“Biscuits,” chirped Mrs. Corrie eagerly, “biscuits and sally in the study.” She sat forward, gathering herself to disperse the gloom. But Mrs. Craven’s deep voice drowned her unspoken gaieties … ah—he’s not gone away, thought Miriam rapidly, he’s in the house. …
“Best thing for biliousness,” gonged Mrs. Craven, and Mr. Craven busily resumed.
“It’s only the fisherman who knows anything, anything whatever about the silver stream. Necessarily. Necessarily. It is the—the concentration, the—the absorption of the passion that enables him to see. Er, the fisherman, the poet-tantamount; exchangeable terms. Fishing is, indeed one might say—”
The men of the party were devouring their food with the air of people just about to separate to fulfil urgent engagements. They bent and gobbled busily and cast smouldering glances about the table, as if with their eyes they would suggest important mysteries brooding above their animated muzzles.
Miriam’s stricken eyes sought their foreheads for relief. Smooth brows and neatly brushed hair above; but the smooth motionless brows were ramparts of hate; pure murderous hate. That’s men, she said, with a sudden flash of certainty, that’s men as they are, when they are opposed, when they are real. All the rest is pretence. Her thoughts flashed forward to a final clear issue of opposition, with a husband. Just a cold blank hating forehead and neatly brushed hair above it. If a man doesn’t understand or doesn’t agree he’s just a blank bony conceitedly thinking, absolutely condemning forehead, a face below, going on eating—and going off somewhere. Men are all hard angry bones; always thinking something, only one thing at a time and unless that is agreed to, they murder. My husband shan’t kill me. … I’ll shatter his conceited brow—make him see … two sides to every question … a million sides … no questions, only sides … always changing. Men argue, think they prove things; their foreheads recover—cool and calm. Damn them all—all men.
“Fee ought to be out here,” said Mrs. Corrie, moving her basket chair to face away from the sun.
The garden blazed in the fresh warm air. But there was no happiness in it. Everything was lost and astray. The house-party had dispersed and disappeared. Mrs. Corrie sat and strolled about the garden, joyless, as if weighed down by some immovable oppression. If Mr. Corrie were to come out and sit there too it would be worse. It was curious to think that the garden was his at all. He would come feebly out, looking ill and they would all sit, uneasy and afraid. But Mrs. Corrie wanted him to come out, knew he ought to be there. It was she who had thought of it. It was intolerable to think of his coming. Yet he had been “crazy mad” about her for five years. Five years and then this. Whose fault was it? His or hers? Or was marriage always like that? Perhaps that was why she and Mrs. Craven had laughed when they were asked whether marriage was a failure. Mrs. Craven had no children. Nothing to think about but stars and spirits and her food and baths and little silk dresses and Mr. Craven treated her as if she were a child he had got tired of petting. She did not even go fishing with him. She was lying down in her room and tea would be taken up to her. At least she thought of herself and seemed to enjoy life. But she was getting fatter and fatter. Mrs. Corrie did not want anything for herself, except for the fun of getting things. She cared only for the children and when they grew up they would have nothing to talk to her about. Sybil would have thoughts behind her ugly strong face. She would tell them to no one. The boy would adore her, until his wife whom he would adore came between them. So there was nothing for women in marriage and children. Because they had no thoughts. Their husbands grew to hate them because they had no thoughts. But if a woman had thoughts a man would not be “silly” about her for five years. And Mrs. Corrie had her garden. She would always have that, when he was not there.
“If you were to go and ask him,” said Mrs. Corrie, brushing out her dress with her hands, “he’d come out.”
“Me!” said Miriam in amazement.
“Yes, go on, my dear, you see; he’ll come.”
“But perhaps he doesn’t want to,” said Miriam, suddenly feeling that she was playing a familiar part in a novel and wanting to feel quite sure she was reading her role aright.
“You go and try,” laughed Mrs. Corrie gently. “Make him come out.”
“I’ll tell him you wish him to come,” said Miriam gravely, getting to her feet. “All right,” she thought, “if I have more influence over him than you it’s not my fault, not anybody’s fault, but how horrid you must feel.”
Miriam’s trembling fingers gave a frightened fumbling tap at the study door. “Come in,” said Mr. Corrie officially, and coughed a loose, wheezy cough. He was sitting by the fire in one of the huge armchairs and didn’t look up as she entered. She stood with the door half closed behind her, fighting against her fear and the cold heavy impression of his dull grey dressing-gown and the grey rug over his knees.
“It’s so lovely in the garden,” she said, fervently fixing her eyes on the small white face, a little puffy under its grizzled hair. He looked stiffly in her direction.
“The sun is so warm,” she went on hurriedly. “
