“Are you happy, dear girl? Do you like being with old Bob in his den?”
He came nearer and spoke with a soft husky whisper.
“Let me go,” said Miriam wearily, longing to rest, longing for the stairs they had come up and the open street in the sunshine and freedom.
She moved away and gathered up her gloves and scarf.
XI
Miriam sat with her mother near the bandstand. They faced the length of the esplanade with the row of houses that held their lodging to their right and the sea away to the left. She had found that it was better to sit facing a moving vista; forms passing by too near to be looked at and people moving in the distance too far away to suggest anything. The bandstand had filled. The town-clock struck eleven. Presently the band would begin to play. Any minute now. It had begun. The introduction to its dreamiest waltz was murmuring in a conversational undertone. The stare of the esplanade rippled and broke. The idling visitors became vivid blottings. The house-rows stood out in lines and angles. The short solemn symphony was over. Full and soft and ripe the euphonium began the beat of the waltz. It beat gently within the wooden kiosk. The fluted melody went out across the sea. The sparkling ripples rocked gently against the melody. A rousing theme would have been more welcome to the suffering at her side. She waited for the loud gay jerky tripping of the second movement. When it crashed brassily out the scene grew vivid. The air seemed to move; freshness of air and sea coming from the busy noise of the kiosk. The restless fingers ceased straying and plucking. The suffering had shifted. The night was over. When the waltz was over they would be able to talk a little. There would be something … a goat-chaise; a pug with a solemn injured face. Until the waltz came to an end she turned towards the sea, wandering out over the gleaming ripples, hearing their soft sound, snuffing freshness, seeing the water just below her eyes, transparent green and blue and mauve, salt-filmed.
The big old woman’s voice grated on about Poole’s Miriorama. She had been a seven-mile walk before lunch and meant to go to Poole’s Miriorama. She knew everything there was in it and went to it every summer and for long walks and washed lace in her room and borrowed an iron from Miss Meldrum. No one listened and her deep voice drowned all the sounds at the table. She only stopped at the beginning of a mouthful or to clear her throat with a long harsh grating sound. She did not know that there was nothing wonderful about Poole’s Miriorama or about walking every morning to the end of the parade and back. She did not know that there were wonderful things. She was like her father … she was mad. Miss Meldrum listened and answered without attending. The other people sat politely round the table and passed things with a great deal of stiff politeness. One or two of them talked suddenly, with raised voices. The others exclaimed. They were all in agreement … “a young woman with a baritone voice” … a frog, white, keeping alive in coal for hundreds of years … my cousin has crossed the Atlantic six times. … Nothing of any kind would ever stop them. They would never wait to know they were alive. They were mad. They would die mad. Of diseases with names. Even Miss Meldrum did not quite know. When she talked she was as mad as they were. When she was alone in her room and not thinking about ways and means she read books of devotion and cried. If she had had a home and a family she would have urged her sons and daughters to get on and beat other people. … But she knew mother was different. All of them knew it in some way. They spoke to her now and again with deference, their faces flickering with beauty. They knew she was beautiful. Sunny and sweet and good, sitting there in her faded dress, her face shining with exhaustion.
They walked down the length of the pier through the stiff breeze arm in arm. The pavilion was gaslit, ready for the entertainment.
“Would you rather stay outside this afternoon?”
“No. Perhaps the entertainment may cheer me.”
There was a pink paper with their tickets—“The South Coast Entertainment Company” … that was better than the usual concert. The inside of the pavilion was like the lunch table … the same people. But there was a yellow curtain across the platform. Mother could look at that. It was quite near them. It would take off the effect of the audience of people she envied. The cool sound of the waves flumping and washing against the pier came in through the open doors with a hollow echo. They were settled and safe for the afternoon. For two hours there would be nothing but the things behind the curtain. Then there would be tea. Mother had felt the yellow curtain. She was holding the pink programme at a distance trying to read it. Miriam glanced. The sight of the cheap black printing on the thin pink paper threatened the spell of the yellow curtain. She must manage to avoid reading it. She crossed her knees and stared at the curtain, yawning and scolding with an affected manliness about the forgotten spectacles. They squabbled and laughed. The flump-wash of the waves had a cheerful sunlit sound. Mrs. Henderson made a
