1
Coming home at ten o’clock in the morning, Miriam found the little villa
standing quiet and empty in the sunshine. The sound of her coming down
the empty tree-lined roadway had brought no face to either of the open
windows. She stood on the short fresh grass in the small front garden
looking up at the empty quiet windows. During her absence the dark
winter villa had changed. It had become home. The little red brick
façade glowed as she looked up at it. It belonged to her family. All
through the spring weather they had been living behind the small bright
house-front. It was they who had set those windows open and left them
standing open to the spring air. They had gone out, of course; all of
them; to be busy about the weddings. But inside was a place for her;
things ready; a bed prepared where she would lie to-night in the
darkness. The sun would come up to-morrow and be again on this green
grass. She could come out on the grass in the morning.
2
The sounds of her knocking and ringing echoed through the house with a
summery resonance. All the inside doors were standing open. Footsteps
came and the door opened upon Mary. She had forgotten Mary and stood
looking at her. Mary stood in her lilac print dress and little mob cap,
filling the doorway in the full sunlight. She had shone through all the
years in the grey basement kitchens at Barnes. Miriam had never before
seen her face to face in the sunlight, her tawny red Somersetshire hair;
the tawny freckles on the soft rose of her face; the red in her shy warm
eyes. They both stood gazing. The strong sweet curve of Mary’s bony chin
moved her thoughtful mouth. “How nice you do look, Miss Mirry.” Miriam
took her by the arm and trundled her into the house. They moved into the
little dining-room filled with a blaze of sunlight and smelling of
leather and tobacco and fresh brown paper and string and into the dim
small drawing-room at the back. The tiny greenhouse plastered on its
hindmost wall was full of growing things. Mary dropped phrases, offering
Miriam her share of the things that had happened while she had been
away. She listened deferentially, her heart rising high. After all these
years she and Mary were confessing their love to each other.
3
She went down the road with a bale of art muslin over her shoulder and
carrying a small bronze table-lamp with a pink silk shade. The bright
bunchy green heads of the little lopped acacia trees bobbed against
their background of red brick villa as she walked ... little moving
green lampshades for Harriett’s life; they were like Harriett; like her
delicate laughter and absurdity. The sounds of the footsteps of
passers-by made her rejoice more keenly in her burdens. She felt herself
a procession of sacred emblems, in the sunshine. The sunshine streamed
about her from an immense height of blue sky. The sky had never been so
high as it was above Harriett’s green acacias. It had gone soaring up
to-day for them all; their sky.
* * * * *
That eldest Wheeler girl, going off to India, to marry a divorced man.
Julia seemed to think it did not matter if she were happy. How could she
be happy?... Coming home from the “Second Mrs. Tanqueray” Bennett had
asked Sarah if she would have married a man with a past ... it was not
only that his studies had kept him straight. It was himself ... and
Gerald too. It was ... there were two kinds of men. You could tell them
at a glance. Life was clean and fresh for Sarah and Harriett.... There
were two kinds of people. Most of the people who were going about ought
to be shut up, somehow, in prison.
4
Eve came into the little room with her arms full of Japanese anemones.
Behind her came a tall man with red-brown hair, a stout fresh face and
beautifully cut clothes. Miriam bowed him a greeting without waiting for
introduction and went on arranging her festoons of art muslin about the
white wooden mantelpiece. He was carrying a trayful of little fluted
green glasses each half filled with water. He came into the room on a
holiday--a little interval in his man’s life--delighted to be arranging
the tray of glasses; half contemptuous and very happy. Pleased and
surprised at himself and ready for miracles. He was not married--but he
was a marrying man--a ladies’ man--a man of the world--something like
Bob Greville--with the same sort of attitude towards women.... “The
vagaries of the Fair” ... a special manner for women and a clubby life
of his own, with men. Women meant sex to him, the reproduction of the
species my dear chap, and his comforts and a little music on Sunday
afternoon. He loved his mother, that was certain, Miriam felt, from
something in his voice, and respected all mothers; the sort of man who
would “look after” a woman properly, but would never know anything about
her. And there was something in himself that he knew nothing about. Some
woman would live with him in loneliness, maddened, waiting for that
something to speak. Secretly he would be half contemptuous, half afraid
of her and would keep on always with that mocking, obsequious,
patronising manner. Horrible--and so easy to deceive, and yet cruel to
deceive. _Hit_ him ... hit him awake. He put down the tray of glasses
near the heap of anemones that Eve had flung on the table and enquired
whether they were to put one bloom in each glass.... He had a secret,
indulgent life of his own. Did he imagine that no one knew?... Eve
giggled and tittered ... this new giggling way of Eve’s ... perhaps it
was the way the Greens treated young men; arch and silly, like the girls
at the tennis club. He must see through it. He was not in the least like
the tennis club young men, most of whom needed to be giggled at before
they could be anything but just sneery and silly.
5
But it was fascinating, like something in a novel come true; the latest
tableau in all the wedding tableaux; their own. Bennett and Gerald had
swept the lonely Henderson family into this. One was going to be a
sister-in-law for certain, to-morrow.... Held up by this dignity Miriam
concentrated on her folds and loops, adjusting and pinning with her back
to the room, listening to the sparring and giggling, the sounds of the
tinkling glasses--the scissors snipping and dropping with a rattle on to
the table, the soft flurring of shifted blossoms. The moment was coming.
The man was being impudently patronising to Eve, but really talking at
her, trying to make her turn round. She did not want him. There was
something ... some quality in men that this kind of man did not possess
... something she knew ... who? It was somewhere, but not in him. Still,
his being there gave an edge to her freedom and happiness. She owed him
some kind of truth ... some blow or shock. Holding her last festoon in
place she consulted some jumbled memory and found a phrase: “Will you
people leave off squabbling and just see if this is all right before I
nail it up?” She spoke in a cool even tone that filled the room. It
startled her, making her feel sad, small and guilty. Still with her back
to the room she waited during the moment of silence that followed her
words. “It’s simply lovely, Mirry,” said Eve. Had she been more vulgar
than Eve? She knew her decoration was all right and did not want an
opinion. She wanted to crush the man’s behaviour, trample on it and
fling it out of the room. Eve was sweeter and more lovable than she.
Mother said it was natural and right to laugh and joke with young men.
No ... no ... no....
She glanced, asking Eve to hold the corner while she went for the hammer
and nails. Eve came eagerly forward. The man was standing upright and
motionless by the table, looking quietly at her as she stood back for
Eve to substitute a supporting hand. “Er--let me do that,” he said
gravely--“or go for the hammer.” He was at the door: “Oh--thanks,” said
Miriam, in a hard tone; “you will find it in the kitchen.”
Eve remained holding the muslin with downcast face and conscious lips.
Seizing a vase of anemones Miriam put it on the marble, bunching up the
muslin to hide the vase.
“This is their smoking-room,” she said, her voice praying for tolerance.
Eve beamed sadly and gladly. “Yes--isn’t it jolly?” Joining hands they
waltzed about the room. Eve did not really mind; she fought, but there
was something in her that did not mind.
