1
“You know I’m funny. I never talk to young ladies.”
Miriam looked leisurely at the man walking at her side along the
grass-covered cliff; his well-knit frame, his well-cut blue serge, the
trimness of collar and tie, his faintly blunted regular features, clean
ruddy skin and clear expressionless German blue eyes. Altogether he was
rather like a German, with his red and white and gold and blue colouring
and his small military moustache. She could imagine him snapping
abruptly in a booming chest voice, “Mit Frauen spreche ich über_haupt_
nicht.” But he spoke slowly and languidly, he was an Englishman and
somehow looked like a man who was accustomed to refined society. It was
true he never spoke at the boarding-house meals, excepting an occasional
word with his friend, and he had been obliged to join their Sunday walk
because his friend was so determined to come. Still he was not awkward
or clumsy either at table or now. Only absolutely quiet, and then saying
such a startling rather rude thing quite suddenly. One could stare at
him to discover the reason of his funny speech, because evidently he was
quite common, not a bounder but quite a common young man, speaking of
women as ‘young ladies.’ Then how on earth did he manage to look
distinguished. Oppressed and ill at ease she turned away to the
far-reaching green levels and listened to the sea tumbling heavily far
below against the cliffs. Away ahead Eve and her little companion
walking jauntily along, his tight dust-coloured curls exposed to the
full sunlight, his cane swinging round as he talked and laughed, seemed
to be turning inland towards the downs. They had seen Ovingdean in the
distance, stupid Ovingdean that everybody had talked about at breakfast,
and were finding the way. How utterly silly. They did not see how
utterly silly it was to make up your mind to “go to Ovingdean” and then
go to Ovingdean. How utterly silly everybody and everything was.
Eve looked very straight and slim and was walking happily, bending her
head a little as she always did when she was listening. Their backs
looked happy. And here she was forced to walk with this nice-looking
strange solid heavyish man and his cold insulting remark; almost the
only thing he had said since they had been alone together. It had been
rather nice walking along the top of the cliff side by side saying
nothing. They walked exactly in step and his blunted features looked
quite at ease; and she had gone easily along disposing of him with a
gentle feeling of proprietorship, and had watched the gentle swing and
movement of the landscape as they swung along. It seemed secure and
painless and was gradually growing beautiful, and then suddenly she felt
that he must have his thoughts, men were always thinking, and would be
expecting her to be animated and entertaining. Lumpishly she had begun
about the dullness of the beach and promenade on Sundays and the need to
find something to do between dinner and tea--lies. All conversation was
a lie. And somehow she had led him to his funny German remark.
“How do you mean?” she said at last anxiously. It was very rude
intruding upon him like that. He had spoken quite simply. She ought to
have laughed and changed the conversation. But it was no laughing
matter. He did not know what he was saying or how horribly it hurt. A
worldly girl would chaff and make fun of him. It was detestable to make
fun of men; just a way of flirting. But Sarah said that being rude to
men or talking seriously to them was flirting just as much. Not true.
Not true. And yet it was true, she did want to feel happy walking along
with this man, have some sort of good understanding with him, him as a
man with her as a woman. Was that flirting? If so she was just a more
solemn underhand flirt than the others, that was all. She felt very sad.
Anyhow she had asked her question now. She looked at his profile.
Perhaps he would put her off in some way. Then she would walk slower and
slower until Harriett and Gerald caught them up and come home walking
four in a row, taking Harriett’s arm. His face had remained quite
expressionless.
“Well,” he said at length in his slow well-modulated tone, “I always
take care to get out of the way when there are any young ladies about.”
“When do you mean?” _I_ didn’t ask you to come, _I_ don’t want to talk
to you you food-loving, pipe-loving, comfort-loving beast, she thought.
But it would be impossible to finish the holiday and go back to the
school with this strange statement uninvestigated.
“Well, when my sisters have young ladies in in the evening I always get
out of the way.”
