HONEYCOMB
TITLES OF THE SERIES:
POINTED ROOFS
BACKWATER
HONEYCOMB
THE TUNNEL (_in
preparation_)
HONEYCOMB
BY
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
AUTHOR OF “POINTED ROOFS” AND “BACKWATER”
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
First Published 1917
HONEYCOMB
CHAPTER I
1
When Miriam got out of the train into the darkness she knew that there
were woods all about her. The moist air was rich with the smell of
trees--wet bark and branches--moss and lichen, damp dead leaves. She
stood on the dark platform snuffing the rich air. It was the end of her
journey. Anything that might follow would be unreal compared to that
moment. Little bulbs of yellow light further up the platform told her
where she must turn to find the things she must go to meet. “How lovely
the air is here.” ... The phrase repeated itself again and again, going
with her up the platform towards the group of lights. It was all she
could summon to meet the new situation. It satisfied her; it made her
happy. It was enough; but no one would think it was enough.
But the house was two miles off. She was safe for the present.
Throughout the journey from London the two-mile drive from the station
had stood between her and the house. The journey was a long solitary
adventure; endless; shielded from thoughts of the new life ahead and
leaving the past winter in the Gunnersbury villa far away; vanquished,
almost forgotten. She could only recall the hours she had spent
shivering apathetically over small fires; a moment when she had brought
a flush of tears to her mother’s eyes by suddenly telling her she was
maddeningly unreasonable, and another moment alone with her father when
she had stood in the middle of the hearth-rug with her hands behind her
and ordered him to abstain from argument with her in the presence of her
mother--“because it gives her pain when I have to show you that I am at
least as right as you are”--and he had stood cowed and silent.... Then
the moment of accepting the new post, the last days of fear and
isolation and helplessness in hard winter weather and the setting off in
the main line train that had carried her away from everything--into the
spring. Sitting in the shabbily upholstered unexpectedly warm and
comfortable main line train she had seen through the mild muggy air bare
woods on the horizon, warm and tawny, and on the near copses a ruddy
purpling bloom. Surprise had kept her thoughtless and rapt. Spring--a
sudden pang of tender green seen in suburban roadways in April ... one
day in the Easter holidays, bringing back the forgotten summer and
showing you the whole picture of summer and autumn in one moment ... but
evidently there was another spring, much more real and wonderful that
she had not known--not a clear green thing, surprising and somehow
disappointing you, giving you one moment and then rushing your thoughts
on through vistas of leafage, but tawny and purple gleamings through
soft mist, promising ... a vision of spring in dim rich faint colours,
with the noisy real rushing spring still to come ... a thing you could
look at and forget; go back into winter, and see again and again,
something to remember when the green spring came, and to think of in the
autumn ... spring; coming; perhaps spring was coming all the year
round.... She looked back, wondering. This was not the first time that
she had been in the country in March. Two years ago, when she had first
gone out into the world it had been March ... the night journey from
Barnes to London, and on down to Harwich, the crossing in a snowstorm,
the afternoon journey across Holland--grey sky, flat bright green
fields, long rows of skeleton poplars. But it was dark before they
reached the wooded German country--the spring must have been there, in
the darkness. And now coming to Newlands she had seen it. The awful
blind cold effort of coming to Newlands had brought a new month of
spring; there for always.... And this was the actual breath of it; here,
going through her in the darkness.... Someone was at her side, murmuring
her name, a footman. She moved with him towards a near patch of light
which they reached without going through the station building, and in a
moment the door of a little brougham closed upon her with a soft thud.