6
Through the French windows of the new drawing-room Miriam saw a group of
figures moving towards the end of the garden. In a moment they would
have reached the low brick wall at the end of the garden. They might
stand talking there with their heads outlined against the green painted
trellis-work that ran along the top of the wall or they might walk back
towards the house and see her at the window.
She hid herself from view. The room closed round her. She could not sit
down on one of the new chairs. The room was too full. Things were
speaking to her. Their challenge had sent her to the window when she
came into the room. It had made her feel like a trespasser. Now she was
caught. She stood breathing in curious odours; faint odours of new wood
and fresh upholstery, and the strange strong subdued emanation coming
from the black grand piano, a mingling of the smell of aromatic wood
with the hard raw bitter tang of metal and the muffled woolly pungency
of new felting.
The whole of the floor space up to the edge of the skirting was filled
by a soft thick rich carpet of clear green with a border and
centre-piece of large soft fresh pink full-blown roses. Standing about
on it were a set of little delicate shiny black chairs, with seats
covered with silken stripings of pink and green, two great padded
easy-chairs, deep cushioned and low-seated, and three little polished
black tables of different shapes. A black overmantel with shelves and
side brackets, holding fluted white bowls framed a long strip of deeply
bevelled mirror. The wooden mantelpiece was draped at the sides like the
high French windows with soft straight hanging green silk curtains. At
the windows long creamy net curtains hung, pulled in narrow straight
folds just within the silk ones.
The walls swept up dimly striped with rose and green, the green misty
and changeful, glossy or dull as you moved. And on the widest spaced
wall dreadful presences ... two long narrow dark-framed pictures, safe
and far-off and dreamy in shop windows, but now, shut in here, suddenly
full of sad heavy dreadful meaning. A girl, listening to the words she
had waited for, not seeing the youth who is gazing at her, not even
thinking of him, but seeing suddenly everything opening far far away,
and leaving him, going on alone, to things he will never see, joining
the lonely women of the past, feeling her old self still there, wanting
everyone to know that she was still there, and cut off, for ever. There
was something ahead; but she could not take him with her. He would see
it now and again, in her face, but would never understand. And the other
picture; the girl grown into a woman; just married, her face veiled
forever, her eyes closed; sinking into the tide, his strong frame near
her the only reality; blindly trying to get back to him across the tide
of separation.
Their child will come--throwing even the support of him off and away,
making her monstrous ... and then born into life between them, forever,
“drawing them together,” showing they were separate; between them,
forever. There was no getting away from that.
The strange strong crude odours breathing quietly out from the open lid
of the new piano seemed to support them, to make them more mockingly
inexorable.
7
The smell of the piano would go on being there while inexorable things
happened.
Voices were sounding in the garden....
Hanging on either side of the mantelpiece were two more pictures--square
green garden scenes.... There was relief in the deeps of the gardens and
in under the huge spreading trees that nearly filled the sky. There were
tiresome people fussing in the foreground ... Marcus Stone
people--having scenes--not noticing the garden; getting in the way of
the garden. But the garden was there, blazing, filled with some
particular time of day, always being filled with different times of day.
There would be in-between times for Harriett--her own times. Times when
she would be at peace in this room near the garden. Away from the
kitchen and strange-eyed servants, and from the stern brown and yellow
pig-skin dining-room. In here she would have fragrant little teas; and
talk as if none of those other things existed. There were figures
standing at the French window.
8
She opened the window upon Harriett and Gerald. Standing a little aloof
from them was a man. As Harriett spoke to her Miriam met his strange
eyes wide and dark, unseeing; no, glaring at things that did not
interest him ... desperate, playing a part. His thin squarish frame hung
loosely, whipped and beaten, within his dark clothes.
His eyes passed expressionlessly from her face to Harriett.
A great gust of laughter sounded from the open kitchen window away to
the left, screened by a trellis over which the lavish trailings of a
creeper made a bright green curtain. It was Bennett’s voice. He had just
accomplished something or other.
“Ullo,” said Harriett. The strange man was holding his lower lip in with
his teeth, as if in horror or pain.... They stood in a row on the
gravel.
“Let me introduce Mr. Grove,” said Harriett, with a shy movement of her
head and shoulders, keeping her hands clasped. Her face was all broken
up. She could either laugh or cry. But there was something, a sort of
light, chiselling it, holding everything back.
Miriam bowed. “What’s Bennett doing?” she said hurriedly.
“The last time _I_ saw him he was standing on the kitchen table fighting
with the gas bracket,” said Gerald.
The sallow man drew in his breath sharply and stood aside, staring down
the garden. Miriam glanced at him, wondering. He was not criticising
Gerald. It was something else.
“I say, Mirry, what did you do to old Tremayne this morning?” went on
Gerald.
“What do you mean?” said Miriam interested. This was the novel going
on....
She must read it through even at this strange moment ... this moment was
the right setting to read through Gerald that little exciting far-away
finished thing of the morning, to know that it had been right. She felt
decked. Gerald stood confronting her and spoke low, fingering the
anemones in her belt. The others were talking. Harriett in high short
laughing sentences, the man gasping and moaning his replies, making
jerky movements. He was not considering his words, but looking for the
right, appropriate things to say. Miriam rejoiced over him as she smiled
encouragingly at Gerald.
“Well, my dear, he wanted to know--_who_ you were; and he swears he’s
going to be engaged to you before the year is out.”
“What abominable cheek,” said Miriam, flushing with delight. Then she
had taken the right line. How easy. This was how things happened.
“No, my dear, he didn’t mean to be cheeky.”
“I call it the most abominable cheek.”
“No you don’t”; Gerald was looking at her with fatherly solicitude.
“That’s what he said anyhow--and he meant it. Ask Harry.”
“Frivolous young man.”
“Well, he’s an awful flirt, I warn you; but he’s struck this time--all
of a heap ... came and raved about you the minute he’d seen you, and
when he heard you were Harry’s sister that’s what he said.”
“I’m sure I’m awfully obliged to his majesty.”
Gerald laughed and turned, looking for Harriett and moving to her.
Miriam caught at a vision of the well-appointed man, a year ... a home
full of fresh new things, no more need to make money; a stylish
contented devoted sort of man, who knew nothing about one. It would be a
fraud, unfair to him ... so easy to pretend to admire him ... well,
there it was ... an offer of freedom ... that was admirable, in almost
any man, the power to lift one out into freedom. He wanted to lift her
out--her, not any other woman. It was rather wonderful, and appealing.
She hung over his moment of certainty in pride and triumph. But there
was something wrong somewhere; though she felt that someone had placed a
jewel in her hair. Gerald had drawn Harriett through the doorway into
the drawing-room. The sunlight followed them. They looked solid and
powerful. The strange terrors of the room were challenged by their
sunlit figures.
