1
Miriam extended herself on the drawing-room sofa which had been drawn up
at the end of the room under the open window.
The quintets of candles on the girandoles hanging on either side of the
high overmantel gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the centre of
the large room the chandelier, pulled low, held out in all directions
bulbs of softly tinted light.
In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pouring from a tall standard
lamp across the sheepskin hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle under
her arm fluttering pages on a music stand. The family sat grouped
towards her in a circle.
On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant light, Miriam was a
retreating loop in the circle of seated forms, all visible as she lay
with her eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and pilfer her own.
The darkness brimmed in from the window on her right. She could touch
the rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy stillness of the
garden.
“What shall I play?” said the guest.
“What have you there?”
“Gluck ... Klassische Stücke ... Cavatina.”
“Ah, Gluck,” said Mr. Henderson, smoothing his long knees with outspread
fingers.
“Have you got that Beethoven thing?” asked Sarah.
“Not here, Sally.”
“I saw it--on the piano--with chords,” said Sarah excitedly.
“Chords,” encouraged Miriam.
“Yes, I think so,” muttered Sarah taking up her crochet. “I daresay I’m
wrong,” she giggled, throwing out a foot and hastily withdrawing it.
“I can find it, dear,” chanted the guest.
Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crimsoned oval of Eve’s face
appeared inverted above her own. She poked a finger into one of the dark
eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whispered voicelessly, “Make her
play the Romance first and _then_ the Cavatina without talking in
between....”
Eve’s large soft mouth pursed a little, and Miriam watched steadily
until dimples appeared. “Go on, Eve,” she said, removing her hand.
“Shall I play the Beethoven first?” enquired the guest.
“Mm--and then the Cavatina,” murmured Miriam, as if half asleep, turning
wholly towards the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano scores.
2
She seemed to grow larger and stronger and easier as the thoughtful
chords came musing out into the night and hovered amongst the dark
trees. She found herself drawing easy breaths and relaxing completely
against the support of the hard friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was
listening....
After a while, everything was dissolved, past and future and present and
she was nothing but an ear, intent on the meditative harmony which stole
out into the garden.
3
When the last gently strung notes had ceased she turned from her window
and found Harriett’s near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling
slowly up the forehead.
“Wow,” mouthed Miriam.
Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and strained her eyebrow higher.
The piano introduction to the Cavatina drowned the comments on the
guest’s playing and the family relaxed once more into listening.
“Pink anemones, eh,” suggested Miriam softly.
Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approvingly.
“Pink anemones,” sighed Miriam, and turned to watch Margaret Wedderburn
standing in her full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a radiance
of red and golden light. Her heavily waving fair hair fell back towards
its tightly braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as death.
From between furry eyelashes her eyes looked steadfastly out, robbed of
their everyday sentimental expression.
As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the fine gold down covering
the cheeks and upper lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin and
firm large mouth and the steady arm that swept out in rich ‘cello-like
notes the devout theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity of
happiness.
4
... To-morrow the room would be lit and decked and clear. Amongst the
crowd of guests, he would come across the room, walking in his way....
She smiled to herself. He would come “sloping in” in his way, like a
shadow, not looking at anyone. His strange friend would be with him.
There would be introductions and greetings. Then he would dance with her
silently and not looking at her, as if they were strangers, and then be
dancing with someone else ... with smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes
and talking and answering and all the time looking about the room. And
then again with her, cool and silent and not looking. And presently she
would tell him about going away to Banbury Park.
5
Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable again as he had done when
they were alone by the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany....
“Play ‘Abide with me,’ Miriam; play ‘Abide with me.’” ...
To-morrow there would be another moment like that. He would say her name
suddenly, as he had done last week at the Babingtons’ dance, very low,
half-turning towards her. She would be ready this time and say his name
and move instead of being turned to stone. Confidently the music assured
her of that moment.
6
She lay looking quietly into his imagined face till the room had gone.
