch chemists who went -out every evening to look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from -Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey curls bunched in a -cherry-coloured velvet band seemed to say “death--death” to Miriam more -dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than when she suddenly caught -sight of them at table, sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the -squatters on the grass. At the last moment she and Eve were obliged to -fall in at the back of the group with Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow, and now -the four of them were walking in a row up the staring white hill with -the evening at the Crystal Palace ahead of them in far-away London. It -was quite right. They were being like ‘other people.’ People met and -made friends and arranged to meet again. And then things happened. It -was quite right and ordinary and safe and warm. Of course Eve and Mr. -Green must meet again. He was evidently quite determined that they -should. That was what was carrying them all so confidently up the hill. -Perhaps he would in the end turn into another Gerald. When they turned -off into the unfamiliar Brighton streets Eve and Mr. Green went on -ahead. Walking quickly in step along the narrow pavement amongst the -unconcerned Brighton townspeople they looked so small and pitiful. - - - 4 - -The brilliant sunlight showed up all the shabbiness of Mr. Green’s -London suit. He looked even smaller than he did in his holiday tweed. -Miriam wanted to call to them and stop them, stop Eve’s bright figure -and her mop of thickly twisted brown hair and ask her what she was -dreaming of, leave the two men there and go back, go out away alone with -Eve down to the edge of the sea. She hesitated in her walking, not -daring even to glance at her companion who was trudging along with bent -head, carrying his large brown leather bag. The street was crowded and -she manoeuvred so that everyone they met should pass between them. -Perhaps they would be able to reach the station without being obliged to -speak to each other. Parrow. It was either quite a nice name or pitiful; -like a child trying to say sparrow. Did he know that to other people it -was a strange, important sort of name, rounded like the padding in the -shoulders of his coat and his blunted features? - -Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single person in the world. If he -were run over and killed on the way to the station, nobody would ever -have known anything about him.... People did die like that ... probably -most people; in a minute, alone and unknown; too late to speak. - -Something was coming slowly down the middle of the roadway from amongst -the confusion of the distant traffic; an elephant--a large grey -elephant. Firmly delicately undisturbed by the noise of the street, the -huge crimson gold-braided howdah it carried on its back, and the -strange, coloured things coming along behind it, the thickening of -people on the pavement and the suddenly increased noise of the town, it -came stepping. It was wonderful. “Wise and beautiful! Wise and -beautiful!” cried a voice far away in Miriam’s brain. It’s a circus said -another voice within her.... He doesn’t know he’s in a circus.... She -hurried forward to reach Eve. Eve turned a flushed face. “I _say_; it’s -a circus,” said Miriam bitingly. The blare of a band broke out farther -up the street. People were jostled against them by a clown who came -bounding and leaping his way along the crowded pavement crying -incoherent words with a thrilling blatter of laughter. The elephant was -close upon them alone in the road space cleared by its swinging walk.... -If only everyone would be quiet they could hear the soft padding of its -feet. Slowly, gently, modestly it went by followed by a crowd of smaller -things; sad-eyed monkeys on horseback in gold coatlets, sullen caged -beasts on trolleys drawn by beribboned unblinkered human-looking horses, -tall white horses pacing singly by, bearing bobbing princesses and men -in masks and cloaks. - - - 5 - -Here and there in the long sunlit hours of the holiday by the Brighton -sea Miriam found the far-away seaside holidays of her childhood. Going -out one afternoon with Eve and Miss Stringer walking at Eve’s side, -listening to the conversation of the two girls, she had felt when they -reached the deserted end of the esplanade and proposed turning round and -walking home, an uncontrollable desire to be alone, and had left them, -impatiently, without a word of excuse and gone on down the grey stone -steps and out among the deserted weed-grown sapphire-pooled chalk -hummocks at the foot of the cliffs. For a while she was chased by little -phrases from Miss Stringer’s quiet talking--“if you want people to be -interested in you, you must be interested in them”; “you can get on with -everybody if you make up your mind to”--and by the memory of her -well-hung clothes and her quiet regular features spoilt by the nose that -Gerald said was old-maidish, and her portmanteau full of finery, -unpacked on the first-floor landing outside the tiny room she -occupied--piles of underlinen startlingly threaded with ribbons. - -At the end of half an hour’s thoughtless wandering over the weed-grown -rocks she found herself sitting on a little patch of dry silt at the end -of a promontory of sea-smoothed hummocks with the pools of bright -blue-green fringed water all about her watching the gentle rippling of -the retreating waves over the weedy lower levels. She seemed long to -have been listening and watching, her mind was full of things she felt -she would never forget, the green-capped white faces of the cliffs, a -patch of wet sand dotted with stiffly waiting seagulls, the more distant -wavelets ink black and golden pouring in over the distant hummocks, the -curious whispering ripples near her feet. She must go back. Her mind -slid out making a strange half-familiar compact with all these things. -She was theirs, she would remember them all, always. They were not alone -because she was with them and knew them. She had always known them she -reflected, remembering with a quick pang a long, unpermitted wandering -out over the cliff edge beyond Dawlish, the sun shining on pinkish sandy -scrub, the expression of the bushes; hurrying home with the big rough -spaniel that belonged to the house they had hired. She must have been -about six years old. She had gone back with a secret, telling them -nothing of the sunlight or the bushes, only of a strange lady, sitting -on the jetty as she came down over the sands, who had caught her in her -arms and horribly kissed her. She had forgotten the lady and been so -happy when she reached home that no one had scolded her. And when they -questioned her it seemed that there was only the lady to tell them -about. Her mother had looked at her and kissed her. And now she must go -back again, and say nothing. The strange promise, the certainty she felt -out here on the rocks must be taken back to the Brighton front and the -boarding-house. It would disappear as soon as she got back. Here on the -Brighton rocks it was not so strong as it had been in Dawlish. And it -would disappear more completely. There had been during the intervening -years holidays with Sarah and Eve and Harriett in seaside lodgings, over -which the curious conviction that possessed her now had spread like a -filmy veil. But now it would hardly ever come; there were always people -talking, the strangers one worked for, or the hard new people like Miss -Stringer, people who had a number of things they were always saying. - -She tried to remember when the strange independent joy had begun and -thought she could trace it back to a morning in the garden at Babington, -the first thing she could remember, when she had found herself toddling -alone along the garden path between beds of flowers almost on a level -with her head and blazing in the sunlight. Bees with large bodies were -sailing heavily across the path from bed to bed, passing close by her -head and making a loud humming in the air. She could see the flowers -distinctly as she walked quickly back through the afternoon throng on -the esplanade; they were sweet williams and “everlasting” flowers, the -sweet williams smelling very strongly sweet in her nostrils, and one -sheeny brown everlasting flower that she had touched with her nose, -smelling like hot paper. - - - 6 - -She wanted to speak to someone of these things. Until she could speak to -someone about them she must always be alone. Always quite alone, she -thought, looking out as she walked across the busy stretch of sea -between the two piers, dotted with pleasure boats. It would be -impossible to speak to anyone about them unless one felt perfectly sure -that the other person felt about them in the same way and knew that they -were more real than anything else in the world, knew that everything -else was a fuss about nothing. But everybody else seemed to be really -interested in the fuss. That was the extraordinary thing. Miss Meldrum -presiding at the boarding-house table with her white padded hair and her -white face and bright steady brown eyes, listening to everybody and -making jokes with everybody and keeping things going, sometimes looked -as if she knew it was all a pretence, but if you spoke to her she would -think you were talking about religion and would kiss you. She had -already kissed Miriam once--for playing accompaniments to the hymns on a -Sunday evening, and made her feel as if there were some sly secret -between them. If she played the hymns again she would play them stonily -... mother would look as she always did if you suddenly began to talk -anything about things in general as if you were going to make some -confession she had been waiting for all her life. Now, with the -operation and all the uncertainty ahead she would probably cry. She -would want to explain in some way, as she had done one day long ago; how -dreadful it had been ... mother, I never feel tired, not really tired, -and however I behave I always feel frightfully happy inside ... my -blessed chick, it’s your splendid health--and the influence of the Holy -Spirit.... But I hate everybody.... What foolish nonsense. You mustn’t -think such things. You will make yourself unpopular.... - -She must keep her secret to herself. This Brighton life crushed it back -more than anything there had been in Germany or at Banbury Park. In -Germany she had found it again and again, and at Banbury Park, though it -could never come out and surround her, it was never far off. It lurked -just beyond the poplars in the park, at the end of the little empty -garden at twilight, amongst the books in the tightly packed bookcase. It -was here, too, in and out the sunlit days. As one opened the door of the -large, sparely furnished breakfast-room it shone for a moment in the -light pouring over the table full of seated forms; it haunted the -glittering scattered sand round about the little blank platform where -the black and white minstrels stood singing in front of their harmonium, -and poured out across the blaze of blue and gold sea ripples, when the -town band played Anitra’s Dance or the moon song from the Mikado; it lay -all along the deserted promenade and roadway as you went home to lunch, -and at night it spoke in the flump flump of the invisible sea against -the lower woodwork of the pier pavilion. - - - 7 - -But every day at breakfast over the eggs, bacon and tomatoes--knowing -voices began their day’s talking, the weary round of words and ugly -laughter went steadily on, narrow horrible sounds that made you feel -conscious of the insides of people’s throats and the backs of their -noses--as if they were not properly formed. The talk was like a silly -sort of battle.... Innuendo, Miriam would say to herself, feeling that -the word was too beautiful for what she wanted to express; _double -entendre_ was also unsatisfactory. These people were all enemies -pretending to be friends. Why did they pretend? Why not keep quiet? Or -all sing between their eating, different songs, it would not matter. She -and Eve and Harriett and Gerald did sometimes hum the refrains of the -nigger minstrels’ songs, or one of them would hum a scrap of a solo and -all three sing the chorus. Then people were quiet, listening and smiling -their evil smiles and Miss Meldrum was delighted. It seemed improper and -half-hearted as no one else joined in; but after the first few days the -four of them always sang between the courses at dinner. Gerald did not -seem to mind the chaffy talk and the vulgar jokes, and would generally -join in; and he said strange disturbing things about the boarders, as if -he knew all about them. And he and Harriett talked to the niggers too -and found out about them. It spoilt them when one knew that they -belonged to small London musical halls, and had wives and families and -illnesses and trouble. Gerald and Harriett did not seem to mind this. -They did not seem to mind anything out of doors. They were free and hard -and contemptuous of everyone except the niggers and a few very -stylish-looking people who sailed along and took no notice of anybody. -Gerald said extraordinary, disturbing things about the girls on the -esplanade. Miriam and Eve were interested in some of the young men they -saw. They talked about them and looked out for them. Sometimes they -exchanged glances with them. Were she and Eve also “on show”; waiting to -be given “half an inch”; would she or Eve be “perfectly awful in the -dark”? Did the young men they specially favoured with their notice say -things about them? When these thoughts buzzed about in Miriam’s brain -she wanted to take a broom and sweep everybody into the sea.... She -discovered that a single steady unexpected glance, meeting her own, from -a man who had the right kind of bearing--something right about the set -of the shoulders--could disperse all the vague trouble she felt at the -perpetual spectacle of the strolling crowds, the stiffly waiting -many-eyed houses, the strange stupid bathing-machines, and send her -gaily forward in a glad world where there was no need to be alone in -order to be happy. A second encounter was sad, shameful, ridiculous; the -man became absurd and lost his dignity; the joyous sense of looking -through him right out and away to an endless perspective, of being told -that the endlessness was there and telling that the endlessness was -there had gone; the eyes were eyes, solid and mocking and helpless--to -be avoided in future; and when they had gone, the sunset or the curious -quivering line along the horizon were no longer gateways, but hard -barriers, until by some chance one was tranquilly alone again--when the -horizon would beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across the sea at -sunset call to your feet until they tingled and ached. - -Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the sea and of the evenings and -mornings must be given up. It would fade more and more. What was life? -Either playing a part all the time in order to be amongst people in the -warm or standing alone with the strange true real feeling--alone with a -sort of edge of reality on everything; even on quite ugly common -things--cheap boarding-houses face towels and blistered window frames. - - - 8 - -Since Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow had left, they had given up going to pier -entertainments and had spent most of their time sitting in a close row -and talking together, in the intervals of the black and white minstrel -concerts and the performances of the town band. They had drifted into -this way of spending their time; there was never any discussion or -alteration of the day’s programme. It worked like a charm and there was -no sign of the breaking of the charm. Miriam was sometimes half afraid -just as they settled themselves down that someone, probably Gerald or -Eve might say ‘Funny, isn’t it, how well we four get on,’ and that -strange power that held them together and kept everything away would be -broken before the holiday came to an end. But no one did and they went -on sitting together in the morning on the hot sand--the moving living -glinting sand that took the sting as soon as you touched it with your -hand out of everything there might be in the latest letter from -home--hearing the niggers from ten to eleven, bathing from eleven to -twelve, sitting afterwards fresh and tingling and drowsy in canopied -chairs near the band until dinner-time, prowling and paddling in the -afternoon and ranging themselves again in chairs for the evening. - -They said nothing until almost the end of their time about the passage -of the days; but they looked at each other, each time they settled down, -with conspiring smiles and then sat, side by side, less visible to each -other than the great sunlit sea or the great clean salt darkness, -stranded in a row with four easy idle laughing commenting voices, away -alone and safe in the gaiety of the strong forgetful air--talking things -over. The far-away troublesome crooked things, all cramped and painful -and puzzling came out one by one and were shaken and tossed away along -the clean wind. And there was so much for Gerald to hear. He wanted to -hear everything--any little thing--“Just like a girl; it’s awfully jolly -for Harry he’s like that. She’ll never be lonely,” agreed Miriam and Eve -privately.... “He’s a perfect dear.” One night towards the end of their -time they talked of the future. It had begun to press on them. There -seemed no more time for brooding even over Eve’s fascinating little -pictures of life in the big country house, or Miriam’s stories and -legends of Germany--she said very little about Banbury Park fearing the -amazement and disgust of the trio if anything of the reality of North -London should reach them through her talk and guessing the impossibility -of their realising the Pernes--or Gerald’s rich memories of the opulence -of his early home life, an atmosphere of spending and operas and -banquets and receptions and distinguished people. During the evening, in -a silent interval, just as the band was tuning up to begin its last -tune, Gerald had said with quiet emphasis, “Well, anyhow, girls, you -mark my words the old man won’t make any more money. Not another penny. -You may as well make up your minds to that.” Then the band had broken -into their favourite Hungarian dance. Three of them sat blissfully back -in their deck chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably propped forward, -eagerly thinking. The music rushed on, she saw dancers shining before -her in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shouting, their feet -scarcely touching the earth and a wild light darted about them as they -shouted and leapt. “Set Mirry up in some sort of business,” quoted her -mind from one of Gerald’s recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not -want that. But the dancing forms told her of the absurdity of going back -without protest to the long aching days of teaching in the little school -amongst those dreadful voices which were going, whatever she did for -them, to be dreadful all their lives. Nothing she could do would make -any difference to them. They did not want her. They were quite happy. -Her feelings and thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire for -space and beautiful things and music and quietude would never be their -desire. Reverence for things--had she reverence? She felt she must have -because she knew they had not; even the old people; only superstition -... North London would always be North London, hard, strong, sneering, -money-making, noisy and trammy. Perhaps the difference between the north -and the south and her own south-west of London was like the difference -between the north and the south of England.... Green’s “History of the -English People” ... spinning-jennys began in the Danish north, hard and -cold, with later sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace. North -London meant twenty pounds a year and the need for resignation and -determination every day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge garden -and new books and music ... a book called “Music and Morals” and -interesting people staying in the house. And Eve had not been to Germany -and could not talk French. “You are an idiot to go on doing it. It’s -wrong. Lazy,” laughed the dancers crowding and flinging all round her. -“I ought,” she responded defiantly, “to stay on and make myself into a -certificated teacher.” “Certificated?” they screamed wildly sweeping -before her in strange lines of light. “If you do you will be like Miss -Cramp. Certificates--little conceited papers, and you dead. Certificates -would finish you off--Kill--Kill--Kill--_Kill_--_Kill!!_” Bang. The band -stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair wounding her flesh. The -trail of the dancers flickered away across the sea and her brain was -busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne: “and therefore I am obliged, -however reluctantly, to take this step, as it is absolutely necessary -for me to earn a larger salary at once.” - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - - 1 - -The Henderson party found Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim -plank-floored corridor leading from the station to the main building of -the Crystal Palace. When the quiet greetings were over and they had -arranged a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case any of the -party should be lost, they all tramped on up the resounding corridor. -Miriam found herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow. They were -going on up the corridor, through the Palace and out into the summer -evening. They had all come to go out into the summer evening and see the -fireworks. All but she had come meaning to get quite near to the ‘set -pieces’ and to look at them. She had not said anything about meaning to -get as far away from the fireworks as possible. She had been trusting to -Mr. Parrow for that. Now that she was with him she felt that perhaps it -was not quite fair. He had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would -be disappointed. She would be obliged to tell him presently, when they -got out into the night. They were all tramping quickly up along the -echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking, just feet, tramp, tramp -on the planking, rather quickly. It was like the sound of workmen’s feet -on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house. The corridor was like -something in the Hospital for Incurables ... that strange old woman -sitting in the hall with bent head laughing over her crochet, and Miss -Garrett whom they had come to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in -a ward, with a pleated mob cap all over the top of her head and half-way -down her forehead, sitting back against large square pillows with her -hands clasped on the neat bed-clothes and a “sweet, patient” look on her -face, coughing gently and spitting, spitting herself to death ... -rushing away out of the ward to wait for mother downstairs in the hall -with the curious smells and the dreadful old woman.... What was it, -chick?... Sick, mother, I felt sick, I couldn’t stay. It was rage; rage -with that dreadful old woman. People probably told her she was patient -and sweet, and she had got that trick of putting her head on one side. -She was not sweet. She was one of the worst of those dreadful people who -would always make people believe in a particular way, all the time. She -had a great big frame. If she had done anything but sit as she sat, in -that particular way, one could have stayed. - -They were all standing looking at some wonderful sort of clock, a -calendar-clock--‘a triumph of ingenuity,’ said Mr. Green’s bright reedy -voice. The building had opened out and rushed up, people were passing to -and fro. “We don’t want to stay inside; let’s go out,” said Gerald. The -group broke into couples again and passed on. Miriam found herself with -Mr. Parrow once more. Of course she would be with him all the evening. -She must tell him at once about the fireworks. She ought not to have -come, if she did not mean to see the fireworks. It was mean and feeble -to cheat him out of his evening. Why had she come; to wander about with -him, not seeing the fireworks. What an idiotic and abominable thing. Now -that she was here at his side it was quite clear that she must endure -the fireworks. Anything else would be like asking him to wander about -with her alone. She did not want to wander about with him alone. She -took an opportunity of joining Eve for a moment. They had just walked -through a winter garden and were standing at the door of a concert room, -all quite silent and looking very shy. “Eve,” she said hurriedly in a -low tone, “d’you want to see the beastly fireworks?” - -“Beastly? Oh, of course, I do,” said Eve in a rather loud embarrassed -tone. How dreadfully self-conscious they all were. Somebody seemed to be -speaking. “What _sticks_ my family are--I had no idea,” muttered Miriam -furiously into Eve’s face. Eve’s eyes filled with tears, but she stood -perfectly still, saying nothing. Miriam wheeled round and stared into -the empty concert room. It was filled with a faint bluish light and -beyond the rows of waiting chairs and the empty platform a huge organ -stood piled up towards the roof. The party were moving on. What a queer -place the Crystal Palace is ... what a perfectly horrible place for a -concert ... pianissimo passages and those feet on those boards tramping -about outside.... What a silly muddle. Mr. Parrow was waiting for her to -join the others. They straggled along past booths and stalls, meeting -groups of people, silent and lost like themselves. Now they were passing -some kind of stonework things, reliefs, antique, roped off like the -seats in a church. Just in front of them a short man holding the red -cord in his hands was looking at a group with some ladies. “_Why_,” he -said suddenly in a loud cheerful voice, stretching an arm out across the -rope and pointing to one of the reliefs, “it’s Auntie and Grandma!” -Miriam stared at him as they passed, he was so short, shorter than any -of the ladies he was with. “It’s the only way to see these things,” he -said in the same loud harsh cheerful voice. Miriam laughed aloud. What a -clever man. - -“Do you like statues?” said Mr. Parrow in a low gentle tone. - -“I don’t know anything about them,” said Miriam. - -“I can’t bear fireworks,” she said hurriedly. - -They were in the open at last. In the deepening twilight many people -were going to and fro. In the distance soft dark masses of trees stood -out against the sky in every direction. Not far away the ghostly frames -of the set pieces reared against the sky made the open evening seem as -prison-like as the enclosure they had just left. Round about the -scaffolding of these pieces dense little crowds were collecting. - -“Don’t you want to see the fireworks?” - -“I want to get away from them.” - -“All right, we’ll get lost at once.” - -“It isn’t,” she explained a little breathlessly, in relief, suddenly -respecting him, allowing him to thread a way for her through the -increasing crowd towards the open evening, “that I don’t want to see the -fireworks, but I simply can’t stand the noise.” - -“I see,” laughed Mr. Parrow gently. They were making towards the open -evening along a narrow gravel pathway, like a garden pathway. Miriam -hurried a little, fearing that the fireworks might begin before they got -to a safe distance. - -“I never have been able to stand a sudden noise. It’s torture to me to -walk along a platform where a train may suddenly shriek.” - -“I see. You’re afraid of the noise.” - -“It isn’t fear--I can’t describe it. It’s agony. It’s like pain. But -much much worse than pain. It’s--it’s--annihilating.” - -“I see; that’s very peculiar.” - -Their long pathway was leading them towards a sweet-scented density, dim -bowers and leafy arches appeared just ahead. - -“It was much worse even than it is now when I was a little thing. When -we went to the seaside I used to sit in the train nearly dead until it -had screamed and started. And there was a teacher who sneezed--a noise -like a hard scream--at school. She used to go on sneezing--twenty times -or so. I was only six and I dreaded going to school just for that. Once -I cried and they took me out of the room. I’ve never told anyone. Nobody -knows.” - -“You’ve told me.” - -“Yes.” - -“It’s very interesting. You shan’t go anywhere near the fireworks.” - - - 2 - -A large rosy flare, wavering steadily against the distant trees showed -up for a moment the shapes and traceries of climbing plants surrounding -their retreat. A moment afterwards with a dull boom a group of white -stars shot up into the air and hovered, melting one by one as the crowd -below moaned and crackled its applause. - -Miriam laughed abruptly. “That’s jolly. How clever people are. But it’s -much better up here. It’s like not being too near at the theatre.” - -“I think we’ve got the best view certainly.” - -“But we shall miss the set pieces.” - -“The people down there won’t see the rosary.” - -“What’s that black thing on our left down there?” - -“That’s the toboggan run. We ought to go on that.” - -“What is it like?” - -“It’s fine; you just rush down. We must try it.” - -“Not for worlds.” - -Mr. Parrow laughed. “Oh you must try the toboggan; there’s no noise -about that.” - -“I really couldn’t.” - -“Really?” - -“Absolutely. I mean it. Nothing under the sun would induce me to go on a -toboggan.” - -They sat watching the fireworks until they were tired of the whistling -rockets, showers of stars and golden rain, the flaming bolts that shot -up from the Battle of the Nile, the fizzlings and fire spurtings of the -set pieces and the recurrent moanings and faint patterings of applause -from the crowd. - -“I wish they’d do some more coloured flares of light up the trees like -they did at first. It was beautiful--more real than these things. ‘Feu -d’artifice’ artificial fire--all these noisy things. Why do people -always like a noise? Men. All the things men have invented, trains and -cannons and things make a frightful noise.” - -“The toboggan’s not noisy. Come and try the toboggan.” - -“Oh no.” - -“Well--there’s the lake down there. We might have a boat.” - -“Do you know how to manage a boat?” - -“I’ve been on once or twice; if you like to try I’ll manage.” - -“No; it’s too dark.” What a plucky man. But the water looked cold. And -perhaps he would be really stupid. - -A solitary uniformed man was yawning and whistling at the top of the -deserted toboggan run. The faint light of a lamp fell upon the square -platform and the little sled standing in place at the top of a shiny -slope which shot steeply down into blackness. - -“We’d better get on,” said Miriam trembling. - -“Well, you’re very graceful at giving in,” remarked Mr. Parrow, handing -her into the sled and settling with the man. - -He got that sentence out of a book, thought Miriam wildly as she heard -the man behind them say “Ready? Off you go!” ... Out of a book a book a -book--_Oh_--_ooooh_--how ab_solutely_ glorious, she yelled as they shot -down through the darkness. _Oh_, she squealed into the face laughing and -talking beside her. She turned away, shouting, for the final rush, they -were flying--involuntarily her hand flung out, they were tearing -headlong into absolute darkness, and was met and firmly clasped. They -shot slackening up a short incline and stood up still hand in hand, -laughing incoherently. - -“Let’s walk back and try again,” said Mr. Parrow. - -“Oh no; I enjoyed it most frightfully; but we mustn’t go again. Besides, -it must be fearfully late.” - -She pulled at her hand. The man was too near and too big. His hand was -not a bit uncertain like his speech, and for a moment she was glad that -she pulled in vain. “Very well,” said Mr. Parrow, “but we must find our -way off the grass and strike the pathway.” Drawing her gently along, he -peered about for the track. “Let me go,” said her hand dragging gently -at his. “No” said the firm enclosure, tightening “not yet.” What does it -matter? flashed her mind. Why should I be such a prude? The hand gave -her confidence. It was firm and strong and perfectly serious. It was a -hand like her own hand and comfortingly strange and different. Gently -and slowly he guided her over the dewy grass. The air that had rushed so -wildly by them a few minutes ago was still and calm and friendly; the -distant crowd harmless and insignificant. The fireworks were over. The -pathway they had missed appeared under their feet and down it they -walked soberly, well apart, but still hand in hand until they reached -the borders of the dispersing crowd. - - - - - CHAPTER X - - - 1 - -When Miriam sat talking everything over with the Pernes at supper, on -the first night of the term, detached for ever from the things that -engrossed them, the school-work, Julia Doyle’s future, the peculiarities -of the visiting teachers, the problem of the “unnatural infatuation” of -two of the boarders with each other, the pros and cons of a -revolutionary plan for taking the girls in parties to the principal -London museums, she made the most of her triumphant assertion that she -had absolutely nothing in view. She found herself decorously waiting, -armed at all points, through the silent interval while the Pernes took -in the facts of her adventurous renunciation. She knew at once that she -would have to be desperately determined.... But after all they could not -do anything with her. - -Sitting there, in the Perne boat, still taking an oar and determined to -fling herself into the sea ... she ought not to have told them she was -leaving them just desperately, without anything else in prospect; -because they were so good, not like employers. They would all feel for -her. It was just like speaking roughly at home. Well, it was done. She -glanced about. Miss Haddie, across the table behind her habitual bowl of -bread and milk had a face--the face of a child surprised by injustice. -‘I was right--I was right,’ Miriam gasped to herself as the light flowed -in. ‘I’m escaping--just in time.... Emotional tyranny.... What a good -expression ... that’s the secret of Miss Haddie. It was awful. She’s -lost me. I’m free. Emotional tyranny.’ ... ‘My hat, Mirry, you’re beyond -me. How much do you charge for that one. Say it again,’ she seemed to -hear Gerald’s friendly voice. Go away Gerald. True. True. All the truth -and meaning of her friendship with Miss Haddie in one single flash. How -_fearfully_ interesting life was. Miss Haddie wrestling with her, -fighting for her soul; praying for her, almost driving her to the early -service and always ready to quiver over her afterwards and to ask her if -she had been happy.... And now angry because she was escaping. - -She appealed to Miss Deborah and met a flash of her beautiful soft -piercing eyes. Her delicate features quivered and wrinkled almost to a -smile. But Miss Deborah was afraid of Miss Jenny who was already -thinking and embarking on little sounds. Miriam got away for a moment in -a tumult, with Miss Deborah. ‘Oh,’ she shouted to her in the depths of -her heart, ‘you are heavenly young. You _know_. Life’s like Robinson -Crusoe. Your god’s a great big Robinson Crusoe. You know that anything -may happen any minute. And it’s all right.’ She laughed and shook -staring at the salt-cellar and then across at Miss Haddie whose eyes -were full of dark fear. Miss Haddie was alone and outraged. ‘She thinks -I’m a fraud besides being vulgar ... life goes on and she’ll wonder and -wonder about me puzzled and alone.’ ... She smiled at her her broadest, -happiest, home smile, one she had never yet reached at Banbury Park. -Flushing scarlet Miss Haddie smiled in return. - -“Eh--my dear girl,” Miss Jenny was saying diffidently at her side, -“isn’t it a little unwise--very unwise--under the circumstances--with -the difficulties--well, in fact with all ye’ve just told us--have ye -thought?” When Miriam reached her broad smile Miss Jenny stopped and -suddenly chuckled. “My _dear_ Miriam! I don’t know. I suppose we don’t -know ye. I suppose we haven’t really known ye as ye are. But come, have -ye thought it out? No, ye haven’t,” she ended gravely, looking along the -table and flicking with her forefinger the end of her little red nose. - -Miriam glanced at her profile and her insecure disorderly bunch of hair. -Miss Jenny was formidable. She would recommend certificates. Her eye -wavered towards Miss Deborah. - -“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Deborah promptly, “Miriam is not a child. She -must do as she thinks best.” - -“But don’t ye see my point, my dear Deborah? I don’t say she’s a child. -She’s a madcap. That’s it.” She paused. “Of course I daresay she’ll fall -on her feet. Ye’re a most extraordinary gel. I don’t know. Of course ye -can come _back_--or stay here in yer holidays. Ye know _that_, my dear,” -she concluded, suddenly softening her sharp little voice. - -“I don’t _want_ to go,” cried Miriam with tear-filled eyes. They were -one person in the grip of a decision. Miss Haddie sat up and moved her -elbows about. All four pairs of eyes held tears. - -“My dear--I wish we could give ye more, Miriam,” murmured Miss Jenny; -“we don’t want to lose ye, ye’ve pulled the lower school together in a -remarkable way”; Miss Deborah was drawing little breaths of protest at -this descent into gross detail; “the children are interested. We hear -that from the parents. We shall be able to give ye excellent -testimonials.” - -“Oh, I don’t care about that,” responded Miriam desperately. -‘Fancy--Great Scott--parents--behind all my sore throats--I’ve never -heard about that. It’s all coming out now,’ she thought. - -“Well--my dear--now----” began Miss Jenny hesitatingly. Feeling herself -slipping, Miriam clung harshly to her determination and drew herself up -to offer the set of the pretty blouse Gerald and Harriett had bought her -in Brighton as a seal on her irrevocable decision to break with Banbury -Park. It was a delicate sheeny green silk, with soft tuckers. - -“What steps have ye taken?” asked Miss Jenny in a quizzical -business-like tone. - -“It’s very kind of you,” said Miriam formally, and went on to hint -vaguely and convincingly at the existence of some place in a family in -the country that would be sure to fall to her lot through the many -friends to whom Eve had written on her behalf, turning away from the -feast towards the freedom of the untenanted part of the room. The -sitting had to be brought to an end.... In a moment she would be utterly -routed.... Her lame statements were the end of the struggle. She knew -she was demonstrating in her feeble broken tones a sort of blind -strength they knew nothing of and that they would leave it at that, -whatever they thought, if only there were no more talk. - - - 2 - -When they had left the room and Flora came in for the supper things, -instead of sitting as usual at the far end of the table pretending to -read, she stood planted on the hearthrug watching her. Flora’s hands -were small and pale and serenely despairing like her face. She cleared -the table quietly. She had nothing to hope for. She did not know she had -nothing to hope for. Whatever happened she would go quietly on doing -things ... in the twilight ... on a sort of edge. People would die. -Perhaps people had already died in her family. But she would always be -the same. One day she would die, perhaps of something hard and slow and -painful with that small yellowish constitution. - -She would not be able to go on looking serene and despairing with people -round her bed helping her. When she died she would wait quietly with -nothing to do, blind and wondering. Death would take her into a great -festival--things for her for herself. She would not believe it and would -put up her hands to keep it off. But it would be all round her in great -laughter, like the deep roaring and crying of a flood. Then she would -cry like a child. - -Why was it that for some people, for herself, life could be happy now. -It was possible now to hear things laugh just by setting your teeth and -doing things; breaking into things, chucking things about, refusing to -be held. It made even the dreadful past seem wonderful. All the days -here, the awful days, each one awful and hateful and painful. - -Flora had gathered up her tray and disappeared, quietly closing the -door. But Flora had known and somehow shared her triumph, felt her -position in the school as she stood planted and happy in the middle of -the Pernes’ hearthrug. - - - 3 - -“An island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water.” - -Miriam kept automatically repeating these words to herself as the newly -returned children clung about her the next morning in the schoolroom. It -was a morning of heavy wind and rain and the schoolroom was dark, and -chilly with its summer-screened fireplace. The children seemed to her -for the first time small and pathetic. She was deserting them. After -fifteen months of strange intimacy she was going away for ever. - -During the usual routine days the little girls always seemed large and -formidable. She was quite sure they were not so to the other teachers, -and she hesitated when she thought over this difference, between the -explanation which accounted for their size and redoubtableness by her -own feebleness and the one to which she inclined when she felt her -success as a teacher. - -She had discovered that the best plan was to stand side by side with the -children in face of the things they had to learn, treating them as -equals and fellow-adventurers, giving explanations when these were -necessary, as if they were obvious and might have been discovered by the -children themselves, never as if they were possessions of her own, to be -imparted, never claiming a knowledge superior to their own. ‘The -business of the teacher is to make the children independent, to get them -to think for themselves, and that’s much more important than whether -they get to know facts,’ she would say irrelevantly to the Pernes -whenever the question of teaching came up. She bitterly resented their -vision of children as malleable subordinates. And there were many -moments when she seemed to be silently exchanging this determination of -hers with her pupils. Good or bad, she knew it was the secret of her -influence with them, and so long as she was faithful to it both she and -they enjoyed their hours together. Very often she was tired, feeble with -fatigue and scamping all opportunities; this too they understood and -never took advantage of her. One or two of them would even when she -failed try to keep things going on her own method. All this was sheer -happiness to her, the bread and wine of her days. - -But now and again, perhaps during the mid-morning recess, this -impersonal relationship gave way and the children clung fawning all -round her, passionately competing for nearness, touching and clinging -and snatching for kisses. There was no thought or uprightness or -laughter then, their hands were quick and eloquent and their eyes wide -and deeply smiling with those strange women’s smiles. Sometimes she -could respond in kind, answering to their smiles and caresses, making -gentle foolish sounds and feeling their passion rise to a frenzy of -adoration. The little deprecating consoling sounds that they made as -they clung told her that if she chose steadily to remain always gentle -and deprecating and consoling and reproachful she could dominate them as -persons and extort in the long run a complete personal obedience to -herself, so that they would do their work for her sake and live by and -through her, adoring her--as a goddess--and hating her. Even as they -fawned she knew they were fighting between their aching desire for a -perfection of tenderness in her and their fear lest she should fulfil -the desire. She was always tempted for an instant to yield and fling -herself irrevocably into the abyss, letting the children go on one by -one into the upper school, carrying as her gift only a passionate memory -such as she herself had for one of her nursemaids; leaving her -downstairs with an endless succession of new loves, different, but -always the same. She would become like a kind of nun, making a bare -subsistence, but so beloved always, so quivering and tender and -responsive that human love would never fail her, and when strength -failed there would be hands held out to shelter her decline. But the -vision never held her for more than a moment. There was something in the -thought of such pure personal sentiment that gave her a feeling of -treachery towards the children. Mentally she flung them out and off, -made them stand upright and estranged. She could not give them personal -love. She did not want to; nor to be entangled with them. They were -going to grow up into North London women, most of them loudly scorning -everything that was not materially profitable; these would remember her -with pity--amusement. A few would escape. These would remember her at -strange moments that were coming for them, moments when they would -recognise the beauty of things like ‘the Psalm of Life’ that she had -induced them to memorise without understanding it. - -This morning a sense of their softness and helplessness went to her -heart. She had taught them so little. But she had forced them to be -impersonal. Almost savagely she had done that. She had never taken them -by a trick.... - - - 4 - -And now they were going to be Julia’s children. - -Julia would teach them--alone there in the room with them, filling the -room for them--in her own way.... - -There would be no more talk about general ideas.... - -She would have to keep on the “object” lessons, because the Pernes had -been so pleased with the idea and the children had liked them. There -would still be those moments, with balls for the solar system and a -candle for the sun, and the blinds down. But there would not be anything -like that instant when all the eyes round the table did nothing but -watch the movement of a shadow on a ball ... the relief afterwards, the -happiness and the moment of intense love in the room--never to be -forgotten, all of them knowing each other, all their differences gone -away, even the clever watchful eyes of the cheating little Jewess, real -and unconscious for a moment. Julia would be watching the children as -much as the shadow, and the children would never quite forget Julia. She -would get to know a great deal about the children, but there would be no -reverence for big cold outside things. She would teach them to be kind. -“Little dorlings.” She thought all children were darlings and talked to -them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring way. If one or two were not, -it was the fault of the way they were treated, something in the -‘English’ way of dealing with them. Nearly all the elder girls she -disapproved of, they were no longer children--they were English. She was -full of contempt and indignant laughter for them, and of pity for the -‘wee things’ who were growing up. Yet she got on with them all and had -the secret of managing them without letting them see her feelings. - -There _was_ something specially bad in the English way of bringing up -children. Not the ‘education’ exactly, but something else, something in -the way they were treated. Something in the way they were brought up -made English women so awful--with their smiles. Julia did not smile or -smirk. She laughed a great deal, often to tears. And she would often -suddenly beam. It was like a light coming from under her thick white -skin. Was Julia the answer to the awfulness of Englishwomen? If, as -Julia said, the children were all right and only the girls and grown-ups -awful, it must be something in the way the children were treated. - - - 5 - -Yet Julia was not impersonal. - -Miss Deborah, ... teaching the whole school to be ‘good’ in the -Fairchild way; with her beautiful quivering nodding black head held -high--blinking, and not looking at the girls separately--in a grave -voice, full of Scripture history, but broken all the time, quivering -with laughter and shoutings which she never uttered ... hilarious, ... -she taught a system of things she had been brought up in. But all the -same, she rushed along sweeping the girls with her ... and the girls -believed her. If I taught her system I should have false lips and the -girls would not believe me. If ever anyone had the courage to tell her -of any dreadful thing, she would weep it all away; and the person would -begin all over again certainly, as much as possible in the Fairchild way -... again and again until they died. Supposing a murderer came and sat -down in the hall? Supposing Miss Deborah had been brought up as a -Thug--killing people from behind?... - -Miss Jenny, exasperatedly trying to wake all the girls up to the -importance of public life, sitting round in their blouses and skirts, -half-amused and sometimes trying to argue, because the tone of Miss -Jenny’s voice made them sorry for the other side. Politics, politics, -reading history and the newspapers, the importance of history if you -wanted to have any understanding of your own times. To come into the -room to take the class after Miss Jenny always meant finding her stating -and protesting and tapping the end of her nose, and the air hot and -excited, and the girls in some sort of state of excitement which could -only be got over by being very quiet and pretending not to notice them -except to be very surprised if there were any disturbance. - -Miss Haddie, in horror of their badness, teaching them to master little -set tasks because it was shocking to be an idler; loving the sinner but -hating the sin much more, with a sort of horror like a girl, a horror in -her eyes that was the same as the horror of insects, fearing God who was -so close in the room, gloomily, all the time--wanting to teach them all -to fawn on Christ. Christ would make everything all right if you made up -to him. “Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. He faileth not and thou -art dear.” Awful.... - -And then Julia, making the children love her, herself, as a person. They -would all love her in time. Even Burra after her first grief would fling -herself upon Julia.... Gertie would not though, ever. Cold, quiet little -Gertie, the doctor’s daughter. She would make no response however much -she were kissed and called a little darling. Gertie even as a child was -the English thing that Julia disliked. Julia, with all her success was -not the answer to the problem of why Englishwomen were abominable. She -left out so much. “Julia, you know, I think things are more important -than people. Much more. People, if you let them for one single instant, -grin and pounce upon you and try to make you forget things. But they’re -there all the time and you have to go back to them,” and Julia laughing -suddenly aloud, “Ah--you’re a duck--a tonic.” And everyone was a little -afraid of Julia, the children, the boarders whom she managed so -high-handedly with her laughter, even the Pernes. - - - 6 - -Perhaps Julia’s ‘personal’ way and the English ‘personal’ way were -somehow both wrong and horrid ... girls’ schools were horrid, bound to -be horrid, sly, mean, somehow tricky and poisonous. It was a hopeless -problem. The English sentimental way was wrong, the way of Englishwomen -with children--it made them grow up with those treacherous smiles. - -The scientific and ‘æsthetic’ way, the way of the Putney school--ah, -blessed escape!... But it left nearly all the girls untouched. - -Julia’s sentimental way was better than the English sentimental way; its -smiles had tears and laughter too, they were not so hypocritical. But it -was wrong. It was the strongest thing though in the Wordsworth House -school. - - - 7 - -Julia was not happy. She dreamed fearful dreams.... Why did she speak of -them as if they were something that no one in this English world into -which she had come would understand? She had her strange nights all to -herself there across the landing; either lying awake or sleeping and -moaning all the time. The girls in her room slept like rocks and did not -know that she moaned. They knew she had nightmares and sometimes cried -out and woke them. But passing the open door late at night one could -hear her moaning softly on every breath with closed lips. That was -Julia, her life, all laid bare, moaning.... She knows she is alive and -that there is no escape from being alive. But it has never made her feel -breathless with joy. She laughs all day, at everybody and everything, -and at night when she is naked and alone she moans; moan, moan, moan, -heart-broken; wind and rain alone in the dark in a great open space. - -She sometimes hinted at things, those real unknown things that were her -own life unshared by anybody; in a low soft terrible broken voice, with -eyes dilated and quivering lips; quite suddenly, with hardly any words. -And she would speak passionately about the sea, how she hated it and -could not look at it or listen to it; and of woods, the horror of woods, -the trees and the shadowiness, making her crisp her hands--ah yes, _les -mains crispées_, that was the word; and she had laughed when it was -explained to her. - -It was not that she had troubles at home. Those things she seemed to -find odd and amusing, like a story of the life of some other -person--poverty and one of her sisters ‘very peculiar,’ another engaged -to a scamp and another going to be a shop-assistant, and two more, -‘doties’ very young, being brought up in the country with an aunt. -Everything that happened to people and all the things people did seemed -to her funny and amusing, “tickled her to death.” Harriett’s engagement -amused her really, though she pretended to be immensely interested and -asked numbers of questions in a rich deep awe-struck voice ... -blarney.... But she wanted to hear everything, and she never forgot -anything she was told. And she had been splendid about the -operation--really anxious, quite conscious and awake across the landing -that awful night and really making you feel she was glad afterwards. -“Poor Mrs. Henderson--I was never so glad in my life”--and always -seeming to know her without having her explained. She was real there, -and so strange in telling the Pernes about it and making it all easy. - - - 8 - -Miriam leaned upon Julia more and more as the term went on, hating and -fearing her for her secret sorrow and wondering and wondering why she -appeared to have such a curious admiration and respect for herself. She -could understand her adoration for the Pernes; she saw them as they were -and had a phrase which partly explained them, “no more knowledge of the -world than babes”--but what was it in herself that Julia seemed so -fiercely and shyly to admire? - -She knew she could not let Julia know how she enjoyed washing her hands, -in several soapings, in the cold water, before dinner. They would go -their favourite midday walk, down the long avenue in the park through -the little windings of the shrubbery and into the chrysanthemum show, -strolling about in the large green-house, all the girls glad of the -escape from a set walk, reading over every day the strange names on the -little wooden stakes, jokes and gigglings and tiresomenesses all kept -within bounds by the happiness that there was, inside the great quiet -steamy glass-house, in the strange raw bitter scent of the great -flowers, in the strange huge way they stood, and with all their -differences of shape and colour staring quietly at you, all in the same -way with one expression. They were startling, amongst their grey leaves; -and they looked startled and held their heads as if they knew they were -beautiful. The girls always hurried to get to the chrysanthemums and -came away all of them walking in twos relieved and happy back through -the cold park to dinner. But Julia, who loved the flowers, though she -made fun of their names in certain moods and dropped them _sotto voce_ -into the general conversation at the dinner-table would have, Miriam -felt sure, scorned her own feeling of satisfaction in the great -hand-washing and the good dinner. And she detested pease pudding with -the meat, and boiled suet pudding with treacle. - - - 9 - -She ate scarcely anything herself, keeping her attention free and always -seeming to be waiting for someone to say something that was never said. -Her broad-shouldered, curiously buoyant, heavy, lounging, ill-clad form, -her thick white skin, her eyes like a grey-blue sea, her dark masses of -fine hair had long been for Miriam the deepest nook in the meal-time -gatherings--she rested there unafraid of anything the boarders might say -or do. She would never be implicated. Julia would take care of that, -heading everything off and melting up the difficulties into some -absurdity that would set all the Pernes talking. Julia lounged easily -there, controlling the atmosphere of the table. And the Pernes knew it -unconsciously, they must know it; any English person would know it ... -though they talked about her untidiness and lack of purpose and -application. Julia was a deep, deep nook, full of thorns. - - - 10 - -Julia had spoiled the news of Sarah’s engagement to Bennett Brodie. It -had been such a wonderful moment. The thick envelope coming at midday in -Bennett’s hand-writing--such a surprise--asking Miss Perne’s permission -to read it at the dinner-table--reading the startling sentences in the -firm curved hand--‘assert my privilege as your prospective -brother-in-law by announcing that I’m on the track of a job that I think -will suit you down to the ground,’ the curious splash, gravy on the -cloth as somebody put the great dish on the table, far-away vexation and -funny familiar far-away discomfort all round the table, ‘no more of this -until I’ve got full particulars on the tapis; but it may, oh Grecian -Mariamne, not be without interest to you to hear that that sister of -yours does not appear to be altogether averse to taking over the -management of the new house and the new practice and the new -practitioner, and that the new practitioner is hereby made anew in a -sense that is more of an amazement to him than it doubtless will be to -your intuitive personality. That life had such happiness in store for -him is not the least of the many surprises that have come his way. He -can only hope to prove not unworthy; and so a hearty au revoir from -yours affectionately.’ ... Then Bennett would always be there amongst -the home things ... with his strange way of putting things; he would -give advice and make suggestions ... and Sarah’s letter ... a glance at -it showing short sentences, things spoken in a low awe-struck voice.... -‘We had been to an entertainment together.... Coming home along the -avenue. I was so surprised. He was so quiet and serious and humble.’ ... -All the practical things gone away in a moment, leaving only a sound of -deep music, ... mornings and evenings. Sarah alone now, at last, a -person, with mornings and evenings and her own reality in everything. No -one could touch her or interfere any more. She was standing aside, -herself. She would always be Sarah, someone called Sarah. She need never -worry any more, but go on doing things.... And then looking up and -finding all the table eagerly watching and saying suddenly to Miss Perne -‘another of my sisters is engaged’ and everybody, even Trixie and -Beadie, excited and interested. - - - 11 - -The news, the great great news, wonderful Sarah away somewhere in the -background with her miracle--telling it out to the table of women was a -sort of public announcement that life was moving out on to wider levels. -They all knew it, pinned there; and how dear and glad they were, for a -moment, making it real, acknowledging by their looks how wonderful it -was. Sarah, floating above them all, caught up out of the darkness of -everyday life.... And then Julia’s eyes--veiled for a moment while she -politely stirred and curved her lips to a smile--cutting through it all, -seeming to say that nothing was really touched or changed. But when the -table had turned to jealousy and resentment and it was time to pretend -to hide the shaft of light and cease to listen to the music, Julia, cool -and steady, covered everything up and made conversation. - - - 12 - -And the thought of Julia was always a disturbance in going to tea with -the Brooms. Grace Broom was the only girl in the school for whom she had -an active aversion. She put one or two questions about them, ‘You really -like going there?’ ‘You’ll go on seeing them after you leave?’ and -concluded carelessly ‘that’s a mystery to me----’ - -Sitting at tea shut in in the Brooms’ little dining-room with the blinds -down and the dark red rep curtains drawn and the gas-light and brilliant -fire-light shining on the brilliantly polished davenport in the -window-space and the thick bevelled glass of the Satsuma-laden mahogany -sideboard, the dim cracked oil-painting of Shakespeare above the -mantel-shelf, the dark old landscapes round the little walls, the new -picture of Queen Victoria leaning on a stick and supported by Hindu -servants, receiving a minister, the solid silver tea-service, the fine -heavily edged linen table-cover, the gleaming, various, delicately -filled dishes, the great bowl of flowers, the heavy, carven, unmoved, -age-long dreaming faces of the three women with their living interested -eyes, she would suddenly, in the midst of a deep, calm undisturbing -silence become aware of Julia. Julia would not be impressed by the -surroundings, the strange silent deeps of the room. She would discover -only that she was with people who revered “our Queen” and despised “the -working classes.” It would be no satisfaction to her to sit drinking -from very exquisite old china, cup after cup of delicious very hot tea, -laughing to tears over the story of the curate who knelt insecurely on a -high kneeling stool at evening service in a country church and crashing -suddenly down in the middle of a long prayer went on quietly intoning -from the floor, or the madeira cake that leapt from the cake-dish on an -at-home day and rolled under the sofa. She would laugh, but she would -look from face to face, privately, and wonder. She would not really like -the three rather dignified seated forms with the brilliant, tear-filled -eyes, sitting on over tea, telling anecdotes, and tales of long strange -illnesses suffered by strange hidden people in quiet houses, weddings, -deaths, the stories of families separated for life by quarrels over -money, stories of far-off holidays in the country; strange sloping rooms -and farmhouse adventures; the cow that walked into the bank in a little -country town.... Mrs. Philps’ first vision, as a bride, of the English -Lakes, the tone of her voice as she talked about all these things. - -The getting together and sitting about and laughing in the little room -would never be to her like being in a world that was independent of all -the other worlds. She would not want to go again and again and sit, just -the four women, at tea, talking. The silent, beautifully kept, -experienced old furniture all over the house would not fill her with -fear and delight and strength. It would be no satisfaction to her to put -on her things in front of the huge plate glass of the enormous -double-fronted wardrobe in the spare-room with its old Bruges ware and -its faded photographs of the interiors of unknown churches, rows and -rows of seats and a faded blur where the altar was, thorn-crowned heads -and bold scrolly texts embroidered in crimson and gold silken mounted -and oak-framed. And when she went home alone along the quiet, dark, -narrow, tree-filled little roadways she would not feel gay and strong -and full of personality. - - - 13 - -On prize-giving day, Miriam’s last day, Julia seemed to disappear. For -the first time since she had come to the school it was as if she were -not there. She was neither talking nor watching nor steering anything at -all. Again and again during the ceremonies Miriam looked at her sitting -or moving about, pale and plain and shabby, one of the crowd of girls. - -The curious power of the collected girls, their steady profiles, their -movements, their unconcerned security rose and flooded round Miriam as -it had done when she first came to the school. But she no longer feared -it. It was going on, harsh and unconscious and determined, next term. -She was glad of it; the certainty thrilled her; she wanted to convey -some of her gladness to Julia, but could not catch her eye. - -Her gladness carried her through the most tedious part of the day’s -performances, the sitting in a listening concourse, doors open, in the -schoolroom, while some ten of the girls went one by one with stricken -faces into the little drawing-room and played the piece they had learned -during the term. Their shame and confusion, the anger and desperation of -their efforts, the comments of the listeners and their violent ironic -applause roused her to an intensity of sympathy. How they despised the -shame-faced tinkling; how they admired the martyrs. - -Their strong indifference seemed to centre in the cold pale scornful -face of Jessie Wheeler, sitting squarely there with defiant eyes, -waiting for the future; the little troop of children she dreamed of. - -These North London girls would be scornful mocking fiancées. They would -be adored by their husbands. Secretly they would forget their husbands -in their houses and children and friends. - - - 14 - -Julia was the last player. She sidled swiftly out of the room; even her -habitual easy halting lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost at -once, slow and tragic and resignedly weeping came the opening notes of -Chopin’s Funeral March. Sitting in the front row of the little batch of -children from the lower school who faced the room from the window bay, -Miriam saw, in fancy, Julia’s face as she sat at the drawing-room -piano--the face she had when she talked of the woods and the sea. The -whole of the long march, including the major passage, was the voice of -Julia’s strange desolation. She played painfully, very slowly and -carefully, with tender respectful attention, almost without emphasis. -She was not in the least panic-stricken; anyone could feel that; but she -had none of the musical assurance that would have filled the girls with -uneasy admiration and disgust. They were pleased and amused. And far -away, Julia was alone with life and death. She made two worlds plain, -the scornful world of the girls and her own shadow-filled life. - -Miriam longed for the performance to be at an end so that the girls -might reassert themselves. - - - 15 - -An important stirring was going on at the little table where Miss Cramp -sat with the Pernes; only their heads and shoulders showing above the -piles of prize-books. Miss Perne stood up and faced the room smiling and -gently muttering. Presently her voice grew clear and she was making -little statements and pronouncing names, clearly and with gay tender -emphasis, the names of tall bold girls in the first class. One by one -they struggled to the table and stood gentle and disturbed with flushed -enlightened faces. Not a single girl could stand unconcerned before Miss -Perne. Even Polly Allen’s brow was shorn of its boldness. - -The girls knew. They would remember something of what the Pernes had -tried to give them. - -The room was unbearably stuffy. The prize-giving was at an end. Miriam’s -own children had struggled to the table and come back to her for the -last time. - -Miss Perne was making a little speech ... about Miss Henderson’s -forthcoming departure. Why did people do these formal things? She would -be expected to make some response. For a moment she had the impulse to -get up and rush away through the hall, get upstairs and pack and send -for a four-wheeler. But from behind came hands dragging at a fold of her -dress and the sound of Burra’s hard sobbing. She felt the child’s head -bowed against her hip. A child at her side twisted its hands together -and sat with its head held high, drawing sharp breaths. Miss Perne’s -voice went on. She was holding up an umbrella, a terrible, expensive, -silver-mounted one. The girls had subscribed. - -Miriam sat with beating heart waiting for Miss Perne’s voice to cease, -pressing back towards the support of Burra and other little outstretched -clutchings and the general snuffling of her class, grappling with the -amazement of hearing from various quarters of the room violent and -repeated nose-blowings, and away near the door in the voice of a girl -she had hardly spoken to a deep heavy contralto sobbing. - -Presently she was on her feet with the tightly-rolled silken twist of -the umbrella heavy in her hands. Her stiff lips murmured incoherent -thanks in a strange thin voice--Harriett’s voice with the life gone from -it. - - - NOTE.--_A further instalment of this book is in preparation._ - - - PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY - WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH - - - - - A NEW SERIES - Modern Plays - - - A New Series of Plays by present-day English playwrights, also - translations of the dramatists of the Continent. 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(Postage 4d.) - - -------- - - Ask to see a list at a Bookseller’s, or write direct to the - Publishers - - -------- - - - - - Messrs. DUCKWORTH & CO.’S - SPRING - ANNOUNCEMENTS - 1916 - - - -------- - - - - - GENERAL LITERATURE - - - D. H. LAWRENCE - - Twilight in Italy. By D. H. LAWRENCE, author of “Sons and - Lovers,” “The Prussian Officer,” etc. Cloth gilt. In the Uniform - Edition of Mr. Lawrence’s Works. Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This volume of travel vignettes by Mr. Lawrence, shows him in a - fresh medium. Mr. Lawrence has published novels, stories, poems, - and a play, and now he appears with a volume of studies or - impressions, of life and scenes in the North of Italy. Some of - the chapters appeared serially in the English Review and the - Westminster Gazette, but they have been revised and rewritten for - publication in book form. Several chapters, however, now appear - for the first time. The volume will be published uniform with the - author’s collected works, which are being issued in a library - edition. - - -------- - - BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - Amores: Poems. By D. H. LAWRENCE. Cloth gilt. Crown 8vo, 5s. net; - postage, 4d. - - - PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. LAWRENCE’S PREVIOUS BOOK OF VERSE - “LOVE POEMS” - - “The book of the moment in verse.”--Bookman. - - “Imagination, apprehension, economy of means, and delicate - ecstatic beauty are in these verses.”--The Times. - - “We have nothing but praise for this book of love - poems.”--English Review. - - -------- - - - - - A UNIFORM EDITION OF THE - Works of D. H. Lawrence - - - Cloth Gilt. Crown 8vo, 6s. each - - Sons and Lovers. A Novel - - The Prussian Officer, and other Stories - - The Trespasser. A Novel - - The White Peacock. A Novel - - -------- - - The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd. A Play. (3s. 6d. net) - - Love Poems (5s. net) - - “D. H. 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A remarkable book to be read by the discriminating and - the experienced.”--The Morning Post, in a review of “The - Trespasser.” - - “A wonderful piece of portraiture. Strong, admirable and - pathetic.”--Daily Telegraph, in a review of “Sons and Lovers.” - - “A study of warring loves and passions, containing much beauty. - The sheer hard matter of living is vividly presented; the toil of - existence in village and town, the solace of nature, the joy of - respite from labour admirably realised and presented.”--Times, in - a review of “Sons and Lovers.” - - -------- - - - - - THE READERS’ LIBRARY - - - New Volume - - PRINCE KROPOTKIN - - Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature. By PRINCE PETER - KROPOTKIN. New and Revised Edition. Type Reset. In the Readers’ - Library. 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He writes with singular facility, and - has complete mastery of rhythm and rhyme. His range is from grave - to gay, from wholehearted endorsement of some homely virtue to - vigorous condemnation of cant, fraud, and shams of all kinds. - - Mr. John Masefield writes:--“I read Walt Mason with great - delight. His poems have wonderful fun and kindliness, and I have - enjoyed them the more for their having so strongly all the - qualities I liked so much in my American friends when I was - living in the United States. - - “I don’t know any book which has struck me as so genuine a voice - of the American nature. - - “I am glad that his work is gaining a wider and wider - recognition.” - - -------- - - - South America as it is To-day - - ROGER W. BABSON - - The Future of South America. By ROGER W. BABSON. With 16 - Illustrations and Two Maps. 407 pages. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net; - postage, 6d. - - There is astonishingly little in the literature about South - America which explains what that continent really means to - business people who are open to extend their trade in foreign - markets. Such an interpretation is given in this book, together - with an interesting account of the picturesque and romantic sides - of South American life, its history, customs and resources, also - information for the business man. Mr. Babson is known as a writer - on economic questions and as an interpreter of statistical data - and industrial and business conditions. He has for years - methodically studied South America and its business - possibilities. He is peculiarly fitted to draw conclusions about - South America as an economic problem, which will be of the utmost - value to the banker, manufacturer, exporter, investor, and the - general student of foreign relations, affairs, and trade. - - The book is especially authoritative and official on account of - the fact that leading government officials, usually the - Presidents of the various countries, have co-operated with Mr. - Babson. - - As a result his book should prove a suggestive volume for all - having or hoping to have business relations with the countries - described and also for the general reader who is interested in - the economic side of the problem. - - -------- - - CHARLES M. DOUGHTY - - The Titans. A Dramatic Poem. By CHARLES M. DOUGHTY, author of - “Travels in Arabia Deserta,” “The Dawn in Britain,” “The Cliffs,” - “The Clouds,” etc. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s. net; postage, 5d. - - SOME PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. DOUGHTY’S EARLIER WORKS - - “The sense of England is the burning thing in these two dramas; - the sense of England as only wartime can make it, which glows - through all the magnificent monologue with which ‘The Cliffs’ - open, or which brightens into most exquisite flame in ‘The - Clouds.’”--LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE, in the Quarterly Review. - - “Mr. Doughty occupies a position by himself. The vigorous impulse - and imaginative strength of his genius have created their own - medium. Work which owes its power to the bigness of its design - and the sheer weight of imagination and intellect. - - “This is an amazingly vivid picture of the fury and wreckage of - war. In part of the poem Mr. Doughty approaches more nearly to - the idyllic than in any other of his works. It is a great work, - full of faith and thought and compelling sincerity, and rich - poetic beauty.”--Spectator. - - “Mr. Doughty is the prophet of Patriotism. Wandering in the - Muses’ Garden, he has received the divine call to chant patriot - hymns, and it is his mission to rouse his country to a sense of - the wrath to come in the guise of ‘air-flying Eastlanders.’ ‘The - Clouds,’ is a passionate plea for the nation. His verse is - astoundingly vivid and vehement, every now and then breaking into - a startling beauty.”--English Review. - - “Mr. Doughty’s ideas and his outlook might be those of Nelson’s - captains could they be called back to life. He thrills our - imagination. His historical sense is so vital and far-reaching, - his patriotic imagination so deeply rooted in the soil of our - forbears’ achievements.... A poem that, we venture to think, will - become a classic. ‘The Clouds,’ as an achievement, possesses a - creative actuality, a breadth of vision, an intensity of - imaginative life. The effect of the poem is cumulative, and no - quotation can convey any idea of the atmosphere of the whole - varied picture.”--The Nation. - - -------- - - - A New Impression - - JOHN MORSE - - An Englishman in the Russian Ranks: Ten Months’ Fighting in - Poland. By JOHN MORSE. 4th printing. Crown 8vo, 6s. - - SOME PRESS OPINIONS - - “This remarkably impressive book is probably the most notable - piece of war literature the war has yet produced.”--The Times. - - “Tolstoy’s pictures of Sebastopol or Dostoievsky’s account of - Siberia do not haunt one much more than episodes in this - book.”--Spectator. - - “Those who wish to see the war without any illusion cannot afford - to miss this the most impressive book that has so far appeared - about it.”--Country Life. - - “This book is one of the most remarkable the war has yet given - us.... He keeps us spellbound with his artless narrative.... This - is decidedly a war book to be read.”--Daily News. - - “We can but offer our sincere congratulations to Mr. Morse on his - splendid achievement; through him the name of Englishman will - stand firmer in Russia, firmer in the world.”--Saturday Review. - - “The war continues to provide incidentally many vivid narratives - ... and this narrative ... must certainly be reckoned one of the - most interesting out of many.”--Evening Standard. - - “It is a most astonishing book.”--Daily Express. - - “Having served for ten months as a volunteer in the Russian Army, - the author has had such strange adventures that his experiences - have provided material for what is undoubtedly one of the most - remarkable books concerning the war.”--Outlook. - - “As a witness of what actually happened on the Russian frontier - Mr. Morse comes forward with a book of engrossing interest.... - The story of his escape and privations which followed is - thrilling in the extreme and related with a quiet restraint and - modesty which, as in every chapter of the book, are an earnest of - truth.”--Daily Telegraph. - - “Mr. Morse has written a book which, as far as I know, is unique. - It is an extraordinarily vivid account of an Englishman who - enlisted in the Russian rank and fought all through the - early--and they were in many ways the most terrible--months of - the war. As a picture of war it is literally haunting. Mr. Morse - writes with the conviction of one who has seen all he desires to - prove. Apart from the book’s value as a personal narrative, it is - notable for the fine description it gives of life in the Russian - Army; while those who thirst for adventure will find no book of - fiction stir them more greatly than this author’s account of how - he was captured and how he escaped.”--Tatler. - - -------- - - - THEOLOGY - - THE REV. CANON RASHDALL, F.B.A. - - Conscience and Christ. By THE REV. CANON HASTINGS RASHDALL, - D.Litt. (Oxon), D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A., author of “Philosophy - and Religion,” etc. Crown 8vo, 5s. net; postage, 5d. - - The book is an attempt to answer the question “in what relation - does the authority of Conscience, which most Christians - acknowledge, stand to the authority of Jesus Christ?” The first - chapter is a brief enquiry into the nature of Conscience on the - one hand and of various forms of external authority on the other. - The answer given is that no external authority can be taken as an - absolutely final guide for conduct unless it does commend itself - to the enlightened Conscience: it is contended that the teaching - of Jesus Christ does so commend itself. In the second chapter is - attempted the investigation of the recent teaching which makes - “Eschatology” the answer of Christ’s message, and treats his - moral teaching as a mere “Interimsethik.” The third chapter - examines the actual contents of that teaching; the fourth deals - with some commonly urged objections to the Christian Ethic--the - finality of this Ethic is asserted upon condition that the - necessity of development is fully recognised. The fifth chapter - examines the nature of the development which the fundamental - principles taught by Jesus have received and must continue to - receive in the Christian Church. The sixth chapter is devoted to - a brief examination of other ethical systems, philosophical and - religious, and endeavours to show that not one of them can be - regarded as a satisfactory substitute for Christianity while the - permanent elements of each are recognised and included in the - Christian ideal. It is also contended that the highest ethical - influence of Christianity is inseparable from a reverent - following of the personal Christ. - - -------- - - THE REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, D.D. - - Faith and Immortality. By THE REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, B.A., D.D., - Principal of the United Independent College, Bradford. Author of - “The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War,” “The Ascent - Through Christ.” Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net; postage, 5d. - - -------- - - - STUDIES IN THEOLOGY--New Volumes - - THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D. - - History of the Study of Theology. By the late CHARLES AUGUSTUS - BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt., of the Union Theological Seminary, New - York. In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net each volume; - postage, 5d. - - -------- - - THE REV. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, M.A., D.D. - - The Justification of God. By THE REV. PRINCIPAL P. T. FORSYTH, - M.A., D.D., of the Hackney Theological College, University of - London. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d. - - Other Volumes already published in the Series are:-- - - Christianity and Ethics. By ARCHIBALD B. D. ALEXANDER, M.A., D.D. - - The Environment of Early Christianity. By S. ANGUS, M.A., Ph.D. - - The Christian Hope: A Study in the Doctrine of the Last Things. - By W. ADAMS BROWN, Ph.D., D.D. - - Christianity and Social Questions. By WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM, F.B.A., - D.D., D.Sc. - - A Handbook of Christian Apologetics. By A. E. GARVIE, D.D. - - A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament. By GEORGE BUCHANAN - GRAY, D.D., D.Litt. - - Gospel Origins. By WILLIAM WEST HOLDSWORTH, M.A. - - Faith and Its Psychology. By WILLIAM R. INGE, D.D. - - Christianity and Sin. By ROBERT MACKINTOSH, D.D. - - Protestant Thought before Kant. By A. C. MCGIFFERT, Ph.D., D.D. - - The Theology of the Gospels. By JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., D.Litt. - - History of Christian Thought since Kant. By EDWARD CALDWELL - MOORE, D.D. - - The Doctrine of the Atonement. By J. K. MOZLEY, M.A. - - Revelation and Inspiration. By JAMES ORR, D.D. - - A Critical Introduction to the New Testament. By ARTHUR SAMUEL - PEAKE, D.D. - - Philosophy and Religion. By HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.Litt. (Oxon), - D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A. - - The Holy Spirit. By T. REES, M.A. (Lond.), B.A. (Oxon.). - - The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament. By H. WHEELER ROBINSON, - M.A. - - The Text and Canon of the New Testament. By ALEXANDER SOUTER, - D.Litt. - - Christian Thought to the Reformation. By HERBERT B. WORKMAN, - D.Litt. - - -------- - - - FICTION - - BERNARD CAPES - - If Age Could. By BERNARD CAPES, author of “A Jay of Italy,” “The - Lake of Wine,” etc. - - Mr. Bernard Capes’ new novel, “If Age Could,” will rank among the - most important of the many popular books which bear his name-- - - “If Youth but Knew” - “If Age Could” - - Eustace Ward discovered that his ward Veronica appealed more to - his senses than he had ever thought possible. He had come to - think he was proof against the effects of feminine charm except - in a detached and esthetic way. He is, however, held back by the - fear that she regards him as old. The aloof and self-centred - attitude towards life of both him and his ward with their ample - means is shown without insistence, while the events of August - 1914 do not greatly disturb their self-sufficiency. The - subsequent bombardment of the North-East coast brings tragedy - very near to Ward’s country seat. It is then that they for the - first time consciously and on an impulse do an action which is - for another’s benefit and which involves their own complete - sacrifice. - - -------- - - TEMPLE BAILEY - - Contrary Mary. A Novel. By TEMPLE BAILEY. 352 pages. Crown 8vo, - 6s. - - “Contrary Mary” will win her way to the hearts of all who meet - her, and the story of the fortunes of her family will provide - restful enjoyment for a very large circle of readers. It is - seldom that a clean, sweet story is not open to the criticism of - being “pretty.” “Contrary Mary” is, however, an exceptional book, - and while it shows the best side of human nature it can never be - charged with being mawkish or sugary. While it has no bad - characters, and only one unfortunate one, the reader is aware - that the author has a firm grip on life. It is clever work, and - shows the author as a writer of depth and feeling. - - -------- - - BEY SOMERVILLE - - The Passing of Nahla. A Story of the Desert. By BEY SOMERVILLE. - Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This story of Nahla, a native girl child, and of the white man - who educates and makes a companion of her, is full of atmosphere. - The baby girl is an amusing companion for the educated, - temperamental poet, and to see her develop under his guidance and - tuition is for him of unfailing interest. In the intense life of - the East she is very quickly a grown woman. Her devotion is - pathetic in its self abasement, and she is ready to accept either - life or death at his hands. The inevitable tragedy is when the - desire comes to the man to return to his own people and their - code of life. It is then he has to reckon with Nahla’s jealousy - and fierce devotion. - - Apart from the story the book is worth reading for its rendering - of the call and influence of the desert on a highly developed - personality. The author feels its magic spell and is very - successful in transmitting it to the reader. - - -------- - - DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON - - Backwater. A Novel. By DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON, author of “Pointed - Roofs.” Crown 8vo, 6s. - - Those who read “Pointed Roofs” will remember taking leave of - Miriam as she got in the train for home, after her term as - assistant teacher in a German school was ended. “Backwater” - continues the narrative of Miriam’s life, the period now being - the emotional period of life, when life is at its fullest. - - The reception given to “Pointed Roofs” has given Miss Richardson - a status. She is recognized as a writer whose method is original - and “different,” and who is thereby successful in conveying by - means of a few strokes the vital experiences of her characters - and their action on one another. Mr. J. D. Beresford, who - contributed an introduction to “Pointed Roofs,” admitted having - read the story three times, the pleasure he experienced at the - first being increased by subsequent readings. He considers - “Backwater” even more interesting. - - -------- - - E. C. BOOTH - - Fondie. A Novel. By E. C. BOOTH, author of “The Cliff End,” “The - Doctor’s Lass.” Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This story of Fondie Bassiemoor, his life, and also that of the - inhabitants of Wivvle, a Yorkshire village, is a big novel in - every way. Mr. Booth’s unhurried method requires a large canvas, - and although the story is long for a modern novel the feeling of - the reader at the finish is that on no account would he have it - shorter. - - Mr. Booth pictures the everyday life of a rural village in - Yorkshire with all its types and characters clearly and lovingly - drawn; the comedy and tragedy of life painted with the sure hand - of an artist and master craftsman. The natural tone and accent of - speech is reproduced, but there is nothing irritating in its - transcription as the author renders the Yorkshire dialect in such - manner and so naturally that no unusual effort is required to - read it. - - The note of comedy is preserved through the greater part of the - book, but the sadness of life is not ignored. To each their - place. - - The author’s previous books have been unreservedly praised, but - it is thought by competent judges that “Fondie” is a particular - advance on any of his earlier work. For a comparison one must go - to the early work of Thomas Hardy. Perhaps “Far from the Madding - Crowd” is the closest. Mr. Booth’s “Fondie” will stand the - comparison very well. - - -------- - - MARY AGNES HAMILTON - - Dead Yesterday. By MARY AGNES HAMILTON, author of “Less than the - Dust,” “Yes.” Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This novel has been described by critics who have read it in - manuscript as both clever and brilliant. It is notably modern in - its feeling and outlook, its detail and allusions revealing its - author’s interest in the artistic and social ideas which were - current in 1914. The action of the story begins before the war, - but is carried past August 1914, and finishes towards the end of - 1915. It gives a very effective picture of an educated and - bohemian coterie whose sophisticated attitude towards life is - sharply challenged by the realization of the need to fight for - national existence. - - -------- - - MILDRED GARNER - - Harmony. A Novel. By MILDRED GARNER. Crown 8vo. 6s. - - The scent of old-fashioned flowers, the drowsy hum of bees, and - the quiet spell of the countryside is realized in every page of - “Harmony.” Peacewold is a harbour of refuge where gather those in - need of the sympathy which the Little Blue Lady unfailingly has - for her friends when they are distressed in spirit or body. To - her comes Star worn out with months of settlement work in Bethnal - Green, and Harmony whose sight is restored after years of - blindness. Robin Grey, the austere Richard Wentworth and his son - Bede, all come and she gives to each from the fulness of her - spirit and faith. Willow, whose story the book is, also has - reason to love the Little Blue Lady who has been as a mother to - her. - - The book is distinguished for its shining faith and belief in the - inherent goodness of human nature when subject to right - influences. The searchings of heart when love comes and - temporarily wrecks the harmony of Peacewold are shown to be for - the good of those concerned and helpful to them in their - development. - - “Harmony” is essentially a novel of sentiment and should - certainly find many readers. It is earnest and sincere, and - promises well for the author’s future as a successful novelist. - - -------- - - RICHARD HARDING DAVIS - - Somewhere in France. Stories. By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, author of - “With the Allies,” etc., etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. - net. - - A new volume by the popular war correspondent. The stories are - varied in theme, and are not solely devoted to war. The title of - the book is obtained from the first story which is of spying and - spies during the German advance on Paris. - - -------- - - LESLIE MONTGOMERY - - Mr. Wildridge of the Bank. An Irish Novel. By LESLIE MONTGOMERY. - Crown 8vo, 6s. - - Mr. Leslie Montgomery will be welcomed as an acquisition to the - ranks of humorous novelists. Like George Birmingham he writes of - the North of Ireland and shows the everyday life of a small town. - The competition of the local managers of the two banks to secure - the account of the heir to a fortune is very amusing and always - strictly probable. How Mr. Wildridge gets the capital subscribed - for the woollen factory: how the confiding Rector and his - daughter are saved from dishonour, and how Orangemen and Sinn - Feiners, Protestants and Catholics are cunningly induced to work - for the prosperity of the town in order to ‘dish’ each other are - all related in an easy and convincing way. The story is told in - light comedy vein, at times becoming madcap farce, and yet it - cannot be said that the bounds of possibility are ever surpassed. - There is not an unpleasant or disagreeable character in the book, - and the humour is at the expense of everyone in the town. Anthony - Wildridge is always cultivated, adroit and audacious, and - deserves all his success. At the close he discovers that he is - younger and more susceptible than he thought he was. - - -------- - - DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C. - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes - - -The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical -errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after -consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after): - - [p. 68]: - ... to an end just as the picture of the French count ... - ... to an end just as the picture of the French court ... - - [p. 86]: - ... back to the table so that nobody “poked.” She ... - ... backs to the table so that nobody “poked.” She ... - - [p. 252]: - ... and canons and things make a frightful noise.” ... - ... and cannons and things make a frightful noise.” ... - - [p. 277]: - ... That life and such happiness in store for him is ... - ... That life had such happiness in store for him is ... - - [p. 283]: - ... lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost ... - ... lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost at ... - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACKWATER *** - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/6/2/2/56221/ - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply -to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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color: gray; background-color: inherit; - letter-spacing: 0; text-indent: 0; text-align: right; font-style: normal; - font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: x-small; - border: 1px solid silver; padding: 1px 4px 1px 4px; - display: inline; } - -div.ads a.pagenum { display:none; } -div.ads a.pagenum:after { display:none; } - -div.centerpic { text-align:center; text-indent:0; display:block; } - -@media screen and (max-width: 768px) { - body { margin-left:0; margin-right:0; } - div.poem-container div.poem { display:block; margin-left:2em; } - div.ads div.list-container p.list { display:block; margin-left:2em; } - div.ads { max-width:inherit; } - a.pagenum { display:none; } - a.pagenum:after { display:none; } -} - -</style> -</head> - -<body> - - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Backwater, by Dorothy M. Richardson</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Backwater<br /> - Pilgrimage, Volume 2</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Dorothy M. Richardson</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 22, 2017 [EBook #56221]<br /> -[Most recently updated: March 11, 2022]</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Jens Sadowski, Mary Glenn Krause, and the -Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. -This file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive.</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACKWATER ***</div> - -<div class="frontmatter"> -<p class="halftitle"> -BACKWATER -</p> - -</div> - -<div class="frontmatter"> -<h1 class="title"> -BACKWATER -</h1> - -<p class="aut"> -<span class="line1">BY</span><br /> -<span class="line2">DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON</span><br /> -<span class="line3">AUTHOR OF “POINTED ROOFS”</span> -</p> - -<div class="centerpic logo"> -<img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<p class="pub"> -<span class="line1">LONDON</span><br /> -<span class="line2">DUCKWORTH & CO.</span><br /> -<span class="line3">3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN</span> -</p> - -</div> - -<div class="frontmatter"> -<p class="cop"> -First published 1916 -</p> - -<p class="cop"> -All rights reserved -</p> - -</div> - -<div class="frontmatter"> -<p class="ded"> -<span class="line1">TO</span><br /> -<span class="line2">J. A. H.</span> -</p> - -</div> - -<p class="tit"> -<a id="page-1" class="pagenum" title="1"></a> -BACKWATER -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-1"> -CHAPTER I -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">A</span> swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam -from a tapestry screen standing between her -and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the -bow of the window. Consulting it at intervals as -the afternoon wore on, she found that it made -very light of the quiet propositions that were -being elaborated within hearing of her inattentive -ears. Looking beyond it she could catch glimpses -between the crowded fernery, when a tram was -not jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across -the roadway and beyond the palisade of a green -level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The -trams seemed very near and noisy. When they -passed by the window, the speakers had to raise -their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room -was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned -quietness. It was full of old things, like the -<a id="page-2" class="pagenum" title="2"></a> -Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts -of the ladies who were sitting and talking there. -She and her mother had seemed quite modern, -fussy, worldly people when they had first come -into the room. From the moment the three -ladies had come in and begun talking to her -mother, the things in the room, and the view of -the distant row of poplars had grown more and -more peaceful, and now at the end of an hour she -felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson -too, belonged to the old-world room with its -quiet green outlook shut in by the poplars. Only -the trams were disturbing. They came busily by, -with their strange jingle-jingle, plock-plock, and -made her inattentive. Why were there so many -people coming by in trams? Where were they -going? Why were all the trams painted that -hard, dingy blue? -</p> - -<p> -The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs -in smooth gentle voices, in small broken phrases, -frequently interrupting and correcting each other. -Miriam heard dreamily that they wanted help -with the lower school, the children from six to -eight years of age, in the mornings and afternoons, -and in the evenings a general superintendence of -the four boarders. They kept on saying that the -<a id="page-3" class="pagenum" title="3"></a> -work was very easy and simple; there were no -naughty girls—hardly a single naughty girl—in -the school; there should be no difficult superintendence, -no exercise of authority would be -required. -</p> - -<p> -By the time they had reached the statement of -these modifications Miriam felt that she knew -them quite well. The shortest, who did most -of the talking and who had twinkling eyes and -crooked pince-nez and soft reddish cheeks and a -little red-tipped nose, and whose small coil of -sheeny grey hair was pinned askew on the top of -her head—stray loops standing out at curious -angles—was Miss Jenny, the middle one. The -very tall one sitting opposite her, with a delicate -wrinkled creamy face and coal-black eyes and a -peak of ringletted smooth coal-black hair, was -the eldest, Miss Deborah. The other sister, much -younger, with neat smooth green-grey hair and a -long sad greyish face and faded eyes, was Miss -Haddie. They were all three dressed in thin -fine black material and had tiny hands and little -softly moving feet. What did they think of the -trams? -</p> - -<p> -“Do you think you could manage it, chickie?” -said Mrs. Henderson suddenly. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-4" class="pagenum" title="4"></a> -“I think I could.” -</p> - -<p> -“No doubt, my dear, oh, no doubt,” said Miss -Jenny with a little sound of laughter as she -tapped her knee with the pince-nez she had -plucked from their rakish perch on the reddened -bridge of her nose. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t think I could teach Scripture.” -</p> - -<p> -An outbreak of incoherent little sounds and -statements from all three taught her that Miss -Deborah took the Bible classes of the whole -school. -</p> - -<p> -“How old is Miriam?” -</p> - -<p> -“Just eighteen. She has put up her hair to-day.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, poor child, she need not have done that.” -</p> - -<p> -“She is a <em>born</em> teacher. She used to hold little -classes amongst her schoolfellows when she was -only eight years old.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam turned sharply to her mother. She -was sitting with her tired look—bright eyes, -and moist flushed face. How had she heard about -the little classes? Had there been little classes? -She could not remember them. -</p> - -<p> -“She speaks French like a Parisienne.” -</p> - -<p> -That was that silly remark made by the woman -in the train coming home from Hanover. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-5" class="pagenum" title="5"></a> -“Eh—we thought—it was in Germany she -was——” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, but I learned more French.” -</p> - -<p> -The sisters smiled provisionally. -</p> - -<p> -“She shared a room with the mademoiselle.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh—er—hee—hay—perhaps she might speak -French with the gels.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh no, I couldn’t <em>speak</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -There was a tender little laugh. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know French conversation.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, well.” -</p> - -<p> -The sisters brought the discussion to an end -by offering twenty pounds a year in return for -Miriam’s services, and naming the date of the -beginning of the autumn term. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -On the way to the front door they all looked -into the principal schoolroom. Miriam saw -a long wide dining-room table covered with -brown American cloth. Shelves neatly crowded -with books lined one wall from floor to ceiling. -Opposite them at the far end of the room was a -heavy grey marble mantelpiece, on which stood -a heavy green marble clock frame. At its centre -a gold-faced clock ticked softly. Opposite the -<a id="page-6" class="pagenum" title="6"></a> -windows were two shallow alcoves. In one -stood a shrouded blackboard on an easel. The -other held a piano with a high slender back. -The prancing outward sweep of its lid -gave Miriam the impression of an afternoon -dress. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Deborah drew up one of the Venetian -blinds. They all crowded to the window and -looked out on a small garden backed by trees and -lying in deep shadow. Beyond were more -gardens and the brownish backs of small old brick -houses. Low walls separated the school garden -from the gardens on either side. -</p> - -<p> -“On our right we have a school for the deaf -and dumb,” said Miss Perne; “on the other side -is a family of Polish Jews.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-3"> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Mother, why <em>did</em> you pile it on?” -</p> - -<p> -They would soon be down at the corner of -Banbury Park where the tram lines ended and -the Favorite omnibuses were standing in the -muddy road under the shadow of the railway -bridge. Through the jingling of the trams, the -dop-dop of the hoofs of the tram-horses and the -noise of a screaming train thundering over the -<a id="page-7" class="pagenum" title="7"></a> -bridge, Miriam made her voice heard, gazing -through the spotted veil at her mother’s quivering -features. -</p> - -<p> -“They might have made me do all sorts of -things I can’t do.