9
Moving to the side of Gerald’s strange friend Miriam said something
about the garden in a determined manner. He drew a sawing breath without
answering. They walked down the short garden. It moved about them in an
intensity of afternoon colour. He did not know it was there; there was
something between him and the little coloured garden. He walked with
bent head, his head dipping from his shoulders with a little bob at each
step. Miriam wanted to make him feel the garden moving round them;
either she must do that or ask him why he was suffering. He walked
responsively, as if they were talking. He was feeling some sort of
reprieve ... perhaps the afternoon had bored him. They had turned and
were walking back towards the house. If they reached it without
speaking, they would not have courage to go down the garden again. She
could not relinquish the strange painful comradeship so soon. They must
go on expressing their relief at being together; anything she might say
would destroy that. She wanted to take him by the arm and groan ... on
Harriett’s wedding-eve, and when she was feeling so happy and
triumphant....
“Have you known Gerald long?” she said, as they reached the house. He
turned sharply to face the garden again.
“Oh, for a very great number of years,” he said quickly,
“a--very--great--number.” His voice was the voice of the ritualistic
curate at All Saints. He sighed impatiently. What was it he was waiting
for her to say? Nothing perhaps. This busy walking was a way of
finishing his visit without having to try to talk to anybody.
“How different people are,” she said airily.
“I’m very different,” he said, with his rasping, indrawn breath. A
darkness coming from him enfolded her.
“Are you?” she said insincerely. Her eyes consulted the flowered border.
She saw it as he saw it, just a flowered border, meaningless.
“You cannot possibly imagine what I am.”
Her mind leapt out to the moving garden, recapturing it scornfully. He
is conceited about his difficulties and differences. He doesn’t think
about mine. But he couldn’t talk like this unless he knew I were
different. He knows it, but is not thinking about me.
“Don’t you think people are all alike, really?” she said impatiently.
“Our common humanity,” he said bitingly.
She had lost a thread. They were divided. She felt stiffly about for a
conventional phrase.
“I expect that most men are the average manly man with the average manly
faults.” She had read that somewhere. It was sly and wrong, written by
somebody who wanted to flatter.
“It is wonderful, _wonderful_ that you should say that to me.” He stared
at the grass with angry eyes. His mouth smiled. His teeth were large and
even. They seemed to smile by themselves. The dark, flexible lips curled
about them in an unwilling grimace.
“He’s in some horrible pit,” thought Miriam, shrinking from the sight of
the desolate garden.
“What are you going to do in life?” she said suddenly.
During the long silent interval she had felt a growing longing to hurt
him in some way.
“If I had my will--if--I had my will--I should escape from the world.”
“What would you do?”
“I should join a brotherhood.”
“Oh....”
“That is the life I should choose.”
“Do you see how unfair everything is?”
“Um?”
“If a woman joins an order she must confess to a man.”
“Yes,” he said indifferently.... “I can’t carry out my wish, I can’t
carry out my dearest wish.”
“You have a dearest wish; that is a good deal.”
She ought to ask him why not and what he was going to do. But what did
it matter? He was going unwillingly along some dreary path. There was
some weak helplessness about him. He would always have a grievance and
be sorry for himself ... self-pity. She remained silent.
“I’m training for the Bar,” he murmured, staring away across the
neighbouring gardens.
“Why--in Heaven’s name?”
“I have no choice.”
“But it’s absurd. You are almost a priest.”
“The Bar. That is my bourne.”
“Lawyers are the most ignorant, awful people.”
“I cannot claim superiority.” He laughed bitterly.
“But you can; you are. You can never be a lawyer.”
“It is necessary to do one’s duty. Occupation does not matter.”
“There you are; you’re a Jesuit already,” said Miriam angrily, seeing
the figure at her side shrouded in a habit, wrapped in tranquillity,
pacing along a cloister, lost to her. But if he stayed in the world and
became a lawyer he would be equally lost to her.
“I have been ... _mad_,” he muttered; “a madman ... nothing but the
cloister can give me peace--nothing but the cloister.”
“I don’t know. It seems like running away.”
“Running towards, running towards----”
Can’t you be at peace now, in this garden? ran her thoughts. I don’t
condemn you for anything. Why can’t we stop worrying at things and be at
peace? If I were beautiful I could make you be at peace--perhaps. But it
would be a trick. Only real religion can help you. I can’t do anything.
You are religious. I must keep still and quiet....
If some cleansing fire could come and consume them both ... flaring into
the garden and consuming them both, together. Neither of them were
wanted in the world. No one would ever want either of them. Then why
could they not want each other? He did not wish it. Salvation. He wanted
salvation--for himself.
“My people must be considered first,” he said speculatively.
“_They_ want you to be a barrister. That’s the last reason in the world
that would affect _me_.”
He glanced at her with far-off speculative eyes, his upper lip drawn
terribly back from his teeth.
“He is thinking I am a hard unfeminine ill-bred woman.”
“I do it as an atonement.”
The word rang in the garden ... the low tone of a bell. Her thoughts
leaned towards the strength at her side.
“Oh, that’s grand,” she said hastily, and fluted quickly on, wondering
where the inspiration had come from: “Luther said it’s much more
difficult to live in the world than in a cell.”
“I am glad I have met you, glad I have met you,” he said, in a clear
light tone.
She felt she knew the quality of the family voice, the way he had spoken
as a lad, before his troubles came, his own voice easy and sincere. The
flowers shone firm and steady on their stalks.
She laughed and rushed on into cheerful words, but his harsh voice
drowned hers. “You have put my life in a nutshell.”
“How uncomfortable for you,” she giggled excitedly.
He laughed with a dip of the head obsequiously. There was a catch of
mirth in his tone.
Miriam laughed and laughed, laughing out fully in relief. He turned
towards her a young lit face, protesting and insisting. She wanted to
wash it, with soap, to clear away a faint greasiness and do something
with the lank, despairing hair.
“You have come at the right instant, and shown me wisdom. You are
wonderful.”
She recoiled. She did not really want to help him. She wanted to attract
his attention to her. She had done it and he did not know it. Horrible.
They were both caught in something. She had wanted to be caught,
together with this agonising priestliness. But it was a trick. Perhaps
they hated each other now.
“It is jolly to talk about things,” she said, as the blood surged into
her face.
He was grave again and did not answer.
“People don’t talk about things nearly enough,” she pursued.
10
“I saw Miriam through the window, _deep_ in conversation with a most
interesting young man.”
“Have those people written about the bouquets?” said Miriam
irritably.... Then mother had moved about the new house and was looking
through those drawing-room windows this afternoon. She had looked about
the house with someone else, saying all the wrong things, admiring
things in the wrong way, impressed in the wrong way, having no thoughts,
and no one with her to tell her what to think....
She flashed a passionate glance towards the clear weak flexible voice,
half seeing the flushed face ... you’re not upset about the
weddings--“Miriam’s scandalous goings-on the whole day long,” said
somebody ... because you’ve got me. You don’t know me. You wouldn’t like
me if you did. You don’t know him. He doesn’t know you. But I know you,
that’s the difference....