She sat in the softly lit interior, holding her umbrella and her
undelivered railway ticket in careful fingers. The footman and a porter
were hoisting her Saratoga trunk. Their movements sounded muffled and
far-off. The brougham bowled away through the darkness softly. The
lights of the station flickered by and disappeared. The brougham windows
were black. No sound but the faint rumble of the wheels along the smooth
road. Miriam relaxed and sat back, smiling. For a moment she was
conscious of nothing but the soft-toned, softly lit interior, the
softness at her back, the warmth under her feet and her happy smile;
then she felt a sudden strength; the smile coming straight up so
unexpectedly from some deep where it had been waiting, was new and
strong and exhilarating. It would not allow itself to dimple; it carried
her forward, tiding her over the passage into new experience and held
her back, at the same time; it lifted her and held her suspended over
the new circumstances in rapid contemplation. She pressed back more
steadily into the elastic softness and sat with bent head, eagerly
watching her thoughts ... this is me; this is right; I’m _used_ to
dainty broughams; I can take everything for granted.... I must take
everything absolutely for granted.... The moments passed, carrying her
rapidly on. There was a life ahead that was going to enrich and change
her as she had been enriched and changed by Hanover, but much more
swiftly and intimately. She was changed already. Poverty and discomfort
had been shut out of her life when the brougham door closed upon her.
For as long as she could endure and achieve any sort of dealing with the
new situation, they had gone, the worry and pain of them could not touch
her. Things that rose warm and laughing and expanding within her now,
that had risen to the beauty and music and happiness of Germany and been
crushed because she was the despised pupil teacher, that had dried up
and seemed to die in the English boarding school, were going to be met
and satisfied ... she looked down at the hands clasped on her knees, the
same hands and knees that had ached with cold through long winter days
in the basement schoolroom ... chilblains ... the everlasting
unforgettable aching of her sore throat ... things that had made her
face yellow and stiff or flushed with fever ... gone away for ever. Her
old self had gone, her governess self. It had really gone weeks ago, got
up and left her in that moment when she had read Mrs. Corrie’s letter in
Bennett’s villa in the middle of a bleak February afternoon. A voice had
seemed to come from the large handwriting scrawling across the faint
blue page under the thick neat small address in raised gilt. The same
voice, begging her to come for a few weeks and try seemed to resound
gently in the brougham. She had not accepted the situation; she had
accepted something in Mrs. Corrie’s imagined voice coming to her
confidently from the big wealthy house.
The brougham passed a lamp and swerved in through a gate, bowling along
over softly crunching gravel. She pressed reluctantly against the
cushioned back. The drive had been too short.... Bennett’s friends had
given the Corries wrong ideas about her. They wanted a governess. She
was not a governess. There were governesses ... the kind of person they
wanted. It was a mistake; another mistake ... the brougham made a
beautiful dull humming, going along a tree-lined tunnel.... What did the
Corries want of her, arriving in their brougham? What did they expect
her to do?...
2
As the footman opened the door of the brougham, a door far back in the
dim porch was flung back, letting out a flood of light, and the swift
figure of a parlourmaid who seized Miriam’s Gladstone bag and the
silver-mounted Banbury Park umbrella and led the way across the porch
into the soft golden blaze. The Saratoga trunk had gone away with the
brougham, and in a moment the door was closed and Miriam was standing,
frightened and alone, in a fire-lit, lamp-lit, thickly carpeted
enclosure within sound of a thin chalky voice saying “Ello, ello.” It
seemed to come from above her. “Ello--ello--ello--ello,” it said busily,
hurrying about somewhere above as she gazed about the terrifying hall.
It was somehow like the box office of a large theatre, only much better;
the lamplight, there seemed to be several lamps shaded with low-hanging
old gold silk, and the rosy light from the huge clear fire in a deep
grate fell upon a thick pale greeny yellow carpet, the little settees
with their huge cushions, and the strange-looking pictures set low on
dull gold walls. In two directions the hall went dimly away towards
low archways screened by silently hanging bead curtains.
“Ello--ello--ello--ello,” said the voice coming quickly downstairs. Half
raising her eyes Miriam saw a pale turquoise blue silk dress, long and
slender with deep frills of black chiffon round the short sleeves and a
large frill draping the low-cut bodice, a head and face, sheeny bronze
and dead white, coming across the hall.
“Ow-de-do; so glad you’ve come,” said the voice, and two thin fingers
and a small thin crushed handkerchief were pressed against her
half-raised hand.
“Are you famished? Deadly awful journey! I’m glad you’re tall.
Wiggerson’ll take up your things. You must be starvin’. Don’t change.
There’s only me. Don’t be long. I shall tell them to put on the soup.”
