“ ’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.
These people sitting at his table were supposed to be friends. But they knew nothing about him. He made little quiet mocking jokes and laughed and kept things going. The Staple-Cravens knew nothing at all about him. Mrs. Staple-Craven did not care for anybody. She looked about and always spoke as if she were answering an accusation that nobody had made—a dressmaker persuading you to
