Honeycomb

of the station flickered by and disappeared. The brougham windows were black. No sound but the faint rumble of the wheels along the smooth road. Miriam relaxed and sat back, smiling. For a moment she was conscious of nothing but the soft-toned, softly lit interior, the softness at her back, the warmth under her feet and her happy smile; then she felt a sudden strength; the smile coming straight up so unexpectedly from some deep where it had been waiting, was new and strong and exhilarating. It would not allow itself to dimple; it carried her forward, tiding her over the passage into new experience and held her back, at the same time; it lifted her and held her suspended over the new circumstances in rapid contemplation. She pressed back more steadily into the elastic softness and sat with bent head, eagerly watching her thoughts⁠ ⁠… this is me; this is right; I’m used to dainty broughams; I can take everything for granted.⁠ ⁠… I must take everything absolutely for granted.⁠ ⁠… The moments passed, carrying her rapidly on. There was a life ahead that was going to enrich and change her as she had been enriched and changed by Hanover, but much more swiftly and intimately. She was changed already. Poverty and discomfort had been shut out of her life when the brougham door closed upon her. For as long as she could endure and achieve any sort of dealing with the new situation, they had gone, the worry and pain of them could not touch her. Things that rose warm and laughing and expanding within her now, that had risen to the beauty and music and happiness of Germany and been crushed because she was the despised pupil teacher, that had dried up and seemed to die in the English boarding school, were going to be met and satisfied⁠ ⁠… she looked down at the hands clasped on her knees, the same hands and knees that had ached with cold through long winter days in the basement schoolroom⁠ ⁠… chilblains⁠ ⁠… the everlasting unforgettable aching of her sore throat⁠ ⁠… things that had made her face yellow and stiff or flushed with fever⁠ ⁠… gone away forever. Her old self had gone, her governess self. It had really gone weeks ago, got up and left her in that moment when she had read Mrs. Corrie’s letter in Bennett’s villa in the middle of a bleak February afternoon. A voice had seemed to come from the large handwriting scrawling across the faint blue page under the thick neat small address in raised gilt. The same voice, begging her to come for a few weeks and try seemed to resound gently in the brougham. She had not accepted the situation; she had accepted something in Mrs. Corrie’s imagined voice coming to her confidently from the big wealthy house.

The brougham passed a lamp and swerved in through a gate, bowling along over softly crunching gravel. She pressed reluctantly against the cushioned back. The drive had been too short.⁠ ⁠… Bennett’s friends had given the Corries wrong ideas about her. They wanted a governess. She was not a governess. There were governesses⁠ ⁠… the kind of person they wanted. It was a mistake; another mistake⁠ ⁠… the brougham made a beautiful dull humming, going along a tree-lined tunnel.⁠ ⁠… What did the Corries want of her, arriving in their brougham? What did they expect her to do?⁠ ⁠…

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As the footman opened the door of the brougham, a door far back in the dim porch was flung back, letting out a flood of light, and the swift figure of a parlourmaid who seized Miriam’s Gladstone bag and the silver-mounted Banbury Park umbrella and led the way across the porch into the soft golden blaze. The Saratoga trunk had gone away with the brougham, and in a moment the door was closed and Miriam was standing, frightened and alone, in a firelit, lamplit, thickly carpeted enclosure within sound of a thin chalky voice saying “Ello, ello.” It seemed to come from above her. “Ello⁠—ello⁠—ello⁠—ello,” it said busily, hurrying about somewhere above as she gazed about the terrifying hall. It was somehow like the box office of a large theatre, only much better; the lamplight, there seemed to be several lamps shaded with low-hanging old gold silk, and the rosy light from the huge clear fire in a deep grate fell upon a thick pale greeny yellow carpet, the little settees with their huge cushions, and the strange-looking pictures set low on dull gold walls. In two directions the hall went dimly away towards low archways screened by silently hanging bead curtains. “Ello⁠—ello⁠—ello⁠—ello,” said the voice coming quickly downstairs. Half raising her eyes Miriam saw a pale turquoise blue silk dress, long and slender with deep frills of black chiffon round the short sleeves and a large frill draping the low-cut bodice, a head and face, sheeny bronze and dead white, coming across the hall.

“Ow-de-do; so glad you’ve come,” said the voice, and two thin fingers and a small thin crushed handkerchief were pressed against her half-raised hand.

“Are you famished? Deadly awful journey! I’m glad you’re tall. Wiggerson’ll take up your things. You must be starvin’. Don’t change. There’s only me. Don’t be long. I shall tell them to put on the soup.”

Gently propelled towards the staircase Miriam went mechanically up the wide shallow stairs towards the parlourmaid waiting at the top. Behind her she heard the swift fuffle of Mrs. Corrie’s dress, the swish of a bead curtain and the thin tuneless voice inaccurately humming in some large near room, “Jack’s the boy for work; Jack’s the boy for play.” She followed the maid across the landing, walking swiftly, as Mrs. Corrie had done⁠—the same greeny carpet, but white walls up here and again strange pictures hung low, on a level with your eyes, strange soft tones⁠ ⁠… crayons?⁠ ⁠… pastels?⁠—what was the word⁠—she was going to live with them, she would be able to look at them⁠—and everything up here, in the soft pink light. There were large