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Henderson’s voice, breathless with walking, -made a little sound of protest, a narrowed -sound that told Miriam her amusement was half -annoyance. The dark, noisy bridge, the clatter -and rattle and the mud through which she must -plunge to an omnibus exasperated her to the -limit of her endurance. -</p> - -<p> -“I’d got the post,” she said angrily; “you -could see it was all settled and then you went -saying those things.” -</p> - -<p> -Glancing at the thin shrouded features she saw -the faint lift of her mother’s eyebrows and the -firmly speechless mouth. -</p> - -<p> -“Piccadilly—jump on, chickie.” -</p> - -<p> -“Let’s go outside now it’s fine,” said Miriam -crossly. -</p> - -<p> -Reaching the top of the omnibus she hurried -to the front seat on the left hand side. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s a very windy spot.” -</p> - -<p> -“No it isn’t, it’s quite hot. The sun’s come -out now. It’s rained for weeks. It won’t rain -<a id="page-8" class="pagenum" title="8"></a> -any more. It’ll be hot. You won’t feel the wind. -Will you have the corner, mother?” -</p> - -<p> -“No, chick, you sit there.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam screwed herself into the corner seat, -crossing her knees and grazing the tips of her -shoes. -</p> - -<p> -“This is the only place on the top of a -bus.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Henderson sat down at her side. -</p> - -<p> -“I always make Harriett come up here when we -go up to the West End.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course it’s the only place,” she insisted -in response to her mother’s amused laugh. “No -one smoking or talking in front; you can see out -in front and you can see the shops if there are -any, and you’re not falling off all the time. The -bus goes on the left side of the road and tilts to -the left.” -</p> - -<p> -The seats were filling up and the driver appeared -clambering into his place. -</p> - -<p> -“Didn’t you ever think of that? Didn’t you -ever think of the bus tilting that way?” persisted -Miriam to her mother’s inattentive face. -“Fancy never thinking of it. It’s beastly on -the other side.” -</p> - -<p> -The omnibus jerked forward. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-9" class="pagenum" title="9"></a> -“You ought to be a man, Mimmy.” -</p> - -<p> -“I liked that little short one,” said Miriam -contentedly as they came from under the roar of -the bridge. “They were awfully nice, weren’t -they? They seemed to have made up their -mind to take me before we went.... So I -think they like us. I wonder why they like us. -Didn’t you think they liked us? Don’t you think -they are awfully nice?” -</p> - -<p> -“I do. They are very charming ladies.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, but wasn’t it awfully rum their liking -us in that funny way?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m sure I don’t see why they should not.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, mother, you know what I mean. I like -them. I’m perfectly sure I shall like them. -D’you remember the little one saying all girls -ought to marry? Why did she say that?” -</p> - -<p> -“They are dear funny little O.M.’s,” said Mrs. -Henderson merrily. She was sitting with her -knees crossed, the stuff of her brown canvas dress -was dragged across them into an ugly fold by -the weight of the velvet panel at the side of the -skirt. She looked very small and resourceless. -And there were the Pernes with their house and -their school. They were old maids. Of course. -What then? -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-10" class="pagenum" title="10"></a> -“I never dreamed of getting such a big -salary.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, my chickie, I’m afraid it isn’t much.” -</p> - -<p> -“It is, mother, it’s lovely.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh—eh—well.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam turned fiercely to the roadway on -her left. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She had missed the first swing forward of the -vehicle and the first movements of the compact -street. -</p> - -<p> -They were going ahead now at a steady even -trot. Her face was bathed in the flow of the -breeze. -</p> - -<p> -Little rivulets played about her temples, feeling -their way through her hair. She drew off -her gloves without turning from the flowing -roadway. As they went on and on down the -long road Miriam forgot her companion in the -tranquil sense of being carried securely forward -through the air away from people and problems. -Ahead of her, at the end of the long drive, lay -three sunlit weeks, bright now in the certainty -of the shadow that lay beyond them ... “the -junior school” ... “four boarders.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-5"> -<a id="page-11" class="pagenum" title="11"></a> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -They lumbered at last round a corner and out -into a wide thoroughfare, drawing up outside a -newly-built public-house. Above it rose row -upon row of upper windows sunk in masses of -ornamental terra-cotta-coloured plaster. Branch -roads, laid with tram lines led off in every direction. -Miriam’s eyes followed a dull blue tram -with a grubby white-painted seatless roof jingling -busily off up a roadway where short trees -stood all the way along in the small dim gardens -of little grey houses. On the near corner of the -road stood a wide white building, bulging into -heavy domes against the sky. Across its side, -large gilt letters standing far apart spelled out -“Banbury Empire.” -</p> - -<p> -“It must be a theatre,” she told herself -in astonishment. “That’s what they call a -suburban theatre. People think it is really a -theatre.” -</p> - -<p> -The little shock sent her mind feeling out -along the road they had just left. She considered -its unbroken length, its shops, its treelessness. -The wide thoroughfare, up which they now began -to rumble, repeated it on a larger scale. The -<a id="page-12" class="pagenum" title="12"></a> -pavements were wide causeways reached from the -roadway by stone steps, three deep. The people -passing along them were unlike any she knew. -There were no ladies, no gentlemen, no girls or -young men such as she knew. They were all -alike. They were.... She could find no word -for the strange impression they made. It coloured -the whole of the district through which they had -come. It was part of the new world to which -she was pledged to go on September 18th. It -was her world already; and she had no words -for it. She would not be able to convey it to -others. She felt sure her mother had not noticed -it. She must deal with it alone. To try to speak -about it, even with Eve, would sap her courage. -It was her secret. A strange secret for all her life -as Hanover had been. But Hanover was beautiful, -with distant country through the saal windows -with its colours misty in the sunlight, the -beautiful, happy town and the woodland villages -so near. This new secret was shabby, ugly and -shabby. The half-perceived something persisted -unchanged when the causeways and shops disappeared -and long rows of houses streamed by, -their close ranks broken only by an occasional -cross road. They were large, high, flat-fronted -<a id="page-13" class="pagenum" title="13"></a> -houses with flights of grey stone steps leading to -their porchless doors. They had tiny railed-in -front gardens crowded with shrubs. Here and -there long narrow strips of garden pushed a row -of houses back from the roadway. In these -longer plots stood signboards and show-cases. -“Photographic Studio,” “Commercial College,” -“Eye Treatment,” “Academy of Dancing.” ... -She read the announcements with growing disquietude. -</p> - -<p> -Rows of shops reappeared and densely crowded -pavements, and then more high straight houses. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-6"> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She roused herself at last from her puzzled -contemplation and turned to glance at her -mother. Mrs. Henderson was looking out ahead. -The exhausted face was ready, Miriam saw, with -its faintly questioning eyebrows and tightly-held -lips, for emotional response. She turned away -uneasily to the spellbound streets. -</p> - -<p> -“Useless to try to talk about anything.... -Mother would be somehow violent. She would -be overpowering. The strange new impressions -would be dissolved.” -</p> - -<p> -But she must do something, show some sign -<a id="page-14" class="pagenum" title="14"></a> -of companionship. She began humming softly. -The air was so full of clamour that she could not -hear her voice. The houses and shops had disappeared. -Drab brick walls were passing slowly -by on either side. A goods’ yard. She deepened -her humming, accentuating her phrases so that -the sound might reach her companion through -the reverberations of the clangour of shunting -trains. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The high brick walls were drawing away. The -end of the long roadway was in sight. Its widening -mouth offered no sign of escape from the disquieting -strangeness. The open stretch of -thoroughfare into which they emerged was fed -by innumerable lanes of traffic. From the islands -dotted over its surface towered huge lamp standards -branching out thin arms. As they rattled -noisily over the stone setts they jolted across -several lines of tramway and wove their way -through currents of traffic crossing each other in -all directions. -</p> - -<p> -“I wonder where we’re going—I wonder if -this is a Piccadilly bus,” Miriam thought of saying. -Impossible to shout through the din. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-8"> -<a id="page-15" class="pagenum" title="15"></a> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The driver gathered up his horses and they -clattered deafeningly over the last open stretch -and turned into a smooth wide prospect. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh bliss, wood-paving,” murmured Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -A mass of smoke-greyed, sharply steepled stone -building appeared on the right. Her eyes rested -on its soft shadows. -</p> - -<p> -On the left a tall grey church was coming towards -them, spindling up into the sky. It sailed -by, showing Miriam a circle of little stone pillars -built into its spire. Plumy trees streamed by, -standing large and separate on moss-green grass -railed from the roadway. Bright white-faced -houses with pillared porches shone through from -behind them and blazed white above them -against the blue sky. Wide side streets opened -showing high balconied houses. The side streets -were feathered with trees and ended mistily. -</p> - -<p> -Away ahead were edges of clean bright masonry -in profile, soft tufted heads of trees, bright green -in the clear light. At the end of the vista -the air was like pure saffron-tinted mother-of-pearl. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam sat back and drew a deep breath. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-9"> -<a id="page-16" class="pagenum" title="16"></a> -9 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Well, chickie?” -</p> - -<p> -“What’s the matter?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, you’ve been very funny!” -</p> - -<p> -“How?” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve been so dummel.” -</p> - -<p> -“No, I haven’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh—eh.” -</p> - -<p> -“How d’you mean I’ve been funny?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not speaking to poor old mum-jam.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you haven’t spoken to me.” -</p> - -<p> -“No.” -</p> - -<p> -“I shan’t take any of my summer things there,” -said Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Henderson’s face twitched. -</p> - -<p> -“Shall I?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m afraid you haven’t very much in the way -of thick clothing.” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve only got my plaid dress for every day -and my mixy grey for best and my dark blue -summer skirt. My velveteen skirt and my nainsook -blouse are too old.” -</p> - -<p> -“You can wear the dark blue muslin blouse -with the blue skirt for a long time yet with something -warm underneath.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-17" class="pagenum" title="17"></a> -“My grey’s very grubby.” -</p> - -<p> -“You look very well in it indeed.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t mean that. I mean it’s all gone sort -of dull and grubby over the surface when you -look down it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, that’s your imagination.” -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t my imagination and I can see how -Harriett’s looks.” -</p> - -<p> -“You both look very nice.” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s not the point.” -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, -my chick.” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m not making anything. The simple fact is -that the grey dresses are piggy.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Henderson flushed deeply, twining and -untwining her silk-gloved fingers. -</p> - -<p> -“She thinks that’s ‘gross exaggeration.’ That’s -what she wants to say,” pondered Miriam -wearily. -</p> - -<p> -They turned into Langham Place. -</p> - -<p> -She glanced to see whether her mother realised -where they were. -</p> - -<p> -“Look, we’re in the West End, mother! Oh, -I’m not going to think about Banbury Park till -it begins!” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-10"> -<a id="page-18" class="pagenum" title="18"></a> -10 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -They drew up near the Maison Nouvelle. -</p> - -<p> -“<em>Stanlake</em> is,” said a refined emphatic voice -from the pavement. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam did not look for the speaker. The -quality of the voice brought her a moment’s -realisation of the meaning of her afternoon’s -adventure. She was going to be shut up away -from the grown-up things, the sunlit world, and -the people who were enjoying it. She would be -shut up and surrounded in Wordsworth House, a -proper schooly school, amongst all those strange -roadways. It would be cold English pianos and -dreadful English children—and trams going up -and down that grey road outside. -</p> - -<p> -As they went on down Regent Street she -fastened, for refuge from her thoughts, upon a -window where softly falling dresses of dull olive -stood about against a draped background of pale -dead yellow. She held it in her mind as shop -after shop streamed by. -</p> - -<p> -“These shops are extremely récherché.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s old Regent Street, mother,” said Miriam -argumentatively. “Glorious old Regent Street. -Ruby wine.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-19" class="pagenum" title="19"></a> -“Ah, Regent Street.” -</p> - -<p> -“We always walk up one side and down the -other. Up the dolls’ hospital side and down -Liberty’s. Glory, glory, ruby wine.” -</p> - -<p> -“You <em>are</em> enthusiastic.” -</p> - -<p> -“But it’s so glorious. Don’t you think so?” -</p> - -<p> -“Sit back a little, chickie. One can’t see the -windows. You’re such a solid young woman.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ll see our A B C soon. You know. The -one we go to after the Saturday pops. You’ve -been to it. You came to it the day we came to -Madame Schumann’s farewell. It’s just round -here in Piccadilly. Here it is. Glorious. I must -make the others come up once more before I die. -I always have a scone. I don’t like the aryated -bread. We go along the Burlington Arcade too. -I don’t believe you’ve ever been along there. -It’s simply perfect. Glove shops and fans and a -smell of the most exquisite scent everywhere.” -</p> - -<p> -“Dear me. It must be very captivating.” -</p> - -<p> -“Now we shall pass the parks. Oh, isn’t the -sun A1 copper bottom!” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Henderson laughed wistfully. -</p> - -<p> -“What delicious shade under those fine old -trees. I almost wish I had brought my <em>en-tout-cas</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-20" class="pagenum" title="20"></a> -“Oh no, you don’t really want it. There will -be more breeze presently. The bus always begins -to go quicker along here. It’s the Green Park, -that one. Those are clubs that side, the West -End clubs. It’s fascinating all the way along here -to Hyde Park Corner. You just see Park Lane -going up at the side. Park Lane. It goes wiggling -away, straight into heaven. We’ve never -been up there. I always read the name at the -corner.” -</p> - -<p> -“You ridiculous chick—ah, there is the Royal -Academy of Arts.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, I wonder if there are any Leightons -this year.” -</p> - -<p> -“Or Leader. Charles Leader. I think there -is nothing more charming than those landscape -scenes by Leader.” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve got three bally weeks. I can see Hyde -Park. We’ve got ages yet. It goes on being -fascinating right down through Kensington and -right on up to the other side of Putney -Bridge.” -</p> - -<p> -“Dear me. Isn’t it fascinating after that?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, not all that awful walk along the Upper -Richmond Road—not until our avenue begins—” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-11"> -<a id="page-21" class="pagenum" title="21"></a> -11 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miriam fumbled with the fastening of the -low wide gate as her mother passed on up the -drive. She waited until the footsteps were -muffled by the fullness of the may trees linking -their middle branches over the bend in the drive. -Then she looked steadily down the sunflecked -asphalted avenue along which they had just come. -The level sunlight streamed along the empty -roadway and the shadows of the lime trees lay -across the path and up the oak palings. Her -eyes travelled up and down the boles of the trees, -stopping at each little stunted tuft of greenery. -She could no longer hear her mother’s footsteps. -There was a scented coolness in the shady -watered garden. Leaning gently with her breast -against the upper bars of the gate she broke -away from the sense of her newly-made engagement. -</p> - -<p> -She scanned the whole length of the shrouded -avenue from end to end and at last looked freely -up amongst the interwoven lime trees. Long -she watched, her eyes roaming from the closely-growing -leaves where the green was densest to -the edges of the trees where the light shone -<a id="page-22" class="pagenum" title="22"></a> -through. “Gold and green,” she whispered, -“green and gold, held up by firm brown stems -bathed in gold.” -</p> - -<p> -When she reached the open garden beyond the -bend she ran once round the large centre bed -where berberus and laurestinus bushes stood in a -clump ringed by violas and blue lobelias and -heavily scented masses of cherry-ripe. Taking -the shallow steps in two silent strides she reached -the shelter of the deep porch. The outer door -and the door of the vestibule stood open. Gently -closing the vestibule she ran across the paved -hall and opened the door on the right. -</p> - -<p> -Harriett, in a long fawn canvas dress with a -deep silk sash, was standing in the middle of the -drawing-room floor with a large pot of scented -geraniums in her arms. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-1-12"> -12 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Hullo!” said Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -Putting down her pot Harriett fixed brown -eyes upon her and began jumping lightly up and -down where she stood. The small tips of her -fawn glacé kid shoes shone together between the -hem of her dress and the pale green of the -carpet. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-23" class="pagenum" title="23"></a> -“What you doing?” said Miriam quietly -shutting the door behind her and flushing with -pleasure. -</p> - -<p> -Harriett hopped more energetically. The -blaze from the western window caught the paste -stone in the tortoise-shell comb crowning her -little high twist of hair and the prisms of the -lustres standing behind her on the white marble -mantelpiece. -</p> - -<p> -“What you doing, booby?” -</p> - -<p> -“Old conservatory,” panted Harriett. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam looked vaguely down the length of the -long room to where the conservatory doors stood -wide open. As she gazed at the wet tiling -Harriett ceased hopping and kicked her delicately. -“Well, gooby?” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam grinned. -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve got it. I knew you would. The -Misses Perne have engaged Miss Miriam Henderson -as resident teacher for the junior school.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, I’ve got it,” smiled Miriam. “But -don’t let’s talk about that. It’s just an old school, -a house. I don’t know a bit what it’ll be like. -I’ve got three bally blooming weeks. Don’t let’s -talk about it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Awri.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-24" class="pagenum" title="24"></a> -“What about Saturday?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s all right. Ted was at the club.” -</p> - -<p> -“Was he!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, old scarlet face, he were.” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m <em>not</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -“He came in just before closing time and -straight up to me and ast where you were. He -looked sick when I told him, and so fagged.” -</p> - -<p> -“It was awfully hot in town,” murmured -Miriam tenderly. -</p> - -<p> -She went to the piano and struck a note very -softly. -</p> - -<p> -“He played a single with the duffer and lost -it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, well, of course, he was so tired.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, but it wasn’t that. It was because you -weren’t there. He’s simply no good when you’re -not there, now. He’s perfectly different.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam struck her note again. -</p> - -<p> -“Listen, that’s E flat.” -</p> - -<p> -“Go on.” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s a chord in E flat. Isn’t it lovely? -It sounds perfectly different in C. Listen. Isn’t -it funny?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, don’t you want to know why it’s all -right about Saturday?” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-25" class="pagenum" title="25"></a> -“Yes, screamingly.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, that’s the perfectly flabbergasting thing. -Ted simply came to say they’ve got a man coming -to stay with them and can he bring him.” -</p> - -<p> -“My dear! What a heavenly relief. That -makes twelve men and fourteen girls. That’ll -do.” -</p> - -<p> -“Nan Babington’s hurt her ankle, but she -swears she’s coming.” Harriett sniffed and sank -down on the white sheepskin, drawing her knees -up to her chin. -</p> - -<p> -“You shouldn’t say ‘swears.’” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you bet. She simply loves our dances.” -</p> - -<p> -“Did she say she did?” -</p> - -<p> -“She sat on the pavilion seat with Bevan Seymour -all the afternoon and I was with them -when Ted was playing with the duffer. She told -Bevan that she didn’t know anywhere else where -the kids arranged the dances, and everything was -so jolly. It’s <em>screaming</em>, my dear, she said.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s horrid the way she calls him ‘my dear.’ -Your ring is simply dazzling like that, Harry. -D’you see? It’s the sun.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course it’ll mean she’ll sit out in a deck -chair in the garden with Bevan all the time.” -</p> - -<p> -“How disgusting.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-26" class="pagenum" title="26"></a> -“It’s her turn for the pavilion tea on Saturday. -She’s coming in her white muslin and then coming -straight on here with two sticks and wants -us to keep her some flowers. Let’s go and have -tea. It’ll be nearly dinner time.” -</p> - -<p> -“Has Mary made a cake?” -</p> - -<p> -“I dunno. Tea was to be in the breakfast-room -when you came back.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why not in the conservatory?” -</p> - -<p> -“Because, you silly old crow, I’m beranging it -for Saturday.” -</p> - -<p> -“Shall we have the piano in there?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, don’t you think so?” -</p> - -<p> -“Twenty-six of us. Perhaps it’ll be more -blissful.” -</p> - -<p> -“If we have the breakfast-room piano in the -hall it’ll bung up the hall.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, but the Erard bass is so perfect for -waltzes.” -</p> - -<p> -“And the be-rilliant Collard treble is so all -right in the vatoire.” -</p> - -<p> -“I thought it was Eve and I talked about the -Collard treble.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I was there.” -</p> - -<p> -“Anyhow we’ll have the grand in the conservatory. -Oh, Bacchus! Ta-ra-ra-boom-deay.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-27" class="pagenum" title="27"></a> -“<em>Tea</em>,” said a rounded voice near the keyhole. -</p> - -<p> -“Eve!” shouted Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -The door opened slightly. “I know,” said the -voice. -</p> - -<p> -“Come <em>in</em>, Eve,” commanded Miriam, trying -to swing the door wide. -</p> - -<p> -“I know,” said the voice quivering with the -effort of holding the door. “I know all about -the new Misses Perne and the new man—Max -Sonnenheim—Max.” -</p> - -<p> -“This way out,” called Harriett from the conservatory. -</p> - -<p> -“Eve,” pleaded Miriam, tugging at the door, -“let me get at you. Don’t be an idiot.” -</p> - -<p> -A gurgle of amusement made her loosen her -hold. -</p> - -<p> -“I’m not trying, you beast. Take your iron -wrists away.” -</p> - -<p> -A small white hand waggled fingers through -the aperture. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam seized and covered it. “Come in for -a minute,” she begged. “I want to see you. -What have you got on?” -</p> - -<p> -“<em>Tea.</em>” -</p> - -<p> -The hand twisted itself free and Eve fled -through the hall. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-28" class="pagenum" title="28"></a> -Miriam flung after her with a yell and caught -at her slender body. “I’ve a great mind to drag -down your old hair.” -</p> - -<p> -“Tea,” smiled Eve serenely. -</p> - -<p> -“All <em>right</em>, I’m coming, damn you, aren’t I?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, Mimmy!” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, damn <em>me</em>, then. Somebody in the -house must swear. I say, Eve?” -</p> - -<p> -“What?” -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing, only I <em>say</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Um.” -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-2"> -<a id="page-29" class="pagenum" title="29"></a> -CHAPTER II -</h2> - -<h3 class=" no" id="subchap-0-2-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">M</span><span class="postfirstchar">iriam</span> extended herself on the drawing-room -sofa which had been drawn up -at the end of the room under the open -window. -</p> - -<p> -The quintets of candles on the girandoles -hanging on either side of the high overmantel -gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the -centre of the large room the chandelier, pulled -low, held out in all directions bulbs of softly -tinted light. -</p> - -<p> -In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pouring -from a tall standard lamp across the sheepskin -hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle -under her arm fluttering pages on a music -stand. The family sat grouped towards her in -a circle. -</p> - -<p> -On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant -light, Miriam was a retreating loop in the circle -of seated forms, all visible as she lay with her -<a id="page-30" class="pagenum" title="30"></a> -eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and -pilfer her own. The darkness brimmed in from -the window on her right. She could touch the -rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy stillness -of the garden. -</p> - -<p> -“What shall I play?” said the guest. -</p> - -<p> -“What have you there?” -</p> - -<p> -“Gluck ... Klassische Stücke ... Cavatina.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, Gluck,” said Mr. Henderson, smoothing -his long knees with outspread fingers. -</p> - -<p> -“Have you got that Beethoven thing?” asked -Sarah. -</p> - -<p> -“Not here, Sally.” -</p> - -<p> -“I saw it—on the piano—with chords,” said -Sarah excitedly. -</p> - -<p> -“Chords,” encouraged Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, I think so,” muttered Sarah taking up -her crochet. “I daresay I’m wrong,” she giggled, -throwing out a foot and hastily withdrawing -it. -</p> - -<p> -“I can find it, dear,” chanted the guest. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crimsoned -oval of Eve’s face appeared inverted above -her own. She poked a finger into one of the -dark eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whispered -<a id="page-31" class="pagenum" title="31"></a> -voicelessly, “Make her play the Romance -first and <em>then</em> the Cavatina without talking in -between....” -</p> - -<p> -Eve’s large soft mouth pursed a little, and -Miriam watched steadily until dimples appeared. -“Go on, Eve,” she said, removing her hand. -</p> - -<p> -“Shall I play the Beethoven first?” enquired -the guest. -</p> - -<p> -“Mm—and then the Cavatina,” murmured -Miriam, as if half asleep, turning wholly towards -the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano -scores. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She seemed to grow larger and stronger and -easier as the thoughtful chords came musing out -into the night and hovered amongst the dark trees. -She found herself drawing easy breaths and relaxing -completely against the support of the hard -friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was listening.... -</p> - -<p> -After a while, everything was dissolved, past -and future and present and she was nothing but -an ear, intent on the meditative harmony which -stole out into the garden. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-3"> -<a id="page-32" class="pagenum" title="32"></a> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -When the last gently strung notes had ceased -she turned from her window and found Harriett’s -near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling -slowly up the forehead. -</p> - -<p> -“Wow,” mouthed Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and -strained her eyebrow higher. -</p> - -<p> -The piano introduction to the Cavatina -drowned the comments on the guest’s playing and -the family relaxed once more into listening. -</p> - -<p> -“Pink anemones, eh,” suggested Miriam softly. -</p> - -<p> -Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approvingly. -</p> - -<p> -“Pink anemones,” sighed Miriam, and turned -to watch Margaret Wedderburn standing in her -full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a -radiance of red and golden light. Her heavily -waving fair hair fell back towards its tightly -braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as -death. From between furry eyelashes her eyes -looked steadfastly out, robbed of their everyday -sentimental expression. -</p> - -<p> -As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the -fine gold down covering the cheeks and upper -<a id="page-33" class="pagenum" title="33"></a> -lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin -and firm large mouth and the steady arm that -swept out in rich ’cello-like notes the devout -theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity -of happiness. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -... To-morrow the room would be lit and -decked and clear. Amongst the crowd of guests, -he would come across the room, walking in his -way.... She smiled to herself. He would -come “sloping in” in his way, like a shadow, not -looking at anyone. His strange friend would be -with him. There would be introductions and -greetings. Then he would dance with her silently -and not looking at her, as if they were strangers, -and then be dancing with someone else ... with -smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes and talking -and answering and all the time looking about the -room. And then again with her, cool and silent -and not looking. And presently she would tell -him about going away to Banbury Park. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable -again as he had done when they were alone by -the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany.... -<a id="page-34" class="pagenum" title="34"></a> -“Play ‘Abide with me,’ Miriam; play -‘Abide with me.’” ... -</p> - -<p> -To-morrow there would be another moment -like that. He would say her name suddenly, as -he had done last week at the Babingtons’ dance, -very low, half-turning towards her. She would -be ready this time and say his name and move -instead of being turned to stone. Confidently -the music assured her of that moment. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-6"> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She lay looking quietly into his imagined face -till the room had gone. Then the face grew dim -and far off and at last receded altogether into -darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was -his own life. She would never know it. However -well they got to know each other they would -always be strangers. Probably he never thought -about her when he was alone. Only of Shakespeare -and politics. What would he think if he -knew she thought of him? But he thought of -her when he saw her. That was utterly certain; -the one thing certain in the world.... That -day, coming along Putney Hill with mother, -tired and dull and trying to keep her temper, -passing his house, seeing him standing at his -<a id="page-35" class="pagenum" title="35"></a> -window, alone and pale and serious. The sudden -lightening of his face surprised her again, violently, -as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole -world from end to end. He did not know that -he had looked like that. She had turned swiftly -from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow -on her heart, that one day he would kiss her. -Not for years and years. But one day he would -bend his head. She wrenched herself from the -thought, but it was too late. She thanked heaven -she had looked; she wished she had not; the -kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not -touched her, it was like the breath of the summer. -Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt -the pavement. She remembered walking on, -exulting with hanging head, cringing close to -the ivy which hung from the top of the garden -wall, sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and -everyone who would never stand first with Ted. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -... There were girls who let themselves be -kissed for fun.... Playing “Kiss in the Ring,” -being kissed by someone they did not mean to -always be with, all their life ... how sad and -dreadful. Why did it not break their hearts? -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-8"> -<a id="page-36" class="pagenum" title="36"></a> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug, -being thanked and praised. Her brown violin -hung amongst the folds of her skirt. -</p> - -<p> -“People <em>do</em> like us,” mused Miriam, listening -to the peculiar sympathy of the family voice. -</p> - -<p> -Meg was there, away from her own home, -happy with them, the front door shut, their -garden and house all round her and her strange -luggage upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice -Meg.... -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-9"> -9 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat -in a low carpet chair at a window in the long -bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a -morning of blazing sunlight and bright blue. -She had just come up through the cool house -from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with -Harriett. A little bunch of pink anemones she -had picked for herself were set in a tumbler on -the wash-hand-stand. -</p> - -<p> -She had left the door open to hear coming -faintly up from the far-away drawing-room the -tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and -Eve were stretching the drugget. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-37" class="pagenum" title="37"></a> -On her knee lay her father’s cigarette-making -machine and a parcel of papers and tobacco. An -empty cigarette tin stood upon the window-sill. -</p> - -<p> -She began packing tobacco into the groove of -the machine, distributing and pressing it lightly -with the tips of her fingers, watching as she -worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and -the shining of their green stalks through the water. -They were, she reflected, a little too much out. -In the sun they would have come out still more. -They would close up at night unless the rooms -grew very hot. Slipping the paper evenly into -the slot she shut the machine and turned the -roller. As the sound of the loosely working cogs -came up to her she revolted from her self-imposed -task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It -would use up her happiness too stupidly. -</p> - -<p> -She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that -she should smoke the single cigarette herself. -Why not? Why had she never yet smoked one? -She glanced at the slowly swinging door. No one -would come. She was alone on the top floor. -Everyone was downstairs and busy. The finished -cigarette lay on her knee. Taking it between her -fingers she pressed a little hanging thread of -<a id="page-38" class="pagenum" title="38"></a> -tobacco into place. The cigarette felt pleasantly -plump and firm. It was well made. As she rose -to get matches the mowing machine sounded -suddenly from the front lawn. She started and -looked out of the window, concealing the cigarette -in her hand. It was the gardener with bent -shoulders pushing with all his might. With some -difficulty she unhitched the phosphorescent -match-box from its place under the gas-bracket -and got back into her low chair, invisible from -the lawn. -</p> - -<p> -The cool air flowed in garden-scented. She -held the cigarette between two fingers. The -match hissed and flared as she held it carefully -below the sill, and the flame flowed towards her -while she set the paper alight. Raising the -cigarette to her lips she blew gently outwards, -down through the tobacco. The flame twisted -and went out, leaving the paper charred. She -struck another match angrily, urging herself to -draw, and drew little panting breaths with the -cigarette well in the flame. It smoked. Blowing -out the match she looked at the end of the cigarette. -It was glowing all over and a delicate little -spiral of smoke rose into her face. Quickly she -applied her lips again and drew little breaths, -<a id="page-39" class="pagenum" title="39"></a> -opening her mouth wide between each breath -and holding the cigarette sideways away from -her. The end glowed afresh with each breath. -The paper charred evenly away and little -flecks of ash fell about her. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-10"> -10 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -A third of the whole length was consumed. -Her nostrils breathed in smoke, and as she tasted -the burnt flavour the sweetness of the unpolluted -air all around her was a new thing. The acrid -tang in her nostrils intoxicated her. She drew -more boldly. There was smoke in her mouth. -She opened it quickly, sharply exhaling a yellow -cloud oddly different from the grey spirals wreathing -their way from the end of the cigarette. -She went on drawing in mouthful after mouthful -of smoke, expelling each quickly with widely-opened -lips, turning to look at the well-known -room through the yellow haze and again at the -sky, which drew nearer as she puffed at it. The -sight of the tree-tops scrolled with her little -clouds brought her a sense of power. She had -chosen to smoke and she was smoking, and the -morning world gleamed back at her.... -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-11"> -<a id="page-40" class="pagenum" title="40"></a> -11 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The morning gleamed. She would choose her -fate. It should be amongst green trees and sunshine. -That daunted lump who had accepted the -post at Banbury Park had nothing to do with -her. Morning gladness flooded her, and her -gladness of the thought of the evening to come -quickened as it had done last night into certainty. -</p> - -<p> -She burned the last inch of the cigarette in -the grate, wrapped with combings from the -toilet-tidy in a screw of paper. When all was -consumed she carefully replaced the summer -bundle of ornamental mohair behind the bars. -</p> - -<p> -Useless to tell anyone. No one would believe -she had not felt ill. She found it difficult to -understand why anyone should feel sick from -smoking. Dizzy perhaps ... a little drunk. -Pater’s tobacco was very strong, some people -could not smoke it.... She had smoked a -whole cigarette of strong tobacco and liked it. -Raising her arms above her head she worked them -upwards, stretching every muscle of her body. -No, she was anything but ill. -</p> - -<p> -Leaving the window wide she went on to the -landing. The smell of tobacco was everywhere. -<a id="page-41" class="pagenum" title="41"></a> -She flung into each room in turn, throwing up -windows and leaving doors propped ajar. -</p> - -<p> -Harriett coming up the garden with a basket -of cut flowers saw her at the cook’s bedroom -window. -</p> - -<p> -“What on earth you doing thayer!” she -shrieked putting down her basket. -</p> - -<p> -Hanging from the window Miriam made a -trumpet of her hands. -</p> - -<p> -“Something blew in!” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-12"> -12 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -All preparations for the evening were made -and the younger members of the household were -having a late tea in the breakfast-room. “We’ve -done the alcoves,” said Sarah explosively, “in -case it rains.” -</p> - -<p> -Nan Babington sat up in her long chair to -bring her face round to the deep bay where -Sarah stood. -</p> - -<p> -“My <em>dear</em>! Seraphina! And she’s doing the -pink bows! Will some saint take my cup? Ta.... -My dear, how <em>perfectly</em> screaming.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam raised her head from the petal-scattered -table, where she lay prone side by side with -Harriett, to watch Nan sitting up in her firm -<a id="page-42" class="pagenum" title="42"></a> -white dress beaming at Sarah through her -slanting eye. -</p> - -<p> -“What flowers you going to wear, Nan?” -</p> - -<p> -Nan patted her sleek slightly Japanese-looking -hair. “<em>Ah</em> ... splashes of scarlet, my dear. -Splashes of scarlet. One in my hair and one -here.” She patted the broad level of her enviable -breast towards the left shoulder. -</p> - -<p> -“Almost <em>on</em> the shoulder, you know—arranged -flat, <em>can’t</em> be squashed and showing as you -dance.” -</p> - -<p> -“Geraniums! Oom. You’ve got awfully good -taste. What a frightfully good effect. Bright -red and bright white. Clean. Go on, Nan.” -</p> - -<p> -“<em>Killing</em>,” pursued Nan. “Tom said at -breakfast with his mouth absolutely <em>full</em> of sweet-bread, -‘it’ll rain’—growled, you know, with his -mouth <em>crammed</em> full. ‘Never mind, Tommy,’ -said Ella with the <em>utmost</em> promptitude, ‘they’re -sure to have the alcoves.’ ‘Oomph,’ growled -Tommy, pretending not to care. <em>Naughty</em> -Tommy, naughty, <em>naughty</em> Tommy!” -</p> - -<p> -“Any cake left?” sighed Miriam, sinking back -amongst her petals and hoping that Nan’s voice -would go on. -</p> - -<p> -“You girls are the most adorable individuals -<a id="page-43" class="pagenum" title="43"></a> -I ever met.... Did anybody see Pearlie going -home this afternoon?” -</p> - -<p> -Everyone chuckled and waited. -</p> - -<p> -“My <em>dears</em>! My <em>dears</em>!! Bevan <em>dragged</em> me -along to the end of the pavilion to see him enter -up the handicaps with his new automatic pen—<em>awfully</em> -smashing—and I was just hobbling the -last few yards past the apple trees when we <em>saw</em> -Pearlie hand-in-hand with the Botterford boys, -prancing along the asphalt court—<em>prancing</em>, my -dears!” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam and Harriett dragged themselves up -to see. Nan bridled and swayed from listener to -listener, her wide throat gleaming as she sang -out her words. -</p> - -<p> -“Prancing—with straggles of grey hair sticking -out and that <em>tiny</em> sailor hat cocked <em>almost</em> on -to her nose. My dear, you sh’d’ve <em>seen</em> Bevan! -He put up his eyeglass, my dears, for a <em>fraction</em> of -a second,” Nan’s head went up—“Madame Pompadour,” -thought Miriam—and her slanting eyes -glanced down her nose, “and dropped it, clickety-click. -You sh’d’ve <em>seen</em> the expression on his -angelic countenance.” -</p> - -<p> -“I say, she <em>is</em> an awful little creature, isn’t -she?” said Miriam, watching Eve bend a crimson -<a id="page-44" class="pagenum" title="44"></a> -face over the tea-tray on the hearthrug. “She -put her boots on the pavilion table this afternoon -when all those men were there—about a mile -high they are—with tassels. Why <em>does</em> she go on -like that?” -</p> - -<p> -“Men like that sort of thing,” said Sarah -lightly. -</p> - -<p> -“Sally!” -</p> - -<p> -“They do.... I believe she drinks.” -</p> - -<p> -“Sally! My <em>dear</em>!” -</p> - -<p> -“I believe she <em>does</em>. She’s always having -shandygaff with the men.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, well, perhaps she doesn’t,” murmured Eve. -</p> - -<p> -“Chuck me a lump of sugar, Eve.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam subsided once more amongst the rose -petals. -</p> - -<p> -“Bevvy thinks I oughtn’t to dance.” -</p> - -<p> -“Did he say so?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course, my dear. But old Wyman said I -could, every third, except the Lancers.” -</p> - -<p> -“You sh’d’ve seen Bevvy’s face. ‘Brother -Tommy doesn’t object,’ I said. ‘He’s going to -look after me!’ ‘<em>Is</em> he?’ said Bevvy in his <em>most</em> -superior manner.” -</p> - -<p> -“What a fearful scrunching you’re making,” -said Harriett, pinching Miriam’s nose. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-45" class="pagenum" title="45"></a> -“Let’s go and dress,” said Miriam, rolling off -the table. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-13"> -13 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“How many times has she met him?” asked -Miriam as they went through the hall. -</p> - -<p> -“I dunno. Not many.” -</p> - -<p> -“I think it’s simply hateful.” -</p> - -<p> -“Mimmy!” It was Nan’s insinuating voice. -</p> - -<p> -“Coming,” called Miriam. “And, you know, -Tommy needn’t think he can carry on with <em>Meg</em> -in an alcove.” -</p> - -<p> -“<em>What</em> would she think? Let’s go and tell -Meg she must dress.” -</p> - -<p> -“Mimmy!” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam went back and put her head round the -breakfast-room door. -</p> - -<p> -“Let me see you when you’re dressed.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why?” -</p> - -<p> -“I want to kiss the back of your neck, my dear; -love kissing people’s necks.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam smiled herself vaguely out of the room, -putting away the unpleasant suggestion. -</p> - -<p> -“I wish I’d got a dress like Nan’s,” she said, -joining Harriett in the dark lobby. -</p> - -<p> -“I say, somebody’s been using the ‘Financial -Times’ to cut up flowers on. It’s all wet.” -<a id="page-46" class="pagenum" title="46"></a> -Harriett lifted the limp newspaper from the -marble-topped coil of pipes and shook it. -</p> - -<p> -“Hang it up somewhere.” -</p> - -<p> -“Where? Everything’s cleared up.” -</p> - -<p> -“Stick it out of the lavatory window and pull -the window down on it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Awri, you hold the door open.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam laughed as Harriett fell into the room. -</p> - -<p> -“Blooming boot-jack.” -</p> - -<p> -“Is it all right in there? Are all the pegs -clear? Is the washing-basin all right?” -</p> - -<p> -A faint light came in as Harriett pushed up -the frosted pane. -</p> - -<p> -“Here’s a pair of boots all over the floor and -your old Zulu hat hanging on a peg. The basin’s -all right except a perfectly foul smell of nicotine. -It’s pater’s old feather.” -</p> - -<p> -“That doesn’t matter. The men won’t mind -that. My old hat can stay. There are ten pegs -out here and all the slab, and there’s hardly anything -on the hall stand. That’s it. Don’t cram -the window down so as to cut the paper. That’ll -do. Come on.” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish I had a really stunning dress,” remarked -Miriam, as they tapped across the wide hall. -</p> - -<p> -“You needn’t.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-47" class="pagenum" title="47"></a> -The drawing-room door was open. They surveyed -the sea of drugget, dark grey in the fading -light. “<em>Pong</em>-pong-<em>pong</em> de doodle, <em>pong</em>-pong-<em>pong</em> -de doodle,” murmured Miriam as they stood -swaying on tiptoe in the doorway. -</p> - -<p> -“Let’s have the gas and <em>two</em> candlesticks, -Harry, on the dressing-table under the gas.” -</p> - -<p> -“All right,” mouthed Harriett in a stage -whisper, making for the stairs as the breakfast-room -door opened. -</p> - -<p> -It was Eve. “I say, Eve, I’m <em>scared</em>,” said -Miriam, meeting her. -</p> - -<p> -Eve giggled triumphantly. -</p> - -<p> -“Look here. I shan’t come down at first. I’ll -play the first dance. I’ll get them all started -with ‘Bitter-Sweet.’” -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t worry, Mim.” -</p> - -<p> -“My <em>dear</em>, I simply don’t know how to face -the evening.” -</p> - -<p> -“You do,” murmured Eve. “You are -proud.” -</p> - -<p> -“What of?” -</p> - -<p> -“You know quite well.” -</p> - -<p> -“What?” -</p> - -<p> -“He’s the nicest boy we know.” -</p> - -<p> -“But he’s not my boy. Of course not. You’re -<a id="page-48" class="pagenum" title="48"></a> -insane. Besides, I don’t know who you’re talking -about.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, well, we won’t talk. We’ll go and arrange -your chignon.” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m going to have simply twists and perhaps -a hair ornament.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-14"> -14 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miriam reached the conservatory from the -garden door and set about opening the lid of -the grand piano. She could see at the far end -of the almost empty drawing-room a little ruddy -thick-set bearded man with a roll of music under -his arm talking to her mother. He was standing -very near to her, surrounding her with his -eager presence. “Mother’s wonderful,” thought -Miriam, with a moment’s adoration for Mrs. -Henderson’s softly-smiling girlish tremulousness. -Listening to the man’s hilarious expostulating -narrative voice she fumbled hastily for her waltz -amongst the scattered piles of music on the lid -of the piano. -</p> - -<p> -As she struck her opening chords she watched -her mother gently quell the narrative and steer -the sturdy form towards a group of people hesitating -in the doorway. “Have they had coffee?” -<a id="page-49" class="pagenum" title="49"></a> -she wondered anxiously. “Is Mary driving them -into the dining-room properly?” Before she -had reached the end of her second page everyone -had disappeared. She paused a moment and -looked down the brightly lit empty room—the -sight of the cold sheeny drugget filled her with -despair. The hilarious voice resounded in the -hall. There couldn’t be many there yet. Were -they all looking after them properly? For a -moment she was tempted to leave her piano and -go and make some desperate attempt at geniality. -Then the sound of the pervading voice back -again in the room and brisk footsteps coming towards -the conservatory drove her back to her -music. The little man stepped quickly over the -low moulding into the conservatory. -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, Mariamne,” he blared gently. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, Bennett, you angel, how <em>did</em> you get -here so early?” responded Miriam, playing with -zealous emphasis. -</p> - -<p> -“Got old Barrowgate to finish off the out-patients,” -he said with a choke of amusement. -</p> - -<p> -“I say, Mirry, don’t you play. Let me take -it on. You go and ply the light fantastic.” He -laid his hands upon her shoulders and burred the -tune she was playing like a muted euphonium -<a id="page-50" class="pagenum" title="50"></a> -over the top of her head. “No. It’s all right. -Go and get them dancing. Get over the awfulness—<em>you</em> -know.” -</p> - -<p> -“Get over the awfulness, eh? Oh, I’ll get -over the awfulness.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ssh—are there many there?” -</p> - -<p> -They both looked round into the drawing-room. -</p> - -<p> -Nan Babington was backing slowly up and down -the room supported by the outstretched arms of -Bevan Seymour, her black head thrown back -level with his, the little scarlet knot in her hair -hardly registering the smooth movements of her -invisible feet. -</p> - -<p> -“They seem to have begun,” shouted Bennett -in a whisper as Harriett and her fiancé swung -easily circling into the room and were followed -by two more couples. -</p> - -<p> -“Go and dance with Meg. She only knows -Tommy Babington.” -</p> - -<p> -“Like the lid up?” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-15"> -15 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miriam’s rhythmic clangour doubled its resonance -in the tiled conservatory as the great lid of -the piano went up. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-51" class="pagenum" title="51"></a> -“Magnifique, Mirry, parfaitement magnifique,” -intoned Tommy Babington, appearing in -the doorway with Meg on his arm. -</p> - -<p> -“Bonsoir, Tomasso.” -</p> - -<p> -“You are like an expressive metronome.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh—nom d’un pipe.” -</p> - -<p> -“You would make a rhinoceros dance.” -</p> - -<p> -Adjusting his pince-nez he dexterously seized -tall Meg and swung her rapidly in amongst the -dancers. -</p> - -<p> -“Sarah’ll say he’s had a Turkish bath,” thought -Miriam, recalling the unusual clear pallor of his -rather overfed face. “Pleated shirt. That’s to -impress Meg.” -</p> - -<p> -She felt all at once that the air seemed cold. -It was not like a summer night. How badly the -ferns were arranged. Nearly all of them together -on the staging behind the end of the piano; -not enough visible from the drawing-room. Her -muscles were somehow stiffening into the wrong -mood. Presently she would be playing badly. -She watched the forms circling past the gap in -the curtains and slowed a little. The room seemed -fairly full. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s it—perfect, Mim,” signalled Harriett’s -partner, swinging her by. She held to the -<a id="page-52" class="pagenum" title="52"></a> -fresh rhythm and passing into a tender old waltz -tune that she knew by heart gave herself to her -playing. She need not watch the feet any longer. -She could go on for ever. She knew she was not -playing altogether for the dancers. She was -playing to two hearers. But she could not play -that tune if they came. They would be late. -But they must be here now. Where were they? -Were they having coffee? Dancing? She flung -a terrified glance at the room and met the cold -eye of Bevan Seymour. She would not look -again. The right feeling for the dreamy old tune -came and went uncontrollably. Why did they -not come? Presently she would be cold and sick -and done for, for the evening. She played on, -harking back to the memory of the kindly challenge -in the eyes of her brother-in-law to be, -dancing gravely with a grave Harriett—fearing -her ... writing in her album: -</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> - <div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <p class="verse7">“She was his life,</p> - <p class="verse">The ocean to the river of his thoughts—</p> - <p class="verse">Which terminated all.”</p> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent"> -... cold, calm little Harriett. Her waltz had -swung soft and low and the dancers were hushed. -Only Tommy Babington’s voice still threaded -the little throng. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-53" class="pagenum" title="53"></a> -Someone held back the near curtain. A voice -said quietly, “Here she is.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-16"> -16 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Ted’s low, faintly-mocking voice filled the conservatory. -</p> - -<p> -He was standing very near her, looking down -at her with his back to the gay room. Yesterday’s -dream had come more than true, at once, at the -beginning of the evening. He had come straight -to her with his friend, not dancing, not looking -for a partner. They were in the little green enclosure -with her. The separating curtains had -fallen back into place. -</p> - -<p> -Behind the friend who stood leaning against the -far end of the piano, the massed fernery gleamed -now with the glow of concealed fairy lamps. She -had not noticed it before. The fragrance of -fronds and moist warm clumps of maidenhair -and scented geraniums inundated her as she -glanced across at the light falling on hard sculptured -waves of hair above a white handsome -face. -</p> - -<p> -Her music held them all, protecting the wordless -meeting. Her last night’s extremity of content -was reality, being lived by all three of them. -<a id="page-54" class="pagenum" title="54"></a> -It centred in herself. Ted stood within it, -happy in it. The friend watched, witnessing -Ted’s confession. Ted had said nothing to him -about her, about any of them, in his usual way. -But he was disguising nothing now that he had -come. -</p> - -<p> -At the end of her playing she stood up faintly -dizzy, and held out towards Max Sonnenheim’s -familiar strangeness hands heavy with happiness -and quickened with the sense of Ted’s touch upon -her arm. The swift crushing of the strange -hands upon her own, steadied her as the curtains -swung wide and a group of dancers crowded in. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-17"> -17 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Don’t tell N.B. we’ve scrubbed the coffin, -Miriorama—she’ll sit there all the evening.” -</p> - -<p> -“That was my sister and my future brother-in-law,” -said Miriam to Max Sonnenheim as -Harriett and Gerald ran down the steps and out -into the dark garden. -</p> - -<p> -“Your sister and brother-in-law,” he responded -thoughtfully. -</p> - -<p> -He was standing at her side at the top of the -garden steps staring out into the garden and apparently -not noticing the noisy passers-by. If -<a id="page-55" class="pagenum" title="55"></a> -they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not -been dancing, would join them. She did not -want that. She would put off her dance with -Ted until later. The next dance she would play -herself and then perhaps dance again with Max. -Once more from the strange security of his -strongly swinging arms she would meet Ted’s -eyes, watching and waiting. She must dance -once more with Max. She had never really -danced before. She would go to Ted at last and -pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not -yet. -</p> - -<p> -“I will show you the front garden,” she said, -running down the steps. -</p> - -<p> -He joined her and they walked silently round -the side of the house, through the kitchen yard -and out into the deserted carriage drive. She -thought she saw people on the front lawn and -walked quickly, humming a little tune, on down -the drive. -</p> - -<p> -Max crunched silently along a little apart from -her, singing to himself. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-18"> -18 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Both sides of the front gate were bolted back -and their footsteps carried them straight out on -<a id="page-56" class="pagenum" title="56"></a> -to the asphalted avenue extending right and left, -a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps -out in the roadway. With a sudden sense of -daring, Miriam determined to assume the deserted -avenue as part of the garden. -</p> - -<p> -The gate left behind, they made their way -slowly along the high leafy tunnel. -</p> - -<p> -They would walk to the end of the long -avenue and back again. In a moment she would -cease humming and make a remark. She tasted -a new sense of ease, walking slowly along with -this strange man without “making conversation.” -He was taking her silence for granted. -All her experience so far had been of companions -whose uneasiness pressed unendurably for speech, -and her talking had been done with an irritated -sense of the injustice of aspersions on “women’s -tongues,” while no man could endure a woman’s -silence ... even Ted, except when dancing; -no woman could, except Minna, in Germany. -Max must be foreign, of course, German—of -<em>course</em>. She could, if she liked, talk of the stars -to him. He would neither make jokes nor talk -science and want her to admire him, until all -the magic was gone. Her mood expanded. He -had come just at the right moment. She would -<a id="page-57" class="pagenum" title="57"></a> -keep him with her until she had to face Ted. -He was like a big ship towing the little barque -of her life to its harbour. -</p> - -<p> -His vague humming rose to a little song. It -was German. It was the Lorelei. For a moment -she forgot everything but pride in her ability to -take her share in both music and words. -</p> - -<p> -“You understand German!” he cried. -</p> - -<p> -They had reached the end of the avenue and -the starlit roadway opened ahead, lined with -meadows. -</p> - -<p> -“Ach, wie schön,” breathed Max. -</p> - -<p> -“Wie schön.” Miriam was startled by the gay -sound of her own voice. It sounded as if she were -alone, speaking to herself. She looked up at the -spangled sky. The freshening air streamed towards -them from the meadows. -</p> - -<p> -“We <em>must</em> go back,” she said easily, turning in -again under the trees. -</p> - -<p> -The limes seemed heavily scented after their -breath of the open. They strolled dreamily along -keeping step with each other. They would make -it a long quiet way to the gate. Miriam felt -strangely invisible. It was as if in a moment a -voice would come from the clustering lime trees -or from the cluster of stars in the imagined sky. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-58" class="pagenum" title="58"></a> -“Wie süss,” murmured Max, “ist treue -Liebe.” -</p> - -<p> -“How dear,” she translated mentally, “is true -love.” Yes, that was it, that was true, the German -phrase. Ted was dear, dear. But so far -away. Coming and going, far away. -</p> - -<p> -“Is it?” she said with a vague, sweet intonation, -to hear more. -</p> - -<p> -“Wie süss, wie süss,” he repeated firmly, -flinging his arm across her shoulders. -</p> - -<p> -The wildly shimmering leafage rustled and -seemed to sing. She walked on horrified, cradled, -her elbow resting in her companion’s hand as in -a cup. She laughed, and her laughter mingled -with the subdued lilting of the voice close at -her side. Ted was waiting somewhere in the -night for her. Ted. Ted. Not this stranger. -But why was he not bold like this? Primly and -gently she disengaged herself. -</p> - -<p> -She and Ted would walk along through the -darkness and it would shout to them. Day-time -colours seemed to be shining through the night.... -She turned abruptly to her companion. -</p> - -<p> -“Aren’t the lime trees jolly?” she said conversationally. -</p> - -<p> -“You will dance again with me?” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-59" class="pagenum" title="59"></a> -“Yes, if you like.” -</p> - -<p> -“I must go so early.” -</p> - -<p> -“Must you?” -</p> - -<p> -“To-morrow morning early I go abroad.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-19"> -19 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Hullo!” -</p> - -<p> -“Where were <em>you</em> all that last dance?” -</p> - -<p> -Nan Babington’s voice startled her as they -came into the bright hall through the open front -door. -</p> - -<p> -She smiled towards Nan, sitting drearily with -a brilliant smile on her face watching the dancers -from a long chair drawn up near the drawing-room -door, and passed on into the room with her -hand on her partner’s arm. They had missed a -dance and an interval. It must have been a -Lancers and now there was another waltz. -</p> - -<p> -Several couples were whirling gravely about. -Amongst them she noted Bevan Seymour, upright -and slender, dancing with Harriett with an -air of condescending vivacity, his bright teeth -showing all the time. Her eyes were ready for -Ted. She was going to meet his for the first -time—just one look, and then she would fly for -her life anywhere, to anybody. And he would -<a id="page-60" class="pagenum" title="60"></a> -find her and make her look at him again. Ted. -He was not there. People were glancing at her, -curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and felt -their radiance stream through her, flooding her -with strength from head to foot. How battered -and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and sick, -stamped with a pallor of sickness. How she pitied -them all. -</p> - -<p> -“Let us take a short turn,” said Max, and his -arms came around her. As they circled slowly -down the length of the room she stared at his -black shoulder a few inches from her eyes. His -stranger’s face was just above her in the bright -light; his strange black-stitched glove holding -her mittened hand. His arms steadied her as -they neared the conservatory. -</p> - -<p> -“Let us go out,” she heard him say, and her -footsteps were guided across the moulding, her -arm retained in his. Meg Wedderburn was -playing and met her with her sentimental smile. -In the gloom at her side, just beyond the shaded -candle, stood Ted ready to turn the music, his -disengaged hand holding the bole of a tall palm. -He dropped his hands and turned as they passed -him, almost colliding with Miriam. “Next -dance with me,” he whispered neatly. “Will -<a id="page-61" class="pagenum" title="61"></a> -you show me your coffin?” asked Max as they -reached the garden steps. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s quite down at the end beyond the kitchen -garden.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-2-20"> -20 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“There are raspberry canes all along here, on -both sides—trailing all over the place; the gardener -puts up stakes and things but they manage -to trail all over the place.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“Some of them are that pale yellow kind, the -colour of champagne. You can just see how -they trail. Isn’t it funny how dark they are, and -yet the colour’s there all the time, isn’t it? They -are lovely in the day, lovely leaves and great big -fruit, and in between are little squatty gooseberry -bushes, all kinds, yellow and egg-shaped like -plums, and little bright green round ones and -every kind of the ordinary red kind. Do you -know the little bright green ones, quite bright -green when they’re ripe, like bright green -Chartreuse?” -</p> - -<p> -“No. The green Chartreuse of course I know. -But green ripe gooseberries I have not seen.” -</p> - -<p> -“I expect you only know the unripe green -ones they make April fool of.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-62" class="pagenum" title="62"></a> -“April fool?” -</p> - -<p> -“I mean <em>gooseberry</em> fool. Do you know why -men are like green gooseberries?” -</p> - -<p> -“No. Why are they? Tell me.” -</p> - -<p> -“Perhaps you would not like it. We are passing -the apple trees now; quarendens and stibbards.” -</p> - -<p> -“Tell me. I shall like what you say.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, it’s because women can make fools of -them whenever they like.” -</p> - -<p> -Max laughed; a deep gurgling laugh that -echoed back from the wall in front of them. -</p> - -<p> -“We are nearly at the end of the garden.” -</p> - -<p> -“I think you would not make a man a fool. -No?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” -</p> - -<p> -“You have not thought much about men.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know.” -</p> - -<p> -“But they, they have thought about you.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know.” -</p> - -<p> -“You do not care, perhaps?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. -Here’s the coffin. I’m afraid it’s not very comfortable. -It’s so low.” -</p> - -<p> -“What is it?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s an overturned seedling box. There’s -<a id="page-63" class="pagenum" title="63"></a> -grass all round. I wonder whether it’s damp,” -said Miriam suddenly invaded by a general uncertainty. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, we will sit down, it will not be damp. -Your future brother-in-law has not scrubbed -also the ivy on the wall,” he pursued as they sat -down on the broad low seat, “it will spoil your -blouse.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam leaned uncomfortably against the -intervening arm. -</p> - -<p> -“Isn’t it a perfectly lovely night?” she said. -</p> - -<p> -“I feel that you would not make of a man a -fool....” -</p> - -<p> -“Why not?” -</p> - -<p> -“I feel that there is no poison in you.” -</p> - -<p> -“What <em>do</em> you mean?” People ... poisonous -... What a horrible idea. -</p> - -<p> -“Just what I say.” -</p> - -<p> -“I know in a way. I think I know what you -mean.” -</p> - -<p> -“I feel that there is no poison in you. I have -not felt that before with a woman.” -</p> - -<p> -“Aren’t women awful?” Miriam made a -little movement of sympathy towards the strange -definiteness at her side. -</p> - -<p> -“I have thought so. But you are not as the -<a id="page-64" class="pagenum" title="64"></a> -women one meets. You have a soul serene and innocent. -With you it should be well with a man.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know,” responded Miriam. “Is he -telling me I am a fool?” she thought. “It’s -true, but no one has the courage to tell me.” -</p> - -<p> -“It is most strange. I talk to you here as I -will. It is simple and fatal”; the supporting -arm became a gentle encirclement and Miriam’s -heart beat softly in her ears. “I go to-morrow -to Paris to the branch of my father’s business -that is managed there by my brother. And I go -then to New York to establish a branch there. -I shall be away then, perhaps a year. Shall I -find you here?” -</p> - -<p> -A quick crunching on the gravel pathway just -in front of them made them both hold their -breath to listen. Someone was standing on the -grass near Max’s side of the coffin. A match spat -and flared and Miriam’s heart was shaken by -Ted’s new, eager, frightened voice. “Aren’t -you <em>ever</em> going to dance with me again?” -</p> - -<p> -She had seen the whiteness of his face and his -cold, delicate, upright figure. In spirit she had -leapt to her feet and faltered his name. All the -world she knew had fallen into newness. This -was certainty. Ted would never leave her. But -<a id="page-65" class="pagenum" title="65"></a> -it was Max who was standing up and saying -richly in the blackness left by the burnt-out -match, “All in good time, Burton. Miss Miriam -is engaged to me for this dance.” Her faint “of -course, Ted,” was drowned in the words which -her partner sang after the footsteps retreating -rapidly along the gravel path: “We’re just -coming!” -</p> - -<p> -“I suppose they’ve begun the next dance,” she -said, rising decisively and brushing at her velvet -skirt with trembling hands. -</p> - -<p> -“Our dance. Let us go and dance our dance.” -</p> - -<p> -They walked a little apart steadily along up -through the kitchen garden, their unmatched -footsteps sounding loudly upon the gravel between -remarks made by Max. Miriam heard -them and heard the voice of Max. But she neither -listened nor responded. -</p> - -<p> -She began to talk and laugh at random as they -neared the lawn lit by the glaring uncurtained -windows. -</p> - -<p> -Consulting his scrutinising face as they danced -easily in the as yet half-empty room, he humming -the waltz which swung with their movement, she -found narrow, glinting eyes looking into her -own; strange eyes that knew all about a big -<a id="page-66" class="pagenum" title="66"></a> -business and were going to Paris and New York. -His stranger’s face was going away, to be -washed and shaved innumerable times, keeping -its assurance in strange places she knew nothing -about. -</p> - -<p> -Here, just for these few hours, laughing at -Ted. A phrase flashed through her brain, “He’s -brought Ted to his senses.” She flushed and -laughed vaguely and danced with a feeling of -tireless strength and gaiety. She knew the phrase -was not her own. It was one Nan Babington -could have used. It excited her. It meant that -real things were going to happen, she could bear -herself proudly in the room. She rippled complacently -at Max. The room was full of whirling -forms, swelling and shrinking as they crossed and -recrossed the line between the clear vision -rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright -confusion. Swift, rhythmic movement, unbroken -and unjostled, told her how well they were -dancing. She was secure, landed in life, dancing -carelessly out and out to a life of her own. -</p> - -<p> -“I go; I see you again in a year,” said Max -suddenly, drawing up near the door where Mrs. -Henderson stood sipping coffee with Sarah and -Bennett. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-67" class="pagenum" title="67"></a> -“Where is Burton?” he asked in the midst of -his thanks and leave-taking. -</p> - -<p> -They all hesitated. Miriam suddenly found -herself in the presence of a tribunal. -</p> - -<p> -Bennett’s careless “Oh, he’s gone; couldn’t -stay,” followed her as she flung upstairs to Meg -Wedderburn’s empty room. Why had her -mother looked so self-conscious and Sarah avoided -her eye ... standing there like a little group of -conspirators. -</p> - -<p> -People were always inventing things. “Bother—damnational -silliness,” she muttered, and began -rapidly calculating. Ted gone away. Little Ted -hurt and angry. To-morrow. Perhaps he -wouldn’t come. If he didn’t she wouldn’t see -him before she went. The quiet little bead of -ruby shaded gas reproached her. Meg’s eyes -would be sad and reproachful in this quiet neatness. -Terror seized her. She wouldn’t see him. -He had finished his work at the Institution. It -was the big Norwich job next week. -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-3"> -<a id="page-68" class="pagenum" title="68"></a> -CHAPTER III -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">M</span><span class="postfirstchar">iriam</span> propped “The Story of Adèle” -open against the three Bibles on the dressing-table. -It would be wasteful to read it upstairs. -It was the only story-book amongst the -rows of volumes which filled the shelves in the -big schoolroom and would have to last her for -tea-time reading the whole term. The “Fleurs -de l’Eloquence?” Shiny brown leather covered -with little gold buds and tendrils, fresh and new -although the parchment pages were yellow with -age. The Fleurs were so short ... that curious -page signed “Froissart” with long s’s, coming -to an end just as the picture of the French <a id="corr-3"></a>court -was getting clear and interesting. That other -thing, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” Fascinating. -But it would take so much reading, on -and on forgetting everything; all the ordinary -things, seeing things in some new way, some way -that fascinated people for a moment if you tried -<a id="page-69" class="pagenum" title="69"></a> -to talk about it and then made them very angry, -made them hate and suspect you. Impossible -to take it out and have it on the schoolroom table -for tea-time reading. What had made the -Pernes begin allowing tea-time reading? Being -shy and finding it difficult to keep conversation -going with the girls for so long? They never did -talk to the girls. Perhaps because they did not -see through them and understand them. North -London girls. So different from the Fairchild -family and the sort of girls they had been accustomed -to when they were young. Anyhow, they -hardly ever had to talk to them. Not at breakfast -or dinner-time when they were all three -there; and at tea-time when there was only one -of them, there were always the books. How -sensible. On Sunday afternoons, coming smiling -into the schoolroom, one of them each Sunday—perhaps -the others were asleep—reading aloud; -the Fairchild family, smooth and good and happy, -everyone in the book surrounded with a sort of -light, going on and on and on towards heaven, -tea-time seeming so nice and mean and ordinary -afterwards—or a book about a place in the -north of England called Saltcoats, brine, and a -vicarage and miners; the people in the book -<a id="page-70" class="pagenum" title="70"></a> -horrible, not lit up, talking about things and -being gloomy and not always knowing what to -do, never really sure about Heaven like the Fairchild -family, black brackish book. The “Fairchild -Family” was golden and gleaming. -</p> - -<p> -“The Anatomy of Melancholy” would not -be golden like “The Fairchild Family” ... “the -cart was now come alongside a wood which was -exceedingly shady and beautiful”; “good manners -and civility make everybody lovely”; but -it would be round and real, not just chilly and -moaning like “Saltcoats.” The title would be -enough to keep one going at tea-time. An<em>at</em>—omy -of <em>Mel</em>—ancholy, and the look of the close-printed -pages and a sentence here and there. -The Pernes would not believe she really wanted -it there on the table. The girls would stare. -When “The Story of Adèle” was finished she -would have to find some other book; or borrow -one. Nancie Wilkie, sitting at tea with her back -to the closed piano facing the great bay of dark -green-blinded window, reading “Nicholas Nickleby.” -Just the very one of all the Dickens -volumes that would be likely to come into her -hands. Impossible to borrow it when Nancie -had finished with it. Impossible to read a book -<a id="page-71" class="pagenum" title="71"></a> -with such a title. “David Copperfield” was all -right; and “The Pickwick Papers.” “Little -Dorritt”—“A Tale of Two Cities”—“The -Old Curiosity Shop.” There was something suspicious -about these, too. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Adèle—the story of Adèle. The book had -hard, unpleasant covers with some thin cottony -material—bright lobelia blue—strained over them -and fraying out at the corners. Over the front -of the cover were little garlands and festoons of -faded gold, and in the centre framed by an oval -band of brighter gold was the word Adèle, with -little strong tendrils on the lettering. There -was some secret charm about the book. The -strong sunlight striking the window just above -the coarse lace curtains that obscured its lower -half, made the gilding shine and seem to move—a -whole wild woodland. The coarse white toilet-cover -on the chest of drawers, the three Bibles, -the little cheap mahogany-framed looking-glass, -Nancie Wilkie’s folding hand-glass, the ugly gas -bracket sticking out above the mirror, her own -bed in the corner with its coarse fringed coverlet, -the two alien beds behind her in the room, and -<a id="page-72" class="pagenum" title="72"></a> -the repellant washstand in the far corner became -friendly as the sun shone on the decorated cover -of the blue and gold book. -</p> - -<p> -She propped it open again and began tidying -her hair. It must be nearly tea-time. A phrase -caught her eye. “The old château where the -first years of Adèle’s life were spent was situated -in the midst of a high-walled garden. Along one -side of the château ran a terrace looking out over -a lovely expanse of flower-beds. Beyond was a -little pleasaunce surrounded by a miniature wall -and threaded by little pathways lined with rose -trees. Almost hidden in the high wall was a little -doorway. When the doorway was open you -could see through into a deep orchard.” The -first tea-bell rang. The figure of Adèle flitting -about in an endless summer became again lines of -black print. In a moment the girls would come -rushing up. Miriam closed the book and turned -to the dazzling window. The sun blazed just -above the gap in the avenue of poplars. A bright -yellow pathway led up through the green of the -public cricket ground, pierced the avenue of -poplars and disappeared through the further -greenery in a curve that was the beginning of -its encirclement of the park lake. Coming slowly -<a id="page-73" class="pagenum" title="73"></a> -along the pathway was a little figure dressed -bunchily in black. It looked pathetically small -and dingy in the bright scene. The afternoon -blazed round it. It was something left over. -What was the explanation of it? As it came near -it seemed to change. It grew real. It was hurrying -eagerly along, quite indifferent to the afternoon -glory, with little rolling steps that were -like the uneven toddling of a child, and carrying -a large newspaper whose great sheets, although -there was no wind, balled out scarcely controlled -by the small hands. Its feathered hat had a -wind-blown rakish air. On such a still afternoon. -It was thinking and coming along, thinking and -thinking and a little angry. What a rum little -party, murmured Miriam, despising her words -and admiring the wild thought-filled little bundle -of dingy clothes. Beastly, to be picking up that -low kind of slang—not real slang. Just North -London sneering. Goo—what a <em>rum</em> little party, -she declared aloud, flattening herself against the -window. Hotly flushing, she recognised that she -had been staring at Miss Jenny Perne hurrying -in to preside at tea. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-3"> -<a id="page-74" class="pagenum" title="74"></a> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“We’ve been to Jones’s this afternoon, Miss -Jenny.” -</p> - -<p> -Each plate held a slice of bread and butter cut -thickly all the way across a household loaf, and the -three-pound jar of home-made plum jam belonging -to Nancie Wilkie was going the round of the -table. It had begun with Miriam, who sat on -Miss Jenny’s right hand, and had Nancie for -neighbour. She had helped herself sparingly, -unable quite to resist the enhancement of the -solid fare, but fearing that there would be no -possibility of getting anything from home to -make a return in kind. Things were so bad, the -dance had cost so much. One of Mary’s cakes, -big enough for five people, would cost so much. -And there would be the postage. -</p> - -<p> -Piling a generous spoonful on to her own -thick slice, Nancie coughed facetiously and repeated -her remark which had produced no result -but a giggle from Charlotte Stubbs who sat -opposite to her. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh? Eh? What?” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Jenny looked down the table over the -top of her newspaper without raising her head. -<a id="page-75" class="pagenum" title="75"></a> -Her pince-nez were perched so that one eye appeared -looking through its proper circle, the -other glared unprotected just above a rim of -glass. -</p> - -<p> -“Miss Haddie took us to Jones’s this afternoon,” -said Nancie almost voicelessly. Miriam -glanced at the too familiar sight of Nancie’s -small eyes vanishing to malicious points. She -was sitting as usual very solid and upright in her -chair, with her long cheeks pink flushed and her -fine nose white and cool and twitching, her yellow -hair standing strongly back from her large white -brow. She stabbed keenly in her direction as -Miriam glanced, and Miriam turned and applied -herself to her bread and jam. If she did not eat -she would not get more than two slices from the -piled dishes before the others had consumed four -and five apiece and brought tea to an end. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh? What for? Why are ye laughing, -Nancie?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m not laughing, Miss Jenny.” Nancie’s -firm lips curved away from her large faultless -teeth. “I’m only smiling and telling you about -our visit to Jones’s.” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Jenny’s newspaper was lowered and her -pince-nez removed. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-76" class="pagenum" title="76"></a> -“Eh? What d’ye say? Nonsense, Nancie, -you know you were laughing. Why do you say -you weren’t? What do you mean? Eh?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m sorry, Miss Jennie. Something tickled -me.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. Don’t be nonsensical. D’ye see? It’s -nonsensical to say no when you mean yes. D’ye -understand what I mean, Nancie? It’s bad -manners.” Hitching on her pince-nez, Miss -Jenny returned to her paper. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam gave herself up to the luxury of reading -Adèle to the accompaniment of bread and jam. -She would not hurry over her bread and jam. -As well not have it. She would sacrifice her -chance of a third slice. She reflected that it -would be a good thing if she could decide never -to have more than two slices, and have them in -peace. Then she could thoroughly enjoy her -reading. But she was always so hungry. At -home she could not have eaten thick bread and -butter. But here every slice seemed better than -the last. When she began at the hard thick edge -there always seemed to be tender places on her -gums, her three hollow teeth were uneasy and -she had to get through worrying thoughts about -them—they would get worse as the years went by, -<a id="page-77" class="pagenum" title="77"></a> -and the little places in the front would grow big -and painful and disfiguring. After the first few -mouthfuls of solid bread a sort of padding -seemed to take place and she could go on forgetful. -</p> - -<p> -“They’d got,” said Trixie Sanderson in a -velvety tone, “they’d got some of their Christmas -things out, Miss Jenny.” She cleared her -throat shrilly on the last word and toned off the -sound with a sigh. Inaudible laughter went -round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced -fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best -dress, a loosely made brown velveteen with a -deep lace collar round her soft brown neck. Her -neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by -lively silky brown curls. She held her small head -sideways from her book with a questioning air. -One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered -serenely with its thin lid. -</p> - -<p> -She uttered a second gentle sigh and once -more cleared her throat, accompanying the sound -with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye -which tried to search her, hating the sudden, -sharp dimpling which came high up almost under -Trixie’s cheek bones in answer to her own expression. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-78" class="pagenum" title="78"></a> -“Miss Jenny,” breathed Trixie in a high tone, -twirling one end of the bow of black ribbon -crowning her head. -</p> - -<p> -Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table -opposite the tea-tray, giggled aloud. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh? What? Did somebody speak?” said -Miss Jenny, looking up with a smile. “Are ye -getting on with yer teas? Are ye ready for -second cups?” -</p> - -<p> -“Beadie spoke,” murmured Trixie, glancing -at Beadie whose neat china doll’s face was half -hidden between her cup and the protruding edge -of her thatch of tight gold curls. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong -the irritating comedy by choking over her tea. -</p> - -<p> -It was some minutes before the whole incident -was made clear to Miss Jenny. Reading was suspended. -Everyone watched while Charlotte -Stubbs, going carefully backwards, came to the -end at last of Miss Jenny’s questions, and when -Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating—<em>well!</em> you’re all -very naughty children. I can’t think what’s the -matter with you? Eh? Ye shouldn’t do it. I -can’t think what possesses you. What is it, eh? -Ye shouldn’t do it. D’you see?—and having -dispensed the second allowance of tea with small -<a id="page-79" class="pagenum" title="79"></a> -hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to -her newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking -guilty. Miriam stole a glance at the breadth of -her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she hung -over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with -her tea-drinking, and her shock of coarse brown-gold -hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck out -bushily on either side, its edges lit by the afternoon -glow from the garden behind her. The -others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the -muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly -active. She and Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque -blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of her book -with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered -on their final competition for the last few slices. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam returned to her book. The story of -Adèle had moved on through several unassimilated -pages. “My child,” she read, “it is important -to remember”—she glanced on gathering -a picture of a woman walking with Adèle along -the magic terrace, talking—words and phrases -that fretted dismally at the beauty of the scene. -Examining later chapters she found conversations, -discussions, situations, arguments, “fusses”—all -about nothing. She turned back to the -early passage of description and caught the glow -<a id="page-80" class="pagenum" title="80"></a> -once more. But this time it was overshadowed -by the promise of those talking women. That -was all there was. She had finished the story of -Adèle. -</p> - -<p> -A resounding slam came up from the kitchen. -</p> - -<p> -“Poor cook—another tooth,” sighed Trixie. -</p> - -<p> -Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb. -Her thwarted expectations ranged forth beyond -control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for -succour where she had learned there was none.... -Nancie, her parents abroad, her aunt’s -house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin -from South Africa coming home to Cromer, -taking her out in a dog-cart, telling her she was -his guiding star, going back to South Africa; -everything Nancie said and did, even her careful -hair-brushing and her energetic upright walk, -her positive brave way of entering a room, coming -out through those malicious pin-points—things -she said about the Misses Perne and the girls, -things she whispered and laughed, little rhymes -she sang with her unbearable laugh. -</p> - -<p> -... Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent -servile glancing laughter, her stepmother, her -little half-brother who had fits, her holidays at -Margate, “you’d look neat, on the seat, of a -<a id="page-81" class="pagenum" title="81"></a> -bicyka made for two”—Beadie brought Miriam -the utmost sense of imprisonment within the -strange influence that had threatened her when -she first came to Banbury Park. Beadie was in -it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that -she could in some way, in some one tint or tone, -realise the whole fabric of Beadie’s life on and -on to the end, no matter what should happen to -her. But she turned from the attempt—any -effort at full realisation threatened complete -despair. Trixie too, with a home just opposite -the Banbury Empire.... Miriam slid over this -link in her rapid reflections—a brother named -Julian who took instantaneous photographs of -girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was -sometimes “tight.” ... -</p> - -<p> -Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint -suggestion of relief. Miriam fled to her as she -sat with the garden light on her hair, her lingering -flush of distress rekindled by her amusement, -her protective responsible smile beaming out -through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind -her painstaking life at the school was a country -home, a farm somewhere far away. Of course it -was dreadful for her to be a farmer’s daughter. -She evidently knew it herself and said very little -<a id="page-82" class="pagenum" title="82"></a> -about it. But her large red hands, so strange -handling school-books, were comforting; and -her holland apron with its bib under the fresh -colouring of her face—do you like butter? A -buttercup under your chin—brought to Miriam -a picture of the farm, white amidst bright greenery, -with a dairy and morning cock-crow and -creamy white sheep on a hillside. It was all there -with her as she sat at table reading “The Lamplighter.” -The sound of her broad husky voice -explaining to Miss Jenny had been full of it. -But it was all past. She too had come to Banbury -Park. She did not seem to mind Banbury -Park. She was to study hard and be a -governess. She evidently thought she was having -a great chance—she was fifteen and quite “uncultured.” -How could she be turned into a -governess? A sort of nursery governess, for -farms, perhaps. But farms did not want books -and worry. Miriam wanted to put her back -into her farm, and sometimes her thoughts -wearily brushed the idea of going with her. -Perhaps, though, she had come away because her -father could not keep her? The little problem -hung about her as she sat sweetly there, common -and good and strong. The golden light that -<a id="page-83" class="pagenum" title="83"></a> -seemed to belong specially to her came from a -London garden, an unreal North London garden. -Resounding in its little spaces were the blatterings -and shouts of the deaf and dumb next door. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miss Jenny left “The Standard” with Miriam -after tea, stopping suddenly as she made her -uncertain way from the tea-table to the door and -saying absently, “Eh, you’d better read this, -my dear. There’s a leader on the Education -Commission. Would ye like to? Yes, I think -you’d better.” Miriam accepted the large sheets -with hesitating expressions of thanks, wondering -rather fearfully what a leader might be and where -she should find it. She knew the word. Her -mother read “the leaders” in the evening—“excellent -leader” she sometimes said, and her -father would put down his volume of “Proceedings -of the British Association,” or Herbert -Spencer’s “First Principles,” and condescendingly -agree. But any discussion generally ended -in his warning her not to believe a thing because -she saw it in print, and a reminder that before -she married she had thought that everything she -saw in print was true, and quite often he would -<a id="page-84" class="pagenum" title="84"></a> -go on to general remarks about the gullibility of -women, bringing in the story of the two large -long-necked pearly transparent drawing-room -vases with stems and soft masses of roses and -leaves painted on their sides that she had given -too much for at the door to a man who said -they were Italian. Brummagem, Brummagem, he -would end, mouthing the word and turning back -to his book with the neighing laugh that made -Miriam turn to the imagined picture of her mother -in the first year of her married life, standing in -the sunlight at the back door of the Babington -house, with the varnished coach-house door on -her right and the cucumber frames in front of -her sloping up towards the bean-rows that began -the kitchen garden; with her little scallopped -bodice, her hooped skirt, her hair bunched in -curls up on her high pad and falling round her -neck, looking at the jugs with grave dark eyes. -And that neighing laugh had come again and -again all through the years until she sat meekly, -flushed and suffering under the fierce gaslight, -feeling every night of her life winter and summer -as if the ceiling were coming down on her head, -and read “leaders” cautiously, and knew when -they were written in “a fine chaste dignified -<a id="page-85" class="pagenum" title="85"></a> -style.” But that was “The Times.” “The -Standard” was a penny rag and probably not -worth considering at all. In any case she would -not read it at evening study. She had never had -a newspaper in her hand before as far as she could -remember. The girls would see that she did not -know how to read it, and it would be snubby -towards them to sit there as if she were a Miss -Perne, scrumpling a great paper while they sat -with their books. So she read her text-books, a -page of Saxon Kings with a ten-line summary of -each reign, a list of six English counties with their -capitals and the rivers the capitals stood on and -the principal industries of each town, devising -ways of remembering the lists and went on to -“Bell’s Standard Elocutionist.” She had found -the book amongst the school books on the schoolroom -shelves. It was a “standard” book and -must therefore be about something she ought to -know something about if she were to hold her -own in this North London world. There had -been no “standard” books at school and the word -offended her. It suggested fixed agreement about -the things people ought to know and that she -felt sure must be wrong, and not only wrong but -“common” ... standard readers ... standard -<a id="page-86" class="pagenum" title="86"></a> -pianoforte tutors. She had learned to read -in “Reading without Tears,” and gone on to -“Classical Poems and Prose for the Young,” her -arithmetic book instead of being a thin cold -paper-covered thing called Standard I, had been -a pleasant green volume called “Barnard Smith,” -that began at the beginning and went on to -compound fractions and stocks. There was no -Morris’s Grammar at Banbury Park, no Wetherell -or English Accidence, no bits from “Piers Plowman” -and pages of scraps of words with the way -they changed in different languages and quotations, -just sentences that had made her long for -more ... “up-clomb” ... “the mist up-clomb.” -She opened “Bell’s Standard Elocutionist” apprehensively, -her mind working on possible meanings -for elocutionist. She thought of ventriloquist -and wondered dismally whether it was a book of -conjuring tricks. It was poems, poems and prose, -all mixed up together anyhow. The room was -very still, the girls all sitting reading with their -<a id="corr-5"></a>backs to the table so that nobody “poked.” She -could not go on vaguely fluttering pages, so she -read a solid-looking poem that was not divided -up into verses. -</p> - -<p> -“Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane -<a id="page-87" class="pagenum" title="87"></a> -And Valmond Emperor of Allemaine, Apparelled -in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a -knight and squire, On St. John’s eve, at vespers, -proudly sat And heard the priests chant the -Magnificat.” Should she go on? It was like the -pieces in Scott’s novels, the best bits, before the -characters began to talk. -</p> - -<p> -... “and bay the moon than such a Roman -and bay the moon than such a Roman,” muttered -Nancie rapidly, swinging her feet. It would not -be fair to read a thing that would take her right -away and not teach her anything whilst the girls -were learning their things for Monday. She -hesitated and turned a page. The poem, she -saw, soon began to break up into sentences with -quotation signs; somebody making a to-do. -Turning several pages at once, she caught sight -of the word Hanover. “Hamelin Town’s in -Brunswick, by famous Hanover city.” That was -irresistible. But she must read it one day away -from the gassy room and the pressure of the -girls. The lines were magic; but the rush that -took her to the German town, the sight and -smell and sound of it, the pointed houses, wood -fires, the bürgers, had made her cheeks flare and -thrown her out of the proper teacher’s frame of -<a id="page-88" class="pagenum" title="88"></a> -mind. She wanted to stand up and pull up the -blinds hiding the garden and shout the poem -aloud to the girls. They would stare and giggle -and think she had gone mad. “The mountain -has gone mad,” Nancie would mutter. “There -is a mountain in Banbury Park, covered over with -yellow bark,” Nancie’s description of herself. -That was how the girls saw her stiff hair—and -they thought she was “about forty.” Well, it -was true. She was, practically. She went on -holding Bell up before her face, open at a page -of prose, and stared at the keyboard of the piano -just beyond her crossed knees. It aroused the -sight and sense of the strangely moving hands of -the various girls whose afternoon practice it was -her business to superintend, their intent faces, -the pages of bad unclassical music, things with -horrible names, by English composers, the uselessness -of the hours and terms and years of -practice. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Presently the bread and butter and milk came -up for the girls, and then there was prayers—the -three servants lined up in front of the bookshelves; -cook wheezing heavily, tall and thin -and bent, with a sloping mob cap and a thin old -<a id="page-89" class="pagenum" title="89"></a> -brown face with a forehead that was like a buttress -of shiny bone and startling dark eyes that -protruded so that they could be seen even when -she sat looking down into her lap; and Flora -the parlourmaid, short and plump and brown -with an expression of perfectly serene despair, -this was part of Miriam’s daily bread; and Annie -the housemaid, raw pink and gold and grinning -slyly at the girls—Miss Perne, sitting at the head -of the table with the shabby family Bible and -the book of family prayers, Miss Jenny and Miss -Haddie one on each side of the fireplace, Miss -Jenny’s feet hardly reaching the floor as she sat -bunched on a high schoolroom chair, Miss Haddie -in her cold slate-grey dress sitting back with her -thin hands clasped in her lap, her grey face bent -devotionally so that her chin rested on her thin -chest, her eyes darting from the servants to the -girls who sat in their places round the table -during the time it took Miss Perne to read a -short psalm. Miriam tried to cast down her -eyes and close her ears. All that went on during -that short interval left her equally excluded from -either party. She could not sit gazing at Flora, -and Miss Perne’s polite unvarying tone brought -her no comfort. She sometimes thought longingly -<a id="page-90" class="pagenum" title="90"></a> -of prayers in Germany, the big quiet saal with -its high windows, its great dark doors, its annexe -of wooden summer-room, Fräulein’s clear, brooding -undertone, the pensive calm of the German -girls; the strange mass of fresh melodious sound -as they all sang together. Here there seemed -to be everything to encourage and nothing whatever -to check the sudden murmur, the lightning -swift gesture of Nancie or Trixie. -</p> - -<p> -The moment Miss Perne had finished her -psalm they all swung round on to their knees. -Miriam pressed her elbows against the cane seat -of her chair and wondered what she should say to -Miss Jenny at supper about the newspaper, while -Miss Perne decorously prayed that they might -all be fed with the sincere milk of the Word and -grow thereby. -</p> - -<p> -After the Lord’s Prayer, a unison of breathy -mutterings against closed fingers, they all rose. -Then the servants filed out of the room followed -by the Misses Perne. Miss Perne stopped in the -doorway to shake hands with the girls on their -way to bed before joining her sisters in the little -sitting-room across the hall. One of the servants -reappeared almost at once with a tray, distributed -its contents at the fire-place end of the long -<a id="page-91" class="pagenum" title="91"></a> -table and rang the little bell in the hall on her -way back to the kitchen. The Misses Perne -filed back across the hall. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-6"> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Eh, Deborah, are ye sure?” said Miss Jenny, -getting into her chair at Miss Perne’s right hand. -</p> - -<p> -Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned -after all. If it were she would simply say she -had been preparing for Monday and was going -to read it after supper. Anyhow there was never -any threat with the Pernes of anything she would -not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what -there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie’s -eye from across the table, assumed an air of interested -abstraction to cover her disappointment. -Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished -with prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream -cheese on a green-edged dessert plate, a box of -plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice and the -red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and -nice—the blancmange would be flavoured with -laurel—prussic acid—and the prunes would be -sweet in the wrong sort of way—wholesome, -just sweet fruit. Cheese—how could people eat -cheese? -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-92" class="pagenum" title="92"></a> -“Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw -with my own eyes—Polly Allen and Eunice -Dupont running about in the park without their -hats.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ech,” syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her -delicate green-grey eyebrows sharply towards -the deep line in the middle of her forehead. -She did not look up but sat frowning sourly into -her bowl of bread and milk, ladling and pouring -the milk from the spoon. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. -No one had seen the behaviour of -her own face, how one corner of her mouth had -shot up so sharply as to bring the feeling of a -deeply denting dimple in her cheek. She sat -regulating her breathing and carefully extracting -the stone from a prune. -</p> - -<p> -“Did ye speak to them?” asked Miss Jenny, -fixing her tall sister over her pince-nez. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black -eyes blinking rapidly at the far-off bookshelves. -</p> - -<p> -“I did <em>not</em> speak to them——” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, Deborah, why not?” scolded Miss Jenny -as Miss Perne drew breath. -</p> - -<p> -“I did <em>not</em> speak to them,” went on Miss Deborah, -beaming delightedly at the bookcase, “for -<a id="page-93" class="pagenum" title="93"></a> -the very good reason that I was not sufficiently -near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt -pathway surrounding the lake and had just become -engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell, -who had stopped me for the purpose of -giving me further details with regard to Constance’s -prolonged absence from school, when I -saw Polly and Eunice apparently chasing one -another across the recreation ground in the condition -I have described to you.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie’s scorn-filled -eyes playing watchfully over her, sat pressing -the sharp edge of her high heel into her -ankle. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn’t speak -to them. They’ve no business at all in the -recreation ground where the rough boys go.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I have described to you the circumstances, -my dear, and the impossibility of my -undertaking any kind of intervention.” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should -have done something. Don’t you think you -ought? Eh? Called someone perhaps—eh?—or -managed to get at the gels in some way—dear, -dear, what is to be done? You see it is hardly -of any use to speak to them afterwards. You -<a id="page-94" class="pagenum" title="94"></a> -want to catch them red-handed and make them -feel ashamed of themselves.” -</p> - -<p> -“I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny, -the justice of all that you say. But I can only -repeat that in the circumstances in which I found -myself I was entirely unable to exercise any -control whatever upon the doings of the gels. -They were running; and long before I was -free from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of -sight.” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative -tone that seemed each moment on the point of -delighted laughter, her delicate head held high, -her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained -pleasure. Miriam saw vividly the picture in the -park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the sad -asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London -greenery, the October wind rushing through it, -Miss Perne’s high stylish arrowy figure fluttered -by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. -Brinkwell’s story, the dreadful asphalt playground -away to the left, its gaunt swings and bars—gallows.... -Ingoldsby—the girls rushing across -it, and held herself sternly back from a vision of -Miss Perne chasing the delinquents down the -wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triumphantly? -<a id="page-95" class="pagenum" title="95"></a> -As much as to say There, my dear -Jenny, there’s a problem you can’t answer. She -enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset -about the girls. She spoke exactly as if she -were reading aloud from “Robinson Crusoe.” -Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her -eyes about as she gently spooned up her bread -and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether -Miss Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen -gravely. She was evidently angry and disgusted. -But still she could watch. -</p> - -<p> -“Did ye go that way at all afterwards—the -way the girls went?” -</p> - -<p> -“I did not,” beamed Miss Perne, turning to -Miss Jenny as if waiting for a judgment. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, eh, I’m sure, really, it’s most diffikilt. -What is one to do with these gels? Now, Miriam, -here’s something for you to exercise your wits -upon. What would ye do, eh?” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb. -Of course she had never rushed about in a common -park where rough boys came. At the same -time—if the girls wanted to rush about and -scream and wear no hats nobody had any right -to interfere with them ... they ought to be -suppressed though, North London girls, capable -<a id="page-96" class="pagenum" title="96"></a> -of anything in the way of horridness ... the -Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls -were in themselves, common and knowing and -horrid. “Dear, funny little O.M.’s” ... they -were something much more than that. They -were wrong about the hats, but it was good, -heavenly to be here like this with them. She -turned to Miss Jenny, her mind in a warm -confusion, and smiled into the little red face -peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon -loops. -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” -</p> - -<p> -“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie’s soft -hollow voice, “how should the child judge?” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam’s heart leapt. She smiled inanely and -eagerly accepted a second helping of blancmange -suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was -drawing little panting breaths and blinking -sharply at her. -</p> - -<p> -“Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear, -it’s a chance for you. Come along.” -</p> - -<p> -“Tomboys,” said Miss Haddie indignantly. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam drew a breath. It was wrong, they -were not tomboys—she knew they had not run -like tomboys—they had scuttled, she was sure—horrid -girls, that was what they were, nothing -<a id="page-97" class="pagenum" title="97"></a> -the Pernes could understand. The Pernes ought -not to be bothered with them. -</p> - -<p> -“Well,” she said, feeling a sudden security, -“are we responsible for them out of school -hours?” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie’s eyebrows moved nervously, and -Miss Perne’s smile turned to a dubious mouthing. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, there you are. D’ye see, Deborah. -That’s it. That’s the crucial point. Are we -responsible? I’m sure I can’t say. That places -the whole difficulty in a nutshell. Here are these -gels, not even day boarders. How far can we -control their general behaviour? Eh? I’m sure -I don’t know.” -</p> - -<p> -“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie quickly, -her hollow voice reverberating as if she were -using a gargle, “it’s quite obvious that we can’t -have gels known to belong to the school running -about in the park with nothing on.” -</p> - -<p> -“I agree, my dear Haddie. But, as Jenny -says, how are we to prevent such conduct?” -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t let us lose sight of Miriam’s point. -<em>Are</em> we responsible for their play-times? I suppose -we’re <em>not</em>, you know, Deborah, really after -all. Not directly, perhaps. But sheerly we are -<em>indirectly</em> responsible. Sheerly. We ought to -<a id="page-98" class="pagenum" title="98"></a> -be able to make it impossible for them to carry -on in this unseemly fashion.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, yes,” said Miss Deborah eagerly, -“sheerly.” -</p> - -<p> -“Is it education?” suggested Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s it, my dear. It is education. That’s -what’s wanted. That’s what these gels want. -I don’t know, though. All this talk of education. -It ought to be the thing. And yet look at these -two gels. Both of them from Miss Cass’s. -There’s her school now. Famous all over London. -Three hundred gels. We’ve had several here. -And they’ve all had that objectionable noisy -tone. Eh, Deborah? I don’t know. How is it -to be accounted for? Eh?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve never heard of Miss Cass’s,” said Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“My <em>dear</em> child! It’s not possible! D’ye -mean to say ye don’t know Miss Cass’s high -school?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, if it’s a high school, of <em>course</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -All three ladies waited, with their eyes on her, -making a chorus of inarticulate sounds. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, high schools are simply fearful.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam glowed in a tide of gentle cackling -laughter. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you know, I think there’s something -<a id="page-99" class="pagenum" title="99"></a> -in it,” giggled Miss Jenny softly. “It’s the -number perhaps. That’s what I always say, -Deborah. Treating the gels like soldiers. Like -a regiment. D’ye see? No individual study of -the gels’ characters——” -</p> - -<p> -“Well. However that may be, I am sure of -one thing. I am sure that on Monday Polly and -Eunice must be reprimanded. Severely reprimanded.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. I suppose they must. They’re nice -gels at heart, you know. Both of them. That’s -the worst of it. Well, I hardly mean that. Only -so often the naughty gels are so thoroughly—well—nice, -likable at bottom, ye know, eh? -I’m sure. I don’t know.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper -with the newspaper spread out on the brown -American cloth table cover under the gas. She -found a long column headed “The Royal Commission -on Education.” The Queen, then, was -interesting herself in education. But in England -the sovereign had no power, was only a figurehead. -Perhaps the Queen had been advised to -interest herself in education by the Privy Council -<a id="page-100" class="pagenum" title="100"></a> -and the Conservatives, people of leisure and -cultivation. A commission was a sort of command—it -must be important, something the -Privy Council had decided and sent out in the -Queen’s name. -</p> - -<p> -She read her column, sitting comfortlessly between -the window and the open door. As she -read the room grew still. The memory of the talking -and clinking supper-table faded, and presently -even the ticking of the clock was no longer there. -She raised her head at last. No wonder people -read newspapers. You could read about what -was going on in the country, actually what the -Government was doing at that very moment. -Of course; men seemed to know such a lot -because they read the newspapers and talked -about what was in them. But anybody could -know as much as the men sitting in the armchairs -if they chose; read all about everything, -written down for everybody to see. That was -the freedom of the Press—Areopagitica, that the -history books said so much about and was one -of those new important things, more important -than facts and dates. Like the Independence of -Ireland. Yet very few people really talked like -newspapers. Only angry men with loud voices. -<a id="page-101" class="pagenum" title="101"></a> -Here was the free Press that Milton had gone to -prison for. Certainly it made a great difference. -The room was quite changed. There was hardly -any pain in the silent cane-seated chairs. There -were really people making the world better. -Now. At last. Perhaps it was rather a happy -fate to be a teacher in the Banbury Park school -and read newspapers. There were plenty of -people who could neither read nor write. Someone -had a servant like that who did all the marketing -and never forgot anything or made any mistake -over the change—none the worse for it, -pater said, people who wanted book-learning -could get it, there must always be hewers of wood -and drawers of water, <em>laissez faire</em>. But Gladstone -did not believe that. At this moment -Gladstone was saying that because the people of -England as a whole were uneducated their “condition -of ignorance” affected the whole of the -“body politic.” That was Gladstone. He had -found that out ... with large moist silky eyes -like a dog and pointed collars seeing things as -they were and going to change them.... Miriam -stirred uneasily as she felt the beating of her -heart.... If only she were at home how she -could rush up and down the house and shout -<a id="page-102" class="pagenum" title="102"></a> -about it and shake Mary by the shoulders. She -shrank into herself and sat stiffly up, suddenly -discovering she was lounging over the table. As -she moved she reflected that probably Gladstone’s -being so very dark made him determined that -things should not go on as they were. In that -case Gladstonians would be dark—perhaps not -musical. Someone had said musical people were -a queer soft lot. <em>Laissez faire</em>. Lazy fair. But -perhaps it was possible to be fair and musical and -to be a Gladstonian too. You can’t have your -cake and eat it. No. It was a good thing, one’s -best self knew it was a good thing that someone -had found out why people were so awful; like -a dentist finding out a bad tooth however much -it hurt. Only if education was going to be the -principal thing and all teachers were to be -‘qualified’ it was no use going on. Miss Jenny -had said private schools were doomed. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-3-8"> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -For a long time she sat blankly contemplating -the new world that was coming. Everyone would -be trained and efficient but herself. She was not -strong enough to earn a living and qualify as a -teacher at the same time. The day’s work tired -<a id="page-103" class="pagenum" title="103"></a> -her to death. She must hide somewhere.... -She would not be wanted.... If you were not -wanted.... If you knew you were not wanted—you -ought to get out of the way. Chloroform. -Someone had drunk a bottle of carbolic acid. -The clock struck ten. Gathering up the newspaper -she folded it neatly, put it on the hall table -and went slowly upstairs, watching the faint -reflection of the half-lowered hall gas upon the -polished balustrade. The staircase was cold and -airy. Cold rooms and landings stretched up -away above her into the darkness. She became -aware of a curious buoyancy rising within her. -It was so strange that she stood still for a moment -on the stair. For a second, life seemed to cease -in her and the staircase to be swept from under -her feet.... “I’m alive.” ... It was as if -something had struck her, struck right through -her impalpable body, sweeping it away, leaving her -there shouting silently without it. I’m alive.... -I’m alive. Then with a thump her heart went on -again and her feet carried her body warm and -happy and elastic easily on up the solid stairs. -She tried once or twice deliberately to bring back -the breathless moment standing still on a stair. -Each time something of it returned. “It’s me, -<a id="page-104" class="pagenum" title="104"></a> -<em>me;</em> this is <em>me</em> being alive,” she murmured with -a feeling under her like the sudden drop of a lift. -But her thoughts distracted her. They were -eagerly talking to her declaring that she had had -this feeling before. She opened her bedroom -door very quietly. The air of the room told her -that Nancie and Beadie were asleep. Going -lightly across to the chest of drawers dressing-table -by the window as if she were treading on -air, she stood holding its edge in the darkness. -Two forgotten incidents flowed past her in quick -succession; one of waking up on her seventh -birthday in the seaside villa alone in a small dark -room and suddenly saying to herself that one day -her father and mother would die and she would -still be there, and after a curious moment when -the darkness seemed to move against her, feeling -very old and crying bitterly, and another of -standing in the bow of the dining-room window -at Barnes looking at the raindrops falling from -the leaves through the sunshine and saying to -Eve, who came into the room as she watched, -“D’you know, Eve, I feel as if I’d suddenly -wakened up out of a dream.” The bedroom -was no longer dark. She could see the outlines -of everything in the light coming from the street -<a id="page-105" class="pagenum" title="105"></a> -lamps through the half-closed Venetian blinds. -Beadie sighed and stirred. Miriam began impatiently -preparing for bed without lighting the -gas. “What’s the use of feeling like that if it -doesn’t stay? It doesn’t change anything. Next -time I’ll make it stay. It might whisk me right -away. There’s something in me that can’t be -touched or altered. Me. If it comes again. If -it’s stronger every time.... Perhaps it goes on -getting stronger till you die.” -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-4"> -<a id="page-106" class="pagenum" title="106"></a> -CHAPTER IV -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-4-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">W</span><span class="postfirstchar">heezing,</span> cook had spread a plaster of -dampened ashy cinders upon the basement -schoolroom fire and gone bonily away -across the oilcloth in her heelless boots. As the -door closed Miriam’s eye went up from her book -to the little slope of grass showing above the -concrete wall of the area. The grass gleamed -along the edge of a bank of mist. In the mist -the area railings stood hard and solid against the -edge of empty space. Several times she glanced -at the rich green, feeling that neither ‘emerald,’ -‘emerald velvet,’ nor ‘velvety enamel’ quite -expressed it. She had not noticed that there was -a mist shutting in and making brilliant the half-darkness -of the room at breakfast-time, only -feeling that for some reason it was a good day. -“It’s fog—there’s a sort of fog,” she said, glowing. -The fog made the room with the strange brilliant -brown light on the table, on the horsehair chairs, -<a id="page-107" class="pagenum" title="107"></a> -on the shabby length of brown and yellow oilcloth -running out to the bay of the low window, seem to -be rushing through space, alone. It was quite safe, -going on its journey—towards some great good. -</p> - -<p> -The back door, just across the little basement -hall, scrooped inwards across the oilcloth, jingling -its little bell, and was banged to. The flounter-<em>crack</em> -of a rain-cloak smartly shaken out was followed -by a gentle scrabbling in a shoe-box,—the -earliest girl, peaceful and calm, a wonderful sort -of girl, coming into the empty basement quietly -getting off her things, with all the rabble of the -school coming along the roads, behind. The -jingling door was pushed open again just as her -slippered feet ran upstairs. “Khoo—what a -filthy day!” said a vibrating hard mature voice. -Miriam glanced at her time-table, history—dictation—geography—sums—writing—and -shrank to -her utmost air of preoccupation lest either of the -elder girls should look in. -</p> - -<p> -Sounds increased in the little hall, loud abrupt -voices, short rallying laughs, the stubbing and -stamping of feet on the oilcloth. At the expected -rattling of the handle of her own door -she crouched over her book. The door opened -and was quietly closed again. A small figure -<a id="page-108" class="pagenum" title="108"></a> -flung itself forward. Miriam was clutched by -harsh serge-clad arms. As she moved, startled, -firm cracked lips were pressed against her cheekbone. -“Good morning, Burra,” she said, turning -to put an arm round the child. She caught -a glimpse of broad cheeks bulging firmly against -a dark bush of short hair. Large fierce bloodshot -eyes glared close to her own. “Hoo—angel.” -The little gasping body stiffened against her -shoulder, pinning down her arm. The crimson -face tried to reach her breast. “Have you -changed your boots,” said Miriam coldly. “Hoo—hoo.” -The short hard fingers hurt her. “Go -and get them off at once.” Head down Burra -rushed at the door, colliding with the incoming -figure of a neat little girl dressed in velvet-trimmed -red merino, with a rose and white face -and short gentle gold hair. She put a little pile -of books on the table and stood still near to -Miriam, with her hands behind her. They both -looked down the room out of the window, with -quiet unsmiling faces. “What have you been -doing since Friday, Gertie?” Miriam said presently. -“We went for a walk,” said Gertie in a -neat liquid little voice, dimpling and faintly -raising her eyebrows. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-109" class="pagenum" title="109"></a> -The eight little girls who made up the upper -class of the junior school stood in a close row as -near as possible to Miriam’s chair at the head of -the table. They were silent and fresh and eagerly -crowded, waiting for her to begin. She kept -them silent for a few moments for the pleasure -of having them there with her. She knew that -Miss Perne, sitting in the window space with the -youngest class drawn up in a half-circle for their -Scripture lesson, was an approving presence, -keeping her own little class at a level of quiet -question and answer that made a background -rather than a disturbance for the adventure of -the elder girls. “Not too close together,” said -Miriam at last, gathering herself with a deep -breath; “throw back your shoulders and stand -straight. Don’t lump down on your heels. Let -your weight come on the ball of your feet. Are -you all all right? Don’t poke your heads forward.” -As the girls eagerly manœuvred themselves, wilfully -carrying out her instructions even to turning -their heads to face the opposite wall, she caught -most of the eyes in turn smiling their eager -affectionate conspiracy, and restraining her desire -to get up then and there and clasp the little -figures one by one, began the lesson. Four of -<a id="page-110" class="pagenum" title="110"></a> -the girls, two square-built Quakeresses with -straight brown frocks, deep slow voices and dreamy -eyes, a white-faced, tawny-haired, thin child with -an eager stammer, and a brilliant little Jewess knew -the “principal facts and dates” of the reign of -Edward I by rote backwards and forwards in -response to any form of question. Burra hung her -head and knew nothing. Beadie Featherwell, -dreadfully tall, a head taller, with her twelve -years, than the tallest child in the lower school, -knew no more than Burra and stood staring at -the wall and biting her lips. A stout child with -open mouth and snoring breath answered with -perfect exactitude from the book, but her answers -bore no relationship to the questions, and -Gertie could only pipe replies if the questions -were so put as to contain part of the answer. -The white-faced girl was beginning to gnaw her -fingers by the time the questioning was at an -end. -</p> - -<p> -“Well now, what is the difficulty,” said Miriam, -“of getting hold of the events of this queer little -reign?” Everybody laughed and was silent again -at once because Miriam’s voice went on, trying -to interest both herself and the successful girls in -inventing ways of remembering all the things -<a id="page-111" class="pagenum" title="111"></a> -that had to be “hooked on to the word Edward.” -In less than ten minutes even the stout snoring -girl could repeat the reign successfully, and for -the remainder of their time they talked aimlessly. -</p> - -<p> -The children standing at ease, saying whatever -occurred to them, even the snoring girl secured -from ridicule by Miriam’s consideration of whatever -was offered. Their adventure took them -away from their subject into what Miriam knew -“clever” people would call “side issues.” -“Nothing is a side issue,” she told herself passionately -with her eyes on the green glare beyond -the window. The breaking up of Miss Perne’s -class left the whole of the lower school on her -hands for the rest of the morning. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-4-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -By half-past twelve she was sitting alone and -exhausted with aching throat at her place at the -head of the table. -</p> - -<p> -“Khoo, <em>isn’t</em> it a filthy day!” Polly Allen, a -short heavy girl with a sallow pitted face, thin -ill-nourished hair and kind swiftly moving grey -eyes, marched in out of the dark hall with -flapping bootlaces. In the bay she sat down and -began to lace up her boots. The laces flicked -<a id="page-112" class="pagenum" title="112"></a> -carelessly upon the linoleum as she threaded, -profaning the little sanctuary of the window -space. “Oh me bones, me poor old bones,” she -muttered. “Eunice!” her hard mature voice -vibrated through the room. “Eunice Dupont!” -</p> - -<p> -“What’s the jolly row?” said a slow voice at -the door. “Wot’s the bally shindy, beloved?” -</p> - -<p> -“Like a really beautiful Cheshire cat,” Miriam -repeated to herself, propped studiously on her -elbows shrinking, and hoping that if she did not -look round, Eunice’s carved brown curls, her -gleaming slithering opaque oval eyes and her -short upper lip, the strange evil carriage of her -head, the wicked lines of her figure, would be -withdrawn. “Cheshire, Cheshire,” she scolded -inwardly, feeling the pain in her throat increase. -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing. Wait for me. That’s all. Oh, my -lungs, bones <em>and</em> et ceteras. It’s old age, I suppose, -Uncle William.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, hurry your old age up, that’s all. I’m -ready.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, don’t go away, you funny cuckoo, you -can wait, can’t you?” -</p> - -<p> -A party of girls straggled in one by one and -drifted towards Polly in the window space. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s the parties I look forward to.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-113" class="pagenum" title="113"></a> -“Oh, look at her tie!” -</p> - -<p> -“My tie? Six-three at Crisp’s.” -</p> - -<p> -The sounds of Polly’s bootlacing came to -an end. She sat holding a court. “Doesn’t -look forward to parties? She must be a funny -cuckoo!” -</p> - -<p> -“Dancing’s divine,” said a smooth deep smiling -voice. “Reversing. Khoo! with a fella. -Khooo!” -</p> - -<p> -“You surprise me, Edie. You do indeed. -Hoh. Shocking.” -</p> - -<p> -“Shocking? Why? What do you mean, -Poll?” -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing. Nothing. Riang doo too.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t think dancing’s shocking. How can -it be? You’re barmy, my son.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ever heard of Lottie Collins?” -</p> - -<p> -“Ssh. Don’t be silly.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t see what Lottie Collins has got to -do with it. My mother thinks dancing’s all right. -That’s good enough for me.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well—I’m not your mother.” -</p> - -<p> -“Nor anyone else’s.” -</p> - -<p> -“Khoo, <em>Mabel</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Who wants to be anyone’s mother?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not me. Ug. Beastly little brats.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-114" class="pagenum" title="114"></a> -“Oh shut <em>up</em>. Oh you <em>do</em> make me tired.” -</p> - -<p> -“Kids are jolly. A1. I hope I have lots.” -</p> - -<p> -Surprised into amazement, Miriam looked up -to consult the face of Jessie Wheeler, the last -speaker—a tall flat-figured girl with a strong -squarish pale face, hollow cheeks, and firm colourless -lips. Was it being a Baptist that made her -have such an extraordinary idea? Miriam’s eyes -sought refuge from the defiant beam of her sea-blue -eyes in the shimmering cloud of her hair. -The strangest hair in the school; negroid in its -intensity of fuzziness, but saved by its fine mesh. -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t you adore kiddies, Miss Henderson?” -</p> - -<p> -“I think they’re rather nice,” said Miriam -quickly, and returned to her book. -</p> - -<p> -“I should jolly well think they were,” said -Jessie fervently. -</p> - -<p> -“Hope your husband’ll think so too, my dear,” -said Polly, getting up. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, of course, I should only have them if the -fellow wanted me to.” -</p> - -<p> -“You haven’t got a fella yet, madam.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course not, cuckoo. But I shall.” -</p> - -<p> -“Plenty of time to think about that.” -</p> - -<p> -“Hoo. Fancy never having a fellow. I should -go off my nut.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-115" class="pagenum" title="115"></a> -When they had all disappeared Miriam opened -the windows. There was still someone moving -about in the hall, and as she stood in the instreaming -current of damp air looking wearily at -the concrete—a girl came into the room. “Can -I come in a minute?” she said, advancing to the -window. “I want to speak to you,” she pursued -when she reached the bay. She stood at Miriam’s -side and looked out of the window. Half-turning, -Miriam had recognized Grace Broom, -one of the elder first-class girls who attended -only for a few subjects. She was a dark short-necked -girl with thick shoulders; a receding -mouth and boldly drawn nose and chin gave her -a look of shrewd elderliness. The heavy mass of -hair above the broad sweep of her forehead, her -heavy frame and flat-footed walk added to this -appearance. She wore a high-waisted black -serge pinafore dress with black crape vest and -sleeves. -</p> - -<p> -“Do you mind me speaking to you?” she said -in a hot voice. Her black-fringed brown eyes were -fixed on the garden railings where people passed -by and Miriam never looked. -</p> - -<p> -“No,” said Miriam shyly. -</p> - -<p> -“You know why we’re in mourning?” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-116" class="pagenum" title="116"></a> -Miriam stood silent with beating heart, trying -to cope with the increasing invasion. -</p> - -<p> -“Our father’s dead.” -</p> - -<p> -Hurriedly Miriam noted the superstitious tone -in the voice.... This is a family that revels in -plumes and hearses. She glanced at the stiff -rather full crape sleeve nearest to her and sought -about in her mind for help as she said with a -blush, “Oh, I see.” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ve just moved.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, I see,” said Miriam, glancing fearfully -at the heavy scroll of profile and finding it -expressive and confused. -</p> - -<p> -“We’ve got a house about a quarter as big as -where we used to live.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam found it impossible to respond to this -confession and still tried desperately to sweep -away the sense of the figure so solidly planted at -her side. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve asked our aunt if we can ask you to come -to tea with us.” -</p> - -<p> -“Thank you very much,” said Miriam in one -word. -</p> - -<p> -“When could you come?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t come. It would be -impossible.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-117" class="pagenum" title="117"></a> -“Oh no. You must come. I shall ask Aunt -Lucy to write to Miss Perne.” -</p> - -<p> -“I really couldn’t come. I shouldn’t be able -to ask you back.” -</p> - -<p> -“That doesn’t matter,” panted the relentless -voice. “I’ve wanted to speak to you ever since -you came.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-4-3"> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -When next Miriam saw the black-robed Brooms -and their aunt file past the transept where were -the Wordsworth House sittings, she felt that to -visit them might perhaps not be the ordeal she -had not dared to picture. It would be strange. -Those three heavy black-dressed women. Their -small new house. She imagined them sitting at -tea in a little room. Why was Grace so determined -that she should sit there too? Grace had -a life and a home and was real. She did not -know that things were awful. Nor did Florrie -Broom, nor the aunt. But yet they did not look -like ‘social’ people. They were a little different. -Not worldly. Not pious either. Nor intellectual. -What could they want with her? She had soon -forgotten them and the congregation assumed -its normal look. As the service went on the -thoughts came that came every Sunday. An old -<a id="page-118" class="pagenum" title="118"></a> -woman with a girl at her side were the only -people whose faces were within Miriam’s line of -vision from her place at the wall end of the -Wordsworth House pew. The people in front of -them were not even in profile, and those behind -were hidden from her by the angle of the transept -wall. To her right she could just see rising -above the heads in the rows of pews in front of -her the far end of the chancel screen. The faces -grouped in the transept on the opposite side of -the church were a blur. The two figures sat or -knelt or stood in a heavy silence. They neither -sang nor prayed. Their faces remained unaltered -during the whole service. To Miriam they were -its most intimate part. During the sermon she -rarely raised her eyes from the circle they filled -for her as they sat thrown into relief by the great -white pillar. Their faces were turned towards -the chancel. They could see its high dim roof -and distant altar, the light on the altar, flowers, -shining metal, embroideries, the maze of the east -window, the white choir. They showed no sign -of seeing these things. The old woman’s heavy -face with its heavy jaw-bone seemed to have -been dead for years under its coffin-shaped black -bonnet. Her large body was covered by a mantle -<a id="page-119" class="pagenum" title="119"></a> -of thickly ribbed black material trimmed with -braid and bugles. That bright yellow colour -meant liver. Whatever she had she was dying of -it. People were always dying when they looked -like that. But it was a bad way to die. The real -way was the way of that lady trailing about over -the Heath near Roehampton, dying by inches of -an internal complaint, with her face looking fragile—like -the little alabaster chapelle in the nursery -with a candle alight inside. She was going to -die, walking about alone on the Heath in the afternoons. -Her family going on as usual at home; -the greengrocer calling. She knew that everybody -was alone and that all the fuss and noise -people made all day was a pretence.... What -to <em>do</em>? To be walking about with a quiet face -meeting death. Nothing could be so alone as -that. The pain, and struggle, and darkness.... -That was what the old woman feared. She did -not think about death. She was afraid and sullen -all the time. Stunned, sitting there with her -cold common daughter. She had been common -herself as a girl, but more noisy, and she had -married and never thought about dying, and now -she was dying and hating her cold daughter. -The daughter, sitting there with her stiff slatey-blue -<a id="page-120" class="pagenum" title="120"></a> -coat and skirt, her indistinct hat tied with a -thin harsh veil to her small flat head—what a -home with her in it all the time. She would -never laugh. Her poor-looking cheeks were -yellowish, her fringe dry, without gloss. She -would move her mouth when she spoke, sideways -with a snarling curl of one-half of the upper lip -and have that resentful way of speaking that all -North Londoners have, and the maddening North -London accent. The old woman’s voice would be -deep and hollow.... The girl moving heavily -about the house wearing boots and stiff dresses and -stiff stays showing their outline through her clothes. -They would be bitter to their servant and would -not trust her. What was the good of their being -alive ... a house and a water system and drains -and cooking, and they would take all these things -for granted and grumble and snarl ... the gas -meter man would call there. Did men like that -resent calling at houses like that? No. They’d -just say, “The ole party she sez to me.” How -good they were, these men. Good and kind and -cheerful. Someone ought to prevent the extravagance -of keeping whole houses and fires going -for women like that. They ought to be in an -institution. But they never thought about that. -<a id="page-121" class="pagenum" title="121"></a> -They were satisfied with themselves. They were -self-satisfied because they did not know what they -were like.... <em>Why</em> should you have a house, -and tradesmen calling? -</p> - -<p> -“<em>Jehoiakin!</em>” The rush of indistinct expostulating -sound coming from the pulpit was accompanied -for a moment by reverberations of the -one clearly bawled word. The sense of the large -cold church, the great stone pillars, the long narrow -windows faintly stained with yellowish green, -the harsh North London congregation stirred and -seemed to settle down more securely. She saw -the form of the vicar in the light grey stone -pulpit standing up short and neat against the -cold grey stone wall, enveloped in fine soft folds, -his small puckered hands beautifully cuffed, his -plump crumpled little face, his small bald head -fringed with little saffron-white curls, his pink -pouched busy mouth. What was it all about? -Pompous pottering, going on and on and on—in -the Old Testament. The whole church was in -the Old Testament.... <em>Honour</em> thy father and -thy mother. How horribly the words would echo -through the great cold church. <em>Why</em> honour -thy father and thy mother? What had they -done that was so honourable? Everybody was -<a id="page-122" class="pagenum" title="122"></a> -dying in cold secret fear. Christ, the son of -God, was part of it all, the same family ... -vindictive. Christmas and Easter, hard white -cold flowers, no real explanation. “I came not -to destroy but to fulfil.” The stagnant blood -flushed in her face and tingled in her ears as the -words occurred to her. Why didn’t everybody -die at once and stop it all? -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-4-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miss Haddie paused at the door of her room -and wheeled suddenly round to face Miriam who -had just reached the landing. -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve not seen my little corner,” she tweedled -breathlessly, throwing open her door. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam went in. “Oh how nice,” she said fearfully, -breathing in the freshness of a little square -sun-filled muslin-draped, blue-papered room. -Taking refuge at the white-skirted window, she -found a narrow view of the park, greener than -the one she knew. The wide yellow pathway -going up through the cricket ground had shifted -away to the right. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s really a—a—a dressing-room from your -room.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh,” said Miriam vivaciously. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-123" class="pagenum" title="123"></a> -“There’s a door, a—a—a door. I daresay -you’ve noticed.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh! <em>That’s</em> the door in our cupboard!” -The dim door behind the hanging garments led -to nothing but to Miss Haddie’s room. She -began unbuttoning her gloves. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie was hesitating near a cupboard, -making little sounds. -</p> - -<p> -“I suppose we must all make ourselves tidy -now,” said Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“I thought you didn’t look very happy in church -this morning,” cluttered Miss Haddie rapidly. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam felt heavy with anger. “Oh,” she said -clumsily, “I had the most frightful headache.” -</p> - -<p> -“Poor child. I thought ye didn’t look yerself.” -</p> - -<p> -The window was shut. But the room was -mysteriously fresh, far away from the school. -A fly was hovering about the muslin window -blind with little reedy loops of song. The oboe -... in the quintet, thought Miriam suddenly. -“I don’t know,” she said, listening. The flies -sang like this at home. She had heard them without -knowing it. She moved in her place by the -window. The fly swept up to the ceiling, wavering -on a deep note like a tiny gong.... Hot -sunny refined lawns, roses in bowls on summerhouse -<a id="page-124" class="pagenum" title="124"></a> -tea-tables, refined voices far away from the -Caledonian Road. -</p> - -<p> -“Flies don’t <em>buzz</em>,” she said passionately. -“They don’t <em>buzz</em>. Why do people say they -buzz?” The pain pressing behind her temples -slackened. In a moment it would be only a glow. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie stood with bent head, her face -turning from side to side, with its sour hesitating -smile, her large eyes darting their strange glances -about the room. -</p> - -<p> -“Won’t you sit down a minute? They haven’t -sounded the first bell yet.” Miriam sat down on -the one little white-painted, cane-seated chair -near the dressing-table. “Eh—eh,” said Miss -Haddie, beginning to unfasten her veil. “She -doesn’t approve of general conversation,” thought -Miriam. “She’s a female. Oh well, she’ll have -to see I’m not.” -</p> - -<p> -“What gave you yer headache?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, I don’t know. I suppose I was wondering -what it was all about.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t think I quite understand ye.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I mean—what that old gentleman was -in such a state of mind about.” -</p> - -<p> -“D’ye mean Mr. La Trobe!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. Why do you laugh?” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-125" class="pagenum" title="125"></a> -“I don’t understand what ye mean.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam watched Miss Haddie’s thin fingers -feeling for the pins in her black toque. “Of -course not,” she thought, looking at the unveiled -shrivelled cheek.... “thirty-five years of -being a lady.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well,” she sighed fiercely. -</p> - -<p> -“What is it ye mean, my dear?” -</p> - -<p> -—‘couldn’t make head or tail of a thing the -old dodderer said’—no ‘old boy,’ no—these -phrases would not do for Miss Haddie. -</p> - -<p> -“I couldn’t agree with <em>anything</em> he said.” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie sat down on the edge of the little -white bed burying her face in her hands and -smoothing them up and down with a wiping -movement. -</p> - -<p> -“One can always criticise a sermon,” she said -reproachfully. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, why not?” -</p> - -<p> -“I mean to say ye <em>can</em>,” said Miss Haddie from -behind her fingers, “but, but ye shouldn’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“You can’t help it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, ye can. If ye listen in the right -spirit,” gargled Miss Haddie hurriedly. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, it isn’t only the sermon, it’s the whole -thing,” said Miriam crimsoning. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-126" class="pagenum" title="126"></a> -“Ye mustn’t think about the speaker,” went -on Miss Haddie in faint hurried rebuke. “That’s -wrong. That sets people running from church -to church. You must attend your own parish -church in the right spirit, let the preacher be -who—who—what he may.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, but I think that’s positively <em>dangerous</em>,” -said Miriam gravely. “It simply means leaving -your mind open for whatever they choose to say. -Like Rome.” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, no—o—o,” flared Miss Haddie dropping -her hands, “nonsense. Not like Rome at -all.” -</p> - -<p> -“But it <em>is</em>. It’s giving up your conscience.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re very determined,” laughed Miss -Haddie bitterly. -</p> - -<p> -“I’m certainly not going to give my mind up -to a parson for him to do what he likes with. -That’s what it is. That’s what they do. I’ve -seen it again and again. I’ve heard people talking -about sermons,” finished Miriam with vivacious -intentness. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie sat very still with her hands once -more pressed tightly against her face. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, my dear. This is a dreadful state of -affairs. I’m afraid you’re all wrong. That’s not -<a id="page-127" class="pagenum" title="127"></a> -it at all. If you listen only for the good, the -good will come to you.” -</p> - -<p> -“But these men don’t know. How should -they? They don’t agree amongst themselves.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, my dear, that is a very wrong attitude. -How long have ye felt like this?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, all my life,” responded Miriam proudly. -</p> - -<p> -“I’m very sorry, my dear.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ever since I can remember. Always.” -</p> - -<p> -There were ivory-backed brushes on the dressing-table. -Miriam stared at them and let her -eyes wander on to a framed picture of an agonised -thorn-crowned head. -</p> - -<p> -“Were you—have ye—eh—have ye been confirmed?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“Did ye discuss any of your difficulties with -yer vicar?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not I. I knew his mind too well. Had -heard him preach for years. He would have run -round my questions. He wasn’t capable of answering -them. For instance, supposing I had -asked him what I’ve <em>always</em> wanted to know. -How can people, ordinary people, be expected -to be like Christ, as they say, when they think -Christ was supernatural? Of course, if he was -<a id="page-128" class="pagenum" title="128"></a> -supernatural it was easy enough for him to be as -he was; if he was not supernatural, then there’s -nothing in the whole thing.” -</p> - -<p> -“My <em>dear</em> child! I’m dreadfully sorry ye feel -like that. I’d no idea ye felt like that, poor child. -I knew ye weren’t quite happy always; I mean -I’ve thought ye weren’t quite happy in yer mind -sometimes, but I’d no idea—eh, eh, have ye ever -consulted anybody—anybody able to give ye -advice?” -</p> - -<p> -“There you are. That’s exactly the whole -thing! <em>Who</em> can one consult? There isn’t anybody. -The people who are qualified are the -people who have the thing called faith, which -means that they beg the whole question from the -beginning.” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh—dear—me—Miriam—child!” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I’m made that way. How can I help -it if faith seems to me just an abnormal condition -of the mind with fanaticism at one end and -agnosticism at the other?” -</p> - -<p> -“My dear, ye believe in God?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you see, I see things like this. On one -side a prime cause with a certain object unknown -to me, bringing humanity into being; on the -other side humanity, all more or less miserable, -<a id="page-129" class="pagenum" title="129"></a> -never having been consulted as to whether they -wanted to come to life. If that is belief, a South -Sea Islander could have it. But good people, -people with faith, want me to believe that one -day God sent a saviour to rescue the world from -sin and that the world can never be grateful -enough and must become as Christ. Well. If -God made people he is responsible and ought to -save them.” -</p> - -<p> -“What do yer parents think about yer ideas?” -</p> - -<p> -“They don’t know.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ye’ve never mentioned yer trouble to them?” -</p> - -<p> -“I did ask Pater once when we were coming -home from the Stabat Mater that question I’ve -told you about.” -</p> - -<p> -“What did he say?” -</p> - -<p> -“He couldn’t answer. We were just by the -gate. He said he thought it was a remarkably -reasonable dilemma. He laughed.” -</p> - -<p> -“And ye’ve never had any discussion of these -things with him?” -</p> - -<p> -“No.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ye’re an independent young woman,” said -Miss Haddie. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam looked up. Miss Haddie was sitting on -the edge of her bed. A faint pink flush on her -<a id="page-130" class="pagenum" title="130"></a> -cheeks made her eyes look almost blue. She was -no longer frowning. ‘I’m something new—a -kind of different world. She is wondering. I -must stick to my guns,’ mused Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ll not ask ye,” said Miss Haddie quietly and -cheerfully, “to expect any help from yer fellow -creatures since ye’ve such a poor opinion of -them. But ye’re not happy. Why not go -straight to the source?” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam waited. For a moment the sheen on -Miss Haddie’s silk sleeves had distracted her by -becoming as gentle and unchallenging as the light -on her mother’s dresses when there were other -people in the room. She had feared the leaping -out of some emotional appeal. But Miss Haddie -had a plan. Strange secret knowledge. -</p> - -<p> -“I should like to ask ye a question.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I’ll put it in this way. While ye’ve -watched the doings of yer fellow creatures ye’ve -forgotten that the truth ye’re seeking is a—a -Person.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam pondered. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s where ye ought to begin. And how -about—what—what about—I fancy ye’ve been -neglecting the—the means of grace.... I think -<a id="page-131" class="pagenum" title="131"></a> -ye have.” Miss Haddie rose and crossed the -room to a little bookshelf at the head of her bed, -talking happily on. ‘Upright as a dart,’ commented -Miriam mentally, waiting for the fulfilment -of the promise of Miss Haddie’s cheerfulness. -Against the straight lines of the wall-paper -Miss Haddie showed as swaying slightly -backwards from the waist as she moved. -</p> - -<p> -The first bell rang and Miriam got up to go. -Miss Haddie came forward with a small volume -in her hands and held it out, standing close by her -and keeping her own hold on the volume. “Ye’ll -find no argument in it. Not but I think a few -sound arguments would do ye good. Give it a -try. Don’t be stiff-necked. Just read it and -see.” The smooth soft leather slipped altogether -into Miriam’s hands and she felt the passing contact -of a cool small hand and noted a faint fine -scent coming to her from Miss Haddie’s person. -</p> - -<p> -In her own room she found that the soft -binding of the book had rounded corners and -nothing on the cover but a small plain gold cross -in the right-hand corner. She feasted her eyes -on it as she took off her things. When the second -bell rang she glanced inside the cover. “Preparation -for Holy Communion.” Hurriedly -<a id="page-132" class="pagenum" title="132"></a> -hiding it in her long drawer under a pile of linen, -she ran to the door. Running back again she took -it out and put it, together with her prayer book -and hymn book, in the small top drawer. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-4-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The opportunity to use Miss Haddie’s book -came with Nancie’s departure for a week-end -visit. Beadie was in the deeps of her first sleep -and the room seemed empty. The book lay open -on her bed. She noted as she placed it there -when she began preparing for bed that it was -written by a bishop, a man she knew by name as -being still alive. It struck her as extraordinary -that a book should be printed and read while the -author was alive, and she turned away with a -feeling of shame from the idea of the bishop, -still going about in his lawn sleeves and talking, -while people read a book that he had written in -his study. But it was very interesting to have -the book to look at, because he probably knew -about modern people with doubts and would not -think about them as ‘infidels’—‘an honest -agnostic has my sympathy,’ he might say, and it -was possible he did not believe in eternal punishment. -If he did he would not have had his book -<a id="page-133" class="pagenum" title="133"></a> -printed with rounded edges and that beautiful -little cross.... “Line upon Line” and the -“Pilgrim’s Progress” were not meant for modern -minds. Archbishop Whateley had a “chaste and -eloquent wit” and was a “great gardener.” A -witty archbishop fond of gardening was simply -aggravating and silly. -</p> - -<p> -Restraining her desire to hurry, Miriam completed -her toilet and at last knelt down in her -dressing-gown. Its pinked neck-frill fell heavily -against her face as she leant over the bed. Tucking -it into her neck she clasped her outstretched -hands, leaving the book within the circle of her -arms. The attitude seemed a little lacking in -respect for the beautifully printed gilt-edged -pages. Flattening her entwined hands between -herself and the edge of the bed, she read very -slowly that just as for worldly communion men -cleanse and deck their bodies so for attendance -at the Holy Feast must there be a cleansing and -decking of the spirit. She knelt upright, feeling -herself grow very grave. The cold air of the bedroom -flowed round her carrying conviction. Then -that dreadful feeling at early service, kneeling -like a lump in the pew, too late to begin to be -good, the exhausted moments by the altar rail—the -<a id="page-134" class="pagenum" title="134"></a> -challenging light on the shining brass rod, on -the priest’s ring and the golden lining of the -cup, the curious bite of the wine in the throat—the -sullen disappointed home-coming; all the -strange failure was due to lack of preparation. -She knelt for some moments, without thoughts, -breathing in the cleansing air, sighing heavily at -intervals. What she ought to do was clear. A -certain time for preparation could be taken every -night, kneeling up in bed with the gas out if -Nancie were awake, and a specially long time on -Saturday night. The decision took her back to -her book. She read that no man can cleanse himself, -but it is his part to examine his conscience -and confess his sins with a prayer for cleansing -grace. -</p> - -<p> -The list of questions for self-examination as to -sins past and present in thought, word, and deed -brought back the sense of her body with its load -of well-known memories. Could they be got rid -of? She could cast them off, feel them sliding -away like Christian’s Burden. But was that all? -Was it being reconciled with your brother to -throw off ill-feeling without letting him know and -telling him you were sorry for unkind deeds and -words? Those you met would find out the change; -<a id="page-135" class="pagenum" title="135"></a> -but all the others—those you had offended from -your youth up—all your family? Write to -them. A sense of a checking of the tide that had -seemed to flow through her finger-tips came with -this suggestion, and Miriam knelt heavily on the -hard floor, feeling the weight of her well-known -body. The wall-paper attracted her attention -and the honeycomb pattern of the thick fringed -white counterpane. She shut the little book and -rose from her knees. Moving quickly about the -room, she turned at random to her washhand -basin and vigorously rewashed her hands in its -soapy water. The Englishman, she reflected as -she wasted the soap, puts a dirty shirt on a clean -body, and the Frenchman a clean shirt on a dirty -body. -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-5"> -<a id="page-136" class="pagenum" title="136"></a> -CHAPTER V -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-5-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">M</span><span class="postfirstchar">iriam</span> felt very proud of tall Miss Perne -when she met her in the hall at the beginning -of her second term. Miss Perne had -kissed her and held one of her hands in two small -welcoming ones, talking in a gleeful voice. “Well, -my dear,” she said at the end of a little pause, -“you’ll have a clear evening. The gels do not -return until to-morrow, so you’ll be able to unpack -and settle yerself in comfortably. Come -and sit with us when ye’ve done. We’ll have -supper in the sitting-room. M’yes.” Smiling -and laughing she turned eagerly away. “Of -course, Miss Perne,” said Miriam in a loud wavering -voice, arresting her, “I enjoyed my holidays; -but I want to tell you how glad I am to be back -here.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, yes,” said Miss Perne hilariously, “we’re -all glad.” -</p> - -<p> -There was a little break in her voice, and -<a id="page-137" class="pagenum" title="137"></a> -Miriam saw that she would have once more taken -her in her arms. -</p> - -<p> -“I like being here,” she said hoarsely, looking -down, and supported herself by putting two -trembling fingers on the hall table. She was -holding back from the gnawing of the despair -that had made her sick with pain when she heard -once more the jingle-jingle, plock-plock of the -North London trams. This strong feeling of -pride in Miss Perne was beating it down. “I’m -very glad, my dear,” responded Miss Perne in a -quivering gleeful falsetto. ‘If you can’t have -what you like you must like what you have,’ said -Miriam over and over to herself as she went with -heavy feet up the four flights of stairs. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-5-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -A candle was already burning in the empty -bedroom. “I’m back. I’m back. It’s all over,” -she gasped as she shut the door. “And a jolly -good thing too. This is my place. I can keep -myself here and cost nothing and not interfere -with anybody. It’s just as if I’d never been -away. It’ll always be like that now. Short -holidays, gone in a minute, and then the long -term. Getting out of touch with everything, -<a id="page-138" class="pagenum" title="138"></a> -things happening, knowing nothing about them, -going home like a visitor, and people talking to -you about things that are only theirs, now and -not wanting to hear about yours ... not about -the little real everyday things that give you an -idea of anything but only the startling things -that are not important. You have to think of -them though to make people interested—awful, -awful, awful, really only putting people further -away afterwards when you’ve told the thing and -their interest dies down and you can’t think of -anything else to say. ‘Miss Perne’s hair is <em>perfectly</em> -black—as black as coal, and she’s the -eldest, just <em>fancy</em>.’ Then everybody looks up. -‘My room’s downstairs, the room where I -teach, is in the basement. Directly breakfast is -over——’ -</p> - -<p> -“‘Basement? What a pity! Basement rooms -are awfully bad,’ and by the time you have stopped -them exclaiming and are just going to begin, you -see that they are fidgetting and thinking about -something else.” ... Eve had listened a little; -because she wanted to tell everything about her -own place and had agreed that nobody really -wanted to hear the details.... The landscapes -from the windows of the big country house, all -<a id="page-139" class="pagenum" title="139"></a> -like pictures by Leader, the stables and laundry, -a “laundry-maid” who was sixty-five, the eldest -pupil with seven muslin dresses in the summer -and being scolded because she swelled out after -two helpings of meat and two of pie and cream, -and the youngest almost square in her little covert -coat and with a square face and large blue eyes and -the puppies who went out in a boat in Weston-super-Mare -and were sea-sick.... Eve did not -seem to mind the family being common. Eve -was changing. “They are so jolly and strong. -They enjoy life. They’re like other people.” ... -“D’you think that’s jolly? Would you like to -be like that—like other people?” “Rather. I -mean to be.” “Do you?” “Of course it can’t -be done all at once. But it’s good for me to be -there. It’s awfully jolly to be in a house with no -worry about money and plenty of jolly food. -Mrs. Green is so strong and clever. She can do -anything. She’s good for me, she keeps me -going.” “Would you like to be like her?” “Of -course. They’re all so jolly—even when they’re -old. Her sister’s forty and she’s still pretty; not -given up hope a bit.” “<em>Eve!</em>” -</p> - -<p> -Eve had listened; but not agreed about the -teaching, about making the girls see how easy it -<a id="page-140" class="pagenum" title="140"></a> -was to get hold of the things and then letting -them talk about other things. “I see how you -do it, and I see why the girls obey you, of course.” -Funny. Eve thought it was hard and inhuman. -That’s what she really thought. -</p> - -<p> -Two newly purchased lengths of spotted net -veiling were lying at the top of her lightly packed -trunk partly folded in uncrumpled tissue paper. -She took the crisp dye-scented net very gently -into her hands, getting, sitting alone on the floor -by her trunk, the full satisfaction that had failed -her in the shop with Harriett’s surprise at her -sudden desire flowing over the counter and infecting -the charm of baskets full of cheap stockings -and common bright-bordered handkerchiefs -some of which had borders so narrow and faint -as really hardly to show when they were scrumpled -up. “Veiling, moddom? Yes, moddom,” the -assistant had retorted when she had asked for a -veil. “Wot on <em>earth</em> fower?” ... Without -answering Harriett she had bought two. There -was no need to have bought two. One could go -back in the trunk as a store. They would be the -beginning of gradually getting a ‘suitable outfit,’ -‘things convenient for you.’ She got up to put -a veil in the little top drawer very carefully; -<a id="page-141" class="pagenum" title="141"></a> -trying it across her face first. It almost obliterated -her features in the dim candle-light. It -would be the greatest comfort on winter walks, -warm and like a rampart. ‘You’ve no idea how -warm it keeps you,’ she could say if anybody -said anything. She arranged her clothes very -slowly and exactly in her half of the chest of -drawers. “My appointments ought to be an -influence in the room—until all my things are -perfectly refined I shan’t be able to influence the -girls as I ought. I must begin it from now. At -the end of the term I shall be stronger. From -strength to strength.” She wished she could go -to bed at once and prepare for to-morrow lying -alone in the dark with the trams going up and -down outside as they would do night by night -for the rest of her life. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-5-3"> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The nine o’clock post brought a letter from -Harriett. Miriam carried it upstairs after supper. -Placing it unopened on a chair by the head of her -bed under the gas bracket she tried to put away -the warm dizzy feeling it brought her in an -elaborate toilet that included the placing in -readiness of everything she would need for the -<a id="page-142" class="pagenum" title="142"></a> -morning. When all was complete she was filled -with a peace that promised to remain indefinitely -as long as everything she had to do should be -carried out with unhurried exactitude. It could -be made to become the atmosphere of her life. -It would come nearer and nearer and she would -live more and more richly into it until she had -grown like those women who were called blessed.... -She looked about her. The plain room gave -her encouragement. It became the scene of -adventure. She tip-toed about it in her night-gown. -All the world would come to her there. -Flora knew. Flora was the same, sweeping the -floors and going to bed in an ugly room with -two other servants; but she was in it alone sometimes -and knew.... -</p> - -<p> -“One verse to-night will be enough.” Opening -her Bible at random she read, “And not only -so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing -that tribulation worketh patience.” Eagerly -closing the volume she knelt down smiling. “Oh -do let tribulation work patience in me,” she murmured, -blushing, and got up staring gladly at the -wall behind her bed. Shaking her pillow lengthwise -against the ironwork head of the bed, she -established herself with the bed-clothes neatly -<a id="page-143" class="pagenum" title="143"></a> -arranged, sitting up to read Harriett’s letter -before turning out the gas: -</p> - -<p> -“Toosday morning—You’ve not gone yet, old -tooral-ooral, but I’m writing this because I know -you’ll feel blue this evening, to tell you not to. -Becos, it’s <em>no</em> time to Easter and becos here’s a -great piece of news. The last of the Neville Subscription -Dances comes in the Easter holidays and -<em>you’re to come</em>. D’ye ’<em>ear</em>, Liza? Gerald says if -you can’t stump up he’s going to get you a ticket, -and anyhow you’ve got to come. You’ll enjoy it -just as much as you did the first and probably -more, because most of the same people will be -there. So Goodni’. Mind the lamp-post. -Harry. P.S.—Heaps of love, old silly. You’re -just the same. It’s no bally good pretending -you’re not.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam felt her heart writhe in her breast. -“Get thee behind me, Harry,” she said, pushing -the letter under the pillow and kneeling up to -turn out the gas. When she lay down again her -mind was rushing on by itself.... -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-5-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Harry doesn’t realise a bit how short holidays -are. Easter—nothing. Just one dance and never -<a id="page-144" class="pagenum" title="144"></a> -seeing the people again. I was right just now. -I was on the right track then. I must get back to -that. It’s no good giving way right or left; I must -make a beginning of my own life.... I wish I had -been called “Patience” and had thin features.... -Adam Street, Adelphi.... “Now do you want -to be dancing out there with one of those -young fellows, my dear girl—No? That’s a very -good thing for me. I’m an old buffer who can’t -manage more than every other dance or so. But -if you do me the honour of sitting here while -those young barbarians romp their Lancers?... -Ah, that is excellent—I want you to talk to me. -You needn’t mind me. Hey? What? I’ve -known that young would-be brother-in-law of -yours for many years and this evening I’ve been -watching your face. Do you mind that, dear -girl, that I’ve watched your face? In all homage. -I’m a staunch worshipper of womanhood. I’ve -seen rough life as well as suave. I’m an old gold-digger—Ustralia -took many years of my life; -but it never robbed me of my homage for -women.... -</p> - -<p> -“That’s a mystery to me. How you’ve allowed -your young sister to overhaul you. Perhaps you -have a Corydon hidden away somewhere—or -<a id="page-145" class="pagenum" title="145"></a> -don’t think favourably of the bonds of matrimony? -Is that it? -</p> - -<p> -“You are not one to be easily happy. But that -is no reason why you should say you pity anyone -undertaking to pass through life at your side. -Don’t let your thoughts and ideas allow you to -miss happiness. Women are made to find and -dispense happiness. Even intense women like -yourself. But you won’t find it an easy matter -to discover your mate. -</p> - -<p> -“Have you ever thought of committing your -ideas to paper? There’s a book called ‘The -Confessions of a Woman.’ It had a great sale -and its composition occupied the authoress for -only six weeks. You could write in your holidays. -</p> - -<p> -“Think over what I’ve told you, my dear, dear -girl. And don’t forget old Bob Greville’s address. -You’re eighteen. He’s only eight; eight Adam -Street. The old Adam. Waiting to hear from -the new Eve—whenever she’s unhappy.” -</p> - -<p> -He would be there again, old flatterer, with -his steely blue eyes and that strong little -Dr. Conelly—Conelly who held you like a -vice and swung you round and kept putting -you back from him to say things. “If only -<a id="page-146" class="pagenum" title="146"></a> -you knew the refreshment it is to dance with -a girl who can talk sense and doesn’t <em>giggle</em>.... -Yes yes yes, women are <em>physically</em> incapable -of keeping a secret.... Meredith, he’s the man. -He understands woman as no other writer——” -And the little dark man—De Vigne—who danced -like a snake.... Tired? Divinely drowsy? -That’s what I like. Don’t talk. Let yourself -go. Little snail, Harriett called him. And that -giant, Conelly’s friend, whirling you round the -room like a gust, with his eyes fixed far away -in the distance and dropping you with the -chaperones at the end of the dance. If <em>he</em> -had suddenly said “Let yourself go” ... He -too would have become a snail. God has made -life ugly. -</p> - -<p> -Dear Mr. Greville, dear <em>Bob</em>. Do you know -anything about a writer called Meredith? If -you have one of his books I should like to -read it. No. Dear Bob, I’m simply wretched. -I want to talk to you. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-5-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Footsteps sounded on the stairs—the servants, -coming upstairs to bed. No dancing for them. -Work, caps and aprons. And those strange -<a id="page-147" class="pagenum" title="147"></a> -rooms upstairs to sleep in that nobody ever saw. -Probably Miss Perne went up occasionally to look -at them and see that they were all right; clean -and tidy.... They had to go up every night, -carrying little jugs of water and making no noise -on the stairs, and come down every morning. -They were the servants—and there would never -be any dancing. Nobody thought about them.... -They could not get away from each other, -and cook.... -</p> - -<p> -To be a general servant would be very hard -work. Perhaps impossible. But there would be -two rooms, the kitchen at the bottom of the -house, and a bedroom at the top, your own. It -would not matter what the family was like. You -would look after them, like children, and be alone -to read and sleep.... Toothache. Cheap -dentists; a red lamp “painless extractions” ... -having to go there before nine in the morning, -and be alone in a cold room, the dentist doing -what he thought best and coming back to your -work crying with pain, your head wrapped up in -a black shawl. Hospitals; being quite helpless -and grateful for wrong treatment; coming back -to work, ill. Sinks and slops ... quinsey, all -alone ... growths ... consumption. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-148" class="pagenum" title="148"></a> -Go to sleep. It would be better to think in -the morning. But then this clear first impression -would be gone and school would begin and go on -from hour to hour through the term, mornings -and afternoons and evenings, dragging you along -further and further and changing you, months -and months and years until it was too late to get -back and there was nothing ahead. -</p> - -<p> -The thing to remember, to keep in mind all -the time was to save money—not to spend a -single penny that could be saved, to be determined -about that so that when the temptation -came you could just hang on until it was -past. -</p> - -<p> -No fun in the holidays, no money spent on -flowers and gloves and blouses. Keeping stiff -and sensible all the time. The family of the two -little Quaker girls had a home library, with lists, -an inventory, lending each other their books and -talking about them, and albums of pressed leaves -and flowers with the Latin names, and went on -wearing the same plain clothes.... You had to -be a certain sort of person to do that. -</p> - -<p> -It would spoil the holidays to be like that at -home. Every penny must be spent, if only on -things for other people. Not spending would -<a id="page-149" class="pagenum" title="149"></a> -bring a nice strong secret feeling and a horrid -expression into one’s eyes. -</p> - -<p> -The only way was to give up your family and -stay at your work, like Flora, and have a box of -half-crowns in your drawer.... Spend and -always be afraid of “rainy days”—or save and -never enjoy life at all. -</p> - -<p> -But going out now and again in the holidays, -feeling stiff and governessy and just beginning -to learn to be oneself again when it was time to -go back was not enjoying life ... your money -was spent and people forgot you and you forgot -them and went back to your convent to begin -again. -</p> - -<p> -Save, save. Sooner or later saving must begin. -Why not at once. Harry, it’s no good. I’m old -already. I’ve got to be one of those who have -to give everything up. -</p> - -<p> -I wonder if Flora is asleep? -</p> - -<p> -That’s settled. Go to sleep. Get thee behind -me. Sleep ... the dark cool room. Air; we -breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Everybody -has air. Manna. As much as you want, full -measure, pressed down and running over.... -Wonderful. There is somebody giving things, -whatever goes ... something left.... Somebody -<a id="page-150" class="pagenum" title="150"></a> -seeing that things are not quite unbearable, ... -but the pain, the pain all the time, mysterious -black pain.... -</p> - -<p> -Into thy hands I commit my spirit. <em>In manus</em> -something.... You understand if nobody else -does. But <em>why</em> must I be one of the ones to give -everything up? <em>Why</em> do you make me suffer so? -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-6"> -<a id="page-151" class="pagenum" title="151"></a> -CHAPTER VI -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">P</span><span class="postfirstchar">iecemeal</span> statements in her letter home -brought Miriam now and again a momentary -sense of developing activities, but she did -not recognise the completeness of the change in -her position at the school until half-way through -her second term she found herself talking to the -new pupil teacher. She had heard apathetically -of her existence during supper-table conversations -with the Misses Perne at the beginning of the -term. She was an Irish girl of sixteen, one of a -large family living on the outskirts of Dublin, and -would be a boarder, attending the first class for -English and earning pocket money by helping -with the lower school. As the weeks went on -and Miriam grew accustomed to hearing her -name—Julia Doyle—she began to associate it -with an idea of charm that brought her a sinking -of heart. She knew her position in the esteem -of the Pernes was secure. But this new young -<a id="page-152" class="pagenum" title="152"></a> -teacher would work strange miracles with the -girls. She would do it quite easily and unconsciously. -The girls would be easy with her -and would laugh and one would have to hear -them. -</p> - -<p> -However, when at last her arrival was near and -the three ladies discussed the difficulty of having -her met, Miriam plied them until they reluctantly -gave her permission to go, taking a workman’s -train that would bring her to Euston station at -seven o’clock in the morning. -</p> - -<p> -At the end of an hour spent pacing the half-dark -platform exhausted with cold and excitement -and the monotonously reiterated effort to imagine -the arrival of one of Mrs. Hungerford’s heroines -from a train journey, Miriam, whose costume had -been described in a letter to the girl’s mother, -was startled wandering amidst the vociferous -passengers at the luggage end of the newly arrived -train by a liquid colourless intimate voice at her -elbow. “I think I’ll be right to say how d’you -do.” -</p> - -<p> -She turned and saw a slender girl in a middle-aged -toque and an ill-cut old-fashioned coat and -skirt. What were they to say to each other, -two dowdy struggling women both in the same -<a id="page-153" class="pagenum" title="153"></a> -box? She must get her to Banbury Park as quickly -as possible. It was dreadful that they should be -seen together there on the platform in their ragbag -clothes. At any rate they must not talk. -“Oh, I’m very pleased to see you. I’m glad -you’ve come. I suppose the train must have been -late,” she said eagerly. -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, we’ll be late I dare venture. Haven’t -an idea of the hour.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes,” said Miriam emphatically, “I’m -sure the train’s <em>late</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Where’ll we find a core?” -</p> - -<p> -“What?” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll need a core for the luggage.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, a cab. We must get a cab. We’d -better find a porter.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, I’ve a man here seeking out my -things.” -</p> - -<p> -Inside the cab Julia’s face shone chalky white, -and Miriam found that her eyes looked like -Weymouth Bay—the sea in general, on days -when clouds keep sweeping across the sun. When -she laughed she had dimples and the thick white -rims of her eyelids looked like piping cord round -her eyes. But she was not pretty. There were -lines in her cheeks as well as dimples, and there -<a id="page-154" class="pagenum" title="154"></a> -was something apologetic in her little gusty laugh. -She laughed a good deal as they started off, saying -things, little quiet remarks that Miriam could not -understand and that did not seem to be answers -to her efforts to make conversation. Perhaps she -was not going the right way to make her talk. -Perhaps she had not said any of the things she -thought she had said. -</p> - -<p> -She cleared her throat and looked out of the -window thinking over a possible opening. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve never been so glad over anything in my -life as hearing you’re one of the teachers,” said -Julia presently. -</p> - -<p> -“The Pernes call me by my name, so I suppose -you will too as you’re a teacher,” said Miriam -headlong. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s awfully sweet of you,” replied Julia -laughing and blushing a clear deep rose. “It -makes anyone feel at home. I’ll be looking out -till I hear it.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s——” Miriam laughed. “Isn’t it funny -that people don’t like saying their own names.” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish you’d tell me about your teaching. -I’m sure you’re awf’ly clever.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam gave her a list of the subjects she taught -in the lower school. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-155" class="pagenum" title="155"></a> -“You know all there is to know.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, and then I take the top girls now -for German and the second class for French -reading, and two arithmetic classes in the upper -school, and a ‘shell’ of two very stupid girls -to help with their College of Preceptors.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re frightening me.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miriam looked out of the cab window, hardly -hearing Julia’s next remark. The drab brick -walls of King’s Cross station were coming towards -them. When they had got themselves and Julia’s -luggage out of the cab and into the train for -Banbury Park she was still pondering uneasily -over her own dislike of appearing as a successful -teacher. This stranger saw her only as a teacher. -That was what she had become. If she was really -a teacher now, just that in life, it meant that she -must decide at once whether she really meant to -teach always. Everyone now would think of her -as a teacher; as someone who was never going to -do anything else, when really she had not even -begun to think about doing any of the things that -professional teachers had to do. She was not -qualifying herself for examinations in her spare -<a id="page-156" class="pagenum" title="156"></a> -time as her predecessor had done. Supposing -she did. This girl Julia would certainly expect -her to be doing so. What then? If she were -to work very hard and also develop her character, -when she was fifty she would be like Miss Cramp; -good enough to be a special visiting teacher, -giving just a few lectures a week at several -schools, talking in a sad voice, feeling ill and -sad, having a yellow face and faded hair and not -enough saved to live on when she was too old to -work. Prospect, said the noisy train. That was -it, there was no prospect in it. There was no -prospect in teaching. What was there a prospect -in, going along in this North London train with -this girl who took her at her word? -</p> - -<p> -She turned eagerly to Julia who was saying -something and laughing unconcernedly as she -said it. “If you’d like to know what it is I’ve -come over for I’ll tell you at once. I’ve come -over to learn Chopang’s Funeral March. It’s all -I think about. When I can play Chopang’s -Funeral March I’ll not call the Queen me aunt.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-3"> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Well, my dear child, I’m sure I wish I could -arrange your life for ye,” said Miss Haddie that -<a id="page-157" class="pagenum" title="157"></a> -evening. She was sitting on the edge of the -schoolroom table, having come in at ten o’clock -to turn out the gas and found Miriam sitting -unoccupied. The room was cold and close with -the long-burning gas, and Miriam had turned -upon her with a scornful half laugh when she -had playfully exclaimed at finding her there so -late. Miss Haddie was obviously still a little -excited. She had presided at schoolroom tea -and Julia had filled the room with Dublin—the -bay, the streets, the jarveys and their outside cars, -her journey, the channel boat, her surprise at -England. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, what’s the matter, Miriam, my dear?” -For some time Miriam had parried her questions, -fiercely demanding that her mood should be -understood without a clue. Presently they had -slid into an irritated discussion of the respective -values of sleep before and sleep after midnight, -in the midst of which Miriam had said savagely, -“I wish to goodness I knew what to do about -things.” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie’s kindly desire gave her no relief. -What did she mean but the hopelessness of imagining -that anybody could do anything about -anything. Nobody could ever understand what -<a id="page-158" class="pagenum" title="158"></a> -anyone else really wanted. Only some people -were fortunate. Miss Haddie was one of the -fortunate ones. She had her share in the school -and many wealthy relatives and the very best -kind of good clothes and a good deal of strange -old-fashioned jewelry. And whatever happened -there was money and her sisters and relatives to -look after her without feeling it a burden because -of the expense. And there she sat at the table -looking at what she thought she could see in -another person’s life. -</p> - -<p> -“If only one knew in the least what one <em>ought</em> -to do,” said Miriam crossly. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie began speaking in a halting murmur, -and Miriam rushed on with flaming face. -“I suppose I shall have to go on teaching all my -life, and I can’t think how on earth I’m going to -do it. I don’t see how I can work in the evenings, -my eyes get so tired. If you don’t get certificates -there’s no prospect. And even if I did my -throat is simply agonies at the end of each -morning.” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh! my dear child! I’m sorry to hear that. -Why have ye taken to that? Is it something -fresh?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh no, my throat always used to get tired. -<a id="page-159" class="pagenum" title="159"></a> -Mother’s is the same. We can’t either of us talk -for ten minutes without feeling it. It’s perfectly -awful.” -</p> - -<p> -“But, my dear, oughtn’t ye to see someone—have -some advice? I mean ye ought to see a -doctor.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam glanced at Miss Haddie’s concerned -face and glanced away with a flash of hatred. -“Oh no. I s’pose I shall manage.” -</p> - -<p> -“D’ye think yer wise—letting it go on?” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam made no reply. -</p> - -<p> -“Well now, my dear,” said Miss Haddie, -getting down off the table, “I think it’s time ye -went to bed.” -</p> - -<p> -“Phm,” said Miriam impatiently, “I suppose -it is.” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie sat down again. “I wish I could -help ye, my dear,” she said gently. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, no one can do that,” said Miriam in a -hard voice. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes,” murmured Miss Haddie cheerfully, -“there’s One who can.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes,” said Miriam, tugging a thread out -of the fraying edge of the table cover. “But it’s -practically impossible to discover what on earth -they mean you to do.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-160" class="pagenum" title="160"></a> -“N—aiche, my dear,” she said in an angry -guttural, “ye’re always led.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam tugged at the thread and bit her lips. -</p> - -<p> -“Why do ye suppose ye’ll go on teaching all -yer life? Perhaps ye’ll marry.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh no.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ye can’t tell.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I never shall—in any case now.” -</p> - -<p> -“Have ye quarrelled with him?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, well, <em>him</em>,” said Miriam roundly, digging -a pencil point between the grainings of -the table-cover. “It’s <em>they</em>, I think, goodness -knows, I don’t know; it’s so perfectly extraordinary.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re a very funny young lady.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I shan’t marry <em>now</em> anyhow.” -</p> - -<p> -“Have ye refused somebody?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well—there was someone—who went -away—went to America—who was coming back -to see me when he came back——” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, my dear?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you see, he’s handed in his checks.” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, my dear—I don’t understand,” said Miss -Haddie thwarted and frowning. -</p> - -<p> -“Aw,” said Miriam, jabbing the table, “kicked -the bucket.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-161" class="pagenum" title="161"></a> -“My dear child, you use such strange language—I -can’t follow ye.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, you see, he went to America. It -was in New York. I heard about it in January. -He caught that funny illness. You know. Influenza—and -died.” -</p> - -<p> -“Eh, my poor dear child, I’m very sorry for -ye. Ye <em>do</em> seem to have troubles.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah well, yes, and then the queer thing is -that he was really only the friend of my real -friend. And it was my real friend who told -me about it and gave me a message he sent -me and didn’t like it, of course. Naturally.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well <em>really</em>, Miriam,” said Miss Haddie, -blushing, with a little laugh half choked by a -cough. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, then of course one meets people—at -dances. It’s appalling.” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish I understood ye, my dear.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, it doesn’t make any difference now. -I shall hardly ever meet anybody now.” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie pondered over the table with -features that worked slightly as she made little -murmuring sounds. “Eh no. Ye needn’t think -that. Ye shouldn’t think like that.... Things -<a id="page-162" class="pagenum" title="162"></a> -happen sometimes ... just when ye least expect -it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Not to me.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, things will happen to ye—never fear.... -Now, my dear child, trot along with ye off -to bed.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam braced herself against Miss Haddie’s -gentle shaking of her shoulders and the quiet kiss -on her forehead that followed it. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The strengthening of her intimacy with Miss -Haddie was the first of the many changes brought -to Miriam by Julia Doyle. At the beginning of -the spring term her two room mates were transferred -to Julia’s care. The two back rooms became -a little hive of girls over which Julia seemed -to preside. She handled them all easily. There -was rollicking and laughter in the back bedrooms, -but never any sign that the girls were “going too -far,” and their escapades were not allowed to reach -across the landing. Her large front room was, -Miriam realised as the term went on, being -secretly and fiercely guarded by Julia. -</p> - -<p> -The fabric of the days too had changed. All -<a id="page-163" class="pagenum" title="163"></a> -day—during the midday constitutional when she -often found Julia at her side walking in her -curious springy lounging way and took the walk -in a comforting silence resting her weary throat, -during the evenings of study and the unemployed -intervals of the long Sundays—Julia seemed to -come between her and the girls. She mastered -them all with her speech and laughter. Miriam -felt that when they were all together she was -always in some hidden way on the alert. She -never jested with Miriam but when they were -alone, and rarely then. Usually she addressed -her in a low tone and as if half beside herself -with some overpowering emotion. It was owing -too to Julia’s presence in the school that an -unexpected freedom came to Miriam every day -during the hour between afternoon school and -tea-time. -</p> - -<p> -Persuaded by the rapid increase towards the end -of the winter term of the half-feverish exhaustion -visiting her at the end of each day she had -confided in her mother, who had wept at this -suggestion of an attack on her health and called -in the family doctor. “More air,” he said testily, -“air and movement.” Miriam repeated this to -Miss Perne, who at once arranged that she should -<a id="page-164" class="pagenum" title="164"></a> -be free if she chose to go out every afternoon between -school and tea-time. -</p> - -<p> -At first she went into the park every day. It -was almost empty during the week at that hour. -The cricket green was sparsely decked with children -and their maids. A few strollers were left -along the poplar avenue and round the asphalt-circled -lake; but away on the further slopes -usually avoided in the midday walks because the -girls found them oppressive, Miriam discovered -the solitary spring air. Day by day she went as -if by appointment to meet it. It was the same -wandering eloquent air she had known from the -beginning of things. Whilst she walked along the -little gravel pathways winding about over the -clear green slopes in the flood of afternoon light -it stayed with her. The day she had just passed -through was touched by it; it added a warm -promise to the hours that lay ahead—tea-time, -the evening’s reading, the possible visit of Miss -Haddie, the quiet of her solitary room, the -coming of sleep. -</p> - -<p> -One day she left the pathways and strayed -amongst pools of shadow lying under the great -trees. As she approached the giant trunks and -the detail of their shape and colour grew clearer -<a id="page-165" class="pagenum" title="165"></a> -her breathing quickened. She felt her prim bearing -about her like a cloak. The reality she had -found was leaving her again. Looking up uneasily -into the forest of leaves above her head she -found them strange. She walked quickly back -into the sunlight, gazing reproachfully at the -trees. There they were as she had always known -them; but between them and herself was her -governess’ veil, close drawn, holding them -sternly away from her. The warm comforting -communicative air was round her, but she could -not recover its secret. She looked fearfully about -her. To get away somewhere by herself every -day would not be enough. If that was all she -could have, there would come a time when there -would be nothing anywhere. For a day or two -she came out and walked feverishly about in -other parts of the park, resentfully questioning -the empty vistas. One afternoon, far away, but -coming towards her as if in answer to her question, -was the figure of a man walking quickly. For a -moment her heart cried out to him. If he would -come straight on and, understanding, would walk -into her life and she could face things knowing -that he was there, the light would come back and -would stay until the end—and there would be -<a id="page-166" class="pagenum" title="166"></a> -other lives, on and on. She stood transfixed, -trembling. He grew more and more distinct and -she saw a handbag and the outline of a bowler -hat; a North London clerk hurrying home to -tea. With bent head she turned away and -dragged her shamed heavy limbs rapidly towards -home. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Early in May came a day of steady rain. Enveloped -in a rain-cloak and sheltered under her -lowered umbrella she ventured down the hill -towards the shops. Near the railway arch the -overshadowed street began to be crowded with -jostling figures. People were pouring from the -city trams at the terminus and coming out of -the station entrance in a steady stream. Hard -intent faces, clashing umbrellas, the harsh snarling -monotone of the North London voice gave -her the feeling of being an intruder. Everything -seemed to wonder what she was doing down there -instead of being at home in the schoolroom. A -sudden angry eye above a coarse loudly talking -mouth all but made her turn to go with instead -of against the tide; but she pushed blindly on -and through and presently found herself in a -<a id="page-167" class="pagenum" title="167"></a> -quiet side street just off the station road looking -into a shop window.... “1 lb. super cream-laid -boudoir note—with envelopes—1s.” Her -eyes moved about the window from packet to -packet, set askew and shining with freshness. If -she had not brought so much note-paper from -home she could have bought some. Perhaps she -could buy a packet as a Christmas present for Eve -and have it in her top drawer all the time. But -there was plenty of note-paper at home. She -half turned to go, and turning back fastened herself -more closely against the window meaninglessly -reading the inscription on each packet. -Standing back at last she still lingered. A little -blue-painted tin plate sticking out from the -side of the window announced in white letters -“Carter Paterson.” Miriam dimly wondered at -the connection. Underneath it hung a cardboard -printed in ink, “Circulating Library, 2d. -weekly.” This was still more mysterious. She -timidly approached the door and met the large -pleasant eye of a man standing back in the doorway. -</p> - -<p> -“Is there a library here?” she said with beating -heart. -</p> - -<p> -She stood so long reading and re-reading half -<a id="page-168" class="pagenum" title="168"></a> -familiar titles, “Cometh up as a Flower,” “Not -like other Girls,” “The Heir of Redcliffe,” books -that she and Harriett had read and books that she -felt were of a similar type, that tea was already -on the schoolroom table when she reached Wordsworth -House with an unknown volume by Mrs. -Hungerford under her arm. Hiding it upstairs, -she came down to tea and sat recovering her composure -over her paper-covered “Cinq Mars,” a -relic of the senior Oxford examination now grown -suddenly rich and amazing. To-day it could not -hold her. “The Madcap” was upstairs, and beyond -it an unlimited supply of twopenny volumes -and Ouida. Red-bound volumes of Ouida on the -bottom shelf had sent her eyes quickly back to -the safety of the upper rows. Through the whole -of tea-time she was quietly aware of a discussion -going on at the back of her mind as to who -it was who had told her that Ouida’s books -were bad; evil books. She remembered her -father’s voice saying that Ouida was an extremely -able woman, quite a politician. Then of course -her books were all right, for grown-up people. -It must have been someone at a dance who had -made her curious about them, someone she had -forgotten. In any case, whatever they were, -<a id="page-169" class="pagenum" title="169"></a> -there was no one now to prevent her reading -them if she chose. She would read them if she -chose. Write to Eve about it first. No. Certainly -not. Eve might say “Better not, my dear. -You will regret it if you do. You won’t be the -same.” Eve was different. She must not be led -by Eve in any case. She must leave off being led -by Eve—or anybody. The figures sitting round -the table, bent over their books, quietly disinclined -for conversation or mischief under the -shrewd eye of Miss Haddie, suddenly looked -exciting and mysterious. But perhaps the man -in the shop would be shocked. It would be impossible -to ask for them; unless she could pretend -she did not know anything about them. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-6"> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -For the last six weeks of the summer term she -sat up night after night propped against her upright -pillow and bolster under the gas jet reading -her twopenny books in her silent room. Almost -every night she read until two o’clock. She felt -at once that she was doing wrong; that the secret -novel-reading was a thing she could not confess, -even to Miss Haddie. She was spending hours of -<a id="page-170" class="pagenum" title="170"></a> -the time that was meant for sleep, for restful -preparation for the next day’s work, in a “vicious -circle” of self-indulgence. It was sin. She had -read somewhere that sin promises a satisfaction -that it is unable to fulfil. But she found when -the house was still and the trams had ceased -jingling up and down outside that she grew steady -and cool and that she rediscovered the self she -had known at home, where the refuge of silence -and books was always open. Perhaps that self, -leaving others to do the practical things, erecting -a little wall of unapproachability between herself -and her family that she might be free to -dream alone in corners had always been wrong. -But it was herself, the nearest most intimate self -she had known. And the discovery that it was -not dead, that her six months in the German -school and the nine long months during which -Banbury Park life had drawn a veil even over the -little slices of holiday freedom, had not even -touched it, brought her warm moments of reassurance. -It was not perhaps a “good” self, but -it was herself, her own familiar secretly happy -and rejoicing self—not dead. Her hands lying -on the coverlet knew it. They were again at -these moments her own old hands, holding very -<a id="page-171" class="pagenum" title="171"></a> -firmly to things that no one might touch or even -approach too nearly, things, everything, the great -thing that would some day communicate itself -to someone through these secret hands with the -strangely thrilling finger-tips. Holding them up -in the gaslight she dreamed over their wisdom. -They knew everything and held their secret, even -from her. She eyed them, communed with them, -passionately trusted them. They were not -“artistic” or “clever” hands. The fingers did -not “taper” nor did the outstretched thumb -curl back on itself like a frond—like Nan Babington’s. -They were long, the tips squarish and -firmly padded, the palm square and bony and -supple, and the large thumb joint stood away -from the rest of the hand like the thumb joint -of a man. The right hand was larger than the -left, kindlier, friendlier, wiser. The expression -of the left hand was less reassuring. It -was a narrower, lighter hand, more flexible, -less sensitive and more even in its touch—more -smooth and manageable in playing scales. It -seemed to belong to her much less than the right; -but when the two were firmly interlocked they -made a pleasant curious whole, the right clasping -more firmly, its thumb always uppermost, its -<a id="page-172" class="pagenum" title="172"></a> -fingers separated firmly over the back of the -left palm, the left hand clinging, its fingers -close together against the hard knuckles of the -right. -</p> - -<p> -It was only when she was alone and in the -intervals of quiet reading that she came into -possession of her hands. With others they oppressed -her by their size and their lack of feminine -expressiveness. No one could fall in love with -such hands. Loving her, someone might come to -tolerate them. They were utterly unlike Eve’s -plump, white, inflexible little palms. But they -were her strength. They came between her and -the world of women. They would be her companions -until the end. They would wither. But -the bones would not change. The bones would -be laid unchanged and wise, in her grave. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She began her readings with Rosa Nouchette -Carey. Reading her at home, after tea by the -breakfast-room fireside with red curtains drawn -and the wind busy outside amongst the evergreen -shrubs under the window, it had seemed -quite possible that life might suddenly develop -<a id="page-173" class="pagenum" title="173"></a> -into the thing the writer described. From somewhere -would come an adoring man who believed -in heaven and eternal life. One would grow -very good; and after the excitement and interest -had worn off one would go on, with firm happy -lips being good and going to church and making -happy matches for other girls or quietly disapproving -of everybody who did not believe just -in the same way and think about good girls and -happy marriages and heaven, keeping such people -outside. Smiling, wise and happy inside in the -warm; growing older, but that did not matter -because the adored man was growing older -too. -</p> - -<p> -Now it had all changed. The quiet house and -fireside, gravity, responsibility, a greying husband, -his reading profile always dear, both of them -going on towards heaven, “all tears wiped away,” -tears and laughter of relief after death, still -seemed desirable, but “women.” ... Those -awful, awful women, she murmured to herself -stirring in bed. I never thought of all the <em>awful</em> -women there would be in such a life. I only -thought of myself and the house and the garden -and the man. What an escape! Good God in -heaven, what an escape! Far better to be alone -<a id="page-174" class="pagenum" title="174"></a> -and suffering and miserable here in the school, -alive.... -</p> - -<p> -Then there’ll be whole heaps of books, millions -of books I can’t read—perhaps nearly all the -books. She took one more volume of Rosa, in -hope, and haunted its deeps of domesticity. -“I’ve gone too far.” ... If Rosa Nouchette -Carey knew me, she’d make me one of the bad -characters who are turned out of the happy -homes. I’m some sort of bad unsimple woman. -Oh, damn, damn, she sighed. I don’t know. -Her hands seemed to mock her, barring her -way. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-8"> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Then came a series of Mrs. Hungerford—all -the volumes she had not already read. She read -them eagerly, inspirited. The gabled country -houses, the sunlit twilit endless gardens, the deep -orchards, the falling of dew, the mists of the -summer mornings, masses of flowers in large -rooms with carved oaken furniture, wide staircases -with huge painted windows throwing down -strange patches of light on shallow thickly carpetted -stairs. These were the things she wanted; -gay house-parties, people with beautiful wavering -<a id="page-175" class="pagenum" title="175"></a> -complexions and masses of shimmering hair -catching the light, fragrant filmy diaphanous -dresses; these were the people to whom she belonged—a -year or two of life like that, dancing -and singing in and out the houses and gardens; -and then marriage. Living alone, sadly estranged, -in the house of a husband who loved her and -with whom she was in love, both of them thinking -that the other had married because they had -lost their way in a thunderstorm or spent the -night sitting up on a mountain-top or because of -a clause in a will, and then one day both finding -out the truth.... That is what is meant by -happiness ... happiness. But these things could -only happen to people with money. She would -never have even the smallest share of that sort of -life. She might get into it as a governess—some -of Mrs. Hungerford’s heroines were governesses—but -they had clouds of hair and were pathetically -slender and appealing in their deep mourning. -She read volume after volume, forgetting the -titles—the single word ‘Hungerford’ on a cover -inflamed her. Her days became an irrelevance -and her evenings a dreamy sunlit indulgence. -Now and again she wondered what Julia Doyle -would think if she knew what she was reading -<a id="page-176" class="pagenum" title="176"></a> -and how it affected her—whether she would still -watch her in the way she did as she went about -her work pale and tired, whether she would go on -guarding her so fiercely? -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-9"> -9 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -At last exasperated, tired of the mocking park, -the mocking happy books, she went one day to -the lower shelf, and saying very calmly, “I think -I’ll take a Ouida,” drew out “Under Two Flags” -with a trembling hand. The brown-eyed man -seemed to take an interminable time noting the -number of the book, and when at last she got -into the air her limbs were heavy with sadness. -That night she read until three o’clock and finished -the volume the next night at the same hour, -sitting upright when the last word was read, -refreshed. From that moment the red-bound -volumes became the centre of her life. She read -“Moths” and “In Maremma” slowly word by -word, with an increasing steadiness and certainty. -The mere sitting with the text held before her -eyes gave her the feeling of being strongly confronted. -The strange currents which came whenever -she was alone and at ease flowing to the tips -of her fingers, seemed to flow into the book as -<a id="page-177" class="pagenum" title="177"></a> -she held it and to be met and satisfied. As soon -as the door was shut and the gas alight, she would -take the precious, solid trusty volume from her -drawer and fling it on her bed, to have it under -her eyes while she undressed. She ceased to read -her Bible and to pray. Ouida, Ouida, she would -muse with the book at last in her hands. I want -bad things—strong bad things.... It doesn’t -matter, Italy, the sky, bright hot landscapes, -things happening. I don’t care what people -think or say. I am older than anyone here in -this house. I am myself. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-10"> -10 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -... If you had loved, if you loved, you could -die, laughing, gasping out your life on a battlefield, -fading by inches in a fever-swamp, or -living on, going about seamed and old and ill. -Whatever happened to you, if you had cared, -fearing nothing, neither death nor hell. God -came. He would welcome and forgive you. -Life, struggle, pain. Happy laughter with -twisted lips—all waiting somewhere outside, -beyond. It would come. It must be made to -come. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-11"> -<a id="page-178" class="pagenum" title="178"></a> -11 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Who was there in the world? Ted had failed. -Ted belonged to the Rosa Nouchette Carey world. -He would marry one of those women. Bob knew. -Bob Greville’s profile was real. Sitting on the -wide stairs at the Easter Subscription Dance, his -soft fine white hair standing up, the straight line -of polished forehead, the fine nose and compressed -lips, the sharp round chin with the three firm -folds underneath it, the point of his collar cutting -across them, the keen blue eyes looking straight -out ahead, across Australia. The whole face -listening. He had been listening to her nearly -all the evening. Now and again quiet questions. -She could go on talking to him whenever she -liked. Go to him and go on talking, and talking, -safely, being understood. Talking on and on. -But he was old. Living old and alone in chambers -in Adam Street—Adelphi. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-12"> -12 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -One day just before the end of the summer -term, Miss Perne asked Miriam to preside over -the large schoolroom for the morning. The first -and second-class girls were settled there at their -<a id="page-179" class="pagenum" title="179"></a> -written examination in English history. Rounding -the schoolroom door she stood for a moment -in the doorway. The sunlight poured in through -the wide bay window and the roomful of quiet -girls seemed like a field. Jessie Wheeler’s voice -broke the silence. “It’s the Hen,” she shouted -gently. “It’s the blessed Hen! Oh, <em>come</em> on. -You going to sit with us?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. Be quiet,” said Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, thank goodness,” groaned Jessie, supported -by groans and murmurs from all over the -room. -</p> - -<p> -“Be quiet, girls, and get on with your papers,” -said Miriam in a tone of acid detachment from -the top of her tide. She sat feeling that her arms -were round the entire roomful, that each girl -struggling alone with the list of questions was -resting against her breast. “I’m going away -from them. I must be going away from them,” -ran her thoughts regretfully. “They can’t keep -me. This is the utmost. I’ve won. There’ll -never be anything more than this, here.” It would -always be the same—with different girls. Certainty. -Even the sunlight paid a sort of homage -to the fathomless certainty she felt. The sunlight -in this little schoolroom was telling her of -<a id="page-180" class="pagenum" title="180"></a> -other sunlights, vast and unbroken, somewhere—coming, -her own sunlights, when she should have -wrenched herself away. It was there; she glanced -up again and again to watch it breaking and -splashing all over the room. It would come again, -but how differently. Quite soon. She might -have spared herself all her agonising. The girls -did not know where she belonged. They were -holding her. But she would go away, to some -huge open space. Leave them—ah, it was -unkind. But she had left them already in -spirit. -</p> - -<p> -If they could all get up together now and sing, -let their voices peal together up and up, throw all -the books out of the window, they might go on -together, forward into the sunshine, but they -would not want to do that. Hardly any of them -would want to do that. They would look at her -with knowing eyes, and look at the door, and stay -where they were. -</p> - -<p> -The room was very close. Polly Allen and -Eunice Dupont, sitting together at a little card-table -in the darkest corner of the room, were -whispering. With beating heart Miriam got up -and went and stood before them. “You two -are talking,” she said with her eyes on the thickness -<a id="page-181" class="pagenum" title="181"></a> -of Polly’s shoulders as she sat in profile to -the room. Eunice, opposite her, against the wall, -flashed up at her her beautiful fugitive grin as -from the darkness of a wood. History, thought -Miriam. What has Eunice to do with history, -laws, Henry II, the English Constitution? “You -don’t talk,” she said coldly, feeling as she watched -her that Eunice’s pretty clothes were stripped -away and she were stabbing at her soft rounded -body, “at examinations. Can’t you see that?” -Eunice’s pale face grew livid. “First because it -isn’t fair and also because it disturbs other -people.” You can tell all the people who cheat -by their smile, she reflected on her way back. -Eunice chuckled serenely two or three times. -“What have these North London girls to -do with studies?” ... There was not a single -girl like Eunice at Barnes. Even the very -pretty girls were ... refined. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-13"> -13 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -That afternoon Miriam spent her hour of -leisure in calling on the Brooms to enquire for -Grace, who had been ill the whole of the term. -She found the house after some difficulty in one -of a maze of little rows and crescents just off -<a id="page-182" class="pagenum" title="182"></a> -the tram-filled main road. “She’s almost perfect—almost -perfection,” said Mrs. Philps, the -Aunt Lucy Miriam had heard of and seen in -church. -</p> - -<p> -They had been together in the little drawing-room -talking about Grace from the moment -when Miriam was shown in to Mrs. Philps sitting -darning a duster in a low chair by the closed conservatory -door. The glazed closed door with the -little strips of window on either side giving on -to a crowded conservatory made the little room -seem dark. To Miriam it seemed horribly remote. -Her journey to it had been through immense -distances. Threading the little sapling-planted -asphalt-pavemented roadways between -houses whose unbroken frontage was so near -and so bare as to forbid scrutiny, she felt she -had reached the centre, the home and secret of -North London life. Off every tram-haunted -main road, there must be a neighbourhood like -this where lived the common-mouthed harsh-speaking -people who filled the pavements and -shops and walked in the parks. To enter one of -the little houses and speak there to its inmates -would be to be finally claimed and infected by -the life these people lived, the thing that made -<a id="page-183" class="pagenum" title="183"></a> -them what they were. At Wordsworth House -she was held up by the presence of the Pernes -and Julia Doyle. Here she was helpless and alone. -When she had discovered the number she sought -and, crossing the little tiled pathway separated -from the pathway next door by a single iron rail, -had knocked with the lacquered knocker against -the glazed and leaded door, her dreams for the -future faded. They would never be realised. -They were just a part of the radiance that shone -now from the spacious houses she had lived in -in the past. The things she had felt this morning -in the examination room were that, too. They -had nothing to do with the future. All the space -was behind. Things would grow less and less. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-6-14"> -14 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Admitted to the dark narrowly echoing tiled -passage, she stated her errand and was conducted -past a closed door and the opening of a narrow -staircase which shot steeply, carpeted with a -narrow strip of surprisingly green velvet carpeting, -up towards an unlit landing and admitted -to Mrs. Philps. -</p> - -<p> -“Wait a minute, Vashti,” said Mrs. Philps, -holding Miriam’s hand as she murmured her -<a id="page-184" class="pagenum" title="184"></a> -errand. “You’ll stay tea? Well, if you’re sure -you can’t I’ll not press you. Bring the biscuits -and the sherry and two white wine-glasses, -Vashti. Get them now and bring them in at -once. Sit down, Miss Henderson. She’s little -better than a step-girl. They’re all the same.” -Whilst she described her niece’s illness, Miriam -wondered over the immense bundle of little even -black sausage-shaped rolls of hair which stuck -out, larger than her head and smoothed to a -sphere by a tightly drawn net, at the back of her -skull. She was short and stout and had bright -red cheeks that shone in the gloom and rather -prominent large blue eyes that roamed as she -talked, allowing Miriam to snatch occasional -glimpses of china-filled what-nots and beaded -ottomans. Presently Vashti returned clumsily -with the wine, making a great bumping and -rattling round about the door. “You stupid -thing, you’ve brought claret. Don’t you know -sherry when you see it? It’s at the back—behind -the Harvest Burgundy.” “I shall have to go -soon,” said Miriam, relieved at the sight of -the red wine and longing to escape the sherry. -Vashti put down the tray and stood with open -mouth. Even with her very high heels she looked -<a id="page-185" class="pagenum" title="185"></a> -almost a dwarf. The room seemed less oppressive -with the strange long-necked decanter and -the silver biscuit box standing on a table in the -curious greenish light. Mrs. Philps accepted -the claret and returned busily to her story, -whilst Miriam sipped and glanced at a large -print in a heavy black frame leaning forward low -over the small white marble mantelpiece. It -represented a young knight in armour kneeling at -an altar with joined and pointed hands held to -his lips. An angel standing in mid-air was touching -his shoulder with a sword. “Why doesn’t -she kiss the top of his head,” thought Miriam as -she sipped her wine. The distant aisles and pillars -of the church made the room seem larger than it -was. “I suppose they all look into that church -when they want to get away from each other,” -she mused as Mrs. Philps went on with her long -sentences beginning “And Dr. Newman said—” -And there was a little mirror above a bulging -chiffonier which was also an escape from the -confined space. Looking into it, she met Mrs. -Philps’s glowing face with the blue eyes widely -staring and fixed upon her own, and heard her -declare, with her bunched cherry-coloured lips, -that Grace was ‘almost perfection.’ “Is she?” -<a id="page-186" class="pagenum" title="186"></a> -she responded eagerly, and Mrs. Philps elaborated -her theme. Grace, then, with her heavy -body and strange hot voice, lying somewhere -upstairs in a white bed, was the most important -thing in this dark little house. “She was very -near to death then,” Mrs. Philps was saying -tearfully, “very near, and when she came round -from her delirium, one of the first things she -said to me as soon as she was strong enough -to whisper, was that she was perfectly certain -about there being another life.” Mrs. Philps’s -voice faded and she sat with trembling lips and -eyes downcast. “<em>Did</em> she!” Miriam almost -shouted, half-rising from her seat and turning -from contemplating Mrs. Philps in the mirror to -look her full in the face. The dim green light -streaming in from the conservatory seemed like -a tide that made everything in the room rock -slightly. A touch would sweep it all away and -heaven would be there all round them. “Did -she,” whispered Miriam in a faint voice that -shook her chest. “‘Aunt,’ she said,” went on -Mrs. Philps steadily, as the room grew firm round -Miriam and the breath she drew seemed like an -early morning breath, “‘I want to say something -quickly,’ she said, ‘in case I die. It’s that -<a id="page-187" class="pagenum" title="187"></a> -I know—for a positive fact, there is another -life.’” -</p> - -<p> -“What a perfectly stupendous thing,” said -Miriam. “It’s so important.” -</p> - -<p> -“I was much impressed. Of course, I knew -she was nearly perfect. But we’ve not been in -the habit of talking about religion. I asked her -if she would like to see the vicar. ‘Oh no,’ she -said, ‘there’s no need. He knows.’ I doubt if -he knows as much as she does. But I didn’t make -a point of it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, but it’s simply wonderful. It’s much -more important than anything a vicar could say. -It’s their business to say those things.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know about that. But she was so -weak that I didn’t press it.” -</p> - -<p> -“But it’s so important. What a wonderful -thing to have in your family. Did she say anything -more?” -</p> - -<p> -“She hasn’t returned to the subject again. -She’s very weak.” -</p> - -<p> -Wild clutching thoughts shook at Miriam. If -only Grace could suddenly appear in her night-gown, -to be questioned. Or if she herself could -stay on there creeping humbly about in this little -house, watering the conservatory and darning -<a id="page-188" class="pagenum" title="188"></a> -dusters, being a relative of the Brooms, devoting -herself to Grace, waiting on her, hearing all she -had to say. What did it matter that the Brooms -wore heavy mourning and gloated over funerals -if Grace upstairs in her room had really seen the -white light away in the distance far away beyond -the noise of the world? -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-7"> -<a id="page-189" class="pagenum" title="189"></a> -CHAPTER VII -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">H</span><span class="postfirstchar">arriett’s</span> ringed fingers had finished -dipping and drying the blue and white -tea-service. She sat for a moment staring ahead -down-stream. Sitting opposite her, Gerald -watched her face with a half smile. Miriam -waited sitting at her side. It was the first moment -of silence since she had come home at midday. -From the willow-curtained island against which -they were moored came little crepitations and -flittings. Ahead of them the river blazed gold -and blue, hedged by high spacious trees. “<em>Come</em>-to-tea, -<em>come</em>-to-tea, hurryup-dear,” said a bird -suddenly from the island thicket. -</p> - -<p> -“D’you know what bird that is, Gerald?” -asked Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“Not from Adam,” breathed Gerald, swaying -on his seat with a little laugh. “It’s a bird. -That’s all I know.” -</p> - -<p> -“We’d better unmoor, silly,” muttered Harriett -briskly, gathering up the tiller ropes. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-190" class="pagenum" title="190"></a> -“Right, la reine.” -</p> - -<p> -“Look here, let me do something this time, -pull or something.” -</p> - -<p> -“You sit still, my dear.” -</p> - -<p> -“But I should simply love to.” -</p> - -<p> -“You shall pull down-stream if you like later -on when the bally sun’s down. My advice to -you now is to go and lounge in the bow.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh yes, Mim, you try it. Lie right down. -It’s simply heavenly.” -</p> - -<p> -The boat glided deliciously away up-stream as -Miriam, relinquishing her vision of Harriett -sitting very upright in the stern in her white -drill dress, and Gerald’s lawn-shirted back and -long lean arms grasping the sculls, lay back on -the bow cushions with her feet comfortably -outstretched under the unoccupied seat in front -of her. Six hours ago, shaking hands with a -roomful of noisy home-going girls—and now -nothing to do but float dreamily out through the -gateway of her six weeks’ holiday. The dust of -the school was still upon her; the skin of her face -felt strained and tired, her hands were tired and -hot, her blouse dim with a week of school wear, -and her black skirt oppressed her with its invisible -burden of grime. But she was staring up -<a id="page-191" class="pagenum" title="191"></a> -at a clean blue sky fringed with tree-tops. She -stretched herself out more luxuriously upon her -cushions. The river smoothly moving and lapping -underneath the boat was like a cradle. The -soft fingers of the air caressed her temples and -moved along the outlines of her face and neck. -Forty-two days ... like this. To-morrow she -would wake up a new person ... sing, and shout -with Harriett. She closed her eyes. The gently -lifting water seemed to come nearer; the invading -air closed in on her. She gave herself -ecstatically to its touch; the muscles of her -tired face relaxed and she believed that she -could sleep; cry or sleep. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -It was Gerald who had worked this miraculous -first day for her. “Boating” hitherto had meant -large made-up parties of tennis-club people, a -fixed day, uneasy anticipations as to the weather, -the carrying of hampers of provisions and crockery, -spirit lamps and kettles, clumsy hired randans, -or little fleets of stupidly competing canoes, -lack of space, heavy loads to pull, the need for -ceaseless chaff, the irritating triumphs of clever -“knowing” girls in smart clothes, the Pooles, or -<a id="page-192" class="pagenum" title="192"></a> -really beautiful people, like Nan Babington and -her cousin. Everything they said sounding wonderful -and seeming to improve the scenery; the -jokes of the men, even Ted always joked all the -time, the misery of large noisy picnic teas on the -grass, and in the end great weariness and disappointment, -the beauty of the river and the trees -only appearing the next day or perhaps long afterwards. -</p> - -<p> -This boat was Gerald’s own private boat, a -double-sculling skiff, slender and gold-brown, -beautifully fitted and with a locker containing -everything that was wanted for picnicking. They -had arranged their expedition at lunch-time, -trained to Richmond, bought fruit and cakes and -got the boat’s water-keg filled by one of Redknap’s -men. Gerald knew how to do things properly. -He had always been accustomed to things like -this boat. He would not care to have anything -just anyhow. “Let’s do the thing decently, la -reine.” He would keep on saying that at intervals -until Harriett had learned too. How he had -changed her since Easter when their engagement -had been openly allowed. The clothes he had -bought for her, especially this plain drill dress -with its neat little coat. The long black tie -<a id="page-193" class="pagenum" title="193"></a> -fastened with the plain heavy cable broach -pinned in lengthwise half-way down the ends of -the tie, which reached almost to her black belt. -That was Gerald. Her shoes, the number of -pairs of light, expensive, beautifully made shoes. -Her bearing, the change in her voice, a sort of -roundness about her old Harryish hardness. But -she was the same Harry, the Harry he had seen -for the first time snorting with anger over Mr. -Marth’s sentimental singing at the Assembly -Rooms concert. “My hat, wasn’t la reine -fuming!” He would forgive her all her ignorance. -It was her triumph. What an extraordinary -time Harry would have. Gerald was -well-off. He had a private income behind his -Canadian Pacific salary. His grandfather had -been a diplomatist, living abroad nearly all the -time, and his wealthy father and wealthy mother -with a large fortune of her own had lived in a -large house in Chelsea, giving dinner parties and -going to the opera until nearly all the capital -had gone, both dying just in time to leave -enough to bring Gerald in a small income -when he left Haileybury. And the wonderful -thing was that Gerald liked mouching about -and giggling. He liked looking for hours in shop -<a id="page-194" class="pagenum" title="194"></a> -windows and strolling on the Heath eating -peppermints. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-3"> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Everything had disappeared into a soft blackness; -only on the water a faint light was left. -It came and went; sometimes there was nothing -but darkness and the soft air. The small paper -lantern swinging at the bow made a little blot of -light that was invisible from the stroke seat. The -boat went swiftly and easily. Miriam felt she -could go on pulling for hours at the top of her -strength through the night. Leaning forward, -breasting the featureless darkness, sweeping the -sculls back at the full reach of her arms, leaning -back and pressing her whole weight upwards -from the footboard against the pull of the water, -her body became an outstretched elastic system of -muscles, rhythmically working against the smooth -dragging resistance of the dark water. Her -sleeves were rolled up, her collar-stud unfastened, -her cool drowsy lids drooped over her cool eyes. -Each time she leaned backwards against her -stroke, pressing the footboard, the weight of her -body dragged at a line of soreness where the -sculls pressed her hands, and with the final fling -of the water from the sculls a little stinging pain -<a id="page-195" class="pagenum" title="195"></a> -ran along the pads of her palms. To-morrow -there would be a row of happy blisters. -</p> - -<p> -“You needn’t put more beef into it than you -like, Mirry.” Gerald’s voice came so quietly out -of the darkness that it scarcely disturbed Miriam’s -ecstacy. She relaxed her swing, and letting the -sculls skim and dip in short easy strokes, sat -glowing. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve never pulled a boat alone before.” -</p> - -<p> -“It shows you can’t be a blue-stocking, thank -the Lord,” laughed Gerald. -</p> - -<p> -“Who said I was?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve always understood you were a very wise -lady, my dear.” -</p> - -<p> -“Nobody told you she was a blue-stocking, -silly. You invented the word yourself.” -</p> - -<p> -“I? I invented blue-stocking?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, you, silly. It’s like your saying women -never date their letters just because your cousins -don’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“Vive la reine. The Lord deliver me from -blue-stockings, anyhow.” -</p> - -<p> -“All <em>right</em>, what <em>about</em> it? There aren’t any -here!” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re not one, anyhow.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-4"> -<a id="page-196" class="pagenum" title="196"></a> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The next day after tea Eve arrived home from -Gloucestershire. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam had spent the day with Harriett. After -breakfast, bounding silently up and downstairs, -they visited each room in turn, chased each other -about the echoing rooms and passages of the basement -and all over the garden. Miriam listened -speechlessly to the sound of Harriett’s heels soft -on the stair carpet, ringing on the stone floors of -the basement, and the swish of her skirts as she -flew over the lawn following surrounding responding -to Miriam’s wild tour of the garden. -Miriam listened and watched, her eyes and ears -eagerly gathering and hoarding visions. It could -not go on. Presently some claim would be made -on Harriett and she would be alone. But when -they had had their fill of silently rushing about, -Harriett piloted her into the drawing-room and -hastily began opening the piano. A pile of -duets lay on the lid. She had evidently gathered -them there in readiness. Wandering about the -room, shifting the familiar ornaments, flinging -herself into chair after chair, Miriam watched -her and saw that her strange quiet little snub face -<a id="page-197" class="pagenum" title="197"></a> -was lit and shapely. Harriett, grown-up, serene -and well-dressed and going to be married in the -spring, was transported by this new coming together. -When they had played the last of the -duets that they knew well, Harriett fumbled at -the pages of a bound volume of operas in obvious -uncertainty. At any moment Miriam might get -up and go off and bring their sitting together on -the long cretonne-covered duet stool to an end. -“Come on,” roared Miriam gently, “let’s try -this”; and they attacked the difficult pages. -Miriam counted the metre, whispered it intoned -and sang it, carrying Harriett along with shouts -“go <em>on</em>, go <em>on</em>” when they had lost each other. -They smashed their way along by turns playing -only a single note here and there into the -framework of Miriam’s desperate counting, or -banging out cheerful masses of discordant tones, -anything to go on driving their way together -through the pages while the sunlight streamed -half seen into the conservatory and the flower-filled -garden crowded up against the windows, -anything to come out triumphantly together at -the end and to stop satisfied, the sounds of the -house, so long secretly known to them both, -low now around them, heard by them together, -<a id="page-198" class="pagenum" title="198"></a> -punctuating their joy. The gong sounded for -lunch. “Eve,” Miriam remembered suddenly, -“Eve’s coming this afternoon.” The thought -set gladness thundering through her as she rose -from the piano. “Let’s go for a walk after -lunch,” she muttered. Harriett blushed. -</p> - -<p> -“Awri,” she responded tenderly. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The mile of gently rising roadway leading to -the Heath was overarched by huge trees. Shadowy -orchards, and the silent sunlit outlying meadows -and park land of a large estate streamed gently by -them beyond the trees as they strode along through -the cool leaf-scented air. They strode speechlessly -ahead as if on a pilgrimage, keeping step. -Harriett’s stylish costume had a strange unreal -look in the great lane, under the towering trees. -Miriam wondered if she found it dull and was -taking it so boldly because they were walking -along it together. Obviously she did not want -to talk. She walked along swiftly and erect, looking -eagerly ahead as if, when they reached the -top and the Heath and the windmill, they would -find something they were both looking for. -Miriam felt she could glance about unnoticed -<a id="page-199" class="pagenum" title="199"></a> -and looked freely, as she had done so many hundreds -of times before, at the light on the distant -meadows and lying along the patches of undergrowth -between the trunks of the trees. They -challenged and questioned her silently as they -had always done and she them, in a sort of passionate -sulkiness. They gave no answer, but the -scents in the cool tree-filled air went on all the -time offering steady assurance, and presently as -walking became an unconscious rhythm and the -question of talk or no talk had definitely decided -itself, the challenge of the light was silenced and -the shaded roadway led on to paradise. Was -there anyone anywhere who saw it as she did? -Anyone who looking along the alley of white road -would want to sit down in the roadway or kneel -amongst the undergrowth and shout and shout? -In the north of London there were all those -harsh street voices infesting the trees and the -parks. No! they did not exist. There was no -North London. Let them die. They did not -know the meaning of far-reaching meadows, -park-land, deer, the great silent Heath, the silent -shoulders of the windmill against the far-off -softness of the sky. Harsh streetiness ... cunning, -knowing ... do you <em>blame</em> me? ... or charwomanishness, -<a id="page-200" class="pagenum" title="200"></a> -smarmy; churchy or chapelish -sentimentality. Sentimentality. No need to -think about them. -</p> - -<p> -“Never the time and the place and the loved -one all together.” Who said that? Was it true? -Dreadful. It couldn’t be. So many people had -seen moonlit gardens, together. All the happy -people who were sure of each other. “I say, -Harriett,” she said at the top of her voice, bringing -Harriett curvetting in the road just in front -of her. “I say, listen.” Harriett ran up the -remaining strips of road and out on to the Heath. -It was ablaze with sunlight—as the river and the -trees had been yesterday—a whole day of light -and Eve on her way home, almost home. Harriett -must not know how she was rushing to Eve; -with what tingling fingers. “Oh, what I was -going to ask you was whether you can see the -moonlight like it is when you are alone, when -Gerald is there.” -</p> - -<p> -“... It isn’t the same as when you are alone,” -said Harriett quietly, arranging the cuff of her -glove. -</p> - -<p> -“Do explain what you mean.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, it’s different.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see. You don’t know how.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-201" class="pagenum" title="201"></a> -“It’s quite different.” -</p> - -<p> -“Does Gerald like the moonlight?” -</p> - -<p> -“<em>I</em> dunno. I never asked him.” -</p> - -<p> -“Fancy the Roehampton people living up -here all the time.” -</p> - -<p> -“There’s their old washing going flip-flap over -there.” -</p> - -<p> -Harriett was finding out that she was back in -the house with Eve. -</p> - -<p> -“Let’s rush to the windmill. Let’s sing.” -</p> - -<p> -“Come on; only we can’t rush and sing too.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes we can, come on.” Running up over -hillocks and stumbling through sandy gorse-grown -hollows they sang a hunting song, Miriam leading -with the short galloping phrases, Harriett’s -thinner voice dropping in, broken and uncertain, -with a strange brave sadness in it that went to -Miriam’s heart. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-6"> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Eve, you look exactly like Dudley’s gracious -lady in these things. Don’t you feel like it?” -Eve stopped near the landing window and stood -in her light green canvas dress with its pale green -silk sleeves shedding herself over Miriam from -under her rose-trimmed white chip hat. Miriam -was carrying her light coat and all the small litter -<a id="page-202" class="pagenum" title="202"></a> -of her journey. “Go on up,” she said, “I want -to talk,” and Eve hurried on, Miriam stumblingly -following her, holding herself in, eyes and ears -wide for the sight and sound of the slender -figure flitting upstairs through the twilight. The -twilight wavered and seemed to ebb and flow, -suggesting silent dawn and full midday, and the -house rang with a soundless music. -</p> - -<p> -“It was Mrs. Wallace who suggested my -<em>wearing</em> all my best things for the journey,” -panted Eve; “they don’t get crushed with packing -and they needn’t get dirty if you’re careful.” -</p> - -<p> -“You look exactly like Dudley’s gracious lady. -You know you do. You know it perfectly well.” -</p> - -<p> -“They do seem jolly now I’m back. They -don’t seem anything down there. Just ordinary -with everybody in much grander things.” -</p> - -<p> -“How do you mean, grander? What sort of -things?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, all sorts of lovely white dresses.” -</p> - -<p> -“It is extraordinary about all those white -dresses,” said Miriam emphatically, pushing her -way after Eve into Sarah’s bedroom. “Can I -come in? I’m coming in. Sarah says it’s because -men like them and she gets simply sick of girls -in white and cream dresses all over the place in -<a id="page-203" class="pagenum" title="203"></a> -the summer, and it’s a perfect relief to see anyone -in a colour in the sun. They have red sunshades -sometimes, but Sarah says that’s not enough; -you want people in colours. I wonder if there’s -anything in it?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course there is,” said Sarah, releasing the -last strap of Eve’s trunk. -</p> - -<p> -“They’d <em>all</em> put on coloured things if it weren’t -for that.” -</p> - -<p> -“Men tell them.” -</p> - -<p> -“Do they?” -</p> - -<p> -“The engaged men tell them—or brothers.” -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t think how you get to know these -things, sober Sally.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, you can tell.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, then, <em>why</em> do men like silly white and -cream dresses, pasty, whitewashy clothes altogether?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s something they want; it looks different -to them.” -</p> - -<p> -“Sarah knows all sorts of things,” said Miriam -excitedly, watching the confusion of the room -from the windows. “She says she knows why the -Pooles look down and smirk; their dimples and -the line of their chins; that men admire them -looking down like that. <em>Isn’t</em> it frightful. Disgusting. -<a id="page-204" class="pagenum" title="204"></a> -And men don’t seem to see through -them.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s those kind of girls get on best.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam sighed. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, don’t let’s think about them. Not -to-night, anyhow,” cooed Eve. -</p> - -<p> -“Sarah says there are much more awful -reasons. I can’t think how she finds them all -out. Sober Sally. I know she’s right. It’s too -utterly sickening somehow, for words.” -</p> - -<p> -“Mim.” -</p> - -<p> -“<em>Pooh</em>—barooo, <em>baroooo</em>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Mim——” -</p> - -<p> -“Damnation.” -</p> - -<p> -“Mimmy—Jim.” -</p> - -<p> -“I said <span class="sc">damnation</span>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, it’s all right. What have we got to do -with horrid knowing people.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, they’re there, all the time. You can’t -get away from them. They’re all over the place. -Either the knowing ones or the simpering ones. -It’s all the same in the end.” -</p> - -<p> -Eve quietly began to unpack. “Oh well,” -she smiled, “we’re <em>all</em> different when there are -men about to when we’re by ourselves. We all -make eyes in a way.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-205" class="pagenum" title="205"></a> -“Eve! What a perfectly beastly thing to say.” -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t, my dear,” said Eve pensively. “You -should see yourself; you do.” -</p> - -<p> -“Sally, <em>do</em> I?” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“Of course you do,” giggled Eve quietly, “as -much as anybody.” -</p> - -<p> -“Then I’m the most crawling thing on the -face of the earth,” thought Miriam, turning -silently to the tree-tops looming softly just outside -the window; “and the worst of it is I only -know it at moments now and again.” The tree-tops -serene with some happy secret cast her off, -and left her standing with groping crisping -fingers unable to lift the misery that pressed -upon her heart. “God, what a filthy world! -God what a filthy world!” she muttered. “Everyone -hemmed and hemmed and hemmed into it.” -Harriett came in and stepped up on to the -high canopied bed. “Ullo,” she said in general, -sitting herself up tailor-fashion in the middle of -the bed so that the bright twilight fell full upon -her head and the breast and shoulders of her -light silk-sleeved dress. Humming shreds of a -violin obligato, Eve rustled out layer after layer -of paper-swathed garments, to be gathered up -<a id="page-206" class="pagenum" title="206"></a> -by Sarah moving solidly about between the wardrobe -and the chest of drawers in her rather heavy -boots. There would not be any talk. But -silently the room filled and overflowed. Turning -at last from her window, Miriam glanced at her -sisters and let her thoughts drop into the flowing -tide. Harry, sitting there sharp and upright in -the fading light, coming in to them with her -future life streaming out behind her spreading -and shining and rippling, herself the radiant -point of that wonderful life, actually there, -neatly enthroned amongst them, one of them, -drawing them all with her out towards its easy -security; Eve, happy with her wardrobe of dainty -things, going fearlessly forward to some unseen -fate, not troubling about it. Sarah’s strange -clean clear channel of wisdom. Where would it -lead? It would always drive straight through -everything. -</p> - -<p> -All these things meant that the mere simple -awfulness of things at home had changed. These -three girls she had known so long as fellow-prisoners, -and who still bore at moments in their -eyes, their movements, the marks of the terrors -and uncertainties amongst which they had all -grown up, were going on, out into life, scored -<a id="page-207" class="pagenum" title="207"></a> -and scarred, but alive and changeable, able to -become quite new. Memories of strange crises -and the ageing deadening shifts they had invented -to tide them over humiliating situations -were here crowded in the room together with -them all. But these memories were no longer -as they had so often been, the principal thing -in the room whenever they were all gathered -silently together. If Eve and Harriett had got -away from the past and now had happy eyes and -mouths.... Sarah’s solid quiet cheerfulness, -now grown so large and free that it seemed even -when she was stillest to knock your mind about like -something in a harlequinade.... Why had they -not all known in the past that they would change? -Why had they been so oppressed whenever they -stopped to think? -</p> - -<p> -Those American girls in “Little Women” -and “Good Wives” made fun out of everything. -But they had never had to face real horrors and -hide them from everybody, mewed up. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-8"> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -When it was nearly dark Sarah lit the gas. -Harriett had gone downstairs. Miriam lowered -the Venetian blinds, shutting out the summer. -<a id="page-208" class="pagenum" title="208"></a> -To-morrow it would be there again, waiting for -them when they woke in the morning. In her -own and Harriett’s room the daylight would be -streaming in through the Madras muslin curtains, -everything in the room very silent and distinct; -nothing to be heard but the little flutterings of -birds under the eaves. You could listen to it for -ever if you kept perfectly still. When you drew -back the curtains the huge day would be standing -outside clear with gold and blue and dense with -trees and flowers. -</p> - -<p> -Sarah’s face was uneasy. She seemed to avoid -meeting anyone’s eyes. Presently she faced them, -sitting on a low rocking chair with her tightly -clasped hands stretched out beyond her knees. -She glanced fearfully from one to the other and -bit her lips. “What now,” thought Miriam. -The anticipated holidays disappeared. Of course. -She might have known they would. For a -moment she felt sick, naked and weak. Then she -braced herself to meet the shock. I must sit -tight, I must sit tight and not show anything. -Eve’s probably praying. Oh, make haste, Sally, -and get it over. -</p> - -<p> -“What’s the matter, Sally?” said Eve in a -low voice. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-209" class="pagenum" title="209"></a> -“Oh, Eve and Mim, I’m awfully sorry.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’d better tell us at once,” said Eve, -crimsoning. -</p> - -<p> -“Haven’t you noticed anything?” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam looked at Sarah’s homely prosperous -shape. It couldn’t be anything. It was a nightmare. -She waited, pinching her wrist. -</p> - -<p> -“What is it, Sally?” breathed Eve, tapping -her green-clad knee. Clothes and furniture and -pictures ... houses full of things and people -talking in the houses and having meals and pretending, -talking and smiling and pretending. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s mother.” -</p> - -<p> -“What on earth do you mean, Sarah?” said -Miriam angrily. -</p> - -<p> -“She’s ill. Bennett took her to a specialist. -There’s got to be—she’s got to have an operation.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam drew up the blind with a noisy rattle, -smiling at Eve frowning impatiently at the -noise. Driving the heavy sash up as far as it -would go, she leaned her head against the open -frame. The garden did not seem to be there. -The tepid night air was like a wall, a black wall. -For a moment a splintered red light, like the light -that comes from a violent blow on the forehead, -<a id="page-210" class="pagenum" title="210"></a> -flashed along it. Sarah and Eve were talking in -strange voices, interrupting each other. It would -be a relief to do something, faint or something -selfish. But she must hear what they were saying; -listen to both the voices cutting through -the air of the hot room. Propped weak-limbed -against the window open-mouthed for air she -forced herself to hear, pressing her cold hands -closely together. The gas light that had seemed -so bright hardly seemed to light the room at all. -Everything looked small, even Grannie’s old -Chippendale bedstead and the double-fronted -wardrobe. The girls were little monkey ghosts -babbling together beside Eve’s open trunk. Did -they see that it was exactly like a grave? -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-7-9"> -9 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The sun shone through the apple trees, making -the small half-ripe apples look as though they were -coated with enamel. -</p> - -<p> -It was quite clear that if they did go away -together, the four of them, she, Eve, Gerald and -Harriett to Brighton or somewhere, they would -be able to forget. You could tell that from the -strange quiet easy tone of Harriett’s and Gerald’s -voices. There would be the aquarium. She -<a id="page-211" class="pagenum" title="211"></a> -supposed they would go to the aquarium with -its strange underground smell of stagnant sea -air and stare into the depths of those strange -green tanks and watch the fish flashing about like -shadows or skimming by near the front of the -tank with the light full on their softly tinted -scales. Harriett sat steadily at her side on the -overturned seed-box, middle-aged and responsible, -quietly discussing the details of the plan with -Gerald, cross-legged at their feet on the grass -plot. They had not said anything about the -reasons for going; but of course Gerald must -know all that. He knew everything now, all -about the money troubles, all the awful things, -and it seemed to make no difference to him. -He made light of it. It was humiliating to think -that he had come just as things had reached their -worst, the house going to be sold, Pater and -mother and Sarah going into lodgings in September, -and the maddening helpless worry about -mother and all the money for that. And yet it -was a good thing he had known them all in the -old house and seen them there, even pretending -to be prosperous. And yet the house and garden -was nothing to him. Just a house and garden. -Harriett’s house and garden, and he was going to -<a id="page-212" class="pagenum" title="212"></a> -take Harriett away. The house and garden did -not matter. -</p> - -<p> -She glanced at the sunlit fruit trees, the -thickets of the familiar kitchen garden, the rising -grass bank at the near end of the distant lawn, -the eloquent back of the large red house. He -could not see all the things there were there, all -the long years, or know what it was to have that -cut away and nothing ahead but Brighton aquarium -with Harriett and Eve, and then the school -again, and disgraceful lodgings in some strange -place, no friends and everybody looking down on -them. She met his eyes and they both smiled. -</p> - -<p> -“Keep her perfectly quiet for the next few -weeks, that’s the idea, and when it’s all over -she’ll be better than she’s ever been in her life.” -</p> - -<p> -“D’you think so?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t think, I know she will; people always -are. I’ve known scores of people have operations. -It’s nothing nowadays. Ask Bennett.” -</p> - -<p> -“Does he think she’ll be better?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course.” -</p> - -<p> -“Did he say so?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of <em>course</em> he did.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I s’pose we’d really better go.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course, we’re going.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-213" class="pagenum" title="213"></a> -“I’m going to look for a place in a family -after next term. I shall give notice when I get -back. You get more money in a family Eve says, -and home life, and if you haven’t a home they’re -only too glad to have you there in the holidays -too.” -</p> - -<p> -“You take my advice, my dear girl. Don’t go -into a family. Eve’ll find it out before she’s -much older.” -</p> - -<p> -“I must have more money.” -</p> - -<p> -“Mirry’s so silly. She insists on paying her -share of Brighton. Isn’t she an owl?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, of course, if she’s going to make a -point of spending her cash when she needn’t she’d -better find a more paying job. That’s certain -sure.” -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-8"> -<a id="page-214" class="pagenum" title="214"></a> -CHAPTER VIII -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar"><span class="prefirstchar">“</span>Y</span><span class="postfirstchar">ou</span> know I’m funny. I never talk to -young ladies.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam looked leisurely at the man walking at -her side along the grass-covered cliff; his well-knit -frame, his well-cut blue serge, the trimness -of collar and tie, his faintly blunted regular -features, clean ruddy skin and clear expressionless -German blue eyes. Altogether he was rather like -a German, with his red and white and gold and -blue colouring and his small military moustache. -She could imagine him snapping abruptly in a -booming chest voice, “Mit Frauen spreche ich -über<em>haupt</em> nicht.” But he spoke slowly and -languidly, he was an Englishman and somehow -looked like a man who was accustomed to refined -society. It was true he never spoke at the boarding-house -meals, excepting an occasional word -with his friend, and he had been obliged to join -their Sunday walk because his friend was so -<a id="page-215" class="pagenum" title="215"></a> -determined to come. Still he was not awkward -or clumsy either at table or now. Only absolutely -quiet, and then saying such a startling rather rude -thing quite suddenly. One could stare at him -to discover the reason of his funny speech, because -evidently he was quite common, not a bounder -but quite a common young man, speaking of -women as ‘young ladies.’ Then how on earth -did he manage to look distinguished. Oppressed -and ill at ease she turned away to the far-reaching -green levels and listened to the sea tumbling -heavily far below against the cliffs. Away ahead -Eve and her little companion walking jauntily -along, his tight dust-coloured curls exposed to -the full sunlight, his cane swinging round as he -talked and laughed, seemed to be turning inland -towards the downs. They had seen Ovingdean -in the distance, stupid Ovingdean that everybody -had talked about at breakfast, and were finding -the way. How utterly silly. They did not see -how utterly silly it was to make up your mind -to “go to Ovingdean” and then go to Ovingdean. -How utterly silly everybody and everything -was. -</p> - -<p> -Eve looked very straight and slim and was -walking happily, bending her head a little as she -<a id="page-216" class="pagenum" title="216"></a> -always did when she was listening. Their backs -looked happy. And here she was forced to walk -with this nice-looking strange solid heavyish man -and his cold insulting remark; almost the only -thing he had said since they had been alone together. -It had been rather nice walking along -the top of the cliff side by side saying nothing. -They walked exactly in step and his blunted -features looked quite at ease; and she had gone -easily along disposing of him with a gentle feeling -of proprietorship, and had watched the gentle -swing and movement of the landscape as they -swung along. It seemed secure and painless and -was gradually growing beautiful, and then suddenly -she felt that he must have his thoughts, -men were always thinking, and would be expecting -her to be animated and entertaining. Lumpishly -she had begun about the dullness of the -beach and promenade on Sundays and the need -to find something to do between dinner and tea—lies. -All conversation was a lie. And somehow -she had led him to his funny German remark. -</p> - -<p> -“How do you mean?” she said at last anxiously. -It was very rude intruding upon him like that. -He had spoken quite simply. She ought to have -laughed and changed the conversation. But it -<a id="page-217" class="pagenum" title="217"></a> -was no laughing matter. He did not know what -he was saying or how horribly it hurt. A worldly -girl would chaff and make fun of him. It was -detestable to make fun of men; just a way of -flirting. But Sarah said that being rude to men -or talking seriously to them was flirting just as -much. Not true. Not true. And yet it was -true, she did want to feel happy walking along -with this man, have some sort of good understanding -with him, him as a man with her as a -woman. Was that flirting? If so she was just -a more solemn underhand flirt than the others, -that was all. She felt very sad. Anyhow she had -asked her question now. She looked at his profile. -Perhaps he would put her off in some way. Then -she would walk slower and slower until Harriett -and Gerald caught them up and come home -walking four in a row, taking Harriett’s arm. -His face had remained quite expressionless. -</p> - -<p> -“Well,” he said at length in his slow well-modulated -tone, “I always take care to get out -of the way when there are any young ladies -about.” -</p> - -<p> -“When do you mean?” <em>I</em> didn’t ask you to -come, <em>I</em> don’t want to talk to you you food-loving, -pipe-loving, comfort-loving beast, she thought. -<a id="page-218" class="pagenum" title="218"></a> -But it would be impossible to finish the holiday -and go back to the school with this strange statement -uninvestigated. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, when my sisters have young ladies in -in the evening I always get out of the way.” -</p> - -<p> -Ah, thought Miriam, you are one of those men -who flirt with servants and shop-girls ... perhaps -those awful women.... Either she must catch -Eve up or wait for Harriett ... not be alone any -longer with this man. -</p> - -<p> -“I see. You simply run away from them,” -she said scornfully; “go out for a walk or something.” -A small Brixton sitting-room full of -Brixton girls—Gerald said that Brixton was -something too chronic for words, just like Clapham, -and there was that joke about the man -who said he would not go to heaven even if he -had the chance because of the strong Clapham -contingent that would be there—after all ... -</p> - -<p> -“I go and sit in my room.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh,” said Miriam brokenly, “in the winter? -Without a fire?” -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Parrow laughed. “I don’t mind about -that. I wrap myself up and get a book.” -</p> - -<p> -“What sort of book?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve got a few books of my own; and there’s -<a id="page-219" class="pagenum" title="219"></a> -generally something worth reading in ‘Tit-Bits.’” -</p> - -<p> -How did he manage to look so refined and cultured? -Those girls were quite good enough for -him, probably too good. But he would go on -despising them and one of them would marry -him and give him beef-steak puddings. And here -he was walking by the sea in the sunlight, confessing -his suspicions and fears and going back to -Brixton. -</p> - -<p> -“You’ll have to marry one of those young -ladies one day,” she said abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s out of the question, even if I was a -marrying man.” -</p> - -<p> -“Nonsense,” said Miriam, as they turned down -the little pathway leading towards the village. -Poor man, how cruel to encourage him to take -up with one of those giggling dressy girls. -</p> - -<p> -“D’you mean to say you’ve been never specially -interested in anybody?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. I never have.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Ovingdean had to be faced. They were going -to look at Ovingdean and then walk back to the -boarding-house to tea. Now that she knew all -<a id="page-220" class="pagenum" title="220"></a> -about his home-life she would not be able to -meet his eyes across the table. Two tired elm -trees stood one on either side of the road at the -entrance to the village. Here they all gathered -and then went forward in a strolling party. -</p> - -<p> -When they turned at last to walk home and -fell again into couples as before, Miriam searched -her empty mind for something to say about the -dim, cool musty church, the strange silent deeps -of it there amongst the great green downs, the -waiting chairs, the cold empty pulpit and the -little cold font, and the sunlit front of the old -Grange where King Charles had taken refuge. -Mr. Parrow would know she was speaking insincerely -if she said anything about these things. -There was a long, long walk ahead. For some -time they walked in silence. “D’you know anything -about architecture?” she said at last -angrily ... cruel silly question. Of course he -didn’t. But men she walked with ought to know -about architecture and be able to tell her things. -</p> - -<p> -“No. That’s a subject I don’t know anything -about.” -</p> - -<p> -“D’you like churches?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about -it.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-221" class="pagenum" title="221"></a> -“Then you probably don’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, well, I don’t know about that. I don’t -see any objection to them.” -</p> - -<p> -“Then you’re probably an atheist.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know, I’m sure.” -</p> - -<p> -“Do you go to church?” -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t say I do in the usual way, unless I’m -on a holiday.” -</p> - -<p> -“Perhaps you go for walks instead?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I generally stay in bed and have a -rest.” -</p> - -<p> -That dreadful room with the dreadful man -hiding in it and reading “Tit-Bits” and staying -in bed in it on bright Sunday mornings. -</p> - -<p> -How heavily they were treading on the orange -and yellow faces of the Tom Thumbs scattered -over the short green grass. -</p> - -<p> -“How much do you think people could marry -on?” said Mr. Parrow suddenly in a thin voice. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh well, that depends on who they are.” -</p> - -<p> -“I suppose it does do that.” -</p> - -<p> -“And where they are going to live.” -</p> - -<p> -“D’you think anyone could marry on a hundred -and fifty?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course,” said Miriam emphatically, mentally -shivering over the vision of a tiresome determined -<a id="page-222" class="pagenum" title="222"></a> -cheerful woman with a thin pinched -reddish nose, an everlasting grey hat and a faded -ulster going on year after year; two or three -common children she would never be able to -educate, with horribly over-developed characters. -It was rather less than the rent of their house. -“Of course, everything would depend on the -woman,” she said wisely. After all a hundred -and fifty, with no doubt and anxiety about it -was a very wonderful thing to have. Probably -everybody was wasteful, buying the wrong things -and silly things, ornaments and brooches and -serviette rings; ... and not thinking things out -and not putting things down in books and not -really enjoying managing the hundred and fifty -and always wanting more. It ought to be quite -jolly being thoroughly common and living in a -small way and having common neighbours doing -the same. -</p> - -<p> -“But you think if a man could find a young -lady who could agree about prices it would be -possible.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course it would.” -</p> - -<p> -The houses on the eastern ridges of Brighton -came into sight in the distance and stood blazing -in the sunlight. There was a high half broken-down -<a id="page-223" class="pagenum" title="223"></a> -piece of fencing at the edge of the cliff to -their left a little ahead of them, splintered and -sunlit. -</p> - -<p> -“How much a week is a hundred and fifty a -year?” -</p> - -<p> -“Three pound.” -</p> - -<p> -They gravitated towards the fence and stood -vaguely near it looking out across the unruffled -glare of the open sea. Why had she always -thought that the bright blue and gold ripples -seen from the beach and the promenade on jolly -weekdays was the best of the sea? It was much -more lovely up there, the great expanse in its -quiet Sunday loneliness. You could see and think -about far-off things instead of just dreaming on -the drowsy hot sands, seeing nothing but the -rippling stripes of bright blue and bright gold. -She put her elbows on the upper bar. Mr. -Parrow did the same and they stood gazing out -across the open sea—Mr. Parrow was probably -wondering how long they were going to stand -silently there and thinking about his tea ... of -course; let him stand—until Eve’s voice sounded -near them in a dimpling laugh. They walked -home in a row, Eve and Mr. Green in the centre, -asking riddles one against the other. Every time -<a id="page-224" class="pagenum" title="224"></a> -Miriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made -some little responsive sound. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-3"> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -When Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow went back -to London at the end of the week Eve and Miriam -saw them off at the station. The four went off -boldly together down the flight of white stone -steps and made their way up into the town. -</p> - -<p> -“Good-bye,” called Miss Meldrum affectionately -from the doorway. “I shall send both of -you a copy of the photograph.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s most generous of Miss Meldrum to go -to all that expense to give us a pleasant memento,” -said Mr. Green in his small ringing voice as -they all swung out into the clean bare roadway. -Miriam felt as if they were a bit of the photograph -walking up the hill, and went freely and -confidently along with a sense of being steered -and guided by Miss Meldrum. Why had she -had the group taken—so odd and bold of her, -having the photographer waiting in the garden -for them before they had finished breakfast, and -then laughing and talking and pushing them all -about as if they were her dearest friends. -It was whilst they were all out in the garden -<a id="page-225" class="pagenum" title="225"></a> -together, hanging about and being arranged, -with the photographer’s voice like the voice -of a ventriloquist, knocking them coldly about, -that Gerald and Mr. Green had arranged about -the evening at the Crystal Palace on the last -day of Miriam’s holiday. Miriam had held back -from the group, feeling nervous about her hair, -there had been no time to go to their rooms, -and had forced Eve to do the same. Harriett, -with a cheerful shiny face, was sitting on the -grass with Gerald in a line with the traveller -from Robinson and Cleaver’s, and his thin-voiced -sheeny-haired mocking fiancée. They all looked -very small and bald. The fiancée kept clearing -her throat and rearranging her smart feet and -rattling her bangles. The traveller’s heavy waxed -moustache was crooked and his slippery blue eyes -looked like the eyes of an old man. Next to him -were two newly arrived restively sneering young -men, one on either side of the saintly-faced -florist’s assistant from Wigmore Street, who sat -in an easy pose with her skirt draping gracefully -over her feet and her long white chin propped -on her hands. She looked reproachfully about -amongst the laughing and talking and seemed to -feel that they were all in church. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-226" class="pagenum" title="226"></a> -Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald -Scotch chemists who went out every evening to -look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from -Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey -curls bunched in a cherry-coloured velvet band -seemed to say “death—death” to Miriam more -dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than -when she suddenly caught sight of them at table, -sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the squatters -on the grass. At the last moment she and Eve -were obliged to fall in at the back of the group -with Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow, and now the -four of them were walking in a row up the staring -white hill with the evening at the Crystal Palace -ahead of them in far-away London. It was quite -right. They were being like ‘other people.’ -People met and made friends and arranged to -meet again. And then things happened. It was -quite right and ordinary and safe and warm. Of -course Eve and Mr. Green must meet again. He -was evidently quite determined that they should. -That was what was carrying them all so confidently -up the hill. Perhaps he would in the -end turn into another Gerald. When they -turned off into the unfamiliar Brighton streets -Eve and Mr. Green went on ahead. Walking -<a id="page-227" class="pagenum" title="227"></a> -quickly in step along the narrow pavement -amongst the unconcerned Brighton townspeople -they looked so small and pitiful. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The brilliant sunlight showed up all the shabbiness -of Mr. Green’s London suit. He looked even -smaller than he did in his holiday tweed. Miriam -wanted to call to them and stop them, stop Eve’s -bright figure and her mop of thickly twisted brown -hair and ask her what she was dreaming of, leave -the two men there and go back, go out away -alone with Eve down to the edge of the sea. -She hesitated in her walking, not daring even to -glance at her companion who was trudging along -with bent head, carrying his large brown leather -bag. The street was crowded and she manœuvred -so that everyone they met should pass between -them. Perhaps they would be able to reach the -station without being obliged to speak to each -other. Parrow. It was either quite a nice name -or pitiful; like a child trying to say sparrow. -Did he know that to other people it was a strange, -important sort of name, rounded like the padding -in the shoulders of his coat and his blunted -features? -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-228" class="pagenum" title="228"></a> -Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single -person in the world. If he were run over and -killed on the way to the station, nobody would -ever have known anything about him.... People -did die like that ... probably most people; in a -minute, alone and unknown; too late to speak. -</p> - -<p> -Something was coming slowly down the middle -of the roadway from amongst the confusion of -the distant traffic; an elephant—a large grey -elephant. Firmly delicately undisturbed by the -noise of the street, the huge crimson gold-braided -howdah it carried on its back, and the strange, -coloured things coming along behind it, the -thickening of people on the pavement and the -suddenly increased noise of the town, it came -stepping. It was wonderful. “Wise and beautiful! -Wise and beautiful!” cried a voice far -away in Miriam’s brain. It’s a circus said another -voice within her.... He doesn’t know he’s in -a circus.... She hurried forward to reach Eve. -Eve turned a flushed face. “I <em>say</em>; it’s a circus,” -said Miriam bitingly. The blare of a band broke -out farther up the street. People were jostled -against them by a clown who came bounding -and leaping his way along the crowded pavement -crying incoherent words with a thrilling blatter -<a id="page-229" class="pagenum" title="229"></a> -of laughter. The elephant was close upon them -alone in the road space cleared by its swinging -walk.... If only everyone would be quiet they -could hear the soft padding of its feet. Slowly, -gently, modestly it went by followed by a crowd -of smaller things; sad-eyed monkeys on horseback -in gold coatlets, sullen caged beasts on trolleys -drawn by beribboned unblinkered human-looking -horses, tall white horses pacing singly by, bearing -bobbing princesses and men in masks and cloaks. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Here and there in the long sunlit hours of the -holiday by the Brighton sea Miriam found the -far-away seaside holidays of her childhood. -Going out one afternoon with Eve and Miss -Stringer walking at Eve’s side, listening to the -conversation of the two girls, she had felt when -they reached the deserted end of the esplanade -and proposed turning round and walking home, -an uncontrollable desire to be alone, and had left -them, impatiently, without a word of excuse -and gone on down the grey stone steps and out -among the deserted weed-grown sapphire-pooled -chalk hummocks at the foot of the cliffs. For a -while she was chased by little phrases from Miss -<a id="page-230" class="pagenum" title="230"></a> -Stringer’s quiet talking—“if you want people to -be interested in you, you must be interested in -them”; “you can get on with everybody if -you make up your mind to”—and by the memory -of her well-hung clothes and her quiet regular -features spoilt by the nose that Gerald said was -old-maidish, and her portmanteau full of finery, -unpacked on the first-floor landing outside the -tiny room she occupied—piles of underlinen -startlingly threaded with ribbons. -</p> - -<p> -At the end of half an hour’s thoughtless wandering -over the weed-grown rocks she found herself -sitting on a little patch of dry silt at the end of a -promontory of sea-smoothed hummocks with the -pools of bright blue-green fringed water all about -her watching the gentle rippling of the retreating -waves over the weedy lower levels. She seemed -long to have been listening and watching, her -mind was full of things she felt she would never -forget, the green-capped white faces of the cliffs, -a patch of wet sand dotted with stiffly waiting -seagulls, the more distant wavelets ink black and -golden pouring in over the distant hummocks, -the curious whispering ripples near her feet. -She must go back. Her mind slid out making a -strange half-familiar compact with all these -<a id="page-231" class="pagenum" title="231"></a> -things. She was theirs, she would remember -them all, always. They were not alone because -she was with them and knew them. She had -always known them she reflected, remembering -with a quick pang a long, unpermitted wandering -out over the cliff edge beyond Dawlish, the -sun shining on pinkish sandy scrub, the expression -of the bushes; hurrying home with the big -rough spaniel that belonged to the house they -had hired. She must have been about six years -old. She had gone back with a secret, telling -them nothing of the sunlight or the bushes, only -of a strange lady, sitting on the jetty as she came -down over the sands, who had caught her in her -arms and horribly kissed her. She had forgotten -the lady and been so happy when she reached home -that no one had scolded her. And when they -questioned her it seemed that there was only the -lady to tell them about. Her mother had looked -at her and kissed her. And now she must go back -again, and say nothing. The strange promise, the -certainty she felt out here on the rocks must be -taken back to the Brighton front and the boarding-house. -It would disappear as soon as she got -back. Here on the Brighton rocks it was not so -strong as it had been in Dawlish. And it would -<a id="page-232" class="pagenum" title="232"></a> -disappear more completely. There had been -during the intervening years holidays with Sarah -and Eve and Harriett in seaside lodgings, over -which the curious conviction that possessed her -now had spread like a filmy veil. But now it -would hardly ever come; there were always -people talking, the strangers one worked for, or -the hard new people like Miss Stringer, people who -had a number of things they were always saying. -</p> - -<p> -She tried to remember when the strange independent -joy had begun and thought she could -trace it back to a morning in the garden at Babington, -the first thing she could remember, when -she had found herself toddling alone along the -garden path between beds of flowers almost on a -level with her head and blazing in the sunlight. -Bees with large bodies were sailing heavily across -the path from bed to bed, passing close by her -head and making a loud humming in the air. -She could see the flowers distinctly as she walked -quickly back through the afternoon throng on -the esplanade; they were sweet williams and -“everlasting” flowers, the sweet williams smelling -very strongly sweet in her nostrils, and one -sheeny brown everlasting flower that she had -touched with her nose, smelling like hot paper. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-6"> -<a id="page-233" class="pagenum" title="233"></a> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She wanted to speak to someone of these -things. Until she could speak to someone about -them she must always be alone. Always quite -alone, she thought, looking out as she walked -across the busy stretch of sea between the two -piers, dotted with pleasure boats. It would be -impossible to speak to anyone about them unless -one felt perfectly sure that the other person -felt about them in the same way and knew that -they were more real than anything else in the -world, knew that everything else was a fuss about -nothing. But everybody else seemed to be -really interested in the fuss. That was the extraordinary -thing. Miss Meldrum presiding at the -boarding-house table with her white padded hair -and her white face and bright steady brown eyes, -listening to everybody and making jokes with -everybody and keeping things going, sometimes -looked as if she knew it was all a pretence, but if -you spoke to her she would think you were talking -about religion and would kiss you. She had -already kissed Miriam once—for playing accompaniments -to the hymns on a Sunday evening, -and made her feel as if there were some sly secret -<a id="page-234" class="pagenum" title="234"></a> -between them. If she played the hymns again -she would play them stonily ... mother would -look as she always did if you suddenly began to -talk anything about things in general as if you -were going to make some confession she had been -waiting for all her life. Now, with the operation -and all the uncertainty ahead she would probably -cry. She would want to explain in some way, as -she had done one day long ago; how dreadful it -had been ... mother, I never feel tired, not -really tired, and however I behave I always feel -frightfully happy inside ... my blessed chick, it’s -your splendid health—and the influence of the -Holy Spirit.... But I hate everybody.... -What foolish nonsense. You mustn’t think such -things. You will make yourself unpopular.... -</p> - -<p> -She must keep her secret to herself. This -Brighton life crushed it back more than anything -there had been in Germany or at Banbury Park. -In Germany she had found it again and again, -and at Banbury Park, though it could never come -out and surround her, it was never far off. It -lurked just beyond the poplars in the park, at -the end of the little empty garden at twilight, -amongst the books in the tightly packed bookcase. -It was here, too, in and out the sunlit -<a id="page-235" class="pagenum" title="235"></a> -days. As one opened the door of the large, -sparely furnished breakfast-room it shone for a -moment in the light pouring over the table full -of seated forms; it haunted the glittering scattered -sand round about the little blank platform -where the black and white minstrels stood singing -in front of their harmonium, and poured out -across the blaze of blue and gold sea ripples, when -the town band played Anitra’s Dance or the -moon song from the Mikado; it lay all along the -deserted promenade and roadway as you went -home to lunch, and at night it spoke in the flump -flump of the invisible sea against the lower woodwork -of the pier pavilion. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -But every day at breakfast over the eggs, -bacon and tomatoes—knowing voices began their -day’s talking, the weary round of words and ugly -laughter went steadily on, narrow horrible sounds -that made you feel conscious of the insides of -people’s throats and the backs of their noses—as -if they were not properly formed. The talk -was like a silly sort of battle.... Innuendo, -Miriam would say to herself, feeling that the word -was too beautiful for what she wanted to express; -<a id="page-236" class="pagenum" title="236"></a> -<em>double entendre</em> was also unsatisfactory. These -people were all enemies pretending to be friends. -Why did they pretend? Why not keep quiet? -Or all sing between their eating, different songs, -it would not matter. She and Eve and Harriett -and Gerald did sometimes hum the refrains of -the nigger minstrels’ songs, or one of them would -hum a scrap of a solo and all three sing the chorus. -Then people were quiet, listening and smiling -their evil smiles and Miss Meldrum was delighted. -It seemed improper and half-hearted as no one -else joined in; but after the first few days the -four of them always sang between the courses -at dinner. Gerald did not seem to mind the -chaffy talk and the vulgar jokes, and would generally -join in; and he said strange disturbing things -about the boarders, as if he knew all about them. -And he and Harriett talked to the niggers too -and found out about them. It spoilt them when -one knew that they belonged to small London -musical halls, and had wives and families and -illnesses and trouble. Gerald and Harriett did -not seem to mind this. They did not seem to -mind anything out of doors. They were free -and hard and contemptuous of everyone except -the niggers and a few very stylish-looking people -<a id="page-237" class="pagenum" title="237"></a> -who sailed along and took no notice of anybody. -Gerald said extraordinary, disturbing things about -the girls on the esplanade. Miriam and Eve were -interested in some of the young men they saw. -They talked about them and looked out for them. -Sometimes they exchanged glances with them. -Were she and Eve also “on show”; waiting to -be given “half an inch”; would she or Eve be -“perfectly awful in the dark”? Did the young -men they specially favoured with their notice say -things about them? When these thoughts buzzed -about in Miriam’s brain she wanted to take a -broom and sweep everybody into the sea.... -She discovered that a single steady unexpected -glance, meeting her own, from a man who had -the right kind of bearing—something right about -the set of the shoulders—could disperse all the -vague trouble she felt at the perpetual spectacle -of the strolling crowds, the stiffly waiting many-eyed -houses, the strange stupid bathing-machines, -and send her gaily forward in a glad world where -there was no need to be alone in order to be -happy. A second encounter was sad, shameful, -ridiculous; the man became absurd and lost his -dignity; the joyous sense of looking through him -right out and away to an endless perspective, of -<a id="page-238" class="pagenum" title="238"></a> -being told that the endlessness was there and -telling that the endlessness was there had gone; -the eyes were eyes, solid and mocking and helpless—to -be avoided in future; and when they had -gone, the sunset or the curious quivering line -along the horizon were no longer gateways, but -hard barriers, until by some chance one was tranquilly -alone again—when the horizon would -beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across -the sea at sunset call to your feet until they -tingled and ached. -</p> - -<p> -Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the -sea and of the evenings and mornings must be -given up. It would fade more and more. What -was life? Either playing a part all the time in -order to be amongst people in the warm or standing -alone with the strange true real feeling—alone -with a sort of edge of reality on everything; -even on quite ugly common things—cheap boarding-houses -face towels and blistered window -frames. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-8-8"> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Since Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow had left, -they had given up going to pier entertainments -and had spent most of their time sitting in a -close row and talking together, in the intervals -<a id="page-239" class="pagenum" title="239"></a> -of the black and white minstrel concerts and the -performances of the town band. They had drifted -into this way of spending their time; there was -never any discussion or alteration of the day’s -programme. It worked like a charm and there -was no sign of the breaking of the charm. Miriam -was sometimes half afraid just as they settled -themselves down that someone, probably Gerald -or Eve might say ‘Funny, isn’t it, how well we -four get on,’ and that strange power that held -them together and kept everything away would -be broken before the holiday came to an end. -But no one did and they went on sitting together -in the morning on the hot sand—the moving -living glinting sand that took the sting as soon as -you touched it with your hand out of everything -there might be in the latest letter from home—hearing -the niggers from ten to eleven, bathing -from eleven to twelve, sitting afterwards fresh -and tingling and drowsy in canopied chairs near -the band until dinner-time, prowling and paddling -in the afternoon and ranging themselves again in -chairs for the evening. -</p> - -<p> -They said nothing until almost the end of -their time about the passage of the days; but -they looked at each other, each time they settled -<a id="page-240" class="pagenum" title="240"></a> -down, with conspiring smiles and then sat, side -by side, less visible to each other than the great -sunlit sea or the great clean salt darkness, stranded -in a row with four easy idle laughing commenting -voices, away alone and safe in the gaiety of the -strong forgetful air—talking things over. The -far-away troublesome crooked things, all cramped -and painful and puzzling came out one by one -and were shaken and tossed away along the clean -wind. And there was so much for Gerald to hear. -He wanted to hear everything—any little thing—“Just -like a girl; it’s awfully jolly for Harry -he’s like that. She’ll never be lonely,” agreed -Miriam and Eve privately.... “He’s a perfect -dear.” One night towards the end of their -time they talked of the future. It had begun to -press on them. There seemed no more time for -brooding even over Eve’s fascinating little pictures -of life in the big country house, or Miriam’s stories -and legends of Germany—she said very little -about Banbury Park fearing the amazement and -disgust of the trio if anything of the reality of -North London should reach them through her -talk and guessing the impossibility of their realising -the Pernes—or Gerald’s rich memories of the -opulence of his early home life, an atmosphere of -<a id="page-241" class="pagenum" title="241"></a> -spending and operas and banquets and receptions -and distinguished people. During the evening, -in a silent interval, just as the band was tuning -up to begin its last tune, Gerald had said with -quiet emphasis, “Well, anyhow, girls, you mark -my words the old man won’t make any more -money. Not another penny. You may as well -make up your minds to that.” Then the band -had broken into their favourite Hungarian dance. -Three of them sat blissfully back in their deck -chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably -propped forward, eagerly thinking. The music -rushed on, she saw dancers shining before her -in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shouting, -their feet scarcely touching the earth and a -wild light darted about them as they shouted -and leapt. “Set Mirry up in some sort of -business,” quoted her mind from one of Gerald’s -recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not -want that. But the dancing forms told her of -the absurdity of going back without protest to -the long aching days of teaching in the little -school amongst those dreadful voices which were -going, whatever she did for them, to be dreadful -all their lives. Nothing she could do would make -any difference to them. They did not want her. -<a id="page-242" class="pagenum" title="242"></a> -They were quite happy. Her feelings and -thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire -for space and beautiful things and music and -quietude would never be their desire. Reverence -for things—had she reverence? She felt she -must have because she knew they had not; even -the old people; only superstition ... North -London would always be North London, hard, -strong, sneering, money-making, noisy and -trammy. Perhaps the difference between the -north and the south and her own south-west of -London was like the difference between the north -and the south of England.... Green’s “History -of the English People” ... spinning-jennys began -in the Danish north, hard and cold, with later -sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace. -North London meant twenty pounds a year and -the need for resignation and determination every -day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge -garden and new books and music ... a book -called “Music and Morals” and interesting -people staying in the house. And Eve had not -been to Germany and could not talk French. -“You are an idiot to go on doing it. It’s wrong. -Lazy,” laughed the dancers crowding and flinging -all round her. “I ought,” she responded -<a id="page-243" class="pagenum" title="243"></a> -defiantly, “to stay on and make myself into a -certificated teacher.” “Certificated?” they -screamed wildly sweeping before her in strange -lines of light. “If you do you will be like Miss -Cramp. Certificates—little conceited papers, -and you dead. Certificates would finish you off—Kill—Kill—Kill—<em>Kill</em>—<em>Kill!!</em>” -Bang. The -band stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair -wounding her flesh. The trail of the dancers -flickered away across the sea and her brain was -busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne: “and -therefore I am obliged, however reluctantly, to -take this step, as it is absolutely necessary for me -to earn a larger salary at once.” -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-9"> -<a id="page-244" class="pagenum" title="244"></a> -CHAPTER IX -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-9-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">T</span><span class="postfirstchar">he</span> Henderson party found Mr. Green and -Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim plank-floored -corridor leading from the station to the -main building of the Crystal Palace. When the -quiet greetings were over and they had arranged -a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case -any of the party should be lost, they all tramped -on up the resounding corridor. Miriam found -herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow. -They were going on up the corridor, through the -Palace and out into the summer evening. They -had all come to go out into the summer evening -and see the fireworks. All but she had come -meaning to get quite near to the ‘set pieces’ -and to look at them. She had not said anything -about meaning to get as far away from the fireworks -as possible. She had been trusting to Mr. -Parrow for that. Now that she was with him -she felt that perhaps it was not quite fair. He -<a id="page-245" class="pagenum" title="245"></a> -had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would -be disappointed. She would be obliged to tell -him presently, when they got out into the night. -They were all tramping quickly up along the -echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking, -just feet, tramp, tramp on the planking, rather -quickly. It was like the sound of workmen’s feet -on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house. -The corridor was like something in the Hospital -for Incurables ... that strange old woman sitting -in the hall with bent head laughing over her -crochet, and Miss Garrett whom they had come -to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in a -ward, with a pleated mob cap all over the top of -her head and half-way down her forehead, sitting -back against large square pillows with her hands -clasped on the neat bed-clothes and a “sweet, -patient” look on her face, coughing gently and -spitting, spitting herself to death ... rushing -away out of the ward to wait for mother downstairs -in the hall with the curious smells and the -dreadful old woman.... What was it, chick?... -Sick, mother, I felt sick, I couldn’t stay. -It was rage; rage with that dreadful old woman. -People probably told her she was patient and -sweet, and she had got that trick of putting her -<a id="page-246" class="pagenum" title="246"></a> -head on one side. She was not sweet. She was -one of the worst of those dreadful people who -would always make people believe in a particular -way, all the time. She had a great big frame. -If she had done anything but sit as she sat, in -that particular way, one could have stayed. -</p> - -<p> -They were all standing looking at some wonderful -sort of clock, a calendar-clock—‘a triumph -of ingenuity,’ said Mr. Green’s bright reedy -voice. The building had opened out and rushed -up, people were passing to and fro. “We don’t -want to stay inside; let’s go out,” said Gerald. -The group broke into couples again and passed -on. Miriam found herself with Mr. Parrow once -more. Of course she would be with him all the -evening. She must tell him at once about the -fireworks. She ought not to have come, if she -did not mean to see the fireworks. It was mean -and feeble to cheat him out of his evening. -Why had she come; to wander about with him, -not seeing the fireworks. What an idiotic and -abominable thing. Now that she was here at his -side it was quite clear that she must endure the -fireworks. Anything else would be like asking -him to wander about with her alone. She did -not want to wander about with him alone. She -<a id="page-247" class="pagenum" title="247"></a> -took an opportunity of joining Eve for a moment. -They had just walked through a winter garden -and were standing at the door of a concert room, -all quite silent and looking very shy. “Eve,” -she said hurriedly in a low tone, “d’you want -to see the beastly fireworks?” -</p> - -<p> -“Beastly? Oh, of course, I do,” said Eve in a -rather loud embarrassed tone. How dreadfully -self-conscious they all were. Somebody seemed to -be speaking. “What <em>sticks</em> my family are—I had -no idea,” muttered Miriam furiously into Eve’s -face. Eve’s eyes filled with tears, but she stood -perfectly still, saying nothing. Miriam wheeled -round and stared into the empty concert room. -It was filled with a faint bluish light and beyond -the rows of waiting chairs and the empty platform -a huge organ stood piled up towards the roof. -The party were moving on. What a queer -place the Crystal Palace is ... what a perfectly -horrible place for a concert ... pianissimo passages -and those feet on those boards tramping -about outside.... What a silly muddle. Mr. -Parrow was waiting for her to join the others. -They straggled along past booths and stalls, -meeting groups of people, silent and lost like -themselves. Now they were passing some kind -<a id="page-248" class="pagenum" title="248"></a> -of stonework things, reliefs, antique, roped off -like the seats in a church. Just in front of them -a short man holding the red cord in his hands -was looking at a group with some ladies. “<em>Why</em>,” -he said suddenly in a loud cheerful voice, stretching -an arm out across the rope and pointing to -one of the reliefs, “it’s Auntie and Grandma!” -Miriam stared at him as they passed, he was so -short, shorter than any of the ladies he was with. -“It’s the only way to see these things,” he said -in the same loud harsh cheerful voice. Miriam -laughed aloud. What a clever man. -</p> - -<p> -“Do you like statues?” said Mr. Parrow in a -low gentle tone. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know anything about them,” said -Miriam. -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t bear fireworks,” she said hurriedly. -</p> - -<p> -They were in the open at last. In the deepening -twilight many people were going to and fro. -In the distance soft dark masses of trees stood -out against the sky in every direction. Not far -away the ghostly frames of the set pieces reared -against the sky made the open evening seem as -prison-like as the enclosure they had just left. -Round about the scaffolding of these pieces dense -little crowds were collecting. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-249" class="pagenum" title="249"></a> -“Don’t you want to see the fireworks?” -</p> - -<p> -“I want to get away from them.” -</p> - -<p> -“All right, we’ll get lost at once.” -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t,” she explained a little breathlessly, -in relief, suddenly respecting him, allowing him -to thread a way for her through the increasing -crowd towards the open evening, “that I don’t -want to see the fireworks, but I simply can’t -stand the noise.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see,” laughed Mr. Parrow gently. They -were making towards the open evening along a -narrow gravel pathway, like a garden pathway. -Miriam hurried a little, fearing that the fireworks -might begin before they got to a safe distance. -</p> - -<p> -“I never have been able to stand a sudden -noise. It’s torture to me to walk along a platform -where a train may suddenly shriek.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see. You’re afraid of the noise.” -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t fear—I can’t describe it. It’s agony. -It’s like pain. But much much worse than pain. -It’s—it’s—annihilating.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see; that’s very peculiar.” -</p> - -<p> -Their long pathway was leading them towards -a sweet-scented density, dim bowers and leafy -arches appeared just ahead. -</p> - -<p> -“It was much worse even than it is now when -<a id="page-250" class="pagenum" title="250"></a> -I was a little thing. When we went to the seaside -I used to sit in the train nearly dead until -it had screamed and started. And there was a -teacher who sneezed—a noise like a hard scream—at -school. She used to go on sneezing—twenty -times or so. I was only six and I dreaded going -to school just for that. Once I cried and they -took me out of the room. I’ve never told anyone. -Nobody knows.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve told me.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s very interesting. You shan’t go anywhere -near the fireworks.” -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-9-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -A large rosy flare, wavering steadily against -the distant trees showed up for a moment the -shapes and traceries of climbing plants surrounding -their retreat. A moment afterwards with a -dull boom a group of white stars shot up into -the air and hovered, melting one by one as the -crowd below moaned and crackled its applause. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam laughed abruptly. “That’s jolly. -How clever people are. But it’s much better -up here. It’s like not being too near at the -theatre.” -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-251" class="pagenum" title="251"></a> -“I think we’ve got the best view certainly.” -</p> - -<p> -“But we shall miss the set pieces.” -</p> - -<p> -“The people down there won’t see the rosary.” -</p> - -<p> -“What’s that black thing on our left down -there?” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s the toboggan run. We ought to go -on that.” -</p> - -<p> -“What is it like?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s fine; you just rush down. We must -try it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Not for worlds.” -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Parrow laughed. “Oh you must try the -toboggan; there’s no noise about that.” -</p> - -<p> -“I really couldn’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“Really?” -</p> - -<p> -“Absolutely. I mean it. Nothing under the -sun would induce me to go on a toboggan.” -</p> - -<p> -They sat watching the fireworks until they were -tired of the whistling rockets, showers of stars -and golden rain, the flaming bolts that shot up -from the Battle of the Nile, the fizzlings and fire -spurtings of the set pieces and the recurrent -moanings and faint patterings of applause from -the crowd. -</p> - -<p> -“I wish they’d do some more coloured flares -of light up the trees like they did at first. It -<a id="page-252" class="pagenum" title="252"></a> -was beautiful—more real than these things. -‘Feu d’artifice’ artificial fire—all these noisy -things. Why do people always like a noise? -Men. All the things men have invented, trains -and <a id="corr-15"></a>cannons and things make a frightful noise.” -</p> - -<p> -“The toboggan’s not noisy. Come and try -the toboggan.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh no.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well—there’s the lake down there. We -might have a boat.” -</p> - -<p> -“Do you know how to manage a boat?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve been on once or twice; if you like to -try I’ll manage.” -</p> - -<p> -“No; it’s too dark.” What a plucky man. -But the water looked cold. And perhaps he would -be really stupid. -</p> - -<p> -A solitary uniformed man was yawning and -whistling at the top of the deserted toboggan -run. The faint light of a lamp fell upon the -square platform and the little sled standing in -place at the top of a shiny slope which shot steeply -down into blackness. -</p> - -<p> -“We’d better get on,” said Miriam trembling. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you’re very graceful at giving in,” remarked -Mr. Parrow, handing her into the sled and -settling with the man. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-253" class="pagenum" title="253"></a> -He got that sentence out of a book, thought -Miriam wildly as she heard the man behind them -say “Ready? Off you go!” ... Out of a -book a book a book—<em>Oh</em>—<em>ooooh</em>—how ab<em>solutely</em> -glorious, she yelled as they shot down through -the darkness. <em>Oh</em>, she squealed into the face -laughing and talking beside her. She turned -away, shouting, for the final rush, they were -flying—involuntarily her hand flung out, they -were tearing headlong into absolute darkness, and -was met and firmly clasped. They shot slackening -up a short incline and stood up still hand in -hand, laughing incoherently. -</p> - -<p> -“Let’s walk back and try again,” said Mr. -Parrow. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh no; I enjoyed it most frightfully; but -we mustn’t go again. Besides, it must be fearfully -late.” -</p> - -<p> -She pulled at her hand. The man was too near -and too big. His hand was not a bit uncertain -like his speech, and for a moment she was glad -that she pulled in vain. “Very well,” said Mr. -Parrow, “but we must find our way off the grass -and strike the pathway.” Drawing her gently -along, he peered about for the track. “Let me -go,” said her hand dragging gently at his. “No” -<a id="page-254" class="pagenum" title="254"></a> -said the firm enclosure, tightening “not yet.” -What does it matter? flashed her mind. Why -should I be such a prude? The hand gave her -confidence. It was firm and strong and perfectly -serious. It was a hand like her own hand and -comfortingly strange and different. Gently and -slowly he guided her over the dewy grass. The -air that had rushed so wildly by them a few -minutes ago was still and calm and friendly; -the distant crowd harmless and insignificant. -The fireworks were over. The pathway they had -missed appeared under their feet and down it -they walked soberly, well apart, but still hand in -hand until they reached the borders of the dispersing -crowd. -</p> - -<h2 class="chapter" id="chapter-0-10"> -<a id="page-255" class="pagenum" title="255"></a> -CHAPTER X -</h2> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-1"> -1 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent first"> -<span class="firstchar">W</span><span class="postfirstchar">hen</span> Miriam sat talking everything over -with the Pernes at supper, on the first -night of the term, detached for ever from the -things that engrossed them, the school-work, -Julia Doyle’s future, the peculiarities of the -visiting teachers, the problem of the “unnatural -infatuation” of two of the boarders with each -other, the pros and cons of a revolutionary plan -for taking the girls in parties to the principal -London museums, she made the most of her -triumphant assertion that she had absolutely -nothing in view. She found herself decorously -waiting, armed at all points, through the silent -interval while the Pernes took in the facts of her -adventurous renunciation. She knew at once -that she would have to be desperately determined.... -But after all they could not do anything -with her. -</p> - -<p> -Sitting there, in the Perne boat, still taking an -oar and determined to fling herself into the sea -<a id="page-256" class="pagenum" title="256"></a> -... she ought not to have told them she was -leaving them just desperately, without anything -else in prospect; because they were so good, not -like employers. They would all feel for her. It -was just like speaking roughly at home. Well, it -was done. She glanced about. Miss Haddie, -across the table behind her habitual bowl of -bread and milk had a face—the face of a child -surprised by injustice. ‘I was right—I was -right,’ Miriam gasped to herself as the light -flowed in. ‘I’m escaping—just in time.... -Emotional tyranny.... What a good expression -... that’s the secret of Miss Haddie. It was -awful. She’s lost me. I’m free. Emotional -tyranny.’ ... ‘My hat, Mirry, you’re beyond -me. How much do you charge for that one. -Say it again,’ she seemed to hear Gerald’s -friendly voice. Go away Gerald. True. True. -All the truth and meaning of her friendship with -Miss Haddie in one single flash. How <em>fearfully</em> -interesting life was. Miss Haddie wrestling with -her, fighting for her soul; praying for her, almost -driving her to the early service and always ready -to quiver over her afterwards and to ask her if -she had been happy.... And now angry because -she was escaping. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-257" class="pagenum" title="257"></a> -She appealed to Miss Deborah and met a -flash of her beautiful soft piercing eyes. Her -delicate features quivered and wrinkled almost -to a smile. But Miss Deborah was afraid of Miss -Jenny who was already thinking and embarking -on little sounds. Miriam got away for a moment -in a tumult, with Miss Deborah. ‘Oh,’ she -shouted to her in the depths of her heart, ‘you -are heavenly young. You <em>know</em>. Life’s like -Robinson Crusoe. Your god’s a great big Robinson -Crusoe. You know that anything may happen -any minute. And it’s all right.’ She laughed -and shook staring at the salt-cellar and then -across at Miss Haddie whose eyes were full of -dark fear. Miss Haddie was alone and outraged. -‘She thinks I’m a fraud besides being vulgar -... life goes on and she’ll wonder and wonder -about me puzzled and alone.’ ... She smiled -at her her broadest, happiest, home smile, one -she had never yet reached at Banbury Park. -Flushing scarlet Miss Haddie smiled in return. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh—my dear girl,” Miss Jenny was saying -diffidently at her side, “isn’t it a little unwise—very -unwise—under the circumstances—with the -difficulties—well, in fact with all ye’ve just told -us—have ye thought?” When Miriam reached -<a id="page-258" class="pagenum" title="258"></a> -her broad smile Miss Jenny stopped and suddenly -chuckled. “My <em>dear</em> Miriam! I don’t know. -I suppose we don’t know ye. I suppose we -haven’t really known ye as ye are. But come, have -ye thought it out? No, ye haven’t,” she ended -gravely, looking along the table and flicking with -her forefinger the end of her little red nose. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam glanced at her profile and her insecure -disorderly bunch of hair. Miss Jenny was formidable. -She would recommend certificates. -Her eye wavered towards Miss Deborah. -</p> - -<p> -“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Deborah promptly, -“Miriam is not a child. She must do as she -thinks best.” -</p> - -<p> -“But don’t ye see my point, my dear Deborah? -I don’t say she’s a child. She’s a madcap. -That’s it.” She paused. “Of course I -daresay she’ll fall on her feet. Ye’re a most -extraordinary gel. I don’t know. Of course ye -can come <em>back</em>—or stay here in yer holidays. Ye -know <em>that</em>, my dear,” she concluded, suddenly -softening her sharp little voice. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t <em>want</em> to go,” cried Miriam with tear-filled -eyes. They were one person in the grip of -a decision. Miss Haddie sat up and moved her -elbows about. All four pairs of eyes held tears. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-259" class="pagenum" title="259"></a> -“My dear—I wish we could give ye more, -Miriam,” murmured Miss Jenny; “we don’t -want to lose ye, ye’ve pulled the lower school -together in a remarkable way”; Miss Deborah -was drawing little breaths of protest at this -descent into gross detail; “the children are -interested. We hear that from the parents. We -shall be able to give ye excellent testimonials.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I don’t care about that,” responded -Miriam desperately. ‘Fancy—Great Scott—parents—behind -all my sore throats—I’ve never -heard about that. It’s all coming out now,’ she -thought. -</p> - -<p> -“Well—my dear—now——” began Miss -Jenny hesitatingly. Feeling herself slipping, -Miriam clung harshly to her determination and -drew herself up to offer the set of the pretty -blouse Gerald and Harriett had bought her in -Brighton as a seal on her irrevocable decision to -break with Banbury Park. It was a delicate sheeny -green silk, with soft tuckers. -</p> - -<p> -“What steps have ye taken?” asked Miss Jenny -in a quizzical business-like tone. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s very kind of you,” said Miriam formally, -and went on to hint vaguely and convincingly at -the existence of some place in a family in the -<a id="page-260" class="pagenum" title="260"></a> -country that would be sure to fall to her lot -through the many friends to whom Eve had -written on her behalf, turning away from the -feast towards the freedom of the untenanted -part of the room. The sitting had to be brought -to an end.... In a moment she would be utterly -routed.... Her lame statements were the end -of the struggle. She knew she was demonstrating -in her feeble broken tones a sort of blind strength -they knew nothing of and that they would leave -it at that, whatever they thought, if only there -were no more talk. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-2"> -2 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -When they had left the room and Flora came -in for the supper things, instead of sitting as -usual at the far end of the table pretending to -read, she stood planted on the hearthrug watching -her. Flora’s hands were small and pale and -serenely despairing like her face. She cleared the -table quietly. She had nothing to hope for. -She did not know she had nothing to hope for. -Whatever happened she would go quietly on -doing things ... in the twilight ... on a sort of -edge. People would die. Perhaps people had -already died in her family. But she would always -be the same. One day she would die, perhaps of -<a id="page-261" class="pagenum" title="261"></a> -something hard and slow and painful with that -small yellowish constitution. -</p> - -<p> -She would not be able to go on looking serene -and despairing with people round her bed helping -her. When she died she would wait quietly with -nothing to do, blind and wondering. Death -would take her into a great festival—things for her -for herself. She would not believe it and would -put up her hands to keep it off. But it would -be all round her in great laughter, like the deep -roaring and crying of a flood. Then she would -cry like a child. -</p> - -<p> -Why was it that for some people, for herself, -life could be happy now. It was possible now -to hear things laugh just by setting your teeth -and doing things; breaking into things, chucking -things about, refusing to be held. It made even -the dreadful past seem wonderful. All the days -here, the awful days, each one awful and hateful -and painful. -</p> - -<p> -Flora had gathered up her tray and disappeared, -quietly closing the door. But Flora had known -and somehow shared her triumph, felt her position -in the school as she stood planted and happy -in the middle of the Pernes’ hearthrug. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-3"> -<a id="page-262" class="pagenum" title="262"></a> -3 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -“An island is a piece of land entirely surrounded -by water.” -</p> - -<p> -Miriam kept automatically repeating these -words to herself as the newly returned children -clung about her the next morning in the schoolroom. -It was a morning of heavy wind and rain -and the schoolroom was dark, and chilly with -its summer-screened fireplace. The children -seemed to her for the first time small and -pathetic. She was deserting them. After fifteen -months of strange intimacy she was going away -for ever. -</p> - -<p> -During the usual routine days the little girls -always seemed large and formidable. She was -quite sure they were not so to the other teachers, -and she hesitated when she thought over this -difference, between the explanation which accounted -for their size and redoubtableness by -her own feebleness and the one to which she -inclined when she felt her success as a teacher. -</p> - -<p> -She had discovered that the best plan was to -stand side by side with the children in face of -the things they had to learn, treating them as -equals and fellow-adventurers, giving explanations -<a id="page-263" class="pagenum" title="263"></a> -when these were necessary, as if they were -obvious and might have been discovered by the -children themselves, never as if they were possessions -of her own, to be imparted, never claiming -a knowledge superior to their own. ‘The -business of the teacher is to make the children -independent, to get them to think for themselves, -and that’s much more important than -whether they get to know facts,’ she would say -irrelevantly to the Pernes whenever the question -of teaching came up. She bitterly resented their -vision of children as malleable subordinates. And -there were many moments when she seemed to -be silently exchanging this determination of hers -with her pupils. Good or bad, she knew it was -the secret of her influence with them, and so -long as she was faithful to it both she and they -enjoyed their hours together. Very often she -was tired, feeble with fatigue and scamping all -opportunities; this too they understood and -never took advantage of her. One or two of them -would even when she failed try to keep things -going on her own method. All this was sheer -happiness to her, the bread and wine of her days. -</p> - -<p> -But now and again, perhaps during the mid-morning -recess, this impersonal relationship gave -<a id="page-264" class="pagenum" title="264"></a> -way and the children clung fawning all round her, -passionately competing for nearness, touching and -clinging and snatching for kisses. There was no -thought or uprightness or laughter then, their -hands were quick and eloquent and their eyes -wide and deeply smiling with those strange -women’s smiles. Sometimes she could respond -in kind, answering to their smiles and caresses, -making gentle foolish sounds and feeling their -passion rise to a frenzy of adoration. The little -deprecating consoling sounds that they made as -they clung told her that if she chose steadily to -remain always gentle and deprecating and consoling -and reproachful she could dominate them -as persons and extort in the long run a complete -personal obedience to herself, so that they would -do their work for her sake and live by and through -her, adoring her—as a goddess—and hating her. -Even as they fawned she knew they were fighting -between their aching desire for a perfection of -tenderness in her and their fear lest she should -fulfil the desire. She was always tempted for an -instant to yield and fling herself irrevocably into -the abyss, letting the children go on one by one -into the upper school, carrying as her gift only a -passionate memory such as she herself had for -<a id="page-265" class="pagenum" title="265"></a> -one of her nursemaids; leaving her downstairs -with an endless succession of new loves, different, -but always the same. She would become like a -kind of nun, making a bare subsistence, but so -beloved always, so quivering and tender and responsive -that human love would never fail her, -and when strength failed there would be hands -held out to shelter her decline. But the vision -never held her for more than a moment. There -was something in the thought of such pure personal -sentiment that gave her a feeling of treachery -towards the children. Mentally she flung them -out and off, made them stand upright and estranged. -She could not give them personal love. -She did not want to; nor to be entangled with -them. They were going to grow up into North -London women, most of them loudly scorning -everything that was not materially profitable; -these would remember her with pity—amusement. -A few would escape. These would remember -her at strange moments that were coming -for them, moments when they would recognise -the beauty of things like ‘the Psalm of Life’ -that she had induced them to memorise without -understanding it. -</p> - -<p> -This morning a sense of their softness and -<a id="page-266" class="pagenum" title="266"></a> -helplessness went to her heart. She had taught -them so little. But she had forced them to be -impersonal. Almost savagely she had done that. -She had never taken them by a trick.... -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-4"> -4 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -And now they were going to be Julia’s children. -</p> - -<p> -Julia would teach them—alone there in the -room with them, filling the room for them—in -her own way.... -</p> - -<p> -There would be no more talk about general -ideas.... -</p> - -<p> -She would have to keep on the “object” -lessons, because the Pernes had been so pleased -with the idea and the children had liked them. -There would still be those moments, with balls -for the solar system and a candle for the sun, and -the blinds down. But there would not be anything -like that instant when all the eyes round -the table did nothing but watch the movement -of a shadow on a ball ... the relief afterwards, -the happiness and the moment of intense love -in the room—never to be forgotten, all of them -knowing each other, all their differences gone -away, even the clever watchful eyes of the -cheating little Jewess, real and unconscious for a -<a id="page-267" class="pagenum" title="267"></a> -moment. Julia would be watching the children -as much as the shadow, and the children would -never quite forget Julia. She would get to know -a great deal about the children, but there would -be no reverence for big cold outside things. She -would teach them to be kind. “Little dorlings.” -She thought all children were darlings and talked -to them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring -way. If one or two were not, it was the fault -of the way they were treated, something in the -‘English’ way of dealing with them. Nearly -all the elder girls she disapproved of, they were -no longer children—they were English. She was -full of contempt and indignant laughter for them, -and of pity for the ‘wee things’ who were -growing up. Yet she got on with them all and -had the secret of managing them without letting -them see her feelings. -</p> - -<p> -There <em>was</em> something specially bad in the English -way of bringing up children. Not the -‘education’ exactly, but something else, something -in the way they were treated. Something -in the way they were brought up made English -women so awful—with their smiles. Julia did -not smile or smirk. She laughed a great deal, -often to tears. And she would often suddenly -<a id="page-268" class="pagenum" title="268"></a> -beam. It was like a light coming from under her -thick white skin. Was Julia the answer to the -awfulness of Englishwomen? If, as Julia said, -the children were all right and only the girls and -grown-ups awful, it must be something in the -way the children were treated. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-5"> -5 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Yet Julia was not impersonal. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Deborah, ... teaching the whole school -to be ‘good’ in the Fairchild way; with her -beautiful quivering nodding black head held high—blinking, -and not looking at the girls separately—in -a grave voice, full of Scripture history, but -broken all the time, quivering with laughter and -shoutings which she never uttered ... hilarious, -... she taught a system of things she had been -brought up in. But all the same, she rushed along -sweeping the girls with her ... and the girls -believed her. If I taught her system I should -have false lips and the girls would not believe -me. If ever anyone had the courage to tell her -of any dreadful thing, she would weep it all -away; and the person would begin all over again -certainly, as much as possible in the Fairchild -way ... again and again until they died. Supposing -<a id="page-269" class="pagenum" title="269"></a> -a murderer came and sat down in the -hall? Supposing Miss Deborah had been brought -up as a Thug—killing people from behind?... -</p> - -<p> -Miss Jenny, exasperatedly trying to wake all -the girls up to the importance of public life, -sitting round in their blouses and skirts, half-amused -and sometimes trying to argue, because -the tone of Miss Jenny’s voice made them sorry -for the other side. Politics, politics, reading -history and the newspapers, the importance of -history if you wanted to have any understanding -of your own times. To come into the room to -take the class after Miss Jenny always meant -finding her stating and protesting and tapping -the end of her nose, and the air hot and excited, -and the girls in some sort of state of excitement -which could only be got over by being very quiet -and pretending not to notice them except to be -very surprised if there were any disturbance. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Haddie, in horror of their badness, teaching -them to master little set tasks because it was -shocking to be an idler; loving the sinner but -hating the sin much more, with a sort of horror -like a girl, a horror in her eyes that was the same -as the horror of insects, fearing God who was so -close in the room, gloomily, all the time—wanting -<a id="page-270" class="pagenum" title="270"></a> -to teach them all to fawn on Christ. Christ -would make everything all right if you made up -to him. “Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. -He faileth not and thou art dear.” Awful.... -</p> - -<p> -And then Julia, making the children love her, -herself, as a person. They would all love her in -time. Even Burra after her first grief would -fling herself upon Julia.... Gertie would not -though, ever. Cold, quiet little Gertie, the -doctor’s daughter. She would make no response -however much she were kissed and called a little -darling. Gertie even as a child was the English -thing that Julia disliked. Julia, with all her -success was not the answer to the problem of why -Englishwomen were abominable. She left out -so much. “Julia, you know, I think things are -more important than people. Much more. -People, if you let them for one single instant, -grin and pounce upon you and try to make you -forget things. But they’re there all the time and -you have to go back to them,” and Julia laughing -suddenly aloud, “Ah—you’re a duck—a tonic.” -And everyone was a little afraid of Julia, the -children, the boarders whom she managed so -high-handedly with her laughter, even the Pernes. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-6"> -<a id="page-271" class="pagenum" title="271"></a> -6 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Perhaps Julia’s ‘personal’ way and the English -‘personal’ way were somehow both wrong and -horrid ... girls’ schools were horrid, bound -to be horrid, sly, mean, somehow tricky and -poisonous. It was a hopeless problem. The -English sentimental way was wrong, the way of -Englishwomen with children—it made them -grow up with those treacherous smiles. -</p> - -<p> -The scientific and ‘æsthetic’ way, the way of -the Putney school—ah, blessed escape!... But -it left nearly all the girls untouched. -</p> - -<p> -Julia’s sentimental way was better than the -English sentimental way; its smiles had tears and -laughter too, they were not so hypocritical. -But it was wrong. It was the strongest thing -though in the Wordsworth House school. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-7"> -7 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Julia was not happy. She dreamed fearful -dreams.... Why did she speak of them as if -they were something that no one in this English -world into which she had come would understand? -She had her strange nights all to herself -there across the landing; either lying awake or -<a id="page-272" class="pagenum" title="272"></a> -sleeping and moaning all the time. The girls -in her room slept like rocks and did not know -that she moaned. They knew she had nightmares -and sometimes cried out and woke them. -But passing the open door late at night one could -hear her moaning softly on every breath with -closed lips. That was Julia, her life, all laid bare, -moaning.... She knows she is alive and that -there is no escape from being alive. But it has -never made her feel breathless with joy. She -laughs all day, at everybody and everything, and -at night when she is naked and alone she moans; -moan, moan, moan, heart-broken; wind and rain -alone in the dark in a great open space. -</p> - -<p> -She sometimes hinted at things, those real unknown -things that were her own life unshared -by anybody; in a low soft terrible broken voice, -with eyes dilated and quivering lips; quite suddenly, -with hardly any words. And she would -speak passionately about the sea, how she hated -it and could not look at it or listen to it; and of -woods, the horror of woods, the trees and the -shadowiness, making her crisp her hands—ah -yes, <em>les mains crispées</em>, that was the word; -and she had laughed when it was explained -to her. -</p> - -<p> -<a id="page-273" class="pagenum" title="273"></a> -It was not that she had troubles at home. -Those things she seemed to find odd and amusing, -like a story of the life of some other person—poverty -and one of her sisters ‘very peculiar,’ -another engaged to a scamp and another going -to be a shop-assistant, and two more, ‘doties’ -very young, being brought up in the country -with an aunt. Everything that happened to -people and all the things people did seemed to her -funny and amusing, “tickled her to death.” -Harriett’s engagement amused her really, though -she pretended to be immensely interested and -asked numbers of questions in a rich deep awe-struck -voice ... blarney.... But she wanted to -hear everything, and she never forgot anything -she was told. And she had been splendid about -the operation—really anxious, quite conscious -and awake across the landing that awful night -and really making you feel she was glad afterwards. -“Poor Mrs. Henderson—I was never so -glad in my life”—and always seeming to know -her without having her explained. She was real -there, and so strange in telling the Pernes about -it and making it all easy. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-8"> -<a id="page-274" class="pagenum" title="274"></a> -8 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Miriam leaned upon Julia more and more as -the term went on, hating and fearing her for her -secret sorrow and wondering and wondering why -she appeared to have such a curious admiration -and respect for herself. She could understand -her adoration for the Pernes; she saw them as -they were and had a phrase which partly explained -them, “no more knowledge of the world -than babes”—but what was it in herself that -Julia seemed so fiercely and shyly to admire? -</p> - -<p> -She knew she could not let Julia know how she -enjoyed washing her hands, in several soapings, -in the cold water, before dinner. They would -go their favourite midday walk, down the long -avenue in the park through the little windings of -the shrubbery and into the chrysanthemum show, -strolling about in the large green-house, all the -girls glad of the escape from a set walk, reading -over every day the strange names on the little -wooden stakes, jokes and gigglings and tiresomenesses -all kept within bounds by the happiness -that there was, inside the great quiet steamy -glass-house, in the strange raw bitter scent of the -great flowers, in the strange huge way they stood, -<a id="page-275" class="pagenum" title="275"></a> -and with all their differences of shape and colour -staring quietly at you, all in the same way with -one expression. They were startling, amongst -their grey leaves; and they looked startled and -held their heads as if they knew they were beautiful. -The girls always hurried to get to the -chrysanthemums and came away all of them -walking in twos relieved and happy back through -the cold park to dinner. But Julia, who loved -the flowers, though she made fun of their names in -certain moods and dropped them <em>sotto voce</em> into -the general conversation at the dinner-table -would have, Miriam felt sure, scorned her own -feeling of satisfaction in the great hand-washing -and the good dinner. And she detested pease -pudding with the meat, and boiled suet pudding -with treacle. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-9"> -9 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -She ate scarcely anything herself, keeping her -attention free and always seeming to be waiting -for someone to say something that was never said. -Her broad-shouldered, curiously buoyant, heavy, -lounging, ill-clad form, her thick white skin, her -eyes like a grey-blue sea, her dark masses of fine -hair had long been for Miriam the deepest nook -in the meal-time gatherings—she rested there -<a id="page-276" class="pagenum" title="276"></a> -unafraid of anything the boarders might say or do. -She would never be implicated. Julia would take -care of that, heading everything off and melting -up the difficulties into some absurdity that would -set all the Pernes talking. Julia lounged easily -there, controlling the atmosphere of the table. -And the Pernes knew it unconsciously, they must -know it; any English person would know it -... though they talked about her untidiness -and lack of purpose and application. Julia was a -deep, deep nook, full of thorns. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-10"> -10 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Julia had spoiled the news of Sarah’s engagement -to Bennett Brodie. It had been such a -wonderful moment. The thick envelope coming -at midday in Bennett’s hand-writing—such a -surprise—asking Miss Perne’s permission to read -it at the dinner-table—reading the startling -sentences in the firm curved hand—‘assert my -privilege as your prospective brother-in-law by -announcing that I’m on the track of a job that I -think will suit you down to the ground,’ the -curious splash, gravy on the cloth as somebody -put the great dish on the table, far-away vexation -and funny familiar far-away discomfort all -<a id="page-277" class="pagenum" title="277"></a> -round the table, ‘no more of this until I’ve got -full particulars on the tapis; but it may, oh -Grecian Mariamne, not be without interest to -you to hear that that sister of yours does not -appear to be altogether averse to taking over the -management of the new house and the new -practice and the new practitioner, and that the -new practitioner is hereby made anew in a sense -that is more of an amazement to him than it -doubtless will be to your intuitive personality. -That life <a id="corr-21"></a>had such happiness in store for him is -not the least of the many surprises that have -come his way. He can only hope to prove not -unworthy; and so a hearty au revoir from yours -affectionately.’ ... Then Bennett would always -be there amongst the home things ... with his -strange way of putting things; he would give -advice and make suggestions ... and Sarah’s -letter ... a glance at it showing short sentences, -things spoken in a low awe-struck voice.... -‘We had been to an entertainment together.... -Coming home along the avenue. I was so surprised. -He was so quiet and serious and humble.’ ... -All the practical things gone away in a moment, -leaving only a sound of deep music, ... -mornings and evenings. Sarah alone now, at -<a id="page-278" class="pagenum" title="278"></a> -last, a person, with mornings and evenings and -her own reality in everything. No one could -touch her or interfere any more. She was standing -aside, herself. She would always be Sarah, -someone called Sarah. She need never worry -any more, but go on doing things.... And -then looking up and finding all the table eagerly -watching and saying suddenly to Miss Perne -‘another of my sisters is engaged’ and everybody, -even Trixie and Beadie, excited and interested. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-11"> -11 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -The news, the great great news, wonderful -Sarah away somewhere in the background with -her miracle—telling it out to the table of women -was a sort of public announcement that life was -moving out on to wider levels. They all knew it, -pinned there; and how dear and glad they were, -for a moment, making it real, acknowledging by -their looks how wonderful it was. Sarah, floating -above them all, caught up out of the darkness of -everyday life.... And then Julia’s eyes—veiled -for a moment while she politely stirred and -curved her lips to a smile—cutting through it -all, seeming to say that nothing was really touched -or changed. But when the table had turned to -<a id="page-279" class="pagenum" title="279"></a> -jealousy and resentment and it was time to pretend -to hide the shaft of light and cease to listen to -the music, Julia, cool and steady, covered everything -up and made conversation. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-12"> -12 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -And the thought of Julia was always a disturbance -in going to tea with the Brooms. Grace -Broom was the only girl in the school for whom -she had an active aversion. She put one or two -questions about them, ‘You really like going -there?’ ‘You’ll go on seeing them after you -leave?’ and concluded carelessly ‘that’s a -mystery to me——’ -</p> - -<p> -Sitting at tea shut in in the Brooms’ little -dining-room with the blinds down and the dark -red rep curtains drawn and the gas-light and -brilliant fire-light shining on the brilliantly -polished davenport in the window-space and the -thick bevelled glass of the Satsuma-laden mahogany -sideboard, the dim cracked oil-painting of Shakespeare -above the mantel-shelf, the dark old landscapes -round the little walls, the new picture of -Queen Victoria leaning on a stick and supported -by Hindu servants, receiving a minister, the solid -silver tea-service, the fine heavily edged linen -<a id="page-280" class="pagenum" title="280"></a> -table-cover, the gleaming, various, delicately -filled dishes, the great bowl of flowers, the heavy, -carven, unmoved, age-long dreaming faces of -the three women with their living interested eyes, -she would suddenly, in the midst of a deep, calm -undisturbing silence become aware of Julia. -Julia would not be impressed by the surroundings, -the strange silent deeps of the room. She would -discover only that she was with people who -revered “our Queen” and despised “the working -classes.” It would be no satisfaction to her to -sit drinking from very exquisite old china, cup -after cup of delicious very hot tea, laughing to -tears over the story of the curate who knelt insecurely -on a high kneeling stool at evening -service in a country church and crashing suddenly -down in the middle of a long prayer went on -quietly intoning from the floor, or the madeira -cake that leapt from the cake-dish on an at-home -day and rolled under the sofa. She would laugh, -but she would look from face to face, privately, -and wonder. She would not really like the three -rather dignified seated forms with the brilliant, -tear-filled eyes, sitting on over tea, telling anecdotes, -and tales of long strange illnesses suffered by -strange hidden people in quiet houses, weddings, -<a id="page-281" class="pagenum" title="281"></a> -deaths, the stories of families separated for life -by quarrels over money, stories of far-off holidays -in the country; strange sloping rooms and farmhouse -adventures; the cow that walked into the -bank in a little country town.... Mrs. Philps’ -first vision, as a bride, of the English Lakes, the -tone of her voice as she talked about all these -things. -</p> - -<p> -The getting together and sitting about and -laughing in the little room would never be to her -like being in a world that was independent of all -the other worlds. She would not want to go -again and again and sit, just the four women, at -tea, talking. The silent, beautifully kept, experienced -old furniture all over the house would -not fill her with fear and delight and strength. -It would be no satisfaction to her to put on her -things in front of the huge plate glass of the -enormous double-fronted wardrobe in the spare-room -with its old Bruges ware and its faded -photographs of the interiors of unknown churches, -rows and rows of seats and a faded blur where -the altar was, thorn-crowned heads and bold -scrolly texts embroidered in crimson and gold -silken mounted and oak-framed. And when she -went home alone along the quiet, dark, narrow, -<a id="page-282" class="pagenum" title="282"></a> -tree-filled little roadways she would not feel gay -and strong and full of personality. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-13"> -13 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -On prize-giving day, Miriam’s last day, Julia -seemed to disappear. For the first time since -she had come to the school it was as if she were -not there. She was neither talking nor watching -nor steering anything at all. Again and again -during the ceremonies Miriam looked at her -sitting or moving about, pale and plain and -shabby, one of the crowd of girls. -</p> - -<p> -The curious power of the collected girls, their -steady profiles, their movements, their unconcerned -security rose and flooded round Miriam -as it had done when she first came to the school. -But she no longer feared it. It was going on, -harsh and unconscious and determined, next -term. She was glad of it; the certainty thrilled -her; she wanted to convey some of her gladness -to Julia, but could not catch her eye. -</p> - -<p> -Her gladness carried her through the most -tedious part of the day’s performances, the sitting -in a listening concourse, doors open, in the schoolroom, -while some ten of the girls went one by -one with stricken faces into the little drawing-room -<a id="page-283" class="pagenum" title="283"></a> -and played the piece they had learned during -the term. Their shame and confusion, the anger -and desperation of their efforts, the comments -of the listeners and their violent ironic applause -roused her to an intensity of sympathy. How -they despised the shame-faced tinkling; how they -admired the martyrs. -</p> - -<p> -Their strong indifference seemed to centre in -the cold pale scornful face of Jessie Wheeler, -sitting squarely there with defiant eyes, waiting -for the future; the little troop of children she -dreamed of. -</p> - -<p> -These North London girls would be scornful -mocking fiancées. They would be adored by -their husbands. Secretly they would forget -their husbands in their houses and children and -friends. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-14"> -14 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -Julia was the last player. She sidled swiftly -out of the room; even her habitual easy halting -lounge seemed to have deserted her; and <a id="corr-24"></a>almost at -once, slow and tragic and resignedly weeping -came the opening notes of Chopin’s Funeral -March. Sitting in the front row of the little -batch of children from the lower school who -faced the room from the window bay, Miriam -<a id="page-284" class="pagenum" title="284"></a> -saw, in fancy, Julia’s face as she sat at the drawing-room -piano—the face she had when she talked of -the woods and the sea. The whole of the long -march, including the major passage, was the voice -of Julia’s strange desolation. She played painfully, -very slowly and carefully, with tender -respectful attention, almost without emphasis. -She was not in the least panic-stricken; anyone -could feel that; but she had none of the musical -assurance that would have filled the girls with -uneasy admiration and disgust. They were -pleased and amused. And far away, Julia was -alone with life and death. She made two worlds -plain, the scornful world of the girls and her own -shadow-filled life. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam longed for the performance to be at an -end so that the girls might reassert themselves. -</p> - -<h3 class="no" id="subchap-0-10-15"> -15 -</h3> - -<p class="noindent"> -An important stirring was going on at the little -table where Miss Cramp sat with the Pernes; -only their heads and shoulders showing above the -piles of prize-books. Miss Perne stood up and -faced the room smiling and gently muttering. -Presently her voice grew clear and she was making -little statements and pronouncing names, clearly -<a id="page-285" class="pagenum" title="285"></a> -and with gay tender emphasis, the names of tall -bold girls in the first class. One by one they -struggled to the table and stood gentle and disturbed -with flushed enlightened faces. Not a -single girl could stand unconcerned before Miss -Perne. Even Polly Allen’s brow was shorn of -its boldness. -</p> - -<p> -The girls knew. They would remember something -of what the Pernes had tried to give them. -</p> - -<p> -The room was unbearably stuffy. The prize-giving -was at an end. Miriam’s own children -had struggled to the table and come back to her -for the last time. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Perne was making a little speech ... -about Miss Henderson’s forthcoming departure. -Why did people do these formal things? She -would be expected to make some response. For -a moment she had the impulse to get up and rush -away through the hall, get upstairs and pack and -send for a four-wheeler. But from behind came -hands dragging at a fold of her dress and the -sound of Burra’s hard sobbing. She felt the child’s -head bowed against her hip. A child at her side -twisted its hands together and sat with its head -held high, drawing sharp breaths. Miss Perne’s -voice went on. She was holding up an umbrella, -<a id="page-286" class="pagenum" title="286"></a> -a terrible, expensive, silver-mounted one. The -girls had subscribed. -</p> - -<p> -Miriam sat with beating heart waiting for Miss -Perne’s voice to cease, pressing back towards the -support of Burra and other little outstretched -clutchings and the general snuffling of her class, -grappling with the amazement of hearing from -various quarters of the room violent and repeated -nose-blowings, and away near the door in the -voice of a girl she had hardly spoken to a deep -heavy contralto sobbing. -</p> - -<p> -Presently she was on her feet with the tightly-rolled -silken twist of the umbrella heavy in her -hands. Her stiff lips murmured incoherent -thanks in a strange thin voice—Harriett’s voice -with the life gone from it. -</p> - -<p class="endnote"> -<span class="sc">Note.</span>—<em>A further instalment of this book is in -preparation.</em> -</p> - -<p class="printer"> -PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br /> -WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH -</p> - -<div class="ads"> -<p class="h287 hdr"> -<a id="page-287" class="pagenum" title="287"></a> -<span class="line1">A NEW SERIES</span><br /> -<span class="line2">Modern Plays</span> -</p> - -<p> -A New Series of Plays by present-day English playwrights, also -translations of the dramatists of the Continent. Including the -dramatic work of -</p> - - <div class="list-container"> -<p class="list"> -STRINDBERG<br /> -TCHEKHOFF<br /> -SUDERMANN<br /> -HAUPTMANN<br /> -JOHN GALSWORTHY<br /> -EDEN PHILLPOTTS<br /> -ALFRED SUTRO<br /> -MRS. W. K. 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Crown 8vo, 5s. net; postage, 4d.</em> -</p> - -<p class="i subh"> -PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. LAWRENCE’S PREVIOUS<br /> -BOOK OF VERSE “LOVE POEMS” -</p> - -<p> -“The book of the moment in verse.”—<em>Bookman.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Imagination, apprehension, economy of means, and delicate ecstatic -beauty are in these verses.”—<em>The Times.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“We have nothing but praise for this book of love poems.”—<em>English -Review.</em> -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="h290 hdr"> -<a id="page-290" class="pagenum" title="290"></a> -<span class="line1">A UNIFORM EDITION OF THE</span><br /> -<span class="line2">Works of D. H. Lawrence</span> -</p> - -<p class="i center"> -Cloth Gilt. Crown 8vo, 6s. each -</p> - -<p class="s book"> -<b>Sons and Lovers. <span class="smaller">A Novel</span></b> -</p> - -<p class="s book"> -<b>The Prussian Officer, <span class="smaller">and other Stories</span></b> -</p> - -<p class="s book"> -<b>The Trespasser. <span class="smaller">A Novel</span></b> -</p> - -<p class="s book"> -<b>The White Peacock. <span class="smaller">A Novel</span></b> -</p> - -<hr class="hr3" /> - -<p class="s book"> -<b>The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd. <span class="smaller">A Play.</span></b> -(<em>3s. 6d. net</em>) -</p> - -<p class="s book"> -<b>Love Poems</b> (<em>5s. net</em>) -</p> - -<p> -“D. H. Lawrence is a master.”—<em>Daily Telegraph.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“‘Sons and Lovers’ is a great book.”—<em>Standard.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“No novel of recent years is the equal of ‘The Trespasser.’”—<em>Observer.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Mr. Lawrence, with this volume (’The Prussian Officer’), takes his -place in the first flight of modern writers.”—<em>English Review.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“‘The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd’ has the qualities of finished craftsmanship. -It is packed with significance and suggestion. It has the -power to exalt and enrich the mind and the emotions.”—<em>Times.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“‘The White Peacock’ aroused enthusiasm and now ‘The Trespasser’ -has appeared. It is no common novel. Helena is a grand full -length portrait. There are pieces of writing which could not be surpassed.... -A picture as powerful as any painted by an artist in -words.”—<em>Saturday Review</em>, in a review of “The Trespasser.” -</p> - -<p> -“Evidently written at a white heat of inspiration. Wonderfully sustained. -A remarkable book to be read by the discriminating and the -experienced.”—<em>The Morning Post</em>, in a review of “The Trespasser.” -</p> - -<p> -“A wonderful piece of portraiture. Strong, admirable and pathetic.”—<em>Daily -Telegraph</em>, in a review of “Sons and Lovers.” -</p> - -<p> -“A study of warring loves and passions, containing much beauty. -The sheer hard matter of living is vividly presented; the toil of existence -in village and town, the solace of nature, the joy of respite from labour -admirably realised and presented.”—<em>Times</em>, in a review of “Sons and -Lovers.” -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="hdr"> -<a id="page-291" class="pagenum" title="291"></a> -THE READERS’ LIBRARY -</p> - -<p class="subh"> -New Volume -</p> - -<p class="author"> -PRINCE KROPOTKIN -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Ideals and Realities in Russian -Literature.</b> By <span class="sc">Prince Peter -Kropotkin</span>. <em>New and Revised Edition.</em> Type Reset. In -the Readers’ Library. <em>Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<p> -This very important book has been unobtainable for some -time, but it now appears with author’s alterations and corrections, -so that it is entirely up to date. -</p> - -<p> -The interest in Russian literature which has grown so -remarkably during the last few years is likely to increase -still further in the near future. Until the nineties, the Russian -writers, with the single exception of Tolstoi, were unknown -in this country. To-day translations of Russian fiction and -drama are published very frequently, and the writings of -Tourguéniev, Dostoieffsky, Tchekoff, Gorky are known to a -great number of readers. -</p> - -<p> -In order to appreciate and understand Russian literature -an authoritative volume such as this is essential to the reader. -Prince Kropotkin surveys the whole field—Early folk literature—Folklore—Songs—Sagas—Poetry—Drama -and Fiction—right -to the present day. He gives full biographical information -concerning the outstanding figures, with a full and critical -account of their work and ideas. The lesser figures are -treated proportionately, so as to form a full and informative -as well as critical volume. The tone of the book is “popular” -in the sense that it is very easily read and apprehended. -This does not mean that the subject is treated in any way -superficially. -</p> - -<p> -A work of sound criticism which should be in every public -and private library. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -<a id="page-292" class="pagenum" title="292"></a> -New Volume -</p> - -<p class="author"> -FRANCIS STOPFORD -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Life’s Great Adventure.</b> By <span class="sc">Francis -Stopford</span>, author of “The Toil of Life.” <em>Crown 8vo, -2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Francis Stopford’s ideas on life and service are expressed -in these essays for those on the threshold of life. They are -addressed primarily to those who have yet to face the more -serious problems of life, not the very young, but those entering -on the responsibilities of parentage, or those who are to -be counted on as being in charge of the succeeding generation. -</p> - -<p class="s i center"> -⁂ <em>A full descriptive booklet of over forty volumes of the Readers’ -Library, illustrated with portraits, can be had free on request.</em> -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -An American Poet -</p> - -<p class="author"> -WALT MASON -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Horse Sense. <span class="smaller">Poems.</span></b> By <span class="sc">Walt Mason</span>. -With Prefatory Letter by <span class="sc">John Masefield</span>. <em>Fcap. 8vo, -2s. 6d. net; postage, 4d.</em> -</p> - -<p> -Walt Mason’s verse has attracted a great deal of attention -when it has appeared from time to time in the daily press. -He has been described as the high priest of ‘horse sense,’ and -this collection of his prose poems is calculated to reveal him -particularly in the light of a practical man of vigorous mind, -whose sense of values is sound and who expresses his views -tersely and emphatically. He writes with singular facility, -and has complete mastery of rhythm and rhyme. His range -is from grave to gay, from wholehearted endorsement of some -homely virtue to vigorous condemnation of cant, fraud, and -shams of all kinds. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Mr. John Masefield</b> writes:—“I read Walt Mason with great delight. -His poems have wonderful fun and kindliness, and I have enjoyed them -the more for their having so strongly all the qualities I liked so much in -my American friends when I was living in the United States. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know any book which has struck me as so genuine a voice of -the American nature. -</p> - -<p> -“I am glad that his work is gaining a wider and wider recognition.” -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -<a id="page-293" class="pagenum" title="293"></a> -South America as it is To-day -</p> - -<p class="author"> -ROGER W. BABSON -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>The Future of South America.</b> -By <span class="sc">Roger W. Babson</span>. With 16 Illustrations and Two -Maps. 407 pages. <em>Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net; postage, 6d.</em> -</p> - -<p> -There is astonishingly little in the literature about South -America which explains what that continent really means to -business people who are open to extend their trade in foreign -markets. Such an interpretation is given in this book, -together with an interesting account of the picturesque and -romantic sides of South American life, its history, customs -and resources, also information for the business man. Mr. -Babson is known as a writer on economic questions and as -an interpreter of statistical data and industrial and business -conditions. He has for years methodically studied South -America and its business possibilities. He is peculiarly fitted -to draw conclusions about South America as an economic -problem, which will be of the utmost value to the banker, -manufacturer, exporter, investor, and the general student of -foreign relations, affairs, and trade. -</p> - -<p> -The book is especially authoritative and official on account -of the fact that leading government officials, usually the -Presidents of the various countries, have co-operated with -Mr. Babson. -</p> - -<p> -As a result his book should prove a suggestive volume for -all having or hoping to have business relations with the -countries described and also for the general reader who is -interested in the economic side of the problem. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -<a id="page-294" class="pagenum" title="294"></a> -CHARLES M. DOUGHTY -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>The Titans. <span class="smaller">A Dramatic Poem.</span></b> By -<span class="sc">Charles M. Doughty</span>, author of “Travels in Arabia -Deserta,” “The Dawn in Britain,” “The Cliffs,” “The -Clouds,” etc. <em>Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s. net; postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<p class="i center"> -SOME PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. DOUGHTY’S -EARLIER WORKS -</p> - -<p> -“The <em>sense of England</em> is the burning thing in these two dramas; the -sense of England as only wartime can make it, which glows through all -the magnificent monologue with which ‘The Cliffs’ open, or which -brightens into most exquisite flame in ‘The Clouds.’”—<span class="sc">Lascelles Abercrombie</span>, in the <em>Quarterly Review</em>. -</p> - -<p> -“Mr. Doughty occupies a position by himself. The vigorous impulse -and imaginative strength of his genius have created their own medium. -Work which owes its power to the bigness of its design and the sheer -weight of imagination and intellect. -</p> - -<p> -“This is an amazingly vivid picture of the fury and wreckage of war. -In part of the poem Mr. Doughty approaches more nearly to the idyllic -than in any other of his works. It is a great work, full of faith and -thought and compelling sincerity, and rich poetic beauty.”—<em>Spectator.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Mr. Doughty is the prophet of Patriotism. Wandering in the Muses’ -Garden, he has received the divine call to chant patriot hymns, and it is -his mission to rouse his country to a sense of the wrath to come in the -guise of ‘air-flying Eastlanders.’ ‘The Clouds,’ is a passionate plea for -the nation. His verse is astoundingly vivid and vehement, every now -and then breaking into a startling beauty.”—<em>English Review.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Mr. Doughty’s ideas and his outlook might be those of Nelson’s captains -could they be called back to life. He thrills our imagination. His -historical sense is so vital and far-reaching, his patriotic imagination so -deeply rooted in the soil of our forbears’ achievements.... A poem that, -we venture to think, will become a classic. ‘The Clouds,’ as an achievement, -possesses a creative actuality, a breadth of vision, an intensity of -imaginative life. The effect of the poem is cumulative, and no quotation -can convey any idea of the atmosphere of the whole varied picture.”—<em>The -Nation.</em> -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -<a id="page-295" class="pagenum" title="295"></a> -A New Impression -</p> - -<p class="author"> -JOHN MORSE -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>An Englishman in the Russian -Ranks: <span class="smaller">Ten Months’ Fighting in Poland.</span></b> -By <span class="sc">John Morse</span>. <em><span class="underline">4th printing.</span> Crown 8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p class="i center"> -SOME PRESS OPINIONS -</p> - -<p> -“This remarkably impressive book is probably the most notable piece -of war literature the war has yet produced.”—<em>The Times.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Tolstoy’s pictures of Sebastopol or Dostoievsky’s account of Siberia do -not haunt one much more than episodes in this book.”—<em>Spectator.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Those who wish to see the war without any illusion cannot afford to -miss this the most impressive book that has so far appeared about it.”—<em>Country -Life.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“This book is one of the most remarkable the war has yet given us.... -He keeps us spellbound with his artless narrative.... This is -decidedly a war book to be read.”—<em>Daily News.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“We can but offer our sincere congratulations to Mr. Morse on his -splendid achievement; through him the name of Englishman will stand -firmer in Russia, firmer in the world.”—<em>Saturday Review.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“The war continues to provide incidentally many vivid narratives -... and this narrative ... must certainly be reckoned one of the -most interesting out of many.”—<em>Evening Standard.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“It is a most astonishing book.”—<em>Daily Express.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Having served for ten months as a volunteer in the Russian Army, -the author has had such strange adventures that his experiences have provided -material for what is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable books -concerning the war.”—<em>Outlook.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“As a witness of what actually happened on the Russian frontier Mr. -Morse comes forward with a book of engrossing interest.... The story -of his escape and privations which followed is thrilling in the extreme and -related with a quiet restraint and modesty which, as in every chapter of -the book, are an earnest of truth.”—<em>Daily Telegraph.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Mr. Morse has written a book which, as far as I know, is unique. It is -an extraordinarily vivid account of an Englishman who enlisted in the -Russian rank and fought all through the early—and they were in many -ways the most terrible—months of the war. As a picture of war it is -literally haunting. Mr. Morse writes with the conviction of one who has -seen all he desires to prove. Apart from the book’s value as a personal -narrative, it is notable for the fine description it gives of life in the Russian -Army; while those who thirst for adventure will find no book of fiction -stir them more greatly than this author’s account of how he was captured -and how he escaped.”—<em>Tatler.</em> -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -<a id="page-296" class="pagenum" title="296"></a> -THEOLOGY -</p> - -<p class="author"> -THE REV. CANON RASHDALL, F.B.A. -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Conscience and Christ.</b> By <span class="sc">The -Rev. Canon Hastings Rashdall</span>, D.Litt. (Oxon), D.C.L. -(Durham), F.B.A., author of “Philosophy and Religion,” -etc. <em>Crown 8vo, 5s. net; postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<p> -The book is an attempt to answer the question “in what relation does -the authority of Conscience, which most Christians acknowledge, stand -to the authority of Jesus Christ?” The first chapter is a brief enquiry -into the nature of Conscience on the one hand and of various forms of -external authority on the other. The answer given is that no external -authority can be taken as an absolutely final guide for conduct unless it -does commend itself to the enlightened Conscience: it is contended that -the teaching of Jesus Christ does so commend itself. In the second -chapter is attempted the investigation of the recent teaching which makes -“Eschatology” the answer of Christ’s message, and treats his moral -teaching as a mere “Interimsethik.” The third chapter examines the -actual contents of that teaching; the fourth deals with some commonly -urged objections to the Christian Ethic—the finality of this Ethic is -asserted upon condition that the necessity of development is fully recognised. -The fifth chapter examines the nature of the development which -the fundamental principles taught by Jesus have received and must continue -to receive in the Christian Church. The sixth chapter is devoted -to a brief examination of other ethical systems, philosophical and religious, -and endeavours to show that not one of them can be regarded as a -satisfactory substitute for Christianity while the permanent elements of -each are recognised and included in the Christian ideal. It is also contended -that the highest ethical influence of Christianity is inseparable -from a reverent following of the personal Christ. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -THE REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, D.D. -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Faith and Immortality.</b> By <span class="sc">The -Rev. E. Griffith-Jones</span>, B.A., D.D., Principal of the -United Independent College, Bradford. Author of -“The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War,” -“The Ascent Through Christ.” <em>Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net; -postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -<a id="page-297" class="pagenum" title="297"></a> -STUDIES IN THEOLOGY—New Volumes -</p> - -<p class="author"> -THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D. -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>History of the Study of Theology.</b> -By the late <span class="sc">Charles Augustus Briggs</span>, -D.D., D.Litt., of the Union Theological Seminary, New -York. In Two Volumes. <em>Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net each -volume; postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -THE REV. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, M.A., D.D. -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>The Justification of God.</b> By -<span class="sc">The Rev. Principal P. T. Forsyth</span>, M.A., D.D., of the -Hackney Theological College, University of London. -<em>Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d.</em> -</p> - -<p class="i s center"> -Other Volumes already published in the Series are:— -</p> - - <div class="col2"> - <div class="left"> -<p> -<b>Christianity and Ethics.</b> By -<span class="sc">Archibald B. D. Alexander</span>, -M.A., D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>The Environment of Early -Christianity.</b> By <span class="sc">S. Angus</span>, -M.A., Ph.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>The Christian Hope: A Study -in the Doctrine of the Last -Things.</b> By <span class="sc">W. Adams Brown</span>, -Ph.D., D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Christianity and Social Questions.</b> -By <span class="sc">William Cunningham</span>, -F.B.A., D.D., D.Sc. -</p> - -<p> -<b>A Handbook of Christian Apologetics.</b> -By <span class="sc">A. E. Garvie</span>, D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>A Critical Introduction to the -Old Testament.</b> By <span class="sc">George -Buchanan Gray</span>, D.D., D.Litt. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Gospel Origins.</b> By <span class="sc">William -West Holdsworth</span>, M.A. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Faith and Its Psychology.</b> By -<span class="sc">William R. Inge</span>, D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Christianity and Sin.</b> By <span class="sc">Robert -Mackintosh</span>, D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Protestant Thought before Kant.</b> -By <span class="sc">A. C. Mcgiffert</span>, Ph.D., D.D. -</p> - - </div> - <div class="right"> -<p> -<b>The Theology of the Gospels.</b> -By <span class="sc">James Moffatt</span>, D.D., D.Litt. -</p> - -<p> -<b>History of Christian Thought -since Kant.</b> By <span class="sc">Edward Caldwell -Moore</span>, D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>The Doctrine of the Atonement.</b> -By <span class="sc">J. K. Mozley</span>, M.A. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Revelation and Inspiration.</b> By -<span class="sc">James Orr</span>, D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>A Critical Introduction to the -New Testament.</b> By <span class="sc">Arthur -Samuel Peake</span>, D.D. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Philosophy and Religion.</b> By -<span class="sc">Hastings Rashdall</span>, D.Litt. -(Oxon), D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A. -</p> - -<p> -<b>The Holy Spirit.</b> By <span class="sc">T. Rees</span>, -M.A. (Lond.), B.A. (Oxon.). -</p> - -<p> -<b>The Religious Ideas of the Old -Testament.</b> By <span class="sc">H. Wheeler -Robinson</span>, M.A. -</p> - -<p> -<b>The Text and Canon of the -New Testament.</b> By <span class="sc">Alexander -Souter</span>, D.Litt. -</p> - -<p> -<b>Christian Thought to the Reformation.</b> -By <span class="sc">Herbert B. -Workman</span>, D.Litt. -</p> - - </div> - </div> -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="subh"> -<a id="page-298" class="pagenum" title="298"></a> -FICTION -</p> - -<p class="author"> -BERNARD CAPES -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>If Age Could.</b> By <span class="sc">Bernard Capes</span>, author -of “A Jay of Italy,” “The Lake of Wine,” etc. -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Bernard Capes’ new novel, “If Age Could,” will rank -among the most important of the many popular books which -bear his name— -</p> - - <div class="poem-container"> - <div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <p class="verse">“If Youth but Knew”</p> - <p class="verse">“If Age Could”</p> - </div> - </div> - </div> -<p class="noindent"> -Eustace Ward discovered that his ward Veronica appealed -more to his senses than he had ever thought possible. He -had come to think he was proof against the effects of feminine -charm except in a detached and esthetic way. He is, however, -held back by the fear that she regards him as old. The -aloof and self-centred attitude towards life of both him and his -ward with their ample means is shown without insistence, -while the events of August 1914 do not greatly disturb their -self-sufficiency. The subsequent bombardment of the North-East -coast brings tragedy very near to Ward’s country seat. -It is then that they for the first time consciously and on an -impulse do an action which is for another’s benefit and which -involves their own complete sacrifice. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -TEMPLE BAILEY -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Contrary Mary. <span class="smaller">A Novel.</span></b> By <span class="sc">Temple -Bailey</span>. 352 pages. <em>Crown 8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -“Contrary Mary” will win her way to the hearts of all who -meet her, and the story of the fortunes of her family will provide -restful enjoyment for a very large circle of readers. It is -seldom that a clean, sweet story is not open to the criticism -of being “pretty.” “Contrary Mary” is, however, an exceptional -book, and while it shows the best side of human -nature it can never be charged with being mawkish or sugary. -While it has no bad characters, and only one unfortunate one, -the reader is aware that the author has a firm grip on life. It -is clever work, and shows the author as a writer of depth and -feeling. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -<a id="page-299" class="pagenum" title="299"></a> -BEY SOMERVILLE -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>The Passing of Nahla. <span class="smaller">A Story -of the Desert.</span></b> By <span class="sc">Bey Somerville</span>. <em>Crown 8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -This story of Nahla, a native girl child, and of the white -man who educates and makes a companion of her, is full of -atmosphere. The baby girl is an amusing companion for the -educated, temperamental poet, and to see her develop under -his guidance and tuition is for him of unfailing interest. In -the intense life of the East she is very quickly a grown -woman. Her devotion is pathetic in its self abasement, and -she is ready to accept either life or death at his hands. The -inevitable tragedy is when the desire comes to the man to -return to his own people and their code of life. It is then he -has to reckon with Nahla’s jealousy and fierce devotion. -</p> - -<p> -Apart from the story the book is worth reading for its rendering -of the call and influence of the desert on a highly -developed personality. The author feels its magic spell and -is very successful in transmitting it to the reader. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Backwater. <span class="smaller">A Novel.</span></b> By <span class="sc">Dorothy M. -Richardson</span>, author of “Pointed Roofs.” <em>Crown 8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -Those who read “Pointed Roofs” will remember taking -leave of Miriam as she got in the train for home, after her -term as assistant teacher in a German school was ended. -“Backwater” continues the narrative of Miriam’s life, the -period now being the emotional period of life, when life is at -its fullest. -</p> - -<p> -The reception given to “Pointed Roofs” has given Miss -Richardson a status. She is recognized as a writer whose -method is original and “different,” and who is thereby successful -in conveying by means of a few strokes the vital -experiences of her characters and their action on one another. -Mr. J. D. Beresford, who contributed an introduction to -“Pointed Roofs,” admitted having read the story three times, -the pleasure he experienced at the first being increased by -subsequent readings. He considers “Backwater” even more -interesting. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -<a id="page-300" class="pagenum" title="300"></a> -E. C. BOOTH -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Fondie. <span class="smaller">A Novel.</span></b> By <span class="sc">E. C. Booth</span>, author -of “The Cliff End,” “The Doctor’s Lass.” <em>Crown 8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -This story of Fondie Bassiemoor, his life, and also that of the -inhabitants of Wivvle, a Yorkshire village, is a big novel in every -way. Mr. Booth’s unhurried method requires a large canvas, and -although the story is long for a modern novel the feeling of the -reader at the finish is that on no account would he have it shorter. -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Booth pictures the everyday life of a rural village in Yorkshire -with all its types and characters clearly and lovingly drawn; -the comedy and tragedy of life painted with the sure hand of an -artist and master craftsman. The natural tone and accent of -speech is reproduced, but there is nothing irritating in its transcription -as the author renders the Yorkshire dialect in such manner -and so naturally that no unusual effort is required to read it. -</p> - -<p> -The note of comedy is preserved through the greater part of the -book, but the sadness of life is not ignored. To each their place. -</p> - -<p> -The author’s previous books have been unreservedly praised, -but it is thought by competent judges that “Fondie” is a particular -advance on any of his earlier work. For a comparison one must -go to the early work of Thomas Hardy. Perhaps “Far from the -Madding Crowd” is the closest. Mr. Booth’s “Fondie” will stand -the comparison very well. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -MARY AGNES HAMILTON -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Dead Yesterday.</b> By <span class="sc">Mary Agnes Hamilton</span>, -author of “Less than the Dust,” “Yes.” <em>Crown -8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -This novel has been described by critics who have read it in -manuscript as both clever and brilliant. It is notably modern in -its feeling and outlook, its detail and allusions revealing its -author’s interest in the artistic and social ideas which were current -in 1914. The action of the story begins before the war, but is -carried past August 1914, and finishes towards the end of 1915. -It gives a very effective picture of an educated and bohemian -coterie whose sophisticated attitude towards life is sharply challenged -by the realization of the need to fight for national existence. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -<a id="page-301" class="pagenum" title="301"></a> -MILDRED GARNER -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Harmony. <span class="smaller">A Novel.</span></b> By <span class="sc">Mildred Garner</span>. -<em>Crown 8vo. 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -The scent of old-fashioned flowers, the drowsy hum of bees, -and the quiet spell of the countryside is realized in every -page of “Harmony.” Peacewold is a harbour of refuge where -gather those in need of the sympathy which the Little Blue -Lady unfailingly has for her friends when they are distressed -in spirit or body. To her comes Star worn out with months -of settlement work in Bethnal Green, and Harmony whose -sight is restored after years of blindness. Robin Grey, the -austere Richard Wentworth and his son Bede, all come and -she gives to each from the fulness of her spirit and faith. -Willow, whose story the book is, also has reason to love the -Little Blue Lady who has been as a mother to her. -</p> - -<p> -The book is distinguished for its shining faith and belief in -the inherent goodness of human nature when subject to right -influences. The searchings of heart when love comes and -temporarily wrecks the harmony of Peacewold are shown to -be for the good of those concerned and helpful to them in -their development. -</p> - -<p> -“Harmony” is essentially a novel of sentiment and should -certainly find many readers. It is earnest and sincere, and -promises well for the author’s future as a successful novelist. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -RICHARD HARDING DAVIS -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Somewhere in France. <span class="smaller">Stories.</span></b> -By <span class="sc">Richard Harding Davis</span>, author of “With the -Allies,” etc., etc. Illustrated. <em>Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.</em> -</p> - -<p> -A new volume by the popular war correspondent. The -stories are varied in theme, and are not solely devoted to -war. The title of the book is obtained from the first story -which is of spying and spies during the German advance -on Paris. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="author"> -<a id="page-302" class="pagenum" title="302"></a> -LESLIE MONTGOMERY -</p> - -<p class="book"> -<b>Mr. Wildridge of the Bank. -<span class="smaller">An Irish Novel.</span></b> By <span class="sc">Leslie Montgomery</span>. <em>Crown -8vo, 6s.</em> -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Leslie Montgomery will be welcomed as an acquisition -to the ranks of humorous novelists. Like George Birmingham -he writes of the North of Ireland and shows the everyday -life of a small town. The competition of the local managers -of the two banks to secure the account of the heir to a fortune -is very amusing and always strictly probable. How Mr. -Wildridge gets the capital subscribed for the woollen factory: -how the confiding Rector and his daughter are saved from -dishonour, and how Orangemen and Sinn Feiners, Protestants -and Catholics are cunningly induced to work for the prosperity -of the town in order to ‘dish’ each other are all -related in an easy and convincing way. The story is told in -light comedy vein, at times becoming madcap farce, and yet it -cannot be said that the bounds of possibility are ever surpassed. -There is not an unpleasant or disagreeable character -in the book, and the humour is at the expense of everyone in -the town. Anthony Wildridge is always cultivated, adroit -and audacious, and deserves all his success. At the close -he discovers that he is younger and more susceptible than he -thought he was. -</p> - -<hr class="hr" /> - -<p class="publ"> -DUCKWORTH & CO., <span class="sc">Covent Garden, London, W.C.</span> -</p> - -</div> - -<div class="trnote"> -<p class="transnote"> -Transcriber’s Notes -</p> - -<p> -The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors -were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after consulting -other editions, are listed here (before/after): -</p> - - - -<ul> - -<li> -... to an end just as the picture of the French <span class="underline">count</span> ...<br /> -... to an end just as the picture of the French <a href="#corr-3"><span class="underline">court</span></a> ...<br /> -</li> - -<li> -... <span class="underline">back</span> to the table so that nobody “poked.” She ...<br /> -... <a href="#corr-5"><span class="underline">backs</span></a> to the table so that nobody “poked.” She ...<br /> -</li> - -<li> -... and <span class="underline">canons</span> and things make a frightful noise.” ...<br /> -... and <a href="#corr-15"><span class="underline">cannons</span></a> and things make a frightful noise.” ...<br /> -</li> - -<li> -... That life <span class="underline">and</span> such happiness in store for him is ...<br /> -... That life <a href="#corr-21"><span class="underline">had</span></a> such happiness in store for him is ...<br /> -</li> - -<li> -... lounge seemed to have deserted her; and <span class="underline">almost</span> ...<br /> -... lounge seemed to have deserted her; and <a href="#corr-24"><span class="underline">almost at</span></a> ...<br /> -</li> -</ul> -</div> - - - - - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACKWATER ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Richardson - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Backwater - Pilgrimage, Volume 2 - -Author: Dorothy M. Richardson - -Release Date: December 22, 2017 [EBook #56221] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACKWATER *** - - - - -Produced by Jens Sadowski, Mary Glenn Krause, and the -Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. -This file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive. - - - - - - - BACKWATER - - - - - BACKWATER - - - BY - DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON - AUTHOR OF "POINTED ROOFS" - - - LONDON - DUCKWORTH & CO. - 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN - - - First published 1916 - - - All rights reserved - - - TO - J. A. H. - - - - - BACKWATER - - - - - - CHAPTER I - - - 1 - -A swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam from a tapestry screen standing -between her and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the bow of -the window. Consulting it at intervals as the afternoon wore on, she -found that it made very light of the quiet propositions that were being -elaborated within hearing of her inattentive ears. Looking beyond it she -could catch glimpses between the crowded fernery, when a tram was not -jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across the roadway and beyond -the palisade of a green level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The -trams seemed very near and noisy. When they passed by the window, the -speakers had to raise their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room -was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned quietness. It was full of -old things, like the Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts -of the ladies who were sitting and talking there. She and her mother had -seemed quite modern, fussy, worldly people when they had first come into -the room. From the moment the three ladies had come in and begun talking -to her mother, the things in the room, and the view of the distant row -of poplars had grown more and more peaceful, and now at the end of an -hour she felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson too, belonged -to the old-world room with its quiet green outlook shut in by the -poplars. Only the trams were disturbing. They came busily by, with their -strange jingle-jingle, plock-plock, and made her inattentive. Why were -there so many people coming by in trams? Where were they going? Why were -all the trams painted that hard, dingy blue? - -The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs in smooth gentle -voices, in small broken phrases, frequently interrupting and correcting -each other. Miriam heard dreamily that they wanted help with the lower -school, the children from six to eight years of age, in the mornings and -afternoons, and in the evenings a general superintendence of the four -boarders. They kept on saying that the work was very easy and simple; -there were no naughty girls--hardly a single naughty girl--in the -school; there should be no difficult superintendence, no exercise of -authority would be required. - -By the time they had reached the statement of these modifications Miriam -felt that she knew them quite well. The shortest, who did most of the -talking and who had twinkling eyes and crooked pince-nez and soft -reddish cheeks and a little red-tipped nose, and whose small coil of -sheeny grey hair was pinned askew on the top of her head--stray loops -standing out at curious angles--was Miss Jenny, the middle one. The very -tall one sitting opposite her, with a delicate wrinkled creamy face and -coal-black eyes and a peak of ringletted smooth coal-black hair, was the -eldest, Miss Deborah. The other sister, much younger, with neat smooth -green-grey hair and a long sad greyish face and faded eyes, was Miss -Haddie. They were all three dressed in thin fine black material and had -tiny hands and little softly moving feet. What did they think of the -trams? - -"Do you think you could manage it, chickie?" said Mrs. Henderson -suddenly. - -"I think I could." - -"No doubt, my dear, oh, no doubt," said Miss Jenny with a little sound -of laughter as she tapped her knee with the pince-nez she had plucked -from their rakish perch on the reddened bridge of her nose. - -"I don't think I could teach Scripture." - -An outbreak of incoherent little sounds and statements from all three -taught her that Miss Deborah took the Bible classes of the whole school. - -"How old is Miriam?" - -"Just eighteen. She has put up her hair to-day." - -"Oh, poor child, she need not have done that." - -"She is a _born_ teacher. She used to hold little classes amongst her -schoolfellows when she was only eight years old." - -Miriam turned sharply to her mother. She was sitting with her tired -look--bright eyes, and moist flushed face. How had she heard about the -little classes? Had there been little classes? She could not remember -them. - -"She speaks French like a Parisienne." - -That was that silly remark made by the woman in the train coming home -from Hanover. - -"Eh--we thought--it was in Germany she was----" - -"Yes, but I learned more French." - -The sisters smiled provisionally. - -"She shared a room with the mademoiselle." - -"Oh--er--hee--hay--perhaps she might speak French with the gels." - -"Oh no, I couldn't _speak_." - -There was a tender little laugh. - -"I don't know French conversation." - -"Well, well." - -The sisters brought the discussion to an end by offering twenty pounds a -year in return for Miriam's services, and naming the date of the -beginning of the autumn term. - - - 2 - -On the way to the front door they all looked into the principal -schoolroom. Miriam saw a long wide dining-room table covered with brown -American cloth. Shelves neatly crowded with books lined one wall from -floor to ceiling. Opposite them at the far end of the room was a heavy -grey marble mantelpiece, on which stood a heavy green marble clock -frame. At its centre a gold-faced clock ticked softly. Opposite the -windows were two shallow alcoves. In one stood a shrouded blackboard on -an easel. The other held a piano with a high slender back. The prancing -outward sweep of its lid gave Miriam the impression of an afternoon -dress. - -Miss Deborah drew up one of the Venetian blinds. They all crowded to the -window and looked out on a small garden backed by trees and lying in -deep shadow. Beyond were more gardens and the brownish backs of small -old brick houses. Low walls separated the school garden from the gardens -on either side. - -"On our right we have a school for the deaf and dumb," said Miss Perne; -"on the other side is a family of Polish Jews." - - - 3 - -"Mother, why _did_ you pile it on?" - -They would soon be down at the corner of Banbury Park where the tram -lines ended and the Favorite omnibuses were standing in the muddy road -under the shadow of the railway bridge. Through the jingling of the -trams, the dop-dop of the hoofs of the tram-horses and the noise of a -screaming train thundering over the bridge, Miriam made her voice heard, -gazing through the spotted veil at her mother's quivering features. - -"They might have made me do all sorts of things I can't do." - -Mrs. Henderson's voice, breathless with walking, made a little sound of -protest, a narrowed sound that told Miriam her amusement was half -annoyance. The dark, noisy bridge, the clatter and rattle and the mud -through which she must plunge to an omnibus exasperated her to the limit -of her endurance. - -"I'd got the post," she said angrily; "you could see it was all settled -and then you went saying those things." - -Glancing at the thin shrouded features she saw the faint lift of her -mother's eyebrows and the firmly speechless mouth. - -"Piccadilly--jump on, chickie." - -"Let's go outside now it's fine," said Miriam crossly. - -Reaching the top of the omnibus she hurried to the front seat on the -left hand side. - -"That's a very windy spot." - -"No it isn't, it's quite hot. The sun's come out now. It's rained for -weeks. It won't rain any more. It'll be hot. You won't feel the wind. -Will you have the corner, mother?" - -"No, chick, you sit there." - -Miriam screwed herself into the corner seat, crossing her knees and -grazing the tips of her shoes. - -"This is the only place on the top of a bus." - -Mrs. Henderson sat down at her side. - -"I always make Harriett come up here when we go up to the West End." - -"Of course it's the only place," she insisted in response to her -mother's amused laugh. "No one smoking or talking in front; you can see -out in front and you can see the shops if there are any, and you're not -falling off all the time. The bus goes on the left side of the road and -tilts to the left." - -The seats were filling up and the driver appeared clambering into his -place. - -"Didn't you ever think of that? Didn't you ever think of the bus tilting -that way?" persisted Miriam to her mother's inattentive face. "Fancy -never thinking of it. It's beastly on the other side." - -The omnibus jerked forward. - -"You ought to be a man, Mimmy." - -"I liked that little short one," said Miriam contentedly as they came -from under the roar of the bridge. "They were awfully nice, weren't -they? They seemed to have made up their mind to take me before we -went.... So I think they like us. I wonder why they like us. Didn't you -think they liked us? Don't you think they are awfully nice?" - -"I do. They are very charming ladies." - -"Yes, but wasn't it awfully rum their liking us in that funny way?" - -"I'm sure I don't see why they should not." - -"Oh, mother, you know what I mean. I like them. I'm perfectly sure I -shall like them. D'you remember the little one saying all girls ought to -marry? Why did she say that?" - -"They are dear funny little O.M.'s," said Mrs. Henderson merrily. She -was sitting with her knees crossed, the stuff of her brown canvas dress -was dragged across them into an ugly fold by the weight of the velvet -panel at the side of the skirt. She looked very small and resourceless. -And there were the Pernes with their house and their school. They were -old maids. Of course. What then? - -"I never dreamed of getting such a big salary." - -"Oh, my chickie, I'm afraid it isn't much." - -"It is, mother, it's lovely." - -"Oh--eh--well." - -Miriam turned fiercely to the roadway on her left. - - - 4 - -She had missed the first swing forward of the vehicle and the first -movements of the compact street. - -They were going ahead now at a steady even trot. Her face was bathed in -the flow of the breeze. - -Little rivulets played about her temples, feeling their way through her -hair. She drew off her gloves without turning from the flowing roadway. -As they went on and on down the long road Miriam forgot her companion in -the tranquil sense of being carried securely forward through the air -away from people and problems. Ahead of her, at the end of the long -drive, lay three sunlit weeks, bright now in the certainty of the shadow -that lay beyond them ... "the junior school" ... "four boarders." - - - 5 - -They lumbered at last round a corner and out into a wide thoroughfare, -drawing up outside a newly-built public-house. Above it rose row upon -row of upper windows sunk in masses of ornamental terra-cotta-coloured -plaster. Branch roads, laid with tram lines led off in every direction. -Miriam's eyes followed a dull blue tram with a grubby white-painted -seatless roof jingling busily off up a roadway where short trees stood -all the way along in the small dim gardens of little grey houses. On the -near corner of the road stood a wide white building, bulging into heavy -domes against the sky. Across its side, large gilt letters standing far -apart spelled out "Banbury Empire." - -"It must be a theatre," she told herself in astonishment. "That's what -they call a suburban theatre. People think it is really a theatre." - -The little shock sent her mind feeling out along the road they had just -left. She considered its unbroken length, its shops, its treelessness. -The wide thoroughfare, up which they now began to rumble, repeated it on -a larger scale. The pavements were wide causeways reached from the -roadway by stone steps, three deep. The people passing along them were -unlike any she knew. There were no ladies, no gentlemen, no girls or -young men such as she knew. They were all alike. They were.... She could -find no word for the strange impression they made. It coloured the whole -of the district through which they had come. It was part of the new -world to which she was pledged to go on September 18th. It was her world -already; and she had no words for it. She would not be able to convey it -to others. She felt sure her mother had not noticed it. She must deal -with it alone. To try to speak about it, even with Eve, would sap her -courage. It was her secret. A strange secret for all her life as Hanover -had been. But Hanover was beautiful, with distant country through the -saal windows with its colours misty in the sunlight, the beautiful, -happy town and the woodland villages so near. This new secret was -shabby, ugly and shabby. The half-perceived something persisted -unchanged when the causeways and shops disappeared and long rows of -houses streamed by, their close ranks broken only by an occasional cross -road. They were large, high, flat-fronted houses with flights of grey -stone steps leading to their porchless doors. They had tiny railed-in -front gardens crowded with shrubs. Here and there long narrow strips of -garden pushed a row of houses back from the roadway. In these longer -plots stood signboards and show-cases. "Photographic Studio," -"Commercial College," "Eye Treatment," "Academy of Dancing." ... She -read the announcements with growing disquietude. - -Rows of shops reappeared and densely crowded pavements, and then more -high straight houses. - - - 6 - -She roused herself at last from her puzzled contemplation and turned to -glance at her mother. Mrs. Henderson was looking out ahead. The -exhausted face was ready, Miriam saw, with its faintly questioning -eyebrows and tightly-held lips, for emotional response. She turned away -uneasily to the spellbound streets. - -"Useless to try to talk about anything.... Mother would be somehow -violent. She would be overpowering. The strange new impressions would be -dissolved." - -But she must do something, show some sign of companionship. She began -humming softly. The air was so full of clamour that she could not hear -her voice. The houses and shops had disappeared. Drab brick walls were -passing slowly by on either side. A goods' yard. She deepened her -humming, accentuating her phrases so that the sound might reach her -companion through the reverberations of the clangour of shunting trains. - - - 7 - -The high brick walls were drawing away. The end of the long roadway was -in sight. Its widening mouth offered no sign of escape from the -disquieting strangeness. The open stretch of thoroughfare into which -they emerged was fed by innumerable lanes of traffic. From the islands -dotted over its surface towered huge lamp standards branching out thin -arms. As they rattled noisily over the stone setts they jolted across -several lines of tramway and wove their way through currents of traffic -crossing each other in all directions. - -"I wonder where we're going--I wonder if this is a Piccadilly bus," -Miriam thought of saying. Impossible to shout through the din. - - - 8 - -The driver gathered up his horses and they clattered deafeningly over -the last open stretch and turned into a smooth wide prospect. - -"Oh bliss, wood-paving," murmured Miriam. - -A mass of smoke-greyed, sharply steepled stone building appeared on the -right. Her eyes rested on its soft shadows. - -On the left a tall grey church was coming towards them, spindling up -into the sky. It sailed by, showing Miriam a circle of little stone -pillars built into its spire. Plumy trees streamed by, standing large -and separate on moss-green grass railed from the roadway. Bright -white-faced houses with pillared porches shone through from behind them -and blazed white above them against the blue sky. Wide side streets -opened showing high balconied houses. The side streets were feathered -with trees and ended mistily. - -Away ahead were edges of clean bright masonry in profile, soft tufted -heads of trees, bright green in the clear light. At the end of the vista -the air was like pure saffron-tinted mother-of-pearl. - -Miriam sat back and drew a deep breath. - - - 9 - -"Well, chickie?" - -"What's the matter?" - -"Why, you've been very funny!" - -"How?" - -"You've been so dummel." - -"No, I haven't." - -"Oh--eh." - -"How d'you mean I've been funny?" - -"Not speaking to poor old mum-jam." - -"Well, you haven't spoken to me." - -"No." - -"I shan't take any of my summer things there," said Miriam. - -Mrs. Henderson's face twitched. - -"Shall I?" - -"I'm afraid you haven't very much in the way of thick clothing." - -"I've only got my plaid dress for every day and my mixy grey for best -and my dark blue summer skirt. My velveteen skirt and my nainsook blouse -are too old." - -"You can wear the dark blue muslin blouse with the blue skirt for a long -time yet with something warm underneath." - -"My grey's very grubby." - -"You look very well in it indeed." - -"I don't mean that. I mean it's all gone sort of dull and grubby over -the surface when you look down it." - -"Oh, that's your imagination." - -"It isn't my imagination and I can see how Harriett's looks." - -"You both look very nice." - -"That's not the point." - -"Don't make a mountain out of a molehill, my chick." - -"I'm not making anything. The simple fact is that the grey dresses are -piggy." - -Mrs. Henderson flushed deeply, twining and untwining her silk-gloved -fingers. - -"She thinks that's 'gross exaggeration.' That's what she wants to say," -pondered Miriam wearily. - -They turned into Langham Place. - -She glanced to see whether her mother realised where they were. - -"Look, we're in the West End, mother! Oh, I'm not going to think about -Banbury Park till it begins!" - - - 10 - -They drew up near the Maison Nouvelle. - -"_Stanlake_ is," said a refined emphatic voice from the pavement. - -Miriam did not look for the speaker. The quality of the voice brought -her a moment's realisation of the meaning of her afternoon's adventure. -She was going to be shut up away from the grown-up things, the sunlit -world, and the people who were enjoying it. She would be shut up and -surrounded in Wordsworth House, a proper schooly school, amongst all -those strange roadways. It would be cold English pianos and dreadful -English children--and trams going up and down that grey road outside. - -As they went on down Regent Street she fastened, for refuge from her -thoughts, upon a window where softly falling dresses of dull olive stood -about against a draped background of pale dead yellow. She held it in -her mind as shop after shop streamed by. - -"These shops are extremely rcherch." - -"It's old Regent Street, mother," said Miriam argumentatively. "Glorious -old Regent Street. Ruby wine." - -"Ah, Regent Street." - -"We always walk up one side and down the other. Up the dolls' hospital -side and down Liberty's. Glory, glory, ruby wine." - -"You _are_ enthusiastic." - -"But it's so glorious. Don't you think so?" - -"Sit back a little, chickie. One can't see the windows. You're such a -solid young woman." - -"You'll see our A B C soon. You know. The one we go to after the -Saturday pops. You've been to it. You came to it the day we came to -Madame Schumann's farewell. It's just round here in Piccadilly. Here it -is. Glorious. I must make the others come up once more before I die. I -always have a scone. I don't like the aryated bread. We go along the -Burlington Arcade too. I don't believe you've ever been along there. -It's simply perfect. Glove shops and fans and a smell of the most -exquisite scent everywhere." - -"Dear me. It must be very captivating." - -"Now we shall pass the parks. Oh, isn't the sun A1 copper bottom!" - -Mrs. Henderson laughed wistfully. - -"What delicious shade under those fine old trees. I almost wish I had -brought my _en-tout-cas_." - -"Oh no, you don't really want it. There will be more breeze presently. -The bus always begins to go quicker along here. It's the Green Park, -that one. Those are clubs that side, the West End clubs. It's -fascinating all the way along here to Hyde Park Corner. You just see -Park Lane going up at the side. Park Lane. It goes wiggling away, -straight into heaven. We've never been up there. I always read the name -at the corner." - -"You ridiculous chick--ah, there is the Royal Academy of Arts." - -"Oh yes, I wonder if there are any Leightons this year." - -"Or Leader. Charles Leader. I think there is nothing more charming than -those landscape scenes by Leader." - -"I've got three bally weeks. I can see Hyde Park. We've got ages yet. It -goes on being fascinating right down through Kensington and right on up -to the other side of Putney Bridge." - -"Dear me. Isn't it fascinating after that?" - -"Oh, not all that awful walk along the Upper Richmond Road--not until -our avenue begins--" - - - 11 - -Miriam fumbled with the fastening of the low wide gate as her mother -passed on up the drive. She waited until the footsteps were muffled by -the fullness of the may trees linking their middle branches over the -bend in the drive. Then she looked steadily down the sunflecked -asphalted avenue along which they had just come. The level sunlight -streamed along the empty roadway and the shadows of the lime trees lay -across the path and up the oak palings. Her eyes travelled up and down -the boles of the trees, stopping at each little stunted tuft of -greenery. She could no longer hear her mother's footsteps. There was a -scented coolness in the shady watered garden. Leaning gently with her -breast against the upper bars of the gate she broke away from the sense -of her newly-made engagement. - -She scanned the whole length of the shrouded avenue from end to end and -at last looked freely up amongst the interwoven lime trees. Long she -watched, her eyes roaming from the closely-growing leaves where the -green was densest to the edges of the trees where the light shone -through. "Gold and green," she whispered, "green and gold, held up by -firm brown stems bathed in gold." - -When she reached the open garden beyond the bend she ran once round the -large centre bed where berberus and laurestinus bushes stood in a clump -ringed by violas and blue lobelias and heavily scented masses of -cherry-ripe. Taking the shallow steps in two silent strides she reached -the shelter of the deep porch. The outer door and the door of the -vestibule stood open. Gently closing the vestibule she ran across the -paved hall and opened the door on the right. - -Harriett, in a long fawn canvas dress with a deep silk sash, was -standing in the middle of the drawing-room floor with a large pot of -scented geraniums in her arms. - - - 12 - -"Hullo!" said Miriam. - -Putting down her pot Harriett fixed brown eyes upon her and began -jumping lightly up and down where she stood. The small tips of her fawn -glac kid shoes shone together between the hem of her dress and the pale -green of the carpet. - -"What you doing?" said Miriam quietly shutting the door behind her and -flushing with pleasure. - -Harriett hopped more energetically. The blaze from the western window -caught the paste stone in the tortoise-shell comb crowning her little -high twist of hair and the prisms of the lustres standing behind her on -the white marble mantelpiece. - -"What you doing, booby?" - -"Old conservatory," panted Harriett. - -Miriam looked vaguely down the length of the long room to where the -conservatory doors stood wide open. As she gazed at the wet tiling -Harriett ceased hopping and kicked her delicately. "Well, gooby?" - -Miriam grinned. - -"You've got it. I knew you would. The Misses Perne have engaged Miss -Miriam Henderson as resident teacher for the junior school." - -"Oh yes, I've got it," smiled Miriam. "But don't let's talk about that. -It's just an old school, a house. I don't know a bit what it'll be like. -I've got three bally blooming weeks. Don't let's talk about it." - -"Awri." - -"What about Saturday?" - -"It's all right. Ted was at the club." - -"Was he!" - -"Yes, old scarlet face, he were." - -"I'm _not_." - -"He came in just before closing time and straight up to me and ast where -you were. He looked sick when I told him, and so fagged." - -"It was awfully hot in town," murmured Miriam tenderly. - -She went to the piano and struck a note very softly. - -"He played a single with the duffer and lost it." - -"Oh, well, of course, he was so tired." - -"Yes, but it wasn't that. It was because you weren't there. He's simply -no good when you're not there, now. He's perfectly different." - -Miriam struck her note again. - -"Listen, that's E flat." - -"Go on." - -"That's a chord in E flat. Isn't it lovely? It sounds perfectly -different in C. Listen. Isn't it funny?" - -"Well, don't you want to know why it's all right about Saturday?" - -"Yes, screamingly." - -"Well, that's the perfectly flabbergasting thing. Ted simply came to say -they've got a man coming to stay with them and can he bring him." - -"My dear! What a heavenly relief. That makes twelve men and fourteen -girls. That'll do." - -"Nan Babington's hurt her ankle, but she swears she's coming." Harriett -sniffed and sank down on the white sheepskin, drawing her knees up to -her chin. - -"You shouldn't say 'swears.'" - -"Well, you bet. She simply loves our dances." - -"Did she say she did?" - -"She sat on the pavilion seat with Bevan Seymour all the afternoon and I -was with them when Ted was playing with the duffer. She told Bevan that -she didn't know anywhere else where the kids arranged the dances, and -everything was so jolly. It's _screaming_, my dear, she said." - -"It's horrid the way she calls him 'my dear.' Your ring is simply -dazzling like that, Harry. D'you see? It's the sun." - -"Of course it'll mean she'll sit out in a deck chair in the garden with -Bevan all the time." - -"How disgusting." - -"It's her turn for the pavilion tea on Saturday. She's coming in her -white muslin and then coming straight on here with two sticks and wants -us to keep her some flowers. Let's go and have tea. It'll be nearly -dinner time." - -"Has Mary made a cake?" - -"I dunno. Tea was to be in the breakfast-room when you came back." - -"Why not in the conservatory?" - -"Because, you silly old crow, I'm beranging it for Saturday." - -"Shall we have the piano in there?" - -"Well, don't you think so?" - -"Twenty-six of us. Perhaps it'll be more blissful." - -"If we have the breakfast-room piano in the hall it'll bung up the -hall." - -"Yes, but the Erard bass is so perfect for waltzes." - -"And the be-rilliant Collard treble is so all right in the vatoire." - -"I thought it was Eve and I talked about the Collard treble." - -"Well, I was there." - -"Anyhow we'll have the grand in the conservatory. Oh, Bacchus! -Ta-ra-ra-boom-deay." - -"_Tea_," said a rounded voice near the keyhole. - -"Eve!" shouted Miriam. - -The door opened slightly. "I know," said the voice. - -"Come _in_, Eve," commanded Miriam, trying to swing the door wide. - -"I know," said the voice quivering with the effort of holding the door. -"I know all about the new Misses Perne and the new man--Max -Sonnenheim--Max." - -"This way out," called Harriett from the conservatory. - -"Eve," pleaded Miriam, tugging at the door, "let me get at you. Don't be -an idiot." - -A gurgle of amusement made her loosen her hold. - -"I'm not trying, you beast. Take your iron wrists away." - -A small white hand waggled fingers through the aperture. - -Miriam seized and covered it. "Come in for a minute," she begged. "I -want to see you. What have you got on?" - -"_Tea._" - -The hand twisted itself free and Eve fled through the hall. - -Miriam flung after her with a yell and caught at her slender body. "I've -a great mind to drag down your old hair." - -"Tea," smiled Eve serenely. - -"All _right_, I'm coming, damn you, aren't I?" - -"Oh, Mimmy!" - -"Well, damn _me_, then. Somebody in the house must swear. I say, Eve?" - -"What?" - -"Nothing, only I _say_." - -"Um." - - - - - CHAPTER II - - - 1 - -Miriam extended herself on the drawing-room sofa which had been drawn up -at the end of the room under the open window. - -The quintets of candles on the girandoles hanging on either side of the -high overmantel gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the centre of -the large room the chandelier, pulled low, held out in all directions -bulbs of softly tinted light. - -In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pouring from a tall standard -lamp across the sheepskin hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle under -her arm fluttering pages on a music stand. The family sat grouped -towards her in a circle. - -On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant light, Miriam was a -retreating loop in the circle of seated forms, all visible as she lay -with her eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and pilfer her own. -The darkness brimmed in from the window on her right. She could touch -the rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy stillness of the -garden. - -"What shall I play?" said the guest. - -"What have you there?" - -"Gluck ... Klassische Stcke ... Cavatina." - -"Ah, Gluck," said Mr. Henderson, smoothing his long knees with outspread -fingers. - -"Have you got that Beethoven thing?" asked Sarah. - -"Not here, Sally." - -"I saw it--on the piano--with chords," said Sarah excitedly. - -"Chords," encouraged Miriam. - -"Yes, I think so," muttered Sarah taking up her crochet. "I daresay I'm -wrong," she giggled, throwing out a foot and hastily withdrawing it. - -"I can find it, dear," chanted the guest. - -Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crimsoned oval of Eve's face -appeared inverted above her own. She poked a finger into one of the dark -eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whispered voicelessly, "Make her -play the Romance first and _then_ the Cavatina without talking in -between...." - -Eve's large soft mouth pursed a little, and Miriam watched steadily -until dimples appeared. "Go on, Eve," she said, removing her hand. - -"Shall I play the Beethoven first?" enquired the guest. - -"Mm--and then the Cavatina," murmured Miriam, as if half asleep, turning -wholly towards the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano scores. - - - 2 - -She seemed to grow larger and stronger and easier as the thoughtful -chords came musing out into the night and hovered amongst the dark -trees. She found herself drawing easy breaths and relaxing completely -against the support of the hard friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was -listening.... - -After a while, everything was dissolved, past and future and present and -she was nothing but an ear, intent on the meditative harmony which stole -out into the garden. - - - 3 - -When the last gently strung notes had ceased she turned from her window -and found Harriett's near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling -slowly up the forehead. - -"Wow," mouthed Miriam. - -Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and strained her eyebrow higher. - -The piano introduction to the Cavatina drowned the comments on the -guest's playing and the family relaxed once more into listening. - -"Pink anemones, eh," suggested Miriam softly. - -Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approvingly. - -"Pink anemones," sighed Miriam, and turned to watch Margaret Wedderburn -standing in her full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a radiance -of red and golden light. Her heavily waving fair hair fell back towards -its tightly braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as death. -From between furry eyelashes her eyes looked steadfastly out, robbed of -their everyday sentimental expression. - -As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the fine gold down covering -the cheeks and upper lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin and -firm large mouth and the steady arm that swept out in rich 'cello-like -notes the devout theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity of -happiness. - - - 4 - -... To-morrow the room would be lit and decked and clear. Amongst the -crowd of guests, he would come across the room, walking in his way.... -She smiled to herself. He would come "sloping in" in his way, like a -shadow, not looking at anyone. His strange friend would be with him. -There would be introductions and greetings. Then he would dance with her -silently and not looking at her, as if they were strangers, and then be -dancing with someone else ... with smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes -and talking and answering and all the time looking about the room. And -then again with her, cool and silent and not looking. And presently she -would tell him about going away to Banbury Park. - - - 5 - -Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable again as he had done when -they were alone by the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany.... -"Play 'Abide with me,' Miriam; play 'Abide with me.'" ... - -To-morrow there would be another moment like that. He would say her name -suddenly, as he had done last week at the Babingtons' dance, very low, -half-turning towards her. She would be ready this time and say his name -and move instead of being turned to stone. Confidently the music assured -her of that moment. - - - 6 - -She lay looking quietly into his imagined face till the room had gone. -Then the face grew dim and far off and at last receded altogether into -darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was his own life. She would -never know it. However well they got to know each other they would -always be strangers. Probably he never thought about her when he was -alone. Only of Shakespeare and politics. What would he think if he knew -she thought of him? But he thought of her when he saw her. That was -utterly certain; the one thing certain in the world.... That day, coming -along Putney Hill with mother, tired and dull and trying to keep her -temper, passing his house, seeing him standing at his window, alone and -pale and serious. The sudden lightening of his face surprised her again, -violently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole world from end to -end. He did not know that he had looked like that. She had turned -swiftly from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow on her heart, that -one day he would kiss her. Not for years and years. But one day he would -bend his head. She wrenched herself from the thought, but it was too -late. She thanked heaven she had looked; she wished she had not; the -kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not touched her, it was like -the breath of the summer. Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt -the pavement. She remembered walking on, exulting with hanging head, -cringing close to the ivy which hung from the top of the garden wall, -sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and everyone who would never stand -first with Ted. - - - 7 - -... There were girls who let themselves be kissed for fun.... Playing -"Kiss in the Ring," being kissed by someone they did not mean to always -be with, all their life ... how sad and dreadful. Why did it not break -their hearts? - - - 8 - -Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug, being thanked and praised. -Her brown violin hung amongst the folds of her skirt. - -"People _do_ like us," mused Miriam, listening to the peculiar sympathy -of the family voice. - -Meg was there, away from her own home, happy with them, the front door -shut, their garden and house all round her and her strange luggage -upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice Meg.... - - - 9 - -After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat in a low carpet chair at a -window in the long bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a morning of -blazing sunlight and bright blue. She had just come up through the cool -house from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with Harriett. A little -bunch of pink anemones she had picked for herself were set in a tumbler -on the wash-hand-stand. - -She had left the door open to hear coming faintly up from the far-away -drawing-room the tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and Eve were -stretching the drugget. - -On her knee lay her father's cigarette-making machine and a parcel of -papers and tobacco. An empty cigarette tin stood upon the window-sill. - -She began packing tobacco into the groove of the machine, distributing -and pressing it lightly with the tips of her fingers, watching as she -worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and the shining of their -green stalks through the water. They were, she reflected, a little too -much out. In the sun they would have come out still more. They would -close up at night unless the rooms grew very hot. Slipping the paper -evenly into the slot she shut the machine and turned the roller. As the -sound of the loosely working cogs came up to her she revolted from her -self-imposed task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It would use up -her happiness too stupidly. - -She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that she should smoke the -single cigarette herself. Why not? Why had she never yet smoked one? She -glanced at the slowly swinging door. No one would come. She was alone on -the top floor. Everyone was downstairs and busy. The finished cigarette -lay on her knee. Taking it between her fingers she pressed a little -hanging thread of tobacco into place. The cigarette felt pleasantly -plump and firm. It was well made. As she rose to get matches the mowing -machine sounded suddenly from the front lawn. She started and looked out -of the window, concealing the cigarette in her hand. It was the gardener -with bent shoulders pushing with all his might. With some difficulty she -unhitched the phosphorescent match-box from its place under the -gas-bracket and got back into her low chair, invisible from the lawn. - -The cool air flowed in garden-scented. She held the cigarette between -two fingers. The match hissed and flared as she held it carefully below -the sill, and the flame flowed towards her while she set the paper -alight. Raising the cigarette to her lips she blew gently outwards, down -through the tobacco. The flame twisted and went out, leaving the paper -charred. She struck another match angrily, urging herself to draw, and -drew little panting breaths with the cigarette well in the flame. It -smoked. Blowing out the match she looked at the end of the cigarette. It -was glowing all over and a delicate little spiral of smoke rose into her -face. Quickly she applied her lips again and drew little breaths, -opening her mouth wide between each breath and holding the cigarette -sideways away from her. The end glowed afresh with each breath. The -paper charred evenly away and little flecks of ash fell about her. - - - 10 - -A third of the whole length was consumed. Her nostrils breathed in -smoke, and as she tasted the burnt flavour the sweetness of the -unpolluted air all around her was a new thing. The acrid tang in her -nostrils intoxicated her. She drew more boldly. There was smoke in her -mouth. She opened it quickly, sharply exhaling a yellow cloud oddly -different from the grey spirals wreathing their way from the end of the -cigarette. She went on drawing in mouthful after mouthful of smoke, -expelling each quickly with widely-opened lips, turning to look at the -well-known room through the yellow haze and again at the sky, which drew -nearer as she puffed at it. The sight of the tree-tops scrolled with her -little clouds brought her a sense of power. She had chosen to smoke and -she was smoking, and the morning world gleamed back at her.... - - - 11 - -The morning gleamed. She would choose her fate. It should be amongst -green trees and sunshine. That daunted lump who had accepted the post at -Banbury Park had nothing to do with her. Morning gladness flooded her, -and her gladness of the thought of the evening to come quickened as it -had done last night into certainty. - -She burned the last inch of the cigarette in the grate, wrapped with -combings from the toilet-tidy in a screw of paper. When all was consumed -she carefully replaced the summer bundle of ornamental mohair behind the -bars. - -Useless to tell anyone. No one would believe she had not felt ill. She -found it difficult to understand why anyone should feel sick from -smoking. Dizzy perhaps ... a little drunk. Pater's tobacco was very -strong, some people could not smoke it.... She had smoked a whole -cigarette of strong tobacco and liked it. Raising her arms above her -head she worked them upwards, stretching every muscle of her body. No, -she was anything but ill. - -Leaving the window wide she went on to the landing. The smell of tobacco -was everywhere. She flung into each room in turn, throwing up windows -and leaving doors propped ajar. - -Harriett coming up the garden with a basket of cut flowers saw her at -the cook's bedroom window. - -"What on earth you doing thayer!" she shrieked putting down her basket. - -Hanging from the window Miriam made a trumpet of her hands. - -"Something blew in!" - - - 12 - -All preparations for the evening were made and the younger members of -the household were having a late tea in the breakfast-room. "We've done -the alcoves," said Sarah explosively, "in case it rains." - -Nan Babington sat up in her long chair to bring her face round to the -deep bay where Sarah stood. - -"My _dear_! Seraphina! And she's doing the pink bows! Will some saint -take my cup? Ta.... My dear, how _perfectly_ screaming." - -Miriam raised her head from the petal-scattered table, where she lay -prone side by side with Harriett, to watch Nan sitting up in her firm -white dress beaming at Sarah through her slanting eye. - -"What flowers you going to wear, Nan?" - -Nan patted her sleek slightly Japanese-looking hair. "_Ah_ ... splashes -of scarlet, my dear. Splashes of scarlet. One in my hair and one here." -She patted the broad level of her enviable breast towards the left -shoulder. - -"Almost _on_ the shoulder, you know--arranged flat, _can't_ be squashed -and showing as you dance." - -"Geraniums! Oom. You've got awfully good taste. What a frightfully good -effect. Bright red and bright white. Clean. Go on, Nan." - -"_Killing_," pursued Nan. "Tom said at breakfast with his mouth -absolutely _full_ of sweet-bread, 'it'll rain'--growled, you know, with -his mouth _crammed_ full. 'Never mind, Tommy,' said Ella with the -_utmost_ promptitude, 'they're sure to have the alcoves.' 'Oomph,' -growled Tommy, pretending not to care. _Naughty_ Tommy, naughty, -_naughty_ Tommy!" - -"Any cake left?" sighed Miriam, sinking back amongst her petals and -hoping that Nan's voice would go on. - -"You girls are the most adorable individuals I ever met.... Did anybody -see Pearlie going home this afternoon?" - -Everyone chuckled and waited. - -"My _dears_! My _dears_!! Bevan _dragged_ me along to the end of the -pavilion to see him enter up the handicaps with his new automatic -pen--_awfully_ smashing--and I was just hobbling the last few yards past -the apple trees when we _saw_ Pearlie hand-in-hand with the Botterford -boys, prancing along the asphalt court--_prancing_, my dears!" - -Miriam and Harriett dragged themselves up to see. Nan bridled and swayed -from listener to listener, her wide throat gleaming as she sang out her -words. - -"Prancing--with straggles of grey hair sticking out and that _tiny_ -sailor hat cocked _almost_ on to her nose. My dear, you sh'd've _seen_ -Bevan! He put up his eyeglass, my dears, for a _fraction_ of a second," -Nan's head went up--"Madame Pompadour," thought Miriam--and her slanting -eyes glanced down her nose, "and dropped it, clickety-click. You sh'd've -_seen_ the expression on his angelic countenance." - -"I say, she _is_ an awful little creature, isn't she?" said Miriam, -watching Eve bend a crimson face over the tea-tray on the hearthrug. -"She put her boots on the pavilion table this afternoon when all those -men were there--about a mile high they are--with tassels. Why _does_ she -go on like that?" - -"Men like that sort of thing," said Sarah lightly. - -"Sally!" - -"They do.... I believe she drinks." - -"Sally! My _dear_!" - -"I believe she _does_. She's always having shandygaff with the men." - -"Oh, well, perhaps she doesn't," murmured Eve. - -"Chuck me a lump of sugar, Eve." - -Miriam subsided once more amongst the rose petals. - -"Bevvy thinks I oughtn't to dance." - -"Did he say so?" - -"Of course, my dear. But old Wyman said I could, every third, except the -Lancers." - -"You sh'd've seen Bevvy's face. 'Brother Tommy doesn't object,' I said. -'He's going to look after me!' '_Is_ he?' said Bevvy in his _most_ -superior manner." - -"What a fearful scrunching you're making," said Harriett, pinching -Miriam's nose. - -"Let's go and dress," said Miriam, rolling off the table. - - - 13 - -"How many times has she met him?" asked Miriam as they went through the -hall. - -"I dunno. Not many." - -"I think it's simply hateful." - -"Mimmy!" It was Nan's insinuating voice. - -"Coming," called Miriam. "And, you know, Tommy needn't think he can -carry on with _Meg_ in an alcove." - -"_What_ would she think? Let's go and tell Meg she must dress." - -"Mimmy!" - -Miriam went back and put her head round the breakfast-room door. - -"Let me see you when you're dressed." - -"Why?" - -"I want to kiss the back of your neck, my dear; love kissing people's -necks." - -Miriam smiled herself vaguely out of the room, putting away the -unpleasant suggestion. - -"I wish I'd got a dress like Nan's," she said, joining Harriett in the -dark lobby. - -"I say, somebody's been using the 'Financial Times' to cut up flowers -on. It's all wet." Harriett lifted the limp newspaper from the -marble-topped coil of pipes and shook it. - -"Hang it up somewhere." - -"Where? Everything's cleared up." - -"Stick it out of the lavatory window and pull the window down on it." - -"Awri, you hold the door open." - -Miriam laughed as Harriett fell into the room. - -"Blooming boot-jack." - -"Is it all right in there? Are all the pegs clear? Is the washing-basin -all right?" - -A faint light came in as Harriett pushed up the frosted pane. - -"Here's a pair of boots all over the floor and your old Zulu hat hanging -on a peg. The basin's all right except a perfectly foul smell of -nicotine. It's pater's old feather." - -"That doesn't matter. The men won't mind that. My old hat can stay. -There are ten pegs out here and all the slab, and there's hardly -anything on the hall stand. That's it. Don't cram the window down so as -to cut the paper. That'll do. Come on." - -"I wish I had a really stunning dress," remarked Miriam, as they tapped -across the wide hall. - -"You needn't." - -The drawing-room door was open. They surveyed the sea of drugget, dark -grey in the fading light. "_Pong_-pong-_pong_ de doodle, -_pong_-pong-_pong_ de doodle," murmured Miriam as they stood swaying on -tiptoe in the doorway. - -"Let's have the gas and _two_ candlesticks, Harry, on the dressing-table -under the gas." - -"All right," mouthed Harriett in a stage whisper, making for the stairs -as the breakfast-room door opened. - -It was Eve. "I say, Eve, I'm _scared_," said Miriam, meeting her. - -Eve giggled triumphantly. - -"Look here. I shan't come down at first. I'll play the first dance. I'll -get them all started with 'Bitter-Sweet.'" - -"Don't worry, Mim." - -"My _dear_, I simply don't know how to face the evening." - -"You do," murmured Eve. "You are proud." - -"What of?" - -"You know quite well." - -"What?" - -"He's the nicest boy we know." - -"But he's not my boy. Of course not. You're insane. Besides, I don't -know who you're talking about." - -"Oh, well, we won't talk. We'll go and arrange your chignon." - -"I'm going to have simply twists and perhaps a hair ornament." - - - 14 - -Miriam reached the conservatory from the garden door and set about -opening the lid of the grand piano. She could see at the far end of the -almost empty drawing-room a little ruddy thick-set bearded man with a -roll of music under his arm talking to her mother. He was standing very -near to her, surrounding her with his eager presence. "Mother's -wonderful," thought Miriam, with a moment's adoration for Mrs. -Henderson's softly-smiling girlish tremulousness. Listening to the man's -hilarious expostulating narrative voice she fumbled hastily for her -waltz amongst the scattered piles of music on the lid of the piano. - -As she struck her opening chords she watched her mother gently quell the -narrative and steer the sturdy form towards a group of people hesitating -in the doorway. "Have they had coffee?" she wondered anxiously. "Is Mary -driving them into the dining-room properly?" Before she had reached the -end of her second page everyone had disappeared. She paused a moment and -looked down the brightly lit empty room--the sight of the cold sheeny -drugget filled her with despair. The hilarious voice resounded in the -hall. There couldn't be many there yet. Were they all looking after them -properly? For a moment she was tempted to leave her piano and go and -make some desperate attempt at geniality. Then the sound of the -pervading voice back again in the room and brisk footsteps coming -towards the conservatory drove her back to her music. The little man -stepped quickly over the low moulding into the conservatory. - -"Ah, Mariamne," he blared gently. - -"Oh, Bennett, you angel, how _did_ you get here so early?" responded -Miriam, playing with zealous emphasis. - -"Got old Barrowgate to finish off the out-patients," he said with a -choke of amusement. - -"I say, Mirry, don't you play. Let me take it on. You go and ply the -light fantastic." He laid his hands upon her shoulders and burred the -tune she was playing like a muted euphonium over the top of her head. -"No. It's all right. Go and get them dancing. Get over the -awfulness--_you_ know." - -"Get over the awfulness, eh? Oh, I'll get over the awfulness." - -"Ssh--are there many there?" - -They both looked round into the drawing-room. - -Nan Babington was backing slowly up and down the room supported by the -outstretched arms of Bevan Seymour, her black head thrown back level -with his, the little scarlet knot in her hair hardly registering the -smooth movements of her invisible feet. - -"They seem to have begun," shouted Bennett in a whisper as Harriett and -her fianc swung easily circling into the room and were followed by two -more couples. - -"Go and dance with Meg. She only knows Tommy Babington." - -"Like the lid up?" - - - 15 - -Miriam's rhythmic clangour doubled its resonance in the tiled -conservatory as the great lid of the piano went up. - -"Magnifique, Mirry, parfaitement magnifique," intoned Tommy Babington, -appearing in the doorway with Meg on his arm. - -"Bonsoir, Tomasso." - -"You are like an expressive metronome." - -"Oh--nom d'un pipe." - -"You would make a rhinoceros dance." - -Adjusting his pince-nez he dexterously seized tall Meg and swung her -rapidly in amongst the dancers. - -"Sarah'll say he's had a Turkish bath," thought Miriam, recalling the -unusual clear pallor of his rather overfed face. "Pleated shirt. That's -to impress Meg." - -She felt all at once that the air seemed cold. It was not like a summer -night. How badly the ferns were arranged. Nearly all of them together on -the staging behind the end of the piano; not enough visible from the -drawing-room. Her muscles were somehow stiffening into the wrong mood. -Presently she would be playing badly. She watched the forms circling -past the gap in the curtains and slowed a little. The room seemed fairly -full. - -"That's it--perfect, Mim," signalled Harriett's partner, swinging her -by. She held to the fresh rhythm and passing into a tender old waltz -tune that she knew by heart gave herself to her playing. She need not -watch the feet any longer. She could go on for ever. She knew she was -not playing altogether for the dancers. She was playing to two hearers. -But she could not play that tune if they came. They would be late. But -they must be here now. Where were they? Were they having coffee? -Dancing? She flung a terrified glance at the room and met the cold eye -of Bevan Seymour. She would not look again. The right feeling for the -dreamy old tune came and went uncontrollably. Why did they not come? -Presently she would be cold and sick and done for, for the evening. She -played on, harking back to the memory of the kindly challenge in the -eyes of her brother-in-law to be, dancing gravely with a grave -Harriett--fearing her ... writing in her album: - - "She was his life, - The ocean to the river of his thoughts-- - Which terminated all." - -... cold, calm little Harriett. Her waltz had swung soft and low and the -dancers were hushed. Only Tommy Babington's voice still threaded the -little throng. - -Someone held back the near curtain. A voice said quietly, "Here she is." - - - 16 - -Ted's low, faintly-mocking voice filled the conservatory. - -He was standing very near her, looking down at her with his back to the -gay room. Yesterday's dream had come more than true, at once, at the -beginning of the evening. He had come straight to her with his friend, -not dancing, not looking for a partner. They were in the little green -enclosure with her. The separating curtains had fallen back into place. - -Behind the friend who stood leaning against the far end of the piano, -the massed fernery gleamed now with the glow of concealed fairy lamps. -She had not noticed it before. The fragrance of fronds and moist warm -clumps of maidenhair and scented geraniums inundated her as she glanced -across at the light falling on hard sculptured waves of hair above a -white handsome face. - -Her music held them all, protecting the wordless meeting. Her last -night's extremity of content was reality, being lived by all three of -them. It centred in herself. Ted stood within it, happy in it. The -friend watched, witnessing Ted's confession. Ted had said nothing to him -about her, about any of them, in his usual way. But he was disguising -nothing now that he had come. - -At the end of her playing she stood up faintly dizzy, and held out -towards Max Sonnenheim's familiar strangeness hands heavy with happiness -and quickened with the sense of Ted's touch upon her arm. The swift -crushing of the strange hands upon her own, steadied her as the curtains -swung wide and a group of dancers crowded in. - - - 17 - -"Don't tell N.B. we've scrubbed the coffin, Miriorama--she'll sit there -all the evening." - -"That was my sister and my future brother-in-law," said Miriam to Max -Sonnenheim as Harriett and Gerald ran down the steps and out into the -dark garden. - -"Your sister and brother-in-law," he responded thoughtfully. - -He was standing at her side at the top of the garden steps staring out -into the garden and apparently not noticing the noisy passers-by. If -they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not been dancing, would join -them. She did not want that. She would put off her dance with Ted until -later. The next dance she would play herself and then perhaps dance -again with Max. Once more from the strange security of his strongly -swinging arms she would meet Ted's eyes, watching and waiting. She must -dance once more with Max. She had never really danced before. She would -go to Ted at last and pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not -yet. - -"I will show you the front garden," she said, running down the steps. - -He joined her and they walked silently round the side of the house, -through the kitchen yard and out into the deserted carriage drive. She -thought she saw people on the front lawn and walked quickly, humming a -little tune, on down the drive. - -Max crunched silently along a little apart from her, singing to himself. - - - 18 - -Both sides of the front gate were bolted back and their footsteps -carried them straight out on to the asphalted avenue extending right and -left, a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps out in the -roadway. With a sudden sense of daring, Miriam determined to assume the -deserted avenue as part of the garden. - -The gate left behind, they made their way slowly along the high leafy -tunnel. - -They would walk to the end of the long avenue and back again. In a -moment she would cease humming and make a remark. She tasted a new sense -of ease, walking slowly along with this strange man without "making -conversation." He was taking her silence for granted. All her experience -so far had been of companions whose uneasiness pressed unendurably for -speech, and her talking had been done with an irritated sense of the -injustice of aspersions on "women's tongues," while no man could endure -a woman's silence ... even Ted, except when dancing; no woman could, -except Minna, in Germany. Max must be foreign, of course, German--of -_course_. She could, if she liked, talk of the stars to him. He would -neither make jokes nor talk science and want her to admire him, until -all the magic was gone. Her mood expanded. He had come just at the right -moment. She would keep him with her until she had to face Ted. He was -like a big ship towing the little barque of her life to its harbour. - -His vague humming rose to a little song. It was German. It was the -Lorelei. For a moment she forgot everything but pride in her ability to -take her share in both music and words. - -"You understand German!" he cried. - -They had reached the end of the avenue and the starlit roadway opened -ahead, lined with meadows. - -"Ach, wie schn," breathed Max. - -"Wie schn." Miriam was startled by the gay sound of her own voice. It -sounded as if she were alone, speaking to herself. She looked up at the -spangled sky. The freshening air streamed towards them from the meadows. - -"We _must_ go back," she said easily, turning in again under the trees. - -The limes seemed heavily scented after their breath of the open. They -strolled dreamily along keeping step with each other. They would make it -a long quiet way to the gate. Miriam felt strangely invisible. It was as -if in a moment a voice would come from the clustering lime trees or from -the cluster of stars in the imagined sky. - -"Wie sss," murmured Max, "ist treue Liebe." - -"How dear," she translated mentally, "is true love." Yes, that was it, -that was true, the German phrase. Ted was dear, dear. But so far away. -Coming and going, far away. - -"Is it?" she said with a vague, sweet intonation, to hear more. - -"Wie sss, wie sss," he repeated firmly, flinging his arm across her -shoulders. - -The wildly shimmering leafage rustled and seemed to sing. She walked on -horrified, cradled, her elbow resting in her companion's hand as in a -cup. She laughed, and her laughter mingled with the subdued lilting of -the voice close at her side. Ted was waiting somewhere in the night for -her. Ted. Ted. Not this stranger. But why was he not bold like this? -Primly and gently she disengaged herself. - -She and Ted would walk along through the darkness and it would shout to -them. Day-time colours seemed to be shining through the night.... She -turned abruptly to her companion. - -"Aren't the lime trees jolly?" she said conversationally. - -"You will dance again with me?" - -"Yes, if you like." - -"I must go so early." - -"Must you?" - -"To-morrow morning early I go abroad." - - - 19 - -"Hullo!" - -"Where were _you_ all that last dance?" - -Nan Babington's voice startled her as they came into the bright hall -through the open front door. - -She smiled towards Nan, sitting drearily with a brilliant smile on her -face watching the dancers from a long chair drawn up near the -drawing-room door, and passed on into the room with her hand on her -partner's arm. They had missed a dance and an interval. It must have -been a Lancers and now there was another waltz. - -Several couples were whirling gravely about. Amongst them she noted -Bevan Seymour, upright and slender, dancing with Harriett with an air of -condescending vivacity, his bright teeth showing all the time. Her eyes -were ready for Ted. She was going to meet his for the first time--just -one look, and then she would fly for her life anywhere, to anybody. And -he would find her and make her look at him again. Ted. He was not there. -People were glancing at her, curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and -felt their radiance stream through her, flooding her with strength from -head to foot. How battered and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and -sick, stamped with a pallor of sickness. How she pitied them all. - -"Let us take a short turn," said Max, and his arms came around her. As -they circled slowly down the length of the room she stared at his black -shoulder a few inches from her eyes. His stranger's face was just above -her in the bright light; his strange black-stitched glove holding her -mittened hand. His arms steadied her as they neared the conservatory. - -"Let us go out," she heard him say, and her footsteps were guided across -the moulding, her arm retained in his. Meg Wedderburn was playing and -met her with her sentimental smile. In the gloom at her side, just -beyond the shaded candle, stood Ted ready to turn the music, his -disengaged hand holding the bole of a tall palm. He dropped his hands -and turned as they passed him, almost colliding with Miriam. "Next dance -with me," he whispered neatly. "Will you show me your coffin?" asked Max -as they reached the garden steps. - -"It's quite down at the end beyond the kitchen garden." - - - 20 - -"There are raspberry canes all along here, on both sides--trailing all -over the place; the gardener puts up stakes and things but they manage -to trail all over the place." - -"Ah, yes." - -"Some of them are that pale yellow kind, the colour of champagne. You -can just see how they trail. Isn't it funny how dark they are, and yet -the colour's there all the time, isn't it? They are lovely in the day, -lovely leaves and great big fruit, and in between are little squatty -gooseberry bushes, all kinds, yellow and egg-shaped like plums, and -little bright green round ones and every kind of the ordinary red kind. -Do you know the little bright green ones, quite bright green when -they're ripe, like bright green Chartreuse?" - -"No. The green Chartreuse of course I know. But green ripe gooseberries -I have not seen." - -"I expect you only know the unripe green ones they make April fool of." - -"April fool?" - -"I mean _gooseberry_ fool. Do you know why men are like green -gooseberries?" - -"No. Why are they? Tell me." - -"Perhaps you would not like it. We are passing the apple trees now; -quarendens and stibbards." - -"Tell me. I shall like what you say." - -"Well, it's because women can make fools of them whenever they like." - -Max laughed; a deep gurgling laugh that echoed back from the wall in -front of them. - -"We are nearly at the end of the garden." - -"I think you would not make a man a fool. No?" - -"I don't know. I've never thought about it." - -"You have not thought much about men." - -"I don't know." - -"But they, they have thought about you." - -"Oh, I'm sure I don't know." - -"You do not care, perhaps?" - -"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Here's the coffin. I'm afraid -it's not very comfortable. It's so low." - -"What is it?" - -"It's an overturned seedling box. There's grass all round. I wonder -whether it's damp," said Miriam suddenly invaded by a general -uncertainty. - -"Oh, we will sit down, it will not be damp. Your future brother-in-law -has not scrubbed also the ivy on the wall," he pursued as they sat down -on the broad low seat, "it will spoil your blouse." - -Miriam leaned uncomfortably against the intervening arm. - -"Isn't it a perfectly lovely night?" she said. - -"I feel that you would not make of a man a fool...." - -"Why not?" - -"I feel that there is no poison in you." - -"What _do_ you mean?" People ... poisonous ... What a horrible idea. - -"Just what I say." - -"I know in a way. I think I know what you mean." - -"I feel that there is no poison in you. I have not felt that before with -a woman." - -"Aren't women awful?" Miriam made a little movement of sympathy towards -the strange definiteness at her side. - -"I have thought so. But you are not as the women one meets. You have a -soul serene and innocent. With you it should be well with a man." - -"I don't know," responded Miriam. "Is he telling me I am a fool?" she -thought. "It's true, but no one has the courage to tell me." - -"It is most strange. I talk to you here as I will. It is simple and -fatal"; the supporting arm became a gentle encirclement and Miriam's -heart beat softly in her ears. "I go to-morrow to Paris to the branch of -my father's business that is managed there by my brother. And I go then -to New York to establish a branch there. I shall be away then, perhaps a -year. Shall I find you here?" - -A quick crunching on the gravel pathway just in front of them made them -both hold their breath to listen. Someone was standing on the grass near -Max's side of the coffin. A match spat and flared and Miriam's heart was -shaken by Ted's new, eager, frightened voice. "Aren't you _ever_ going -to dance with me again?" - -She had seen the whiteness of his face and his cold, delicate, upright -figure. In spirit she had leapt to her feet and faltered his name. All -the world she knew had fallen into newness. This was certainty. Ted -would never leave her. But it was Max who was standing up and saying -richly in the blackness left by the burnt-out match, "All in good time, -Burton. Miss Miriam is engaged to me for this dance." Her faint "of -course, Ted," was drowned in the words which her partner sang after the -footsteps retreating rapidly along the gravel path: "We're just coming!" - -"I suppose they've begun the next dance," she said, rising decisively -and brushing at her velvet skirt with trembling hands. - -"Our dance. Let us go and dance our dance." - -They walked a little apart steadily along up through the kitchen garden, -their unmatched footsteps sounding loudly upon the gravel between -remarks made by Max. Miriam heard them and heard the voice of Max. But -she neither listened nor responded. - -She began to talk and laugh at random as they neared the lawn lit by the -glaring uncurtained windows. - -Consulting his scrutinising face as they danced easily in the as yet -half-empty room, he humming the waltz which swung with their movement, -she found narrow, glinting eyes looking into her own; strange eyes that -knew all about a big business and were going to Paris and New York. His -stranger's face was going away, to be washed and shaved innumerable -times, keeping its assurance in strange places she knew nothing about. - -Here, just for these few hours, laughing at Ted. A phrase flashed -through her brain, "He's brought Ted to his senses." She flushed and -laughed vaguely and danced with a feeling of tireless strength and -gaiety. She knew the phrase was not her own. It was one Nan Babington -could have used. It excited her. It meant that real things were going to -happen, she could bear herself proudly in the room. She rippled -complacently at Max. The room was full of whirling forms, swelling and -shrinking as they crossed and recrossed the line between the clear -vision rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright confusion. -Swift, rhythmic movement, unbroken and unjostled, told her how well they -were dancing. She was secure, landed in life, dancing carelessly out and -out to a life of her own. - -"I go; I see you again in a year," said Max suddenly, drawing up near -the door where Mrs. Henderson stood sipping coffee with Sarah and -Bennett. - -"Where is Burton?" he asked in the midst of his thanks and leave-taking. - -They all hesitated. Miriam suddenly found herself in the presence of a -tribunal. - -Bennett's careless "Oh, he's gone; couldn't stay," followed her as she -flung upstairs to Meg Wedderburn's empty room. Why had her mother looked -so self-conscious and Sarah avoided her eye ... standing there like a -little group of conspirators. - -People were always inventing things. "Bother--damnational silliness," -she muttered, and began rapidly calculating. Ted gone away. Little Ted -hurt and angry. To-morrow. Perhaps he wouldn't come. If he didn't she -wouldn't see him before she went. The quiet little bead of ruby shaded -gas reproached her. Meg's eyes would be sad and reproachful in this -quiet neatness. Terror seized her. She wouldn't see him. He had finished -his work at the Institution. It was the big Norwich job next week. - - - - - CHAPTER III - - - 1 - -Miriam propped "The Story of Adle" open against the three Bibles on the -dressing-table. It would be wasteful to read it upstairs. It was the -only story-book amongst the rows of volumes which filled the shelves in -the big schoolroom and would have to last her for tea-time reading the -whole term. The "Fleurs de l'Eloquence?" Shiny brown leather covered -with little gold buds and tendrils, fresh and new although the parchment -pages were yellow with age. The Fleurs were so short ... that curious -page signed "Froissart" with long s's, coming to an end just as the -picture of the French court was getting clear and interesting. That -other thing, "The Anatomy of Melancholy." Fascinating. But it would take -so much reading, on and on forgetting everything; all the ordinary -things, seeing things in some new way, some way that fascinated people -for a moment if you tried to talk about it and then made them very -angry, made them hate and suspect you. Impossible to take it out and -have it on the schoolroom table for tea-time reading. What had made the -Pernes begin allowing tea-time reading? Being shy and finding it -difficult to keep conversation going with the girls for so long? They -never did talk to the girls. Perhaps because they did not see through -them and understand them. North London girls. So different from the -Fairchild family and the sort of girls they had been accustomed to when -they were young. Anyhow, they hardly ever had to talk to them. Not at -breakfast or dinner-time when they were all three there; and at tea-time -when there was only one of them, there were always the books. How -sensible. On Sunday afternoons, coming smiling into the schoolroom, one -of them each Sunday--perhaps the others were asleep--reading aloud; the -Fairchild family, smooth and good and happy, everyone in the book -surrounded with a sort of light, going on and on and on towards heaven, -tea-time seeming so nice and mean and ordinary afterwards--or a book -about a place in the north of England called Saltcoats, brine, and a -vicarage and miners; the people in the book horrible, not lit up, -talking about things and being gloomy and not always knowing what to do, -never really sure about Heaven like the Fairchild family, black brackish -book. The "Fairchild Family" was golden and gleaming. - -"The Anatomy of Melancholy" would not be golden like "The Fairchild -Family" ... "the cart was now come alongside a wood which was -exceedingly shady and beautiful"; "good manners and civility make -everybody lovely"; but it would be round and real, not just chilly and -moaning like "Saltcoats." The title would be enough to keep one going at -tea-time. An_at_--omy of _Mel_--ancholy, and the look of the -close-printed pages and a sentence here and there. The Pernes would not -believe she really wanted it there on the table. The girls would stare. -When "The Story of Adle" was finished she would have to find some other -book; or borrow one. Nancie Wilkie, sitting at tea with her back to the -closed piano facing the great bay of dark green-blinded window, reading -"Nicholas Nickleby." Just the very one of all the Dickens volumes that -would be likely to come into her hands. Impossible to borrow it when -Nancie had finished with it. Impossible to read a book with such a -title. "David Copperfield" was all right; and "The Pickwick Papers." -"Little Dorritt"--"A Tale of Two Cities"--"The Old Curiosity Shop." -There was something suspicious about these, too. - - - 2 - -Adle--the story of Adle. The book had hard, unpleasant covers with -some thin cottony material--bright lobelia blue--strained over them and -fraying out at the corners. Over the front of the cover were little -garlands and festoons of faded gold, and in the centre framed by an oval -band of brighter gold was the word Adle, with little strong tendrils on -the lettering. There was some secret charm about the book. The strong -sunlight striking the window just above the coarse lace curtains that -obscured its lower half, made the gilding shine and seem to move--a -whole wild woodland. The coarse white toilet-cover on the chest of -drawers, the three Bibles, the little cheap mahogany-framed -looking-glass, Nancie Wilkie's folding hand-glass, the ugly gas bracket -sticking out above the mirror, her own bed in the corner with its coarse -fringed coverlet, the two alien beds behind her in the room, and the -repellant washstand in the far corner became friendly as the sun shone -on the decorated cover of the blue and gold book. - -She propped it open again and began tidying her hair. It must be nearly -tea-time. A phrase caught her eye. "The old chteau where the first -years of Adle's life were spent was situated in the midst of a -high-walled garden. Along one side of the chteau ran a terrace looking -out over a lovely expanse of flower-beds. Beyond was a little pleasaunce -surrounded by a miniature wall and threaded by little pathways lined -with rose trees. Almost hidden in the high wall was a little doorway. -When the doorway was open you could see through into a deep orchard." -The first tea-bell rang. The figure of Adle flitting about in an -endless summer became again lines of black print. In a moment the girls -would come rushing up. Miriam closed the book and turned to the dazzling -window. The sun blazed just above the gap in the avenue of poplars. A -bright yellow pathway led up through the green of the public cricket -ground, pierced the avenue of poplars and disappeared through the -further greenery in a curve that was the beginning of its encirclement -of the park lake. Coming slowly along the pathway was a little figure -dressed bunchily in black. It looked pathetically small and dingy in the -bright scene. The afternoon blazed round it. It was something left over. -What was the explanation of it? As it came near it seemed to change. It -grew real. It was hurrying eagerly along, quite indifferent to the -afternoon glory, with little rolling steps that were like the uneven -toddling of a child, and carrying a large newspaper whose great sheets, -although there was no wind, balled out scarcely controlled by the small -hands. Its feathered hat had a wind-blown rakish air. On such a still -afternoon. It was thinking and coming along, thinking and thinking and a -little angry. What a rum little party, murmured Miriam, despising her -words and admiring the wild thought-filled little bundle of dingy -clothes. Beastly, to be picking up that low kind of slang--not real -slang. Just North London sneering. Goo--what a _rum_ little party, she -declared aloud, flattening herself against the window. Hotly flushing, -she recognised that she had been staring at Miss Jenny Perne hurrying in -to preside at tea. - - - 3 - -"We've been to Jones's this afternoon, Miss Jenny." - -Each plate held a slice of bread and butter cut thickly all the way -across a household loaf, and the three-pound jar of home-made plum jam -belonging to Nancie Wilkie was going the round of the table. It had -begun with Miriam, who sat on Miss Jenny's right hand, and had Nancie -for neighbour. She had helped herself sparingly, unable quite to resist -the enhancement of the solid fare, but fearing that there would be no -possibility of getting anything from home to make a return in kind. -Things were so bad, the dance had cost so much. One of Mary's cakes, big -enough for five people, would cost so much. And there would be the -postage. - -Piling a generous spoonful on to her own thick slice, Nancie coughed -facetiously and repeated her remark which had produced no result but a -giggle from Charlotte Stubbs who sat opposite to her. - -"Eh? Eh? What?" - -Miss Jenny looked down the table over the top of her newspaper without -raising her head. Her pince-nez were perched so that one eye appeared -looking through its proper circle, the other glared unprotected just -above a rim of glass. - -"Miss Haddie took us to Jones's this afternoon," said Nancie almost -voicelessly. Miriam glanced at the too familiar sight of Nancie's small -eyes vanishing to malicious points. She was sitting as usual very solid -and upright in her chair, with her long cheeks pink flushed and her fine -nose white and cool and twitching, her yellow hair standing strongly -back from her large white brow. She stabbed keenly in her direction as -Miriam glanced, and Miriam turned and applied herself to her bread and -jam. If she did not eat she would not get more than two slices from the -piled dishes before the others had consumed four and five apiece and -brought tea to an end. - -"Eh? What for? Why are ye laughing, Nancie?" - -"I'm not laughing, Miss Jenny." Nancie's firm lips curved away from her -large faultless teeth. "I'm only smiling and telling you about our visit -to Jones's." - -Miss Jenny's newspaper was lowered and her pince-nez removed. - -"Eh? What d'ye say? Nonsense, Nancie, you know you were laughing. Why do -you say you weren't? What do you mean? Eh?" - -"I'm sorry, Miss Jennie. Something tickled me." - -"Yes. Don't be nonsensical. D'ye see? It's nonsensical to say no when -you mean yes. D'ye understand what I mean, Nancie? It's bad manners." -Hitching on her pince-nez, Miss Jenny returned to her paper. - -Miriam gave herself up to the luxury of reading Adle to the -accompaniment of bread and jam. She would not hurry over her bread and -jam. As well not have it. She would sacrifice her chance of a third -slice. She reflected that it would be a good thing if she could decide -never to have more than two slices, and have them in peace. Then she -could thoroughly enjoy her reading. But she was always so hungry. At -home she could not have eaten thick bread and butter. But here every -slice seemed better than the last. When she began at the hard thick edge -there always seemed to be tender places on her gums, her three hollow -teeth were uneasy and she had to get through worrying thoughts about -them--they would get worse as the years went by, and the little places -in the front would grow big and painful and disfiguring. After the first -few mouthfuls of solid bread a sort of padding seemed to take place and -she could go on forgetful. - -"They'd got," said Trixie Sanderson in a velvety tone, "they'd got some -of their Christmas things out, Miss Jenny." She cleared her throat -shrilly on the last word and toned off the sound with a sigh. Inaudible -laughter went round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced -fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best dress, a loosely -made brown velveteen with a deep lace collar round her soft brown neck. -Her neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by lively silky brown -curls. She held her small head sideways from her book with a questioning -air. One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered serenely with its -thin lid. - -She uttered a second gentle sigh and once more cleared her throat, -accompanying the sound with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid. - -Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye which tried to search her, -hating the sudden, sharp dimpling which came high up almost under -Trixie's cheek bones in answer to her own expression. - -"Miss Jenny," breathed Trixie in a high tone, twirling one end of the -bow of black ribbon crowning her head. - -Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table opposite the tea-tray, -giggled aloud. - -"Eh? What? Did somebody speak?" said Miss Jenny, looking up with a -smile. "Are ye getting on with yer teas? Are ye ready for second cups?" - -"Beadie spoke," murmured Trixie, glancing at Beadie whose neat china -doll's face was half hidden between her cup and the protruding edge of -her thatch of tight gold curls. - -Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong the irritating comedy by -choking over her tea. - -It was some minutes before the whole incident was made clear to Miss -Jenny. Reading was suspended. Everyone watched while Charlotte Stubbs, -going carefully backwards, came to the end at last of Miss Jenny's -questions, and when Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating--_well!_ you're all -very naughty children. I can't think what's the matter with you? Eh? Ye -shouldn't do it. I can't think what possesses you. What is it, eh? Ye -shouldn't do it. D'you see?--and having dispensed the second allowance -of tea with small hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to her -newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking guilty. Miriam stole a -glance at the breadth of her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she -hung over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with her tea-drinking, and -her shock of coarse brown-gold hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck -out bushily on either side, its edges lit by the afternoon glow from the -garden behind her. The others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the -muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly active. She and -Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of -her book with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered on their -final competition for the last few slices. - -Miriam returned to her book. The story of Adle had moved on through -several unassimilated pages. "My child," she read, "it is important to -remember"--she glanced on gathering a picture of a woman walking with -Adle along the magic terrace, talking--words and phrases that fretted -dismally at the beauty of the scene. Examining later chapters she found -conversations, discussions, situations, arguments, "fusses"--all about -nothing. She turned back to the early passage of description and caught -the glow once more. But this time it was overshadowed by the promise of -those talking women. That was all there was. She had finished the story -of Adle. - -A resounding slam came up from the kitchen. - -"Poor cook--another tooth," sighed Trixie. - -Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb. Her thwarted expectations -ranged forth beyond control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for -succour where she had learned there was none.... Nancie, her parents -abroad, her aunt's house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin from -South Africa coming home to Cromer, taking her out in a dog-cart, -telling her she was his guiding star, going back to South Africa; -everything Nancie said and did, even her careful hair-brushing and her -energetic upright walk, her positive brave way of entering a room, -coming out through those malicious pin-points--things she said about the -Misses Perne and the girls, things she whispered and laughed, little -rhymes she sang with her unbearable laugh. - -... Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent servile glancing -laughter, her stepmother, her little half-brother who had fits, her -holidays at Margate, "you'd look neat, on the seat, of a bicyka made for -two"--Beadie brought Miriam the utmost sense of imprisonment within the -strange influence that had threatened her when she first came to Banbury -Park. Beadie was in it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that -she could in some way, in some one tint or tone, realise the whole -fabric of Beadie's life on and on to the end, no matter what should -happen to her. But she turned from the attempt--any effort at full -realisation threatened complete despair. Trixie too, with a home just -opposite the Banbury Empire.... Miriam slid over this link in her rapid -reflections--a brother named Julian who took instantaneous photographs -of girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was sometimes "tight." ... - -Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint suggestion of relief. Miriam -fled to her as she sat with the garden light on her hair, her lingering -flush of distress rekindled by her amusement, her protective responsible -smile beaming out through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind her -painstaking life at the school was a country home, a farm somewhere far -away. Of course it was dreadful for her to be a farmer's daughter. She -evidently knew it herself and said very little about it. But her large -red hands, so strange handling school-books, were comforting; and her -holland apron with its bib under the fresh colouring of her face--do you -like butter? A buttercup under your chin--brought to Miriam a picture of -the farm, white amidst bright greenery, with a dairy and morning -cock-crow and creamy white sheep on a hillside. It was all there with -her as she sat at table reading "The Lamplighter." The sound of her -broad husky voice explaining to Miss Jenny had been full of it. But it -was all past. She too had come to Banbury Park. She did not seem to mind -Banbury Park. She was to study hard and be a governess. She evidently -thought she was having a great chance--she was fifteen and quite -"uncultured." How could she be turned into a governess? A sort of -nursery governess, for farms, perhaps. But farms did not want books and -worry. Miriam wanted to put her back into her farm, and sometimes her -thoughts wearily brushed the idea of going with her. Perhaps, though, -she had come away because her father could not keep her? The little -problem hung about her as she sat sweetly there, common and good and -strong. The golden light that seemed to belong specially to her came -from a London garden, an unreal North London garden. Resounding in its -little spaces were the blatterings and shouts of the deaf and dumb next -door. - - - 4 - -Miss Jenny left "The Standard" with Miriam after tea, stopping suddenly -as she made her uncertain way from the tea-table to the door and saying -absently, "Eh, you'd better read this, my dear. There's a leader on the -Education Commission. Would ye like to? Yes, I think you'd better." -Miriam accepted the large sheets with hesitating expressions of thanks, -wondering rather fearfully what a leader might be and where she should -find it. She knew the word. Her mother read "the leaders" in the -evening--"excellent leader" she sometimes said, and her father would put -down his volume of "Proceedings of the British Association," or Herbert -Spencer's "First Principles," and condescendingly agree. But any -discussion generally ended in his warning her not to believe a thing -because she saw it in print, and a reminder that before she married she -had thought that everything she saw in print was true, and quite often -he would go on to general remarks about the gullibility of women, -bringing in the story of the two large long-necked pearly transparent -drawing-room vases with stems and soft masses of roses and leaves -painted on their sides that she had given too much for at the door to a -man who said they were Italian. Brummagem, Brummagem, he would end, -mouthing the word and turning back to his book with the neighing laugh -that made Miriam turn to the imagined picture of her mother in the first -year of her married life, standing in the sunlight at the back door of -the Babington house, with the varnished coach-house door on her right -and the cucumber frames in front of her sloping up towards the bean-rows -that began the kitchen garden; with her little scallopped bodice, her -hooped skirt, her hair bunched in curls up on her high pad and falling -round her neck, looking at the jugs with grave dark eyes. And that -neighing laugh had come again and again all through the years until she -sat meekly, flushed and suffering under the fierce gaslight, feeling -every night of her life winter and summer as if the ceiling were coming -down on her head, and read "leaders" cautiously, and knew when they were -written in "a fine chaste dignified style." But that was "The Times." -"The Standard" was a penny rag and probably not worth considering at -all. In any case she would not read it at evening study. She had never -had a newspaper in her hand before as far as she could remember. The -girls would see that she did not know how to read it, and it would be -snubby towards them to sit there as if she were a Miss Perne, scrumpling -a great paper while they sat with their books. So she read her -text-books, a page of Saxon Kings with a ten-line summary of each reign, -a list of six English counties with their capitals and the rivers the -capitals stood on and the principal industries of each town, devising -ways of remembering the lists and went on to "Bell's Standard -Elocutionist." She had found the book amongst the school books on the -schoolroom shelves. It was a "standard" book and must therefore be about -something she ought to know something about if she were to hold her own -in this North London world. There had been no "standard" books at school -and the word offended her. It suggested fixed agreement about the things -people ought to know and that she felt sure must be wrong, and not only -wrong but "common" ... standard readers ... standard pianoforte tutors. -She had learned to read in "Reading without Tears," and gone on to -"Classical Poems and Prose for the Young," her arithmetic book instead -of being a thin cold paper-covered thing called Standard I, had been a -pleasant green volume called "Barnard Smith," that began at the -beginning and went on to compound fractions and stocks. There was no -Morris's Grammar at Banbury Park, no Wetherell or English Accidence, no -bits from "Piers Plowman" and pages of scraps of words with the way they -changed in different languages and quotations, just sentences that had -made her long for more ... "up-clomb" ... "the mist up-clomb." She -opened "Bell's Standard Elocutionist" apprehensively, her mind working -on possible meanings for elocutionist. She thought of ventriloquist and -wondered dismally whether it was a book of conjuring tricks. It was -poems, poems and prose, all mixed up together anyhow. The room was very -still, the girls all sitting reading with their backs to the table so -that nobody "poked." She could not go on vaguely fluttering pages, so -she read a solid-looking poem that was not divided up into verses. - -"Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond Emperor of -Allemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a -knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard -the priests chant the Magnificat." Should she go on? It was like the -pieces in Scott's novels, the best bits, before the characters began to -talk. - -... "and bay the moon than such a Roman and bay the moon than such a -Roman," muttered Nancie rapidly, swinging her feet. It would not be fair -to read a thing that would take her right away and not teach her -anything whilst the girls were learning their things for Monday. She -hesitated and turned a page. The poem, she saw, soon began to break up -into sentences with quotation signs; somebody making a to-do. Turning -several pages at once, she caught sight of the word Hanover. "Hamelin -Town's in Brunswick, by famous Hanover city." That was irresistible. But -she must read it one day away from the gassy room and the pressure of -the girls. The lines were magic; but the rush that took her to the -German town, the sight and smell and sound of it, the pointed houses, -wood fires, the brgers, had made her cheeks flare and thrown her out of -the proper teacher's frame of mind. She wanted to stand up and pull up -the blinds hiding the garden and shout the poem aloud to the girls. They -would stare and giggle and think she had gone mad. "The mountain has -gone mad," Nancie would mutter. "There is a mountain in Banbury Park, -covered over with yellow bark," Nancie's description of herself. That -was how the girls saw her stiff hair--and they thought she was "about -forty." Well, it was true. She was, practically. She went on holding -Bell up before her face, open at a page of prose, and stared at the -keyboard of the piano just beyond her crossed knees. It aroused the -sight and sense of the strangely moving hands of the various girls whose -afternoon practice it was her business to superintend, their intent -faces, the pages of bad unclassical music, things with horrible names, -by English composers, the uselessness of the hours and terms and years -of practice. - - - 5 - -Presently the bread and butter and milk came up for the girls, and then -there was prayers--the three servants lined up in front of the -bookshelves; cook wheezing heavily, tall and thin and bent, with a -sloping mob cap and a thin old brown face with a forehead that was like -a buttress of shiny bone and startling dark eyes that protruded so that -they could be seen even when she sat looking down into her lap; and -Flora the parlourmaid, short and plump and brown with an expression of -perfectly serene despair, this was part of Miriam's daily bread; and -Annie the housemaid, raw pink and gold and grinning slyly at the -girls--Miss Perne, sitting at the head of the table with the shabby -family Bible and the book of family prayers, Miss Jenny and Miss Haddie -one on each side of the fireplace, Miss Jenny's feet hardly reaching the -floor as she sat bunched on a high schoolroom chair, Miss Haddie in her -cold slate-grey dress sitting back with her thin hands clasped in her -lap, her grey face bent devotionally so that her chin rested on her thin -chest, her eyes darting from the servants to the girls who sat in their -places round the table during the time it took Miss Perne to read a -short psalm. Miriam tried to cast down her eyes and close her ears. All -that went on during that short interval left her equally excluded from -either party. She could not sit gazing at Flora, and Miss Perne's polite -unvarying tone brought her no comfort. She sometimes thought longingly -of prayers in Germany, the big quiet saal with its high windows, its -great dark doors, its annexe of wooden summer-room, Frulein's clear, -brooding undertone, the pensive calm of the German girls; the strange -mass of fresh melodious sound as they all sang together. Here there -seemed to be everything to encourage and nothing whatever to check the -sudden murmur, the lightning swift gesture of Nancie or Trixie. - -The moment Miss Perne had finished her psalm they all swung round on to -their knees. Miriam pressed her elbows against the cane seat of her -chair and wondered what she should say to Miss Jenny at supper about the -newspaper, while Miss Perne decorously prayed that they might all be fed -with the sincere milk of the Word and grow thereby. - -After the Lord's Prayer, a unison of breathy mutterings against closed -fingers, they all rose. Then the servants filed out of the room followed -by the Misses Perne. Miss Perne stopped in the doorway to shake hands -with the girls on their way to bed before joining her sisters in the -little sitting-room across the hall. One of the servants reappeared -almost at once with a tray, distributed its contents at the fire-place -end of the long table and rang the little bell in the hall on her way -back to the kitchen. The Misses Perne filed back across the hall. - - - 6 - -"Eh, Deborah, are ye sure?" said Miss Jenny, getting into her chair at -Miss Perne's right hand. - -Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned after all. If it were she -would simply say she had been preparing for Monday and was going to read -it after supper. Anyhow there was never any threat with the Pernes of -anything she would not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what -there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie's eye from across the -table, assumed an air of interested abstraction to cover her -disappointment. Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished with -prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream cheese on a green-edged -dessert plate, a box of plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice -and the red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and nice--the -blancmange would be flavoured with laurel--prussic acid--and the prunes -would be sweet in the wrong sort of way--wholesome, just sweet fruit. -Cheese--how could people eat cheese? - -"Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw with my own eyes--Polly Allen -and Eunice Dupont running about in the park without their hats." - -"Ech," syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her delicate green-grey eyebrows -sharply towards the deep line in the middle of her forehead. She did not -look up but sat frowning sourly into her bowl of bread and milk, ladling -and pouring the milk from the spoon. - -Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. No one had seen the -behaviour of her own face, how one corner of her mouth had shot up so -sharply as to bring the feeling of a deeply denting dimple in her cheek. -She sat regulating her breathing and carefully extracting the stone from -a prune. - -"Did ye speak to them?" asked Miss Jenny, fixing her tall sister over -her pince-nez. - -Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black eyes blinking rapidly at the -far-off bookshelves. - -"I did _not_ speak to them----" - -"Eh, Deborah, why not?" scolded Miss Jenny as Miss Perne drew breath. - -"I did _not_ speak to them," went on Miss Deborah, beaming delightedly -at the bookcase, "for the very good reason that I was not sufficiently -near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt pathway surrounding the -lake and had just become engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell, -who had stopped me for the purpose of giving me further details with -regard to Constance's prolonged absence from school, when I saw Polly -and Eunice apparently chasing one another across the recreation ground -in the condition I have described to you." - -Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie's scorn-filled eyes playing watchfully -over her, sat pressing the sharp edge of her high heel into her ankle. - -"Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn't speak to them. They've no -business at all in the recreation ground where the rough boys go." - -"Well, I have described to you the circumstances, my dear, and the -impossibility of my undertaking any kind of intervention." - -"Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should have done something. Don't -you think you ought? Eh? Called someone perhaps--eh?--or managed to get -at the gels in some way--dear, dear, what is to be done? You see it is -hardly of any use to speak to them afterwards. You want to catch them -red-handed and make them feel ashamed of themselves." - -"I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny, the justice of all that -you say. But I can only repeat that in the circumstances in which I -found myself I was entirely unable to exercise any control whatever upon -the doings of the gels. They were running; and long before I was free -from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of sight." - -Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative tone that seemed each -moment on the point of delighted laughter, her delicate head held high, -her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained pleasure. Miriam saw -vividly the picture in the park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the -sad asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London greenery, the -October wind rushing through it, Miss Perne's high stylish arrowy figure -fluttered by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. Brinkwell's -story, the dreadful asphalt playground away to the left, its gaunt -swings and bars--gallows.... Ingoldsby--the girls rushing across it, and -held herself sternly back from a vision of Miss Perne chasing the -delinquents down the wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triumphantly? As -much as to say There, my dear Jenny, there's a problem you can't answer. -She enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset about the girls. -She spoke exactly as if she were reading aloud from "Robinson Crusoe." -Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her eyes about as she gently -spooned up her bread and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether Miss -Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen gravely. She was evidently -angry and disgusted. But still she could watch. - -"Did ye go that way at all afterwards--the way the girls went?" - -"I did not," beamed Miss Perne, turning to Miss Jenny as if waiting for -a judgment. - -"Well, eh, I'm sure, really, it's most diffikilt. What is one to do with -these gels? Now, Miriam, here's something for you to exercise your wits -upon. What would ye do, eh?" - -Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb. Of course she had never rushed -about in a common park where rough boys came. At the same time--if the -girls wanted to rush about and scream and wear no hats nobody had any -right to interfere with them ... they ought to be suppressed though, -North London girls, capable of anything in the way of horridness ... the -Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls were in themselves, -common and knowing and horrid. "Dear, funny little O.M.'s" ... they were -something much more than that. They were wrong about the hats, but it -was good, heavenly to be here like this with them. She turned to Miss -Jenny, her mind in a warm confusion, and smiled into the little red face -peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon loops. - -"Well?" - -"My dear Jenny," said Miss Haddie's soft hollow voice, "how should the -child judge?" - -Miriam's heart leapt. She smiled inanely and eagerly accepted a second -helping of blancmange suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was drawing -little panting breaths and blinking sharply at her. - -"Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear, it's a chance for you. Come -along." - -"Tomboys," said Miss Haddie indignantly. - -Miriam drew a breath. It was wrong, they were not tomboys--she knew they -had not run like tomboys--they had scuttled, she was sure--horrid girls, -that was what they were, nothing the Pernes could understand. The Pernes -ought not to be bothered with them. - -"Well," she said, feeling a sudden security, "are we responsible for -them out of school hours?" - -Miss Haddie's eyebrows moved nervously, and Miss Perne's smile turned to -a dubious mouthing. - -"Eh, there you are. D'ye see, Deborah. That's it. That's the crucial -point. Are we responsible? I'm sure I can't say. That places the whole -difficulty in a nutshell. Here are these gels, not even day boarders. -How far can we control their general behaviour? Eh? I'm sure I don't -know." - -"My dear Jenny," said Miss Haddie quickly, her hollow voice -reverberating as if she were using a gargle, "it's quite obvious that we -can't have gels known to belong to the school running about in the park -with nothing on." - -"I agree, my dear Haddie. But, as Jenny says, how are we to prevent such -conduct?" - -"Don't let us lose sight of Miriam's point. _Are_ we responsible for -their play-times? I suppose we're _not_, you know, Deborah, really after -all. Not directly, perhaps. But sheerly we are _indirectly_ responsible. -Sheerly. We ought to be able to make it impossible for them to carry on -in this unseemly fashion." - -"Yes, yes," said Miss Deborah eagerly, "sheerly." - -"Is it education?" suggested Miriam. - -"That's it, my dear. It is education. That's what's wanted. That's what -these gels want. I don't know, though. All this talk of education. It -ought to be the thing. And yet look at these two gels. Both of them from -Miss Cass's. There's her school now. Famous all over London. Three -hundred gels. We've had several here. And they've all had that -objectionable noisy tone. Eh, Deborah? I don't know. How is it to be -accounted for? Eh?" - -"I've never heard of Miss Cass's," said Miriam. - -"My _dear_ child! It's not possible! D'ye mean to say ye don't know Miss -Cass's high school?" - -"Oh, if it's a high school, of _course_." - -All three ladies waited, with their eyes on her, making a chorus of -inarticulate sounds. - -"Oh well, high schools are simply fearful." - -Miriam glowed in a tide of gentle cackling laughter. - -"Well, you know, I think there's something in it," giggled Miss Jenny -softly. "It's the number perhaps. That's what I always say, Deborah. -Treating the gels like soldiers. Like a regiment. D'ye see? No -individual study of the gels' characters----" - -"Well. However that may be, I am sure of one thing. I am sure that on -Monday Polly and Eunice must be reprimanded. Severely reprimanded." - -"Yes. I suppose they must. They're nice gels at heart, you know. Both of -them. That's the worst of it. Well, I hardly mean that. Only so often -the naughty gels are so thoroughly--well--nice, likable at bottom, ye -know, eh? I'm sure. I don't know." - - - 7 - -Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper with the newspaper spread -out on the brown American cloth table cover under the gas. She found a -long column headed "The Royal Commission on Education." The Queen, then, -was interesting herself in education. But in England the sovereign had -no power, was only a figurehead. Perhaps the Queen had been advised to -interest herself in education by the Privy Council and the -Conservatives, people of leisure and cultivation. A commission was a -sort of command--it must be important, something the Privy Council had -decided and sent out in the Queen's name. - -She read her column, sitting comfortlessly between the window and the -open door. As she read the room grew still. The memory of the talking -and clinking supper-table faded, and presently even the ticking of the -clock was no longer there. She raised her head at last. No wonder people -read newspapers. You could read about what was going on in the country, -actually what the Government was doing at that very moment. Of course; -men seemed to know such a lot because they read the newspapers and -talked about what was in them. But anybody could know as much as the men -sitting in the armchairs if they chose; read all about everything, -written down for everybody to see. That was the freedom of the -Press--Areopagitica, that the history books said so much about and was -one of those new important things, more important than facts and dates. -Like the Independence of Ireland. Yet very few people really talked like -newspapers. Only angry men with loud voices. Here was the free Press -that Milton had gone to prison for. Certainly it made a great -difference. The room was quite changed. There was hardly any pain in the -silent cane-seated chairs. There were really people making the world -better. Now. At last. Perhaps it was rather a happy fate to be a teacher -in the Banbury Park school and read newspapers. There were plenty of -people who could neither read nor write. Someone had a servant like that -who did all the marketing and never forgot anything or made any mistake -over the change--none the worse for it, pater said, people who wanted -book-learning could get it, there must always be hewers of wood and -drawers of water, _laissez faire_. But Gladstone did not believe that. -At this moment Gladstone was saying that because the people of England -as a whole were uneducated their "condition of ignorance" affected the -whole of the "body politic." That was Gladstone. He had found that out -... with large moist silky eyes like a dog and pointed collars seeing -things as they were and going to change them.... Miriam stirred uneasily -as she felt the beating of her heart.... If only she were at home how -she could rush up and down the house and shout about it and shake Mary -by the shoulders. She shrank into herself and sat stiffly up, suddenly -discovering she was lounging over the table. As she moved she reflected -that probably Gladstone's being so very dark made him determined that -things should not go on as they were. In that case Gladstonians would be -dark--perhaps not musical. Someone had said musical people were a queer -soft lot. _Laissez faire_. Lazy fair. But perhaps it was possible to be -fair and musical and to be a Gladstonian too. You can't have your cake -and eat it. No. It was a good thing, one's best self knew it was a good -thing that someone had found out why people were so awful; like a -dentist finding out a bad tooth however much it hurt. Only if education -was going to be the principal thing and all teachers were to be -'qualified' it was no use going on. Miss Jenny had said private schools -were doomed. - - - 8 - -For a long time she sat blankly contemplating the new world that was -coming. Everyone would be trained and efficient but herself. She was not -strong enough to earn a living and qualify as a teacher at the same -time. The day's work tired her to death. She must hide somewhere.... She -would not be wanted.... If you were not wanted.... If you knew you were -not wanted--you ought to get out of the way. Chloroform. Someone had -drunk a bottle of carbolic acid. The clock struck ten. Gathering up the -newspaper she folded it neatly, put it on the hall table and went slowly -upstairs, watching the faint reflection of the half-lowered hall gas -upon the polished balustrade. The staircase was cold and airy. Cold -rooms and landings stretched up away above her into the darkness. She -became aware of a curious buoyancy rising within her. It was so strange -that she stood still for a moment on the stair. For a second, life -seemed to cease in her and the staircase to be swept from under her -feet.... "I'm alive." ... It was as if something had struck her, struck -right through her impalpable body, sweeping it away, leaving her there -shouting silently without it. I'm alive.... I'm alive. Then with a thump -her heart went on again and her feet carried her body warm and happy and -elastic easily on up the solid stairs. She tried once or twice -deliberately to bring back the breathless moment standing still on a -stair. Each time something of it returned. "It's me, _me;_ this is _me_ -being alive," she murmured with a feeling under her like the sudden drop -of a lift. But her thoughts distracted her. They were eagerly talking to -her declaring that she had had this feeling before. She opened her -bedroom door very quietly. The air of the room told her that Nancie and -Beadie were asleep. Going lightly across to the chest of drawers -dressing-table by the window as if she were treading on air, she stood -holding its edge in the darkness. Two forgotten incidents flowed past -her in quick succession; one of waking up on her seventh birthday in the -seaside villa alone in a small dark room and suddenly saying to herself -that one day her father and mother would die and she would still be -there, and after a curious moment when the darkness seemed to move -against her, feeling very old and crying bitterly, and another of -standing in the bow of the dining-room window at Barnes looking at the -raindrops falling from the leaves through the sunshine and saying to -Eve, who came into the room as she watched, "D'you know, Eve, I feel as -if I'd suddenly wakened up out of a dream." The bedroom was no longer -dark. She could see the outlines of everything in the light coming from -the street lamps through the half-closed Venetian blinds. Beadie sighed -and stirred. Miriam began impatiently preparing for bed without lighting -the gas. "What's the use of feeling like that if it doesn't stay? It -doesn't change anything. Next time I'll make it stay. It might whisk me -right away. There's something in me that can't be touched or altered. -Me. If it comes again. If it's stronger every time.... Perhaps it goes -on getting stronger till you die." - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - - 1 - -Wheezing, cook had spread a plaster of dampened ashy cinders upon the -basement schoolroom fire and gone bonily away across the oilcloth in her -heelless boots. As the door closed Miriam's eye went up from her book to -the little slope of grass showing above the concrete wall of the area. -The grass gleamed along the edge of a bank of mist. In the mist the area -railings stood hard and solid against the edge of empty space. Several -times she glanced at the rich green, feeling that neither 'emerald,' -'emerald velvet,' nor 'velvety enamel' quite expressed it. She had not -noticed that there was a mist shutting in and making brilliant the -half-darkness of the room at breakfast-time, only feeling that for some -reason it was a good day. "It's fog--there's a sort of fog," she said, -glowing. The fog made the room with the strange brilliant brown light on -the table, on the horsehair chairs, on the shabby length of brown and -yellow oilcloth running out to the bay of the low window, seem to be -rushing through space, alone. It was quite safe, going on its -journey--towards some great good. - -The back door, just across the little basement hall, scrooped inwards -across the oilcloth, jingling its little bell, and was banged to. The -flounter-_crack_ of a rain-cloak smartly shaken out was followed by a -gentle scrabbling in a shoe-box,--the earliest girl, peaceful and calm, -a wonderful sort of girl, coming into the empty basement quietly getting -off her things, with all the rabble of the school coming along the -roads, behind. The jingling door was pushed open again just as her -slippered feet ran upstairs. "Khoo--what a filthy day!" said a -vibrating hard mature voice. Miriam glanced at her time-table, -history--dictation--geography--sums--writing--and shrank to her utmost -air of preoccupation lest either of the elder girls should look in. - -Sounds increased in the little hall, loud abrupt voices, short rallying -laughs, the stubbing and stamping of feet on the oilcloth. At the -expected rattling of the handle of her own door she crouched over her -book. The door opened and was quietly closed again. A small figure flung -itself forward. Miriam was clutched by harsh serge-clad arms. As she -moved, startled, firm cracked lips were pressed against her cheekbone. -"Good morning, Burra," she said, turning to put an arm round the child. -She caught a glimpse of broad cheeks bulging firmly against a dark bush -of short hair. Large fierce bloodshot eyes glared close to her own. -"Hoo--angel." The little gasping body stiffened against her shoulder, -pinning down her arm. The crimson face tried to reach her breast. "Have -you changed your boots," said Miriam coldly. "Hoo--hoo." The short hard -fingers hurt her. "Go and get them off at once." Head down Burra rushed -at the door, colliding with the incoming figure of a neat little girl -dressed in velvet-trimmed red merino, with a rose and white face and -short gentle gold hair. She put a little pile of books on the table and -stood still near to Miriam, with her hands behind her. They both looked -down the room out of the window, with quiet unsmiling faces. "What have -you been doing since Friday, Gertie?" Miriam said presently. "We went -for a walk," said Gertie in a neat liquid little voice, dimpling and -faintly raising her eyebrows. - -The eight little girls who made up the upper class of the junior school -stood in a close row as near as possible to Miriam's chair at the head -of the table. They were silent and fresh and eagerly crowded, waiting -for her to begin. She kept them silent for a few moments for the -pleasure of having them there with her. She knew that Miss Perne, -sitting in the window space with the youngest class drawn up in a -half-circle for their Scripture lesson, was an approving presence, -keeping her own little class at a level of quiet question and answer -that made a background rather than a disturbance for the adventure of -the elder girls. "Not too close together," said Miriam at last, -gathering herself with a deep breath; "throw back your shoulders and -stand straight. Don't lump down on your heels. Let your weight come on -the ball of your feet. Are you all all right? Don't poke your heads -forward." As the girls eagerly manoeuvred themselves, wilfully carrying -out her instructions even to turning their heads to face the opposite -wall, she caught most of the eyes in turn smiling their eager -affectionate conspiracy, and restraining her desire to get up then and -there and clasp the little figures one by one, began the lesson. Four of -the girls, two square-built Quakeresses with straight brown frocks, deep -slow voices and dreamy eyes, a white-faced, tawny-haired, thin child -with an eager stammer, and a brilliant little Jewess knew the "principal -facts and dates" of the reign of Edward I by rote backwards and forwards -in response to any form of question. Burra hung her head and knew -nothing. Beadie Featherwell, dreadfully tall, a head taller, with her -twelve years, than the tallest child in the lower school, knew no more -than Burra and stood staring at the wall and biting her lips. A stout -child with open mouth and snoring breath answered with perfect -exactitude from the book, but her answers bore no relationship to the -questions, and Gertie could only pipe replies if the questions were so -put as to contain part of the answer. The white-faced girl was beginning -to gnaw her fingers by the time the questioning was at an end. - -"Well now, what is the difficulty," said Miriam, "of getting hold of the -events of this queer little reign?" Everybody laughed and was silent -again at once because Miriam's voice went on, trying to interest both -herself and the successful girls in inventing ways of remembering all -the things that had to be "hooked on to the word Edward." In less than -ten minutes even the stout snoring girl could repeat the reign -successfully, and for the remainder of their time they talked aimlessly. - -The children standing at ease, saying whatever occurred to them, even -the snoring girl secured from ridicule by Miriam's consideration of -whatever was offered. Their adventure took them away from their subject -into what Miriam knew "clever" people would call "side issues." "Nothing -is a side issue," she told herself passionately with her eyes on the -green glare beyond the window. The breaking up of Miss Perne's class -left the whole of the lower school on her hands for the rest of the -morning. - - - 2 - -By half-past twelve she was sitting alone and exhausted with aching -throat at her place at the head of the table. - -"Khoo, _isn't_ it a filthy day!" Polly Allen, a short heavy girl with a -sallow pitted face, thin ill-nourished hair and kind swiftly moving grey -eyes, marched in out of the dark hall with flapping bootlaces. In the -bay she sat down and began to lace up her boots. The laces flicked -carelessly upon the linoleum as she threaded, profaning the little -sanctuary of the window space. "Oh me bones, me poor old bones," she -muttered. "Eunice!" her hard mature voice vibrated through the room. -"Eunice Dupont!" - -"What's the jolly row?" said a slow voice at the door. "Wot's the bally -shindy, beloved?" - -"Like a really beautiful Cheshire cat," Miriam repeated to herself, -propped studiously on her elbows shrinking, and hoping that if she did -not look round, Eunice's carved brown curls, her gleaming slithering -opaque oval eyes and her short upper lip, the strange evil carriage of -her head, the wicked lines of her figure, would be withdrawn. "Cheshire, -Cheshire," she scolded inwardly, feeling the pain in her throat -increase. - -"Nothing. Wait for me. That's all. Oh, my lungs, bones _and_ et ceteras. -It's old age, I suppose, Uncle William." - -"Well, hurry your old age up, that's all. I'm ready." - -"Well, don't go away, you funny cuckoo, you can wait, can't you?" - -A party of girls straggled in one by one and drifted towards Polly in -the window space. - -"It's the parties I look forward to." - -"Oh, look at her tie!" - -"My tie? Six-three at Crisp's." - -The sounds of Polly's bootlacing came to an end. She sat holding a -court. "Doesn't look forward to parties? She must be a funny cuckoo!" - -"Dancing's divine," said a smooth deep smiling voice. "Reversing. Khoo! -with a fella. Khooo!" - -"You surprise me, Edie. You do indeed. Hoh. Shocking." - -"Shocking? Why? What do you mean, Poll?" - -"Nothing. Nothing. Riang doo too." - -"I don't think dancing's shocking. How can it be? You're barmy, my son." - -"Ever heard of Lottie Collins?" - -"Ssh. Don't be silly." - -"I don't see what Lottie Collins has got to do with it. My mother thinks -dancing's all right. That's good enough for me." - -"Well--I'm not your mother." - -"Nor anyone else's." - -"Khoo, _Mabel_." - -"Who wants to be anyone's mother?" - -"Not me. Ug. Beastly little brats." - -"Oh shut _up_. Oh you _do_ make me tired." - -"Kids are jolly. A1. I hope I have lots." - -Surprised into amazement, Miriam looked up to consult the face of Jessie -Wheeler, the last speaker--a tall flat-figured girl with a strong -squarish pale face, hollow cheeks, and firm colourless lips. Was it -being a Baptist that made her have such an extraordinary idea? Miriam's -eyes sought refuge from the defiant beam of her sea-blue eyes in the -shimmering cloud of her hair. The strangest hair in the school; negroid -in its intensity of fuzziness, but saved by its fine mesh. - -"Don't you adore kiddies, Miss Henderson?" - -"I think they're rather nice," said Miriam quickly, and returned to her -book. - -"I should jolly well think they were," said Jessie fervently. - -"Hope your husband'll think so too, my dear," said Polly, getting up. - -"Oh, of course, I should only have them if the fellow wanted me to." - -"You haven't got a fella yet, madam." - -"Of course not, cuckoo. But I shall." - -"Plenty of time to think about that." - -"Hoo. Fancy never having a fellow. I should go off my nut." - -When they had all disappeared Miriam opened the windows. There was still -someone moving about in the hall, and as she stood in the instreaming -current of damp air looking wearily at the concrete--a girl came into -the room. "Can I come in a minute?" she said, advancing to the window. -"I want to speak to you," she pursued when she reached the bay. She -stood at Miriam's side and looked out of the window. Half-turning, -Miriam had recognized Grace Broom, one of the elder first-class girls -who attended only for a few subjects. She was a dark short-necked girl -with thick shoulders; a receding mouth and boldly drawn nose and chin -gave her a look of shrewd elderliness. The heavy mass of hair above the -broad sweep of her forehead, her heavy frame and flat-footed walk added -to this appearance. She wore a high-waisted black serge pinafore dress -with black crape vest and sleeves. - -"Do you mind me speaking to you?" she said in a hot voice. Her -black-fringed brown eyes were fixed on the garden railings where people -passed by and Miriam never looked. - -"No," said Miriam shyly. - -"You know why we're in mourning?" - -Miriam stood silent with beating heart, trying to cope with the -increasing invasion. - -"Our father's dead." - -Hurriedly Miriam noted the superstitious tone in the voice.... This is a -family that revels in plumes and hearses. She glanced at the stiff -rather full crape sleeve nearest to her and sought about in her mind for -help as she said with a blush, "Oh, I see." - -"We've just moved." - -"Oh yes, I see," said Miriam, glancing fearfully at the heavy scroll of -profile and finding it expressive and confused. - -"We've got a house about a quarter as big as where we used to live." - -Miriam found it impossible to respond to this confession and still tried -desperately to sweep away the sense of the figure so solidly planted at -her side. - -"I've asked our aunt if we can ask you to come to tea with us." - -"Thank you very much," said Miriam in one word. - -"When could you come?" - -"Oh, I'm afraid I couldn't come. It would be impossible." - -"Oh no. You must come. I shall ask Aunt Lucy to write to Miss Perne." - -"I really couldn't come. I shouldn't be able to ask you back." - -"That doesn't matter," panted the relentless voice. "I've wanted to -speak to you ever since you came." - - - 3 - -When next Miriam saw the black-robed Brooms and their aunt file past the -transept where were the Wordsworth House sittings, she felt that to -visit them might perhaps not be the ordeal she had not dared to picture. -It would be strange. Those three heavy black-dressed women. Their small -new house. She imagined them sitting at tea in a little room. Why was -Grace so determined that she should sit there too? Grace had a life and -a home and was real. She did not know that things were awful. Nor did -Florrie Broom, nor the aunt. But yet they did not look like 'social' -people. They were a little different. Not worldly. Not pious either. Nor -intellectual. What could they want with her? She had soon forgotten them -and the congregation assumed its normal look. As the service went on the -thoughts came that came every Sunday. An old woman with a girl at her -side were the only people whose faces were within Miriam's line of -vision from her place at the wall end of the Wordsworth House pew. The -people in front of them were not even in profile, and those behind were -hidden from her by the angle of the transept wall. To her right she -could just see rising above the heads in the rows of pews in front of -her the far end of the chancel screen. The faces grouped in the transept -on the opposite side of the church were a blur. The two figures sat or -knelt or stood in a heavy silence. They neither sang nor prayed. Their -faces remained unaltered during the whole service. To Miriam they were -its most intimate part. During the sermon she rarely raised her eyes -from the circle they filled for her as they sat thrown into relief by -the great white pillar. Their faces were turned towards the chancel. -They could see its high dim roof and distant altar, the light on the -altar, flowers, shining metal, embroideries, the maze of the east -window, the white choir. They showed no sign of seeing these things. The -old woman's heavy face with its heavy jaw-bone seemed to have been dead -for years under its coffin-shaped black bonnet. Her large body was -covered by a mantle of thickly ribbed black material trimmed with braid -and bugles. That bright yellow colour meant liver. Whatever she had she -was dying of it. People were always dying when they looked like that. -But it was a bad way to die. The real way was the way of that lady -trailing about over the Heath near Roehampton, dying by inches of an -internal complaint, with her face looking fragile--like the little -alabaster chapelle in the nursery with a candle alight inside. She was -going to die, walking about alone on the Heath in the afternoons. Her -family going on as usual at home; the greengrocer calling. She knew that -everybody was alone and that all the fuss and noise people made all day -was a pretence.... What to _do_? To be walking about with a quiet face -meeting death. Nothing could be so alone as that. The pain, and -struggle, and darkness.... That was what the old woman feared. She did -not think about death. She was afraid and sullen all the time. Stunned, -sitting there with her cold common daughter. She had been common herself -as a girl, but more noisy, and she had married and never thought about -dying, and now she was dying and hating her cold daughter. The daughter, -sitting there with her stiff slatey-blue coat and skirt, her indistinct -hat tied with a thin harsh veil to her small flat head--what a home with -her in it all the time. She would never laugh. Her poor-looking cheeks -were yellowish, her fringe dry, without gloss. She would move her mouth -when she spoke, sideways with a snarling curl of one-half of the upper -lip and have that resentful way of speaking that all North Londoners -have, and the maddening North London accent. The old woman's voice would -be deep and hollow.... The girl moving heavily about the house wearing -boots and stiff dresses and stiff stays showing their outline through -her clothes. They would be bitter to their servant and would not trust -her. What was the good of their being alive ... a house and a water -system and drains and cooking, and they would take all these things for -granted and grumble and snarl ... the gas meter man would call there. -Did men like that resent calling at houses like that? No. They'd just -say, "The ole party she sez to me." How good they were, these men. Good -and kind and cheerful. Someone ought to prevent the extravagance of -keeping whole houses and fires going for women like that. They ought to -be in an institution. But they never thought about that. They were -satisfied with themselves. They were self-satisfied because they did not -know what they were like.... _Why_ should you have a house, and -tradesmen calling? - -"_Jehoiakin!