“I’ve just thought something out,” she said aloud, her voice drowned by
two or three voices and the sound of things being served and handed
about the supper-table. They were trying to draw her--still talking
about the young men and her “goings-on.” They did not know how far away
she was and how secure she felt. She laughed towards her mother and
smiled at her until she made her blush. Ah, she thought proudly, it’s I
who am your husband. Why have I not been with you all your life?... all
the times you were alone; I knew them all. No one else knows them.
“I say,” she insisted, “what about the bouquets?”
Mrs. Henderson raised her eyebrows helplessly and smiled, disclaiming.
“Hasn’t anybody done anything?” roared Miriam.
Mary came in with a dish of fruit. Everyone went on so placidly.... She
thought of the perfect set of her white silk bridesmaid’s dress, its
freshness, its clear apple green pipings, the little green leaves and
fresh pink cluster roses on the white chip hat. If the shower bouquets
did not come it would be simply ghastly. And everybody went on
chattering.
She leaned anxiously across the table to Harriett.
“Oo--what’s up?” asked Harriett.
Conversation had dropped. Miriam sat up to fling out her grievances.
“Well--just this. I’m told Gerald said the people would send a line to
say it was all right, and they haven’t written, and so far as I can make
out nothing’s been done.”
“Bouquets would appear to be one of the essentials of the ceremony,”
hooted Mr. Henderson.
“Well, of course,” retorted Miriam savagely, “if you _have_ a dress
wedding at all. That’s the point.”
“Quite so, my dear, quite so. I was unaware that you were depending on a
message.”
“I’m not anxious. It’s simply silly, that’s all.”
“It’ll be all right,” suggested Harriett, looking into space. “They’d
have written.”
“Well, it’s your old bouquet principally.”
“Me. With a bouquet. Hoo----”
11
“Peace I give unto you, My peace I give unto you. Not as the world
giveth, give I unto you----”
Christ said that. But peace came from God--the peace of God that passeth
all understanding. How could Christ give that? He put Himself between
God and man. Why could not people get at God direct? He was somewhere.
The steam was disappearing out of the window; the row of objects ranged
along the far side of the bath grew clear. Miriam looked at them,
seeking escape from the problem--the upright hand-glass, the brush bag
propped against it, the small bottle of Jockey Club, the little pink box
of French face powder ... perhaps one day she would learn to use powder
without looking like a pierrot ... how nice to have a thick white skin
that never changed and took powder like a soft bloom....
But as long as the powder box were there it would be impossible to reach
that state of peace and freedom that Thomas à Kempis meant. “To Miriam,
from her friend, Harriett A. Perne.” Had Miss Haddie found anything of
it? No--she was horribly afraid of God and turned to Christ as a sort of
protecting lover to be flattered and to lean upon....
There were so many exquisite and wise things in the book; the language
was so beautiful. But somehow there was a whining going all through it
... fretfulness. Anger too--“I had rather feel compunction than know the
definition thereof.” Why not both? He was talking at someone in that
sentence.
The Kingdom of Heaven is _within_ you. But even Christ went about sad,
trying to get people to do some sort of trick that He said was necessary
before they could find God--something to do with Himself. There was
something wrong about that.
If one were perfectly still, the sense of God was there.
Supposing everyone could be got to stay perfectly still, until they died
... like that woman in the book who was dying so happily of starvation
... and then the friend came fussing in with soup....
Things were astounding enough; enough to make you die of astonishment,
if you did nothing at all. Being _alive_. If one could realise that
clearly enough, one _would_ die.
Everything everyone did was just a distraction from astonishment.
It could only be done in a convent.... It cost money to get into a
convent, except as a servant. If you were a servant you could not stay
day and night in your cell--watching the light and darkness until you
died.... Perhaps in women’s convents they would not let you anyhow.
Why did men always have more freedom?... His head had a listening look.
His eyes were waiting desperately, seeing nothing of the things in the
world ... he wanted to stay still until the voice of things grew so
clear and near that one could give a great cry and fall dead ... a long
long cry.... Your hot heart, all of you, pouring out, getting free.
Perhaps that happened to people when they were happy. They cried out to
each other and were free--lost in another person. Whoso would save his
soul ... but then they grew strange and apart.... Marriage was a sort of
inferior condition ... an imitation of something else....
Ho-o-zan-na-in-the-Hi...i...est ... the top note rang up and stayed
right up, in the rafters of the church.
“Did you ever notice how white the insides of your wrists are?”
Why did Bob seem so serious?... What a bother, what a bother.
It is a good thing to be plain ... “the tragedy of beauty; woman’s
greatest curse.” ... Andromeda on a rock with her hair blowing over her
face....
She was afraid to look at the monster coming out of the sea. If she had
looked at it, it would not have dared to come near her. Because Perseus
looked and rescued her, she would have to be grateful to him all her
life and smile and be Mrs. Perseus. One day they would quarrel and he
would never think her beautiful again....
Adam had not faced the devil. He was stupid first, and afterwards a
coward and a cad ... “the divine curiosity of Eve....” Some person had
said that.... Perhaps men would turn round one day and see, what they
were like. Eve had not been unkind to the devil; only Adam and God. All
the men in the world, and their God, ought to apologise to women....
To hold back and keep free ... and real. Impossible to be real unless
you were quite free.... Two married in one family was enough. Eve would
marry, too.
But money.
The chair-bed creaked as she knelt up and turned out the gas. “I love
you” ... just a quiet manly voice ... perhaps one would forget
everything, all the horrors and mysteries ... because there would be
somewhere then always to be, to rest, and feel sure. If only ... just to
sit hand in hand ... watching snowflakes ... to sit in the lamplight,
quite quiet.
Pictures came in the darkness ... lamplit rooms, gardens, a presence,
understanding.
12
Voices were sounding in the next room. Something being argued. A voice
level and reassuring; going up now and again into a hateful amused
falsetto. Miriam refused to listen. She had never been so near before.
Of course they talked in their room. They had talked all their lives; an
endless conversation; he laying down the law ... no end to it ... the
movement of his beard as he spoke, the red lips shining through the fair
moustache ... splash baths and no soap; soap is not a cleansing agent
... he had a ruddy skin ... healthy.
A tearful, uncertain voice....
“Don’t mother ... don’t, don’t ... he can’t understand.... Come to me!
Come in here.... Well, well!...” A loud clear tone moving near the door,
“Leave it all to nature, my dear....”
They’re talking about Sally and Harriett.... He is _amused_ ... like
when he says “the marriage service begins with ‘dearly beloved’ and ends
with ‘amazement.’ ...”
She turned about, straining away from the wall and burying her head in
her pillow. Something seemed to shriek within her, throwing him off,
destroying, flinging him away. Never again anything but contempt....
She lay weak and shivering in the uncomfortable little bed. Her heart
was thudding in her throat and in her hands ... beloved ... beloved ...
a voice, singing--
“So ear-ly _in_ the mor-ning,
My beloved--my beloved.”
Silence, darkness and silence.