Ah, thought Miriam, you are one of those men who flirt with servants and
shop-girls ... perhaps those awful women.... Either she must catch Eve
up or wait for Harriett ... not be alone any longer with this man.
“I see. You simply run away from them,” she said scornfully; “go out for
a walk or something.” A small Brixton sitting-room full of Brixton
girls--Gerald said that Brixton was something too chronic for words,
just like Clapham, and there was that joke about the man who said he
would not go to heaven even if he had the chance because of the strong
Clapham contingent that would be there--after all ...
“I go and sit in my room.”
“Oh,” said Miriam brokenly, “in the winter? Without a fire?”
Mr. Parrow laughed. “I don’t mind about that. I wrap myself up and get a
book.”
“What sort of book?”
“I’ve got a few books of my own; and there’s generally something worth
reading in ‘Tit-Bits.’”
How did he manage to look so refined and cultured? Those girls were
quite good enough for him, probably too good. But he would go on
despising them and one of them would marry him and give him beef-steak
puddings. And here he was walking by the sea in the sunlight, confessing
his suspicions and fears and going back to Brixton.
“You’ll have to marry one of those young ladies one day,” she said
abruptly.
“That’s out of the question, even if I was a marrying man.”
“Nonsense,” said Miriam, as they turned down the little pathway leading
towards the village. Poor man, how cruel to encourage him to take up
with one of those giggling dressy girls.
“D’you mean to say you’ve been never specially interested in anybody?”
“Yes. I never have.”
2
Ovingdean had to be faced. They were going to look at Ovingdean and then
walk back to the boarding-house to tea. Now that she knew all about his
home-life she would not be able to meet his eyes across the table. Two
tired elm trees stood one on either side of the road at the entrance to
the village. Here they all gathered and then went forward in a strolling
party.
When they turned at last to walk home and fell again into couples as
before, Miriam searched her empty mind for something to say about the
dim, cool musty church, the strange silent deeps of it there amongst the
great green downs, the waiting chairs, the cold empty pulpit and the
little cold font, and the sunlit front of the old Grange where King
Charles had taken refuge. Mr. Parrow would know she was speaking
insincerely if she said anything about these things. There was a long,
long walk ahead. For some time they walked in silence. “D’you know
anything about architecture?” she said at last angrily ... cruel silly
question. Of course he didn’t. But men she walked with ought to know
about architecture and be able to tell her things.
“No. That’s a subject I don’t know anything about.”
“D’you like churches?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it.”
“Then you probably don’t.”
“Oh, well, I don’t know about that. I don’t see any objection to them.”
“Then you’re probably an atheist.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“Do you go to church?”
“I can’t say I do in the usual way, unless I’m on a holiday.”
“Perhaps you go for walks instead?”
“Well, I generally stay in bed and have a rest.”
That dreadful room with the dreadful man hiding in it and reading
“Tit-Bits” and staying in bed in it on bright Sunday mornings.
How heavily they were treading on the orange and yellow faces of the Tom
Thumbs scattered over the short green grass.
“How much do you think people could marry on?” said Mr. Parrow suddenly
in a thin voice.
“Oh well, that depends on who they are.”
“I suppose it does do that.”
“And where they are going to live.”
“D’you think anyone could marry on a hundred and fifty?”
“Of course,” said Miriam emphatically, mentally shivering over the
vision of a tiresome determined cheerful woman with a thin pinched
reddish nose, an everlasting grey hat and a faded ulster going on year
after year; two or three common children she would never be able to
educate, with horribly over-developed characters. It was rather less
than the rent of their house. “Of course, everything would depend on the
woman,” she said wisely. After all a hundred and fifty, with no doubt
and anxiety about it was a very wonderful thing to have. Probably
everybody was wasteful, buying the wrong things and silly things,
ornaments and brooches and serviette rings; ... and not thinking things
out and not putting things down in books and not really enjoying
managing the hundred and fifty and always wanting more. It ought to be
quite jolly being thoroughly common and living in a small way and having
common neighbours doing the same.
