Backwater · Chapter 2 (1/3)

II

Miriam extended herself on the drawing-room sofa which had been drawn up at the end of the room under the open window.

The quintets of candles on the girandoles hanging on either side of the high overmantel gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the centre of the large room the chandelier, pulled low, held out in all directions bulbs of softly tinted light.

In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pouring from a tall standard lamp across the sheepskin hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle under her arm fluttering pages on a music stand. The family sat grouped towards her in a circle.

On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant light, Miriam was a retreating loop in the circle of seated forms, all visible as she lay with her eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and pilfer her own. The darkness brimmed in from the window on her right. She could touch the rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy stillness of the garden.

“What shall I play?” said the guest.

“What have you there?”

“Gluck⁠ ⁠… Klassische Stücke⁠ ⁠… Cavatina.”

“Ah, Gluck,” said Mr. Henderson, smoothing his long knees with outspread fingers.

“Have you got that Beethoven thing?” asked Sarah.

“Not here, Sally.”

“I saw it⁠—on the piano⁠—with chords,” said Sarah excitedly.

“Chords,” encouraged Miriam.

“Yes, I think so,” muttered Sarah taking up her crochet. “I daresay I’m wrong,” she giggled, throwing out a foot and hastily withdrawing it.

“I can find it, dear,” chanted the guest.

Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crimsoned oval of Eve’s face appeared inverted above her own. She poked a finger into one of the dark eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whispered voicelessly, “Make her play the Romance first and then the Cavatina without talking in between.⁠ ⁠…”

Eve’s large soft mouth pursed a little, and Miriam watched steadily until dimples appeared. “Go on, Eve,” she said, removing her hand.

“Shall I play the Beethoven first?” enquired the guest.

“Mm⁠—and then the Cavatina,” murmured Miriam, as if half asleep, turning wholly towards the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano scores.

She seemed to grow larger and stronger and easier as the thoughtful chords came musing out into the night and hovered amongst the dark trees. She found herself drawing easy breaths and relaxing completely against the support of the hard friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was listening.⁠ ⁠…

After a while, everything was dissolved, past and future and present and she was nothing but an ear, intent on the meditative harmony which stole out into the garden.

When the last gently strung notes had ceased she turned from her window and found Harriett’s near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling slowly up the forehead.

“Wow,” mouthed Miriam.

Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and strained her eyebrow higher.

The piano introduction to the Cavatina drowned the comments on the guest’s playing and the family relaxed once more into listening.

“Pink anemones, eh,” suggested Miriam softly.

Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approvingly.

“Pink anemones,” sighed Miriam, and turned to watch Margaret Wedderburn standing in her full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a radiance of red and golden light. Her heavily waving fair hair fell back towards its tightly braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as death. From between furry eyelashes her eyes looked steadfastly out, robbed of their everyday sentimental expression.

As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the fine gold down covering the cheeks and upper lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin and firm large mouth and the steady arm that swept out in rich cello-like notes the devout theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity of happiness.

… Tomorrow the room would be lit and decked and clear. Amongst the crowd of guests, he would come across the room, walking in his way.⁠ ⁠… She smiled to herself. He would come “sloping in” in his way, like a shadow, not looking at anyone. His strange friend would be with him. There would be introductions and greetings. Then he would dance with her silently and not looking at her, as if they were strangers, and then be dancing with someone else⁠ ⁠… with smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes and talking and answering and all the time looking about the room. And then again with her, cool and silent and not looking. And presently she would tell him about going away to Banbury Park.

Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable again as he had done when they were alone by the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany.⁠ ⁠… “Play ‘Abide with me,’ Miriam; play ‘Abide with me.’ ”⁠ ⁠…

Tomorrow there would be another moment like that. He would say her name suddenly, as he had done last week at the Babingtons’ dance, very low, half-turning towards her. She would be ready this time and say his name and move instead of being turned to stone. Confidently the music assured her of that moment.

