They sat in a curious oak settee, like a high-backed church pew. The waitress had cleared away the tea things and brought cigarettes, large flat Turkish cigarettes. Responding to her companion’s elaborate apologetic petition for permission to smoke it did not occur to Miriam to confess that she herself occasionally smoked. She forgot the fact in the completeness of her contentment. On the square oak table in front of them was a bowl of garden anemones, mauve and scarlet with black centres, flaring richly in the soft light coming through the green-tinted diamond panes of a little low square deep-silled window. On either side of the window short red curtains were drawn back and hung in straight, close folds … scarlet geraniums … against the creamy plaster wall. Bowls of flowers stood on other tables placed without crowding or confusion about the room and there was another green window with red curtains near a far-off corner. There were no other customers for the greater part of their time and when the waitress was not in the room it was still; a softly shaded stillness. Bob’s low blurred voice had gone on and on undisturbingly, no questions about her life or her plans, just jokes, about the tea-service and everything they had had, making her laugh. Whenever she laughed, he laughed delightedly. All the time her eyes had wandered from the brilliant anemones across to the soft green window with its scarlet curtains.
VIII
When May came life lay round Miriam without a flaw. She seemed to have reached the summit of a hill up which she had been climbing ever since she came to Newlands. The weeks had been green lanes of experience, fresh and scented and balmy and free from lurking fears. Now the landscape lay open before her eyes, clear from horizon to horizon, sunlit and flawless, past and future. The present, within her hands, brought her, whenever she paused to consider it, to the tips of her toes, as if its pressure lifted her. She would push it off, smiling—turning and shutting herself away from it, with laughter and closed eyes, she found herself deeper in the airy flood and drawing breath swam forward.
The old troubles, the things she had known from the beginning, the general shadow that lay over the family life and closed punctually in whenever the sun began to shine, her own personal thoughts, the impossibility of living with people, poverty, disease, death in a dark corner, had moved and changed, melted and flowed away.
The family shadow had shrunk long ago, back in the winter months they had spent in Bennett’s little bachelor villa, to a small black cloud of disgrace hanging over her father. At the time of its appearance, when the extent of his embarrassment was exactly known, she had sunk for a while under the conviction that the rest of her life must be spent in a vain attempt to pay off his debts. Her mind revolved round the problem hopelessly. … Even if she went on the stage she could not make enough to pay off one of his creditors. Most women who went on the stage, Gerald had said, made practically nothing, and the successful ones had to spend enormous sums in bribery whilst they were making their way—even the orchestra expected to be flattered and bribed. She would have to go on being a resident governess, keeping ten pounds a year for dress and paying over the rest of her salary. Her bitter rebellion against this prospect was reinforced by the creditors’ refusal to make her father a bankrupt. The refusal brought her a picture of the creditors, men “on the Stock Exchange,” sitting in a circle, in frock-coats, talking over her father’s affairs. She winced, her blood came scorching against her skin. She confronted them, “Stop!” she shouted, “stop talking—you smug ugly men! You shall be paid. Stop! Go away. …” But Gerald had said, “They like the old boy … it won’t hurt them … they’re all made of money.” They liked him. They would be kind. What right had they to be “kind”? They would be kind to her too. They would smile at her plan of restitution and put it on one side. And yet secretly she knew that each one of them would like to be paid and was vexed and angry at losing money just as she was angry at having to sacrifice her life to them. She would not sacrifice her life, but if ever she found herself wealthy she would find out their names and pay them secretly. Probably that would be never.
Disgrace closed round her, stifling. “It’s us—we’re doomed,” she thought, feeling the stigma of her family in her flesh. “If I go on after this, holding up my head, I shall be a liar and a cheat. It will show in my face and in my walk, always.” She bowed her head. “I want to live,” murmured something. “I want to live, even if I slink through life. I will. I don’t care inside. I shall always have myself to be with.”
Something that was not touched, that sang far away down inside the gloom, that cared nothing for the creditors and could get away down and down into the twilight far away from the everlasting accusations of humanity. … The disgrace sat only in the muscles of her face, in her muscles, the stuff of her that had defied and fought and been laughed at and beaten. It would not get deeper. Deeper down was something cool and fresh—endless—an endless garden. In happiness it came up and made everything in the world into a garden. Sorrow blotted it over, but it was always there, waiting and looking on. It had looked on in Germany and had loved the music and
