The end of the piece was swift and tuneful and stormy, the only part she had cared for hitherto. For a moment she was tempted to dash into it … her hands were so able and strong, so near to mastery of the piano after that curious careful playing. But it would be cruel. She passed on to the final chords—broad and even and simple. They suggested quiet music going on, playing itself in the room. Getting up beaming and shy and embarrassed she did not dare to look at the waiting figure, and looked busily into the dark interiors of the bowls and vases along the mantelpiece. … There was something in the waiting figure that did not want to scream. Something exactly like herself. … At the bottom of one of the deep bowls was a curling-pin. She giggled, catching her breath.
Mrs. Henderson glanced up at her and looked away, looking about the room. That’s naughty, thought Miriam. She’s not trying; she’s being naughty and tiresome. Perhaps she’s angry with me, and thinks I mean she must just go on enduring.
“I can’t correct a misprint with a curling-pin.”
Mother believed in the misprint. … Talk on about misprints … why was it necessary to be insincere if one wanted to make anything happen? But anything was better than saying, What is the matter? That would be just as insincere, and impudent too.
“These cheap things are always so badly printed.”
“Oh!” … Mother’s polite tone, trying to be interested. That was all she’d had for years. All she’d ever had, from him. Miriam sat down conversationally, in a long chair. She felt a numb sleepiness coming over her, and stretched all her muscles lazily, to their full limit … mother, just mother in the room, perfect ease and security … and relaxed with a long yawn, feeling serenely awake. The little figure ceased to be horrible.
“My life has been so useless,” said Mrs. Henderson suddenly.
Here it was … a jolt … an awful physical shock, jarring her body. … She braced herself and spoke quickly and blindly … a network of feeling vibrated all over to and fro, painfully.
“It only seems so to you,” she said, in a voice muffled by the beating of her heart. Anything might happen—she had no power. … Mother—almost killed by things she could not control, having done her duty all her life … doing thing after thing had not satisfied her … being happy and brave had not satisfied her. There was something she had always wanted, for herself … even mother. …
Mrs. Henderson shuddered and sighed. Her pose relaxed a little.
“I might have done something for the poor.”
“Oh, yes? What things?” She had lived in a nightmare of ways and means, helpless. …
“I might have made clothes, sometimes. …”
“That worries you, so that you can hardly bear it.”
“Yes.”
“It needn’t. I don’t mean the poor need not be helped. But you needn’t have that feeling.”
“You understand it?”
“I feel it this moment, as you feel it.”
“Well?”
“You needn’t.”
Miriam held back her thoughts. Nothing mattered but to sit there holding back thought and feeling and argument, if only she could without getting angry. … There was something here, something decisive. This was what she had been born for, if only she could hold on. She felt very old. No more happiness … the little house they sat in was a mockery, a fiendish contrivance to hide agony. There was nothing in these little houses in themselves, just indifference hiding miseries.
She sat forward conversationally. A rain of tears was coming down her companion’s cheeks. To hold on … hold on … not to think or feel glad or sorry … it would be impudent to feel anything … to hold on if the tears went on for an hour … treating them as if they were part of a conversation.
“You understand me?”
“Of course.”
“You are the only one.”
The relieved voice … steady, as she had known it correcting her in her babyhood.
“I should be better if I could be more with you …” oh Lord … impossible.
“You must be with me as much as you like.”
That was the thing. That was what must be done somehow.
“Mother! would you mind if I smoked a cigarette?”
It was suddenly possible, the unheard-of unconfessed … suddenly easy and possible.
“My dearest child!” Mrs. Henderson’s flushed face crimsoned unresistingly. She was shocked and ashamed and half delighted. Miriam gazed boldly, admiring and adoring. She felt she had embarked on her first real flirtation and blessed the impulse that had that morning transferred cigarettes and matches from her handbag to her hanging pocket as a protection against suburban influence and a foretaste of her appointment with Bob. She lit a cigarette with downcast lids and a wicked smile, throwing a triumphant possessive glance at her mother as it drew. The cigarette was divine. It was divine to smoke like this, countenanced and beloved—scandalous and beloved.
Miriam ran all the way to the station. The gardens on either side of Gipsy Lane were full of flowering shrubs massed up against laburnum and May trees
