The general preoccupation and excitement seemed to destroy her link with the household. As soon as the children’s tea was over she felt herself free. A strange tall woman came to stay in the house, trailing about in long jewelled dresses with a slight limp; Miss Tower, Mrs. Corrie called her Jin. But the name did not belong to her. Miriam could not think of any name that would belong to her … talking to Mrs. Corrie at lunch with amused eyes and expressionless, small fine features of some illness that was going to kill her in eight or ten years, of her friends, talking about her men friends as if they were boys to be cried over. “Why don’t you marry him?” Mrs. Corrie would say of one or another. How happy the man would be, thought Miriam, gazing into the strange eyes and daring her to marry anyone and alter the eyes. Miss Tower spoke to her now and again as if she had known her all her life. One day after lunch she suddenly said, “You ought to smile more often—you’ve got pretty teeth; but you forget about them. Don’t forget about them”; and one evening she came into her room just as she was beginning to undress and stood by the fire and said, “Your evening dresses are all wrong. You should have them cut higher, above the collarbone—or much lower—don’t forget. Don’t forget, you could be charming.”
Mrs. Corrie came in herself the next evening and gave Miriam a full-length cabinet photograph of herself, suddenly. Afterwards she heard her saying to Kate on the landing, “Let the poor thing rest when she can,” and they both went into Kate’s room.
Every day as soon as the children’s tea was over she fled to her room. The memory of Mrs. Corrie’s little sketchbook had haunted her for days. She had bought a block and brushes, a small box of paints and a book on painting in water colours. For days she painted, secure in the feeling of Mrs. Corrie and Kate occupied with each other. She filled sheet after sheet with swift efforts to recall Brighton skies—sunset, the red mass of the sun, the profile of the cliffs, the sky clear or full of heavy cloud, the darkness of the afternoon sea streaked by a path of gold, bird-specks, above the cliffs, above the sea. The painting was thick and confused, the objects blurred and ran into each other, the image of each recalled object came close before her eyes, shaking her with its sharp reality, her heart and hand shook as she contemplated it, and her body thrilled as she swept her brushes about. She found herself breathing heavily and deeply, sure each time of registering what she saw, sweeping rapidly on until the filled paper confronted her, a confused mass of shapeless images, leaving her angry and cold. Each day what she had done the day before thrilled her afresh and drove her on, and the time she spent in contemplation and hope became the heart of the days as April wore on.
On the last day of Jin Tower’s visit, Miriam came in from the garden upon Mrs. Corrie sitting in the hall with her guest. Jin was going and was sorry that she was going. But Miriam saw that her gladness was as great as her sorrow. It always would be. Whatever happened to her. Mrs. Corrie was sitting at her side bent from the waist with her arms stretched out and hands clasped beyond her knees. Miriam was amazed to see how much Mrs. Corrie had been talking, and that she was treating Jin’s departure as if it were a small crisis. There was a touch of soft heat and fussiness in the air. Mrs. Corrie’s features were discomposed. They both glanced at her as she came across the hall and she smiled, awkwardly and half paused. Her mind was turned towards her vision of a great cliff in profile against a still sky with a deep sea brimming to its feet in a placid afterglow; the garden with its lawn and trees, its bushiness and its buttons of bright rosebuds had seemed small and troubled and talkative in comparison. In her slight pause she offered them her vision, but knew as she went on upstairs that her attitude had said, “I am the paid governess. You must not talk to me as you would to each other; I am an inferior and can never be an intimate.” She was glad that Jin had left off coming to her room. She did not want intimacy with anyone if it meant that strained fussiness in the hall. Meeting Mrs. Corrie later on the landing she asked with a sudden sense of inspiration whether she might have her meal in her room, adding in an insincere effort at explanation that she wanted to do some reading up for the children. Mrs. Corrie agreed with an alacrity that gave her a vision of possible freedom ahead and a shock of apprehension. Perhaps she had not succeeded even so far as she thought in living the Newlands social life. She spent the evening writing to Eve, asking her if she remembered sea scenes at Weymouth and Brighton, pushing on and on weighed down by a sense of the urgency of finding out whether to Eve the registration and the recalling of her impressions was a thing that she must either do or lose hold of some essential thing … she felt that Eve would somehow admire her own stormy emphasis but would
