as miriam sat having tea with the children in the dining-room the brougham drove up to the door. “there’s someone arriving,” she said, hoping to distract the attention of the children from her fumblings with the teapot and the hot water jug. they had certainly never met anyone who did not know how to pour out tea. but they were taken in by her bored tone.
“it’s only joey,” said sybil, frowning tranquilly, her lively penetrating brown eyes fixed on the table just ahead of the small plate nearly covered by a mass of raspberry jam from which she ate with a teaspoon in the intervals of taking small bites from a thin piece of bread and butter held conveniently near her mouth as she sat with one elbow on the table. “she’s always here.” she looked across the table and met the soft brown eyes of the boy. they had been wandering absently about her square pale face and her short straggling red hair as she answered miriam.
“jenooshalet,” he said, lisping over the s and smiling meditatively.
“jenoash,” responded sybil, and they both laughed drunkenly.
“what i’m finking,” said the boy, putting a teaspoonful of jam into his teacup and speaking with a stammering difficulty that drew deep lines in his thin face; “what’s worrying me is she’ll have rollo after tea instead of us.... vat’s what i’m finking.”
“d’you like bays?” said sybil, throwing a fleeting glance in the direction of miriam.
“yes, i do, i think,” said miriam at random, patting her hair and wondering if the children had been to weymouth.
“oh, boy.” sybil flung her arms tightly round her thin body and sat grinning at her brother. her old blue and white striped overall, her sparse hair and the ugly large gap between her two large front teeth seemed to set her apart from her surroundings. for a moment it seemed to miriam that the large quiet room looking through two high windows on to a stretch of tree-shaded lawn, the cheerful little spread of delicate white china at one end of the long table, the preserves and cakes, the cress sandwiches and
thin bread and butter were all there for her appreciation alone, the children somehow profane and accidental, having no right to be there. but they had been in these surroundings, the girl for twelve the boy for eight years. they had never known anything else. for years life had been for them just what it was to-day—breakfast in bed, chirping at their mother from the dressing-rooms where they slept, and scolding at stokes as she waited on their toilet; jocularly and impatiently learning lessons from little text-books for an hour or so in the morning, spending their afternoons cantering about the commons and along the sandy roadways with the groom; driving with their mother or walking with the governess and every day coming in at the end of the afternoon to this cosy, dainty grown-up tea, with their strange untroubled brooding faces. they would grow up and be exactly like their parents. they did not know anything about their fate. it was a kind of prison. perhaps they knew. perhaps that was what they were always brooding over. no, they did not mind. their musings were tranquil. they were waiting. they had silent conversations all the time. to be with them after being
so long with the straining, determined, secretly ambitious children at banbury park was a great relief ... the way they moved their heads and used their hands ... the boy’s hands were wonderful, the palest fine brown silk, quick eloquent little claws, promising understanding and support. fine little hands and steady gentle brown eyes.
“bays.”
“bright bays.”
“roans.”
“strawberry roans.”
“chestnuts.”
“chestnut bays.”
the children sat facing each other, each with clasped hands, and eyes lit with dreams. miriam listened. bay, then, must be that curious liver colour that was neither brown nor chestnut.
“our ponies are bay,” said sybil quickly, with flushed face. “boy’s and mine, the brougham and victoria horses are chestnut bays and we’ve got two dogs, a whippet bitch, she’s in the stables now, and a great dane; i’m going to have a willoughby pug pup on my birthday.”
2
mrs. corrie was standing in the hall when the little tea-party came out of the dining-room. she raised her head and stood shaped in the well-cut lines of her long brown and fawn check coat and skirt against the bead curtain that led to the drawing-room, looking across at them. the boy tottered blindly across the hall with arms outstretched. “oh, rollo, rollo,” he said brokenly, as he reached her, pressing his hands up against her grey suède waistcoat and his face into her skirt, “are we going to h—ave you?”
mrs. corrie began singing in a thin laughing voice, taking the boy by the wrists.
