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—

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 “Lawzanne.” 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.”