Honeycomb · Chapter 3 (1/3)

III

The next day the ground was powdered with snow. Large snowflakes were hurrying through the air driving to and fro on a harsh wind. The wind snored round the house like a flame and bellowed in the chimneys. An opened window let in the cold air and the smell of the snow. No sound came from the woods. The singing of the birds and the faint sound of the woods had gone.

But when Miriam left her room to go across to the schoolroom and wait for the children she found the spring in the house. The landing was bright with the light streaming through many open doors. Rooms were being prepared. On a large tray on the landing table lay a mass of spring flowers and little flowered bowls of many shapes and sizes filled with fresh water. Stokes and Wiggerson were fluttering in and out of the rooms carrying frilled bed-linen, lace-edged towels and flowered bedspreads.

People with money could make the spring come as soon as the days lengthened. Clear bright rooms, bright clean paint, soft coloured hangings, spring flowers in the bright light on landings. The warmth from stoves and fires seemed as if it came from the sun. Its glow changed suddenly to the glow of sunlight. It drew the scent of the flowers into the air. And with the new scent of the new flowers something was moving and leaping and dancing in the air. Outside the wintry weather might go on and on as though the spring would never come.

In a dull cheap villa there might be a bunch of violets in a bowl on a whatnot. Snuffing very close you could feel the tide of spring wash through your brain. But only in the corner where the violets were. In cold rooms upstairs you could remember the violets and the spring; but the spring did not get into the house.

There was an extraordinary noise going on downstairs. Standing inside the schoolroom door Miriam listened. Joey’s contralto laugh coming up in gusts, the sound of dancing feet, the children shouting names, Mrs. Corrie repeating them in her laughing wavering chalky voice. Joey; certainly Joey was not dancing about. She was probably sitting on the sofa watching them, and thinking. Fancy their being so excited about people coming. Just like any ordinary people. She went into the schoolroom saying over the names to herself. “Mélie today⁠ ⁠… Dad and Mr. Staple-Craven tomorrow⁠ ⁠… the Bean-pole for Sunday”⁠ ⁠… someone they knew very well. It might be either a tall man or a tall woman.⁠ ⁠… They made the house springlike because people were coming. Would the people notice that the house was springlike? Would they realise? People did not seem to realise anything. They would patronise the flowers⁠ ⁠… they ought to feel wild with joy; join hands and dance round the flowers.

At lunch time the door at the far end of the dining-room stood open showing the shrouded length of a billiard-table, and beyond it at the far end in the gloom a squat oak chimneypiece littered with pipes and other small objects. The light, even from the overcast sky, came in so brilliantly that the holland cover looked almost white. There must be several windows; perhaps three. What a room to have, just for a billiard-room. A quiet, mannish room, waiting until it was wanted, the pockets of the table bulging excitingly under the cover, the green glass supports under the squat round stoutly spindling legs, a bit of a huge armchair showing near the fireplace, the end of a sofa, the green shaded lamps low over the table, the dark untidy mantelpiece, tobacco, books, talks, billiards. In there too the spring flowers stood ready on the table. They would be put somewhere on the wide dark mantel, probably on a corner out of the way. “We used to play table billiards at home,” said Miriam at random, longing to know what part the billiard-room played in the weekend.

“Billy-billy,” said Mrs. Corrie, “oh, we’ll have some fun. We’ll all play.”

“It was such a bore stretching the webbing,” said Miriam critically, avoiding Sybil’s eager eyes.

“It must have been⁠—but how awfully jolly to have billiards. I simply adaw billiards,” said Joey fervently.

“Such a fearful business getting them absolutely taut,” pursued Miriam, feeling how much the cream caramel was enhanced by the sight of the length, beyond the length of the dining-room, of that bright long heavy room. She imagined it lit and people walking about amongst the curious lights and shadows with cues⁠—and cigarettes; quiet intent faces. Englishmen. Did the English invent billiards?

“Poor old Joey. Wish you weren’t going to the dentist. You won’t be here when Mélie comes.”

“Don’t mind the dentist a scrap. I’m looking forward to it. I shall see Mélie tonight.”

She doesn’t like her, thought Miriam; people being together is awful; like the creaking of furniture.

Mélie arrived an hour before dinner time. Miriam heard Mrs. Corrie taking her into the room next to her own with laughter and many phrases. A panting, determined voice, like a voice out of a play, the thick, smooth, rather common voice of a fair-haired middle-aged lady in a play kept saying, “The pores, my dear. I must open my pores after the journey. I’m choked with it.”

