Admitted to the dark narrowly echoing tiled passage, she stated her errand and was conducted past a closed door and the opening of a narrow staircase which shot steeply, carpeted with a narrow strip of surprisingly green velvet carpeting, up towards an unlit landing and admitted to Mrs. Philps.
“Wait a minute, Vashti,” said Mrs. Philps, holding Miriam’s hand as she murmured her errand. “You’ll stay tea? Well, if you’re sure you can’t I’ll not press you. Bring the biscuits and the sherry and two white wineglasses, Vashti. Get them now and bring them in at once. Sit down, Miss Henderson. She’s little better than a step-girl. They’re all the same.” Whilst she described her niece’s illness, Miriam wondered over the immense bundle of little even black sausage-shaped rolls of hair which stuck out, larger than her head and smoothed to a sphere by a tightly drawn net, at the back of her skull. She was short and stout and had bright red cheeks that shone in the gloom and rather prominent large blue eyes that roamed as she talked, allowing Miriam to snatch occasional glimpses of china-filled what-nots and beaded ottomans. Presently Vashti returned clumsily with the wine, making a great bumping and rattling round about the door. “You stupid thing, you’ve brought claret. Don’t you know sherry when you see it? It’s at the back—behind the Harvest Burgundy.” “I shall have to go soon,” said Miriam, relieved at the sight of the red wine and longing to escape the sherry. Vashti put down the tray and stood with open mouth. Even with her very high heels she looked almost a dwarf. The room seemed less oppressive with the strange long-necked decanter and the silver biscuit box standing on a table in the curious greenish light. Mrs. Philps accepted the claret and returned busily to her story, whilst Miriam sipped and glanced at a large print in a heavy black frame leaning forward low over the small white marble mantelpiece. It represented a young knight in armour kneeling at an altar with joined and pointed hands held to his lips. An angel standing in midair was touching his shoulder with a sword. “Why doesn’t she kiss the top of his head,” thought Miriam as she sipped her wine. The distant aisles and pillars of the church made the room seem larger than it was. “I suppose they all look into that church when they want to get away from each other,” she mused as Mrs. Philps went on with her long sentences beginning “And Dr. Newman said—” And there was a little mirror above a bulging chiffonier which was also an escape from the confined space. Looking into it, she met Mrs. Philps’s glowing face with the blue eyes widely staring and fixed upon her own, and heard her declare, with her bunched cherry-coloured lips, that Grace was “almost perfection.” “Is she?” she responded eagerly, and Mrs. Philps elaborated her theme. Grace, then, with her heavy body and strange hot voice, lying somewhere upstairs in a white bed, was the most important thing in this dark little house. “She was very near to death then,” Mrs. Philps was saying tearfully, “very near, and when she came round from her delirium, one of the first things she said to me as soon as she was strong enough to whisper, was that she was perfectly certain about there being another life.” Mrs. Philps’s voice faded and she sat with trembling lips and eyes downcast. “Did she!” Miriam almost shouted, half-rising from her seat and turning from contemplating Mrs. Philps in the mirror to look her full in the face. The dim green light streaming in from the conservatory seemed like a tide that made everything in the room rock slightly. A touch would sweep it all away and heaven would be there all round them. “Did she,” whispered Miriam in a faint voice that shook her chest. “ ‘Aunt,’ she said,” went on Mrs. Philps steadily, as the room grew firm round Miriam and the breath she drew seemed like an early morning breath, “ ‘I want to say something quickly,’ she said, ‘in case I die. It’s that I know—for a positive fact, there is another life.’ ”
“What a perfectly stupendous thing,” said Miriam. “It’s so important.”
“I was much impressed. Of course, I knew she was nearly perfect. But we’ve not been in the habit of talking about religion. I asked her if she would like to see the vicar. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘there’s no need. He knows.’ I doubt if he knows as much as she does. But