“But you think if a man could find a young lady who could agree about
prices it would be possible.”
“Of course it would.”
The houses on the eastern ridges of Brighton came into sight in the
distance and stood blazing in the sunlight. There was a high half
broken-down piece of fencing at the edge of the cliff to their left a
little ahead of them, splintered and sunlit.
“How much a week is a hundred and fifty a year?”
“Three pound.”
They gravitated towards the fence and stood vaguely near it looking out
across the unruffled glare of the open sea. Why had she always thought
that the bright blue and gold ripples seen from the beach and the
promenade on jolly weekdays was the best of the sea? It was much more
lovely up there, the great expanse in its quiet Sunday loneliness. You
could see and think about far-off things instead of just dreaming on the
drowsy hot sands, seeing nothing but the rippling stripes of bright blue
and bright gold. She put her elbows on the upper bar. Mr. Parrow did the
same and they stood gazing out across the open sea--Mr. Parrow was
probably wondering how long they were going to stand silently there and
thinking about his tea ... of course; let him stand--until Eve’s voice
sounded near them in a dimpling laugh. They walked home in a row, Eve
and Mr. Green in the centre, asking riddles one against the other. Every
time Miriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made some little responsive
sound.
3
When Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow went back to London at the end of the week
Eve and Miriam saw them off at the station. The four went off boldly
together down the flight of white stone steps and made their way up into
the town.
“Good-bye,” called Miss Meldrum affectionately from the doorway. “I
shall send both of you a copy of the photograph.”
“It’s most generous of Miss Meldrum to go to all that expense to give us
a pleasant memento,” said Mr. Green in his small ringing voice as they
all swung out into the clean bare roadway. Miriam felt as if they were a
bit of the photograph walking up the hill, and went freely and
confidently along with a sense of being steered and guided by Miss
Meldrum. Why had she had the group taken--so odd and bold of her, having
the photographer waiting in the garden for them before they had finished
breakfast, and then laughing and talking and pushing them all about as
if they were her dearest friends. It was whilst they were all out in the
garden together, hanging about and being arranged, with the
photographer’s voice like the voice of a ventriloquist, knocking them
coldly about, that Gerald and Mr. Green had arranged about the evening
at the Crystal Palace on the last day of Miriam’s holiday. Miriam had
held back from the group, feeling nervous about her hair, there had been
no time to go to their rooms, and had forced Eve to do the same.
Harriett, with a cheerful shiny face, was sitting on the grass with
Gerald in a line with the traveller from Robinson and Cleaver’s, and his
thin-voiced sheeny-haired mocking fiancée. They all looked very small
and bald. The fiancée kept clearing her throat and rearranging her smart
feet and rattling her bangles. The traveller’s heavy waxed moustache was
crooked and his slippery blue eyes looked like the eyes of an old man.
Next to him were two newly arrived restively sneering young men, one on
either side of the saintly-faced florist’s assistant from Wigmore
Street, who sat in an easy pose with her skirt draping gracefully over
her feet and her long white chin propped on her hands. She looked
reproachfully about amongst the laughing and talking and seemed to feel
that they were all in church.
Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald Scotch chemists who went
out every evening to look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from
Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey curls bunched in a
cherry-coloured velvet band seemed to say “death--death” to Miriam more
dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than when she suddenly caught
sight of them at table, sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the
squatters on the grass. At the last moment she and Eve were obliged to
fall in at the back of the group with Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow, and now
the four of them were walking in a row up the staring white hill with
the evening at the Crystal Palace ahead of them in far-away London. It
was quite right. They were being like ‘other people.’ People met and
made friends and arranged to meet again. And then things happened. It
was quite right and ordinary and safe and warm. Of course Eve and Mr.
Green must meet again. He was evidently quite determined that they
should. That was what was carrying them all so confidently up the hill.
Perhaps he would in the end turn into another Gerald. When they turned
off into the unfamiliar Brighton streets Eve and Mr. Green went on
ahead. Walking quickly in step along the narrow pavement amongst the
unconcerned Brighton townspeople they looked so small and pitiful.
