The Thames. Barking Creek goes into the Thames and the Roding goes into Barking Creek. Yesterday, the last walk with Roddy, across Barking Flats to the river, over the dry, sallow grass, the wind blowing in their faces. Roddy’s face, beautiful, like Mamma’s, his mouth, white at the edges. Roddy gasping in the wind, trying to laugh, his heart thumping. Roddy was excited when he saw the tall masts of the ships. He had wanted to be a sailor.
Dan’s face, when he said goodbye; his hurt, unhappy eyes; the little dark, furry moustache trying to come. Tibby’s eyes. Dank wanted to marry Effie. Mark was the only one who got what he wanted.
Better not think of Dank.
She looked shyly at her companions. The stout lady in brown, sitting beside her; kind, thin mouth, pursed to look important; dull kind eyes trying to be wise and sharp behind spectacles, between curtains of dead hair. A grand manner, excessively polite, on the platform, to Papa—Miss Lambert.
The three girls, all facing them. Pam Quin; flaxen pigtail; grown up nose; polite mouth, buttoned, little flaxen and pink old lady, Pam Quin, talking about her thirteenth birthday.
Lucy Elliott, red pigtail, suddenly sad in her corner, innocent white-face, grey eyes blinking to swallow her tears. Frances Elliott, hay coloured pigtail, very upright, sitting forward and talking fast to hide her sister’s shame.
Mamma’s face—Don’t think of it.
Green fields and trees rushing past now. Stop a tree and you’ll change and feel the train moving. Plato. You can’t trust your senses. The cave-dwellers didn’t see the things that really moved, only the shadows of the images of the things. Is the world in your mind or your mind in the world? Which really moves? Perhaps the world stands still and you move on and on like the train. If both moved together that would feel like standing still.
Grass banks. Telegraph wires dipping and rising like sea-waves. At Dover there would be the sea.
Mamma’s face—Think. Think harder. The world was going on before your mind started. Supposing you lived before, would that settle it? No. A white chalk cutting flashed by. God’s mind is what both go on in. That settles it.
The train dashed into a tunnel. A long tunnel. She couldn’t remember what she was thinking of the second before they went in. Something that settled it. Settled what? She couldn’t think any more.
Dover. The girls standing up, and laughing. They said she had gone to sleep in the train.
III
There was no sea; only the Maison Dieu Road and the big square house in the walled garden. Brown wire blinds halfway up the schoolroom windows. An old lady with grey hair and a kind, blunt face, like Jenny; she unpacked your box in the large, light bedroom, folding and unfolding your things with little gentle, tender hands. Miss Haynes. She hoped you would be happy with them, hoped you wouldn’t mind sleeping alone the first night, thought you must be hungry and took you down to tea in the long dining-room.
More girls, pretending not to look at you; talking politely to Miss Lambert.
After tea they paired off, glad to see each other. She sat in the corner of the schoolroom reading the new green Shakespeare that Roddy had given her. Two girls glanced at her, looked at each other. “Is she doing it for fun?” “Cheek, more likely.”
Night. A strange white bed. Two empty beds, strange and white, in the large, light room. She wondered what sort of girls would be sleeping there tomorrow night. A big white curtain: you could draw it across the room and shut them out.
She lay awake, thinking of her mother, crying now and then; thinking of Roddy and Dan. Mysterious, measured sounds came through the open window. That was the sea. She got up and looked out. The deep-walled garden lay under the window, black and clear like a well. Calais was over there. And Paris. Mr. Jourdain had written to say he was going to Paris. She had his letter.
In bed she felt for the sharp edge of the envelope sticking out under the pillow. She threw back the hot blankets. The wind flowed to her, running cold like water over the thin sheet.
A light moved across the ceiling. Somebody had waked her. Somebody was putting the blankets back again, pressing a large, kind hand to her forehead. Miss Lambert.
IV
“Mais—mais—de grâce! ça ne finira jamais—jamais, s’il faut répondre à tes sottises, Marie. Recommençons.”
Mademoiselle, golden topknot shining and shaking, blue eyes rolling between black lashes.
“De ta tige détachée,
Pauvre feuille desséchée”—
Détachée—desséchée. They didn’t rhyme. Their not rhyming irritated her distress.
She hated the schoolroom: the ochreish wallpaper, the light soiled by the brown wire gauze; the cramped classes, the faint odour of girl’s skin; girl’s talk in the bedroom when you undressed.
The queer she-things had a wonderful, mysterious life you couldn’t touch.
Clara, when she walked with you, smiling with her black-treacle eyes and bad teeth, glad to be talked to. Clara in bed. You bathed her forehead with eau-de-cologne, and she lay there, happy, glad of her headache that made them sorry for her. Clara, waiting for you at the foot of the stairs, looking with dog’s eyes, imploring. “Will you walk with me?” “I can’t. I’m going with Lucy.” She turned her wounded dog’s eyes and slunk away, beaten, humble, to walk with the little ones.
Lucy Elliott in the bathing machine, slipping from the cloak of the towel, slender and straight; sea water gluing red weeds of hair to her white skin. Sweet eyes looking towards you in the evening at sewing-time.
“Will you sit with me at sewing?”
“I’m sitting with Rose Godwin.”
Sudden sweetness; sudden trouble; grey eyes dark and angry behind sudden tears. She wouldn’t look at you;
