Backwater · Chapter 1 (2/2)

“You can wear the dark blue muslin blouse with the blue skirt for a long time yet with something warm underneath.”

“My grey’s very grubby.”

“You look very well in it indeed.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean it’s all gone sort of dull and grubby over the surface when you look down it.”

“Oh, that’s your imagination.”

“It isn’t my imagination and I can see how Harriett’s looks.”

“You both look very nice.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, my chick.”

“I’m not making anything. The simple fact is that the grey dresses are piggy.”

Mrs. Henderson flushed deeply, twining and untwining her silk-gloved fingers.

“She thinks that’s ‘gross exaggeration.’ That’s what she wants to say,” pondered Miriam wearily.

They turned into Langham Place.

She glanced to see whether her mother realised where they were.

“Look, we’re in the West End, mother! Oh, I’m not going to think about Banbury Park till it begins!”

They drew up near the Maison Nouvelle.

“Stanlake is,” said a refined emphatic voice from the pavement.

Miriam did not look for the speaker. The quality of the voice brought her a moment’s realisation of the meaning of her afternoon’s adventure. She was going to be shut up away from the grown-up things, the sunlit world, and the people who were enjoying it. She would be shut up and surrounded in Wordsworth House, a proper schooly school, amongst all those strange roadways. It would be cold English pianos and dreadful English children⁠—and trams going up and down that grey road outside.

As they went on down Regent Street she fastened, for refuge from her thoughts, upon a window where softly falling dresses of dull olive stood about against a draped background of pale dead yellow. She held it in her mind as shop after shop streamed by.

“These shops are extremely récherché.”

“It’s old Regent Street, mother,” said Miriam argumentatively. “Glorious old Regent Street. Ruby wine.”

“Ah, Regent Street.”

“We always walk up one side and down the other. Up the dolls’ hospital side and down Liberty’s. Glory, glory, ruby wine.”

“You are enthusiastic.”

“But it’s so glorious. Don’t you think so?”

“Sit back a little, chickie. One can’t see the windows. You’re such a solid young woman.”

“You’ll see our A.B.C. soon. You know. The one we go to after the Saturday pops. You’ve been to it. You came to it the day we came to Madame Schumann’s farewell. It’s just round here in Piccadilly. Here it is. Glorious. I must make the others come up once more before I die. I always have a scone. I don’t like the aryated bread. We go along the Burlington Arcade too. I don’t believe you’ve ever been along there. It’s simply perfect. Glove shops and fans and a smell of the most exquisite scent everywhere.”

“Dear me. It must be very captivating.”

“Now we shall pass the parks. Oh, isn’t the sun A1 copper bottom!”

Mrs. Henderson laughed wistfully.

“What delicious shade under those fine old trees. I almost wish I had brought my en-tout-cas.”

“Oh no, you don’t really want it. There will be more breeze presently. The bus always begins to go quicker along here. It’s the Green Park, that one. Those are clubs that side, the West End clubs. It’s fascinating all the way along here to Hyde Park Corner. You just see Park Lane going up at the side. Park Lane. It goes wiggling away, straight into heaven. We’ve never been up there. I always read the name at the corner.”

“You ridiculous chick⁠—ah, there is the Royal Academy of Arts.”

“Oh yes, I wonder if there are any Leightons this year.”

“Or Leader. Charles Leader. I think there is nothing more charming than those landscape scenes by Leader.”

“I’ve got three bally weeks. I can see Hyde Park. We’ve got ages yet. It goes on being fascinating right down through Kensington and right on up to the other side of Putney Bridge.”

“Dear me. Isn’t it fascinating after that?”

“Oh, not all that awful walk along the Upper Richmond Road⁠—not until our avenue begins⁠—”

Miriam fumbled with the fastening of the low wide gate as her mother passed on up the drive. She waited until the footsteps were muffled by the fullness of the may trees linking their middle branches over the bend in the drive. Then she looked steadily down the sunflecked asphalted avenue along which they had just come. The level sunlight streamed along the empty roadway and the shadows of the lime trees lay across the path and up the oak palings. Her eyes travelled up and down the boles of the trees, stopping at each little stunted tuft of greenery. She could no longer hear her mother’s footsteps. There was a scented coolness in the shady watered garden. Leaning gently with her breast against the upper bars of the gate she broke away from the sense of her newly-made engagement.

She scanned the whole length of the shrouded avenue from end to end and at last looked freely up amongst the interwoven lime trees. Long she watched, her eyes roaming from the closely-growing leaves where the green was densest to the edges of the trees where the light shone through. “Gold and green,” she whispered, “green and gold, held up by firm brown stems bathed in gold.”

When she reached the open garden beyond the bend she ran once round the large centre bed where berberus and laurestinus bushes stood in a clump ringed by violas and blue lobelias and heavily scented masses of cherry-ripe. Taking the shallow steps in two silent strides she reached the shelter of the deep porch. The outer door and the door of the vestibule stood open. Gently closing the vestibule she ran across the paved hall and opened the door on the right.

Harriett, in a long fawn canvas dress with a deep silk sash, was standing in the middle of the drawing-room floor with a large pot of scented geraniums in her arms.