13
Waking in the darkness, she heard the fluttering of leafage in the
garden and lay still and cool listening and smiling. That went on ...
flutter, flutter, in the breeze. It was enough ... and things happened,
as well, in the far far off things called “days.”
14
A fearful clamour--bright sunlight; something sticking sideways through
the partly opened door--a tin trumpet. It disappeared with a flash as
she leapt out of bed. The idea of Harriett being up first!
Harriett stood on the landing in petticoat and embroidered camisole, her
hair neatly pinned, her face glowing and fresh.
“Gerrup,” she said at once.
“You _up_. You oughtn’t to be. I’m going to get your breakfast. You
mustn’t dress yourself....”
“Rot! You hurry up, old silly, breakfast’s nearly ready.”
She ran upstairs tootling her trumpet. “Hurry up,” she said, from the
top of the stairs, with a friendly grin.
Miriam shouted convivially and retired into her crowded sunlit bathroom,
turning on both bath taps so that she might sing aloud. Harriett had
made the day strong ... silver bright and clean and clear. Harriett was
like a clear blade. She splashed into the cold water gasping and
singing. Two o’clock--ages yet before the weddings. There was a smell of
bacon frying. They would all have breakfast together. She could smile at
Harriett. They had grown up together and could admit it, because
Harriett was going away. But not for ages. She flew through her toilet;
the little garden was blazing. It was a fine hot day.
15
Bennett and Gerald had turned strained pale faces to meet the brides as
they came up the aisle. Now, Bennett’s broad white forehead seemed to
give out a radiance. It had been fearful to stand behind Harriett
through the service listening to the bland hollow voice of the vicar and
the four unfamiliar low voices responding, and taking the long glove
smooth and warm from Harriett’s hand, her rustling heavy-scented
bouquet. At the sight of Bennett’s grave radiant face the fear deepened
and changed. Marriage was a reality ... fearful, searching reality; it
changed people’s expressions. Hard behind came Gerald and Harriett;
Gerald’s long face still pale, his loosely knit figure carried along by
her tense little frame as she walked, a little firm straight figure of
satin, her veil thrown back from her little snub face, her face held
firmly; steady and old with its solid babyish curves and its brave
stricken eyes: old and stricken; that was how Sarah had looked too. No
radiance on the faces of Sarah and Harriett.
The Wedding March was pealing out from the chancel, a great tide of
sound blaring down through the church and echoing back from the west
window, near the door where they would all go out, in a moment, out into
the world. On they went; how swift it all was.... Sarah and Harriett,
rescued from poverty and fear ... mother’s wedding on a May morning long
ago ... in the little village church ... to walk out of church into the
open country; in the morning; a bride. There were no brides in London.
Now to fall in behind Eve and Mr. Tremayne. Mr. Grove walked clumsily.
His arm brushed against the shower bouquet.
The upturned faces of the pink carnations were fresh and sweet; for
nothing. To-morrow they would be dead. Harriett’s bouquet, dead too ...
a wonderful dead bouquet that meant life. “Where are you, my friend, my
own friend?”
16
A wedding seemed to make everybody happy. The people moving in
Harriett’s new rooms were happy. Old people were new and young. They
laughed.... The sad dark man, following with his tray of glasses as she
went from guest to guest with Harriett’s champagne cup had laughed again
and again....
The voices of the grey-clad bridegrooms rang about the rooms full of
quiet relieved laughter. The outlines of their well-cut grey clothes
were softly pencilled with a radiance of marriage. Round about Sarah and
Eve was a great radiance. Light streamed from their satin dresses. But
they were untouched. Silent and untouched and far away. What should
these strange men ever know of them; coming and going?
17
She found herself standing elbow to elbow with Harriett. Warm currents
came to her from Harriett’s body; she moved her elbow against Harriett’s
to draw her attention. Harriett turned a scorched cheek and a dilated
unseeing eye. Their hands dropped and met. Miriam felt the quivering of
firm, strong fingers and the warm metal of rings. She grasped the
matronly hand with the whole strength of her own. Harriett must remember
... all this wedding was nothing.... She was Harriett ... not the Mrs.
Ducayne Bob Greville had just been talking to about Curtain Lectures and
the Rascality of the Genus Homo ... she must remember all the years of
being together, years of nights side by side ... night turning to day
for both of them, at the same moment. She gave her hand a little shake.
Harriett made a little skipping movement and grinned her own ironic
grin. It was all right. They were quite alone and irreverent; they two;
the festive crowd was playing a game for their amusement. They laughed
without a sound as they had so often done in church. The air that
encircled them was the air of their childhood.
18
Gerald’s voice sounded near. It made no break in their union though
Harriett welcomed it, clearing her throat with a businesslike cough.
“Time you changed, Mrs. La Reine,” said Gerald, in a frightened friendly
voice.
“Oh, lor, is it?” ... that kindliness was only in Harriett’s voice when
she had hurt someone.
... The edge of Gerald’s voice, kind to everyone, would always be broken
when he spoke to Harriett. She would always be this young absurd
Harriett to him, always. He would go on fastening her boots for her
tenderly, and go happily about his hobbies. She would never hear him
call her “my dear.” That old-fashioned mock-polite insolence of men ...
paterfamilias.
19
The four of them were together in a room again, fastening and hooking
and adjusting; standing about before mirrors. We’ve all grown up
together ... we can admit it now ... we’re admitting it. Everything
clear, back to the beginning; happy and good. The room was still with
the hush of its fresh draperies, hemming them in. Beautiful immortal
forms moved in the room, reaping ... voices, steady and secure, said
nothing but the necessary things, borne down with wealth, all the wealth
there was ... all the laughter and certainty. Immortality. Nothing could
die. They saw and knew everything. Each tone was a confession and a song
of truth. They need never meet and speak again. They had known. The
voices of Sarah and Harriett would go on ... marked with fresh
things.... Her own and Eve’s would remain, separate, to grow broken and
false and unrecognisable in the awful struggle for money. No matter. The
low secure untroubled tone of a woman’s voice. There was nothing like it
on earth.... If you had once heard it ... in your own voice, and the
voice of another woman responding ... everything was there.
20
Was there anyone who fully realised how amazing it was ... a human tone.
Perhaps everyone did, really, most people without knowing it. A few
knew. Perhaps that was what kept life going.
21
In a few minutes they would go. They avoided each other’s eyes. Miriam
began to be afraid Eve would say something cheerful, or sing a snatch of
song, desecrating the singing that was there, the deep eternal singing
in each casual tone.
Gerald’s whistle came up from the front garden.
Miriam opened the door. Bennett’s voice came from the hall, calling for
Sarah.
“Your skirt sets simply perfectly, Sally.” ... Sarah was at the door in
her neat soft dark blue travelling dress, and a soft blue straw hat with
striped ribbon bands and bows, hurrying forward, her gold hair shining
under her hat; seeing nothing but the open door downstairs and Bennett
waiting.