“no, no,” he said sharply, “let me hold you a minute.” but mrs. corrie danced, forcing his steps as he pressed against her. up and down the hall they capered while sybil pranced round them whirling her skirts and clapping her hands. miriam sank into a settee. the cold march sunlight streaming in through the thinly curtained windows painted the sharply bobbing figures in faint shadows on the wall opposite her.
3
when the dancers were breathless the little party strayed into the drawing-room. presently they were gathered at the piano. mrs. corrie sat on a striped ottoman and peering closely picked out the airs of songs that made miriam stare in amazement. they all sang. slowly and stumblingly with many gasps of annoyance from mrs. corrie and the children violently assaulting each other whenever either of them got ahead of the halting accompaniment, they sang through all the songs in an album with a brightly decorated paper cover. but in their performance there was no tune, no rhythm, and the words spoken out slowly and separately were intolerable to her. one song they sang three times. its chorus
stiboo—stibee,
sti-ibbety-oo
sti-ibbety-boo,
stibee,
which sybil could sing without the piano with an extraordinary flourishing rapidity, pirouetting as she sang, they attacked again and again, slowly and waveringly, fitting the syllables note by note into the printed line of disconnected
jerkily tailed quavers.... they thought this was music. encouraged at last by the fervour of the halting performance miriam found herself seated at the piano attacking the score. they went through the songs from the beginning, three thin blissful wavering tremulous voices, with a careful perfect monotony of emphasis, uninfluenced by any variation of accent or inflection introduced by miriam into the accompaniment. looking round as they reached the end she saw flushed rapt faces with happy eyes gleaming through the gathering twilight. they smiled at her as they sang. when they had finished they lit the piano candles and sang “stiboo” once more.
4
“sti-boo, stibee, sti-ibbety-oo, sti-ibbety boo, stibee,” sang miriam, getting into the large square bodice of her silkette evening dress. its great oblong box-like elbow sleeves more than filled the mirror as she stood. they were stiffened with stout muslin, and stood squarely out from shoulder to elbow, so that the little band of silk edged with a piping of salmon pink velveteen which held them round the arm just
above the elbow could only be seen when she raised her arms. the piping was repeated round the square neck of her bodice, cutting in front across the bust just below the collar bone and at the back just above her shoulder blades. she sang the little refrain at intervals until her toilet was completed by the pinning of a small salmon pink velvet bow against the left side of the hard mass of her coiled hair and went humming downstairs into the hall. the soles of her new patent leather shoes felt pleasantly smooth against the thick carpet. she went across the hall to prop a foot against the fender and take one more reassuring look at the little disc of steel beads adorning her toe. “stiboo——”
“won’t you come in here?” said a soft staccato bass voice, a woman’s voice, but deep and rounded like the voice of a deep-chested watch-dog barking single soft notes after a furious outbreak.
miriam looked round. wiggerson was lighting the big lamp in the dining-room, peering up under the rose-coloured shade. “in here,” repeated the deep voice, smiling, and miriam’s eyes discovered that the small door set back between the dining-room and the window on
the left side of the hall door was open, showing part of a curious soft brown room; a solid brown leather covered secretaire, with a revolving chair between its pillars of drawers, set back in the bow of a small window, a little bronze lamp with a plain buff-coloured shade standing near a pile of large volumes on the secretaire, a piece of wall covered with a dark silky-looking brown paper shining in the glow of an invisible fire. she went forward across the hall into the room with a polite pleased hesitating smile. there was a faint rich exciting odour in the warm little room ... cigars ... leather ... a sort of deep freedom. the rest of the house seemed suddenly far away. coloured drawings of houses on the little brown walls, two enormous deep low leather arm-chairs drawn up on either side of an enormous fire, a littered mantelshelf. “i saw you froo the crack,” said a lady, fitted deeply into one of the large chairs. she held out a small hand when miriam was near enough to take it and said softly and lazily, “you’re the new guvnis, aren’t you? i’m joey banks.”
