“They’d got,” said Trixie Sanderson in a velvety tone, “they’d got some of their Christmas things out, Miss Jenny.” She cleared her throat shrilly on the last word and toned off the sound with a sigh. Inaudible laughter went round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best dress, a loosely made brown velveteen with a deep lace collar round her soft brown neck. Her neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by lively silky brown curls. She held her small head sideways from her book with a questioning air. One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered serenely with its thin lid.
She uttered a second gentle sigh and once more cleared her throat, accompanying the sound with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid.
Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye which tried to search her, hating the sudden, sharp dimpling which came high up almost under Trixie’s cheek bones in answer to her own expression.
“Miss Jenny,” breathed Trixie in a high tone, twirling one end of the bow of black ribbon crowning her head.
Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table opposite the tea-tray, giggled aloud.
“Eh? What? Did somebody speak?” said Miss Jenny, looking up with a smile. “Are ye getting on with yer teas? Are ye ready for second cups?”
“Beadie spoke,” murmured Trixie, glancing at Beadie whose neat china doll’s face was half hidden between her cup and the protruding edge of her thatch of tight gold curls.
Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong the irritating comedy by choking over her tea.
It was some minutes before the whole incident was made clear to Miss Jenny. Reading was suspended. Everyone watched while Charlotte Stubbs, going carefully backwards, came to the end at last of Miss Jenny’s questions, and when Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating—well! you’re all very naughty children. I can’t think what’s the matter with you? Eh? Ye shouldn’t do it. I can’t think what possesses you. What is it, eh? Ye shouldn’t do it. D’you see?—and having dispensed the second allowance of tea with small hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to her newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking guilty. Miriam stole a glance at the breadth of her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she hung over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with her tea-drinking, and her shock of coarse brown-gold hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck out bushily on either side, its edges lit by the afternoon glow from the garden behind her. The others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly active. She and Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of her book with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered on their final competition for the last few slices.
Miriam returned to her book. The story of Adèle had moved on through several unassimilated pages. “My child,” she read, “it is important to remember”—she glanced on gathering a picture of a woman walking with Adèle along the magic terrace, talking—words and phrases that fretted dismally at the beauty of the scene. Examining later chapters she found conversations, discussions, situations, arguments, “fusses”—all about nothing. She turned back to the early passage of description and caught the glow once more. But this time it was overshadowed by the promise of those talking women. That was all there was. She had finished the story of Adèle.
A resounding slam came up from the kitchen.
“Poor cook—another tooth,” sighed Trixie.
Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb. Her thwarted expectations ranged forth beyond control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for succour where she had learned there was none. … Nancie, her parents abroad, her aunt’s house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin from South Africa coming home to Cromer, taking her out in a dogcart, telling her she was his guiding star, going back to South Africa; everything Nancie said and did, even her careful hair-brushing and her energetic upright walk, her positive brave way of entering a room, coming out through those malicious pinpoints—things she said about the Misses Perne and the girls, things she whispered and laughed, little rhymes she sang with her unbearable laugh.
… Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent servile glancing laughter, her stepmother, her little half-brother who had fits, her holidays at Margate, “you’d look neat, on the seat, of a bicyka made for two”—Beadie brought Miriam the utmost sense of imprisonment within the strange influence that had threatened her when she first came to Banbury Park. Beadie was in it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that she could in some way, in some one tint or tone, realise the whole fabric of Beadie’s life on and on to the end, no matter what should happen to her. But she turned from the attempt—any effort at full realisation threatened complete despair. Trixie too, with a home just opposite the Banbury Empire. … Miriam slid over this link in her rapid reflections—a brother named Julian who took instantaneous photographs of girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was sometimes “tight.” …
Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint suggestion of relief. Miriam fled to her as she sat with the garden light on her hair, her lingering flush of distress rekindled by her amusement, her protective responsible smile beaming out through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind her painstaking life at the school was a country home, a