4
The brilliant sunlight showed up all the shabbiness of Mr. Green’s
London suit. He looked even smaller than he did in his holiday tweed.
Miriam wanted to call to them and stop them, stop Eve’s bright figure
and her mop of thickly twisted brown hair and ask her what she was
dreaming of, leave the two men there and go back, go out away alone with
Eve down to the edge of the sea. She hesitated in her walking, not
daring even to glance at her companion who was trudging along with bent
head, carrying his large brown leather bag. The street was crowded and
she manoeuvred so that everyone they met should pass between them.
Perhaps they would be able to reach the station without being obliged to
speak to each other. Parrow. It was either quite a nice name or pitiful;
like a child trying to say sparrow. Did he know that to other people it
was a strange, important sort of name, rounded like the padding in the
shoulders of his coat and his blunted features?
Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single person in the world. If he
were run over and killed on the way to the station, nobody would ever
have known anything about him.... People did die like that ... probably
most people; in a minute, alone and unknown; too late to speak.
Something was coming slowly down the middle of the roadway from amongst
the confusion of the distant traffic; an elephant--a large grey
elephant. Firmly delicately undisturbed by the noise of the street, the
huge crimson gold-braided howdah it carried on its back, and the
strange, coloured things coming along behind it, the thickening of
people on the pavement and the suddenly increased noise of the town, it
came stepping. It was wonderful. “Wise and beautiful! Wise and
beautiful!” cried a voice far away in Miriam’s brain. It’s a circus said
another voice within her.... He doesn’t know he’s in a circus.... She
hurried forward to reach Eve. Eve turned a flushed face. “I _say_; it’s
a circus,” said Miriam bitingly. The blare of a band broke out farther
up the street. People were jostled against them by a clown who came
bounding and leaping his way along the crowded pavement crying
incoherent words with a thrilling blatter of laughter. The elephant was
close upon them alone in the road space cleared by its swinging walk....
If only everyone would be quiet they could hear the soft padding of its
feet. Slowly, gently, modestly it went by followed by a crowd of smaller
things; sad-eyed monkeys on horseback in gold coatlets, sullen caged
beasts on trolleys drawn by beribboned unblinkered human-looking horses,
tall white horses pacing singly by, bearing bobbing princesses and men
in masks and cloaks.
5
Here and there in the long sunlit hours of the holiday by the Brighton
sea Miriam found the far-away seaside holidays of her childhood. Going
out one afternoon with Eve and Miss Stringer walking at Eve’s side,
listening to the conversation of the two girls, she had felt when they
reached the deserted end of the esplanade and proposed turning round and
walking home, an uncontrollable desire to be alone, and had left them,
impatiently, without a word of excuse and gone on down the grey stone
steps and out among the deserted weed-grown sapphire-pooled chalk
hummocks at the foot of the cliffs. For a while she was chased by little
phrases from Miss Stringer’s quiet talking--“if you want people to be
interested in you, you must be interested in them”; “you can get on with
everybody if you make up your mind to”--and by the memory of her
well-hung clothes and her quiet regular features spoilt by the nose that
Gerald said was old-maidish, and her portmanteau full of finery,
unpacked on the first-floor landing outside the tiny room she
occupied--piles of underlinen startlingly threaded with ribbons.
At the end of half an hour’s thoughtless wandering over the weed-grown
rocks she found herself sitting on a little patch of dry silt at the end
of a promontory of sea-smoothed hummocks with the pools of bright
blue-green fringed water all about her watching the gentle rippling of
the retreating waves over the weedy lower levels. She seemed long to
have been listening and watching, her mind was full of things she felt
she would never forget, the green-capped white faces of the cliffs, a
patch of wet sand dotted with stiffly waiting seagulls, the more distant
wavelets ink black and golden pouring in over the distant hummocks, the
curious whispering ripples near her feet. She must go back. Her mind
slid out making a strange half-familiar compact with all these things.