Then the face grew dim and far off and at last receded altogether into
darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was his own life. She would
never know it. However well they got to know each other they would
always be strangers. Probably he never thought about her when he was
alone. Only of Shakespeare and politics. What would he think if he knew
she thought of him? But he thought of her when he saw her. That was
utterly certain; the one thing certain in the world.... That day, coming
along Putney Hill with mother, tired and dull and trying to keep her
temper, passing his house, seeing him standing at his window, alone and
pale and serious. The sudden lightening of his face surprised her again,
violently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole world from end to
end. He did not know that he had looked like that. She had turned
swiftly from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow on her heart, that
one day he would kiss her. Not for years and years. But one day he would
bend his head. She wrenched herself from the thought, but it was too
late. She thanked heaven she had looked; she wished she had not; the
kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not touched her, it was like
the breath of the summer. Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt
the pavement. She remembered walking on, exulting with hanging head,
cringing close to the ivy which hung from the top of the garden wall,
sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and everyone who would never stand
first with Ted.
7
... There were girls who let themselves be kissed for fun.... Playing
“Kiss in the Ring,” being kissed by someone they did not mean to always
be with, all their life ... how sad and dreadful. Why did it not break
their hearts?
8
Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug, being thanked and praised.
Her brown violin hung amongst the folds of her skirt.
“People _do_ like us,” mused Miriam, listening to the peculiar sympathy
of the family voice.
Meg was there, away from her own home, happy with them, the front door
shut, their garden and house all round her and her strange luggage
upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice Meg....
9
After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat in a low carpet chair at a
window in the long bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a morning of
blazing sunlight and bright blue. She had just come up through the cool
house from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with Harriett. A little
bunch of pink anemones she had picked for herself were set in a tumbler
on the wash-hand-stand.
She had left the door open to hear coming faintly up from the far-away
drawing-room the tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and Eve were
stretching the drugget.
On her knee lay her father’s cigarette-making machine and a parcel of
papers and tobacco. An empty cigarette tin stood upon the window-sill.
She began packing tobacco into the groove of the machine, distributing
and pressing it lightly with the tips of her fingers, watching as she
worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and the shining of their
green stalks through the water. They were, she reflected, a little too
much out. In the sun they would have come out still more. They would
close up at night unless the rooms grew very hot. Slipping the paper
evenly into the slot she shut the machine and turned the roller. As the
sound of the loosely working cogs came up to her she revolted from her
self-imposed task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It would use up
her happiness too stupidly.
She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that she should smoke the
single cigarette herself. Why not? Why had she never yet smoked one? She
glanced at the slowly swinging door. No one would come. She was alone on
the top floor. Everyone was downstairs and busy. The finished cigarette
lay on her knee. Taking it between her fingers she pressed a little
hanging thread of tobacco into place. The cigarette felt pleasantly
plump and firm. It was well made. As she rose to get matches the mowing
machine sounded suddenly from the front lawn. She started and looked out
of the window, concealing the cigarette in her hand. It was the gardener
with bent shoulders pushing with all his might. With some difficulty she
unhitched the phosphorescent match-box from its place under the
gas-bracket and got back into her low chair, invisible from the lawn.
The cool air flowed in garden-scented. She held the cigarette between
two fingers. The match hissed and flared as she held it carefully below
the sill, and the flame flowed towards her while she set the paper
alight. Raising the cigarette to her lips she blew gently outwards, down
through the tobacco. The flame twisted and went out, leaving the paper
charred. She struck another match angrily, urging herself to draw, and
drew little panting breaths with the cigarette well in the flame. It
smoked. Blowing out the match she looked at the end of the cigarette. It
was glowing all over and a delicate little spiral of smoke rose into her
face. Quickly she applied her lips again and drew little breaths,
opening her mouth wide between each breath and holding the cigarette
sideways away from her. The end glowed afresh with each breath. The
paper charred evenly away and little flecks of ash fell about her.
10
A third of the whole length was consumed. Her nostrils breathed in
smoke, and as she tasted the burnt flavour the sweetness of the
unpolluted air all around her was a new thing. The acrid tang in her
nostrils intoxicated her. She drew more boldly. There was smoke in her
mouth. She opened it quickly, sharply exhaling a yellow cloud oddly
different from the grey spirals wreathing their way from the end of the
cigarette. She went on drawing in mouthful after mouthful of smoke,
expelling each quickly with widely-opened lips, turning to look at the
well-known room through the yellow haze and again at the sky, which drew
nearer as she puffed at it. The sight of the tree-tops scrolled with her
little clouds brought her a sense of power. She had chosen to smoke and
she was smoking, and the morning world gleamed back at her....