Gently propelled towards the staircase Miriam went mechanically up the
wide shallow stairs towards the parlourmaid waiting at the top. Behind
her she heard the swift fuffle of Mrs. Corrie’s dress, the swish of a
bead curtain and the thin tuneless voice inaccurately humming in some
large near room, “Jack’s the boy for work; Jack’s the boy for play.” She
followed the maid across the landing, walking swiftly, as Mrs. Corrie
had done--the same greeny carpet, but white walls up here and again
strange pictures hung low, on a level with your eyes, strange soft tones
... crayons? ... pastels?--what was the word--she was going to live with
them, she would be able to look at them--and everything up here, in the
soft pink light. There were large lamps with rose-pink shades. The maid
held back a pink silk curtain hanging across an alcove, and Miriam went
through to the open door of her room. “Harris will bring up your trunk
later, miss--if you like to leave your keys with me,” said the maid
behind her. “Oh yes,” said Miriam carelessly, going on into the room.
“Oh, I don’t know where they are. Oh, it doesn’t matter, I’ll manage.”
“Very good, miss,” said Wiggerson politely, and came forward to close
the bedroom door.
Miriam flung off her outer things and faced herself in the mirror in her
plain black hopsack dress with the apple green velveteen pipings about
the tight bodice and the square box sleeves which filled the square
mirror from side to side as she stood. “This dress is a nightmare in
this room,” she thought, puffing up her hair under her fringe-net with a
hat-pin. “Never mind, I mustn’t think about it,” she added hurriedly,
disconcerted for a moment by the frightened look in her eyes. The
distant soft flat silvery swell of a little gong sent her hurrying to
the mound of soft bath towel in the wide pale blue wash-hand basin. She
found a bulging copper hot-water jug, brilliantly polished, with a
wicker-covered handle. The water hissed gently into the wide shallow
basin, sending up a great cloud of comforting steam. Dare’s soap ...
extraordinary. People like this being taken in by advertisements ...
awful stuff, full of free soda, _any_ transparent soap is bad for the
skin, must be, in the nature of things ... makes your skin feel tight.
Perhaps they only use it for their hands.... Advertisement will do
anything, Pater said.... Perhaps in houses like this--plonk, it
certainly made a lovely hard ring falling into the basin--where
everything was warm and clean and fragrant even Dare’s soap could not
hurt you. The room behind her seemed to encourage the idea. But surely
it couldn’t be her room. It was a spare room. They had put her into it
for her month on trial. Could it possibly be hers, just her room, if she
stayed ... the strange, beautiful, beautiful long wide hang of the
faintly patterny faintly blue curtains covering the whole of the window
space; the firelight on them as she came into the room with Wiggerson,
the table with a blotter, there had been a table by the door with a
blotter, as Wiggerson spoke. She looked round, there it was ... the blue
covered bed, the frilled pillows, high silky-looking bed curtains with
some sort of little pattern on them, the huge clear fire, the big wicker
chair.
3
Miriam laughed over her strange hot wine-clear wine-flavoured soup ...
_two_ things about soup besides taking it from the side of your spoon,
which everybody knows--you _eat_ soup, and you tilt your plate _away_,
not towards you (chum along, chum along and eat your nice hot soup)....
Her secure, shy, contented laugh was all right as a response to Mrs.
Corrie, sitting at the head of the long table, a tall graceful bird,
thin broad shoulders, with the broad black frill slipping from them,
rather broad thin oval white face, wiry auburn Princess of Wales fringe
coming down into a peak with hollow beaten-in temples each side of it,
auburn coils shining as she moved her head and the chalky lisping voice
that said little things and laughed at them and went on without waiting
for answers. But to herself the laugh meant much more than liking Mrs.
