1
Miriam felt very proud of tall Miss Perne when she met her in the hall
at the beginning of her second term. Miss Perne had kissed her and held
one of her hands in two small welcoming ones, talking in a gleeful
voice. “Well, my dear,” she said at the end of a little pause, “you’ll
have a clear evening. The gels do not return until to-morrow, so you’ll
be able to unpack and settle yerself in comfortably. Come and sit with
us when ye’ve done. We’ll have supper in the sitting-room. M’yes.”
Smiling and laughing she turned eagerly away. “Of course, Miss Perne,”
said Miriam in a loud wavering voice, arresting her, “I enjoyed my
holidays; but I want to tell you how glad I am to be back here.”
“Yes, yes,” said Miss Perne hilariously, “we’re all glad.”
There was a little break in her voice, and Miriam saw that she would
have once more taken her in her arms.
“I like being here,” she said hoarsely, looking down, and supported
herself by putting two trembling fingers on the hall table. She was
holding back from the gnawing of the despair that had made her sick with
pain when she heard once more the jingle-jingle, plock-plock of the
North London trams. This strong feeling of pride in Miss Perne was
beating it down. “I’m very glad, my dear,” responded Miss Perne in a
quivering gleeful falsetto. ‘If you can’t have what you like you must
like what you have,’ said Miriam over and over to herself as she went
with heavy feet up the four flights of stairs.
2
A candle was already burning in the empty bedroom. “I’m back. I’m back.
It’s all over,” she gasped as she shut the door. “And a jolly good thing
too. This is my place. I can keep myself here and cost nothing and not
interfere with anybody. It’s just as if I’d never been away. It’ll
always be like that now. Short holidays, gone in a minute, and then the
long term. Getting out of touch with everything, things happening,
knowing nothing about them, going home like a visitor, and people
talking to you about things that are only theirs, now and not wanting to
hear about yours ... not about the little real everyday things that give
you an idea of anything but only the startling things that are not
important. You have to think of them though to make people
interested--awful, awful, awful, really only putting people further away
afterwards when you’ve told the thing and their interest dies down and
you can’t think of anything else to say. ‘Miss Perne’s hair is
_perfectly_ black--as black as coal, and she’s the eldest, just
_fancy_.’ Then everybody looks up. ‘My room’s downstairs, the room where
I teach, is in the basement. Directly breakfast is over----’
“‘Basement? What a pity! Basement rooms are awfully bad,’ and by the
time you have stopped them exclaiming and are just going to begin, you
see that they are fidgetting and thinking about something else.” ... Eve
had listened a little; because she wanted to tell everything about her
own place and had agreed that nobody really wanted to hear the
details.... The landscapes from the windows of the big country house,
all like pictures by Leader, the stables and laundry, a “laundry-maid”
who was sixty-five, the eldest pupil with seven muslin dresses in the
summer and being scolded because she swelled out after two helpings of
meat and two of pie and cream, and the youngest almost square in her
little covert coat and with a square face and large blue eyes and the
puppies who went out in a boat in Weston-super-Mare and were
sea-sick.... Eve did not seem to mind the family being common. Eve was
changing. “They are so jolly and strong. They enjoy life. They’re like
other people.” ... “D’you think that’s jolly? Would you like to be like
that--like other people?” “Rather. I mean to be.” “Do you?” “Of course
it can’t be done all at once. But it’s good for me to be there. It’s
awfully jolly to be in a house with no worry about money and plenty of
jolly food. Mrs. Green is so strong and clever. She can do anything.
She’s good for me, she keeps me going.” “Would you like to be like her?”
“Of course. They’re all so jolly--even when they’re old. Her sister’s
forty and she’s still pretty; not given up hope a bit.” “_Eve!_”
Eve had listened; but not agreed about the teaching, about making the
girls see how easy it was to get hold of the things and then letting
them talk about other things. “I see how you do it, and I see why the
girls obey you, of course.” Funny. Eve thought it was hard and inhuman.
That’s what she really thought.
Two newly purchased lengths of spotted net veiling were lying at the top
of her lightly packed trunk partly folded in uncrumpled tissue paper.