“yes, i came yesterday,” said miriam serenely.
sinking into the second arm-chair she crossed her knees and beamed into the fire. what
perfect security.... she turned to mr. corrie, unknown and mysteriously away somewhere in london to thank him for setting her here, protected from the whole world in the deeps of his study chair—all the worry and the noise and the fussing people shut away. if suddenly he came in she would not thank him, but he would know. he would be sitting in the other arm-chair, and she would say, “what do you think about everything?” not so much to hear what he thought, but because some of his thoughts would be her thoughts. thought was the same in everybody who thought at all. she would sit back and rest and hear an understanding voice. he might be heavy and fat. but a leading q.c. must have thoughts ... and he had been thin once ... and there were those books ... and he would read newspapers; perhaps too many newspapers. he would know almost at once that she thought he read too many newspapers. she would have to conceal that to hear the voice going on and leaving her undisturbed.
5
of course people like this wore evening dress every day. you could only rest and think and
talk and be happy without collars and sleeves—with the cool beaded leather against one’s neck and arms in the firelight....
she gazed familiarly into her companion’s eyes taking in her soft crimson silk evening dress with its wide folded belt of black velvet and the little knots of black about the square sleeves, as the eyes smiled long and easily into hers ... the smile of one of the girls at the putney school, the same dark fringed caressing smiling eyes set in delicately bulging pale brown cheeks, the same little frizz of dark hair. she felt for the name, but could only recall the sense of the girl as she had sat, glints of fear and hard watchfulness in the beautiful eyes, trying to copy her neighbour’s exercise. this girl’s dull hair was fluffed cloudily, and there was no uneasiness in the eyes. probably she too had been a duffer at school and had had to crib things. but she had left all that behind and her smile was—perfect.
“you look like an oriental princess,” said miriam, gazing.
joey flushed and smiled more deeply, but without making the smallest movement.
“do i, weally?”
“exactly,” said miriam, keeping her own pose
with difficulty. she knew she had flung up her head and spoken emphatically. but the girl was such a wonderful effect—she wanted her to be able to see herself ... she was not quite of the same class as the corries, or different, somehow. miriam gazed on. raising the large black cushion a little, turning her head and pressing her cheek into it, her eyes still on miriam’s, joey laughed a short contralto gurgle, bringing the sharp dimples and making her cheeks bulge slightly on either side of the chin.
“i brought it in from rollo’s room,” she said. “i like bein’ in here. rollo never comes in; but she always has a fire in here when she’s got people stoppin’. you can pop in here whenever you like when felix isn’t at home. it’s jolly. i like it.”
miriam looked into the fire and thought. joey, too, liked talking to mr. corrie in his room when he was not there. he must be one of those charming sort of men, rather weak, who went on liking people. joey was evidently an old friend of the family and still liked him. she evidently liked even to mention his name. he couldn’t be really anything much ... or perhaps joey didn’t really know him at all. joey did not live there. she came and went.
“of course you haven’t seen felix yet, have you?”
“no.”
joey straightened her head on her pillow.
“it’s not the least use me tryin’ to describe him to you,” she breathed in broken tones.
miriam struggled uneasily with her thoughts ... a leading q.c.—about forty.... “oh, do try,” she said, a little fearfully ... how vulgar ... just like a housemaid ... no; wiggerson would never have said such a thing, nor asked at all. it was treachery to mr. corrie. if joey said anything more about him she would never be able to speak to him freely.
“he’s divine,” said joey, smiling into the fire.
how nice of joey to be so free with her and want her to like him too ... the gong. they both rose and peered into the little strip of mirror in the small overmantel ... divine might mean anything ... divine ... oh, quite too utterly too-too ... greenery-yellery—grosvenor-gallery—foot-in-the-grave young man.