11
The morning gleamed. She would choose her fate. It should be amongst
green trees and sunshine. That daunted lump who had accepted the post at
Banbury Park had nothing to do with her. Morning gladness flooded her,
and her gladness of the thought of the evening to come quickened as it
had done last night into certainty.
She burned the last inch of the cigarette in the grate, wrapped with
combings from the toilet-tidy in a screw of paper. When all was consumed
she carefully replaced the summer bundle of ornamental mohair behind the
bars.
Useless to tell anyone. No one would believe she had not felt ill. She
found it difficult to understand why anyone should feel sick from
smoking. Dizzy perhaps ... a little drunk. Pater’s tobacco was very
strong, some people could not smoke it.... She had smoked a whole
cigarette of strong tobacco and liked it. Raising her arms above her
head she worked them upwards, stretching every muscle of her body. No,
she was anything but ill.
Leaving the window wide she went on to the landing. The smell of tobacco
was everywhere. She flung into each room in turn, throwing up windows
and leaving doors propped ajar.
Harriett coming up the garden with a basket of cut flowers saw her at
the cook’s bedroom window.
“What on earth you doing thayer!” she shrieked putting down her basket.
Hanging from the window Miriam made a trumpet of her hands.
“Something blew in!”
12
All preparations for the evening were made and the younger members of
the household were having a late tea in the breakfast-room. “We’ve done
the alcoves,” said Sarah explosively, “in case it rains.”
Nan Babington sat up in her long chair to bring her face round to the
deep bay where Sarah stood.
“My _dear_! Seraphina! And she’s doing the pink bows! Will some saint
take my cup? Ta.... My dear, how _perfectly_ screaming.”
Miriam raised her head from the petal-scattered table, where she lay
prone side by side with Harriett, to watch Nan sitting up in her firm
white dress beaming at Sarah through her slanting eye.
“What flowers you going to wear, Nan?”
Nan patted her sleek slightly Japanese-looking hair. “_Ah_ ... splashes
of scarlet, my dear. Splashes of scarlet. One in my hair and one here.”
She patted the broad level of her enviable breast towards the left
shoulder.
“Almost _on_ the shoulder, you know--arranged flat, _can’t_ be squashed
and showing as you dance.”
“Geraniums! Oom. You’ve got awfully good taste. What a frightfully good
effect. Bright red and bright white. Clean. Go on, Nan.”
“_Killing_,” pursued Nan. “Tom said at breakfast with his mouth
absolutely _full_ of sweet-bread, ‘it’ll rain’--growled, you know, with
his mouth _crammed_ full. ‘Never mind, Tommy,’ said Ella with the
_utmost_ promptitude, ‘they’re sure to have the alcoves.’ ‘Oomph,’
growled Tommy, pretending not to care. _Naughty_ Tommy, naughty,
_naughty_ Tommy!”
“Any cake left?” sighed Miriam, sinking back amongst her petals and
hoping that Nan’s voice would go on.
“You girls are the most adorable individuals I ever met.... Did anybody
see Pearlie going home this afternoon?”
Everyone chuckled and waited.
“My _dears_! My _dears_!! Bevan _dragged_ me along to the end of the
pavilion to see him enter up the handicaps with his new automatic
pen--_awfully_ smashing--and I was just hobbling the last few yards past
the apple trees when we _saw_ Pearlie hand-in-hand with the Botterford
boys, prancing along the asphalt court--_prancing_, my dears!”
Miriam and Harriett dragged themselves up to see. Nan bridled and swayed
from listener to listener, her wide throat gleaming as she sang out her
words.
“Prancing--with straggles of grey hair sticking out and that _tiny_
sailor hat cocked _almost_ on to her nose. My dear, you sh’d’ve _seen_
Bevan! He put up his eyeglass, my dears, for a _fraction_ of a second,”
Nan’s head went up--“Madame Pompadour,” thought Miriam--and her slanting
eyes glanced down her nose, “and dropped it, clickety-click. You sh’d’ve
_seen_ the expression on his angelic countenance.”
“I say, she _is_ an awful little creature, isn’t she?” said Miriam,
watching Eve bend a crimson face over the tea-tray on the hearthrug.
“She put her boots on the pavilion table this afternoon when all those
men were there--about a mile high they are--with tassels. Why _does_ she
go on like that?”
“Men like that sort of thing,” said Sarah lightly.
“Sally!”
“They do.... I believe she drinks.”
