1
As Miriam sat having tea with the children in the dining-room the
brougham drove up to the door. “There’s someone arriving,” she said,
hoping to distract the attention of the children from her fumblings with
the teapot and the hot water jug. They had certainly never met anyone
who did not know how to pour out tea. But they were taken in by her
bored tone.
“It’s only Joey,” said Sybil, frowning tranquilly, her lively
penetrating brown eyes fixed on the table just ahead of the small plate
nearly covered by a mass of raspberry jam from which she ate with a
teaspoon in the intervals of taking small bites from a thin piece of
bread and butter held conveniently near her mouth as she sat with one
elbow on the table. “She’s always here.” She looked across the table and
met the soft brown eyes of the boy. They had been wandering absently
about her square pale face and her short straggling red hair as she
answered Miriam. “Jenooshalet,” he said, lisping over the s and smiling
meditatively.
“Jeno_ash_,” responded Sybil, and they both laughed drunkenly.
“What _I’m_ finking,” said the boy, putting a teaspoonful of jam into
his teacup and speaking with a stammering difficulty that drew deep
lines in his thin face; “what’s worrying me is she’ll have Rollo after
tea instead of us.... Vat’s what I’m finking.”
“D’you like bays?” said Sybil, throwing a fleeting glance in the
direction of Miriam.
“Yes, I do, I think,” said Miriam at random, patting her hair and
wondering if the children had been to Weymouth.
“Oh, _Boy_.” Sybil flung her arms tightly round her thin body and sat
grinning at her brother. Her old blue and white striped overall, her
sparse hair and the ugly large gap between her two large front teeth
seemed to set her apart from her surroundings. For a moment it seemed to
Miriam that the large quiet room looking through two high windows on to
a stretch of tree-shaded lawn, the cheerful little spread of delicate
white china at one end of the long table, the preserves and cakes, the
cress sandwiches and thin bread and butter were all there for her
appreciation alone, the children somehow profane and accidental, having
no right to be there. But they had been in these surroundings, the girl
for twelve the boy for eight years. They had never known anything else.
For years life had been for them just what it was to-day--breakfast in
bed, chirping at their mother from the dressing-rooms where they slept,
and scolding at Stokes as she waited on their toilet; jocularly and
impatiently learning lessons from little text-books for an hour or so in
the morning, spending their afternoons cantering about the commons and
along the sandy roadways with the groom; driving with their mother or
walking with the governess and every day coming in at the end of the
afternoon to this cosy, dainty grown-up tea, with their strange
untroubled brooding faces. They would grow up and be exactly like their
parents. They did not know anything about their fate. It was a kind of
prison. Perhaps they knew. Perhaps that was what they were always
brooding over. No, they did not mind. Their musings were tranquil. They
were waiting. They had silent conversations all the time. To be with
them after being so long with the straining, determined, secretly
ambitious children at Banbury Park was a great relief ... the way they
moved their heads and used their hands ... the boy’s hands were
wonderful, the palest fine brown silk, quick eloquent little claws,
promising understanding and support. Fine little hands and steady gentle
brown eyes.
“Bays.”
“_Bright_ bays.”
“Roans.”
“_Strawberry_ roans.”
“_Chestnuts._”
“_Chestnut_ bays.”
The children sat facing each other, each with clasped hands, and eyes
lit with dreams. Miriam listened. Bay, then, must be that curious liver
colour that was neither brown nor chestnut.
“Our ponies are bay,” said Sybil quickly, with flushed face. “Boy’s and
mine, the brougham and victoria horses are chestnut bays and we’ve got
two dogs, a whippet bitch, she’s in the stables now, and a Great Dane;
I’m going to have a Willoughby pug pup on my birthday.”
2
Mrs. Corrie was standing in the hall when the little tea-party came out
of the dining-room. She raised her head and stood shaped in the well-cut
lines of her long brown and fawn check coat and skirt against the bead
curtain that led to the drawing-room, looking across at them. The boy
tottered blindly across the hall with arms outstretched. “Oh, Rollo,
Rollo,” he said brokenly, as he reached her, pressing his hands up
against her grey suède waistcoat and his face into her skirt, “are we
going to _h--ave_ you?”
