Lawyers were quite happy, pleased with themselves if they made some one person guilty—put their finger on him. “Can’t go back into the mists of the past … you didn’t understand, you’re not capable of understanding any real movements of thought. I always knew it. You think—in propositions. Can’t go back. Of course you can go back, and round and up and everywhere. Things as a whole … you understand nothing. We’ve done. That’s you. Mr. Corrie—a leading Q.C. Heavens.”
In that moment Miriam felt that she left Newlands forever. She glanced at Mrs. Corrie and Mrs. Craven—bright beautiful coloured birds, fading slowly year by year in the stifling atmosphere, the hard brutal laughing complacent atmosphere of men’s minds … men’s minds, staring at things, ignorantly, knowing “everything” in an irritating way and yet ignorant.
X
Coming home at ten o’clock in the morning, Miriam found the little villa standing quiet and empty in the sunshine. The sound of her coming down the empty tree-lined roadway had brought no face to either of the open windows. She stood on the short fresh grass in the small front garden looking up at the empty quiet windows. During her absence the dark winter villa had changed. It had become home. The little red brick façade glowed as she looked up at it. It belonged to her family. All through the spring weather they had been living behind the small bright house-front. It was they who had set those windows open and left them standing open to the spring air. They had gone out, of course; all of them; to be busy about the weddings. But inside was a place for her; things ready; a bed prepared where she would lie tonight in the darkness. The sun would come up tomorrow and be again on this green grass. She could come out on the grass in the morning.
The sounds of her knocking and ringing echoed through the house with a summery resonance. All the inside doors were standing open. Footsteps came and the door opened upon Mary. She had forgotten Mary and stood looking at her. Mary stood in her lilac print dress and little mob cap, filling the doorway in the full sunlight. She had shone through all the years in the grey basement kitchens at Barnes. Miriam had never before seen her face to face in the sunlight, her tawny red Somersetshire hair; the tawny freckles on the soft rose of her face; the red in her shy warm eyes. They both stood gazing. The strong sweet curve of Mary’s bony chin moved her thoughtful mouth. “How nice you do look, Miss Mirry.” Miriam took her by the arm and trundled her into the house. They moved into the little dining-room filled with a blaze of sunlight and smelling of leather and tobacco and fresh brown paper and string and into the dim small drawing-room at the back. The tiny greenhouse plastered on its hindmost wall was full of growing things. Mary dropped phrases, offering Miriam her share of the things that had happened while she had been away. She listened deferentially, her heart rising high. After all these years she and Mary were confessing their love to each other.
She went down the road with a bale of art muslin over her shoulder and carrying a small bronze table-lamp with a pink silk shade. The bright bunchy green heads of the little lopped acacia trees bobbed against their background of red brick villa as she walked … little moving green lampshades for Harriett’s life; they were like Harriett; like her delicate laughter and absurdity. The sounds of the footsteps of passersby made her rejoice more keenly in her burdens. She felt herself a procession of sacred emblems, in the sunshine. The sunshine streamed about her from an immense height of blue sky. The sky had never been so high as it was above Harriett’s green acacias. It had gone soaring up today for them all; their sky.
That eldest Wheeler girl, going off to India, to marry a divorced man. Julia seemed to think it did not matter if she were happy. How could she be happy? … Coming home from the “Second Mrs. Tanqueray” Bennett had asked Sarah if she would have married a man with a past … it was not only that his studies had kept him straight. It was himself … and Gerald too. It was … there were two kinds of men. You could tell them at a glance. Life was clean and fresh for Sarah and Harriett. … There were two kinds of people. Most of the people who were going about ought to be shut up, somehow, in prison.
Eve came into the little room with her arms full of Japanese anemones. Behind her came a tall man with red-brown hair, a stout fresh face and beautifully cut clothes. Miriam bowed him a greeting without waiting for introduction and went on arranging her festoons of art muslin about the white wooden mantelpiece. He was carrying a trayful of little fluted green glasses each half filled with water. He came into the room on a holiday—a little interval in his man’s life—delighted to be arranging the tray of glasses; half contemptuous and very happy. Pleased and surprised at himself and ready for miracles. He was not married—but he was a marrying man—a ladies’ man—a man of the world—something like Bob Greville—with the same sort of attitude towards women. … “The vagaries of the Fair” … a special manner for women and a clubby life of his own, with men. Women meant sex to him, the reproduction of the species my dear chap, and his comforts and a little music on Sunday afternoon. He loved his mother, that was certain, Miriam felt, from something in his voice, and respected all mothers; the sort of man who would