Corrie and holding her up and begging her to go on. It meant the large
dark room, the dark invisible picture, the big pieces of strange dark
furniture in gloomy corners, the huge screen near the door where the
parlourmaid came in and out; the table like an island under the dome of
the low-hanging rose-shaded lamp, the table-centre thickly embroidered
with beetles’ wings, the little dishes stuck about, sweets, curiously
crusted brown almonds, sheeny grey-green olives; the misty beaded glass
of the finger bowls--Venetian glass from that shop in Regent Street--the
four various wine glasses at each right hand, one on a high thin stem,
curved and fluted like a shallow tulip, filled with hock; and floating
in the warmth amongst all these things the strange, exciting, dry sweet
fragrance coming from the mass of mimosa, a forest of little powdery
blossoms, little stiff grey--the arms of railway signals at
junctions--Japanese looking leaves--standing as if it were growing, in a
shallow bowl under the rose-shaded lamp.
“Mélie’s coming on Friday.”
The parlourmaid set before Miriam a small shapely fish, with scales like
mother-of-pearl and pink fins, lying in a curl of paper. “Red mullet,”
she exclaimed to herself; “how on earth do I know that it’s red mullet?
And those _are_ olives, of course.” Mrs. Corrie was humming to herself
about Mélie as the fork in her thin little fingers plucked fitfully at
the papered fish. “Do you know planchette?” she asked, in a faint
singsong, turning with a little bold pounce to the salt-cellar close at
Miriam’s left hand. “Oh-h-h” said Miriam intelligently.... “Planchette
... Planchette ... Cloches de Corneville. Planquette. Is planchette a
part of all this?... Planchette, a French dressmaker, perhaps.” She
turned fully round to Mrs. Corrie and waited, smiling sympathetically.
“It’s deadly uncanny,” Mrs. Corrie went on, “I can tell you. _Deadly._”
Her delicate voice stopped fearfully and she glanced at Miriam with a
laugh. “I don’t believe I know what it is,” said Miriam, sniffing in the
scent of the mimosa and savouring the delicate flavour of the fish.
These things would go on after planchette was disposed of, she thought,
and took a sip of hock.
“It’s deadly. I hope Mélie’ll bring one. She’s a fairy; real Devonshire
fairy. She’ll make it work. We’ll have _such_ fun.”
“What is it?” said Miriam a little uneasily.... A fairy and a planchette
and fun--silly laughter, some tiresome sort of game; a hoax.
“I tell you _all_ about it, all, all ...” intoned Mrs. Corrie
provisionally, whilst the maid handed the tiny ready-cut saddle of lamb.
“Spinnich? Ah, nicey spinnich; you can leave us that, Stokes.... Oh, you
_must_ have Burgundy--spin-spin and Burgundy; awful good; a
thimble-full, half a glass; that’s right.”
The clear dry hock had leapt to Miriam’s brain and opened her eyes, the
Burgundy spread through her limbs, a warm silky tide. The green flavour
of the spinach, tasting of earth, and yet as smooth as cream intoxicated
her. Surely nothing could so delicately build up your strength as these
small stubby slices of meat so tender that it seemed to crumble under
your teeth.... “It’s an awful thing. It whirls about and writes with a
pencil. Writes. All sorts of things,” said Mrs. Corrie, with a little
frightened laugh. “Really. No nonsense. Names. Anythin’. Whatever you’re
thinkin’ about. It’s uncanny, I can tell you.”
“It sounds most extraordinary,” said Miriam, with a firm touch of
scepticism.
“You wait. Oh--you wait,” sang Mrs. Corrie in a whisper. “I shall find
out, I shall find out, if you’re not careful, I shall find out his
name.”
Miriam blushed violently. “Ah-ha,” beamed Mrs. Corrie in a soft high
monotone. “_I_ shall find out. We’ll have _such_ fun.”
“Do you _believe_ in it?” said Miriam, half irritably.
“You wait--you wait--you wait, young lady. Mélie’ll be here on Friday
day.”
The rich caramel, the nuts and dessert, Mrs. Corrie’s approval of her
refusal of port wine with her nuts, the curious, half-drowsy chill which
fell upon the table, darkening and sharpening everything in the room as
the broken brown nutshells increased upon their trellis-edged plates
were under the spell of the strange woman. Mrs. Corrie kept on talking
about her; Mélie--born in Devonshire, seeing fairies, having second
sight, being seen one day staring into space by a sportsman, a
fisherman, a sort of poet, who married her and brought her to London.
