She felt she knew the quality of the family voice, the way he had spoken as a lad, before his troubles came, his own voice easy and sincere. The flowers shone firm and steady on their stalks.
She laughed and rushed on into cheerful words, but his harsh voice drowned hers. “You have put my life in a nutshell.”
“How uncomfortable for you,” she giggled excitedly.
He laughed with a dip of the head obsequiously. There was a catch of mirth in his tone.
Miriam laughed and laughed, laughing out fully in relief. He turned towards her a young lit face, protesting and insisting. She wanted to wash it, with soap, to clear away a faint greasiness and do something with the lank, despairing hair.
“You have come at the right instant, and shown me wisdom. You are wonderful.”
She recoiled. She did not really want to help him. She wanted to attract his attention to her. She had done it and he did not know it. Horrible. They were both caught in something. She had wanted to be caught, together with this agonising priestliness. But it was a trick. Perhaps they hated each other now.
“It is jolly to talk about things,” she said, as the blood surged into her face.
He was grave again and did not answer.
“People don’t talk about things nearly enough,” she pursued.
“I saw Miriam through the window, deep in conversation with a most interesting young man.”
“Have those people written about the bouquets?” said Miriam irritably. … Then mother had moved about the new house and was looking through those drawing-room windows this afternoon. She had looked about the house with someone else, saying all the wrong things, admiring things in the wrong way, impressed in the wrong way, having no thoughts, and no one with her to tell her what to think. …
She flashed a passionate glance towards the clear weak flexible voice, half seeing the flushed face … you’re not upset about the weddings—“Miriam’s scandalous goings-on the whole day long,” said somebody … because you’ve got me. You don’t know me. You wouldn’t like me if you did. You don’t know him. He doesn’t know you. But I know you, that’s the difference. …
“I’ve just thought something out,” she said aloud, her voice drowned by two or three voices and the sound of things being served and handed about the supper-table. They were trying to draw her—still talking about the young men and her “goings-on.” They did not know how far away she was and how secure she felt. She laughed towards her mother and smiled at her until she made her blush. Ah, she thought proudly, it’s I who am your husband. Why have I not been with you all your life? … all the times you were alone; I knew them all. No one else knows them.
“I say,” she insisted, “what about the bouquets?”
Mrs. Henderson raised her eyebrows helplessly and smiled, disclaiming.
“Hasn’t anybody done anything?” roared Miriam.
Mary came in with a dish of fruit. Everyone went on so placidly. … She thought of the perfect set of her white silk bridesmaid’s dress, its freshness, its clear apple green pipings, the little green leaves and fresh pink cluster roses on the white chip hat. If the shower bouquets did not come it would be simply ghastly. And everybody went on chattering.
She leaned anxiously across the table to Harriett.
“Oo—what’s up?” asked Harriett.
Conversation had dropped. Miriam sat up to fling out her grievances.
“Well—just this. I’m told Gerald said the people would send a line to say it was all right, and they haven’t written, and so far as I can make out nothing’s been done.”
“Bouquets would appear to be one of the essentials of the ceremony,” hooted Mr. Henderson.
“Well, of course,” retorted Miriam savagely, “if you have a dress wedding at all. That’s the point.”
“Quite so, my dear, quite so. I was unaware that you were depending on a message.”
“I’m not anxious. It’s simply silly, that’s all.”
“It’ll be all right,” suggested Harriett, looking into space. “They’d have written.”
“Well, it’s your old bouquet principally.”
“Me. With a bouquet. Hoo—”
“Peace I give unto you, My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you—”
Christ said that. But peace came from God—the peace of God that passeth all understanding. How could Christ give that? He put Himself between God and man. Why could not people get at God direct? He was somewhere.
The steam was disappearing out of the window; the row of objects ranged along the far side of the bath grew clear. Miriam looked at them, seeking escape from the problem—the upright hand-glass, the brush bag propped against it, the small bottle of Jockey Club, the little pink box of French face powder … perhaps one day she would learn to use powder without looking like a pierrot … how nice to have a thick white skin that never changed and took powder like a soft bloom. …
But as long as the powder box were there it would be impossible to reach that state of peace and freedom that Thomas à Kempis meant. “To Miriam, from her friend, Harriett A. Perne.” Had Miss Haddie found anything of it? No—she was horribly afraid of God and turned to Christ as a sort of protecting lover to be flattered and to lean upon. …
There were so many exquisite and wise things in the book; the language was so beautiful. But somehow there was a whining going all through it … fretfulness. Anger too—“I had rather feel compunction than know the definition thereof.” Why not both? He was talking at someone in that sentence.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. But even Christ went about sad, trying to get people to do some sort of trick that He said was necessary before they could find God—something to do with Himself. There was something wrong about that.
If one were perfectly still, the sense of God was there.
Supposing everyone could be got to stay perfectly still, until they died … like that woman in the book who was dying so happily of starvation … and then
