the sermon she rarely raised her eyes from the circle they filled for her as they sat thrown into relief by the great white pillar. Their faces were turned towards the chancel. They could see its high dim roof and distant altar, the light on the altar, flowers, shining metal, embroideries, the maze of the east window, the white choir. They showed no sign of seeing these things. The old woman’s heavy face with its heavy jawbone seemed to have been dead for years under its coffin-shaped black bonnet. Her large body was covered by a mantle of thickly ribbed black material trimmed with braid and bugles. That bright yellow colour meant liver. Whatever she had she was dying of it. People were always dying when they looked like that. But it was a bad way to die. The real way was the way of that lady trailing about over the Heath near Roehampton, dying by inches of an internal complaint, with her face looking fragile—like the little alabaster
chapelle in the nursery with a candle alight inside. She was going to die, walking about alone on the Heath in the afternoons. Her family going on as usual at home; the greengrocer calling. She knew that everybody was alone and that all the fuss and noise people made all day was a pretence. … What to
do? To be walking about with a quiet face meeting death. Nothing could be so alone as that. The pain, and struggle, and darkness. … That was what the old woman feared. She did not think about death. She was afraid and sullen all the time. Stunned, sitting there with her cold common daughter. She had been common herself as a girl, but more noisy, and she had married and never thought about dying, and now she was dying and hating her cold daughter. The daughter, sitting there with her stiff slatey-blue coat and skirt, her indistinct hat tied with a thin harsh veil to her small flat head—what a home with her in it all the time. She would never laugh. Her poor-looking cheeks were yellowish, her fringe dry, without gloss. She would move her mouth when she spoke, sideways with a snarling curl of one-half of the upper lip and have that resentful way of speaking that all North Londoners have, and the maddening North London accent. The old woman’s voice would be deep and hollow. … The girl moving heavily about the house wearing boots and stiff dresses and stiff stays showing their outline through her clothes. They would be bitter to their servant and would not trust her. What was the good of their being alive … a house and a water system and drains and cooking, and they would take all these things for granted and grumble and snarl … the gas meter man would call there. Did men like that resent calling at houses like that? No. They’d just say, “The ole party she sez to me.” How good they were, these men. Good and kind and cheerful. Someone ought to prevent the extravagance of keeping whole houses and fires going for women like that. They ought to be in an institution. But they never thought about that. They were satisfied with themselves. They were self-satisfied because they did not know what they were like. …
Why should you have a house, and tradesmen calling?
“Jehoiakin!” The rush of indistinct expostulating sound coming from the pulpit was accompanied for a moment by reverberations of the one clearly bawled word. The sense of the large cold church, the great stone pillars, the long narrow windows faintly stained with yellowish green, the harsh North London congregation stirred and seemed to settle down more securely. She saw the form of the vicar in the light grey stone pulpit standing up short and neat against the cold grey stone wall, enveloped in fine soft folds, his small puckered hands beautifully cuffed, his plump crumpled little face, his small bald head fringed with little saffron-white curls, his pink pouched busy mouth. What was it all about? Pompous pottering, going on and on and on—in the Old Testament. The whole church was in the Old Testament. … Honour thy father and thy mother. How horribly the words would echo through the great cold church. Why honour thy father and thy mother? What had they done that was so honourable? Everybody was dying in cold secret fear. Christ, the son of God, was part of it all, the same family … vindictive. Christmas and Easter, hard white cold flowers, no real explanation. “I came not to destroy but to fulfil.” The stagnant blood flushed in her face and tingled in her ears as the words occurred to her. Why didn’t everybody die at once and stop it all?
Miss Haddie paused at the door of her room and wheeled suddenly round to face Miriam who had just reached the landing.
“You’ve not seen my little corner,” she tweedled breathlessly, throwing open her door.
Miriam went in. “Oh how nice,” she said fearfully, breathing in the freshness of a little square sun-filled muslin-draped, blue-papered room. Taking refuge at the white-skirted window, she found a narrow view of the park, greener than the one she knew. The wide yellow pathway going up through the cricket ground had shifted away to the right.
“It’s really a—a—a dressing-room from your room.”
“Oh,” said Miriam vivaciously.
“There’s a door, a—a—a door. I daresay you’ve noticed.”
“Oh! That’s the door in our cupboard!” The dim door behind the hanging garments led to nothing but to Miss Haddie’s room. She began unbuttoning her gloves.
Miss Haddie was hesitating near a cupboard, making little sounds.
“I suppose we must all make ourselves tidy now,” said Miriam.
“I thought you didn’t look very happy in church this morning,” cluttered Miss Haddie rapidly.
Miriam felt heavy with anger. “Oh,” she said clumsily, “I had the most frightful headache.”
“Poor child. I thought ye didn’t look yerself.”
The window was shut. But the room was mysteriously fresh, far away from the school. A fly was hovering