She was theirs, she would remember them all, always. They were not alone
because she was with them and knew them. She had always known them she
reflected, remembering with a quick pang a long, unpermitted wandering
out over the cliff edge beyond Dawlish, the sun shining on pinkish sandy
scrub, the expression of the bushes; hurrying home with the big rough
spaniel that belonged to the house they had hired. She must have been
about six years old. She had gone back with a secret, telling them
nothing of the sunlight or the bushes, only of a strange lady, sitting
on the jetty as she came down over the sands, who had caught her in her
arms and horribly kissed her. She had forgotten the lady and been so
happy when she reached home that no one had scolded her. And when they
questioned her it seemed that there was only the lady to tell them
about. Her mother had looked at her and kissed her. And now she must go
back again, and say nothing. The strange promise, the certainty she felt
out here on the rocks must be taken back to the Brighton front and the
boarding-house. It would disappear as soon as she got back. Here on the
Brighton rocks it was not so strong as it had been in Dawlish. And it
would disappear more completely. There had been during the intervening
years holidays with Sarah and Eve and Harriett in seaside lodgings, over
which the curious conviction that possessed her now had spread like a
filmy veil. But now it would hardly ever come; there were always people
talking, the strangers one worked for, or the hard new people like Miss
Stringer, people who had a number of things they were always saying.
She tried to remember when the strange independent joy had begun and
thought she could trace it back to a morning in the garden at Babington,
the first thing she could remember, when she had found herself toddling
alone along the garden path between beds of flowers almost on a level
with her head and blazing in the sunlight. Bees with large bodies were
sailing heavily across the path from bed to bed, passing close by her
head and making a loud humming in the air. She could see the flowers
distinctly as she walked quickly back through the afternoon throng on
the esplanade; they were sweet williams and “everlasting” flowers, the
sweet williams smelling very strongly sweet in her nostrils, and one
sheeny brown everlasting flower that she had touched with her nose,
smelling like hot paper.
6
She wanted to speak to someone of these things. Until she could speak to
someone about them she must always be alone. Always quite alone, she
thought, looking out as she walked across the busy stretch of sea
between the two piers, dotted with pleasure boats. It would be
impossible to speak to anyone about them unless one felt perfectly sure
that the other person felt about them in the same way and knew that they
were more real than anything else in the world, knew that everything
else was a fuss about nothing. But everybody else seemed to be really
interested in the fuss. That was the extraordinary thing. Miss Meldrum
presiding at the boarding-house table with her white padded hair and her
white face and bright steady brown eyes, listening to everybody and
making jokes with everybody and keeping things going, sometimes looked
as if she knew it was all a pretence, but if you spoke to her she would
think you were talking about religion and would kiss you. She had
already kissed Miriam once--for playing accompaniments to the hymns on a
Sunday evening, and made her feel as if there were some sly secret
between them. If she played the hymns again she would play them stonily
... mother would look as she always did if you suddenly began to talk
anything about things in general as if you were going to make some
confession she had been waiting for all her life. Now, with the
operation and all the uncertainty ahead she would probably cry. She
would want to explain in some way, as she had done one day long ago; how
dreadful it had been ... mother, I never feel tired, not really tired,
and however I behave I always feel frightfully happy inside ... my
blessed chick, it’s your splendid health--and the influence of the Holy
Spirit.... But I hate everybody.... What foolish nonsense. You mustn’t
think such things. You will make yourself unpopular....
She must keep her secret to herself. This Brighton life crushed it back
more than anything there had been in Germany or at Banbury Park. In
Germany she had found it again and again, and at Banbury Park, though it
could never come out and surround her, it was never far off. It lurked
just beyond the poplars in the park, at the end of the little empty
garden at twilight, amongst the books in the tightly packed bookcase. It
was here, too, in and out the sunlit days. As one opened the door of the
large, sparely furnished breakfast-room it shone for a moment in the
light pouring over the table full of seated forms; it haunted the
glittering scattered sand round about the little blank platform where
the black and white minstrels stood singing in front of their harmonium,
and poured out across the blaze of blue and gold sea ripples, when the
town band played Anitra’s Dance or the moon song from the Mikado; it lay
all along the deserted promenade and roadway as you went home to lunch,
and at night it spoke in the flump flump of the invisible sea against
the lower woodwork of the pier pavilion.
