and face her room. Her eyes wandered vacantly back to the panels and down to the drawer below them and back again. The warm quiet booming of a gong came up through the house. She got to her feet and stood listening in amazement.
Mrs. Bailey had instituted a boardinghouse gong! She went out on to the landing; the gong ceased and rattled gently against its framework released from hands that had stilled its reverberation. A voice sounded in the hall and then the dining-room door closed and there was silence. They were having tea. Of course; every day; life going on down there in the dining-room. Involuntarily her feet were on the stairs. She went down the narrow flight holding to the balustrade to steady the stumbling of her benumbed limbs.
What was she doing? Going down to
Mrs. Bailey; going to stand for a moment close by
Mrs. Bailey’s tea-tray. No; impossible to let the Baileys save her; having done nothing for herself. Impossible to be beholden to the
Baileys for anything. Restoration by them would be restoration to shame. She had moved unconsciously. Her life was still her own. She was in the world, in a house, going down some stairs. For the present the pretence of living could go on. She could not go back to her room; nor forward to any other room. She pushed blindly on, bitter anger growing within her. She
had moved towards the Baileys. It was irrevocable. She had departed from all her precedents. She would always know it. Wherever she found herself it would always be there, at the root of her consciousness, shaming her, showing in everything she did or said. Halfway downstairs she restrained her heavy movements and began to go swiftly and stealthily. Mean, mean mean; utterly mean and damned, a sneaking evil spirit. She pulled herself upright and cleared her throat in a businesslike way. The echo of Harriett’s voice in her voice plumbed her for tears. But there were no tears. Only something close round her that moulded her face in lines of despair. The hall was in sight. She was going down to the hall to look for letters on the hall table, and go back. She paused in the hall. If the dining-room door opened she would kill someone with a cold blind glance and go angrily on and out of the front door. If it did not open? It remained closed. It was not going to open. It came quietly wide as if someone had been waiting behind it with the handle turned.
Mrs. Bailey was in the hall with a firm little hand on her arm.—
Well, young lady?—Miriam turned full round, shrinking backwards towards the hall table.
Mrs. Bailey was clutching her hands—Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?⸺I can’t whispered Miriam briskly, moving towards the dining-room door.—I’ve got to go out she murmured, standing just inside the open door.—Going out asked
Mrs. Bailey in a refined little voice throwing a proud fond shy glance towards Miriam from her recovered place behind the tea-tray. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled brightly under the gaslight. Miriam’s glance elastic in the warmth coming from the room swept from the flood of yellow hair on the back of the youngest Bailey girl sitting close at her mother’s left hand, across to the far side of the table. The pale grey-blue eyes of the eldest Bailey girl were directed towards the bread and butter her hand was stretched out to take with the unseeing look they must have had when she had turned her face towards the door. At her side, between her and her mother sat the young Norwegian gentleman, a dark blue upright form with a narrow gold bar set aslant in the soft mass of black silk tie bulging about the uncreased flatness of his length of grey waistcoat. He had reared his head smoothly upright and a smooth metallic glance had slid across her from large dark clear easily opened eyes. He was very young, about twenty; the leanness of his dart-like perfectly clad form led slenderly up to a lean distinguished head. But above the wide high pale brow where the bone stared squarely through the skin and was beaten in at the temples the skull had a snakelike flatness the polished hair was poor and worn.—Yes, murmured Miriam abstractedly, I’m just going out—Don’t catch cold young lady, smiled
Mrs. Bailey.—Oh well, I’ll try not to, said Miriam departing. They’ll never do it, she told herself as she made her way through the darkness towards her
A.B.C. He’ll find out. He thinks he is learning English in an English family.
Mrs. Bailey came up herself to do Miriam’s room on Sunday morning. Miriam wondered as she came archly in after a brisk tap on the door how she knew that her visit caused dismay. The visit of the little maid did not break into anything. It only meant standing for a minute or so by the window longing for the snuffling and shuffling to be over. But if Mrs. Bailey were coming up every Sunday morning. … She stood at Mrs. Bailey’s disposal sheepishly smiling, in the middle of the room.—You didn’t expect to see me, young lady—Miriam broadened her smile.—I want to talk to you—They stood confronted in the room just as they had done the first time Mrs. Bailey had been there with her and they had settled about the rent. Only that then the room had seemed large and real and at once inhabited, the crown of the large house and the reality of all the unknown rooms. Now it seemed to be at a disadvantage, one of Mrs. Bailey’s unconsidered attics, apart from the life that was beginning to flow all round her downstairs. Something in Mrs. Bailey’s face when she said I was wondering if you would give Sissie a few French lessons spoke the energy of the new feeling and