Mrs. Corrie began singing in a thin laughing voice, taking the boy by
the wrists.
“No, no,” he said sharply, “let me hold you a minute.” But Mrs. Corrie
danced, forcing his steps as he pressed against her. Up and down the
hall they capered while Sybil pranced round them whirling her skirts and
clapping her hands. Miriam sank into a settee. The cold March sunlight
streaming in through the thinly curtained windows painted the sharply
bobbing figures in faint shadows on the wall opposite her.
3
When the dancers were breathless the little party strayed into the
drawing-room. Presently they were gathered at the piano. Mrs. Corrie sat
on a striped ottoman and peering closely picked out the airs of songs
that made Miriam stare in amazement. They all sang. Slowly and
stumblingly with many gasps of annoyance from Mrs. Corrie and the
children violently assaulting each other whenever either of them got
ahead of the halting accompaniment, they sang through all the songs in
an album with a brightly decorated paper cover. But in their performance
there was no tune, no rhythm, and the words spoken out slowly and
separately were intolerable to her. One song they sang three times. Its
chorus
Stiboo--stib_ee_,
Sti-ibbety-_oo_
Sti-ibbety-b_oo_,
Stib_ee_,
which Sybil could sing without the piano with an extraordinary
flourishing rapidity, pirouetting as she sang, they attacked again and
again, slowly and waveringly, fitting the syllables note by note into
the printed line of disconnected jerkily tailed quavers.... They thought
this was music. Encouraged at last by the fervour of the halting
performance Miriam found herself seated at the piano attacking the
score. They went through the songs from the beginning, three thin
blissful wavering tremulous voices, with a careful perfect monotony of
emphasis, uninfluenced by any variation of accent or inflection
introduced by Miriam into the accompaniment. Looking round as they
reached the end she saw flushed rapt faces with happy eyes gleaming
through the gathering twilight. They smiled at her as they sang. When
they had finished they lit the piano candles and sang “Stiboo” once
more.
4
“Sti-boo, stibee, sti-ibbety-oo, sti-ibbety boo, stibee,” sang Miriam,
getting into the large square bodice of her silkette evening dress. Its
great oblong box-like elbow sleeves more than filled the mirror as she
stood. They were stiffened with stout muslin, and stood squarely out
from shoulder to elbow, so that the little band of silk edged with a
piping of salmon pink velveteen which held them round the arm just above
the elbow could only be seen when she raised her arms. The piping was
repeated round the square neck of her bodice, cutting in front across
the bust just below the collar bone and at the back just above her
shoulder blades. She sang the little refrain at intervals until her
toilet was completed by the pinning of a small salmon pink velvet bow
against the left side of the hard mass of her coiled hair and went
humming downstairs into the hall. The soles of her new patent leather
shoes felt pleasantly smooth against the thick carpet. She went across
the hall to prop a foot against the fender and take one more reassuring
look at the little disc of steel beads adorning her toe. “Stiboo----”
“Won’t you come in here?” said a soft staccato bass voice, a woman’s
voice, but deep and rounded like the voice of a deep-chested watch-dog
barking single soft notes after a furious outbreak.
Miriam looked round. Wiggerson was lighting the big lamp in the
dining-room, peering up under the rose-coloured shade. “In here,”
repeated the deep voice, smiling, and Miriam’s eyes discovered that the
small door set back between the dining-room and the window on the left
side of the hall door was open, showing part of a curious soft brown
room; a solid brown leather covered secretaire, with a revolving chair
between its pillars of drawers, set back in the bow of a small window, a
little bronze lamp with a plain buff-coloured shade standing near a pile
of large volumes on the secretaire, a piece of wall covered with a dark
silky-looking brown paper shining in the glow of an invisible fire. She
went forward across the hall into the room with a polite pleased
hesitating smile. There was a faint rich exciting odour in the warm
little room ... cigars ... leather ... a sort of deep freedom. The rest
of the house seemed suddenly far away. Coloured drawings of houses on
the little brown walls, two enormous deep low leather arm-chairs drawn
up on either side of an enormous fire, a littered mantelshelf. “I saw
you froo the crack,” said a lady, fitted deeply into one of the large
chairs. She held out a small hand when Miriam was near enough to take it
and said softly and lazily, “You’re the new guvnis, aren’t you? I’m Joey
Banks.”