7
But every day at breakfast over the eggs, bacon and tomatoes--knowing
voices began their day’s talking, the weary round of words and ugly
laughter went steadily on, narrow horrible sounds that made you feel
conscious of the insides of people’s throats and the backs of their
noses--as if they were not properly formed. The talk was like a silly
sort of battle.... Innuendo, Miriam would say to herself, feeling that
the word was too beautiful for what she wanted to express; _double
entendre_ was also unsatisfactory. These people were all enemies
pretending to be friends. Why did they pretend? Why not keep quiet? Or
all sing between their eating, different songs, it would not matter. She
and Eve and Harriett and Gerald did sometimes hum the refrains of the
nigger minstrels’ songs, or one of them would hum a scrap of a solo and
all three sing the chorus. Then people were quiet, listening and smiling
their evil smiles and Miss Meldrum was delighted. It seemed improper and
half-hearted as no one else joined in; but after the first few days the
four of them always sang between the courses at dinner. Gerald did not
seem to mind the chaffy talk and the vulgar jokes, and would generally
join in; and he said strange disturbing things about the boarders, as if
he knew all about them. And he and Harriett talked to the niggers too
and found out about them. It spoilt them when one knew that they
belonged to small London musical halls, and had wives and families and
illnesses and trouble. Gerald and Harriett did not seem to mind this.
They did not seem to mind anything out of doors. They were free and hard
and contemptuous of everyone except the niggers and a few very
stylish-looking people who sailed along and took no notice of anybody.
Gerald said extraordinary, disturbing things about the girls on the
esplanade. Miriam and Eve were interested in some of the young men they
saw. They talked about them and looked out for them. Sometimes they
exchanged glances with them. Were she and Eve also “on show”; waiting to
be given “half an inch”; would she or Eve be “perfectly awful in the
dark”? Did the young men they specially favoured with their notice say
things about them? When these thoughts buzzed about in Miriam’s brain
she wanted to take a broom and sweep everybody into the sea.... She
discovered that a single steady unexpected glance, meeting her own, from
a man who had the right kind of bearing--something right about the set
of the shoulders--could disperse all the vague trouble she felt at the
perpetual spectacle of the strolling crowds, the stiffly waiting
many-eyed houses, the strange stupid bathing-machines, and send her
gaily forward in a glad world where there was no need to be alone in
order to be happy. A second encounter was sad, shameful, ridiculous; the
man became absurd and lost his dignity; the joyous sense of looking
through him right out and away to an endless perspective, of being told
that the endlessness was there and telling that the endlessness was
there had gone; the eyes were eyes, solid and mocking and helpless--to
be avoided in future; and when they had gone, the sunset or the curious
quivering line along the horizon were no longer gateways, but hard
barriers, until by some chance one was tranquilly alone again--when the
horizon would beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across the sea at
sunset call to your feet until they tingled and ached.
Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the sea and of the evenings and
mornings must be given up. It would fade more and more. What was life?
Either playing a part all the time in order to be amongst people in the
warm or standing alone with the strange true real feeling--alone with a
sort of edge of reality on everything; even on quite ugly common
things--cheap boarding-houses face towels and blistered window frames.