22
The garden and pathway was thronged with bright-coloured guests. Miriam
found herself standing with Gerald on the curb, waiting for Harriett to
finish her farewells. He crushed her arm against his side. “Good Lord,
Mirry, ain’t I glad it’s all over.”
Sarah was stepping into the shelter of the first of the two waiting
carriages. Her face was clear with relief. Bennett followed, dressed
like her in dark blue. On the step he spoke abruptly, something about a
small portmanteau. Sarah’s voice sounded from inside. Miriam had never
heard her speak with such cool unconcern. Perhaps she had never known
Sarah. Sarah was herself now, for the first time free and unconcerned.
What freedom. Cool and unconcerned. The door shut with a bang. They had
forgotten everyone. They were going to forget to wave. Everyone had
watched them. But they did not think of that. They saw green Devonshire
ahead and their little house waiting in the Upper Richmond Road with
work for them both, work they could both do well, with all their might
when they came back. Someone shouted. Rice was being showered. People
were running down the road showering rice. The road and pathway were
bright with happy marriage, all the world linked in happy marriages.
23
The second carriage swept round the bend of the road with a yellow silk
slipper swinging in the rear. Miriam struggled for breath through tears.
Gerald and Harriett had taken the old life away with them in their
carriage. Harriett had taken it, and gone. But she knew. She would bring
it back with her. They would come back. Harriett would never forget.
Nothing could change or frighten her. She would come back the same, in
her new dresses, laughing.
A fat voice ... Mrs. Bywater ... “proud of your gails, Mrs. Henderson”
... fat flattering voice. The brightness had gone from the houses and
the roadway ... unreal people were moving about with absurd things on
their heads. Bridesmaids in cold white dresses, moving in pounces, as
people spoke to them ... the Hendon girls.... What bad complexions
Harriett’s school friends had. Why were they all dark? Why did Harriett
like them? Who was Harriett? Why did she have dark, sallow friends? Oh
... this dark face, near and familiar ... saying something--eyes looking
at nothing; haunted eyes looking at nothing, very dear and familiar ...
relief ... the sky seems to lift again; kind harmless bitter features,
coming near and speaking.
“I am obliged to go----” rasping voice, curious sawing breath....
“Oh yes....” Perhaps there will be a thunderstorm or
something--something will happen.
“We shall meet again.”
“Yes--oh, yes.”
24
There was no reason to feel nervous, at any rate for a night or two.
Burglars who wanted the presents would take some time to find out that
there was only one young lady in the house and a little servant sleeping
in a top room. It was all right. No need to put the dinner-bell on the
dressing-table. Next week the middle-aged servant would have arrived.
Would she mind being alone with the presents and the little maid? The
only way to feel quite secure at night would be to marry ... how awful
... either you marry and are never alone or you risk being alone and
afraid ... to marry for safety ... perhaps some women did. No wonder ...
and not to turn into a silly scared nervous old maid ... how tiresome,
one thing or the other ... no choice.
She laid her head on the pillow. Thank Heaven I’m here and not at home
... out of it.... “I’ll come round, first thing, to cut up the
cake”--that would be jolly too. But here ... with all these new things,
magical and easy, secure with Gerald and Harriett, chosen to embark on
their new life with them.... “You chuck your job, my dear, and stay with
us for a bit.” They would like it. That was so jolly. Absurd free days
with Harriett; tea in the garden, theatres; people coming, Mr. Tremayne
and Mr. Grove....
But there was something, some thought sweeping round all these things,
something else, sweeping round outside the weddings and the joy of being
at home, making all these things extra, like things thrown in, jolly and
perfect and surprising, but thrown in with something else that was her
own, something hovering around and above, in and out the whole day
keeping her apart. This morning the weddings had seemed the end of
everything. They were over, Harriett’s and Sarah’s lives going forward
and her own share in them, and home still there too, three things
instead of one, easily hers. And yet they did not concern her. It would
be a sham to pretend they did, with this other thing haunting--to go on
from thing to thing, living with people and for them as if there were
nothing else, as people seemed to do, one thing happening after another
all the time. Sham.
Harriett and Sarah had rushed out into life. They had changed
everything. Things did not seem to matter now that they had achieved all
that. Harriett would take the first shock of life for her. Curiosities
could come to an end. It did not seem to matter. That was all at peace,
through Harriett. Life had come into the family, leaving her free....
Was she free? That strange, dark priestliness. If he called to her, if
he really called.... But he called in a dark dreadful way ... and yet
mysteriously linked to something in her. She could not give the help he
needed. She would fail. Over their lives would shine, far away, visible
to both of them the radiance of heaven. They both wanted to be good;
redemption from sin. They both believed these things. But he was weak,
weak ... and she not strong enough to help. And there was that other
thing beckoning far from this suburban life and quite as far from him,
away, up in London, down at Newlands, a brightness....
She looked through the darkness at the harmony of soft tones and
draperies at distant Newlands ... etchings; the strange effect of
etchings ... there were no etchings in the suburbs ... curious, close,
strong lines that rested you and had a meaning and expression even
though you did not understand the subject. There were so many things to
take you away from people. In the suburbs people were everything, and
there was nothing in them. They did not understand anything; but going
on. They were helpless and without thoughts; amongst their furniture.
They did not even have busts of Beethoven. At Newlands people might be
dead, the women in bright hard deaths or deaths of cold, cruel
deceitfulness, the men tiny insects of selfishness, but there were
things that made up for everything full and satisfying.
And Salviati’s window....
She must hold on to these things. Life without them would be impossible.
It was--Style ... or something. Le style c’est l’homme. That meant
something. It was the same with clothes.... Suburban people could be
fashionable, never stylish. And manners.... They were fussily kind and
nice to each other; as if life were pitiful ... _life_ ... pitiful. They
all pitied, and despised each other.
25
The night was vast with all the other things. No need to sleep. To lie
happy and strong in the sense of them was better than sleep. In a few
hours the little suburban day would come ... everything gleaming with
the light of the big things beyond. One could go through it in a drowse
of strength, full of laughter ... laughter to the brim, all one’s limbs
strong and heavy with laughter.
Bob Greville had gone jingling down the road in a hansom--grey holland
blinds and a pink rosebud in the driver’s buttonhole. Why had he come?
Going in and out of the weddings a pale grey white-spatted guest,
talking to everyone ... a preoccupied piece of the West End. Large club
windows looking out on sunlit Piccadilly; a glimpse of the haze of the
Green Park. Weddings must be laughable to him with his “Mrs. Caudle’s
Curtain Lectures” ideas. His wife was dead. She had been fearfully ill
suddenly on their wedding tour ... at “Law_zanne_.” That was the wrong
way to pronounce Lausanne. And that wrong way of pronouncing was somehow
part of his way of thinking about her. He seemed to remember nothing but
her getting ill and spoke with a sort of laughing, contemptuous _fear_.
Men.
But in some way he was connected with that strange thing outside the
everyday things.
26
How stupid of Eve to be vexed because she was told there was no need to
scrawl the addresses of the little cake boxes right across the labels.