She took the crisp dye-scented net very gently into her hands, getting,
sitting alone on the floor by her trunk, the full satisfaction that had
failed her in the shop with Harriett’s surprise at her sudden desire
flowing over the counter and infecting the charm of baskets full of
cheap stockings and common bright-bordered handkerchiefs some of which
had borders so narrow and faint as really hardly to show when they were
scrumpled up. “Veiling, moddom? Yes, moddom,” the assistant had retorted
when she had asked for a veil. “Wot on _earth_ fower?” ... Without
answering Harriett she had bought two. There was no need to have bought
two. One could go back in the trunk as a store. They would be the
beginning of gradually getting a ‘suitable outfit,’ ‘things convenient
for you.’ She got up to put a veil in the little top drawer very
carefully; trying it across her face first. It almost obliterated her
features in the dim candle-light. It would be the greatest comfort on
winter walks, warm and like a rampart. ‘You’ve no idea how warm it keeps
you,’ she could say if anybody said anything. She arranged her clothes
very slowly and exactly in her half of the chest of drawers. “My
appointments ought to be an influence in the room--until all my things
are perfectly refined I shan’t be able to influence the girls as I
ought. I must begin it from now. At the end of the term I shall be
stronger. From strength to strength.” She wished she could go to bed at
once and prepare for to-morrow lying alone in the dark with the trams
going up and down outside as they would do night by night for the rest
of her life.
3
The nine o’clock post brought a letter from Harriett. Miriam carried it
upstairs after supper. Placing it unopened on a chair by the head of her
bed under the gas bracket she tried to put away the warm dizzy feeling
it brought her in an elaborate toilet that included the placing in
readiness of everything she would need for the morning. When all was
complete she was filled with a peace that promised to remain
indefinitely as long as everything she had to do should be carried out
with unhurried exactitude. It could be made to become the atmosphere of
her life. It would come nearer and nearer and she would live more and
more richly into it until she had grown like those women who were called
blessed.... She looked about her. The plain room gave her encouragement.
It became the scene of adventure. She tip-toed about it in her
night-gown. All the world would come to her there. Flora knew. Flora was
the same, sweeping the floors and going to bed in an ugly room with two
other servants; but she was in it alone sometimes and knew....
“One verse to-night will be enough.” Opening her Bible at random she
read, “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that
tribulation worketh patience.” Eagerly closing the volume she knelt down
smiling. “Oh do let tribulation work patience in me,” she murmured,
blushing, and got up staring gladly at the wall behind her bed. Shaking
her pillow lengthwise against the ironwork head of the bed, she
established herself with the bed-clothes neatly arranged, sitting up to
read Harriett’s letter before turning out the gas:
“Toosday morning--You’ve not gone yet, old tooral-ooral, but I’m writing
this because I know you’ll feel blue this evening, to tell you not to.
Becos, it’s _no_ time to Easter and becos here’s a great piece of news.
The last of the Neville Subscription Dances comes in the Easter holidays
and _you’re to come_. D’ye ’_ear_, Liza? Gerald says if you can’t stump
up he’s going to get you a ticket, and anyhow you’ve got to come. You’ll
enjoy it just as much as you did the first and probably more, because
most of the same people will be there. So Goodni’. Mind the lamp-post.
Harry. P.S.--Heaps of love, old silly. You’re just the same. It’s no
bally good pretending you’re not.”
Miriam felt her heart writhe in her breast. “Get thee behind me, Harry,”
she said, pushing the letter under the pillow and kneeling up to turn
out the gas. When she lay down again her mind was rushing on by
itself....
4
Harry doesn’t realise a bit how short holidays are. Easter--nothing.
Just one dance and never seeing the people again. I was right just now.
I was on the right track then. I must get back to that. It’s no good
giving way right or left; I must make a beginning of my own life.... I
wish I had been called “Patience” and had thin features.... Adam Street,
Adelphi.... “Now do you want to be dancing out there with one of those
young fellows, my dear girl--No? That’s a very good thing for me. I’m an
old buffer who can’t manage more than every other dance or so. But if
you do me the honour of sitting here while those young barbarians romp
their Lancers?... Ah, that is excellent--I want you to talk to me. You
needn’t mind me. Hey? What? I’ve known that young would-be
brother-in-law of yours for many years and this evening I’ve been
watching your face. Do you mind that, dear girl, that I’ve watched your
face? In all homage. I’m a staunch worshipper of womanhood. I’ve seen
rough life as well as suave. I’m an old gold-digger--Ustralia took many
years of my life; but it never robbed me of my homage for women....
“That’s a mystery to me. How you’ve allowed your young sister to
overhaul you. Perhaps you have a Corydon hidden away somewhere--or don’t
think favourably of the bonds of matrimony? Is that it?
“You are not one to be easily happy. But that is no reason why you
should say you pity anyone undertaking to pass through life at your
side. Don’t let your thoughts and ideas allow you to miss happiness.
Women are made to find and dispense happiness. Even intense women like
yourself. But you won’t find it an easy matter to discover your mate.