“Sally! My _dear_!”
“I believe she _does_. She’s always having shandygaff with the men.”
“Oh, well, perhaps she doesn’t,” murmured Eve.
“Chuck me a lump of sugar, Eve.”
Miriam subsided once more amongst the rose petals.
“Bevvy thinks I oughtn’t to dance.”
“Did he say so?”
“Of course, my dear. But old Wyman said I could, every third, except the
Lancers.”
“You sh’d’ve seen Bevvy’s face. ‘Brother Tommy doesn’t object,’ I said.
‘He’s going to look after me!’ ‘_Is_ he?’ said Bevvy in his _most_
superior manner.”
“What a fearful scrunching you’re making,” said Harriett, pinching
Miriam’s nose.
“Let’s go and dress,” said Miriam, rolling off the table.
13
“How many times has she met him?” asked Miriam as they went through the
hall.
“I dunno. Not many.”
“I think it’s simply hateful.”
“Mimmy!” It was Nan’s insinuating voice.
“Coming,” called Miriam. “And, you know, Tommy needn’t think he can
carry on with _Meg_ in an alcove.”
“_What_ would she think? Let’s go and tell Meg she must dress.”
“Mimmy!”
Miriam went back and put her head round the breakfast-room door.
“Let me see you when you’re dressed.”
“Why?”
“I want to kiss the back of your neck, my dear; love kissing people’s
necks.”
Miriam smiled herself vaguely out of the room, putting away the
unpleasant suggestion.
“I wish I’d got a dress like Nan’s,” she said, joining Harriett in the
dark lobby.
“I say, somebody’s been using the ‘Financial Times’ to cut up flowers
on. It’s all wet.” Harriett lifted the limp newspaper from the
marble-topped coil of pipes and shook it.
“Hang it up somewhere.”
“Where? Everything’s cleared up.”
“Stick it out of the lavatory window and pull the window down on it.”
“Awri, you hold the door open.”
Miriam laughed as Harriett fell into the room.
“Blooming boot-jack.”
“Is it all right in there? Are all the pegs clear? Is the washing-basin
all right?”
A faint light came in as Harriett pushed up the frosted pane.
“Here’s a pair of boots all over the floor and your old Zulu hat hanging
on a peg. The basin’s all right except a perfectly foul smell of
nicotine. It’s pater’s old feather.”
“That doesn’t matter. The men won’t mind that. My old hat can stay.
There are ten pegs out here and all the slab, and there’s hardly
anything on the hall stand. That’s it. Don’t cram the window down so as
to cut the paper. That’ll do. Come on.”
“I wish I had a really stunning dress,” remarked Miriam, as they tapped
across the wide hall.
“You needn’t.”
The drawing-room door was open. They surveyed the sea of drugget, dark
grey in the fading light. “_Pong_-pong-_pong_ de doodle,
_pong_-pong-_pong_ de doodle,” murmured Miriam as they stood swaying on
tiptoe in the doorway.
“Let’s have the gas and _two_ candlesticks, Harry, on the dressing-table
under the gas.”
“All right,” mouthed Harriett in a stage whisper, making for the stairs
as the breakfast-room door opened.
It was Eve. “I say, Eve, I’m _scared_,” said Miriam, meeting her.
Eve giggled triumphantly.
“Look here. I shan’t come down at first. I’ll play the first dance. I’ll
get them all started with ‘Bitter-Sweet.’”
“Don’t worry, Mim.”
“My _dear_, I simply don’t know how to face the evening.”
“You do,” murmured Eve. “You are proud.”
“What of?”
“You know quite well.”
“What?”
“He’s the nicest boy we know.”
“But he’s not my boy. Of course not. You’re insane. Besides, I don’t
know who you’re talking about.”
“Oh, well, we won’t talk. We’ll go and arrange your chignon.”
“I’m going to have simply twists and perhaps a hair ornament.”
14
Miriam reached the conservatory from the garden door and set about
opening the lid of the grand piano. She could see at the far end of the
almost empty drawing-room a little ruddy thick-set bearded man with a
roll of music under his arm talking to her mother. He was standing very
near to her, surrounding her with his eager presence. “Mother’s
wonderful,” thought Miriam, with a moment’s adoration for Mrs.
Henderson’s softly-smiling girlish tremulousness. Listening to the man’s
hilarious expostulating narrative voice she fumbled hastily for her
waltz amongst the scattered piles of music on the lid of the piano.