“Hullo!” said Miriam.

Putting down her pot Harriett fixed brown eyes upon her and began jumping lightly up and down where she stood. The small tips of her fawn glacé kid shoes shone together between the hem of her dress and the pale green of the carpet.

“What you doing?” said Miriam quietly shutting the door behind her and flushing with pleasure.

Harriett hopped more energetically. The blaze from the western window caught the paste stone in the tortoiseshell comb crowning her little high twist of hair and the prisms of the lustres standing behind her on the white marble mantelpiece.

“What you doing, booby?”

“Old conservatory,” panted Harriett.

Miriam looked vaguely down the length of the long room to where the conservatory doors stood wide open. As she gazed at the wet tiling Harriett ceased hopping and kicked her delicately. “Well, gooby?”

Miriam grinned.

“You’ve got it. I knew you would. The Misses Perne have engaged Miss Miriam Henderson as resident teacher for the junior school.”

“Oh yes, I’ve got it,” smiled Miriam. “But don’t let’s talk about that. It’s just an old school, a house. I don’t know a bit what it’ll be like. I’ve got three bally blooming weeks. Don’t let’s talk about it.”

“Awri.”

“What about Saturday?”

“It’s all right. Ted was at the club.”

“Was he!”

“Yes, old scarlet face, he were.”

“I’m not.”

“He came in just before closing time and straight up to me and ast where you were. He looked sick when I told him, and so fagged.”

“It was awfully hot in town,” murmured Miriam tenderly.

She went to the piano and struck a note very softly.

“He played a single with the duffer and lost it.”

“Oh, well, of course, he was so tired.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t that. It was because you weren’t there. He’s simply no good when you’re not there, now. He’s perfectly different.”

Miriam struck her note again.

“Listen, that’s E flat.”

“Go on.”

“That’s a chord in E flat. Isn’t it lovely? It sounds perfectly different in C. Listen. Isn’t it funny?”

“Well, don’t you want to know why it’s all right about Saturday?”

“Yes, screamingly.”

“Well, that’s the perfectly flabbergasting thing. Ted simply came to say they’ve got a man coming to stay with them and can he bring him.”

“My dear! What a heavenly relief. That makes twelve men and fourteen girls. That’ll do.”

“Nan Babington’s hurt her ankle, but she swears she’s coming.” Harriett sniffed and sank down on the white sheepskin, drawing her knees up to her chin.

“You shouldn’t say ‘swears.’ ”

“Well, you bet. She simply loves our dances.”

“Did she say she did?”

“She sat on the pavilion seat with Bevan Seymour all the afternoon and I was with them when Ted was playing with the duffer. She told Bevan that she didn’t know anywhere else where the kids arranged the dances, and everything was so jolly. It’s screaming, my dear, she said.”

“It’s horrid the way she calls him ‘my dear.’ Your ring is simply dazzling like that, Harry. D’you see? It’s the sun.”

“Of course it’ll mean she’ll sit out in a deck chair in the garden with Bevan all the time.”

“How disgusting.”

“It’s her turn for the pavilion tea on Saturday. She’s coming in her white muslin and then coming straight on here with two sticks and wants us to keep her some flowers. Let’s go and have tea. It’ll be nearly dinner time.”

“Has Mary made a cake?”

“I dunno. Tea was to be in the breakfast-room when you came back.”

“Why not in the conservatory?”

“Because, you silly old crow, I’m beranging it for Saturday.”

“Shall we have the piano in there?”

“Well, don’t you think so?”

“Twenty-six of us. Perhaps it’ll be more blissful.”

“If we have the breakfast-room piano in the hall it’ll bung up the hall.”

“Yes, but the Erard bass is so perfect for waltzes.”

“And the be-rilliant Collard treble is so all right in the vatoire.”

“I thought it was Eve and I talked about the Collard treble.”

“Well, I was there.”

“Anyhow we’ll have the grand in the conservatory. Oh, Bacchus! Ta-ra-ra-boom-deay.”

“Tea,” said a rounded voice near the keyhole.

“Eve!” shouted Miriam.

The door opened slightly. “I know,” said the voice.

“Come in, Eve,” commanded Miriam, trying to swing the door wide.

“I know,” said the voice quivering with the effort of holding the door. “I know all about the new Misses Perne and the new man⁠—Max Sonnenheim⁠—Max.”

“This way out,” called Harriett from the conservatory.

“Eve,” pleaded Miriam, tugging at the door, “let me get at you. Don’t be an idiot.”

A gurgle of amusement made her loosen her hold.

“I’m not trying, you beast. Take your iron wrists away.”

A small white hand waggled fingers through the aperture.

Miriam seized and covered it. “Come in for a minute,” she begged. “I want to see you. What have you got on?”

“Tea.”

The hand twisted itself free and Eve fled through the hall.

Miriam flung after her with a yell and caught at her slender body. “I’ve a great mind to drag down your old hair.”

“Tea,” smiled Eve serenely.

“All right, I’m coming, damn you, aren’t I?”

“Oh, Mimmy!”

“Well, damn me, then. Somebody in the house must swear. I say, Eve?”

“What?”

“Nothing, only I say.”

“Um.”