_" The rush of indistinct expostulating sound coming from -the pulpit was accompanied for a moment by reverberations of the one -clearly bawled word. The sense of the large cold church, the great stone -pillars, the long narrow windows faintly stained with yellowish green, -the harsh North London congregation stirred and seemed to settle down -more securely. She saw the form of the vicar in the light grey stone -pulpit standing up short and neat against the cold grey stone wall, -enveloped in fine soft folds, his small puckered hands beautifully -cuffed, his plump crumpled little face, his small bald head fringed with -little saffron-white curls, his pink pouched busy mouth. What was it all -about? Pompous pottering, going on and on and on--in the Old Testament. -The whole church was in the Old Testament.... _Honour_ thy father and -thy mother. How horribly the words would echo through the great cold -church. _Why_ honour thy father and thy mother? What had they done that -was so honourable? Everybody was dying in cold secret fear. Christ, the -son of God, was part of it all, the same family ... vindictive. -Christmas and Easter, hard white cold flowers, no real explanation. "I -came not to destroy but to fulfil." The stagnant blood flushed in her -face and tingled in her ears as the words occurred to her. Why didn't -everybody die at once and stop it all? - - - 4 - -Miss Haddie paused at the door of her room and wheeled suddenly round to -face Miriam who had just reached the landing. - -"You've not seen my little corner," she tweedled breathlessly, throwing -open her door. - -Miriam went in. "Oh how nice," she said fearfully, breathing in the -freshness of a little square sun-filled muslin-draped, blue-papered -room. Taking refuge at the white-skirted window, she found a narrow view -of the park, greener than the one she knew. The wide yellow pathway -going up through the cricket ground had shifted away to the right. - -"It's really a--a--a dressing-room from your room." - -"Oh," said Miriam vivaciously. - -"There's a door, a--a--a door. I daresay you've noticed." - -"Oh! _That's_ the door in our cupboard!" The dim door behind the hanging -garments led to nothing but to Miss Haddie's room. She began unbuttoning -her gloves. - -Miss Haddie was hesitating near a cupboard, making little sounds. - -"I suppose we must all make ourselves tidy now," said Miriam. - -"I thought you didn't look very happy in church this morning," cluttered -Miss Haddie rapidly. - -Miriam felt heavy with anger. "Oh," she said clumsily, "I had the most -frightful headache." - -"Poor child. I thought ye didn't look yerself." - -The window was shut. But the room was mysteriously fresh, far away from -the school. A fly was hovering about the muslin window blind with little -reedy loops of song. The oboe ... in the quintet, thought Miriam -suddenly. "I don't know," she said, listening. The flies sang like this -at home. She had heard them without knowing it. She moved in her place -by the window. The fly swept up to the ceiling, wavering on a deep note -like a tiny gong.... Hot sunny refined lawns, roses in bowls on -summerhouse tea-tables, refined voices far away from the Caledonian -Road. - -"Flies don't _buzz_," she said passionately. "They don't _buzz_. Why do -people say they buzz?" The pain pressing behind her temples slackened. -In a moment it would be only a glow. - -Miss Haddie stood with bent head, her face turning from side to side, -with its sour hesitating smile, her large eyes darting their strange -glances about the room. - -"Won't you sit down a minute? They haven't sounded the first bell yet." -Miriam sat down on the one little white-painted, cane-seated chair near -the dressing-table. "Eh--eh," said Miss Haddie, beginning to unfasten -her veil. "She doesn't approve of general conversation," thought Miriam. -"She's a female. Oh well, she'll have to see I'm not." - -"What gave you yer headache?" - -"Oh well, I don't know. I suppose I was wondering what it was all -about." - -"I don't think I quite understand ye." - -"Well, I mean--what that old gentleman was in such a state of mind -about." - -"D'ye mean Mr. La Trobe!" - -"Yes. Why do you laugh?" - -"I don't understand what ye mean." - -Miriam watched Miss Haddie's thin fingers feeling for the pins in her -black toque. "Of course not," she thought, looking at the unveiled -shrivelled cheek.... "thirty-five years of being a lady." - -"Oh well," she sighed fiercely. - -"What is it ye mean, my dear?" - ---'couldn't make head or tail of a thing the old dodderer said'--no 'old -boy,' no--these phrases would not do for Miss Haddie. - -"I couldn't agree with _anything_ he said." - -Miss Haddie sat down on the edge of the little white bed burying her -face in her hands and smoothing them up and down with a wiping movement. - -"One can always criticise a sermon," she said reproachfully. - -"Well, why not?" - -"I mean to say ye _can_," said Miss Haddie from behind her fingers, -"but, but ye shouldn't." - -"You can't help it." - -"Oh yes, ye can. If ye listen in the right spirit," gargled Miss Haddie -hurriedly. - -"Oh, it isn't only the sermon, it's the whole thing," said Miriam -crimsoning. - -"Ye mustn't think about the speaker," went on Miss Haddie in faint -hurried rebuke. "That's wrong. That sets people running from church to -church. You must attend your own parish church in the right spirit, let -the preacher be who--who--what he may." - -"Oh, but I think that's positively _dangerous_," said Miriam gravely. -"It simply means leaving your mind open for whatever they choose to say. -Like Rome." - -"Eh, no--o--o," flared Miss Haddie dropping her hands, "nonsense. Not -like Rome at all." - -"But it _is_. It's giving up your conscience." - -"You're very determined," laughed Miss Haddie bitterly. - -"I'm certainly not going to give my mind up to a parson for him to do -what he likes with. That's what it is. That's what they do. I've seen it -again and again. I've heard people talking about sermons," finished -Miriam with vivacious intentness. - -Miss Haddie sat very still with her hands once more pressed tightly -against her face. - -"Oh, my dear. This is a dreadful state of affairs. I'm afraid you're all -wrong. That's not it at all. If you listen only for the good, the good -will come to you." - -"But these men don't know. How should they? They don't agree amongst -themselves." - -"Oh, my dear, that is a very wrong attitude. How long have ye felt like -this?" - -"Oh, all my life," responded Miriam proudly. - -"I'm very sorry, my dear." - -"Ever since I can remember. Always." - -There were ivory-backed brushes on the dressing-table. Miriam stared at -them and let her eyes wander on to a framed picture of an agonised -thorn-crowned head. - -"Were you--have ye--eh--have ye been confirmed?" - -"Oh yes." - -"Did ye discuss any of your difficulties with yer vicar?" - -"Not I. I knew his mind too well. Had heard him preach for years. He -would have run round my questions. He wasn't capable of answering them. -For instance, supposing I had asked him what I've _always_ wanted to -know. How can people, ordinary people, be expected to be like Christ, as -they say, when they think Christ was supernatural? Of course, if he was -supernatural it was easy enough for him to be as he was; if he was not -supernatural, then there's nothing in the whole thing." - -"My _dear_ child! I'm dreadfully sorry ye feel like that. I'd no idea ye -felt like that, poor child. I knew ye weren't quite happy always; I mean -I've thought ye weren't quite happy in yer mind sometimes, but I'd no -idea--eh, eh, have ye ever consulted anybody--anybody able to give ye -advice?" - -"There you are. That's exactly the whole thing! _Who_ can one consult? -There isn't anybody. The people who are qualified are the people who -have the thing called faith, which means that they beg the whole -question from the beginning." - -"Eh--dear--me--Miriam--child!" - -"Well, I'm made that way. How can I help it if faith seems to me just an -abnormal condition of the mind with fanaticism at one end and -agnosticism at the other?" - -"My dear, ye believe in God?" - -"Well, you see, I see things like this. On one side a prime cause with a -certain object unknown to me, bringing humanity into being; on the other -side humanity, all more or less miserable, never having been consulted -as to whether they wanted to come to life. If that is belief, a South -Sea Islander could have it. But good people, people with faith, want me -to believe that one day God sent a saviour to rescue the world from sin -and that the world can never be grateful enough and must become as -Christ. Well. If God made people he is responsible and ought to save -them." - -"What do yer parents think about yer ideas?" - -"They don't know." - -"Ye've never mentioned yer trouble to them?" - -"I did ask Pater once when we were coming home from the Stabat Mater -that question I've told you about." - -"What did he say?" - -"He couldn't answer. We were just by the gate. He said he thought it was -a remarkably reasonable dilemma. He laughed." - -"And ye've never had any discussion of these things with him?" - -"No." - -"Ye're an independent young woman," said Miss Haddie. - -Miriam looked up. Miss Haddie was sitting on the edge of her bed. A -faint pink flush on her cheeks made her eyes look almost blue. She was -no longer frowning. 'I'm something new--a kind of different world. She -is wondering. I must stick to my guns,' mused Miriam. - -"I'll not ask ye," said Miss Haddie quietly and cheerfully, "to expect -any help from yer fellow creatures since ye've such a poor opinion of -them. But ye're not happy. Why not go straight to the source?" - -Miriam waited. For a moment the sheen on Miss Haddie's silk sleeves had -distracted her by becoming as gentle and unchallenging as the light on -her mother's dresses when there were other people in the room. She had -feared the leaping out of some emotional appeal. But Miss Haddie had a -plan. Strange secret knowledge. - -"I should like to ask ye a question." - -"Yes?" - -"Well, I'll put it in this way. While ye've watched the doings of yer -fellow creatures ye've forgotten that the truth ye're seeking is a--a -Person." - -Miriam pondered. - -"That's where ye ought to begin. And how about--what--what about--I -fancy ye've been neglecting the--the means of grace.... I think ye -have." Miss Haddie rose and crossed the room to a little bookshelf at -the head of her bed, talking happily on. 'Upright as a dart,' commented -Miriam mentally, waiting for the fulfilment of the promise of Miss -Haddie's cheerfulness. Against the straight lines of the wall-paper Miss -Haddie showed as swaying slightly backwards from the waist as she moved. - -The first bell rang and Miriam got up to go. Miss Haddie came forward -with a small volume in her hands and held it out, standing close by her -and keeping her own hold on the volume. "Ye'll find no argument in it. -Not but I think a few sound arguments would do ye good. Give it a try. -Don't be stiff-necked. Just read it and see." The smooth soft leather -slipped altogether into Miriam's hands and she felt the passing contact -of a cool small hand and noted a faint fine scent coming to her from -Miss Haddie's person. - -In her own room she found that the soft binding of the book had rounded -corners and nothing on the cover but a small plain gold cross in the -right-hand corner. She feasted her eyes on it as she took off her -things. When the second bell rang she glanced inside the cover. -"Preparation for Holy Communion." Hurriedly hiding it in her long drawer -under a pile of linen, she ran to the door. Running back again she took -it out and put it, together with her prayer book and hymn book, in the -small top drawer. - - - 5 - -The opportunity to use Miss Haddie's book came with Nancie's departure -for a week-end visit. Beadie was in the deeps of her first sleep and the -room seemed empty. The book lay open on her bed. She noted as she placed -it there when she began preparing for bed that it was written by a -bishop, a man she knew by name as being still alive. It struck her as -extraordinary that a book should be printed and read while the author -was alive, and she turned away with a feeling of shame from the idea of -the bishop, still going about in his lawn sleeves and talking, while -people read a book that he had written in his study. But it was very -interesting to have the book to look at, because he probably knew about -modern people with doubts and would not think about them as -'infidels'--'an honest agnostic has my sympathy,' he might say, and it -was possible he did not believe in eternal punishment. If he did he -would not have had his book printed with rounded edges and that -beautiful little cross.... "Line upon Line" and the "Pilgrim's Progress" -were not meant for modern minds. Archbishop Whateley had a "chaste and -eloquent wit" and was a "great gardener." A witty archbishop fond of -gardening was simply aggravating and silly. - -Restraining her desire to hurry, Miriam completed her toilet and at last -knelt down in her dressing-gown. Its pinked neck-frill fell heavily -against her face as she leant over the bed. Tucking it into her neck she -clasped her outstretched hands, leaving the book within the circle of -her arms. The attitude seemed a little lacking in respect for the -beautifully printed gilt-edged pages. Flattening her entwined hands -between herself and the edge of the bed, she read very slowly that just -as for worldly communion men cleanse and deck their bodies so for -attendance at the Holy Feast must there be a cleansing and decking of -the spirit. She knelt upright, feeling herself grow very grave. The cold -air of the bedroom flowed round her carrying conviction. Then that -dreadful feeling at early service, kneeling like a lump in the pew, too -late to begin to be good, the exhausted moments by the altar rail--the -challenging light on the shining brass rod, on the priest's ring and the -golden lining of the cup, the curious bite of the wine in the -throat--the sullen disappointed home-coming; all the strange failure was -due to lack of preparation. She knelt for some moments, without -thoughts, breathing in the cleansing air, sighing heavily at intervals. -What she ought to do was clear. A certain time for preparation could be -taken every night, kneeling up in bed with the gas out if Nancie were -awake, and a specially long time on Saturday night. The decision took -her back to her book. She read that no man can cleanse himself, but it -is his part to examine his conscience and confess his sins with a prayer -for cleansing grace. - -The list of questions for self-examination as to sins past and present -in thought, word, and deed brought back the sense of her body with its -load of well-known memories. Could they be got rid of? She could cast -them off, feel them sliding away like Christian's Burden. But was that -all? Was it being reconciled with your brother to throw off ill-feeling -without letting him know and telling him you were sorry for unkind deeds -and words? Those you met would find out the change; but all the -others--those you had offended from your youth up--all your family? -Write to them. A sense of a checking of the tide that had seemed to flow -through her finger-tips came with this suggestion, and Miriam knelt -heavily on the hard floor, feeling the weight of her well-known body. -The wall-paper attracted her attention and the honeycomb pattern of the -thick fringed white counterpane. She shut the little book and rose from -her knees. Moving quickly about the room, she turned at random to her -washhand basin and vigorously rewashed her hands in its soapy water. The -Englishman, she reflected as she wasted the soap, puts a dirty shirt on -a clean body, and the Frenchman a clean shirt on a dirty body. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - - 1 - -Miriam felt very proud of tall Miss Perne when she met her in the hall -at the beginning of her second term. Miss Perne had kissed her and held -one of her hands in two small welcoming ones, talking in a gleeful -voice. "Well, my dear," she said at the end of a little pause, "you'll -have a clear evening. The gels do not return until to-morrow, so you'll -be able to unpack and settle yerself in comfortably. Come and sit with -us when ye've done. We'll have supper in the sitting-room. M'yes." -Smiling and laughing she turned eagerly away. "Of course, Miss Perne," -said Miriam in a loud wavering voice, arresting her, "I enjoyed my -holidays; but I want to tell you how glad I am to be back here." - -"Yes, yes," said Miss Perne hilariously, "we're all glad." - -There was a little break in her voice, and Miriam saw that she would -have once more taken her in her arms. - -"I like being here," she said hoarsely, looking down, and supported -herself by putting two trembling fingers on the hall table. She was -holding back from the gnawing of the despair that had made her sick with -pain when she heard once more the jingle-jingle, plock-plock of the -North London trams. This strong feeling of pride in Miss Perne was -beating it down. "I'm very glad, my dear," responded Miss Perne in a -quivering gleeful falsetto. 'If you can't have what you like you must -like what you have,' said Miriam over and over to herself as she went -with heavy feet up the four flights of stairs. - - - 2 - -A candle was already burning in the empty bedroom. "I'm back. I'm back. -It's all over," she gasped as she shut the door. "And a jolly good thing -too. This is my place. I can keep myself here and cost nothing and not -interfere with anybody. It's just as if I'd never been away. It'll -always be like that now. Short holidays, gone in a minute, and then the -long term. Getting out of touch with everything, things happening, -knowing nothing about them, going home like a visitor, and people -talking to you about things that are only theirs, now and not wanting to -hear about yours ... not about the little real everyday things that give -you an idea of anything but only the startling things that are not -important. You have to think of them though to make people -interested--awful, awful, awful, really only putting people further away -afterwards when you've told the thing and their interest dies down and -you can't think of anything else to say. 'Miss Perne's hair is -_perfectly_ black--as black as coal, and she's the eldest, just -_fancy_.' Then everybody looks up. 'My room's downstairs, the room where -I teach, is in the basement. Directly breakfast is over----' - -"'Basement? What a pity! Basement rooms are awfully bad,' and by the -time you have stopped them exclaiming and are just going to begin, you -see that they are fidgetting and thinking about something else." ... Eve -had listened a little; because she wanted to tell everything about her -own place and had agreed that nobody really wanted to hear the -details.... The landscapes from the windows of the big country house, -all like pictures by Leader, the stables and laundry, a "laundry-maid" -who was sixty-five, the eldest pupil with seven muslin dresses in the -summer and being scolded because she swelled out after two helpings of -meat and two of pie and cream, and the youngest almost square in her -little covert coat and with a square face and large blue eyes and the -puppies who went out in a boat in Weston-super-Mare and were -sea-sick.... Eve did not seem to mind the family being common. Eve was -changing. "They are so jolly and strong. They enjoy life. They're like -other people." ... "D'you think that's jolly? Would you like to be like -that--like other people?" "Rather. I mean to be." "Do you?" "Of course -it can't be done all at once. But it's good for me to be there. It's -awfully jolly to be in a house with no worry about money and plenty of -jolly food. Mrs. Green is so strong and clever. She can do anything. -She's good for me, she keeps me going." "Would you like to be like her?" -"Of course. They're all so jolly--even when they're old. Her sister's -forty and she's still pretty; not given up hope a bit." "_Eve!_" - -Eve had listened; but not agreed about the teaching, about making the -girls see how easy it was to get hold of the things and then letting -them talk about other things. "I see how you do it, and I see why the -girls obey you, of course." Funny. Eve thought it was hard and inhuman. -That's what she really thought. - -Two newly purchased lengths of spotted net veiling were lying at the top -of her lightly packed trunk partly folded in uncrumpled tissue paper. -She took the crisp dye-scented net very gently into her hands, getting, -sitting alone on the floor by her trunk, the full satisfaction that had -failed her in the shop with Harriett's surprise at her sudden desire -flowing over the counter and infecting the charm of baskets full of -cheap stockings and common bright-bordered handkerchiefs some of which -had borders so narrow and faint as really hardly to show when they were -scrumpled up. "Veiling, moddom? Yes, moddom," the assistant had retorted -when she had asked for a veil. "Wot on _earth_ fower?" ... Without -answering Harriett she had bought two. There was no need to have bought -two. One could go back in the trunk as a store. They would be the -beginning of gradually getting a 'suitable outfit,' 'things convenient -for you.' She got up to put a veil in the little top drawer very -carefully; trying it across her face first. It almost obliterated her -features in the dim candle-light. It would be the greatest comfort on -winter walks, warm and like a rampart. 'You've no idea how warm it keeps -you,' she could say if anybody said anything. She arranged her clothes -very slowly and exactly in her half of the chest of drawers. "My -appointments ought to be an influence in the room--until all my things -are perfectly refined I shan't be able to influence the girls as I -ought. I must begin it from now. At the end of the term I shall be -stronger. From strength to strength." She wished she could go to bed at -once and prepare for to-morrow lying alone in the dark with the trams -going up and down outside as they would do night by night for the rest -of her life. - - - 3 - -The nine o'clock post brought a letter from Harriett. Miriam carried it -upstairs after supper. Placing it unopened on a chair by the head of her -bed under the gas bracket she tried to put away the warm dizzy feeling -it brought her in an elaborate toilet that included the placing in -readiness of everything she would need for the morning. When all was -complete she was filled with a peace that promised to remain -indefinitely as long as everything she had to do should be carried out -with unhurried exactitude. It could be made to become the atmosphere of -her life. It would come nearer and nearer and she would live more and -more richly into it until she had grown like those women who were called -blessed.... She looked about her. The plain room gave her encouragement. -It became the scene of adventure. She tip-toed about it in her -night-gown. All the world would come to her there. Flora knew. Flora was -the same, sweeping the floors and going to bed in an ugly room with two -other servants; but she was in it alone sometimes and knew.... - -"One verse to-night will be enough." Opening her Bible at random she -read, "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that -tribulation worketh patience." Eagerly closing the volume she knelt down -smiling. "Oh do let tribulation work patience in me," she murmured, -blushing, and got up staring gladly at the wall behind her bed. Shaking -her pillow lengthwise against the ironwork head of the bed, she -established herself with the bed-clothes neatly arranged, sitting up to -read Harriett's letter before turning out the gas: - -"Toosday morning--You've not gone yet, old tooral-ooral, but I'm writing -this because I know you'll feel blue this evening, to tell you not to. -Becos, it's _no_ time to Easter and becos here's a great piece of news. -The last of the Neville Subscription Dances comes in the Easter holidays -and _you're to come_. D'ye '_ear_, Liza? Gerald says if you can't stump -up he's going to get you a ticket, and anyhow you've got to come. You'll -enjoy it just as much as you did the first and probably more, because -most of the same people will be there. So Goodni'. Mind the lamp-post. -Harry. P'.S.--Heaps of love, old silly. You're just the same. It's no -bally good pretending you're not." - -Miriam felt her heart writhe in her breast. "Get thee behind me, Harry," -she said, pushing the letter under the pillow and kneeling up to turn -out the gas. When she lay down again her mind was rushing on by -itself.... - - - 4 - -Harry doesn't realise a bit how short holidays are. Easter--nothing. -Just one dance and never seeing the people again. I was right just now. -I was on the right track then. I must get back to that. It's no good -giving way right or left; I must make a beginning of my own life.... I -wish I had been called "Patience" and had thin features.... Adam Street, -Adelphi.... "Now do you want to be dancing out there with one of those -young fellows, my dear girl--No? That's a very good thing for me. I'm an -old buffer who can't manage more than every other dance or so. But if -you do me the honour of sitting here while those young barbarians romp -their Lancers?... Ah, that is excellent--I want you to talk to me. You -needn't mind me. Hey? What? I've known that young would-be -brother-in-law of yours for many years and this evening I've been -watching your face. Do you mind that, dear girl, that I've watched your -face? In all homage. I'm a staunch worshipper of womanhood. I've seen -rough life as well as suave. I'm an old gold-digger--Ustralia took many -years of my life; but it never robbed me of my homage for women.... - -"That's a mystery to me. How you've allowed your young sister to -overhaul you. Perhaps you have a Corydon hidden away somewhere--or don't -think favourably of the bonds of matrimony? Is that it? - -"You are not one to be easily happy. But that is no reason why you -should say you pity anyone undertaking to pass through life at your -side. Don't let your thoughts and ideas allow you to miss happiness. -Women are made to find and dispense happiness. Even intense women like -yourself. But you won't find it an easy matter to discover your mate. - -"Have you ever thought of committing your ideas to paper? There's a book -called 'The Confessions of a Woman.' It had a great sale and its -composition occupied the authoress for only six weeks. You could write -in your holidays. - -"Think over what I've told you, my dear, dear girl. And don't forget old -Bob Greville's address. You're eighteen. He's only eight; eight Adam -Street. The old Adam. Waiting to hear from the new Eve--whenever she's -unhappy." - -He would be there again, old flatterer, with his steely blue eyes and -that strong little Dr. Conelly--Conelly who held you like a vice and -swung you round and kept putting you back from him to say things. "If -only you knew the refreshment it is to dance with a girl who can talk -sense and doesn't _giggle_.... Yes yes yes, women are _physically_ -incapable of keeping a secret.... Meredith, he's the man. He understands -woman as no other writer----" And the little dark man--De Vigne--who -danced like a snake.... Tired? Divinely drowsy? That's what I like. -Don't talk. Let yourself go. Little snail, Harriett called him. And that -giant, Conelly's friend, whirling you round the room like a gust, with -his eyes fixed far away in the distance and dropping you with the -chaperones at the end of the dance. If _he_ had suddenly said "Let -yourself go" ... He too would have become a snail. God has made life -ugly. - -Dear Mr. Greville, dear _Bob_. Do you know anything about a writer -called Meredith? If you have one of his books I should like to read it. -No. Dear Bob, I'm simply wretched. I want to talk to you. - - - 5 - -Footsteps sounded on the stairs--the servants, coming upstairs to bed. -No dancing for them. Work, caps and aprons. And those strange rooms -upstairs to sleep in that nobody ever saw. Probably Miss Perne went up -occasionally to look at them and see that they were all right; clean and -tidy.... They had to go up every night, carrying little jugs of water -and making no noise on the stairs, and come down every morning. They -were the servants--and there would never be any dancing. Nobody thought -about them.... They could not get away from each other, and cook.... - -To be a general servant would be very hard work. Perhaps impossible. But -there would be two rooms, the kitchen at the bottom of the house, and a -bedroom at the top, your own. It would not matter what the family was -like. You would look after them, like children, and be alone to read and -sleep.... Toothache. Cheap dentists; a red lamp "painless extractions" -... having to go there before nine in the morning, and be alone in a -cold room, the dentist doing what he thought best and coming back to -your work crying with pain, your head wrapped up in a black shawl. -Hospitals; being quite helpless and grateful for wrong treatment; coming -back to work, ill. Sinks and slops ... quinsey, all alone ... growths -... consumption. - -Go to sleep. It would be better to think in the morning. But then this -clear first impression would be gone and school would begin and go on -from hour to hour through the term, mornings and afternoons and -evenings, dragging you along further and further and changing you, -months and months and years until it was too late to get back and there -was nothing ahead. - -The thing to remember, to keep in mind all the time was to save -money--not to spend a single penny that could be saved, to be determined -about that so that when the temptation came you could just hang on until -it was past. - -No fun in the holidays, no money spent on flowers and gloves and -blouses. Keeping stiff and sensible all the time. The family of the two -little Quaker girls had a home library, with lists, an inventory, -lending each other their books and talking about them, and albums of -pressed leaves and flowers with the Latin names, and went on wearing the -same plain clothes.... You had to be a certain sort of person to do -that. - -It would spoil the holidays to be like that at home. Every penny must be -spent, if only on things for other people. Not spending would bring a -nice strong secret feeling and a horrid expression into one's eyes. - -The only way was to give up your family and stay at your work, like -Flora, and have a box of half-crowns in your drawer.... Spend and always -be afraid of "rainy days"--or save and never enjoy life at all. - -But going out now and again in the holidays, feeling stiff and -governessy and just beginning to learn to be oneself again when it was -time to go back was not enjoying life ... your money was spent and -people forgot you and you forgot them and went back to your convent to -begin again. - -Save, save. Sooner or later saving must begin. Why not at once. Harry, -it's no good. I'm old already. I've got to be one of those who have to -give everything up. - -I wonder if Flora is asleep? - -That's settled. Go to sleep. Get thee behind me. Sleep ... the dark cool -room. Air; we breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Everybody has air. -Manna. As much as you want, full measure, pressed down and running -over.... Wonderful. There is somebody giving things, whatever goes ... -something left.... Somebody seeing that things are not quite unbearable, -... but the pain, the pain all the time, mysterious black pain.... - -Into thy hands I commit my spirit. _In manus_ something.... You -understand if nobody else does. But _why_ must I be one of the ones to -give everything up? _Why_ do you make me suffer so? - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - - 1 - -Piecemeal statements in her letter home brought Miriam now and again a -momentary sense of developing activities, but she did not recognise the -completeness of the change in her position at the school until half-way -through her second term she found herself talking to the new pupil -teacher. She had heard apathetically of her existence during -supper-table conversations with the Misses Perne at the beginning of the -term. She was an Irish girl of sixteen, one of a large family living on -the outskirts of Dublin, and would be a boarder, attending the first -class for English and earning pocket money by helping with the lower -school. As the weeks went on and Miriam grew accustomed to hearing her -name--Julia Doyle--she began to associate it with an idea of charm that -brought her a sinking of heart. She knew her position in the esteem of -the Pernes was secure. But this new young teacher would work strange -miracles with the girls. She would do it quite easily and unconsciously. -The girls would be easy with her and would laugh and one would have to -hear them. - -However, when at last her arrival was near and the three ladies -discussed the difficulty of having her met, Miriam plied them until they -reluctantly gave her permission to go, taking a workman's train that -would bring her to Euston station at seven o'clock in the morning. - -At the end of an hour spent pacing the half-dark platform exhausted with -cold and excitement and the monotonously reiterated effort to imagine -the arrival of one of Mrs. Hungerford's heroines from a train journey, -Miriam, whose costume had been described in a letter to the girl's -mother, was startled wandering amidst the vociferous passengers at the -luggage end of the newly arrived train by a liquid colourless intimate -voice at her elbow. "I think I'll be right to say how d'you do." - -She turned and saw a slender girl in a middle-aged toque and an ill-cut -old-fashioned coat and skirt. What were they to say to each other, two -dowdy struggling women both in the same box? She must get her to Banbury -Park as quickly as possible. It was dreadful that they should be seen -together there on the platform in their ragbag clothes. At any rate they -must not talk. "Oh, I'm very pleased to see you. I'm glad you've come. I -suppose the train must have been late," she said eagerly. - -"Ah, we'll be late I dare venture. Haven't an idea of the hour." - -"Oh, yes," said Miriam emphatically, "I'm sure the train's _late_." - -"Where'll we find a core?" - -"What?" - -"We'll need a core for the luggage." - -"Oh yes, a cab. We must get a cab. We'd better find a porter." - -"Ah, I've a man here seeking out my things." - -Inside the cab Julia's face shone chalky white, and Miriam found that -her eyes looked like Weymouth Bay--the sea in general, on days when -clouds keep sweeping across the sun. When she laughed she had dimples -and the thick white rims of her eyelids looked like piping cord round -her eyes. But she was not pretty. There were lines in her cheeks as well -as dimples, and there was something apologetic in her little gusty -laugh. She laughed a good deal as they started off, saying things, -little quiet remarks that Miriam could not understand and that did not -seem to be answers to her efforts to make conversation. Perhaps she was -not going the right way to make her talk. Perhaps she had not said any -of the things she thought she had said. - -She cleared her throat and looked out of the window thinking over a -possible opening. - -"I've never been so glad over anything in my life as hearing you're one -of the teachers," said Julia presently. - -"The Pernes call me by my name, so I suppose you will too as you're a -teacher," said Miriam headlong. - -"That's awfully sweet of you," replied Julia laughing and blushing a -clear deep rose. "It makes anyone feel at home. I'll be looking out till -I hear it." - -"It's----" Miriam laughed. "Isn't it funny that people don't like saying -their own names." - -"I wish you'd tell me about your teaching. I'm sure you're awf'ly -clever." - -Miriam gave her a list of the subjects she taught in the lower school. - -"You know all there is to know." - -"Oh well, and then I take the top girls now for German and the second -class for French reading, and two arithmetic classes in the upper -school, and a 'shell' of two very stupid girls to help with their -College of Preceptors." - -"You're frightening me." - - - 2 - -Miriam looked out of the cab window, hardly hearing Julia's next remark. -The drab brick walls of King's Cross station were coming towards them. -When they had got themselves and Julia's luggage out of the cab and into -the train for Banbury Park she was still pondering uneasily over her own -dislike of appearing as a successful teacher. This stranger saw her only -as a teacher. That was what she had become. If she was really a teacher -now, just that in life, it meant that she must decide at once whether -she really meant to teach always. Everyone now would think of her as a -teacher; as someone who was never going to do anything else, when really -she had not even begun to think about doing any of the things that -professional teachers had to do. She was not qualifying herself for -examinations in her spare time as her predecessor had done. Supposing -she did. This girl Julia would certainly expect her to be doing so. What -then? If she were to work very hard and also develop her character, when -she was fifty she would be like Miss Cramp; good enough to be a special -visiting teacher, giving just a few lectures a week at several schools, -talking in a sad voice, feeling ill and sad, having a yellow face and -faded hair and not enough saved to live on when she was too old to work. -Prospect, said the noisy train. That was it, there was no prospect in -it. There was no prospect in teaching. What was there a prospect in, -going along in this North London train with this girl who took her at -her word? - -She turned eagerly to Julia who was saying something and laughing -unconcernedly as she said it. "If you'd like to know what it is I've -come over for I'll tell you at once. I've come over to learn Chopang's -Funeral March. It's all I think about. When I can play Chopang's Funeral -March I'll not call the Queen me aunt." - - - 3 - -"Well, my dear child, I'm sure I wish I could arrange your life for ye," -said Miss Haddie that evening. She was sitting on the edge of the -schoolroom table, having come in at ten o'clock to turn out the gas and -found Miriam sitting unoccupied. The room was cold and close with the -long-burning gas, and Miriam had turned upon her with a scornful half -laugh when she had playfully exclaimed at finding her there so late. -Miss Haddie was obviously still a little excited. She had presided at -schoolroom tea and Julia had filled the room with Dublin--the bay, the -streets, the jarveys and their outside cars, her journey, the channel -boat, her surprise at England. - -"Eh, what's the matter, Miriam, my dear?" For some time Miriam had -parried her questions, fiercely demanding that her mood should be -understood without a clue. Presently they had slid into an irritated -discussion of the respective values of sleep before and sleep after -midnight, in the midst of which Miriam had said savagely, "I wish to -goodness I knew what to do about things." - -Miss Haddie's kindly desire gave her no relief. What did she mean but -the hopelessness of imagining that anybody could do anything about -anything. Nobody could ever understand what anyone else really wanted. -Only some people were fortunate. Miss Haddie was one of the fortunate -ones. She had her share in the school and many wealthy relatives and the -very best kind of good clothes and a good deal of strange old-fashioned -jewelry. And whatever happened there was money and her sisters and -relatives to look after her without feeling it a burden because of the -expense. And there she sat at the table looking at what she thought she -could see in another person's life. - -"If only one knew in the least what one _ought_ to do," said Miriam -crossly. - -Miss Haddie began speaking in a halting murmur, and Miriam rushed on -with flaming face. "I suppose I shall have to go on teaching all my -life, and I can't think how on earth I'm going to do it. I don't see how -I can work in the evenings, my eyes get so tired. If you don't get -certificates there's no prospect. And even if I did my throat is simply -agonies at the end of each morning." - -"Eh! my dear child! I'm sorry to hear that. Why have ye taken to that? -Is it something fresh?" - -"Oh no, my throat always used to get tired. Mother's is the same. We -can't either of us talk for ten minutes without feeling it. It's -perfectly awful." - -"But, my dear, oughtn't ye to see someone--have some advice? I mean ye -ought to see a doctor." - -Miriam glanced at Miss Haddie's concerned face and glanced away with a -flash of hatred. "Oh no. I s'pose I shall manage." - -"D'ye think yer wise--letting it go on?" - -Miriam made no reply. - -"Well now, my dear," said Miss Haddie, getting down off the table, "I -think it's time ye went to bed." - -"Phm," said Miriam impatiently, "I suppose it is." - -Miss Haddie sat down again. "I wish I could help ye, my dear," she said -gently. - -"Oh, no one can do that," said Miriam in a hard voice. - -"Oh yes," murmured Miss Haddie cheerfully, "there's One who can." - -"Oh yes," said Miriam, tugging a thread out of the fraying edge of the -table cover. "But it's practically impossible to discover what on earth -they mean you to do." - -"N--aiche, my dear," she said in an angry guttural, "ye're always led." - -Miriam tugged at the thread and bit her lips. - -"Why do ye suppose ye'll go on teaching all yer life? Perhaps ye'll -marry." - -"Oh no." - -"Ye can't tell." - -"Oh, I never shall--in any case now." - -"Have ye quarrelled with him?" - -"Oh, well, _him_," said Miriam roundly, digging a pencil point between -the grainings of the table-cover. "It's _they_, I think, goodness knows, -I don't know; it's so perfectly extraordinary." - -"You're a very funny young lady." - -"Well, I shan't marry _now_ anyhow." - -"Have ye refused somebody?" - -"Oh well--there was someone--who went away--went to America--who was -coming back to see me when he came back----" - -"Yes, my dear?" - -"Well, you see, he's handed in his checks." - -"Eh, my dear--I don't understand," said Miss Haddie thwarted and -frowning. - -"Aw," said Miriam, jabbing the table, "kicked the bucket." - -"My dear child, you use such strange language--I can't follow ye." - -"Oh well, you see, he went to America. It was in New York. I heard about -it in January. He caught that funny illness. You know. Influenza--and -died." - -"Eh, my poor dear child, I'm very sorry for ye. Ye _do_ seem to have -troubles." - -"Ah well, yes, and then the queer thing is that he was really only the -friend of my real friend. And it was my real friend who told me about it -and gave me a message he sent me and didn't like it, of course. -Naturally." - -"Well _really_, Miriam," said Miss Haddie, blushing, with a little laugh -half choked by a cough. - -"Oh yes, then of course one meets people--at dances. It's appalling." - -"I wish I understood ye, my dear." - -"Oh well, it doesn't make any difference now. I shall hardly ever meet -anybody now." - -Miss Haddie pondered over the table with features that worked slightly -as she made little murmuring sounds. "Eh no. Ye needn't think that. Ye -shouldn't think like that.... Things happen sometimes ... just when ye -least expect it." - -"Not to me." - -"Oh, things will happen to ye--never fear.... Now, my dear child, trot -along with ye off to bed." - -Miriam braced herself against Miss Haddie's gentle shaking of her -shoulders and the quiet kiss on her forehead that followed it. - - - 4 - -The strengthening of her intimacy with Miss Haddie was the first of the -many changes brought to Miriam by Julia Doyle. At the beginning of the -spring term her two room mates were transferred to Julia's care. The two -back rooms became a little hive of girls over which Julia seemed to -preside. She handled them all easily. There was rollicking and laughter -in the back bedrooms, but never any sign that the girls were "going too -far," and their escapades were not allowed to reach across the landing. -Her large front room was, Miriam realised as the term went on, being -secretly and fiercely guarded by Julia. - -The fabric of the days too had changed. All day--during the midday -constitutional when she often found Julia at her side walking in her -curious springy lounging way and took the walk in a comforting silence -resting her weary throat, during the evenings of study and the -unemployed intervals of the long Sundays--Julia seemed to come between -her and the girls. She mastered them all with her speech and laughter. -Miriam felt that when they were all together she was always in some -hidden way on the alert. She never jested with Miriam but when they were -alone, and rarely then. Usually she addressed her in a low tone and as -if half beside herself with some overpowering emotion. It was owing too -to Julia's presence in the school that an unexpected freedom came to -Miriam every day during the hour between afternoon school and tea-time. - -Persuaded by the rapid increase towards the end of the winter term of -the half-feverish exhaustion visiting her at the end of each day she had -confided in her mother, who had wept at this suggestion of an attack on -her health and called in the family doctor. "More air," he said testily, -"air and movement." Miriam repeated this to Miss Perne, who at once -arranged that she should be free if she chose to go out every afternoon -between school and tea-time. - -At first she went into the park every day. It was almost empty during -the week at that hour. The cricket green was sparsely decked with -children and their maids. A few strollers were left along the poplar -avenue and round the asphalt-circled lake; but away on the further -slopes usually avoided in the midday walks because the girls found them -oppressive, Miriam discovered the solitary spring air. Day by day she -went as if by appointment to meet it. It was the same wandering eloquent -air she had known from the beginning of things. Whilst she walked along -the little gravel pathways winding about over the clear green slopes in -the flood of afternoon light it stayed with her. The day she had just -passed through was touched by it; it added a warm promise to the hours -that lay ahead--tea-time, the evening's reading, the possible visit of -Miss Haddie, the quiet of her solitary room, the coming of sleep. - -One day she left the pathways and strayed amongst pools of shadow lying -under the great trees. As she approached the giant trunks and the detail -of their shape and colour grew clearer her breathing quickened. She felt -her prim bearing about her like a cloak. The reality she had found was -leaving her again. Looking up uneasily into the forest of leaves above -her head she found them strange. She walked quickly back into the -sunlight, gazing reproachfully at the trees. There they were as she had -always known them; but between them and herself was her governess' veil, -close drawn, holding them sternly away from her. The warm comforting -communicative air was round her, but she could not recover its secret. -She looked fearfully about her. To get away somewhere by herself every -day would not be enough. If that was all she could have, there would -come a time when there would be nothing anywhere. For a day or two she -came out and walked feverishly about in other parts of the park, -resentfully questioning the empty vistas. One afternoon, far away, but -coming towards her as if in answer to her question, was the figure of a -man walking quickly. For a moment her heart cried out to him. If he -would come straight on and, understanding, would walk into her life and -she could face things knowing that he was there, the light would come -back and would stay until the end--and there would be other lives, on -and on. She stood transfixed, trembling. He grew more and more distinct -and she saw a handbag and the outline of a bowler hat; a North London -clerk hurrying home to tea. With bent head she turned away and dragged -her shamed heavy limbs rapidly towards home. - - - 5 - -Early in May came a day of steady rain. Enveloped in a rain-cloak and -sheltered under her lowered umbrella she ventured down the hill towards -the shops. Near the railway arch the overshadowed street began to be -crowded with jostling figures. People were pouring from the city trams -at the terminus and coming out of the station entrance in a steady -stream. Hard intent faces, clashing umbrellas, the harsh snarling -monotone of the North London voice gave her the feeling of being an -intruder. Everything seemed to wonder what she was doing down there -instead of being at home in the schoolroom. A sudden angry eye above a -coarse loudly talking mouth all but made her turn to go with instead of -against the tide; but she pushed blindly on and through and presently -found herself in a quiet side street just off the station road looking -into a shop window.... "1 lb. super cream-laid boudoir note--with -envelopes--1s." Her eyes moved about the window from packet to packet, -set askew and shining with freshness. If she had not brought so much -note-paper from home she could have bought some. Perhaps she could buy a -packet as a Christmas present for Eve and have it in her top drawer all -the time. But there was plenty of note-paper at home. She half turned to -go, and turning back fastened herself more closely against the window -meaninglessly reading the inscription on each packet. Standing back at -last she still lingered. A little blue-painted tin plate sticking out -from the side of the window announced in white letters "Carter -Paterson." Miriam dimly wondered at the connection. Underneath it hung a -cardboard printed in ink, "Circulating Library, 2d. weekly." This was -still more mysterious. She timidly approached the door and met the large -pleasant eye of a man standing back in the doorway. - -"Is there a library here?" she said with beating heart. - -She stood so long reading and re-reading half familiar titles, "Cometh -up as a Flower," "Not like other Girls," "The Heir of Redcliffe," books -that she and Harriett had read and books that she felt were of a similar -type, that tea was already on the schoolroom table when she reached -Wordsworth House with an unknown volume by Mrs. Hungerford under her -arm. Hiding it upstairs, she came down to tea and sat recovering her -composure over her paper-covered "Cinq Mars," a relic of the senior -Oxford examination now grown suddenly rich and amazing. To-day it could -not hold her. "The Madcap" was upstairs, and beyond it an unlimited -supply of twopenny volumes and Ouida. Red-bound volumes of Ouida on the -bottom shelf had sent her eyes quickly back to the safety of the upper -rows. Through the whole of tea-time she was quietly aware of a -discussion going on at the back of her mind as to who it was who had -told her that Ouida's books were bad; evil books. She remembered her -father's voice saying that Ouida was an extremely able woman, quite a -politician. Then of course her books were all right, for grown-up -people. It must have been someone at a dance who had made her curious -about them, someone she had forgotten. In any case, whatever they were, -there was no one now to prevent her reading them if she chose. She would -read them if she chose. Write to Eve about it first. No. Certainly not. -Eve might say "Better not, my dear. You will regret it if you do. You -won't be the same." Eve was different. She must not be led by Eve in any -case. She must leave off being led by Eve--or anybody. The figures -sitting round the table, bent over their books, quietly disinclined for -conversation or mischief under the shrewd eye of Miss Haddie, suddenly -looked exciting and mysterious. But perhaps the man in the shop would be -shocked. It would be impossible to ask for them; unless she could -pretend she did not know anything about them. - - - 6 - -For the last six weeks of the summer term she sat up night after night -propped against her upright pillow and bolster under the gas jet reading -her twopenny books in her silent room. Almost every night she read until -two o'clock. She felt at once that she was doing wrong; that the secret -novel-reading was a thing she could not confess, even to Miss Haddie. -She was spending hours of the time that was meant for sleep, for restful -preparation for the next day's work, in a "vicious circle" of -self-indulgence. It was sin. She had read somewhere that sin promises a -satisfaction that it is unable to fulfil. But she found when the house -was still and the trams had ceased jingling up and down outside that she -grew steady and cool and that she rediscovered the self she had known at -home, where the refuge of silence and books was always open. Perhaps -that self, leaving others to do the practical things, erecting a little -wall of unapproachability between herself and her family that she might -be free to dream alone in corners had always been wrong. But it was -herself, the nearest most intimate self she had known. And the discovery -that it was not dead, that her six months in the German school and the -nine long months during which Banbury Park life had drawn a veil even -over the little slices of holiday freedom, had not even touched it, -brought her warm moments of reassurance. It was not perhaps a "good" -self, but it was herself, her own familiar secretly happy and rejoicing -self--not dead. Her hands lying on the coverlet knew it. They were again -at these moments her own old hands, holding very firmly to things that -no one might touch or even approach too nearly, things, everything, the -great thing that would some day communicate itself to someone through -these secret hands with the strangely thrilling finger-tips. Holding -them up in the gaslight she dreamed over their wisdom. They knew -everything and held their secret, even from her. She eyed them, communed -with them, passionately trusted them. They were not "artistic" or -"clever" hands. The fingers did not "taper" nor did the outstretched -thumb curl back on itself like a frond--like Nan Babington's. They were -long, the tips squarish and firmly padded, the palm square and bony and -supple, and the large thumb joint stood away from the rest of the hand -like the thumb joint of a man. The right hand was larger than the left, -kindlier, friendlier, wiser. The expression of the left hand was less -reassuring. It was a narrower, lighter hand, more flexible, less -sensitive and more even in its touch--more smooth and manageable in -playing scales. It seemed to belong to her much less than the right; but -when the two were firmly interlocked they made a pleasant curious whole, -the right clasping more firmly, its thumb always uppermost, its fingers -separated firmly over the back of the left palm, the left hand clinging, -its fingers close together against the hard knuckles of the right. - -It was only when she was alone and in the intervals of quiet reading -that she came into possession of her hands. With others they oppressed -her by their size and their lack of feminine expressiveness. No one -could fall in love with such hands. Loving her, someone might come to -tolerate them. They were utterly unlike Eve's plump, white, inflexible -little palms. But they were her strength. They came between her and the -world of women. They would be her companions until the end. They would -wither. But the bones would not change. The bones would be laid -unchanged and wise, in her grave. - - - 7 - -She began her readings with Rosa Nouchette Carey. Reading her at home, -after tea by the breakfast-room fireside with red curtains drawn and the -wind busy outside amongst the evergreen shrubs under the window, it had -seemed quite possible that life might suddenly develop into the thing -the writer described. From somewhere would come an adoring man who -believed in heaven and eternal life. One would grow very good; and after -the excitement and interest had worn off one would go on, with firm -happy lips being good and going to church and making happy matches for -other girls or quietly disapproving of everybody who did not believe -just in the same way and think about good girls and happy marriages and -heaven, keeping such people outside. Smiling, wise and happy inside in -the warm; growing older, but that did not matter because the adored man -was growing older too. - -Now it had all changed. The quiet house and fireside, gravity, -responsibility, a greying husband, his reading profile always dear, both -of them going on towards heaven, "all tears wiped away," tears and -laughter of relief after death, still seemed desirable, but "women." ... -Those awful, awful women, she murmured to herself stirring in bed. I -never thought of all the _awful_ women there would be in such a life. I -only thought of myself and the house and the garden and the man. What an -escape! Good God in heaven, what an escape! Far better to be alone and -suffering and miserable here in the school, alive.... - -Then there'll be whole heaps of books, millions of books I can't -read--perhaps nearly all the books. She took one more volume of Rosa, in -hope, and haunted its deeps of domesticity. "I've gone too far." ... If -Rosa Nouchette Carey knew me, she'd make me one of the bad characters -who are turned out of the happy homes. I'm some sort of bad unsimple -woman. Oh, damn, damn, she sighed. I don't know. Her hands seemed to -mock her, barring her way. - - - 8 - -Then came a series of Mrs. Hungerford--all the volumes she had not -already read. She read them eagerly, inspirited. The gabled country -houses, the sunlit twilit endless gardens, the deep orchards, the -falling of dew, the mists of the summer mornings, masses of flowers in -large rooms with carved oaken furniture, wide staircases with huge -painted windows throwing down strange patches of light on shallow -thickly carpetted stairs. These were the things she wanted; gay -house-parties, people with beautiful wavering complexions and masses of -shimmering hair catching the light, fragrant filmy diaphanous dresses; -these were the people to whom she belonged--a year or two of life like -that, dancing and singing in and out the houses and gardens; and then -marriage. Living alone, sadly estranged, in the house of a husband who -loved her and with whom she was in love, both of them thinking that the -other had married because they had lost their way in a thunderstorm or -spent the night sitting up on a mountain-top or because of a clause in a -will, and then one day both finding out the truth.... That is what is -meant by happiness ... happiness. But these things could only happen to -people with money. She would never have even the smallest share of that -sort of life. She might get into it as a governess--some of Mrs. -Hungerford's heroines were governesses--but they had clouds of hair and -were pathetically slender and appealing in their deep mourning. She read -volume after volume, forgetting the titles--the single word 'Hungerford' -on a cover inflamed her. Her days became an irrelevance and her evenings -a dreamy sunlit indulgence. Now and again she wondered what Julia Doyle -would think if she knew what she was reading and how it affected -her--whether she would still watch her in the way she did as she went -about her work pale and tired, whether she would go on guarding her so -fiercely? - - - 9 - -At last exasperated, tired of the mocking park, the mocking happy books, -she went one day to the lower shelf, and saying very calmly, "I think -I'll take a Ouida," drew out "Under Two Flags" with a trembling hand. -The brown-eyed man seemed to take an interminable time noting the number -of the book, and when at last she got into the air her limbs were heavy -with sadness. That night she read until three o'clock and finished the -volume the next night at the same hour, sitting upright when the last -word was read, refreshed. From that moment the red-bound volumes became -the centre of her life. She read "Moths" and "In Maremma" slowly word by -word, with an increasing steadiness and certainty. The mere sitting with -the text held before her eyes gave her the feeling of being strongly -confronted. The strange currents which came whenever she was alone and -at ease flowing to the tips of her fingers, seemed to flow into the book -as she held it and to be met and satisfied. As soon as the door was shut -and the gas alight, she would take the precious, solid trusty volume -from her drawer and fling it on her bed, to have it under her eyes while -she undressed. She ceased to read her Bible and to pray. Ouida, Ouida, -she would muse with the book at last in her hands. I want bad -things--strong bad things.... It doesn't matter, Italy, the sky, bright -hot landscapes, things happening. I don't care what people think or say. -I am older than anyone here in this house. I am myself. - - - 10 - -... If you had loved, if you loved, you could die, laughing, gasping out -your life on a battlefield, fading by inches in a fever-swamp, or living -on, going about seamed and old and ill. Whatever happened to you, if you -had cared, fearing nothing, neither death nor hell. God came. He would -welcome and forgive you. Life, struggle, pain. Happy laughter with -twisted lips--all waiting somewhere outside, beyond. It would come. It -must be made to come. - - - 11 - -Who was there in the world? Ted had failed. Ted belonged to the Rosa -Nouchette Carey world. He would marry one of those women. Bob knew. Bob -Greville's profile was real. Sitting on the wide stairs at the Easter -Subscription Dance, his soft fine white hair standing up, the straight -line of polished forehead, the fine nose and compressed lips, the sharp -round chin with the three firm folds underneath it, the point of his -collar cutting across them, the keen blue eyes looking straight out -ahead, across Australia. The whole face listening. He had been listening -to her nearly all the evening. Now and again quiet questions. She could -go on talking to him whenever she liked. Go to him and go on talking, -and talking, safely, being understood. Talking on and on. But he was -old. Living old and alone in chambers in Adam Street--Adelphi. - - - 12 - -One day just before the end of the summer term, Miss Perne asked Miriam -to preside over the large schoolroom for the morning. The first and -second-class girls were settled there at their written examination in -English history. Rounding the schoolroom door she stood for a moment in -the doorway. The sunlight poured in through the wide bay window and the -roomful of quiet girls seemed like a field. Jessie Wheeler's voice broke -the silence. "It's the Hen," she shouted gently. "It's the blessed Hen! -Oh, _come_ on. You going to sit with us?" - -"Yes. Be quiet," said Miriam. - -"Oh, thank goodness," groaned Jessie, supported by groans and murmurs -from all over the room. - -"Be quiet, girls, and get on with your papers," said Miriam in a tone of -acid detachment from the top of her tide. She sat feeling that her arms -were round the entire roomful, that each girl struggling alone with the -list of questions was resting against her breast. "I'm going away from -them. I must be going away from them," ran her thoughts regretfully. -"They can't keep me. This is the utmost. I've won. There'll never be -anything more than this, here." It would always be the same--with -different girls. Certainty. Even the sunlight paid a sort of homage to -the fathomless certainty she felt. The sunlight in this little -schoolroom was telling her of other sunlights, vast and unbroken, -somewhere--coming, her own sunlights, when she should have wrenched -herself away. It was there; she glanced up again and again to watch it -breaking and splashing all over the room. It would come again, but how -differently. Quite soon. She might have spared herself all her -agonising. The girls did not know where she belonged. They were holding -her. But she would go away, to some huge open space. Leave them--ah, it -was unkind. But she had left them already in spirit. - -If they could all get up together now and sing, let their voices peal -together up and up, throw all the books out of the window, they might go -on together, forward into the sunshine, but they would not want to do -that. Hardly any of them would want to do that. They would look at her -with knowing eyes, and look at the door, and stay where they were. - -The room was very close. Polly Allen and Eunice Dupont, sitting together -at a little card-table in the darkest corner of the room, were -whispering. With beating heart Miriam got up and went and stood before -them. "You two are talking," she said with her eyes on the thickness of -Polly's shoulders as she sat in profile to the room. Eunice, opposite -her, against the wall, flashed up at her her beautiful fugitive grin as -from the darkness of a wood. History, thought Miriam. What has Eunice to -do with history, laws, Henry II, the English Constitution? "You don't -talk," she said coldly, feeling as she watched her that Eunice's pretty -clothes were stripped away and she were stabbing at her soft rounded -body, "at examinations. Can't you see that?" Eunice's pale face grew -livid. "First because it isn't fair and also because it disturbs other -people." You can tell all the people who cheat by their smile, she -reflected on her way back. Eunice chuckled serenely two or three times. -"What have these North London girls to do with studies?" ... There was -not a single girl like Eunice at Barnes. Even the very pretty girls were -... refined. - - - 13 - -That afternoon Miriam spent her hour of leisure in calling on the Brooms -to enquire for Grace, who had been ill the whole of the term. She found -the house after some difficulty in one of a maze of little rows and -crescents just off the tram-filled main road. "She's almost -perfect--almost perfection," said Mrs. Philps, the Aunt Lucy Miriam had -heard of and seen in church. - -They had been together in the little drawing-room talking about Grace -from the moment when Miriam was shown in to Mrs. Philps sitting darning -a duster in a low chair by the closed conservatory door. The glazed -closed door with the little strips of window on either side giving on to -a crowded conservatory made the little room seem dark. To Miriam it -seemed horribly remote. Her journey to it had been through immense -distances. Threading the little sapling-planted asphalt-pavemented -roadways between houses whose unbroken frontage was so near and so bare -as to forbid scrutiny, she felt she had reached the centre, the home and -secret of North London life. Off every tram-haunted main road, there -must be a neighbourhood like this where lived the common-mouthed -harsh-speaking people who filled the pavements and shops and walked in -the parks. To enter one of the little houses and speak there to its -inmates would be to be finally claimed and infected by the life these -people lived, the thing that made them what they were. At Wordsworth -House she was held up by the presence of the Pernes and Julia Doyle. -Here she was helpless and alone. When she had discovered the number she -sought and, crossing the little tiled pathway separated from the pathway -next door by a single iron rail, had knocked with the lacquered knocker -against the glazed and leaded door, her dreams for the future faded. -They would never be realised. They were just a part of the radiance that -shone now from the spacious houses she had lived in in the past. The -things she had felt this morning in the examination room were that, too. -They had nothing to do with the future. All the space was behind. Things -would grow less and less. - - - 14 - -Admitted to the dark narrowly echoing tiled passage, she stated her -errand and was conducted past a closed door and the opening of a narrow -staircase which shot steeply, carpeted with a narrow strip of -surprisingly green velvet carpeting, up towards an unlit landing and -admitted to Mrs. Philps. - -"Wait a minute, Vashti," said Mrs. Philps, holding Miriam's hand as she -murmured her errand. "You'll stay tea? Well, if you're sure you can't -I'll not press you. Bring the biscuits and the sherry and two white -wine-glasses, Vashti. Get them now and bring them in at once. Sit down, -Miss Henderson. She's little better than a step-girl. They're all the -same." Whilst she described her niece's illness, Miriam wondered over -the immense bundle of little even black sausage-shaped rolls of hair -which stuck out, larger than her head and smoothed to a sphere by a -tightly drawn net, at the back of her skull. She was short and stout and -had bright red cheeks that shone in the gloom and rather prominent large -blue eyes that roamed as she talked, allowing Miriam to snatch -occasional glimpses of china-filled what-nots and beaded ottomans. -Presently Vashti returned clumsily with the wine, making a great bumping -and rattling round about the door. "You stupid thing, you've brought -claret. Don't you know sherry when you see it? It's at the back--behind -the Harvest Burgundy." "I shall have to go soon," said Miriam, relieved -at the sight of the red wine and longing to escape the sherry. Vashti -put down the tray and stood with open mouth. Even with her very high -heels she looked almost a dwarf. The room seemed less oppressive with -the strange long-necked decanter and the silver biscuit box standing on -a table in the curious greenish light. Mrs. Philps accepted the claret -and returned busily to her story, whilst Miriam sipped and glanced at a -large print in a heavy black frame leaning forward low over the small -white marble mantelpiece. It represented a young knight in armour -kneeling at an altar with joined and pointed hands held to his lips. An -angel standing in mid-air was touching his shoulder with a sword. "Why -doesn't she kiss the top of his head," thought Miriam as she sipped her -wine. The distant aisles and pillars of the church made the room seem -larger than it was. "I suppose they all look into that church when they -want to get away from each other," she mused as Mrs. Philps went on with -her long sentences beginning "And Dr. Newman said--" And there was a -little mirror above a bulging chiffonier which was also an escape from -the confined space. Looking into it, she met Mrs. Philps's glowing face -with the blue eyes widely staring and fixed upon her own, and heard her -declare, with her bunched cherry-coloured lips, that Grace was 'almost -perfection.' "Is she?" she responded eagerly, and Mrs. Philps elaborated -her theme. Grace, then, with her heavy body and strange hot voice, lying -somewhere upstairs in a white bed, was the most important thing in this -dark little house. "She was very near to death then," Mrs. Philps was -saying tearfully, "very near, and when she came round from her delirium, -one of the first things she said to me as soon as she was strong enough -to whisper, was that she was perfectly certain about there being another -life." Mrs. Philps's voice faded and she sat with trembling lips and -eyes downcast. "_Did_ she!" Miriam almost shouted, half-rising from her -seat and turning from contemplating Mrs. Philps in the mirror to look -her full in the face. The dim green light streaming in from the -conservatory seemed like a tide that made everything in the room rock -slightly. A touch would sweep it all away and heaven would be there all -round them. "Did she," whispered Miriam in a faint voice that shook her -chest. "'Aunt,' she said," went on Mrs. Philps steadily, as the room -grew firm round Miriam and the breath she drew seemed like an early -morning breath, "'I want to say something quickly,' she said, 'in case I -die. It's that I know--for a positive fact, there is another life.'" - -"What a perfectly stupendous thing," said Miriam. "It's so important." - -"I was much impressed. Of course, I knew she was nearly perfect. But -we've not been in the habit of talking about religion. I asked her if -she would like to see the vicar. 'Oh no,' she said, 'there's no need. He -knows.' I doubt if he knows as much as she does. But I didn't make a -point of it." - -"Oh, but it's simply wonderful. It's much more important than anything a -vicar could say. It's their business to say those things." - -"I don't know about that. But she was so weak that I didn't press it." - -"But it's so important. What a wonderful thing to have in your family. -Did she say anything more?" - -"She hasn't returned to the subject again. She's very weak." - -Wild clutching thoughts shook at Miriam. If only Grace could suddenly -appear in her night-gown, to be questioned. Or if she herself could stay -on there creeping humbly about in this little house, watering the -conservatory and darning dusters, being a relative of the Brooms, -devoting herself to Grace, waiting on her, hearing all she had to say. -What did it matter that the Brooms wore heavy mourning and gloated over -funerals if Grace upstairs in her room had really seen the white light -away in the distance far away beyond the noise of the world? - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - - 1 - -Harriett's ringed fingers had finished dipping and drying the blue and -white tea-service. She sat for a moment staring ahead down-stream. -Sitting opposite her, Gerald watched her face with a half smile. Miriam -waited sitting at her side. It was the first moment of silence since she -had come home at midday. From the willow-curtained island against which -they were moored came little crepitations and flittings. Ahead of them -the river blazed gold and blue, hedged by high spacious trees. -"_Come_-to-tea, _come_-to-tea, hurryup-dear," said a bird suddenly from -the island thicket. - -"D'you know what bird that is, Gerald?" asked Miriam. - -"Not from Adam," breathed Gerald, swaying on his seat with a little -laugh. "It's a bird. That's all I know." - -"We'd better unmoor, silly," muttered Harriett briskly, gathering up the -tiller ropes. - -"Right, la reine." - -"Look here, let me do something this time, pull or something." - -"You sit still, my dear." - -"But I should simply love to." - -"You shall pull down-stream if you like later on when the bally sun's -down. My advice to you now is to go and lounge in the bow." - -"Oh yes, Mim, you try it. Lie right down. It's simply heavenly." - -The boat glided deliciously away up-stream as Miriam, relinquishing her -vision of Harriett sitting very upright in the stern in her white drill -dress, and Gerald's lawn-shirted back and long lean arms grasping the -sculls, lay back on the bow cushions with her feet comfortably -outstretched under the unoccupied seat in front of her. Six hours ago, -shaking hands with a roomful of noisy home-going girls--and now nothing -to do but float dreamily out through the gateway of her six weeks' -holiday. The dust of the school was still upon her; the skin of her face -felt strained and tired, her hands were tired and hot, her blouse dim -with a week of school wear, and her black skirt oppressed her with its -invisible burden of grime. But she was staring up at a clean blue sky -fringed with tree-tops. She stretched herself out more luxuriously upon -her cushions. The river smoothly moving and lapping underneath the boat -was like a cradle. The soft fingers of the air caressed her temples and -moved along the outlines of her face and neck. Forty-two days ... like -this. To-morrow she would wake up a new person ... sing, and shout with -Harriett. She closed her eyes. The gently lifting water seemed to come -nearer; the invading air closed in on her. She gave herself ecstatically -to its touch; the muscles of her tired face relaxed and she believed -that she could sleep; cry or sleep. - - - 2 - -It was Gerald who had worked this miraculous first day for her. -"Boating" hitherto had meant large made-up parties of tennis-club -people, a fixed day, uneasy anticipations as to the weather, the -carrying of hampers of provisions and crockery, spirit lamps and -kettles, clumsy hired randans, or little fleets of stupidly competing -canoes, lack of space, heavy loads to pull, the need for ceaseless -chaff, the irritating triumphs of clever "knowing" girls in smart -clothes, the Pooles, or really beautiful people, like Nan Babington and -her cousin. Everything they said sounding wonderful and seeming to -improve the scenery; the jokes of the men, even Ted always joked all the -time, the misery of large noisy picnic teas on the grass, and in the end -great weariness and disappointment, the beauty of the river and the -trees only appearing the next day or perhaps long afterwards. - -This boat was Gerald's own private boat, a double-sculling skiff, -slender and gold-brown, beautifully fitted and with a locker containing -everything that was wanted for picnicking. They had arranged their -expedition at lunch-time, trained to Richmond, bought fruit and cakes -and got the boat's water-keg filled by one of Redknap's men. Gerald knew -how to do things properly. He had always been accustomed to things like -this boat. He would not care to have anything just anyhow. "Let's do the -thing decently, la reine." He would keep on saying that at intervals -until Harriett had learned too. How he had changed her since Easter when -their engagement had been openly allowed. The clothes he had bought for -her, especially this plain drill dress with its neat little coat. The -long black tie fastened with the plain heavy cable broach pinned in -lengthwise half-way down the ends of the tie, which reached almost to -her black belt. That was Gerald. Her shoes, the number of pairs of -light, expensive, beautifully made shoes. Her bearing, the change in her -voice, a sort of roundness about her old Harryish hardness. But she was -the same Harry, the Harry he had seen for the first time snorting with -anger over Mr. Marth's sentimental singing at the Assembly Rooms -concert. "My hat, wasn't la reine fuming!" He would forgive her all her -ignorance. It was her triumph. What an extraordinary time Harry would -have. Gerald was well-off. He had a private income behind his Canadian -Pacific salary. His grandfather had been a diplomatist, living abroad -nearly all the time, and his wealthy father and wealthy mother with a -large fortune of her own had lived in a large house in Chelsea, giving -dinner parties and going to the opera until nearly all the capital had -gone, both dying just in time to leave enough to bring Gerald in a small -income when he left Haileybury. And the wonderful thing was that Gerald -liked mouching about and giggling. He liked looking for hours in shop -windows and strolling on the Heath eating peppermints. - - - 3 - -Everything had disappeared into a soft blackness; only on the water a -faint light was left. It came and went; sometimes there was nothing but -darkness and the soft air. The small paper lantern swinging at the bow -made a little blot of light that was invisible from the stroke seat. The -boat went swiftly and easily. Miriam felt she could go on pulling for -hours at the top of her strength through the night. Leaning forward, -breasting the featureless darkness, sweeping the sculls back at the full -reach of her arms, leaning back and pressing her whole weight upwards -from the footboard against the pull of the water, her body became an -outstretched elastic system of muscles, rhythmically working against the -smooth dragging resistance of the dark water. Her sleeves were rolled -up, her collar-stud unfastened, her cool drowsy lids drooped over her -cool eyes. Each time she leaned backwards against her stroke, pressing -the footboard, the weight of her body dragged at a line of soreness -where the sculls pressed her hands, and with the final fling of the -water from the sculls a little stinging pain ran along the pads of her -palms. To-morrow there would be a row of happy blisters. - -"You needn't put more beef into it than you like, Mirry." Gerald's voice -came so quietly out of the darkness that it scarcely disturbed Miriam's -ecstacy. She relaxed her swing, and letting the sculls skim and dip in -short easy strokes, sat glowing. - -"I've never pulled a boat alone before." - -"It shows you can't be a blue-stocking, thank the Lord," laughed Gerald. - -"Who said I was?" - -"I've always understood you were a very wise lady, my dear." - -"Nobody told you she was a blue-stocking, silly. You invented the word -yourself." - -"I? I invented blue-stocking?" - -"Yes, you, silly. It's like your saying women never date their letters -just because your cousins don't." - -"Vive la reine. The Lord deliver me from blue-stockings, anyhow." - -"All _right_, what _about_ it? There aren't any here!" - -"You're not one, anyhow." - - - 4 - -The next day after tea Eve arrived home from Gloucestershire. - -Miriam had spent the day with Harriett. After breakfast, bounding -silently up and downstairs, they visited each room in turn, chased each -other about the echoing rooms and passages of the basement and all over -the garden. Miriam listened speechlessly to the sound of Harriett's -heels soft on the stair carpet, ringing on the stone floors of the -basement, and the swish of her skirts as she flew over the lawn -following surrounding responding to Miriam's wild tour of the garden. -Miriam listened and watched, her eyes and ears eagerly gathering and -hoarding visions. It could not go on. Presently some claim would be made -on Harriett and she would be alone. But when they had had their fill of -silently rushing about, Harriett piloted her into the drawing-room and -hastily began opening the piano. A pile of duets lay on the lid. She had -evidently gathered them there in readiness. Wandering about the room, -shifting the familiar ornaments, flinging herself into chair after -chair, Miriam watched her and saw that her strange quiet little snub -face was lit and shapely. Harriett, grown-up, serene and well-dressed -and going to be married in the spring, was transported by this new -coming together. When they had played the last of the duets that they -knew well, Harriett fumbled at the pages of a bound volume of operas in -obvious uncertainty. At any moment Miriam might get up and go off and -bring their sitting together on the long cretonne-covered duet stool to -an end. "Come on," roared Miriam gently, "let's try this"; and they -attacked the difficult pages. Miriam counted the metre, whispered it -intoned and sang it, carrying Harriett along with shouts "go _on_, go -_on_" when they had lost each other. They smashed their way along by -turns playing only a single note here and there into the framework of -Miriam's desperate counting, or banging out cheerful masses of -discordant tones, anything to go on driving their way together through -the pages while the sunlight streamed half seen into the conservatory -and the flower-filled garden crowded up against the windows, anything to -come out triumphantly together at the end and to stop satisfied, the -sounds of the house, so long secretly known to them both, low now around -them, heard by them together, punctuating their joy. The gong sounded -for lunch. "Eve," Miriam remembered suddenly, "Eve's coming this -afternoon." The thought set gladness thundering through her as she rose -from the piano. "Let's go for a walk after lunch," she muttered. -Harriett blushed. - -"Awri," she responded tenderly. - - - 5 - -The mile of gently rising roadway leading to the Heath was overarched by -huge trees. Shadowy orchards, and the silent sunlit outlying meadows and -park land of a large estate streamed gently by them beyond the trees as -they strode along through the cool leaf-scented air. They strode -speechlessly ahead as if on a pilgrimage, keeping step. Harriett's -stylish costume had a strange unreal look in the great lane, under the -towering trees. Miriam wondered if she found it dull and was taking it -so boldly because they were walking along it together. Obviously she did -not want to talk. She walked along swiftly and erect, looking eagerly -ahead as if, when they reached the top and the Heath and the windmill, -they would find something they were both looking for. Miriam felt she -could glance about unnoticed and looked freely, as she had done so many -hundreds of times before, at the light on the distant meadows and lying -along the patches of undergrowth between the trunks of the trees. They -challenged and questioned her silently as they had always done and she -them, in a sort of passionate sulkiness. They gave no answer, but the -scents in the cool tree-filled air went on all the time offering steady -assurance, and presently as walking became an unconscious rhythm and the -question of talk or no talk had definitely decided itself, the challenge -of the light was silenced and the shaded roadway led on to paradise. Was -there anyone anywhere who saw it as she did? Anyone who looking along -the alley of white road would want to sit down in the roadway or kneel -amongst the undergrowth and shout and shout? In the north of London -there were all those harsh street voices infesting the trees and the -parks. No! they did not exist. There was no North London. Let them die. -They did not know the meaning of far-reaching meadows, park-land, deer, -the great silent Heath, the silent shoulders of the windmill against the -far-off softness of the sky. Harsh streetiness ... cunning, knowing ... -do you _blame_ me? ... or charwomanishness, smarmy; churchy or chapelish -sentimentality. Sentimentality. No need to think about them. - -"Never the time and the place and the loved one all together." Who said -that? Was it true? Dreadful. It couldn't be. So many people had seen -moonlit gardens, together. All the happy people who were sure of each -other. "I say, Harriett," she said at the top of her voice, bringing -Harriett curvetting in the road just in front of her. "I say, listen." -Harriett ran up the remaining strips of road and out on to the Heath. It -was ablaze with sunlight--as the river and the trees had been -yesterday--a whole day of light and Eve on her way home, almost home. -Harriett must not know how she was rushing to Eve; with what tingling -fingers. "Oh, what I was going to ask you was whether you can see the -moonlight like it is when you are alone, when Gerald is there." - -"... It isn't the same as when you are alone," said Harriett quietly, -arranging the cuff of her glove. - -"Do explain what you mean." - -"Well, it's different." - -"I see. You don't know how." - -"It's quite different." - -"Does Gerald like the moonlight?" - -"_I_ dunno. I never asked him." - -"Fancy the Roehampton people living up here all the time." - -"There's their old washing going flip-flap over there." - -Harriett was finding out that she was back in the house with Eve. - -"Let's rush to the windmill. Let's sing." - -"Come on; only we can't rush and sing too." - -"Yes we can, come on." Running up over hillocks and stumbling through -sandy gorse-grown hollows they sang a hunting song, Miriam leading with -the short galloping phrases, Harriett's thinner voice dropping in, -broken and uncertain, with a strange brave sadness in it that went to -Miriam's heart. - - - 6 - -"Eve, you look exactly like Dudley's gracious lady in these things. -Don't you feel like it?" Eve stopped near the landing window and stood -in her light green canvas dress with its pale green silk sleeves -shedding herself over Miriam from under her rose-trimmed white chip hat. -Miriam was carrying her light coat and all the small litter of her -journey. "Go on up," she said, "I want to talk," and Eve hurried on, -Miriam stumblingly following her, holding herself in, eyes and ears wide -for the sight and sound of the slender figure flitting upstairs through -the twilight. The twilight wavered and seemed to ebb and flow, -suggesting silent dawn and full midday, and the house rang with a -soundless music. - -"It was Mrs. Wallace who suggested my _wearing_ all my best things for -the journey," panted Eve; "they don't get crushed with packing and they -needn't get dirty if you're careful." - -"You look exactly like Dudley's gracious lady. You know you do. You know -it perfectly well." - -"They do seem jolly now I'm back. They don't seem anything down there. -Just ordinary with everybody in much grander things." - -"How do you mean, grander? What sort of things?" - -"Oh, all sorts of lovely white dresses." - -"It is extraordinary about all those white dresses," said Miriam -emphatically, pushing her way after Eve into Sarah's bedroom. "Can I -come in? I'm coming in. Sarah says it's because men like them and she -gets simply sick of girls in white and cream dresses all over the place -in the summer, and it's a perfect relief to see anyone in a colour in -the sun. They have red sunshades sometimes, but Sarah says that's not -enough; you want people in colours. I wonder if there's anything in it?" - -"Of course there is," said Sarah, releasing the last strap of Eve's -trunk. - -"They'd _all_ put on coloured things if it weren't for that." - -"Men tell them." - -"Do they?" - -"The engaged men tell them--or brothers." - -"I can't think how you get to know these things, sober Sally." - -"Oh, you can tell." - -"Well, then, _why_ do men like silly white and cream dresses, pasty, -whitewashy clothes altogether?" - -"It's something they want; it looks different to them." - -"Sarah knows all sorts of things," said Miriam excitedly, watching the -confusion of the room from the windows. "She says she knows why the -Pooles look down and smirk; their dimples and the line of their chins; -that men admire them looking down like that. _Isn't_ it frightful. -Disgusting. And men don't seem to see through them." - -"It's those kind of girls get on best." - -Miriam sighed. - -"Oh well, don't let's think about them. Not to-night, anyhow," cooed -Eve. - -"Sarah says there are much more awful reasons. I can't think how she -finds them all out. Sober Sally. I know she's right. It's too utterly -sickening somehow, for words." - -"Mim." - -"_Pooh_--barooo, _baroooo_." - -"Mim----" - -"Damnation." - -"Mimmy--Jim." - -"I said DAMNATION." - -"Oh, it's all right. What have we got to do with horrid knowing people." - -"Well, they're there, all the time. You can't get away from them. -They're all over the place. Either the knowing ones or the simpering -ones. It's all the same in the end." - -Eve quietly began to unpack. "Oh well," she smiled, "we're _all_ -different when there are men about to when we're by ourselves. We all -make eyes in a way." - -"Eve! What a perfectly beastly thing to say." - -"It isn't, my dear," said Eve pensively. "You should see yourself; you -do." - -"Sally, _do_ I?" - - - 7 - -"Of course you do," giggled Eve quietly, "as much as anybody." - -"Then I'm the most crawling thing on the face of the earth," thought -Miriam, turning silently to the tree-tops looming softly just outside -the window; "and the worst of it is I only know it at moments now and -again." The tree-tops serene with some happy secret cast her off, and -left her standing with groping crisping fingers unable to lift the -misery that pressed upon her heart. "God, what a filthy world! God what -a filthy world!" she muttered. "Everyone hemmed and hemmed and hemmed -into it." Harriett came in and stepped up on to the high canopied bed. -"Ullo," she said in general, sitting herself up tailor-fashion in the -middle of the bed so that the bright twilight fell full upon her head -and the breast and shoulders of her light silk-sleeved dress. Humming -shreds of a violin obligato, Eve rustled out layer after layer of -paper-swathed garments, to be gathered up by Sarah moving solidly about -between the wardrobe and the chest of drawers in her rather heavy boots. -There would not be any talk. But silently the room filled and -overflowed. Turning at last from her window, Miriam glanced at her -sisters and let her thoughts drop into the flowing tide. Harry, sitting -there sharp and upright in the fading light, coming in to them with her -future life streaming out behind her spreading and shining and rippling, -herself the radiant point of that wonderful life, actually there, neatly -enthroned amongst them, one of them, drawing them all with her out -towards its easy security; Eve, happy with her wardrobe of dainty -things, going fearlessly forward to some unseen fate, not troubling -about it. Sarah's strange clean clear channel of wisdom. Where would it -lead? It would always drive straight through everything. - -All these things meant that the mere simple awfulness of things at home -had changed. These three girls she had known so long as -fellow-prisoners, and who still bore at moments in their eyes, their -movements, the marks of the terrors and uncertainties amongst which they -had all grown up, were going on, out into life, scored and scarred, but -alive and changeable, able to become quite new. Memories of strange -crises and the ageing deadening shifts they had invented to tide them -over humiliating situations were here crowded in the room together with -them all. But these memories were no longer as they had so often been, -the principal thing in the room whenever they were all gathered silently -together. If Eve and Harriett had got away from the past and now had -happy eyes and mouths.... Sarah's solid quiet cheerfulness, now grown so -large and free that it seemed even when she was stillest to knock your -mind about like something in a harlequinade.... Why had they not all -known in the past that they would change? Why had they been so oppressed -whenever they stopped to think? - -Those American girls in "Little Women" and "Good Wives" made fun out of -everything. But they had never had to face real horrors and hide them -from everybody, mewed up. - - - 8 - -When it was nearly dark Sarah lit the gas. Harriett had gone downstairs. -Miriam lowered the Venetian blinds, shutting out the summer. To-morrow -it would be there again, waiting for them when they woke in the morning. -In her own and Harriett's room the daylight would be streaming in -through the Madras muslin curtains, everything in the room very silent -and distinct; nothing to be heard but the little flutterings of birds -under the eaves. You could listen to it for ever if you kept perfectly -still. When you drew back the curtains the huge day would be standing -outside clear with gold and blue and dense with trees and flowers. - -Sarah's face was uneasy. She seemed to avoid meeting anyone's eyes. -Presently she faced them, sitting on a low rocking chair with her -tightly clasped hands stretched out beyond her knees. She glanced -fearfully from one to the other and bit her lips. "What now," thought -Miriam. The anticipated holidays disappeared. Of course. She might have -known they would. For a moment she felt sick, naked and weak. Then she -braced herself to meet the shock. I must sit tight, I must sit tight and -not show anything. Eve's probably praying. Oh, make haste, Sally, and -get it over. - -"What's the matter, Sally?" said Eve in a low voice. - -"Oh, Eve and Mim, I'm awfully sorry." - -"You'd better tell us at once," said Eve, crimsoning. - -"Haven't you noticed anything?" - -Miriam looked at Sarah's homely prosperous shape. It couldn't be -anything. It was a nightmare. She waited, pinching her wrist. - -"What is it, Sally?" breathed Eve, tapping her green-clad knee. Clothes -and furniture and pictures ... houses full of things and people talking -in the houses and having meals and pretending, talking and smiling and -pretending. - -"It's mother." - -"What on earth do you mean, Sarah?" said Miriam angrily. - -"She's ill. Bennett took her to a specialist. There's got to be--she's -got to have an operation." - -Miriam drew up the blind with a noisy rattle, smiling at Eve frowning -impatiently at the noise. Driving the heavy sash up as far as it would -go, she leaned her head against the open frame. The garden did not seem -to be there. The tepid night air was like a wall, a black wall. For a -moment a splintered red light, like the light that comes from a violent -blow on the forehead, flashed along it. Sarah and Eve were talking in -strange voices, interrupting each other. It would be a relief to do -something, faint or something selfish. But she must hear what they were -saying; listen to both the voices cutting through the air of the hot -room. Propped weak-limbed against the window open-mouthed for air she -forced herself to hear, pressing her cold hands closely together. The -gas light that had seemed so bright hardly seemed to light the room at -all. Everything looked small, even Grannie's old Chippendale bedstead -and the double-fronted wardrobe. The girls were little monkey ghosts -babbling together beside Eve's open trunk. Did they see that it was -exactly like a grave? - - - 9 - -The sun shone through the apple trees, making the small half-ripe apples -look as though they were coated with enamel. - -It was quite clear that if they did go away together, the four of them, -she, Eve, Gerald and Harriett to Brighton or somewhere, they would be -able to forget. You could tell that from the strange quiet easy tone of -Harriett's and Gerald's voices. There would be the aquarium. She -supposed they would go to the aquarium with its strange underground -smell of stagnant sea air and stare into the depths of those strange -green tanks and watch the fish flashing about like shadows or skimming -by near the front of the tank with the light full on their softly tinted -scales. Harriett sat steadily at her side on the overturned seed-box, -middle-aged and responsible, quietly discussing the details of the plan -with Gerald, cross-legged at their feet on the grass plot. They had not -said anything about the reasons for going; but of course Gerald must -know all that. He knew everything now, all about the money troubles, all -the awful things, and it seemed to make no difference to him. He made -light of it. It was humiliating to think that he had come just as things -had reached their worst, the house going to be sold, Pater and mother -and Sarah going into lodgings in September, and the maddening helpless -worry about mother and all the money for that. And yet it was a good -thing he had known them all in the old house and seen them there, even -pretending to be prosperous. And yet the house and garden was nothing to -him. Just a house and garden. Harriett's house and garden, and he was -going to take Harriett away. The house and garden did not matter. - -She glanced at the sunlit fruit trees, the thickets of the familiar -kitchen garden, the rising grass bank at the near end of the distant -lawn, the eloquent back of the large red house. He could not see all the -things there were there, all the long years, or know what it was to have -that cut away and nothing ahead but Brighton aquarium with Harriett and -Eve, and then the school again, and disgraceful lodgings in some strange -place, no friends and everybody looking down on them. She met his eyes -and they both smiled. - -"Keep her perfectly quiet for the next few weeks, that's the idea, and -when it's all over she'll be better than she's ever been in her life." - -"D'you think so?" - -"I don't think, I know she will; people always are. I've known scores of -people have operations. It's nothing nowadays. Ask Bennett." - -"Does he think she'll be better?" - -"Of course." - -"Did he say so?" - -"Of _course_ he did." - -"Well, I s'pose we'd really better go." - -"Of course, we're going." - -"I'm going to look for a place in a family after next term. I shall give -notice when I get back. You get more money in a family Eve says, and -home life, and if you haven't a home they're only too glad to have you -there in the holidays too." - -"You take my advice, my dear girl. Don't go into a family. Eve'll find -it out before she's much older." - -"I must have more money." - -"Mirry's so silly. She insists on paying her share of Brighton. Isn't -she an owl?" - -"Oh well, of course, if she's going to make a point of spending her cash -when she needn't she'd better find a more paying job. That's certain -sure." - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - - 1 - -"You know I'm funny. I never talk to young ladies." - -Miriam looked leisurely at the man walking at her side along the -grass-covered cliff; his well-knit frame, his well-cut blue serge, the -trimness of collar and tie, his faintly blunted regular features, clean -ruddy skin and clear expressionless German blue eyes. Altogether he was -rather like a German, with his red and white and gold and blue colouring -and his small military moustache. She could imagine him snapping -abruptly in a booming chest voice, "Mit Frauen spreche ich ber_haupt_ -nicht." But he spoke slowly and languidly, he was an Englishman and -somehow looked like a man who was accustomed to refined society. It was -true he never spoke at the boarding-house meals, excepting an occasional -word with his friend, and he had been obliged to join their Sunday walk -because his friend was so determined to come. Still he was not awkward -or clumsy either at table or now. Only absolutely quiet, and then saying -such a startling rather rude thing quite suddenly. One could stare at -him to discover the reason of his funny speech, because evidently he was -quite common, not a bounder but quite a common young man, speaking of -women as 'young ladies.' Then how on earth did he manage to look -distinguished. Oppressed and ill at ease she turned away to the -far-reaching green levels and listened to the sea tumbling heavily far -below against the cliffs. Away ahead Eve and her little companion -walking jauntily along, his tight dust-coloured curls exposed to the -full sunlight, his cane swinging round as he talked and laughed, seemed -to be turning inland towards the downs. They had seen Ovingdean in the -distance, stupid Ovingdean that everybody had talked about at breakfast, -and were finding the way. How utterly silly. They did not see how -utterly silly it was to make up your mind to "go to Ovingdean" and then -go to Ovingdean. How utterly silly everybody and everything was. - -Eve looked very straight and slim and was walking happily, bending her -head a little as she always did when she was listening. Their backs -looked happy. And here she was forced to walk with this nice-looking -strange solid heavyish man and his cold insulting remark; almost the -only thing he had said since they had been alone together. It had been -rather nice walking along the top of the cliff side by side saying -nothing. They walked exactly in step and his blunted features looked -quite at ease; and she had gone easily along disposing of him with a -gentle feeling of proprietorship, and had watched the gentle swing and -movement of the landscape as they swung along. It seemed secure and -painless and was gradually growing beautiful, and then suddenly she felt -that he must have his thoughts, men were always thinking, and would be -expecting her to be animated and entertaining. Lumpishly she had begun -about the dullness of the beach and promenade on Sundays and the need to -find something to do between dinner and tea--lies. All conversation was -a lie. And somehow she had led him to his funny German remark. - -"How do you mean?" she said at last anxiously. It was very rude -intruding upon him like that. He had spoken quite simply. She ought to -have laughed and changed the conversation. But it was no laughing -matter. He did not know what he was saying or how horribly it hurt. A -worldly girl would chaff and make fun of him. It was detestable to make -fun of men; just a way of flirting. But Sarah said that being rude to -men or talking seriously to them was flirting just as much. Not true. -Not true. And yet it was true, she did want to feel happy walking along -with this man, have some sort of good understanding with him, him as a -man with her as a woman. Was that flirting? If so she was just a more -solemn underhand flirt than the others, that was all. She felt very sad. -Anyhow she had asked her question now. She looked at his profile. -Perhaps he would put her off in some way. Then she would walk slower and -slower until Harriett and Gerald caught them up and come home walking -four in a row, taking Harriett's arm. His face had remained quite -expressionless. - -"Well," he said at length in his slow well-modulated tone, "I always -take care to get out of the way when there are any young ladies about." - -"When do you mean?" _I_ didn't ask you to come, _I_ don't want to talk -to you you food-loving, pipe-loving, comfort-loving beast, she thought. -But it would be impossible to finish the holiday and go back to the -school with this strange statement uninvestigated. - -"Well, when my sisters have young ladies in in the evening I always get -out of the way." - -Ah, thought Miriam, you are one of those men who flirt with servants and -shop-girls ... perhaps those awful women.... Either she must catch Eve -up or wait for Harriett ... not be alone any longer with this man. - -"I see. You simply run away from them," she said scornfully; "go out for -a walk or something." A small Brixton sitting-room full of Brixton -girls--Gerald said that Brixton was something too chronic for words, -just like Clapham, and there was that joke about the man who said he -would not go to heaven even if he had the chance because of the strong -Clapham contingent that would be there--after all ... - -"I go and sit in my room." - -"Oh," said Miriam brokenly, "in the winter? Without a fire?" - -Mr. Parrow laughed. "I don't mind about that. I wrap myself up and get a -book." - -"What sort of book?" - -"I've got a few books of my own; and there's generally something worth -reading in 'Tit-Bits.'" - -How did he manage to look so refined and cultured? Those girls were -quite good enough for him, probably too good. But he would go on -despising them and one of them would marry him and give him beef-steak -puddings. And here he was walking by the sea in the sunlight, confessing -his suspicions and fears and going back to Brixton. - -"You'll have to marry one of those young ladies one day," she said -abruptly. - -"That's out of the question, even if I was a marrying man." - -"Nonsense," said Miriam, as they turned down the little pathway leading -towards the village. Poor man, how cruel to encourage him to take up -with one of those giggling dressy girls. - -"D'you mean to say you've been never specially interested in anybody?" - -"Yes. I never have." - - - 2 - -Ovingdean had to be faced. They were going to look at Ovingdean and then -walk back to the boarding-house to tea. Now that she knew all about his -home-life she would not be able to meet his eyes across the table. Two -tired elm trees stood one on either side of the road at the entrance to -the village. Here they all gathered and then went forward in a strolling -party. - -When they turned at last to walk home and fell again into couples as -before, Miriam searched her empty mind for something to say about the -dim, cool musty church, the strange silent deeps of it there amongst the -great green downs, the waiting chairs, the cold empty pulpit and the -little cold font, and the sunlit front of the old Grange where King -Charles had taken refuge. Mr. Parrow would know she was speaking -insincerely if she said anything about these things. There was a long, -long walk ahead. For some time they walked in silence. "D'you know -anything, about architecture?" she said at last angrily ... cruel silly -question. Of course he didn't. But men she walked with ought to know -about architecture and be able to tell her things. - -"No. That's a subject I don't know anything about." - -"D'you like churches?" - -"I don't know that I've ever thought about it." - -"Then you probably don't." - -"Oh, well, I don't know about that. I don't see any objection to them." - -"Then you're