“Ah. I thought the young lady was in. I thought so.” Mrs. Bailey stood approving inside the door. The sunlight streamed on to her shabby skirt. The large dusty house, the many downstair rooms, the mysterious dark-roomed vault of the basement, all upright in her upright form; hurried smeary cleansings, swift straightening of grey-sheeted beds, the strange unfailing water-system, gurgling cisterns, gushing taps and lavatory flushes, the wonder of gaslight and bedroom candles, the daily meals magically appearing and disappearing; her knowledge of the various mysteriously arriving and vanishing people, all beginning and ending in her triumphant, reassuring smile that went forward outside beyond these things, with everybody.
Now that she was there, bearing and banishing all these heavy things, the squat green teapot on the table in the blaze of window-light, the Chinese lantern hanging from the hook in the ceiling, the little Madras muslin curtains at either end of the endmost lattices made a picture and set the room free from the challenge of the house accumulating as Miriam had come up through it and preventing the effect she had sought when she put out the green teapot on the sunlit table. She was receiving Mrs. Bailey as a guest, backed up by the summery little window-room. She stood back in the gloom, dropping back into the green lamplit stillness of the farmhouse garden. The Song of Hiawatha sounded on and on amongst the trees, the trunk of the huge sheltering oak lit brightly by the shaded lamp on the little garden table, the forms in the long chairs scarcely visible. She offered Mrs. Bailey the joy of her journey down, her bicycle in the van, Miss Szigmondy’s London guests, the sixteenth-century ingle, the pine-scented bedrooms with sloping floors, the sandy high-banked lanes and pine-clad hills, the strange talk with the connoisseur, the kind stupid boyish mind of the London doctor who had seen myopic astigmatism across the lunch table and admitted being beaten in argument without resentment; the long dewy morning ride to Guildford; the happy thorns in her hands keeping the weekend still going on at Wimpole Street; her renewed sense of the simplicity of imposing looking people, their personal helplessness on the surface of wealthy social life; the glow of wealthy social life lighting the little wooden window-room, gleaming from the sheeny flecks of light on the well-shaped green teapot.
Mrs. Bailey advanced to the middle of the floor and stood looking towards the window. My word aren’t we smart she breathed.
“I like the teapot and the lantern, don’t you?” said Miriam.
“Very pretty, mts, very pretty, young lady.”
“It reminds me of weekends. It is a weekend. That is my drawing-room.”
“That’s it. It’s a weekend,” beamed Mrs. Bailey. But she had come for something. The effect was not spoiled by giving a wrong, social impression of it, because Mrs. Bailey was busily thinking behind her voice. When she had gone the silent effect would be there, more strongly. Perhaps she had some new suggestion to make about Sissie.
“Well, young lady, I want to talk to you.” Mrs. Bailey propped one elbow on the mantelpiece and brushed at her skirt. Miriam waited, watching her impatiently. The Tansley Street life was fading into the glow of the oncoming holiday season. Rain was cooling the July weather, skirmishy sunlit April rain and wind drawing her forward. There was leisure in cool uncrowded streets and restaurants and in the two cool houses, no pressure of work, the gay easy August that was almost as good as a holiday, and the certainty beyond the rain, of September brilliance.
“Well you know I’ve a great regard for you, young lady.”
Miriam stared back at the long row of interviews with Mrs. Bailey and sought her face for her invisible thoughts.
“Well to come straight to the point without beating about the bush, it’s about him, that little man, you know who I mean.”
“Who?”
“Mendizzable.”
Miriam’s interest awoke and flared. That past patch of happy life had been somehow or other visible to Mrs. Bailey. She felt decorated and smiled into the room.
“Well; you know I don’t believe in talk going about from one to another. In my opinion people should mind their own business and not listen to tittle-tattle, or if they do, keep it to themselves without passing it on and making mischief.”
“Has someone been trying to make mischief about poor little Mr. Mendizabal?”
“Well, if it was about him I wouldn’t mind so much. Little villain. That’s my name for him.”
“Fascinating little villain if he must be called a villain.”
“Well; that’s what I’ve got to ask you my chahld; are you under a fascination about him? You’ll excuse me asking such a question.”
Solicitude! what for?
“Well. I did think him fascinating; he fascinated me, he would anybody. He would fascinate Miss Scott if he chose.”
“ ’Er? ’Er be fascinated by anybody? She thinks too much of number one for that.”
… Miss Scott. Dressing so carefully, so full of independent talk and laughter and not able to be fascinated … too farseeing to be fascinated.
“But why do you ask? I’m not responsible for Mr. Mendizabal’s being a fascinating little man.”
“Fascinating little devil. You should have heard Dr. Winchester.”
Something hidden; all the time; behind the politeness of the house.
“Dr. Winchester?”
“Dr. Winchester. Do you remember him coming out into the hall one evening when you were brushing your coat?”
“And brushing it for me. Yes.”
“He didn’t know how to let you go.” There was a trembling in Mrs. Bailey’s voice. “He said,” she pursued breathlessly, “he was in two minds to come with you himself.”
“Where? Why?”
“Why? He knew that fella was waiting for you round the corner.”
Suddenly appearing, brushing so carefully … why not have spoken and come.
“Well now we’re coming to it. I can’t tell you how it all happened, that’s between Mr. Gunner and Miss S. They got to know you was going out with Mendizzable and where you went. It’s contemptible I know, if you like, but there’s many such people about.”
Miriam