“Yes, I came yesterday,” said Miriam serenely.
Sinking into the second arm-chair she crossed her knees and beamed into
the fire. What perfect security.... She turned to Mr. Corrie, unknown
and mysteriously away somewhere in London to thank him for setting her
here, protected from the whole world in the deeps of his study
chair--all the worry and the noise and the fussing people shut away. If
suddenly he came in she would not thank him, but he would know. He would
be sitting in the other arm-chair, and she would say, “What do you think
about everything?” Not so much to hear what he thought, but because some
of his thoughts would be her thoughts. Thought was the same in everybody
who thought at all. She would sit back and rest and hear an
understanding voice. He might be heavy and fat. But a leading Q.C. must
have thoughts ... and he had been thin once ... and there were those
books ... and he would read newspapers; perhaps too many newspapers. He
would know almost at once that she thought he read too many newspapers.
She would have to conceal that to hear the voice going on and leaving
her undisturbed.
5
Of course people like this wore evening dress every day. You could only
rest and think and talk and be happy without collars and sleeves--with
the cool beaded leather against one’s neck and arms in the firelight....
She gazed familiarly into her companion’s eyes taking in her soft
crimson silk evening dress with its wide folded belt of black velvet and
the little knots of black about the square sleeves, as the eyes smiled
long and easily into hers ... the smile of one of the girls at the
Putney school, the same dark fringed caressing smiling eyes set in
delicately bulging pale brown cheeks, the same little frizz of dark
hair. She felt for the name, but could only recall the sense of the girl
as she had sat, glints of fear and hard watchfulness in the beautiful
eyes, trying to copy her neighbour’s exercise. This girl’s dull hair was
fluffed cloudily, and there was no uneasiness in the eyes. Probably she
too had been a duffer at school and had had to crib things. But she had
left all that behind and her smile was--perfect.
“You look like an Oriental princess,” said Miriam, gazing.
Joey flushed and smiled more deeply, but without making the smallest
movement.
“Do I, weally?”
“Exactly,” said Miriam, keeping her own pose with difficulty. She knew
she had flung up her head and spoken emphatically. But the girl was such
a wonderful effect--she wanted her to be able to see herself ... she was
not quite of the same class as the Corries, or different, somehow.
Miriam gazed on. Raising the large black cushion a little, turning her
head and pressing her cheek into it, her eyes still on Miriam’s, Joey
laughed a short contralto gurgle, bringing the sharp dimples and making
her cheeks bulge slightly on either side of the chin.
“I brought it in from Rollo’s room,” she said. “I like bein’ in here.
Rollo never comes in; but she always has a fire in here when she’s got
people stoppin’. You can pop in here whenever you like when Felix isn’t
at home. It’s jolly. I like it.”
Miriam looked into the fire and thought. Joey, too, liked talking to Mr.
Corrie in his room when he was not there. He must be one of those
charming sort of men, rather weak, who went on liking people. Joey was
evidently an old friend of the family and still liked him. She evidently
liked even to mention his name. He couldn’t be really anything much ...
or perhaps Joey didn’t really know him at all. Joey did not live there.
She came and went.
“Of course you haven’t seen Felix yet, have you?”
“No.”
Joey straightened her head on her pillow.
“It’s not the least use me tryin’ to describe him to you,” she breathed
in broken tones.
Miriam struggled uneasily with her thoughts ... a leading Q.C.--about
forty.... “Oh, do try,” she said, a little fearfully ... how vulgar ...
just like a housemaid ... no; Wiggerson would never have said such a
thing, nor asked at all. It was treachery to Mr. Corrie. If Joey said
anything more about him she would never be able to speak to him freely.
“He’s divine,” said Joey, smiling into the fire.
How nice of Joey to be so free with her and want her to like
him too ... the gong. They both rose and peered into the little
strip of mirror in the small overmantel ... divine might mean
anything ... divine ... oh, quite too utterly too-too ...
greenery-yellery--Grosvenor-gallery--foot-in-the-grave young man.