Eve’s large soft mouth pursed a little, and Miriam watched steadily until dimples appeared. “Go on, Eve,” she said, removing her hand.
“Shall I play the Beethoven first?” enquired the guest.
“Mm—and then the Cavatina,” murmured Miriam, as if half asleep, turning wholly towards the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano scores.
She seemed to grow larger and stronger and easier as the thoughtful chords came musing out into the night and hovered amongst the dark trees. She found herself drawing easy breaths and relaxing completely against the support of the hard friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was listening. …
After a while, everything was dissolved, past and future and present and she was nothing but an ear, intent on the meditative harmony which stole out into the garden.
When the last gently strung notes had ceased she turned from her window and found Harriett’s near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling slowly up the forehead.
“Wow,” mouthed Miriam.
Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and strained her eyebrow higher.
The piano introduction to the Cavatina drowned the comments on the guest’s playing and the family relaxed once more into listening.
“Pink anemones, eh,” suggested Miriam softly.
Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approvingly.
“Pink anemones,” sighed Miriam, and turned to watch Margaret Wedderburn standing in her full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a radiance of red and golden light. Her heavily waving fair hair fell back towards its tightly braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as death. From between furry eyelashes her eyes looked steadfastly out, robbed of their everyday sentimental expression.
As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the fine gold down covering the cheeks and upper lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin and firm large mouth and the steady arm that swept out in rich cello-like notes the devout theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity of happiness.
… Tomorrow the room would be lit and decked and clear. Amongst the crowd of guests, he would come across the room, walking in his way. … She smiled to herself. He would come “sloping in” in his way, like a shadow, not looking at anyone. His strange friend would be with him. There would be introductions and greetings. Then he would dance with her silently and not looking at her, as if they were strangers, and then be dancing with someone else … with smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes and talking and answering and all the time looking about the room. And then again with her, cool and silent and not looking. And presently she would tell him about going away to Banbury Park.
Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable again as he had done when they were alone by the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany. … “Play ‘Abide with me,’ Miriam; play ‘Abide with me.’ ” …
Tomorrow there would be another moment like that. He would say her name suddenly, as he had done last week at the Babingtons’ dance, very low, half-turning towards her. She would be ready this time and say his name and move instead of being turned to stone. Confidently the music assured her of that moment.
She lay looking quietly into his imagined face till the room had gone. Then the face grew dim and far off and at last receded altogether into darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was his own life. She would never know it. However well they got to know each other they would always be strangers. Probably he never thought about her when he was alone. Only of Shakespeare and politics. What would he think if he knew she thought of him? But he thought of her when he saw her. That was utterly certain; the one thing certain in the world. … That day, coming along Putney Hill with mother, tired and dull and trying to keep her temper, passing his house, seeing him standing at his window, alone and pale and serious. The sudden lightening of his face surprised her again, violently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole world from end to end. He did not know that he had looked like that. She had turned swiftly from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow on her heart, that one day he would kiss her. Not for years and years. But one day he would bend his head. She wrenched herself from the thought, but it was too late. She thanked heaven she had looked; she wished she had not; the kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not touched her, it was like the breath of the summer. Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt the pavement. She remembered walking on, exulting with hanging head, cringing close to the ivy which hung from the top of the garden wall, sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and everyone who would never stand first with Ted.
… There were girls who let themselves be kissed for fun. … Playing “Kiss in the Ring,” being kissed by someone they did not mean to always be with, all their life … how sad and dreadful. Why did it not break their hearts?
Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug, being thanked and praised. Her brown violin hung amongst the folds of her skirt.
“People do like us,” mused Miriam, listening to the peculiar sympathy of the family voice.
Meg was there, away from her own home, happy with them, the front door shut, their garden and house all round her and her strange luggage upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice Meg. …
After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat in a low carpet chair at a window in the long bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a morning of blazing sunlight and bright blue. She had just come up through the cool house from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with Harriett. A little bunch of pink anemones she had picked for herself were set in a tumbler on the wash-hand-stand.
She had left the