Presently Mélie’s door closed and Mrs. Corrie tapped and put her head inside Miriam’s door. “She’s goin’ to have a steam bath on her floor, got an injarubber tent on the floor and a spirit lamp. She’s gettin’ inside it. Isn’t she an old cure!”

“She’s thinking more about her food than anything they’re saying; she doesn’t really care about them a bit,” thought Miriam at dinner, gazing again and again across at Mrs. Staple-Craven’s fat little shape seated opposite herself in a tightly fitting pale blue silk dress whose sleeves had tiny puffs instead of the fashionable large square sleeves. Watching her cross unconscious face, round and blue-eyed and all pure “milk and roses,” her large yellow head with a tiny twist of hair standing up like the handle of a jug, exactly on the top of the crown, her fat white hands with thick soft curly fingers and bright pink nails, the strange blue stare that went from thing to thing on the table, hearing her thick smooth heedless voice, with its irrelevant assertions and statements, Miriam wondered how she had come to be Mrs. Staple-Craven. She was no more Mrs. Staple-Craven than she was sitting at Mrs. Corrie’s table. She was not really there. She was just getting through, and neither Mrs. Corrie nor Joey really knew this. At the same time she was too stout and gluttonous to be still really a fairy in Devonshire. Where was she? What did she think? She went on and on because she was afraid someone might ask her that.

Although Joey had been to have her hair dyed and had not been to the dentist at all she was not pretending nearly so much. She was a little ashamed. Why had she said she was going to the dentist and come back with sheeny bronzy hair, ashamed? She had been worrying about her looks. Perhaps she was more than twenty-one. Nan Babington said no one need mind being twenty-one if they were engaged, but if not it was a frantic age to be. Joey was a poor worried thing, just like any other girl.

When they were safely ensconced round the drawing-room fire Mrs. Staple-Craven sat very upright in her chair with her plump little hands on either arm and her eyes fixed on the blaze. Joey pleading toothache had said good night and gone away with her coffee. There was a moment’s silence.

“You’d never think I’d been fairly banged to death by the spirits last night,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven in a thick flat reproachful narrative tone. It sounds like a housekeeper giving an order to a servant she knows won’t obey her, thought Miriam, swishing more comfortably into her chair. If Mrs. Craven would talk there would be no need to do anything.

“Ah-ha,” said Mrs. Craven, still looking at the fire, “something’s pleasing Miss Henderson.”

“Is she rejoicin’? Tell us about the spirits, Mélie. I’m deadly keen. Deadly. She mustn’t be too delighted. I’ve told her she’s not to get engaged.”

“Engaged?” enquired Mrs. Craven, of the fire.

“She’s promised,” said Mrs. Corrie, turning off the lights until only one heavily shaded lamp was left, throwing a rosy glow over Mélie’s compact form.

“She won’t, if she’s not under the star, to be sure.”

“Oh, she mustn’t think about stars. Why should she marry?”

Miriam looked a little anxiously from one to the other.

“You’ve shocked her, Julia,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven. “Never mind at all, my dear. You’ll marry if you’re under the star.”

“Star, star, beautiful star, a handsome one with twenty thousand a year,” sang Mrs. Corrie.

“I don’t think a man has any right to be handsome,” said Miriam desperately⁠—she must manage to keep the topic going. These women were so terrible⁠—they filled her with fear. She must make them take back what they had said.

“A handsome man’s much handsomer than a pretty woman,” said Mrs. Craven.

“It’s cash, cash, cash⁠—that’s what it is,” chanted Mrs. Corrie softly.

“Oh, do you?” said Miriam. “I think a handsome man’s generally so weak.”

Mrs. Craven stared into the fire.

“You take the one who’s got the ooftish, my friend,” said Mrs. Corrie.

“But you say I’m not to marry.”

“You shall marry when my poor little old kiddies are grown up. We’ll find you a very nice one with plenty of money.”

“Then you don’t think marriage is a failure,” said Miriam, with immense relief.

Mrs. Corrie leaned towards her with laughter in her clear light eyes. It seemed to fill the room. “Have some more coffy-drink?”

“No, thanks,” said Miriam, shivering.

“Sing us something⁠—she sings, Mélie⁠—German songs. Isn’t she no end clever?”

“Does she?” said Mrs. Craven. “Yes. She’s got a singing chin. Sing us a pretty song, my dear.”

As she fluttered the leaves of her Schumann album she saw Mrs. Craven sit back with closed eyes, and Mrs. Corrie still sitting forward in her chair with her hands clasped on her knees gazing with a sad white face into the flames.

“Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht,” sang Miriam, and thought of Germany. Her listeners did not trouble her. They would not understand. No English person would quite understand⁠—the need, that the Germans understood so well⁠—the need to admit the beauty of things⁠ ⁠… the need of the strange expression of music, making the beautiful things more beautiful and of words when they were together in the beauty of the poems. Music and poetry told everything⁠—whether you understood the music or the words⁠—they put you in the mood that made things shine⁠—then heartbreak or darkness did not matter. Things go on shining in the end; German landscapes and German sunshine and German towns were full of this knowledge. In England there was something besides⁠—something hard.

“ ’Menjous, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Corrie, as she rose from the piano.

“If we lived aright we should all be singing,” said Mrs. Craven, “it’s natural.”

“You look a duck.”

Miriam stood still at the top of the stairs and looked down into the hall. Mrs. Staple-Craven was standing under the largest lamp near the fireplace looking up at a tall man in a long ulster. Grizzled hair and a long face with a long pointed grizzled beard⁠—she was staring up at him with her eyes “like saucers” and her face pink, white, gold, “like a full moon”⁠—how awful for him⁠ ⁠… he’d come down from town probably in a smoking carriage, talking, and there she was and he had to say something.

“I’ve just had my bath,” said Mrs. Craven, without altering the angle of her gaze.

“You look a duck,” said the tall man fussily, half turning away.

Standing with his back to the couple, opening letters at the hall table was a little man in a neat little overcoat with a silk hat tilted back on his head. His figure had a curious crooked jaunty appearance, the shoulders a little crooked and the little legs slightly bent. “It’s Mr. Corrie,” mused Miriam, moving backwards as he turned and went swiftly out banging the front door behind him. “He looks like a jockey”; she got herself back into her room until the hall should be clear. “He’s gone down to the stables.” She listened to the quick jerky little footsteps crunching along the gravel outside her window.

Soon after the quick little steps sounded on the stairs and the children shouted from their rooms. A door was opened and shut and for five minutes there was a babel of voices. Then the steps came out again and went away down the passage leading off the landing to the bathroom and a little spare room at the further end. They passed the bathroom and the door of the little room was opened and shut and locked. Everything was silent in the house, but from the room next to hers came the sounds of Mr. Craven plunging quickly about and blowing and clearing his throat. She had not heard him come up.

When at last she came downstairs she found the whole party standing talking in the hall. The second gong was drowning the terrible voices, leaving nothing but gesticulating figures. Presently Mr. Staple-Craven was standing before her with Mrs. Corrie, and her hand was powerfully wrung and released with a fussy emphatic handshake cancelling the first impression. Mr. Craven made some remark in a high voice, lost by Miriam as Mr. Corrie came across to her from talking to Joey under a lamp and took her hand. “Let me introduce your host,” he said, keeping her hand and placing it on his arm as he turned towards the dining-room, “and take you in to dinner.”

Miriam went across the hall past the servants waiting on either side of the dining-room door and down the long room with her hand on the soft coat sleeve of a neat little dinner jacket and her footsteps led by the firm, disconnected, jumpy footsteps of the little figure at her side. There was a vague crowd of people coming along behind. “Come on, everybody,” Mrs. Corrie had pealed delicately, and Mrs. Craven had said in a thick smooth explanatory voice, “Of course she’s the greatest stranger.”

The table was set with replicas of the little groups of Venetian wine and finger glasses and fine silver and cutlery that had accompanied Miriam’s first sense of dining and when she found herself seated at Mr. Corrie’s left hand opposite Mrs. Craven, with Joey away on her left, facing Mr. Craven and Mrs. Corrie now far away from her at the door end of the table, it seemed as if these things had been got together only for the use of the men. Why were women there? Why did men and women dine together? She would have liked to sit there and watch and listen, but not to dine⁠—not to be seen dining by Mr. Corrie. It was extraordinary, this muddle of men and women with nothing in common. The men must hate it. She knew he did not have such thoughts. All the decanters stood in a little group between him and the great bowl of flaring purple and crimson anemones that stood in the centre of the table, and the way in which he said when her soup came, “Have some Moselle,” and filled her glass, compelled her to feel welcome to share the ritual of the feast. She sat with bent head wrapped and protected, hearing nothing as the voices sounded about the table but the clear sweet narrow rather drawling tones of Mr. Corrie’s voice. She could hear it talking to men, on racecourses, talking in clubs, laughing richly, rather drunkenly, at improper stories in club smoking-rooms; dining, talking and lunching, dining, talking, talking every day and sitting there now, wonderfully, giving her security. She knew with perfect certainty that nothing painful or disagreeable or embarrassing could come near her in his presence. But he knew nothing about her; much less than Wiggerson knew.

Joey felt the same, of course. But Joey was laughing and talking in her deep voice and making eyes. No, it was not the same. Joey was not happy.