“Alma hasn’t changed,” she said, desperately questioning the smooth soft movements of the smooth soft hands, the quiet controlled pose of the head. Alma had the same birdlike wide blink and flash of her limpid brown eyes, the same tight crinkle and snicker when she laughed, the same way of saying nothing or only the clever superficially true things men said. Alma had agreed with this man and had told him nothing or only things in the clever way he would admire.
He made little sounds into his handkerchief. He was nonplussed at a dull answer. It would be necessary to be brilliant and amusing to hold his attention—in fact to tell lies. To get on here one would have to say clever things in a high bright voice.
The little man began making statements about Alma. Sitting back in his high-backed chair with his head bent and his small fine hands clasping his large handkerchief he made little short statements, each improving on the one before it and coming out of it, and little subdued snortings at the back of his nose in the pauses between his sentences as if he were afraid of being answered or interrupted before he developed the next thing. Alma accompanied his discourse with increasing snickerings. Miriam after eagerly watching the curious mouthing half hidden by the drooping straggle of moustache and the strange concentrated gleam of the grey blue eyes staring into space, laughed outright. But how could he speak so of her? He met the laughter with a minatory outstretched forefinger, and raised his voice to a soft squeal ending as he launched with a little throw of the hand his final jest, in a rotund crackle of high hysterical open-mouthed laughter. The door opened and two tall people were shown in; a woman with a narrow figure and a long dark-curtained sallow horse-like face, dressed in a black striped cream serge coat and skirt and a fair florid troubled fickle smiling man in a Norfolk tweed and pale blue tie. “Hullo,” said the little man propelling himself out of his chair with a neat swift gesture and standing small and square in the room making cordial sounds and moving his arms about as if to introduce and seat his guests without words and formalities. Alma’s thin excited hubbub and the clearly enunciated, obviously prepared facetiousnesses of the newcomers—his large and tenor and florid … a less clever man than Mr. Wilson … and hers bass and crisp and contemptuous … nothing was hidden from her; she would like the queer odd people who went about at Tansley Street—was broken into by the entry of three small young men, all three dark and a little grubby and shabby looking. The foremost stood with vivid eager eyes wide open as if he had been suddenly checked in the midst of imparting an important piece of news. Alma came forward to where they stood herded and silent just inside the door and made little faint encouraging maternal sounds at them as she shook hands.
As she did this Miriam figured them in a flash coming down the road to the house; their young men’s talk and arguments, their certainty of rightness and completeness, their sudden embarrassment and secret anger with their precipitate rescuer. Mr. Wilson was on his feet again, not looking at them nor breaking up the circle already made, but again making his sociable sounds and circular movements with his arms as if to introduce and distribute them about the room. The husband and wife kept on a dialogue in strained social voices as if they were bent on showing that their performance was not dependant on an audience. Miriam averted her eyes from them, overcome by painful visions of the two at breakfast or going home after social occasions. The three young men retreated to the window alcove behind the tea-table one of them becoming Miriam’s neighbour as she sat in the corner near the piano whither she had fled from the centre of the room when the husband and wife came in.
It was the young man with the important piece of news. He sat bent forward holding his cup and plate with outstretched arms. His headlong expression remained unchanged. Wisps of black hair stood eagerly out from his head and a heavy thatch fell nearly to his eyebrows. “Did anybody see anything of Mrs. Binks at the station?” asked Alma from her table. “Oh my dear,” she squealed gently as the maid ushered in a little lady in a straight dress of red flannel frilled with black chiffon at the neck and wrists, “we were all afraid you weren’t coming.” “Don’t anybody move”—the deep reedy voice reverberated amongst the standing figures; the firm compact undulating figure came across the room to Alma. Its light-footed swiftness and easy certainty filled Miriam with envy. The envy evaporated during the embracing of Alma and the general handshaking. The low strong reedy