Did Mrs. Corrie really believe that she knew everything? “I believe
she’s a changeling,” laughed Mrs. Corrie at last--“oh, it’s cold.
Chum-long, let’s go.”
4
“We can’t go into my little room,” said Mrs. Corrie, turning to Miriam
with a little excited catch in her voice, as the bead curtain rattled
gently into place behind them. “It’s bein’ re-done.” Just ahead of them,
beyond a mystery of palms to right and left, a door opened upon warm
brilliance. Miriam heard the busy tranquil flickering of a fire. “I
see,” she said eagerly. “Why does she explain?” she wondered, as they
passed into the large clear room. How light it was, fairyland, light and
fragrant and very warm. The light was high; creamy bulbs, high up, and
creamy colour everywhere, cream and gold stripes, stripy chairs of every
shape, some of them with twisted gilt legs, curious oval pictures in
soft half-tones, women in hats, strange groups, all tilted forward like
mirrors.
“Ooogh--barracky, ain’t it? I hate empty droin’-rooms,” said Mrs.
Corrie, sweeping swiftly about, pushing up great striped easy chairs
towards the fire. Miriam stood in a dream, watching the little pale
hands in the clear light, dead white fingers, rings, twinkling green and
sea blue, and the thin cruel flash of tiny diamonds ... harpy hands ...
dreadful and clever ... one of the hands came upon her own and compelled
her to drop into a large cushioned chair.
“Like him black?” came the gay voice. Coffee cups tinkled on a little
low table near Mrs. Corrie’s chair. “I’m glad you’re tall. Kummel?”
“She doesn’t know German pronunciation,” thought Miriam complacently.
“I suppose I am,” she said, accepting a transparent little cup and
refusing the liqueur. Those strange eyes were blue with dark rings round
the iris and there were fine deep wrinkles about the mouth and chin. She
looked so picturesque sitting there, like something by an “old master,”
but worn and tired. Why was she so happy--if she thought so many things
were deadly awful....
“How’s Gabbie Anstruther?”
“Oh--you see--I don’t know Mrs. Anstruther. They are patients of my
future brother-in-law. It was all arranged by letter.”
“About your comin’ here, you mean. I say--you’ll never get engaged, will
you? Promise?”
Miriam got up out of her deep chair and stood with her elbow on the low
mantel staring into the fire. She heard phrases from Mrs. Anstruther’s
letter to Bennett as if they were being spoken by a tiresome grave
voice. “She doats upon her children. What she really wants is someone to
control her; read Shakespeare to her and get her into the air.” Mrs.
Corrie did not want Shakespeare. That was quite clear. And it was quite
clear that she wanted a plain dull woman she could count on; always
there, in a black dress. She doated. Someone else, working for her, in
her pay, would look after the children and do the hard work.
“The kiddies were ’riffickly ’cited. Wanted to stay up. I hope you’re
strict, very strict, eh?”
“I believe I’m supposed to understand discipline,” said Miriam stiffly,
gazing with weary eyes at the bars of the grate.
“We were in an awful fix before we heard about you. Poor old Bunnikin
breakin’ down. She adored them--they’re angels. But she hadn’t the
tiniest bit of a hold over them. Used to cry when they were naughty.
_You_ know. Poor old kiddies. Want them to be awfully clever. Work like
a house afire. I know you’re clever. P’raps you won’t stay with my
little heathens. Do try and stay. I can see you’ve got just what they
want. Strong-minded, eh? I’m an imbecile. So was poor old Bunnikin.
D’you like kiddies?”
“Oh, I’m very fond of children,” said Miriam despairingly. She stared at
the familiar bars. They were the bars of the old breakfast-room grate at
home, and the schoolroom bars at Banbury Park. There they were again
hard and black in the hard black grate in the midst of all this light
and warmth and fragrance. Nothing had really changed. Black and hard.
Someone’s grate. She was alone again. Mrs. Corrie would soon find out.
“I think children are so _interesting_,” she said conversationally,
struck by a feeling of originality in the remark. Perhaps children were
interesting. Perhaps she would manage to find the children interesting.