As she struck her opening chords she watched her mother gently quell the
narrative and steer the sturdy form towards a group of people hesitating
in the doorway. “Have they had coffee?” she wondered anxiously. “Is Mary
driving them into the dining-room properly?” Before she had reached the
end of her second page everyone had disappeared. She paused a moment and
looked down the brightly lit empty room--the sight of the cold sheeny
drugget filled her with despair. The hilarious voice resounded in the
hall. There couldn’t be many there yet. Were they all looking after them
properly? For a moment she was tempted to leave her piano and go and
make some desperate attempt at geniality. Then the sound of the
pervading voice back again in the room and brisk footsteps coming
towards the conservatory drove her back to her music. The little man
stepped quickly over the low moulding into the conservatory.
“Ah, Mariamne,” he blared gently.
“Oh, Bennett, you angel, how _did_ you get here so early?” responded
Miriam, playing with zealous emphasis.
“Got old Barrowgate to finish off the out-patients,” he said with a
choke of amusement.
“I say, Mirry, don’t you play. Let me take it on. You go and ply the
light fantastic.” He laid his hands upon her shoulders and burred the
tune she was playing like a muted euphonium over the top of her head.
“No. It’s all right. Go and get them dancing. Get over the
awfulness--_you_ know.”
“Get over the awfulness, eh? Oh, I’ll get over the awfulness.”
“Ssh--are there many there?”
They both looked round into the drawing-room.
Nan Babington was backing slowly up and down the room supported by the
outstretched arms of Bevan Seymour, her black head thrown back level
with his, the little scarlet knot in her hair hardly registering the
smooth movements of her invisible feet.
“They seem to have begun,” shouted Bennett in a whisper as Harriett and
her fiancé swung easily circling into the room and were followed by two
more couples.
“Go and dance with Meg. She only knows Tommy Babington.”
“Like the lid up?”
15
Miriam’s rhythmic clangour doubled its resonance in the tiled
conservatory as the great lid of the piano went up.
“Magnifique, Mirry, parfaitement magnifique,” intoned Tommy Babington,
appearing in the doorway with Meg on his arm.
“Bonsoir, Tomasso.”
“You are like an expressive metronome.”
“Oh--nom d’un pipe.”
“You would make a rhinoceros dance.”
Adjusting his pince-nez he dexterously seized tall Meg and swung her
rapidly in amongst the dancers.
“Sarah’ll say he’s had a Turkish bath,” thought Miriam, recalling the
unusual clear pallor of his rather overfed face. “Pleated shirt. That’s
to impress Meg.”
She felt all at once that the air seemed cold. It was not like a summer
night. How badly the ferns were arranged. Nearly all of them together on
the staging behind the end of the piano; not enough visible from the
drawing-room. Her muscles were somehow stiffening into the wrong mood.
Presently she would be playing badly. She watched the forms circling
past the gap in the curtains and slowed a little. The room seemed fairly
full.
“That’s it--perfect, Mim,” signalled Harriett’s partner, swinging her
by. She held to the fresh rhythm and passing into a tender old waltz
tune that she knew by heart gave herself to her playing. She need not
watch the feet any longer. She could go on for ever. She knew she was
not playing altogether for the dancers. She was playing to two hearers.
But she could not play that tune if they came. They would be late. But
they must be here now. Where were they? Were they having coffee?
Dancing? She flung a terrified glance at the room and met the cold eye
of Bevan Seymour. She would not look again. The right feeling for the
dreamy old tune came and went uncontrollably. Why did they not come?
Presently she would be cold and sick and done for, for the evening. She
played on, harking back to the memory of the kindly challenge in the
eyes of her brother-in-law to be, dancing gravely with a grave
Harriett--fearing her ... writing in her album:
“She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts--
Which terminated all.”
... cold, calm little Harriett. Her waltz had swung soft and low and the
dancers were hushed. Only Tommy Babington’s voice still threaded the
little throng.
Someone held back the near curtain. A voice said quietly, “Here she is.”
16
Ted’s low, faintly-mocking voice filled the conservatory.
He was standing very near her, looking down at her with his back to the
gay room. Yesterday’s dream had come more than true, at once, at the
beginning of the evening. He had come straight to her with his friend,
not dancing, not looking for a partner. They were in the little green
enclosure with her. The separating curtains had fallen back into place.