Impossible now to ask her to come and play song accompaniments. Besides,
she was tired. Eve was tired because she did not really know how
glorious life was. In her life with the Greens in Wiltshire there was
nothing besides the Greens but the beautiful landscape. And the
landscape seen from the Greens’ windows must look commercial, in the
end. Eve was evidently beginning to tire of it. And they had worked so
hard all the morning cutting up the cake. Eve did not know that towards
the end of the morning she had thought of singing after lunch ...
feeling so strong and wanting to make a noise. Bohm’s songs. It was
better really to sing to one’s own accompaniment; only there was no one
to listen....
“Und wenn i dann mal wie-ie-d-er _komm_.”
a German girl, her face _strahlend mit Freude_--_radiant_ with joy ...
but _strahlend_ was more than radiant ... streaming--like
sunlight--shafts of sunlight. German women were not self-conscious. They
were full of joy and sorrow. Perhaps _happier_ than any other women.
Their mountains and woods and villages and towns were beautiful with
joy. They did not care what men thought or said. They were happy in
their beautiful country in their own way. Germany ... all washed with
poetry and music and song. “Freue dich des Lebens.” _Freue ... Freue
dich_ ... the words were like the rush of wings ... the flutter of a
fresh skirt round happy hurrying feet.
27
“What a melancholy ditty, chick.”
Miriam laughed and dropped into the accompaniment of Schubert’s “Ave
Maria.” “Listen, mother ... there was a monk who sang this so
beautifully in a church that he had to be stopped.” She played through
the “Ave Maria” and looked round. Mrs. Henderson was sitting stiffly in
a stiff straight chair with her hands twisted in her lap. “Oh bother,”
thought Miriam, “she’s feeling hysterical ... and it’s my turn this
time. What on earth shall I do?” The word had come up through the years.
Sarah had seen “attacks of hysteria....” Was she going to have one now
... laugh and cry and say dreadful things and then be utterly exhausted?
Good Lord, how fearful. And what was the good? She “couldn’t help it.”
That was why you had to be firm with hysterical people. But there was no
need, now. Everything was better. Two of them married; the boys ready to
look after everything. It was simply irritating ... and the sun just
coming round into the green of the conservatory....
She sat impatient, feeling young and strong and solid with joy on the
piano stool. Couldn’t mother see her, sitting there in a sort of blaze
of happy strength? She swung impatiently round to the keyboard and
glanced at the open album. There was silence in the room. Her heart beat
anxiously ... some German printer had printed those notes ... in pain
and illness perhaps--but pain and illness in _Germany_, not in this
dreadful little room where despair was shut in.... “Comus,” “The Seven
Ages of Man,” “The Arctic Regions,” beautiful bindings on the little old
inlaid table, things belonging to those sunny beginnings and ending with
that awful agonised figure sitting there silent. She cleared her throat
and stretched a hand out over the notes of a chord without striking it.
Something was gaining on her. Something awful and horrible.
“Play something cheerful, chickie,” said her mother, in a dreadful deep
trembling voice. Suddenly Miriam knew, in horror, that the voice wanted
to scream, to bellow. Bellow ... that huge, tall woman striding about on
the common at Worthing ... bellowing ... mad--madness. She summoned,
desperately, something in herself, and played a thing she disliked,
wondering why she chose it. Her hands played carefully, holding to the
rhythm, carefully avoiding pressure and emphasis. Nothing could happen
as long as she could keep on playing like that. It made the music seem
like a third person in the room. It was a new way of playing. She would
try it again when she was alone. It made the piece wonderful ...
traceries of tone shaping themselves one after another, intertwining,
and stopping against the air ... tendrils on a sunlit wall.... She had a
clear conviction of manhood ... that strange hard feeling that was
always twining between her and the things people wanted her to do and to
be. Manhood with something behind it that understood. This time it was
welcome. It served. She asserted it, sadly feeling it mould the lines of
her face.
28
The end of the piece was swift and tuneful and stormy, the only part she
had cared for hitherto. For a moment she was tempted to dash into it ...
her hands were so able and strong, so near to mastery of the piano after
that curious careful playing. But it would be cruel. She passed on to
the final chords--broad and even and simple. They suggested quiet music
going on, playing itself in the room. Getting up beaming and shy and
embarrassed she did not dare to look at the waiting figure, and looked
busily into the dark interiors of the bowls and vases along the
mantelpiece.... There was something in the waiting figure that did not
want to scream. Something exactly like herself.... At the bottom of one
of the deep bowls was a curling-pin. She giggled, catching her breath.
Mrs. Henderson glanced up at her and looked away, looking about the
room. That’s naughty, thought Miriam. She’s not trying; she’s being
naughty and tiresome. Perhaps she’s angry with me, and thinks I mean she
must just go on enduring.
“I can’t correct a misprint with a curling-pin.”
Mother believed in the misprint.... Talk on about misprints ... why was
it necessary to be insincere if one wanted to make anything happen? But
anything was better than saying, What is the matter? That would be just
as insincere, and impudent too.
“These cheap things are always so badly printed.”
“Oh!” ... Mother’s polite tone, trying to be interested. That was all
she’d had for years. All she’d ever had, from him. Miriam sat down
conversationally, in a long chair. She felt a numb sleepiness coming
over her, and stretched all her muscles lazily, to their full limit ...
mother, just mother in the room, perfect ease and security ... and
relaxed with a long yawn, feeling serenely awake. The little figure
ceased to be horrible.
“My life has been so useless,” said Mrs. Henderson suddenly.
Here it was ... a jolt ... an awful physical shock, jarring her body....
She braced herself and spoke quickly and blindly ... a network of
feeling vibrated all over to and fro, painfully.
“It only seems so to you,” she said, in a voice muffled by the beating
of her heart. Anything might happen--she had no power.... Mother--almost
killed by things she could not control, having done her duty all her
life ... doing thing after thing had not satisfied her ... being happy
and brave had not satisfied her. There was something she had always
wanted, for herself ... even mother....
Mrs. Henderson shuddered and sighed. Her pose relaxed a little.
“I might have done something for the poor.”
“Oh, yes? What things?” She had lived in a nightmare of ways and means,
helpless....
“I might have made clothes, sometimes....”
“That worries you, so that you can hardly bear it.”
“Yes.”
“It needn’t. I don’t mean the poor need not be helped. But you needn’t
have that feeling.”
“You understand it?”
“I feel it this moment, as you feel it.”
“Well?”
“You needn’t.”
Miriam held back her thoughts. Nothing mattered but to sit there holding
back thought and feeling and argument, if only she could without getting
angry.... There was something here, something decisive. This was what
she had been born for, if only she could hold on. She felt very old. No
more happiness ... the little house they sat in was a mockery, a
fiendish contrivance to hide agony. There was nothing in these little
houses in themselves, just indifference hiding miseries.
She sat forward conversationally. A rain of tears was coming down her
companion’s cheeks. To hold on ... hold on ... not to think or feel glad
or sorry ... it would be impudent to feel anything ... to hold on if the
tears went on for an hour ... treating them as if they were part of a
conversation.