She glanced round at Mrs. Corrie. Her squarish white face was worn. Her
eyes and neck looked as though all the life and youth had been washed
away from them by some long sorrow. Her smile was startling ... absolute
confidence and admiration ... like mother. But she would find out if one
were not really interested.
5
That night Miriam roamed about her room from one to another of the
faintly patterned blue hangings. Again and again she faced each one of
them. For long she contemplated the drapery of the window space, the
strange forest-like confusion made in the faint pattern of tiny leaves
and flowers by the many soft folds, and turned from it for a distant
view of the draperies of the bed and the French wardrobe. Sitting down
by the fire at last she had them all in her mind’s eye. She was going to
be with them all night. If she stayed with them long enough she would
wake one day with red bronze hair and a pale face and thin white hands.
And by that time life would be all strange draperies and strange
inspiring food and mocking laughing people who floated about hiding a
great secret and servants who were in the plot, admiring and serving it
and despising as much as anybody the vulgar things outside.
Her black dress mocked at these thoughts and she looked about for her
luggage. Finding the Saratoga trunk behind the draperies of the French
wardrobe she extracted her striped flannelette dressing-gown and
presently sat down again with loosened hair. Entrenched in her familiar
old dressing-gown, she felt more completely the power of her
surroundings. Whatever should happen in this strange house she had sat
for one evening in possession of this room. It was added for ever to the
other things. And this one evening was more real than all the fifteen
months at Banbury Park. It was so far away from everything, trams and
people and noise--it was in the centre of beautiful exciting life;
perfectly still and secure. Creeping to the window she held back the
silk-corded rim of a curtain--a deep window-seat, a row of oblong
lattices with leaded diamond panes. One of the windows was hasped a few
inches open. No sound came in ... soft moist air and the smell of trees.
Nothing but woods all round, everywhere.
6
The next morning a housemaid tapped at Miriam’s door half an hour after
she had called her to say that her breakfast was laid in the schoolroom.
Going out on to the landing she discovered the room by a curious rank
odour coming towards her through a half-opened door. Pushing open the
door she found a large clear room, barely furnished, carpeted with
linoleum and cold in the morning light pouring through an undraped
window. In the grate smoked a half-ignited fire and one corner of the
hearth-rug caught by a foot lay turned back. Across one end of the
baize-covered table a cloth was laid, and on it stood a small crowded
tray: a little teapot, no cosy, some rather thick slices of bread and
butter, a small dish of marmalade, a small plate and cup and saucer
piled together, and a larger plate on which lay an unfamiliar fish, dark
brown, curiously dried and twisted and giving out a strong salt smoky
odour. Miriam sat uncomfortably on the edge of a cane chair getting
through her bread and butter and tea and one mouthful of the strong dry
fish, feeling, with the door still standing wide, like a traveller
snatching a hasty meal at a buffet. She tried to collect her thoughts on
education. Little querulous excited sounds came to her from across the
wide landing. Presently there came the swift flountering of a print
dress across the landing and Wiggerson, long and willowy and capless
with a cold red nose and large red hands, her thin small head looking
very young with its revealed bunch of untidy hair, appeared in the
schoolroom doorway with an unconscious smile hesitating on her pale lips
and in her pale blue eyes. “It isn’t very comfortable for you,” she said
in a hurried voice. “I say, my _word_”; she went to the chilly grate and
bent down for the poker. Miriam glanced at the solicitous droop of her
long figure. “Stokes hasn’t half laid it,” went on Wiggerson; “if I were
you I should have breakfast in my room. They all do, except Mr. Corrie
when he’s at home. The other young lady was daily; she didn’t stop. I
should, if I were you,” she finished, getting lightly to her feet. She
stood between the door and the fireplace, half turned away, and gazing
into space with her pale strong eyes, every line in her long pure
unconscious figure waiting for Miriam’s response.
“Do you _like_ me, Wiggerson?” said Miriam within, “you’ll have
toothache and neuralgia with that thin head. You’re devoted to your
relations. You’ve got a tiresome sickly old mother. You’ll never know
you’re a servant....” “I think perhaps I will,” she drawled, clearing
her throat.
“All right,” said Wiggerson, with a lit face. “I’ll tell them.”