Behind the friend who stood leaning against the far end of the piano,
the massed fernery gleamed now with the glow of concealed fairy lamps.
She had not noticed it before. The fragrance of fronds and moist warm
clumps of maidenhair and scented geraniums inundated her as she glanced
across at the light falling on hard sculptured waves of hair above a
white handsome face.
Her music held them all, protecting the wordless meeting. Her last
night’s extremity of content was reality, being lived by all three of
them. It centred in herself. Ted stood within it, happy in it. The
friend watched, witnessing Ted’s confession. Ted had said nothing to him
about her, about any of them, in his usual way. But he was disguising
nothing now that he had come.
At the end of her playing she stood up faintly dizzy, and held out
towards Max Sonnenheim’s familiar strangeness hands heavy with happiness
and quickened with the sense of Ted’s touch upon her arm. The swift
crushing of the strange hands upon her own, steadied her as the curtains
swung wide and a group of dancers crowded in.
17
“Don’t tell N.B. we’ve scrubbed the coffin, Miriorama--she’ll sit there
all the evening.”
“That was my sister and my future brother-in-law,” said Miriam to Max
Sonnenheim as Harriett and Gerald ran down the steps and out into the
dark garden.
“Your sister and brother-in-law,” he responded thoughtfully.
He was standing at her side at the top of the garden steps staring out
into the garden and apparently not noticing the noisy passers-by. If
they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not been dancing, would join
them. She did not want that. She would put off her dance with Ted until
later. The next dance she would play herself and then perhaps dance
again with Max. Once more from the strange security of his strongly
swinging arms she would meet Ted’s eyes, watching and waiting. She must
dance once more with Max. She had never really danced before. She would
go to Ted at last and pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not
yet.
“I will show you the front garden,” she said, running down the steps.
He joined her and they walked silently round the side of the house,
through the kitchen yard and out into the deserted carriage drive. She
thought she saw people on the front lawn and walked quickly, humming a
little tune, on down the drive.
Max crunched silently along a little apart from her, singing to himself.
18
Both sides of the front gate were bolted back and their footsteps
carried them straight out on to the asphalted avenue extending right and
left, a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps out in the
roadway. With a sudden sense of daring, Miriam determined to assume the
deserted avenue as part of the garden.
The gate left behind, they made their way slowly along the high leafy
tunnel.
They would walk to the end of the long avenue and back again. In a
moment she would cease humming and make a remark. She tasted a new sense
of ease, walking slowly along with this strange man without “making
conversation.” He was taking her silence for granted. All her experience
so far had been of companions whose uneasiness pressed unendurably for
speech, and her talking had been done with an irritated sense of the
injustice of aspersions on “women’s tongues,” while no man could endure
a woman’s silence ... even Ted, except when dancing; no woman could,
except Minna, in Germany. Max must be foreign, of course, German--of
_course_. She could, if she liked, talk of the stars to him. He would
neither make jokes nor talk science and want her to admire him, until
all the magic was gone. Her mood expanded. He had come just at the right
moment. She would keep him with her until she had to face Ted. He was
like a big ship towing the little barque of her life to its harbour.
His vague humming rose to a little song. It was German. It was the
Lorelei. For a moment she forgot everything but pride in her ability to
take her share in both music and words.
“You understand German!” he cried.
They had reached the end of the avenue and the starlit roadway opened
ahead, lined with meadows.
“Ach, wie schön,” breathed Max.
“Wie schön.” Miriam was startled by the gay sound of her own voice. It
sounded as if she were alone, speaking to herself. She looked up at the
spangled sky. The freshening air streamed towards them from the meadows.
“We _must_ go back,” she said easily, turning in again under the trees.
The limes seemed heavily scented after their breath of the open. They
strolled dreamily along keeping step with each other. They would make it
a long quiet way to the gate. Miriam felt strangely invisible. It was as
if in a moment a voice would come from the clustering lime trees or from
the cluster of stars in the imagined sky.
“Wie süss,” murmured Max, “ist treue Liebe.”
“How dear,” she translated mentally, “is true love.” Yes, that was it,
that was true, the German phrase. Ted was dear, dear. But so far away.
Coming and going, far away.
“Is it?” she said with a vague, sweet intonation, to hear more.