She lay looking quietly into his imagined face till the room had gone. Then the face grew dim and far off and at last receded altogether into darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was his own life. She would never know it. However well they got to know each other they would always be strangers. Probably he never thought about her when he was alone. Only of Shakespeare and politics. What would he think if he knew she thought of him? But he thought of her when he saw her. That was utterly certain; the one thing certain in the world.⁠ ⁠… That day, coming along Putney Hill with mother, tired and dull and trying to keep her temper, passing his house, seeing him standing at his window, alone and pale and serious. The sudden lightening of his face surprised her again, violently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole world from end to end. He did not know that he had looked like that. She had turned swiftly from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow on her heart, that one day he would kiss her. Not for years and years. But one day he would bend his head. She wrenched herself from the thought, but it was too late. She thanked heaven she had looked; she wished she had not; the kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not touched her, it was like the breath of the summer. Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt the pavement. She remembered walking on, exulting with hanging head, cringing close to the ivy which hung from the top of the garden wall, sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and everyone who would never stand first with Ted.

… There were girls who let themselves be kissed for fun.⁠ ⁠… Playing “Kiss in the Ring,” being kissed by someone they did not mean to always be with, all their life⁠ ⁠… how sad and dreadful. Why did it not break their hearts?

Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug, being thanked and praised. Her brown violin hung amongst the folds of her skirt.

“People do like us,” mused Miriam, listening to the peculiar sympathy of the family voice.

Meg was there, away from her own home, happy with them, the front door shut, their garden and house all round her and her strange luggage upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice Meg.⁠ ⁠…

After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat in a low carpet chair at a window in the long bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a morning of blazing sunlight and bright blue. She had just come up through the cool house from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with Harriett. A little bunch of pink anemones she had picked for herself were set in a tumbler on the wash-hand-stand.

She had left the door open to hear coming faintly up from the faraway drawing-room the tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and Eve were stretching the drugget.

On her knee lay her father’s cigarette-making machine and a parcel of papers and tobacco. An empty cigarette tin stood upon the windowsill.

She began packing tobacco into the groove of the machine, distributing and pressing it lightly with the tips of her fingers, watching as she worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and the shining of their green stalks through the water. They were, she reflected, a little too much out. In the sun they would have come out still more. They would close up at night unless the rooms grew very hot. Slipping the paper evenly into the slot she shut the machine and turned the roller. As the sound of the loosely working cogs came up to her she revolted from her self-imposed task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It would use up her happiness too stupidly.

She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that she should smoke the single cigarette herself. Why not? Why had she never yet smoked one? She glanced at the slowly swinging door. No one would come. She was alone on the top floor. Everyone was downstairs and busy. The finished cigarette lay on her knee. Taking it between her fingers she pressed a little hanging thread of tobacco into place. The cigarette felt pleasantly plump and firm. It was well made. As she rose to get matches the mowing machine sounded suddenly from the front lawn. She started and looked out of the window, concealing the cigarette in her hand. It was the gardener with bent shoulders pushing with all his might. With some difficulty she unhitched the phosphorescent matchbox from its place under the gas-bracket and got back into her low chair, invisible from the lawn.

The cool air flowed in garden-scented. She held the cigarette between two fingers. The match hissed and flared as she held it carefully below the sill, and the flame flowed towards her while she set the paper alight. Raising the cigarette to her lips she blew gently outwards, down through the tobacco. The flame twisted and went out, leaving the paper charred. She struck another match angrily, urging herself to draw, and drew little panting breaths with the cigarette well in the flame. It smoked. Blowing out the match she looked at the end of the cigarette. It was glowing all over and a delicate little spiral of smoke rose into her face. Quickly she applied her lips again and drew little breaths, opening her mouth wide between each breath and holding the cigarette sideways away from her. The end glowed afresh with each breath. The paper charred evenly away and little flecks of ash fell about her.

A third of the whole length was consumed. Her nostrils breathed in smoke, and as she tasted the burnt flavour the sweetness of the unpolluted air all around her was a new thing. The acrid tang in her nostrils intoxicated her. She drew more boldly. There was smoke in her mouth. She opened it quickly, sharply exhaling a yellow cloud oddly different from the grey spirals wreathing their way from the end of the cigarette. She went on drawing in mouthful after mouthful of smoke, expelling each quickly with widely-opened lips, turning to look at the well-known room through the yellow haze and again at the sky, which drew nearer as she puffed at it. The sight of the treetops scrolled with her little clouds brought her a sense of power. She had chosen to smoke and she was smoking, and the morning world gleamed back at her.⁠ ⁠…

The morning gleamed. She would choose her fate. It should be amongst green trees and sunshine. That daunted lump who had accepted the post at Banbury Park had nothing to do with her. Morning gladness flooded her, and her gladness of the thought of the evening to come quickened as it had done last night into certainty.

