the impossibility of their realising the Pernes—or Gerald’s rich memories of the opulence of his early home life, an atmosphere of spending and operas and banquets and receptions and distinguished people. During the evening, in a silent interval, just as the band was tuning up to begin its last tune, Gerald had said with quiet emphasis, “Well, anyhow, girls, you mark my words the old man won’t make any more money. Not another penny. You may as well make up your minds to that.” Then the band had broken into their favourite Hungarian dance. Three of them sat blissfully back in their deck chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably propped forward, eagerly thinking. The music rushed on, she saw dancers shining before her in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shouting, their feet scarcely touching the earth and a wild light darted about them as they shouted and leapt. “Set Mirry up in some sort of business,” quoted her mind from one of Gerald’s recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not want that. But the dancing forms told her of the absurdity of going back without protest to the long aching days of teaching in the little school amongst those dreadful voices which were going, whatever she did for them, to be dreadful all their lives. Nothing she could do would make any difference to them. They did not want her. They were quite happy. Her feelings and thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire for space and beautiful things and music and quietude would never be their desire. Reverence for things—had she reverence? She felt she must have because she knew they had not; even the old people; only superstition … North London would always be North London, hard, strong, sneering, moneymaking, noisy and trammy. Perhaps the difference between the north and the south and her own southwest of London was like the difference between the north and the south of England. … Green’s “History of the English People” … spinning-jennys began in the Danish north, hard and cold, with later sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace. North London meant twenty pounds a year and the need for resignation and determination every day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge garden and new books and music … a book called “Music and Morals” and interesting people staying in the house. And Eve had not been to Germany and could not talk French. “You are an idiot to go on doing it. It’s wrong. Lazy,” laughed the dancers crowding and flinging all round her. “I ought,” she responded defiantly, “to stay on and make myself into a certificated teacher.” “Certificated?” they screamed wildly sweeping before her in strange lines of light. “If you do you will be like Miss Cramp. Certificates—little conceited papers, and you dead. Certificates would finish you off—Kill—Kill—Kill—
Kill—
Kill!!” Bang. The band stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair wounding her flesh. The trail of the dancers flickered away across the sea and her brain was busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne: “and therefore I am obliged, however reluctantly, to take this step, as it is absolutely necessary for me to earn a larger salary at once.”
IX
The Henderson party found Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim plank-floored corridor leading from the station to the main building of the Crystal Palace. When the quiet greetings were over and they had arranged a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case any of the party should be lost, they all tramped on up the resounding corridor. Miriam found herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow. They were going on up the corridor, through the Palace and out into the summer evening. They had all come to go out into the summer evening and see the fireworks. All but she had come meaning to get quite near to the “set pieces” and to look at them. She had not said anything about meaning to get as far away from the fireworks as possible. She had been trusting to Mr. Parrow for that. Now that she was with him she felt that perhaps it was not quite fair. He had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would be disappointed. She would be obliged to tell him presently, when they got out into the night. They were all tramping quickly up along the echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking, just feet, tramp, tramp on the planking, rather quickly. It was like the sound of workmen’s feet on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house. The corridor was like something in the Hospital for Incurables … that strange old woman sitting in the hall with bent head laughing over her crochet, and Miss Garrett whom they had come to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in a ward, with a pleated mobcap all over the top of her head and halfway down her forehead, sitting back against large square pillows with her hands clasped on the neat bedclothes and a “sweet, patient” look on her face, coughing gently and spitting, spitting herself to death … rushing away out of the ward to wait for mother downstairs in the hall with the curious smells and the dreadful old woman. … What was it, chick? … Sick, mother, I felt sick, I couldn’t stay. It was rage; rage with that dreadful old woman. People probably told her she was patient and sweet, and she had got that trick of putting her head on one side. She was not sweet. She was one of the worst of those dreadful people who would always make people believe in a particular way, all the time. She had a great big frame. If she had done anything but sit as she sat, in that particular way, one could have stayed.
They were all standing looking at some wonderful sort of clock, a calendar-clock—“a triumph of ingenuity,” said Mr. Green’s bright reedy voice. The building had opened
