“It must be a theatre,” she told herself in astonishment. “That’s what they call a suburban theatre. People think it is really a theatre.”
The little shock sent her mind feeling out along the road they had just left. She considered its unbroken length, its shops, its treelessness. The wide thoroughfare, up which they now began to rumble, repeated it on a larger scale. The pavements were wide causeways reached from the roadway by stone steps, three deep. The people passing along them were unlike any she knew. There were no ladies, no gentlemen, no girls or young men such as she knew. They were all alike. They were … She could find no word for the strange impression they made. It coloured the whole of the district through which they had come. It was part of the new world to which she was pledged to go on September 18th. It was her world already; and she had no words for it. She would not be able to convey it to others. She felt sure her mother had not noticed it. She must deal with it alone. To try to speak about it, even with Eve, would sap her courage. It was her secret. A strange secret for all her life as Hanover had been. But Hanover was beautiful, with distant country through the Saal windows with its colours misty in the sunlight, the beautiful, happy town and the woodland villages so near. This new secret was shabby, ugly and shabby. The half-perceived something persisted unchanged when the causeways and shops disappeared and long rows of houses streamed by, their close ranks broken only by an occasional cross road. They were large, high, flat-fronted houses with flights of grey stone steps leading to their porchless doors. They had tiny railed-in front gardens crowded with shrubs. Here and there long narrow strips of garden pushed a row of houses back from the roadway. In these longer plots stood signboards and showcases. “Photographic Studio,” “Commercial College,” “Eye Treatment,” “Academy of Dancing.” … She read the announcements with growing disquietude.
Rows of shops reappeared and densely crowded pavements, and then more high straight houses.
She roused herself at last from her puzzled contemplation and turned to glance at her mother. Mrs. Henderson was looking out ahead. The exhausted face was ready, Miriam saw, with its faintly questioning eyebrows and tightly-held lips, for emotional response. She turned away uneasily to the spellbound streets.
“Useless to try to talk about anything. … Mother would be somehow violent. She would be overpowering. The strange new impressions would be dissolved.”
But she must do something, show some sign of companionship. She began humming softly. The air was so full of clamour that she could not hear her voice. The houses and shops had disappeared. Drab brick walls were passing slowly by on either side. A goods’ yard. She deepened her humming, accentuating her phrases so that the sound might reach her companion through the reverberations of the clangour of shunting trains.
The high brick walls were drawing away. The end of the long roadway was in sight. Its widening mouth offered no sign of escape from the disquieting strangeness. The open stretch of thoroughfare into which they emerged was fed by innumerable lanes of traffic. From the islands dotted over its surface towered huge lamp standards branching out thin arms. As they rattled noisily over the stone setts they jolted across several lines of tramway and wove their way through currents of traffic crossing each other in all directions.
“I wonder where we’re going—I wonder if this is a Piccadilly bus,” Miriam thought of saying. Impossible to shout through the din.
The driver gathered up his horses and they clattered deafeningly over the last open stretch and turned into a smooth wide prospect.
“Oh bliss, wood-paving,” murmured Miriam.
A mass of smoke-greyed, sharply steepled stone building appeared on the right. Her eyes rested on its soft shadows.
On the left a tall grey church was coming towards them, spindling up into the sky. It sailed by, showing Miriam a circle of little stone pillars built into its spire. Plumy trees streamed by, standing large and separate on moss-green grass railed from the roadway. Bright white-faced houses with pillared porches shone through from behind them and blazed white above them against the blue sky. Wide side streets opened showing high balconied houses. The side streets were feathered with trees and ended mistily.
Away ahead were edges of clean bright masonry in profile, soft tufted heads of trees, bright green in the clear light. At the end of the vista the air was like pure saffron-tinted mother-of-pearl.
Miriam sat back and drew a deep breath.
“Well, chickie?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why, you’ve been very funny!”
“How?”
“You’ve been so dummel.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Oh—eh.”
“How d’you mean I’ve been funny?”
“Not speaking to poor old mum-jam.”
“Well, you haven’t spoken to me.”
“No.”
“I shan’t take any of my summer things there,” said Miriam.
Mrs. Henderson’s face twitched.
“Shall I?”
“I’m afraid you haven’t very much in the way of thick clothing.”
“I’ve only got my plaid dress for every day and my mixy grey for best and my dark blue summer skirt. My velveteen skirt and my nainsook blouse are too old.”
“You can wear the dark blue muslin blouse with the blue skirt for a long time yet with something warm underneath.”
“My grey’s very grubby.”
“You look very well in it indeed.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean it’s all gone sort of dull and grubby over the surface when you look down it.”
“Oh, that’s your imagination.”
“It isn’t my imagination and I can see how Harriett’s looks.”
“You both look very nice.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, my chick.”
“I’m not making