“Have you ever thought of committing your ideas to paper? There’s a book
called ‘The Confessions of a Woman.’ It had a great sale and its
composition occupied the authoress for only six weeks. You could write
in your holidays.
“Think over what I’ve told you, my dear, dear girl. And don’t forget old
Bob Greville’s address. You’re eighteen. He’s only eight; eight Adam
Street. The old Adam. Waiting to hear from the new Eve--whenever she’s
unhappy.”
He would be there again, old flatterer, with his steely blue eyes and
that strong little Dr. Conelly--Conelly who held you like a vice and
swung you round and kept putting you back from him to say things. “If
only you knew the refreshment it is to dance with a girl who can talk
sense and doesn’t _giggle_.... Yes yes yes, women are _physically_
incapable of keeping a secret.... Meredith, he’s the man. He understands
woman as no other writer----” And the little dark man--De Vigne--who
danced like a snake.... Tired? Divinely drowsy? That’s what I like.
Don’t talk. Let yourself go. Little snail, Harriett called him. And that
giant, Conelly’s friend, whirling you round the room like a gust, with
his eyes fixed far away in the distance and dropping you with the
chaperones at the end of the dance. If _he_ had suddenly said “Let
yourself go” ... He too would have become a snail. God has made life
ugly.
Dear Mr. Greville, dear _Bob_. Do you know anything about a writer
called Meredith? If you have one of his books I should like to read it.
No. Dear Bob, I’m simply wretched. I want to talk to you.
5
Footsteps sounded on the stairs--the servants, coming upstairs to bed.
No dancing for them. Work, caps and aprons. And those strange rooms
upstairs to sleep in that nobody ever saw. Probably Miss Perne went up
occasionally to look at them and see that they were all right; clean and
tidy.... They had to go up every night, carrying little jugs of water
and making no noise on the stairs, and come down every morning. They
were the servants--and there would never be any dancing. Nobody thought
about them.... They could not get away from each other, and cook....
To be a general servant would be very hard work. Perhaps impossible. But
there would be two rooms, the kitchen at the bottom of the house, and a
bedroom at the top, your own. It would not matter what the family was
like. You would look after them, like children, and be alone to read and
sleep.... Toothache. Cheap dentists; a red lamp “painless extractions”
... having to go there before nine in the morning, and be alone in a
cold room, the dentist doing what he thought best and coming back to
your work crying with pain, your head wrapped up in a black shawl.
Hospitals; being quite helpless and grateful for wrong treatment; coming
back to work, ill. Sinks and slops ... quinsey, all alone ... growths
... consumption.
Go to sleep. It would be better to think in the morning. But then this
clear first impression would be gone and school would begin and go on
from hour to hour through the term, mornings and afternoons and
evenings, dragging you along further and further and changing you,
months and months and years until it was too late to get back and there
was nothing ahead.
The thing to remember, to keep in mind all the time was to save
money--not to spend a single penny that could be saved, to be determined
about that so that when the temptation came you could just hang on until
it was past.
No fun in the holidays, no money spent on flowers and gloves and
blouses. Keeping stiff and sensible all the time. The family of the two
little Quaker girls had a home library, with lists, an inventory,
lending each other their books and talking about them, and albums of
pressed leaves and flowers with the Latin names, and went on wearing the
same plain clothes.... You had to be a certain sort of person to do
that.
It would spoil the holidays to be like that at home. Every penny must be
spent, if only on things for other people. Not spending would bring a
nice strong secret feeling and a horrid expression into one’s eyes.
The only way was to give up your family and stay at your work, like
Flora, and have a box of half-crowns in your drawer.... Spend and always
be afraid of “rainy days”--or save and never enjoy life at all.
But going out now and again in the holidays, feeling stiff and
governessy and just beginning to learn to be oneself again when it was
time to go back was not enjoying life ... your money was spent and
people forgot you and you forgot them and went back to your convent to
begin again.
Save, save. Sooner or later saving must begin. Why not at once. Harry,
it’s no good. I’m old already. I’ve got to be one of those who have to
give everything up.
I wonder if Flora is asleep?
That’s settled. Go to sleep. Get thee behind me. Sleep ... the dark cool
room. Air; we breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Everybody has air.
Manna. As much as you want, full measure, pressed down and running
over.... Wonderful. There is somebody giving things, whatever goes ...
something left.... Somebody seeing that things are not quite unbearable,
... but the pain, the pain all the time, mysterious black pain....
Into thy hands I commit my spirit. _In manus_ something.... You
understand if nobody else does. But _why_ must I be one of the ones to
give everything up? _Why_ do you make me suffer so?