probably an atheist." - -"I don't know, I'm sure." - -"Do you go to church?" - -"I can't say I do in the usual way, unless I'm on a holiday." - -"Perhaps you go for walks instead?" - -"Well, I generally stay in bed and have a rest." - -That dreadful room with the dreadful man hiding in it and reading -"Tit-Bits" and staying in bed in it on bright Sunday mornings. - -How heavily they were treading on the orange and yellow faces of the Tom -Thumbs scattered over the short green grass. - -"How much do you think people could marry on?" said Mr. Parrow suddenly -in a thin voice. - -"Oh well, that depends on who they are." - -"I suppose it does do that." - -"And where they are going to live." - -"D'you think anyone could marry on a hundred and fifty?" - -"Of course," said Miriam emphatically, mentally shivering over the -vision of a tiresome determined cheerful woman with a thin pinched -reddish nose, an everlasting grey hat and a faded ulster going on year -after year; two or three common children she would never be able to -educate, with horribly over-developed characters. It was rather less -than the rent of their house. "Of course, everything would depend on the -woman," she said wisely. After all a hundred and fifty, with no doubt -and anxiety about it was a very wonderful thing to have. Probably -everybody was wasteful, buying the wrong things and silly things, -ornaments and brooches and serviette rings; ... and not thinking things -out and not putting things down in books and not really enjoying -managing the hundred and fifty and always wanting more. It ought to be -quite jolly being thoroughly common and living in a small way and having -common neighbours doing the same. - -"But you think if a man could find a young lady who could agree about -prices it would be possible." - -"Of course it would." - -The houses on the eastern ridges of Brighton came into sight in the -distance and stood blazing in the sunlight. There was a high half -broken-down piece of fencing at the edge of the cliff to their left a -little ahead of them, splintered and sunlit. - -"How much a week is a hundred and fifty a year?" - -"Three pound." - -They gravitated towards the fence and stood vaguely near it looking out -across the unruffled glare of the open sea. Why had she always thought -that the bright blue and gold ripples seen from the beach and the -promenade on jolly weekdays was the best of the sea? It was much more -lovely up there, the great expanse in its quiet Sunday loneliness. You -could see and think about far-off things instead of just dreaming on the -drowsy hot sands, seeing nothing but the rippling stripes of bright blue -and bright gold. She put her elbows on the upper bar. Mr. Parrow did the -same and they stood gazing out across the open sea--Mr. Parrow was -probably wondering how long they were going to stand silently there and -thinking about his tea ... of course; let him stand--until Eve's voice -sounded near them in a dimpling laugh. They walked home in a row, Eve -and Mr. Green in the centre, asking riddles one against the other. Every -time Miriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made some little responsive -sound. - - - 3 - -When Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow went back to London at the end of the week -Eve and Miriam saw them off at the station. The four went off boldly -together down the flight of white stone steps and made their way up into -the town. - -"Good-bye," called Miss Meldrum affectionately from the doorway. "I -shall send both of you a copy of the photograph." - -"It's most generous of Miss Meldrum to go to all that expense to give us -a pleasant memento," said Mr. Green in his small ringing voice as they -all swung out into the clean bare roadway. Miriam felt as if they were a -bit of the photograph walking up the hill, and went freely and -confidently along with a sense of being steered and guided by Miss -Meldrum. Why had she had the group taken--so odd and bold of her, having -the photographer waiting in the garden for them before they had finished -breakfast, and then laughing and talking and pushing them all about as -if they were her dearest friends. It was whilst they were all out in the -garden together, hanging about and being arranged, with the -photographer's voice like the voice of a ventriloquist, knocking them -coldly about, that Gerald and Mr. Green had arranged about the evening -at the Crystal Palace on the last day of Miriam's holiday. Miriam had -held back from the group, feeling nervous about her hair, there had been -no time to go to their rooms, and had forced Eve to do the same. -Harriett, with a cheerful shiny face, was sitting on the grass with -Gerald in a line with the traveller from Robinson and Cleaver's, and his -thin-voiced sheeny-haired mocking fiance. They all looked very small -and bald. The fiance kept clearing her throat and rearranging her smart -feet and rattling her bangles. The traveller's heavy waxed moustache was -crooked and his slippery blue eyes looked like the eyes of an old man. -Next to him were two newly arrived restively sneering young men, one on -either side of the saintly-faced florist's assistant from Wigmore -Street, who sat in an easy pose with her skirt draping gracefully over -her feet and her long white chin propped on her hands. She looked -reproachfully about amongst the laughing and talking and seemed to feel -that they were all in church. - -Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald Scotch chemists who went -out every evening to look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from -Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey curls bunched in a -cherry-coloured velvet band seemed to say "death--death" to Miriam more -dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than when she suddenly caught -sight of them at table, sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the -squatters on the grass. At the last moment she and Eve were obliged to -fall in at the back of the group with Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow, and now -the four of them were walking in a row up the staring white hill with -the evening at the Crystal Palace ahead of them in far-away London. It -was quite right. They were being like 'other people.' People met and -made friends and arranged to meet again. And then things happened. It -was quite right and ordinary and safe and warm. Of course Eve and Mr. -Green must meet again. He was evidently quite determined that they -should. That was what was carrying them all so confidently up the hill. -Perhaps he would in the end turn into another Gerald. When they turned -off into the unfamiliar Brighton streets Eve and Mr. Green went on -ahead. Walking quickly in step along the narrow pavement amongst the -unconcerned Brighton townspeople they looked so small and pitiful. - - - 4 - -The brilliant sunlight showed up all the shabbiness of Mr. Green's -London suit. He looked even smaller than he did in his holiday tweed. -Miriam wanted to call to them and stop them, stop Eve's bright figure -and her mop of thickly twisted brown hair and ask her what she was -dreaming of, leave the two men there and go back, go out away alone with -Eve down to the edge of the sea. She hesitated in her walking, not -daring even to glance at her companion who was trudging along with bent -head, carrying his large brown leather bag. The street was crowded and -she manoeuvred so that everyone they met should pass between them. -Perhaps they would be able to reach the station without being obliged to -speak to each other. Parrow. It was either quite a nice name or pitiful; -like a child trying to say sparrow. Did he know that to other people it -was a strange, important sort of name, rounded like the padding in the -shoulders of his coat and his blunted features? - -Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single person in the world. If he -were run over and killed on the way to the station, nobody would ever -have known anything about him.... People did die like that ... probably -most people; in a minute, alone and unknown; too late to speak. - -Something was coming slowly down the middle of the roadway from amongst -the confusion of the distant traffic; an elephant--a large grey -elephant. Firmly delicately undisturbed by the noise of the street, the -huge crimson gold-braided howdah it carried on its back, and the -strange, coloured things coming along behind it, the thickening of -people on the pavement and the suddenly increased noise of the town, it -came stepping. It was wonderful. "Wise and beautiful! Wise and -beautiful!" cried a voice far away in Miriam's brain. It's a circus said -another voice within her.... He doesn't know he's in a circus.... She -hurried forward to reach Eve. Eve turned a flushed face. "I _say_; it's -a circus," said Miriam bitingly. The blare of a band broke out farther -up the street. People were jostled against them by a clown who came -bounding and leaping his way along the crowded pavement crying -incoherent words with a thrilling blatter of laughter. The elephant was -close upon them alone in the road space cleared by its swinging walk.... -If only everyone would be quiet they could hear the soft padding of its -feet. Slowly, gently, modestly it went by followed by a crowd of smaller -things; sad-eyed monkeys on horseback in gold coatlets, sullen caged -beasts on trolleys drawn by beribboned unblinkered human-looking horses, -tall white horses pacing singly by, bearing bobbing princesses and men -in masks and cloaks. - - - 5 - -Here and there in the long sunlit hours of the holiday by the Brighton -sea Miriam found the far-away seaside holidays of her childhood. Going -out one afternoon with Eve and Miss Stringer walking at Eve's side, -listening to the conversation of the two girls, she had felt when they -reached the deserted end of the esplanade and proposed turning round and -walking home, an uncontrollable desire to be alone, and had left them, -impatiently, without a word of excuse and gone on down the grey stone -steps and out among the deserted weed-grown sapphire-pooled chalk -hummocks at the foot of the cliffs. For a while she was chased by little -phrases from Miss Stringer's quiet talking--"if you want people to be -interested in you, you must be interested in them"; "you can get on with -everybody if you make up your mind to"--and by the memory of her -well-hung clothes and her quiet regular features spoilt by the nose that -Gerald said was old-maidish, and her portmanteau full of finery, -unpacked on the first-floor landing outside the tiny room she -occupied--piles of underlinen startlingly threaded with ribbons. - -At the end of half an hour's thoughtless wandering over the weed-grown -rocks she found herself sitting on a little patch of dry silt at the end -of a promontory of sea-smoothed hummocks with the pools of bright -blue-green fringed water all about her watching the gentle rippling of -the retreating waves over the weedy lower levels. She seemed long to -have been listening and watching, her mind was full of things she felt -she would never forget, the green-capped white faces of the cliffs, a -patch of wet sand dotted with stiffly waiting seagulls, the more distant -wavelets ink black and golden pouring in over the distant hummocks, the -curious whispering ripples near her feet. She must go back. Her mind -slid out making a strange half-familiar compact with all these things. -She was theirs, she would remember them all, always. They were not alone -because she was with them and knew them. She had always known them she -reflected, remembering with a quick pang a long, unpermitted wandering -out over the cliff edge beyond Dawlish, the sun shining on pinkish sandy -scrub, the expression of the bushes; hurrying home with the big rough -spaniel that belonged to the house they had hired. She must have been -about six years old. She had gone back with a secret, telling them -nothing of the sunlight or the bushes, only of a strange lady, sitting -on the jetty as she came down over the sands, who had caught her in her -arms and horribly kissed her. She had forgotten the lady and been so -happy when she reached home that no one had scolded her. And when they -questioned her it seemed that there was only the lady to tell them -about. Her mother had looked at her and kissed her. And now she must go -back again, and say nothing. The strange promise, the certainty she felt -out here on the rocks must be taken back to the Brighton front and the -boarding-house. It would disappear as soon as she got back. Here on the -Brighton rocks it was not so strong as it had been in Dawlish. And it -would disappear more completely. There had been during the intervening -years holidays with Sarah and Eve and Harriett in seaside lodgings, over -which the curious conviction that possessed her now had spread like a -filmy veil. But now it would hardly ever come; there were always people -talking, the strangers one worked for, or the hard new people like Miss -Stringer, people who had a number of things they were always saying. - -She tried to remember when the strange independent joy had begun and -thought she could trace it back to a morning in the garden at Babington, -the first thing she could remember, when she had found herself toddling -alone along the garden path between beds of flowers almost on a level -with her head and blazing in the sunlight. Bees with large bodies were -sailing heavily across the path from bed to bed, passing close by her -head and making a loud humming in the air. She could see the flowers -distinctly as she walked quickly back through the afternoon throng on -the esplanade; they were sweet williams and "everlasting" flowers, the -sweet williams smelling very strongly sweet in her nostrils, and one -sheeny brown everlasting flower that she had touched with her nose, -smelling like hot paper. - - - 6 - -She wanted to speak to someone of these things. Until she could speak to -someone about them she must always be alone. Always quite alone, she -thought, looking out as she walked across the busy stretch of sea -between the two piers, dotted with pleasure boats. It would be -impossible to speak to anyone about them unless one felt perfectly sure -that the other person felt about them in the same way and knew that they -were more real than anything else in the world, knew that everything -else was a fuss about nothing. But everybody else seemed to be really -interested in the fuss. That was the extraordinary thing. Miss Meldrum -presiding at the boarding-house table with her white padded hair and her -white face and bright steady brown eyes, listening to everybody and -making jokes with everybody and keeping things going, sometimes looked -as if she knew it was all a pretence, but if you spoke to her she would -think you were talking about religion and would kiss you. She had -already kissed Miriam once--for playing accompaniments to the hymns on a -Sunday evening, and made her feel as if there were some sly secret -between them. If she played the hymns again she would play them stonily -... mother would look as she always did if you suddenly began to talk -anything about things in general as if you were going to make some -confession she had been waiting for all her life. Now, with the -operation and all the uncertainty ahead she would probably cry. She -would want to explain in some way, as she had done one day long ago; how -dreadful it had been ... mother, I never feel tired, not really tired, -and however I behave I always feel frightfully happy inside ... my -blessed chick, it's your splendid health--and the influence of the Holy -Spirit.... But I hate everybody.... What foolish nonsense. You mustn't -think such things. You will make yourself unpopular.... - -She must keep her secret to herself. This Brighton life crushed it back -more than anything there had been in Germany or at Banbury Park. In -Germany she had found it again and again, and at Banbury Park, though it -could never come out and surround her, it was never far off. It lurked -just beyond the poplars in the park, at the end of the little empty -garden at twilight, amongst the books in the tightly packed bookcase. It -was here, too, in and out the sunlit days. As one opened the door of the -large, sparely furnished breakfast-room it shone for a moment in the -light pouring over the table full of seated forms; it haunted the -glittering scattered sand round about the little blank platform where -the black and white minstrels stood singing in front of their harmonium, -and poured out across the blaze of blue and gold sea ripples, when the -town band played Anitra's Dance or the moon song from the Mikado; it lay -all along the deserted promenade and roadway as you went home to lunch, -and at night it spoke in the flump flump of the invisible sea against -the lower woodwork of the pier pavilion. - - - 7 - -But every day at breakfast over the eggs, bacon and tomatoes--knowing -voices began their day's talking, the weary round of words and ugly -laughter went steadily on, narrow horrible sounds that made you feel -conscious of the insides of people's throats and the backs of their -noses--as if they were not properly formed. The talk was like a silly -sort of battle.... Innuendo, Miriam would say to herself, feeling that -the word was too beautiful for what she wanted to express; _double -entendre_ was also unsatisfactory. These people were all enemies -pretending to be friends. Why did they pretend? Why not keep quiet? Or -all sing between their eating, different songs, it would not matter. She -and Eve and Harriett and Gerald did sometimes hum the refrains of the -nigger minstrels' songs, or one of them would hum a scrap of a solo and -all three sing the chorus. Then people were quiet, listening and smiling -their evil smiles and Miss Meldrum was delighted. It seemed improper and -half-hearted as no one else joined in; but after the first few days the -four of them always sang between the courses at dinner. Gerald did not -seem to mind the chaffy talk and the vulgar jokes, and would generally -join in; and he said strange disturbing things about the boarders, as if -he knew all about them. And he and Harriett talked to the niggers too -and found out about them. It spoilt them when one knew that they -belonged to small London musical halls, and had wives and families and -illnesses and trouble. Gerald and Harriett did not seem to mind this. -They did not seem to mind anything out of doors. They were free and hard -and contemptuous of everyone except the niggers and a few very -stylish-looking people who sailed along and took no notice of anybody. -Gerald said extraordinary, disturbing things about the girls on the -esplanade. Miriam and Eve were interested in some of the young men they -saw. They talked about them and looked out for them. Sometimes they -exchanged glances with them. Were she and Eve also "on show"; waiting to -be given "half an inch"; would she or Eve be "perfectly awful in the -dark"? Did the young men they specially favoured with their notice say -things about them? When these thoughts buzzed about in Miriam's brain -she wanted to take a broom and sweep everybody into the sea.... She -discovered that a single steady unexpected glance, meeting her own, from -a man who had the right kind of bearing--something right about the set -of the shoulders--could disperse all the vague trouble she felt at the -perpetual spectacle of the strolling crowds, the stiffly waiting -many-eyed houses, the strange stupid bathing-machines, and send her -gaily forward in a glad world where there was no need to be alone in -order to be happy. A second encounter was sad, shameful, ridiculous; the -man became absurd and lost his dignity; the joyous sense of looking -through him right out and away to an endless perspective, of being told -that the endlessness was there and telling that the endlessness was -there had gone; the eyes were eyes, solid and mocking and helpless--to -be avoided in future; and when they had gone, the sunset or the curious -quivering line along the horizon were no longer gateways, but hard -barriers, until by some chance one was tranquilly alone again--when the -horizon would beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across the sea at -sunset call to your feet until they tingled and ached. - -Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the sea and of the evenings and -mornings must be given up. It would fade more and more. What was life? -Either playing a part all the time in order to be amongst people in the -warm or standing alone with the strange true real feeling--alone with a -sort of edge of reality on everything; even on quite ugly common -things--cheap boarding-houses face towels and blistered window frames. - - - 8 - -Since Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow had left, they had given up going to pier -entertainments and had spent most of their time sitting in a close row -and talking together, in the intervals of the black and white minstrel -concerts and the performances of the town band. They had drifted into -this way of spending their time; there was never any discussion or -alteration of the day's programme. It worked like a charm and there was -no sign of the breaking of the charm. Miriam was sometimes half afraid -just as they settled themselves down that someone, probably Gerald or -Eve might say 'Funny, isn't it, how well we four get on,' and that -strange power that held them together and kept everything away would be -broken before the holiday came to an end. But no one did and they went -on sitting together in the morning on the hot sand--the moving living -glinting sand that took the sting as soon as you touched it with your -hand out of everything there might be in the latest letter from -home--hearing the niggers from ten to eleven, bathing from eleven to -twelve, sitting afterwards fresh and tingling and drowsy in canopied -chairs near the band until dinner-time, prowling and paddling in the -afternoon and ranging themselves again in chairs for the evening. - -They said nothing until almost the end of their time about the passage -of the days; but they looked at each other, each time they settled down, -with conspiring smiles and then sat, side by side, less visible to each -other than the great sunlit sea or the great clean salt darkness, -stranded in a row with four easy idle laughing commenting voices, away -alone and safe in the gaiety of the strong forgetful air--talking things -over. The far-away troublesome crooked things, all cramped and painful -and puzzling came out one by one and were shaken and tossed away along -the clean wind. And there was so much for Gerald to hear. He wanted to -hear everything--any little thing--"Just like a girl; it's awfully jolly -for Harry he's like that. She'll never be lonely," agreed Miriam and Eve -privately.... "He's a perfect dear." One night towards the end of their -time they talked of the future. It had begun to press on them. There -seemed no more time for brooding even over Eve's fascinating little -pictures of life in the big country house, or Miriam's stories and -legends of Germany--she said very little about Banbury Park fearing the -amazement and disgust of the trio if anything of the reality of North -London should reach them through her talk and guessing the impossibility -of their realising the Pernes--or Gerald's rich memories of the opulence -of his early home life, an atmosphere of spending and operas and -banquets and receptions and distinguished people. During the evening, in -a silent interval, just as the band was tuning up to begin its last -tune, Gerald had said with quiet emphasis, "Well, anyhow, girls, you -mark my words the old man won't make any more money. Not another penny. -You may as well make up your minds to that." Then the band had broken -into their favourite Hungarian dance. Three of them sat blissfully back -in their deck chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably propped forward, -eagerly thinking. The music rushed on, she saw dancers shining before -her in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shouting, their feet -scarcely touching the earth and a wild light darted about them as they -shouted and leapt. "Set Mirry up in some sort of business," quoted her -mind from one of Gerald's recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not -want that. But the dancing forms told her of the absurdity of going back -without protest to the long aching days of teaching in the little school -amongst those dreadful voices which were going, whatever she did for -them, to be dreadful all their lives. Nothing she could do would make -any difference to them. They did not want her. They were quite happy. -Her feelings and thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire for -space and beautiful things and music and quietude would never be their -desire. Reverence for things--had she reverence? She felt she must have -because she knew they had not; even the old people; only superstition -... North London would always be North London, hard, strong, sneering, -money-making, noisy and trammy. Perhaps the difference between the north -and the south and her own south-west of London was like the difference -between the north and the south of England.... Green's "History of the -English People" ... spinning-jennys began in the Danish north, hard and -cold, with later sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace. North -London meant twenty pounds a year and the need for resignation and -determination every day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge garden -and new books and music ... a book called "Music and Morals" and -interesting people staying in the house. And Eve had not been to Germany -and could not talk French. "You are an idiot to go on doing it. It's -wrong. Lazy," laughed the dancers crowding and flinging all round her. -"I ought," she responded defiantly, "to stay on and make myself into a -certificated teacher." "Certificated?" they screamed wildly sweeping -before her in strange lines of light. "If you do you will be like Miss -Cramp. Certificates--little conceited papers, and you dead. Certificates -would finish you off--Kill--Kill--Kill--_Kill_--_Kill!!_" Bang. The band -stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair wounding her flesh. The -trail of the dancers flickered away across the sea and her brain was -busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne: "and therefore I am obliged, -however reluctantly, to take this step, as it is absolutely necessary -for me to earn a larger salary at once." - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - - 1 - -The Henderson party found Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim -plank-floored corridor leading from the station to the main building of -the Crystal Palace. When the quiet greetings were over and they had -arranged a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case any of the -party should be lost, they all tramped on up the resounding corridor. -Miriam found herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow. They were -going on up the corridor, through the Palace and out into the summer -evening. They had all come to go out into the summer evening and see the -fireworks. All but she had come meaning to get quite near to the 'set -pieces' and to look at them. She had not said anything about meaning to -get as far away from the fireworks as possible. She had been trusting to -Mr. Parrow for that. Now that she was with him she felt that perhaps it -was not quite fair. He had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would -be disappointed. She would be obliged to tell him presently, when they -got out into the night. They were all tramping quickly up along the -echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking, just feet, tramp, tramp -on the planking, rather quickly. It was like the sound of workmen's feet -on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house. The corridor was like -something in the Hospital for Incurables ... that strange old woman -sitting in the hall with bent head laughing over her crochet, and Miss -Garrett whom they had come to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in -a ward, with a pleated mob cap all over the top of her head and half-way -down her forehead, sitting back against large square pillows with her -hands clasped on the neat bed-clothes and a "sweet, patient" look on her -face, coughing gently and spitting, spitting herself to death ... -rushing away out of the ward to wait for mother downstairs in the hall -with the curious smells and the dreadful old woman.... What was it, -chick?... Sick, mother, I felt sick, I couldn't stay. It was rage; rage -with that dreadful old woman. People probably told her she was patient -and sweet, and she had got that trick of putting her head on one side. -She was not sweet. She was one of the worst of those dreadful people who -would always make people believe in a particular way, all the time. She -had a great big frame. If she had done anything but sit as she sat, in -that particular way, one could have stayed. - -They were all standing looking at some wonderful sort of clock, a -calendar-clock--'a triumph of ingenuity,' said Mr. Green's bright reedy -voice. The building had opened out and rushed up, people were passing to -and fro. "We don't want to stay inside; let's go out," said Gerald. The -group broke into couples again and passed on. Miriam found herself with -Mr. Parrow once more. Of course she would be with him all the evening. -She must tell him at once about the fireworks. She ought not to have -come, if she did not mean to see the fireworks. It was mean and feeble -to cheat him out of his evening. Why had she come; to wander about with -him, not seeing the fireworks. What an idiotic and abominable thing. Now -that she was here at his side it was quite clear that she must endure -the fireworks. Anything else would be like asking him to wander about -with her alone. She did not want to wander about with him alone. She -took an opportunity of joining Eve for a moment. They had just walked -through a winter garden and were standing at the door of a concert room, -all quite silent and looking very shy. "Eve," she said hurriedly in a -low tone, "d'you want to see the beastly fireworks?" - -"Beastly? Oh, of course, I do," said Eve in a rather loud embarrassed -tone. How dreadfully self-conscious they all were. Somebody seemed to be -speaking. "What _sticks_ my family are--I had no idea," muttered Miriam -furiously into Eve's face. Eve's eyes filled with tears, but she stood -perfectly still, saying nothing. Miriam wheeled round and stared into -the empty concert room. It was filled with a faint bluish light and -beyond the rows of waiting chairs and the empty platform a huge organ -stood piled up towards the roof. The party were moving on. What a queer -place the Crystal Palace is ... what a perfectly horrible place for a -concert ... pianissimo passages and those feet on those boards tramping -about outside.... What a silly muddle. Mr. Parrow was waiting for her to -join the others. They straggled along past booths and stalls, meeting -groups of people, silent and lost like themselves. Now they were passing -some kind of stonework things, reliefs, antique, roped off like the -seats in a church. Just in front of them a short man holding the red -cord in his hands was looking at a group with some ladies. "_Why_," he -said suddenly in a loud cheerful voice, stretching an arm out across the -rope and pointing to one of the reliefs, "it's Auntie and Grandma!" -Miriam stared at him as they passed, he was so short, shorter than any -of the ladies he was with. "It's the only way to see these things," he -said in the same loud harsh cheerful voice. Miriam laughed aloud. What a -clever man. - -"Do you like statues?" said Mr. Parrow in a low gentle tone. - -"I don't know anything about them," said Miriam. - -"I can't bear fireworks," she said hurriedly. - -They were in the open at last. In the deepening twilight many people -were going to and fro. In the distance soft dark masses of trees stood -out against the sky in every direction. Not far away the ghostly frames -of the set pieces reared against the sky made the open evening seem as -prison-like as the enclosure they had just left. Round about the -scaffolding of these pieces dense little crowds were collecting. - -"Don't you want to see the fireworks?" - -"I want to get away from them." - -"All right, we'll get lost at once." - -"It isn't," she explained a little breathlessly, in relief, suddenly -respecting him, allowing him to thread a way for her through the -increasing crowd towards the open evening, "that I don't want to see the -fireworks, but I simply can't stand the noise." - -"I see," laughed Mr. Parrow gently. They were making towards the open -evening along a narrow gravel pathway, like a garden pathway. Miriam -hurried a little, fearing that the fireworks might begin before they got -to a safe distance. - -"I never have been able to stand a sudden noise. It's torture to me to -walk along a platform where a train may suddenly shriek." - -"I see. You're afraid of the noise." - -"It isn't fear--I can't describe it. It's agony. It's like pain. But -much much worse than pain. It's--it's--annihilating." - -"I see; that's very peculiar." - -Their long pathway was leading them towards a sweet-scented density, dim -bowers and leafy arches appeared just ahead. - -"It was much worse even than it is now when I was a little thing. When -we went to the seaside I used to sit in the train nearly dead until it -had screamed and started. And there was a teacher who sneezed--a noise -like a hard scream--at school. She used to go on sneezing--twenty times -or so. I was only six and I dreaded going to school just for that. Once -I cried and they took me out of the room. I've never told anyone. Nobody -knows." - -"You've told me." - -"Yes." - -"It's very interesting. You shan't go anywhere near the fireworks." - - - 2 - -A large rosy flare, wavering steadily against the distant trees showed -up for a moment the shapes and traceries of climbing plants surrounding -their retreat. A moment afterwards with a dull boom a group of white -stars shot up into the air and hovered, melting one by one as the crowd -below moaned and crackled its applause. - -Miriam laughed abruptly. "That's jolly. How clever people are. But it's -much better up here. It's like not being too near at the theatre." - -"I think we've got the best view certainly." - -"But we shall miss the set pieces." - -"The people down there won't see the rosary." - -"What's that black thing on our left down there?" - -"That's the toboggan run. We ought to go on that." - -"What is it like?" - -"It's fine; you just rush down. We must try it." - -"Not for worlds." - -Mr. Parrow laughed. "Oh you must try the toboggan; there's no noise -about that." - -"I really couldn't." - -"Really?" - -"Absolutely. I mean it. Nothing under the sun would induce me to go on a -toboggan." - -They sat watching the fireworks until they were tired of the whistling -rockets, showers of stars and golden rain, the flaming bolts that shot -up from the Battle of the Nile, the fizzlings and fire spurtings of the -set pieces and the recurrent moanings and faint patterings of applause -from the crowd. - -"I wish they'd do some more coloured flares of light up the trees like -they did at first. It was beautiful--more real than these things. 'Feu -d'artifice' artificial fire--all these noisy things. Why do people -always like a noise? Men. All the things men have invented, trains and -cannons and things make a frightful noise." - -"The toboggan's not noisy. Come and try the toboggan." - -"Oh no." - -"Well--there's the lake down there. We might have a boat." - -"Do you know how to manage a boat?" - -"I've been on once or twice; if you like to try I'll manage." - -"No; it's too dark." What a plucky man. But the water looked cold. And -perhaps he would be really stupid. - -A solitary uniformed man was yawning and whistling at the top of the -deserted toboggan run. The faint light of a lamp fell upon the square -platform and the little sled standing in place at the top of a shiny -slope which shot steeply down into blackness. - -"We'd better get on," said Miriam trembling. - -"Well, you're very graceful at giving in," remarked Mr. Parrow, handing -her into the sled and settling with the man. - -He got that sentence out of a book, thought Miriam wildly as she heard -the man behind them say "Ready? Off you go!" ... Out of a book a book a -book--_Oh_--_ooooh_--how ab_solutely_ glorious, she yelled as they shot -down through the darkness. _Oh_, she squealed into the face laughing and -talking beside her. She turned away, shouting, for the final rush, they -were flying--involuntarily her hand flung out, they were tearing -headlong into absolute darkness, and was met and firmly clasped. They -shot slackening up a short incline and stood up still hand in hand, -laughing incoherently. - -"Let's walk back and try again," said Mr. Parrow. - -"Oh no; I enjoyed it most frightfully; but we mustn't go again. Besides, -it must be fearfully late." - -She pulled at her hand. The man was too near and too big. His hand was -not a bit uncertain like his speech, and for a moment she was glad that -she pulled in vain. "Very well," said Mr. Parrow, "but we must find our -way off the grass and strike the pathway." Drawing her gently along, he -peered about for the track. "Let me go," said her hand dragging gently -at his. "No" said the firm enclosure, tightening "not yet." What does it -matter? flashed her mind. Why should I be such a prude? The hand gave -her confidence. It was firm and strong and perfectly serious. It was a -hand like her own hand and comfortingly strange and different. Gently -and slowly he guided her over the dewy grass. The air that had rushed so -wildly by them a few minutes ago was still and calm and friendly; the -distant crowd harmless and insignificant. The fireworks were over. The -pathway they had missed appeared under their feet and down it they -walked soberly, well apart, but still hand in hand until they reached -the borders of the dispersing crowd. - - - - - CHAPTER X - - - 1 - -When Miriam sat talking everything over with the Pernes at supper, on -the first night of the term, detached for ever from the things that -engrossed them, the school-work, Julia Doyle's future, the peculiarities -of the visiting teachers, the problem of the "unnatural infatuation" of -two of the boarders with each other, the pros and cons of a -revolutionary plan for taking the girls in parties to the principal -London museums, she made the most of her triumphant assertion that she -had absolutely nothing in view. She found herself decorously waiting, -armed at all points, through the silent interval while the Pernes took -in the facts of her adventurous renunciation. She knew at once that she -would have to be desperately determined.... But after all they could not -do anything with her. - -Sitting there, in the Perne boat, still taking an oar and determined to -fling herself into the sea ... she ought not to have told them she was -leaving them just desperately, without anything else in prospect; -because they were so good, not like employers. They would all feel for -her. It was just like speaking roughly at home. Well, it was done. She -glanced about. Miss Haddie, across the table behind her habitual bowl of -bread and milk had a face--the face of a child surprised by injustice. -'I was right--I was right,' Miriam gasped to herself as the light flowed -in. 'I'm escaping--just in time.... Emotional tyranny.... What a good -expression ... that's the secret of Miss Haddie. It was awful. She's -lost me. I'm free. Emotional tyranny.' ... 'My hat, Mirry, you're beyond -me. How much do you charge for that one. Say it again,' she seemed to -hear Gerald's friendly voice. Go away Gerald. True. True. All the truth -and meaning of her friendship with Miss Haddie in one single flash. How -_fearfully_ interesting life was. Miss Haddie wrestling with her, -fighting for her soul; praying for her, almost driving her to the early -service and always ready to quiver over her afterwards and to ask her if -she had been happy.... And now angry because she was escaping. - -She appealed to Miss Deborah and met a flash of her beautiful soft -piercing eyes. Her delicate features quivered and wrinkled almost to a -smile. But Miss Deborah was afraid of Miss Jenny who was already -thinking and embarking on little sounds. Miriam got away for a moment in -a tumult, with Miss Deborah. 'Oh,' she shouted to her in the depths of -her heart, 'you are heavenly young. You _know_. Life's like Robinson -Crusoe. Your god's a great big Robinson Crusoe. You know that anything -may happen any minute. And it's all right.' She laughed and shook -staring at the salt-cellar and then across at Miss Haddie whose eyes -were full of dark fear. Miss Haddie was alone and outraged. 'She thinks -I'm a fraud besides being vulgar ... life goes on and she'll wonder and -wonder about me puzzled and alone.' ... She smiled at her her broadest, -happiest, home smile, one she had never yet reached at Banbury Park. -Flushing scarlet Miss Haddie smiled in return. - -"Eh--my dear girl," Miss Jenny was saying diffidently at her side, -"isn't it a little unwise--very unwise--under the circumstances--with -the difficulties--well, in fact with all ye've just told us--have ye -thought?" When Miriam reached her broad smile Miss Jenny stopped and -suddenly chuckled. "My _dear_ Miriam! I don't know. I suppose we don't -know ye. I suppose we haven't really known ye as ye are. But come, have -ye thought it out? No, ye haven't," she ended gravely, looking along the -table and flicking with her forefinger the end of her little red nose. - -Miriam glanced at her profile and her insecure disorderly bunch of hair. -Miss Jenny was formidable. She would recommend certificates. Her eye -wavered towards Miss Deborah. - -"My dear Jenny," said Miss Deborah promptly, "Miriam is not a child. She -must do as she thinks best." - -"But don't ye see my point, my dear Deborah? I don't say she's a child. -She's a madcap. That's it." She paused. "Of course I daresay she'll fall -on her feet. Ye're a most extraordinary gel. I don't know. Of course ye -can come _back_--or stay here in yer holidays. Ye know _that_, my dear," -she concluded, suddenly softening her sharp little voice. - -"I don't _want_ to go," cried Miriam with tear-filled eyes. They were -one person in the grip of a decision. Miss Haddie sat up and moved her -elbows about. All four pairs of eyes held tears. - -"My dear--I wish we could give ye more, Miriam," murmured Miss Jenny; -"we don't want to lose ye, ye've pulled the lower school together in a -remarkable way"; Miss Deborah was drawing little breaths of protest at -this descent into gross detail; "the children are interested. We hear -that from the parents. We shall be able to give ye excellent -testimonials." - -"Oh, I don't care about that," responded Miriam desperately. -'Fancy--Great Scott--parents--behind all my sore throats--I've never -heard about that. It's all coming out now,' she thought. - -"Well--my dear--now----" began Miss Jenny hesitatingly. Feeling herself -slipping, Miriam clung harshly to her determination and drew herself up -to offer the set of the pretty blouse Gerald and Harriett had bought her -in Brighton as a seal on her irrevocable decision to break with Banbury -Park. It was a delicate sheeny green silk, with soft tuckers. - -"What steps have ye taken?" asked Miss Jenny in a quizzical -business-like tone. - -"It's very kind of you," said Miriam formally, and went on to hint -vaguely and convincingly at the existence of some place in a family in -the country that would be sure to fall to her lot through the many -friends to whom Eve had written on her behalf, turning away from the -feast towards the freedom of the untenanted part of the room. The -sitting had to be brought to an end.... In a moment she would be utterly -routed.... Her lame statements were the end of the struggle. She knew -she was demonstrating in her feeble broken tones a sort of blind -strength they knew nothing of and that they would leave it at that, -whatever they thought, if only there were no more talk. - - - 2 - -When they had left the room and Flora came in for the supper things, -instead of sitting as usual at the far end of the table pretending to -read, she stood planted on the hearthrug watching her. Flora's hands -were small and pale and serenely despairing like her face. She cleared -the table quietly. She had nothing to hope for. She did not know she had -nothing to hope for. Whatever happened she would go quietly on doing -things ... in the twilight ... on a sort of edge. People would die. -Perhaps people had already died in her family. But she would always be -the same. One day she would die, perhaps of something hard and slow and -painful with that small yellowish constitution. - -She would not be able to go on looking serene and despairing with people -round her bed helping her. When she died she would wait quietly with -nothing to do, blind and wondering. Death would take her into a great -festival--things for her for herself. She would not believe it and would -put up her hands to keep it off. But it would be all round her in great -laughter, like the deep roaring and crying of a flood. Then she would -cry like a child. - -Why was it that for some people, for herself, life could be happy now. -It was possible now to hear things laugh just by setting your teeth and -doing things; breaking into things, chucking things about, refusing to -be held. It made even the dreadful past seem wonderful. All the days -here, the awful days, each one awful and hateful and painful. - -Flora had gathered up her tray and disappeared, quietly closing the -door. But Flora had known and somehow shared her triumph, felt her -position in the school as she stood planted and happy in the middle of -the Pernes' hearthrug. - - - 3 - -"An island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water." - -Miriam kept automatically repeating these words to herself as the newly -returned children clung about her the next morning in the schoolroom. It -was a morning of heavy wind and rain and the schoolroom was dark, and -chilly with its summer-screened fireplace. The children seemed to her -for the first time small and pathetic. She was deserting them. After -fifteen months of strange intimacy she was going away for ever. - -During the usual routine days the little girls always seemed large and -formidable. She was quite sure they were not so to the other teachers, -and she hesitated when she thought over this difference, between the -explanation which accounted for their size and redoubtableness by her -own feebleness and the one to which she inclined when she felt her -success as a teacher. - -She had discovered that the best plan was to stand side by side with the -children in face of the things they had to learn, treating them as -equals and fellow-adventurers, giving explanations when these were -necessary, as if they were obvious and might have been discovered by the -children themselves, never as if they were possessions of her own, to be -imparted, never claiming a knowledge superior to their own. 'The -business of the teacher is to make the children independent, to get them -to think for themselves, and that's much more important than whether -they get to know facts,' she would say irrelevantly to the Pernes -whenever the question of teaching came up. She bitterly resented their -vision of children as malleable subordinates. And there were many -moments when she seemed to be silently exchanging this determination of -hers with her pupils. Good or bad, she knew it was the secret of her -influence with them, and so long as she was faithful to it both she and -they enjoyed their hours together. Very often she was tired, feeble with -fatigue and scamping all opportunities; this too they understood and -never took advantage of her. One or two of them would even when she -failed try to keep things going on her own method. All this was sheer -happiness to her, the bread and wine of her days. - -But now and again, perhaps during the mid-morning recess, this -impersonal relationship gave way and the children clung fawning all -round her, passionately competing for nearness, touching and clinging -and snatching for kisses. There was no thought or uprightness or -laughter then, their hands were quick and eloquent and their eyes wide -and deeply smiling with those strange women's smiles. Sometimes she -could respond in kind, answering to their smiles and caresses, making -gentle foolish sounds and feeling their passion rise to a frenzy of -adoration. The little deprecating consoling sounds that they made as -they clung told her that if she chose steadily to remain always gentle -and deprecating and consoling and reproachful she could dominate them as -persons and extort in the long run a complete personal obedience to -herself, so that they would do their work for her sake and live by and -through her, adoring her--as a goddess--and hating her. Even as they -fawned she knew they were fighting between their aching desire for a -perfection of tenderness in her and their fear lest she should fulfil -the desire. She was always tempted for an instant to yield and fling -herself irrevocably into the abyss, letting the children go on one by -one into the upper school, carrying as her gift only a passionate memory -such as she herself had for one of her nursemaids; leaving her -downstairs with an endless succession of new loves, different, but -always the same. She would become like a kind of nun, making a bare -subsistence, but so beloved always, so quivering and tender and -responsive that human love would never fail her, and when strength -failed there would be hands held out to shelter her decline. But the -vision never held her for more than a moment. There was something in the -thought of such pure personal sentiment that gave her a feeling of -treachery towards the children. Mentally she flung them out and off, -made them stand upright and estranged. She could not give them personal -love. She did not want to; nor to be entangled with them. They were -going to grow up into North London women, most of them loudly scorning -everything that was not materially profitable; these would remember her -with pity--amusement. A few would escape. These would remember her at -strange moments that were coming for them, moments when they would -recognise the beauty of things like 'the Psalm of Life' that she had -induced them to memorise without understanding it. - -This morning a sense of their softness and helplessness went to her -heart. She had taught them so little. But she had forced them to be -impersonal. Almost savagely she had done that. She had never taken them -by a trick.... - - - 4 - -And now they were going to be Julia's children. - -Julia would teach them--alone there in the room with them, filling the -room for them--in her own way.... - -There would be no more talk about general ideas.... - -She would have to keep on the "object" lessons, because the Pernes had -been so pleased with the idea and the children had liked them. There -would still be those moments, with balls for the solar system and a -candle for the sun, and the blinds down. But there would not be anything -like that instant when all the eyes round the table did nothing but -watch the movement of a shadow on a ball ... the relief afterwards, the -happiness and the moment of intense love in the room--never to be -forgotten, all of them knowing each other, all their differences gone -away, even the clever watchful eyes of the cheating little Jewess, real -and unconscious for a moment. Julia would be watching the children as -much as the shadow, and the children would never quite forget Julia. She -would get to know a great deal about the children, but there would be no -reverence for big cold outside things. She would teach them to be kind. -"Little dorlings." She thought all children were darlings and talked to -them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring way. If one or two were not, -it was the fault of the way they were treated, something in the -'English' way of dealing with them. Nearly all the elder girls she -disapproved of, they were no longer children--they were English. She was -full of contempt and indignant laughter for them, and of pity for the -'wee things' who were growing up. Yet she got on with them all and had -the secret of managing them without letting them see her feelings. - -There _was_ something specially bad in the English way of bringing up -children. Not the 'education' exactly, but something else, something in -the way they were treated. Something in the way they were brought up -made English women so awful--with their smiles. Julia did not smile or -smirk. She laughed a great deal, often to tears. And she would often -suddenly beam. It was like a light coming from under her thick white -skin. Was Julia the answer to the awfulness of Englishwomen? If, as -Julia said, the children were all right and only the girls and grown-ups -awful, it must be something in the way the children were treated. - - - 5 - -Yet Julia was not impersonal. - -Miss Deborah, ... teaching the whole school to be 'good' in the -Fairchild way; with her beautiful quivering nodding black head held -high--blinking, and not looking at the girls separately--in a grave -voice, full of Scripture history, but broken all the time, quivering -with laughter and shoutings which she never uttered ... hilarious, ... -she taught a system of things she had been brought up in. But all the -same, she rushed along sweeping the girls with her ... and the girls -believed her. If I taught her system I should have false lips and the -girls would not believe me. If ever anyone had the courage to tell her -of any dreadful thing, she would weep it all away; and the person would -begin all over again certainly, as much as possible in the Fairchild way -... again and again until they died. Supposing a murderer came and sat -down in the hall? Supposing Miss Deborah had been brought up as a -Thug--killing people from behind?... - -Miss Jenny, exasperatedly trying to wake all the girls up to the -importance of public life, sitting round in their blouses and skirts, -half-amused and sometimes trying to argue, because the tone of Miss -Jenny's voice made them sorry for the other side. Politics, politics, -reading history and the newspapers, the importance of history if you -wanted to have any understanding of your own times. To come into the -room to take the class after Miss Jenny always meant finding her stating -and protesting and tapping the end of her nose, and the air hot and -excited, and the girls in some sort of state of excitement which could -only be got over by being very quiet and pretending not to notice them -except to be very surprised if there were any disturbance. - -Miss Haddie, in horror of their badness, teaching them to master little -set tasks because it was shocking to be an idler; loving the sinner but -hating the sin much more, with a sort of horror like a girl, a horror in -her eyes that was the same as the horror of insects, fearing God who was -so close in the room, gloomily, all the time--wanting to teach them all -to fawn on Christ. Christ would make everything all right if you made up -to him. "Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. He faileth not and thou -art dear." Awful.... - -And then Julia, making the children love her, herself, as a person. They -would all love her in time. Even Burra after her first grief would fling -herself upon Julia.... Gertie would not though, ever. Cold, quiet little -Gertie, the doctor's daughter. She would make no response however much -she were kissed and called a little darling. Gertie even as a child was -the English thing that Julia disliked. Julia, with all her success was -not the answer to the problem of why Englishwomen were abominable. She -left out so much. "Julia, you know, I think things are more important -than people. Much more. People, if you let them for one single instant, -grin and pounce upon you and try to make you forget things. But they're -there all the time and you have to go back to them," and Julia laughing -suddenly aloud, "Ah--you're a duck--a tonic." And everyone was a little -afraid of Julia, the children, the boarders whom she managed so -high-handedly with her laughter, even the Pernes. - - - 6 - -Perhaps Julia's 'personal' way and the English 'personal' way were -somehow both wrong and horrid ... girls' schools were horrid, bound to -be horrid, sly, mean, somehow tricky and poisonous. It was a hopeless -problem. The English sentimental way was wrong, the way of Englishwomen -with children--it made them grow up with those treacherous smiles. - -The scientific and 'sthetic' way, the way of the Putney school--ah, -blessed escape!... But it left nearly all the girls untouched. - -Julia's sentimental way was better than the English sentimental way; its -smiles had tears and laughter too, they were not so hypocritical. But it -was wrong. It was the strongest thing though in the Wordsworth House -school. - - - 7 - -Julia was not happy. She dreamed fearful dreams.... Why did she speak of -them as if they were something that no one in this English world into -which she had come would understand? She had her strange nights all to -herself there across the landing; either lying awake or sleeping and -moaning all the time. The girls in her room slept like rocks and did not -know that she moaned. They knew she had nightmares and sometimes cried -out and woke them. But passing the open door late at night one could -hear her moaning softly on every breath with closed lips. That was -Julia, her life, all laid bare, moaning.... She knows she is alive and -that there is no escape from being alive. But it has never made her feel -breathless with joy. She laughs all day, at everybody and everything, -and at night when she is naked and alone she moans; moan, moan, moan, -heart-broken; wind and rain alone in the dark in a great open space. - -She sometimes hinted at things, those real unknown things that were her -own life unshared by anybody; in a low soft terrible broken voice, with -eyes dilated and quivering lips; quite suddenly, with hardly any words. -And she would speak passionately about the sea, how she hated it and -could not look at it or listen to it; and of woods, the horror of woods, -the trees and the shadowiness, making her crisp her hands--ah yes, _les -mains crispes_, that was the word; and she had laughed when it was -explained to her. - -It was not that she had troubles at home. Those things she seemed to -find odd and amusing, like a story of the life of some other -person--poverty and one of her sisters 'very peculiar,' another engaged -to a scamp and another going to be a shop-assistant, and two more, -'doties' very young, being brought up in the country with an aunt. -Everything that happened to people and all the things people did seemed -to her funny and amusing, "tickled her to death." Harriett's engagement -amused her really, though she pretended to be immensely interested and -asked numbers of questions in a rich deep awe-struck voice ... -blarney.... But she wanted to hear everything, and she never forgot -anything she was told. And she had been splendid about the -operation--really anxious, quite conscious and awake across the landing -that awful night and really making you feel she was glad afterwards. -"Poor Mrs. Henderson--I was never so glad in my life"--and always -seeming to know her without having her explained. She was real there, -and so strange in telling the Pernes about it and making it all easy. - - - 8 - -Miriam leaned upon Julia more and more as the term went on, hating and -fearing her for her secret sorrow and wondering and wondering why she -appeared to have such a curious admiration and respect for herself. She -could understand her adoration for the Pernes; she saw them as they were -and had a phrase which partly explained them, "no more knowledge of the -world than babes"--but what was it in herself that Julia seemed so -fiercely and shyly to admire? - -She knew she could not let Julia know how she enjoyed washing her hands, -in several soapings, in the cold water, before dinner. They would go -their favourite midday walk, down the long avenue in the park through -the little windings of the shrubbery and into the chrysanthemum show, -strolling about in the large green-house, all the girls glad of the -escape from a set walk, reading over every day the strange names on the -little wooden stakes, jokes and gigglings and tiresomenesses all kept -within bounds by the happiness that there was, inside the great quiet -steamy glass-house, in the strange raw bitter scent of the great -flowers, in the strange huge way they stood, and with all their -differences of shape and colour staring quietly at you, all in the same -way with one expression. They were startling, amongst their grey leaves; -and they looked startled and held their heads as if they knew they were -beautiful. The girls always hurried to get to the chrysanthemums and -came away all of them walking in twos relieved and happy back through -the cold park to dinner. But Julia, who loved the flowers, though she -made fun of their names in certain moods and dropped them _sotto voce_ -into the general conversation at the dinner-table would have, Miriam -felt sure, scorned her own feeling of satisfaction in the great -hand-washing and the good dinner. And she detested pease pudding with -the meat, and boiled suet pudding with treacle. - - - 9 - -She ate scarcely anything herself, keeping her attention free and always -seeming to be waiting for someone to say something that was never said. -Her broad-shouldered, curiously buoyant, heavy, lounging, ill-clad form, -her thick white skin, her eyes like a grey-blue sea, her dark masses of -fine hair had long been for Miriam the deepest nook in the meal-time -gatherings--she rested there unafraid of anything the boarders might say -or do. She would never be implicated. Julia would take care of that, -heading everything off and melting up the difficulties into some -absurdity that would set all the Pernes talking. Julia lounged easily -there, controlling the atmosphere of the table. And the Pernes knew it -unconsciously, they must know it; any English person would know it ... -though they talked about her untidiness and lack of purpose and -application. Julia was a deep, deep nook, full of thorns. - - - 10 - -Julia had spoiled the news of Sarah's engagement to Bennett Brodie. It -had been such a wonderful moment. The thick envelope coming at midday in -Bennett's hand-writing--such a surprise--asking Miss Perne's permission -to read it at the dinner-table--reading the startling sentences in the -firm curved hand--'assert my privilege as your prospective -brother-in-law by announcing that I'm on the track of a job that I think -will suit you down to the ground,' the curious splash, gravy on the -cloth as somebody put the great dish on the table, far-away vexation and -funny familiar far-away discomfort all round the table, 'no more of this -until I've got full particulars on the tapis; but it may, oh Grecian -Mariamne, not be without interest to you to hear that that sister of -yours does not appear to be altogether averse to taking over the -management of the new house and the new practice and the new -practitioner, and that the new practitioner is hereby made anew in a -sense that is more of an amazement to him than it doubtless will be to -your intuitive personality. That life had such happiness in store for -him is not the least of the many surprises that have come his way. He -can only hope to prove not unworthy; and so a hearty au revoir from -yours affectionately.' ... Then Bennett would always be there amongst -the home things ... with his strange way of putting things; he would -give advice and make suggestions ... and Sarah's letter ... a glance at -it showing short sentences, things spoken in a low awe-struck voice.... -'We had been to an entertainment together.... Coming home along the -avenue. I was so surprised. He was so quiet and serious and humble.' ... -All the practical things gone away in a moment, leaving only a sound of -deep music, ... mornings and evenings. Sarah alone now, at last, a -person, with mornings and evenings and her own reality in everything. No -one could touch her or interfere any more. She was standing aside, -herself. She would always be Sarah, someone called Sarah. She need never -worry any more, but go on doing things.... And then looking up and -finding all the table eagerly watching and saying suddenly to Miss Perne -'another of my sisters is engaged' and everybody, even Trixie and -Beadie, excited and interested. - - - 11 - -The news, the great great news, wonderful Sarah away somewhere in the -background with her miracle--telling it out to the table of women was a -sort of public announcement that life was moving out on to wider levels. -They all knew it, pinned there; and how dear and glad they were, for a -moment, making it real, acknowledging by their looks how wonderful it -was. Sarah, floating above them all, caught up out of the darkness of -everyday life.... And then Julia's eyes--veiled for a moment while she -politely stirred and curved her lips to a smile--cutting through it all, -seeming to say that nothing was really touched or changed. But when the -table had turned to jealousy and resentment and it was time to pretend -to hide the shaft of light and cease to listen to the music, Julia, cool -and steady, covered everything up and made conversation. - - - 12 - -And the thought of Julia was always a disturbance in going to tea with -the Brooms. Grace Broom was the only girl in the school for whom she had -an active aversion. She put one or two questions about them, 'You really -like going there?' 'You'll go on seeing them after you leave?' and -concluded carelessly 'that's a mystery to me----' - -Sitting at tea shut in in the Brooms' little dining-room with the blinds -down and the dark red rep curtains drawn and the gas-light and brilliant -fire-light shining on the brilliantly polished davenport in the -window-space and the thick bevelled glass of the Satsuma-laden mahogany -sideboard, the dim cracked oil-painting of Shakespeare above the -mantel-shelf, the dark old landscapes round the little walls, the new -picture of Queen Victoria leaning on a stick and supported by Hindu -servants, receiving a minister, the solid silver tea-service, the fine -heavily edged linen table-cover, the gleaming, various, delicately -filled dishes, the great bowl of flowers, the heavy, carven, unmoved, -age-long dreaming faces of the three women with their living interested -eyes, she would suddenly, in the midst of a deep, calm undisturbing -silence become aware of Julia. Julia would not be impressed by the -surroundings, the strange silent deeps of the room. She would discover -only that she was with people who revered "our Queen" and despised "the -working classes." It would be no satisfaction to her to sit drinking -from very exquisite old china, cup after cup of delicious very hot tea, -laughing to tears over the story of the curate who knelt insecurely on a -high kneeling stool at evening service in a country church and crashing -suddenly down in the middle of a long prayer went on quietly intoning -from the floor, or the madeira cake that leapt from the cake-dish on an -at-home day and rolled under the sofa. She would laugh, but she would -look from face to face, privately, and wonder. She would not really like -the three rather dignified seated forms with the brilliant, tear-filled -eyes, sitting on over tea, telling anecdotes, and tales of long strange -illnesses suffered by strange hidden people in quiet houses, weddings, -deaths, the stories of families separated for life by quarrels over -money, stories of far-off holidays in the country; strange sloping rooms -and farmhouse adventures; the cow that walked into the bank in a little -country town.... Mrs. Philps' first vision, as a bride, of the English -Lakes, the tone of her voice as she talked about all these things. - -The getting together and sitting about and laughing in the little room -would never be to her like being in a world that was independent of all -the other worlds. She would not want to go again and again and sit, just -the four women, at tea, talking. The silent, beautifully kept, -experienced old furniture all over the house would not fill her with -fear and delight and strength. It would be no satisfaction to her to put -on her things in front of the huge plate glass of the enormous -double-fronted wardrobe in the spare-room with its old Bruges ware and -its faded photographs of the interiors of unknown churches, rows and -rows of seats and a faded blur where the altar was, thorn-crowned heads -and bold scrolly texts embroidered in crimson and gold silken mounted -and oak-framed. And when she went home alone along the quiet, dark, -narrow, tree-filled little roadways she would not feel gay and strong -and full of personality. - - - 13 - -On prize-giving day, Miriam's last day, Julia seemed to disappear. For -the first time since she had come to the school it was as if she were -not there. She was neither talking nor watching nor steering anything at -all. Again and again during the ceremonies Miriam looked at her sitting -or moving about, pale and plain and shabby, one of the crowd of girls. - -The curious power of the collected girls, their steady profiles, their -movements, their unconcerned security rose and flooded round Miriam as -it had done when she first came to the school. But she no longer feared -it. It was going on, harsh and unconscious and determined, next term. -She was glad of it; the certainty thrilled her; she wanted to convey -some of her gladness to Julia, but could not catch her eye. - -Her gladness carried her through the most tedious part of the day's -performances, the sitting in a listening concourse, doors open, in the -schoolroom, while some ten of the girls went one by one with stricken -faces into the little drawing-room and played the piece they had learned -during the term. Their shame and confusion, the anger and desperation of -their efforts, the comments of the listeners and their violent ironic -applause roused her to an intensity of sympathy. How they despised the -shame-faced tinkling; how they admired the martyrs. - -Their strong indifference seemed to centre in the cold pale scornful -face of Jessie Wheeler, sitting squarely there with defiant eyes, -waiting for the future; the little troop of children she dreamed of. - -These North London girls would be scornful mocking fiances. They would -be adored by their husbands. Secretly they would forget their husbands -in their houses and children and friends. - - - 14 - -Julia was the last player. She sidled swiftly out of the room; even her -habitual easy halting lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost at -once, slow and tragic and resignedly weeping came the opening notes of -Chopin's Funeral March. Sitting in the front row of the little batch of -children from the lower school who faced the room from the window bay, -Miriam saw, in fancy, Julia's face as she sat at the drawing-room -piano--the face she had when she talked of the woods and the sea. The -whole of the long march, including the major passage, was the voice of -Julia's strange desolation. She played painfully, very slowly and -carefully, with tender respectful attention, almost without emphasis. -She was not in the least panic-stricken; anyone could feel that; but she -had none of the musical assurance that would have filled the girls with -uneasy admiration and disgust. They were pleased and amused. And far -away, Julia was alone with life and death. She made two worlds plain, -the scornful world of the girls and her own shadow-filled life. - -Miriam longed for the performance to be at an end so that the girls -might reassert themselves. - - - 15 - -An important stirring was going on at the little table where Miss Cramp -sat with the Pernes; only their heads and shoulders showing above the -piles of prize-books. Miss Perne stood up and faced the room smiling and -gently muttering. Presently her voice grew clear and she was making -little statements and pronouncing names, clearly and with gay tender -emphasis, the names of tall bold girls in the first class. One by one -they struggled to the table and stood gentle and disturbed with flushed -enlightened faces. Not a single girl could stand unconcerned before Miss -Perne. Even Polly Allen's brow was shorn of its boldness. - -The girls knew. They would remember something of what the Pernes had -tried to give them. - -The room was unbearably stuffy. The prize-giving was at an end. Miriam's -own children had struggled to the table and come back to her for the -last time. - -Miss Perne was making a little speech ... about Miss Henderson's -forthcoming departure. Why did people do these formal things? She would -be expected to make some response. For a moment she had the impulse to -get up and rush away through the hall, get upstairs and pack and send -for a four-wheeler. But from behind came hands dragging at a fold of her -dress and the sound of Burra's hard sobbing. She felt the child's head -bowed against her hip. A child at her side twisted its hands together -and sat with its head held high, drawing sharp breaths. Miss Perne's -voice went on. She was holding up an umbrella, a terrible, expensive, -silver-mounted one. The girls had subscribed. - -Miriam sat with beating heart waiting for Miss Perne's voice to cease, -pressing back towards the support of Burra and other little outstretched -clutchings and the general snuffling of her class, grappling with the -amazement of hearing from various quarters of the room violent and -repeated nose-blowings, and away near the door in the voice of a girl -she had hardly spoken to a deep heavy contralto sobbing. - -Presently she was on her feet with the tightly-rolled silken twist of -the umbrella heavy in her hands. Her stiff lips murmured incoherent -thanks in a strange thin voice--Harriett's voice with the life gone from -it. - - - NOTE.--_A further instalment of this book is in preparation._ - - - PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY - WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH - - - - - A NEW SERIES - Modern Plays - - - A New Series of Plays by present-day English playwrights, also - translations of the dramatists of the Continent. Including the - dramatic work of - - STRINDBERG - TCHEKHOFF - SUDERMANN - HAUPTMANN - JOHN GALSWORTHY - EDEN PHILLPOTTS - ALFRED SUTRO - MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD - HADDON CHAMBERS - HENRY ARTHUR JONES - - OVER 30 VOLUMES NOW READY - - -------- - - Cloth. Crown 8vo. 2s. net a volume. (Inland post 3d.) - - -------- - - List of volumes can be obtained from Booksellers, or from - the Publishers - - -------- - - - - - A FAMOUS SERIES - OVER 40 VOLUMES NOW PUBLISHED - The Reader's Library - - - COPYRIGHT WORKS OF INDIVIDUAL - MERIT AND PERMANENT VALUE BY - AUTHORS OF REPUTE - - INCLUDING WORKS BY - - HILAIRE BELLOC - STOPFORD BROOKE - W. H. HUDSON - COVENTRY PATMORE - AUGUSTINE BIRRELL - JOHN GALSWORTHY - RICHARD JEFFERIES - ANTON TCHEKHOFF - SIR LESLIE STEPHEN - CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM - - AND OTHERS - - Well printed and well bound Library Editions. Crown 8vo. - Blue cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. net a volume. (Postage 4d.) - - -------- - - Ask to see a list at a Bookseller's, or write direct to the - Publishers - - -------- - - - - - Messrs. DUCKWORTH & CO.'S - SPRING - ANNOUNCEMENTS - 1916 - - - -------- - - - - - GENERAL LITERATURE - - - D. H. LAWRENCE - - Twilight in Italy. By D. H. LAWRENCE, author of "Sons and - Lovers," "The Prussian Officer," etc. Cloth gilt. In the Uniform - Edition of Mr. Lawrence's Works. Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This volume of travel vignettes by Mr. Lawrence, shows him in a - fresh medium. Mr. Lawrence has published novels, stories, poems, - and a play, and now he appears with a volume of studies or - impressions, of life and scenes in the North of Italy. Some of - the chapters appeared serially in the English Review and the - Westminster Gazette, but they have been revised and rewritten for - publication in book form. Several chapters, however, now appear - for the first time. The volume will be published uniform with the - author's collected works, which are being issued in a library - edition. - - -------- - - BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - Amores: Poems. By D. H. LAWRENCE. Cloth gilt. Crown 8vo, 5s. net; - postage, 4d. - - - PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. LAWRENCE'S PREVIOUS BOOK OF VERSE - "LOVE POEMS" - - "The book of the moment in verse."--Bookman. - - "Imagination, apprehension, economy of means, and delicate - ecstatic beauty are in these verses."--The Times. - - "We have nothing but praise for this book of love - poems."--English Review. - - -------- - - - - - A UNIFORM EDITION OF THE - Works of D. H. Lawrence - - - Cloth Gilt. Crown 8vo, 6s. each - - Sons and Lovers. A Novel - - The Prussian Officer, and other Stories - - The Trespasser. A Novel - - The White Peacock. A Novel - - -------- - - The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd. A Play. (3s. 6d. net) - - Love Poems (5s. net) - - "D. H. Lawrence is a master."--Daily Telegraph. - - "'Sons and Lovers' is a great book."--Standard. - - "No novel of recent years is the equal of 'The - Trespasser.'"--Observer. - - "Mr. Lawrence, with this volume ('The Prussian Officer'), takes - his place in the first flight of modern writers."--English - Review. - - "'The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd' has the qualities of finished - craftsmanship. It is packed with significance and suggestion. It - has the power to exalt and enrich the mind and the - emotions."--Times. - - "'The White Peacock' aroused enthusiasm and now 'The Trespasser' - has appeared. It is no common novel. Helena is a grand full - length portrait. There are pieces of writing which could not be - surpassed.... A picture as powerful as any painted by an artist - in words."--Saturday Review, in a review of "The Trespasser." - - "Evidently written at a white heat of inspiration. Wonderfully - sustained. A remarkable book to be read by the discriminating and - the experienced."--The Morning Post, in a review of "The - Trespasser." - - "A wonderful piece of portraiture. Strong, admirable and - pathetic."--Daily Telegraph, in a review of "Sons and Lovers." - - "A study of warring loves and passions, containing much beauty. - The sheer hard matter of living is vividly presented; the toil of - existence in village and town, the solace of nature, the joy of - respite from labour admirably realised and presented."--Times, in - a review of "Sons and Lovers." - - -------- - - - - - THE READERS' LIBRARY - - - - New Volume - - PRINCE KROPOTKIN - - Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature. By PRINCE PETER - KROPOTKIN. New and Revised Edition. Type Reset. In the Readers' - Library. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d. - - This very important book has been unobtainable for some time, but - it now appears with author's alterations and corrections, so that - it is entirely up to date. - - The interest in Russian literature which has grown so remarkably - during the last few years is likely to increase still further in - the near future. Until the nineties, the Russian writers, with - the single exception of Tolstoi, were unknown in this country. - To-day translations of Russian fiction and drama are published - very frequently, and the writings of Tourguniev, Dostoieffsky, - Tchekoff, Gorky are known to a great number of readers. - - In order to appreciate and understand Russian literature an - authoritative volume such as this is essential to the reader. - Prince Kropotkin surveys the whole field--Early folk - literature--Folklore--Songs--Sagas--Poetry--Drama and - Fiction--right to the present day. He gives full biographical - information concerning the outstanding figures, with a full and - critical account of their work and ideas. The lesser figures are - treated proportionately, so as to form a full and informative as - well as critical volume. The tone of the book is "popular" in the - sense that it is very easily read and apprehended. This does not - mean that the subject is treated in any way superficially. - - A work of sound criticism which should be in every public and - private library. - - -------- - - - New Volume - - FRANCIS STOPFORD - - Life's Great Adventure. By FRANCIS STOPFORD, author of "The Toil - of Life." Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d. - - Mr. Francis Stopford's ideas on life and service are expressed in - these essays for those on the threshold of life. They are - addressed primarily to those who have yet to face the more - serious problems of life, not the very young, but those entering - on the responsibilities of parentage, or those who are to be - counted on as being in charge of the succeeding generation. - - *** A full descriptive booklet of over forty volumes of the - Readers' Library, illustrated with portraits, can be had - free on request. - - -------- - - - An American Poet - - WALT MASON - - Horse Sense. Poems. By WALT MASON. With Prefatory Letter by JOHN - MASEFIELD. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 4d. - - Walt Mason's verse has attracted a great deal of attention when - it has appeared from time to time in the daily press. He has been - described as the high priest of 'horse sense,' and this - collection of his prose poems is calculated to reveal him - particularly in the light of a practical man of vigorous mind, - whose sense of values is sound and who expresses his views - tersely and emphatically. He writes with singular facility, and - has complete mastery of rhythm and rhyme. His range is from grave - to gay, from wholehearted endorsement of some homely virtue to - vigorous condemnation of cant, fraud, and shams of all kinds. - - Mr. John Masefield writes:--"I read Walt Mason with great - delight. His poems have wonderful fun and kindliness, and I have - enjoyed them the more for their having so strongly all the - qualities I liked so much in my American friends when I was - living in the United States. - - "I don't know any book which has struck me as so genuine a voice - of the American nature. - - "I am glad that his work is gaining a wider and wider - recognition." - - -------- - - - South America as it is To-day - - ROGER W. BABSON - - The Future of South America. By ROGER W. BABSON. With 16 - Illustrations and Two Maps. 407 pages. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net; - postage, 6d. - - There is astonishingly little in the literature about South - America which explains what that continent really means to - business people who are open to extend their trade in foreign - markets. Such an interpretation is given in this book, together - with an interesting account of the picturesque and romantic sides - of South American life, its history, customs and resources, also - information for the business man. Mr. Babson is known as a writer - on economic questions and as an interpreter of statistical data - and industrial and business conditions. He has for years - methodically studied South America and its business - possibilities. He is peculiarly fitted to draw conclusions about - South America as an economic problem, which will be of the utmost - value to the banker, manufacturer, exporter, investor, and the - general student of foreign relations, affairs, and trade. - - The book is especially authoritative and official on account of - the fact that leading government officials, usually the - Presidents of the various countries, have co-operated with Mr. - Babson. - - As a result his book should prove a suggestive volume for all - having or hoping to have business relations with the countries - described and also for the general reader who is interested in - the economic side of the problem. - - -------- - - CHARLES M. DOUGHTY - - The Titans. A Dramatic Poem. By CHARLES M. DOUGHTY, author of - "Travels in Arabia Deserta," "The Dawn in Britain," "The Cliffs," - "The Clouds," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s. net; postage, 5d. - - SOME PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. DOUGHTY'S EARLIER WORKS - - "The sense of England is the burning thing in these two dramas; - the sense of England as only wartime can make it, which glows - through all the magnificent monologue with which 'The Cliffs' - open, or which brightens into most exquisite flame in 'The - Clouds.'"--LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE, in the Quarterly Review. - - "Mr. Doughty occupies a position by himself. The vigorous impulse - and imaginative strength of his genius have created their own - medium. Work which owes its power to the bigness of its design - and the sheer weight of imagination and intellect. - - "This is an amazingly vivid picture of the fury and wreckage of - war. In part of the poem Mr. Doughty approaches more nearly to - the idyllic than in any other of his works. It is a great work, - full of faith and thought and compelling sincerity, and rich - poetic beauty."--Spectator. - - "Mr. Doughty is the prophet of Patriotism. Wandering in the - Muses' Garden, he has received the divine call to chant patriot - hymns, and it is his mission to rouse his country to a sense of - the wrath to come in the guise of 'air-flying Eastlanders.' 'The - Clouds,' is a passionate plea for the nation. His verse is - astoundingly vivid and vehement, every now and then breaking into - a startling beauty."--English Review. - - "Mr. Doughty's ideas and his outlook might be those of Nelson's - captains could they be called back to life. He thrills our - imagination. His historical sense is so vital and far-reaching, - his patriotic imagination so deeply rooted in the soil of our - forbears' achievements.... A poem that, we venture to think, will - become a classic. 'The Clouds,' as an achievement, possesses a - creative actuality, a breadth of vision, an intensity of - imaginative life. The effect of the poem is cumulative, and no - quotation can convey any idea of the atmosphere of the whole - varied picture."--The Nation. - - -------- - - - A New Impression - - JOHN MORSE - - An Englishman in the Russian Ranks: Ten Months' Fighting in - Poland. By JOHN MORSE. 4th printing. Crown 8vo, 6s. - - SOME PRESS OPINIONS - - "This remarkably impressive book is probably the most notable - piece of war literature the war has yet produced."--The Times. - - "Tolstoy's pictures of Sebastopol or Dostoievsky's account of - Siberia do not haunt one much more than episodes in this - book."--Spectator. - - "Those who wish to see the war without any illusion cannot afford - to miss this the most impressive book that has so far appeared - about it."--Country Life. - - "This book is one of the most remarkable the war has yet given - us.... He keeps us spellbound with his artless narrative.... This - is decidedly a war book to be read."--Daily News. - - "We can but offer our sincere congratulations to Mr. Morse on his - splendid achievement; through him the name of Englishman will - stand firmer in Russia, firmer in the world."--Saturday Review. - - "The war continues to provide incidentally many vivid narratives - ... and this narrative ... must certainly be reckoned one of the - most interesting out of many."--Evening Standard. - - "It is a most astonishing book."--Daily Express. - - "Having served for ten months as a volunteer in the Russian Army, - the author has had such strange adventures that his experiences - have provided material for what is undoubtedly one of the most - remarkable books concerning the war."--Outlook. - - "As a witness of what actually happened on the Russian frontier - Mr. Morse comes forward with a book of engrossing interest.... - The story of his escape and privations which followed is - thrilling in the extreme and related with a quiet restraint and - modesty which, as in every chapter of the book, are an earnest of - truth."--Daily Telegraph. - - "Mr. Morse has written a book which, as far as I know, is unique. - It is an extraordinarily vivid account of an Englishman who - enlisted in the Russian rank and fought all through the - early--and they were in many ways the most terrible--months of - the war. As a picture of war it is literally haunting. Mr. Morse - writes with the conviction of one who has seen all he desires to - prove. Apart from the book's value as a personal narrative, it is - notable for the fine description it gives of life in the Russian - Army; while those who thirst for adventure will find no book of - fiction stir them more greatly than this author's account of how - he was captured and how he escaped."--Tatler. - - -------- - - - THEOLOGY - - THE REV. CANON RASHDALL, F.B.A. - - Conscience and Christ. By THE REV. CANON HASTINGS RASHDALL, - D.Litt. (Oxon), D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A., author of "Philosophy - and Religion," etc. Crown 8vo, 5s. net; postage, 5d. - - The book is an attempt to answer the question "in what relation - does the authority of Conscience, which most Christians - acknowledge, stand to the authority of Jesus Christ?" The first - chapter is a brief enquiry into the nature of Conscience on the - one hand and of various forms of external authority on the other. - The answer given is that no external authority can be taken as an - absolutely final guide for conduct unless it does commend itself - to the enlightened Conscience: it is contended that the teaching - of Jesus Christ does so commend itself. In the second chapter is - attempted the investigation of the recent teaching which makes - "Eschatology" the answer of Christ's message, and treats his - moral teaching as a mere "Interimsethik." The third chapter - examines the actual contents of that teaching; the fourth deals - with some commonly urged objections to the Christian Ethic--the - finality of this Ethic is asserted upon condition that the - necessity of development is fully recognised. The fifth chapter - examines the nature of the development which the fundamental - principles taught by Jesus have received and must continue to - receive in the Christian Church. The sixth chapter is devoted to - a brief examination of other ethical systems, philosophical and - religious, and endeavours to show that not one of them can be - regarded as a satisfactory substitute for Christianity while the - permanent elements of each are recognised and included in the - Christian ideal. It is also contended that the highest ethical - influence of Christianity is inseparable from a reverent - following of the personal Christ. - - -------- - - THE REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, D.D. - - Faith and Immortality. By THE REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, B.A., D.D., - Principal of the United Independent College, Bradford. Author of - "The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War," "The Ascent - Through Christ." Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net; postage, 5d. - - -------- - - - STUDIES IN THEOLOGY--New Volumes - - THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D. - - History of the Study of Theology. By the late CHARLES AUGUSTUS - BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt., of the Union Theological Seminary, New - York. In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net each volume; - postage, 5d. - - -------- - - THE REV. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, M.A., D.D. - - The Justification of God. By THE REV. PRINCIPAL P. T. FORSYTH, - M.A., D.D., of the Hackney Theological College, University of - London. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net; postage, 5d. - - Other Volumes already published in the Series are:-- - - Christianity and Ethics. By ARCHIBALD B. D. ALEXANDER, M.A., D.D. - - The Environment of Early Christianity. By S. ANGUS, M.A., Ph.D. - - The Christian Hope: A Study in the Doctrine of the Last Things. - By W. ADAMS BROWN, Ph.D., D.D. - - Christianity and Social Questions. By WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM, F.B.A., - D.D., D.Sc. - - A Handbook of Christian Apologetics. By A. E. GARVIE, D.D. - - A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament. By GEORGE BUCHANAN - GRAY, D.D., D.Litt. - - Gospel Origins. By WILLIAM WEST HOLDSWORTH, M.A. - - Faith and Its Psychology. By WILLIAM R. INGE, D.D. - - Christianity and Sin. By ROBERT MACKINTOSH, D.D. - - Protestant Thought before Kant. By A. C. MCGIFFERT, Ph.D., D.D. - - The Theology of the Gospels. By JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., D.Litt. - - History of Christian Thought since Kant. By EDWARD CALDWELL - MOORE, D.D. - - The Doctrine of the Atonement. By J. K. MOZLEY, M.A. - - Revelation and Inspiration. By JAMES ORR, D.D. - - A Critical Introduction to the New Testament. By ARTHUR SAMUEL - PEAKE, D.D. - - Philosophy and Religion. By HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.Litt. (Oxon), - D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A. - - The Holy Spirit. By T. REES, M.A. (Lond.), B.A. (Oxon.). - - The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament. By H. WHEELER ROBINSON, - M.A. - - The Text and Canon of the New Testament. By ALEXANDER SOUTER, - D.Litt. - - Christian Thought to the Reformation. By HERBERT B. WORKMAN, - D.Litt. - - -------- - - - FICTION - - BERNARD CAPES - - If Age Could. By BERNARD CAPES, author of "A Jay of Italy," "The - Lake of Wine," etc. - - Mr. Bernard Capes' new novel, "If Age Could," will rank among the - most important of the many popular books which bear his name-- - - "If Youth but Knew" - "If Age Could" - - Eustace Ward discovered that his ward Veronica appealed more to - his senses than he had ever thought possible. He had come to - think he was proof against the effects of feminine charm except - in a detached and esthetic way. He is, however, held back by the - fear that she regards him as old. The aloof and self-centred - attitude towards life of both him and his ward with their ample - means is shown without insistence, while the events of August - 1914 do not greatly disturb their self-sufficiency. The - subsequent bombardment of the North-East coast brings tragedy - very near to Ward's country seat. It is then that they for the - first time consciously and on an impulse do an action which is - for another's benefit and which involves their own complete - sacrifice. - - -------- - - TEMPLE BAILEY - - Contrary Mary. A Novel. By TEMPLE BAILEY. 352 pages. Crown 8vo, - 6s. - - "Contrary Mary" will win her way to the hearts of all who meet - her, and the story of the fortunes of her family will provide - restful enjoyment for a very large circle of readers. It is - seldom that a clean, sweet story is not open to the criticism of - being "pretty." "Contrary Mary" is, however, an exceptional book, - and while it shows the best side of human nature it can never be - charged with being mawkish or sugary. While it has no bad - characters, and only one unfortunate one, the reader is aware - that the author has a firm grip on life. It is clever work, and - shows the author as a writer of depth and feeling. - - -------- - - BEY SOMERVILLE - - The Passing of Nahla. A Story of the Desert. By BEY SOMERVILLE. - Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This story of Nahla, a native girl child, and of the white man - who educates and makes a companion of her, is full of atmosphere. - The baby girl is an amusing companion for the educated, - temperamental poet, and to see her develop under his guidance and - tuition is for him of unfailing interest. In the intense life of - the East she is very quickly a grown woman. Her devotion is - pathetic in its self abasement, and she is ready to accept either - life or death at his hands. The inevitable tragedy is when the - desire comes to the man to return to his own people and their - code of life. It is then he has to reckon with Nahla's jealousy - and fierce devotion. - - Apart from the story the book is worth reading for its rendering - of the call and influence of the desert on a highly developed - personality. The author feels its magic spell and is very - successful in transmitting it to the reader. - - -------- - - DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON - - Backwater. A Novel. By DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON, author of "Pointed - Roofs." Crown 8vo, 6s. - - Those who read "Pointed Roofs" will remember taking leave of - Miriam as she got in the train for home, after her term as - assistant teacher in a German school was ended. "Backwater" - continues the narrative of Miriam's life, the period now being - the emotional period of life, when life is at its fullest. - - The reception given to "Pointed Roofs" has given Miss Richardson - a status. She is recognized as a writer whose method is original - and "different," and who is thereby successful in conveying by - means of a few strokes the vital experiences of her characters - and their action on one another. Mr. J. D. Beresford, who - contributed an introduction to "Pointed Roofs," admitted having - read the story three times, the pleasure he experienced at the - first being increased by subsequent readings. He considers - "Backwater" even more interesting. - - -------- - - E. C. BOOTH - - Fondie. A Novel. By E. C. BOOTH, author of "The Cliff End," "The - Doctor's Lass." Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This story of Fondie Bassiemoor, his life, and also that of the - inhabitants of Wivvle, a Yorkshire village, is a big novel in - every way. Mr. Booth's unhurried method requires a large canvas, - and although the story is long for a modern novel the feeling of - the reader at the finish is that on no account would he have it - shorter. - - Mr. Booth pictures the everyday life of a rural village in - Yorkshire with all its types and characters clearly and lovingly - drawn; the comedy and tragedy of life painted with the sure hand - of an artist and master craftsman. The natural tone and accent of - speech is reproduced, but there is nothing irritating in its - transcription as the author renders the Yorkshire dialect in such - manner and so naturally that no unusual effort is required to - read it. - - The note of comedy is preserved through the greater part of the - book, but the sadness of life is not ignored. To each their - place. - - The author's previous books have been unreservedly praised, but - it is thought by competent judges that "Fondie" is a particular - advance on any of his earlier work. For a comparison one must go - to the early work of Thomas Hardy. Perhaps "Far from the Madding - Crowd" is the closest. Mr. Booth's "Fondie" will stand the - comparison very well. - - -------- - - MARY AGNES HAMILTON - - Dead Yesterday. By MARY AGNES HAMILTON, author of "Less than the - Dust," "Yes." Crown 8vo, 6s. - - This novel has been described by critics who have read it in - manuscript as both clever and brilliant. It is notably modern in - its feeling and outlook, its detail and allusions revealing its - author's interest in the artistic and social ideas which were - current in 1914. The action of the story begins before the war, - but is carried past August 1914, and finishes towards the end of - 1915. It gives a very effective picture of an educated and - bohemian coterie whose sophisticated attitude towards life is - sharply challenged by the realization of the need to fight for - national existence. - - -------- - - MILDRED GARNER - - Harmony. A Novel. By MILDRED GARNER. Crown 8vo. 6s. - - The scent of old-fashioned flowers, the drowsy hum of bees, and - the quiet spell of the countryside is realized in every page of - "Harmony." Peacewold is a harbour of refuge where gather those in - need of the sympathy which the Little Blue Lady unfailingly has - for her friends when they are distressed in spirit or body. To - her comes Star worn out with months of settlement work in Bethnal - Green, and Harmony whose sight is restored after years of - blindness. Robin Grey, the austere Richard Wentworth and his son - Bede, all come and she gives to each from the fulness of her - spirit and faith. Willow, whose story the book is, also has - reason to love the Little Blue Lady who has been as a mother to - her. - - The book is distinguished for its shining faith and belief in the - inherent goodness of human nature when subject to right - influences. The searchings of heart when love comes and - temporarily wrecks the harmony of Peacewold are shown to be for - the good of those concerned and helpful to them in their - development. - - "Harmony" is essentially a novel of sentiment and should - certainly find many readers. It is earnest and sincere, and - promises well for the author's future as a successful novelist. - - -------- - - RICHARD HARDING DAVIS - - Somewhere in France. Stories. By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, author of - "With the Allies," etc., etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. - net. - - A new volume by the popular war correspondent. The stories are - varied in theme, and are not solely devoted to war. The title of - the book is obtained from the first story which is of spying and - spies during the German advance on Paris. - - -------- - - LESLIE MONTGOMERY - - Mr. Wildridge of the Bank. An Irish Novel. By LESLIE MONTGOMERY. - Crown 8vo, 6s. - - Mr. Leslie Montgomery will be welcomed as an acquisition to the - ranks of humorous novelists. Like George Birmingham he writes of - the North of Ireland and shows the everyday life of a small town. - The competition of the local managers of the two banks to secure - the account of the heir to a fortune is very amusing and always - strictly probable. How Mr. Wildridge gets the capital subscribed - for the woollen factory: how the confiding Rector and his - daughter are saved from dishonour, and how Orangemen and Sinn - Feiners, Protestants and Catholics are cunningly induced to work - for the prosperity of the town in order to 'dish' each other are - all related in an easy and convincing way. The story is told in - light comedy vein, at times becoming madcap farce, and yet it - cannot be said that the bounds of possibility are ever surpassed. - There is not an unpleasant or disagreeable character in the book, - and the humour is at the expense of everyone in the town. Anthony - Wildridge is always cultivated, adroit and audacious, and - deserves all his success. At the close he discovers that he is - younger and more susceptible than he thought he was. - - -------- - - DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C. - - - - - Transcriber's Notes - - -The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical -errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after -consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after): - - [p. 68]: - ... to an end just as the picture of the French count ... - ... to an end just as the picture of the French court ... - - [p. 86]: - ... back to the table so that nobody "poked." She ... - ... backs to the table so that nobody "poked." She ... - - [p. 252]: - ... and canons and things make a frightful noise." ... - ... and cannons and things make a frightful noise." ... - - [p. 277]: - ... That life and such happiness in store for him is ... - ... That life had such happiness in store for him is ... - - [p. 283]: - ... lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost ... - ... lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost at ... - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Backwater, by Dorothy M. 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