She burned the last inch of the cigarette in the grate, wrapped with combings from the toilet-tidy in a screw of paper. When all was consumed she carefully replaced the summer bundle of ornamental mohair behind the bars.

Useless to tell anyone. No one would believe she had not felt ill. She found it difficult to understand why anyone should feel sick from smoking. Dizzy perhaps⁠ ⁠… a little drunk. Pater’s tobacco was very strong, some people could not smoke it.⁠ ⁠… She had smoked a whole cigarette of strong tobacco and liked it. Raising her arms above her head she worked them upwards, stretching every muscle of her body. No, she was anything but ill.

Leaving the window wide she went on to the landing. The smell of tobacco was everywhere. She flung into each room in turn, throwing up windows and leaving doors propped ajar.

Harriett coming up the garden with a basket of cut flowers saw her at the cook’s bedroom window.

“What on earth you doing thayer!” she shrieked putting down her basket.

Hanging from the window Miriam made a trumpet of her hands.

“Something blew in!”

All preparations for the evening were made and the younger members of the household were having a late tea in the breakfast-room. “We’ve done the alcoves,” said Sarah explosively, “in case it rains.”

Nan Babington sat up in her long chair to bring her face round to the deep bay where Sarah stood.

“My dear! Seraphina! And she’s doing the pink bows! Will some saint take my cup? Ta.⁠ ⁠… My dear, how perfectly screaming.”

Miriam raised her head from the petal-scattered table, where she lay prone side by side with Harriett, to watch Nan sitting up in her firm white dress beaming at Sarah through her slanting eye.

“What flowers you going to wear, Nan?”

Nan patted her sleek slightly Japanese-looking hair. “Ah⁠ ⁠… splashes of scarlet, my dear. Splashes of scarlet. One in my hair and one here.” She patted the broad level of her enviable breast towards the left shoulder.

“Almost on the shoulder, you know⁠—arranged flat, can’t be squashed and showing as you dance.”

“Geraniums! Oom. You’ve got awfully good taste. What a frightfully good effect. Bright red and bright white. Clean. Go on, Nan.”

“Killing,” pursued Nan. “Tom said at breakfast with his mouth absolutely full of sweetbread, ‘it’ll rain’⁠—growled, you know, with his mouth crammed full. ‘Never mind, Tommy,’ said Ella with the utmost promptitude, ‘they’re sure to have the alcoves.’ ‘Oomph,’ growled Tommy, pretending not to care. Naughty Tommy, naughty, naughty Tommy!”

“Any cake left?” sighed Miriam, sinking back amongst her petals and hoping that Nan’s voice would go on.

“You girls are the most adorable individuals I ever met.⁠ ⁠… Did anybody see Pearlie going home this afternoon?”

Everyone chuckled and waited.

“My dears! My dears!! Bevan dragged me along to the end of the pavilion to see him enter up the handicaps with his new automatic pen⁠—awfully smashing⁠—and I was just hobbling the last few yards past the apple trees when we saw Pearlie hand-in-hand with the Botterford boys, prancing along the asphalt court⁠—prancing, my dears!”

Miriam and Harriett dragged themselves up to see. Nan bridled and swayed from listener to listener, her wide throat gleaming as she sang out her words.

“Prancing⁠—with straggles of grey hair sticking out and that tiny sailor hat cocked almost on to her nose. My dear, you sh’d’ve seen Bevan! He put up his eyeglass, my dears, for a fraction of a second,” Nan’s head went up⁠—“Madame Pompadour,” thought Miriam⁠—and her slanting eyes glanced down her nose, “and dropped it, clickety-click. You sh’d’ve seen the expression on his angelic countenance.”

“I say, she is an awful little creature, isn’t she?” said Miriam, watching Eve bend a crimson face over the tea-tray on the hearthrug. “She put her boots on the pavilion table this afternoon when all those men were there⁠—about a mile high they are⁠—with tassels. Why does she go on like that?”

“Men like that sort of thing,” said Sarah lightly.

“Sally!”

“They do.⁠ ⁠… I believe she drinks.”

“Sally! My dear!”

“I believe she does. She’s always having shandygaff with the men.”

“Oh, well, perhaps she doesn’t,” murmured Eve.

“Chuck me a lump of sugar, Eve.”

Miriam subsided once more amongst the rose petals.

“Bevvy thinks I oughtn’t to dance.”

“Did he say so?”

“Of course, my dear. But old Wyman said I could, every third, except the Lancers.”