8
Since Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow had left, they had given up going to pier
entertainments and had spent most of their time sitting in a close row
and talking together, in the intervals of the black and white minstrel
concerts and the performances of the town band. They had drifted into
this way of spending their time; there was never any discussion or
alteration of the day’s programme. It worked like a charm and there was
no sign of the breaking of the charm. Miriam was sometimes half afraid
just as they settled themselves down that someone, probably Gerald or
Eve might say ‘Funny, isn’t it, how well we four get on,’ and that
strange power that held them together and kept everything away would be
broken before the holiday came to an end. But no one did and they went
on sitting together in the morning on the hot sand--the moving living
glinting sand that took the sting as soon as you touched it with your
hand out of everything there might be in the latest letter from
home--hearing the niggers from ten to eleven, bathing from eleven to
twelve, sitting afterwards fresh and tingling and drowsy in canopied
chairs near the band until dinner-time, prowling and paddling in the
afternoon and ranging themselves again in chairs for the evening.
They said nothing until almost the end of their time about the passage
of the days; but they looked at each other, each time they settled down,
with conspiring smiles and then sat, side by side, less visible to each
other than the great sunlit sea or the great clean salt darkness,
stranded in a row with four easy idle laughing commenting voices, away
alone and safe in the gaiety of the strong forgetful air--talking things
over. The far-away troublesome crooked things, all cramped and painful
and puzzling came out one by one and were shaken and tossed away along
the clean wind. And there was so much for Gerald to hear. He wanted to
hear everything--any little thing--“Just like a girl; it’s awfully jolly
for Harry he’s like that. She’ll never be lonely,” agreed Miriam and Eve
privately.... “He’s a perfect dear.” One night towards the end of their
time they talked of the future. It had begun to press on them. There
seemed no more time for brooding even over Eve’s fascinating little
pictures of life in the big country house, or Miriam’s stories and
legends of Germany--she said very little about Banbury Park fearing the
amazement and disgust of the trio if anything of the reality of North
London should reach them through her talk and guessing the impossibility
of their realising the Pernes--or Gerald’s rich memories of the opulence
of his early home life, an atmosphere of spending and operas and
banquets and receptions and distinguished people. During the evening, in
a silent interval, just as the band was tuning up to begin its last
tune, Gerald had said with quiet emphasis, “Well, anyhow, girls, you
mark my words the old man won’t make any more money. Not another penny.
You may as well make up your minds to that.” Then the band had broken
into their favourite Hungarian dance. Three of them sat blissfully back
in their deck chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably propped forward,
eagerly thinking. The music rushed on, she saw dancers shining before
her in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shouting, their feet
scarcely touching the earth and a wild light darted about them as they
shouted and leapt. “Set Mirry up in some sort of business,” quoted her
mind from one of Gerald’s recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not
want that. But the dancing forms told her of the absurdity of going back
without protest to the long aching days of teaching in the little school
amongst those dreadful voices which were going, whatever she did for
them, to be dreadful all their lives. Nothing she could do would make
any difference to them. They did not want her. They were quite happy.
Her feelings and thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire for
space and beautiful things and music and quietude would never be their
desire. Reverence for things--had she reverence? She felt she must have
because she knew they had not; even the old people; only superstition
... North London would always be North London, hard, strong, sneering,
money-making, noisy and trammy. Perhaps the difference between the north
and the south and her own south-west of London was like the difference
between the north and the south of England.... Green’s “History of the
English People” ... spinning-jennys began in the Danish north, hard and
cold, with later sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace. North
London meant twenty pounds a year and the need for resignation and
determination every day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge garden
and new books and music ... a book called “Music and Morals” and
interesting people staying in the house. And Eve had not been to Germany
and could not talk French. “You are an idiot to go on doing it. It’s
wrong. Lazy,” laughed the dancers crowding and flinging all round her.
“I ought,” she responded defiantly, “to stay on and make myself into a
certificated teacher.” “Certificated?” they screamed wildly sweeping
before her in strange lines of light. “If you do you will be like Miss
Cramp. Certificates--little conceited papers, and you dead. Certificates
would finish you off--Kill--Kill--Kill--_Kill_--_Kill!!_” Bang. The band
stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair wounding her flesh. The
trail of the dancers flickered away across the sea and her brain was
busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne: “and therefore I am obliged,
however reluctantly, to take this step, as it is absolutely necessary
for me to earn a larger salary at once.”