“You understand me?”
“Of course.”
“You are the only one.”
The relieved voice ... steady, as she had known it correcting her in her
babyhood.
“I should be better if I could be more with you ...” oh Lord ...
impossible.
“You must be with me as much as you like.”
That was the thing. That was what must be done somehow.
“Mother! would you mind if I smoked a cigarette?”
It was suddenly possible, the unheard-of unconfessed ... suddenly easy
and possible.
“My dearest child!” Mrs. Henderson’s flushed face crimsoned
unresistingly. She was shocked and ashamed and half delighted. Miriam
gazed boldly, admiring and adoring. She felt she had embarked on her
first real flirtation and blessed the impulse that had that morning
transferred cigarettes and matches from her handbag to her hanging
pocket as a protection against suburban influence and a foretaste of her
appointment with Bob. She lit a cigarette with downcast lids and a
wicked smile, throwing a triumphant possessive glance at her mother as
it drew. The cigarette was divine. It was divine to smoke like this,
countenanced and beloved--scandalous and beloved.
29
Miriam ran all the way to the station. The gardens on either side of
Gipsy Lane were full of flowering shrubs massed up against laburnum and
May trees in flower ... fresh clean colours, pink and lilac and yellow
and everywhere new bright fresh green ... May. She flung herself into an
empty carriage of the three o’clock Vauxhall and Waterloo train, her
eyes filled with the maze of garden freshness and was carried off along
the edge of the common, streaming blazing green in the full sunlight,
dotted with gorse. Bob would not have to wait at Waterloo.... Further
down the line, towards Kew, was the mile of orchards, close on either
side of the line, thick with bloom.... Walls and houses began to appear.
She took her eyes from the window and the gardens and the common and the
imagined orchards passed before her eyes in the dusty enclosure. As she
gazed they seemed to pass through her, the freshness of the blossoms
backed by fresh greenery was a feeling, cool and fresh in her blood. The
growing intensity of this feeling stirred her to movement and
consciousness of the dust-filmed carriage, the smell of dust. Still
again, the sight of the spring flowing from her eyes, into them, out
through them, breathing with her breath, the feeling of spring in the
soft beating from head to foot of her blood, was all there was anywhere
out to the limits of space. The dusty carriage was a speck in the great
fresh tide, and the vision of Eve drifting in the carriage, in the
corner, opposite, with pale frightened face, saying the things she had
said just now, was no longer terrifying, though each thing she said came
clearly, a separate digging blow.
... “Dr. Ryman is giving her bromide ... she can’t sleep without it.”
Sleeplessness, insomnia ... she can’t see the spring ... why not; and
forget about herself.
“It’s nerves. He says we must behave as if there was nothing wrong with
her. There _is_ nothing wrong but nerves.”
That fevered frame, the burning hands and burning eyes looking at
everything in the wrong way, the brain seeking about, thinking first
this and then that ... nerves; and fat Dr. Ryman giving bromide ...
awful little bottles of bromide coming to the house wrapped up in white
paper. And everyone satisfied. “She’s in Dr. Ryman’s hands. Dr. Ryman is
treating her.” Mrs. Poole said Dr. Ryman was a very able man. What did
she mean? How did she know? Suburban faces; satisfied. “In the doctor’s
hands.” A large square house, a square garden, high walls, a delicate
wife always being ill, always going to that place in Germany--how did he
know, going about in a brougham--and he had gout ... how did he know
more than anyone else? ... bottles of bromide, visits, bills, and mother
going patiently on, trusting and feeling unhelped. Going on. People went
... mad. If she could not sleep she would go ... _mad_.... And everyone
behaving as if nothing were wrong.
And the vicar! Praying in the dining-room. Sarah had heard.... The
vicar, kneeling on the Turkey carpet ... praying. Couldn’t God see her,
on the carpet, praying and trying? And the vicar went away. And things
were the same and that night she would not sleep, just the same. Of
course not. Nothing was changed. It was all going on for her in some hot
wrong, shut-up way. Bromide and prayers.
30
And she blamed herself. If only she would not blame herself. “He’s one
in a thousand ... if only I could be as calm and cool as he is.” Why not
be calm and cool? She had gone too far ... “the end of my tether” ...
mother, a clever phrase like that, where had she got it? It was true.
Her suffering had taught her to find that awful phrase. She feared her
room, “loathed” it. She, always gently scolding exaggeration, used and
meant that violent word.
31
Money. That was why nothing had been done. “The doctor” had to be
afforded as she was so ill, but nothing had been done. Borrow from the
boys to take her away. “A bright place and a cool breeze.” She dreamed
of things--far-away impossible things. Had she told the others she
wanted them? They must be told. To-morrow she should know she was going
away. Nothing else in life mattered. Someone must pay, anyone. Newlands
must go. To-morrow and every day till they went away she should come
round to Harriett’s new house. Something for her to do every day.
The little bonneted figure ... happy, shocked, smiling. To go about with
her, telling her everything, dreadful things. The two of them going
about and talking and not talking, and going about.
32
Miriam moved uneasily to the mantelpiece. An unlit fire was laid neatly
in the grate. A ray of sunlight struck the black bars of the grate;
false uneasy sunlight. Two strange round-bowled long-necked vases stood
on the mantelpiece amongst the litter of Bob’s belongings. Dull blue and
green enamellings moving on a dark almost black background ... strange
fine little threads of gold.... She peered at them.
“My dear girl, do you like my vases?” Bob came and stood at her side.
“Yes--they’re funny and queer. I like them.”
“They’re clawzonny--Japanese clawzonny.” He took one of them up and
tapped it with his nail. It gave out a curious dull metallic ring.
Miriam passed her finger over the enamelled surface. It was softly
smooth and with no chill about it; as if the enamel were alive. She
marvelled at the workmanship, wondering how the gold wires were
introduced. They gleamed, veining over the curves of the vase.
Her uneasiness had gone. While they were looking at the vases it did not
seem to matter that she had consented, defying the whole world, to come
and see Bob’s bachelor chambers. She did not like them and wanted to be
gone. The curious dingy dustiness oppressed her, and there was an
emptiness. Fancy having breakfast in a room like this. Who looked after
a man’s washing when he lived alone? There must be some dreadful sort of
charwoman who came, and Bob had to speak kindly to her in his weary old
voice and go on day after day being here. But the vases stood there
alive and beautiful and he liked them. She turned to see his liking in
his face. As she turned his arm came round her shoulders and the angle
of his shoulder softly touched her head. Behind her head there was a
point of perfect rest; comfort, perfect. Australia; a young man in
shirt-sleeves, toiling and dreaming. Was that there still in his face?
“Are you happy, dear girl? Do you like being with old Bob in his den?”
He came nearer and spoke with a soft husky whisper.
“Let me go,” said Miriam wearily, longing to rest, longing for the
stairs they had come up and the open street in the sunshine and freedom.
She moved away and gathered up her gloves and scarf.