“Wie süss, wie süss,” he repeated firmly, flinging his arm across her
shoulders.
The wildly shimmering leafage rustled and seemed to sing. She walked on
horrified, cradled, her elbow resting in her companion’s hand as in a
cup. She laughed, and her laughter mingled with the subdued lilting of
the voice close at her side. Ted was waiting somewhere in the night for
her. Ted. Ted. Not this stranger. But why was he not bold like this?
Primly and gently she disengaged herself.
She and Ted would walk along through the darkness and it would shout to
them. Day-time colours seemed to be shining through the night.... She
turned abruptly to her companion.
“Aren’t the lime trees jolly?” she said conversationally.
“You will dance again with me?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“I must go so early.”
“Must you?”
“To-morrow morning early I go abroad.”
19
“Hullo!”
“Where were _you_ all that last dance?”
Nan Babington’s voice startled her as they came into the bright hall
through the open front door.
She smiled towards Nan, sitting drearily with a brilliant smile on her
face watching the dancers from a long chair drawn up near the
drawing-room door, and passed on into the room with her hand on her
partner’s arm. They had missed a dance and an interval. It must have
been a Lancers and now there was another waltz.
Several couples were whirling gravely about. Amongst them she noted
Bevan Seymour, upright and slender, dancing with Harriett with an air of
condescending vivacity, his bright teeth showing all the time. Her eyes
were ready for Ted. She was going to meet his for the first time--just
one look, and then she would fly for her life anywhere, to anybody. And
he would find her and make her look at him again. Ted. He was not there.
People were glancing at her, curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and
felt their radiance stream through her, flooding her with strength from
head to foot. How battered and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and
sick, stamped with a pallor of sickness. How she pitied them all.
“Let us take a short turn,” said Max, and his arms came around her. As
they circled slowly down the length of the room she stared at his black
shoulder a few inches from her eyes. His stranger’s face was just above
her in the bright light; his strange black-stitched glove holding her
mittened hand. His arms steadied her as they neared the conservatory.
“Let us go out,” she heard him say, and her footsteps were guided across
the moulding, her arm retained in his. Meg Wedderburn was playing and
met her with her sentimental smile. In the gloom at her side, just
beyond the shaded candle, stood Ted ready to turn the music, his
disengaged hand holding the bole of a tall palm. He dropped his hands
and turned as they passed him, almost colliding with Miriam. “Next dance
with me,” he whispered neatly. “Will you show me your coffin?” asked Max
as they reached the garden steps.
“It’s quite down at the end beyond the kitchen garden.”
20
“There are raspberry canes all along here, on both sides--trailing all
over the place; the gardener puts up stakes and things but they manage
to trail all over the place.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Some of them are that pale yellow kind, the colour of champagne. You
can just see how they trail. Isn’t it funny how dark they are, and yet
the colour’s there all the time, isn’t it? They are lovely in the day,
lovely leaves and great big fruit, and in between are little squatty
gooseberry bushes, all kinds, yellow and egg-shaped like plums, and
little bright green round ones and every kind of the ordinary red kind.
Do you know the little bright green ones, quite bright green when
they’re ripe, like bright green Chartreuse?”
“No. The green Chartreuse of course I know. But green ripe gooseberries
I have not seen.”
“I expect you only know the unripe green ones they make April fool of.”
“April fool?”
“I mean _gooseberry_ fool. Do you know why men are like green
gooseberries?”
“No. Why are they? Tell me.”
“Perhaps you would not like it. We are passing the apple trees now;
quarendens and stibbards.”
“Tell me. I shall like what you say.”
“Well, it’s because women can make fools of them whenever they like.”
Max laughed; a deep gurgling laugh that echoed back from the wall in
front of them.
“We are nearly at the end of the garden.”
“I think you would not make a man a fool. No?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“You have not thought much about men.”
“I don’t know.”
“But they, they have thought about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“You do not care, perhaps?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Here’s the coffin. I’m afraid
it’s not very comfortable. It’s so low.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an overturned seedling box. There’s grass all round. I wonder
whether it’s damp,” said Miriam suddenly invaded by a general
uncertainty.
“Oh, we will sit down, it will not be damp. Your future brother-in-law
has not scrubbed also the ivy on the wall,” he pursued as they sat down
on the broad low seat, “it will spoil your blouse.”
Miriam leaned uncomfortably against the intervening arm.
