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. Allday—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 shouldbe 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 clearerher 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 beother 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.
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 aquiet 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 halffamiliar 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.
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 ofthe 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 veryfirmly 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, itsfingers 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.
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 developinto 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 theawfulwomen 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 aloneand 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.
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 waveringcomplexions 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 readingand 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?
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 asshe 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.
... 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.
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.
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 theirwritten 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,comeon. 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 ofother 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 thicknessof 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.
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 offthe 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 madethem 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.
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 hererrand. “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 lookedalmost 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. “Didshe!” 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 thatI 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 darningdusters, 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?
Harriett’sringed 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 upat 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.
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, orreally 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 tiefastened 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 shopwindows and strolling on the Heath eating peppermints.
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 painran 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.”
“Allright, whataboutit? There aren’t any here!”
“You’re not one, anyhow.”
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 facewas 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 “goon, goon” 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.
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 unnoticedand 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 youblameme? ... 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?”
“Idunno. 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.
“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 litterof 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 mywearingall 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 inthe 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’dallput 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,whydo 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’tit 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 saiddamnation.”
“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’realldifferent 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,doI?”
“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 upby 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, scoredand 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.
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?
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. Shesupposed 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 totake 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?”
“Ofcoursehe 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.”
“Youknow 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 überhauptnicht.” 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 sodetermined 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 shealways 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 itwas 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?”Ididn’t ask you to come,Idon’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’sgenerally 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.”
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 allabout 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 determinedcheerful 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-downpiece 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 timeMiriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made some little responsive sound.