“Isn’t it a perfectly lovely night?” she said.
“I feel that you would not make of a man a fool....”
“Why not?”
“I feel that there is no poison in you.”
“What _do_ you mean?” People ... poisonous ... What a horrible idea.
“Just what I say.”
“I know in a way. I think I know what you mean.”
“I feel that there is no poison in you. I have not felt that before with
a woman.”
“Aren’t women awful?” Miriam made a little movement of sympathy towards
the strange definiteness at her side.
“I have thought so. But you are not as the women one meets. You have a
soul serene and innocent. With you it should be well with a man.”
“I don’t know,” responded Miriam. “Is he telling me I am a fool?” she
thought. “It’s true, but no one has the courage to tell me.”
“It is most strange. I talk to you here as I will. It is simple and
fatal”; the supporting arm became a gentle encirclement and Miriam’s
heart beat softly in her ears. “I go to-morrow to Paris to the branch of
my father’s business that is managed there by my brother. And I go then
to New York to establish a branch there. I shall be away then, perhaps a
year. Shall I find you here?”
A quick crunching on the gravel pathway just in front of them made them
both hold their breath to listen. Someone was standing on the grass near
Max’s side of the coffin. A match spat and flared and Miriam’s heart was
shaken by Ted’s new, eager, frightened voice. “Aren’t you _ever_ going
to dance with me again?”
She had seen the whiteness of his face and his cold, delicate, upright
figure. In spirit she had leapt to her feet and faltered his name. All
the world she knew had fallen into newness. This was certainty. Ted
would never leave her. But it was Max who was standing up and saying
richly in the blackness left by the burnt-out match, “All in good time,
Burton. Miss Miriam is engaged to me for this dance.” Her faint “of
course, Ted,” was drowned in the words which her partner sang after the
footsteps retreating rapidly along the gravel path: “We’re just coming!”
“I suppose they’ve begun the next dance,” she said, rising decisively
and brushing at her velvet skirt with trembling hands.
“Our dance. Let us go and dance our dance.”
They walked a little apart steadily along up through the kitchen garden,
their unmatched footsteps sounding loudly upon the gravel between
remarks made by Max. Miriam heard them and heard the voice of Max. But
she neither listened nor responded.
She began to talk and laugh at random as they neared the lawn lit by the
glaring uncurtained windows.
Consulting his scrutinising face as they danced easily in the as yet
half-empty room, he humming the waltz which swung with their movement,
she found narrow, glinting eyes looking into her own; strange eyes that
knew all about a big business and were going to Paris and New York. His
stranger’s face was going away, to be washed and shaved innumerable
times, keeping its assurance in strange places she knew nothing about.
Here, just for these few hours, laughing at Ted. A phrase flashed
through her brain, “He’s brought Ted to his senses.” She flushed and
laughed vaguely and danced with a feeling of tireless strength and
gaiety. She knew the phrase was not her own. It was one Nan Babington
could have used. It excited her. It meant that real things were going to
happen, she could bear herself proudly in the room. She rippled
complacently at Max. The room was full of whirling forms, swelling and
shrinking as they crossed and recrossed the line between the clear
vision rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright confusion.
Swift, rhythmic movement, unbroken and unjostled, told her how well they
were dancing. She was secure, landed in life, dancing carelessly out and
out to a life of her own.
“I go; I see you again in a year,” said Max suddenly, drawing up near
the door where Mrs. Henderson stood sipping coffee with Sarah and
Bennett.
“Where is Burton?” he asked in the midst of his thanks and leave-taking.
They all hesitated. Miriam suddenly found herself in the presence of a
tribunal.
Bennett’s careless “Oh, he’s gone; couldn’t stay,” followed her as she
flung upstairs to Meg Wedderburn’s empty room. Why had her mother looked
so self-conscious and Sarah avoided her eye ... standing there like a
little group of conspirators.
People were always inventing things. “Bother--damnational silliness,”
she muttered, and began rapidly calculating. Ted gone away. Little Ted
hurt and angry. To-morrow. Perhaps he wouldn’t come. If he didn’t she
wouldn’t see him before she went. The quiet little bead of ruby shaded
gas reproached her. Meg’s eyes would be sad and reproachful in this
quiet neatness. Terror seized her. She wouldn’t see him. He had finished
his work at the Institution. It was the big Norwich job next week.