The dining-room was a buzz of conversation. The table was packed save for two chairs on Mrs. Bailey’s right hand. Mrs. Bailey was wearing a black satin blouse cut in a V and a piece of black ribbon-velvet tied round her neck! She was in conversation, preening and arching as she ladled out the soup, with a little lady and a big old gentleman with a patriarch beard sitting on her right bowing and smiling, personally, towards Miriam and Miss Dear as they took their seats. Miriam bowed and gazed as they went on talking. The old gentleman had a large oblong head above a large expensive spread of smooth well-cut black coat; a huge figure, sitting tall, with easily moving head reared high, massy grey hair; unspectacled smiling glistening eyes and oblong fresh cheeked face wreathed in smiles revealing gleaming squares of gold stopping in his front teeth. His voice was vast and silky, like the beard that moved as he spoke, shifting about on the serviette tucked by one corner into his neck. His little wife was like a kind bird, soft curtains of greying black hair crimping down from a beautifully twisted topknot on either side of a clear gentle forehead. Softly gleaming eyes shone through rimless pince-nez perched delicately on her delicate nose, no ugly straight bar, a little half-hoop to join them together and at the side a delicate gold chain tucked over one ear … she was about as old as mother had been … she was exactly like her … girlishly young, but untroubled; the little white ringed left hand with strange unfamiliarly expressive fingertips and curiously mobile turned-back thumb-tip was herself in miniature. It held a little piece of bread, peaked, expressively, as she ate her soup. She was utterly familiar, no stranger; always known. Miriam adored, seeking her eyes till she looked, and meeting a gentle enveloping welcome, making no break in her continuous soft animation. The only strange thing was a curious circular sweep of her delicate jaw as she spoke; a sort of wide mouthing on some of her many quiet words, thrown in through and between and together with the louder easily audible silky tones of her husband. Mrs. Bailey sat unafraid, expanding in happiness. You will have a number of things to see she was saying. We are counting on this laddie to be our guide, said the old gentleman turning hugely to his further neighbour. Miriam’s eyes followed and met the face of Dr. Hurd … grinning; his intensest brick-red grin. He had not gone! These were his parents. He needs a holiday too, the dear lad, said the old gentleman laying a hand on his shoulder. Dr. Hurd grinned a rueful disclaimer with his eyes still on Miriam’s and said I shan’t be sorry, his face crinkling with his unexploded hysterically leaping laugh. Mrs. Hurd’s smiling little face flickered with quickly smothered sadness. They had come all the way from Canada to share his triumph and were here smoothing his defeat. … Canadian old people. A Canadian woman … that circular jaw movement was made by the Canadian vowels. They disturbed a woman’s small mouth more than a man’s. It must affect her thoughts, the held-open mouth; airing them; making them circular, sympathetically balanced, easier to go on from than the more narrowly mouthed English speech. … Mr. Gunner, sitting beside your son is a violinist. … Ah. We shall hope to hear him. Mr. Gunner, small and shyly smiling, next to him an enormous woman with a large schoolgirl face, fair straight and schoolgirl hair lifted in a flat wave from her broad forehead into an angry peak, angrily eating with quickly moving brawny arms coming out of elbow sleeves with cheap cream lace frilling, reluctantly forced to flop against the brawny arms. Sallow good-looking husband, olive, furious, cocksure, bilious type, clubby and knowing, flat ignorance on the top of his unconscious shiny round black skull, both snatching at scraps of Scott and Sissie and Gunner chaff, trying to smile their way in to hide their fury with each other. Too poor to get further away from each other, accustomed to boarding house life, eating rapidly and looking for more. She had several brothers; a short aristocratic upper lip and shapely scornful nostrils, brothers in the diplomatic service or the army. There was someone this side of the table they recognised as different and were watching; a tall man beyond Mrs. Barrow, a strange fine voice with wandering protesting inflections; speaking out into the world, with practised polished wandering inflections, like a tired pebble worn by the sea, going on and on, presenting the same worn wandering curves wherever it was, always a stranger everywhere, always anew presenting the strange wandering inflections; indiscriminately. That end of the table was not aware of the Hurds. Its group was wandering outside the warm glow of Canadian society. Eleanor Dear was feeling at its doors, pathetic-looking with delicate appealing head and thoughtful baby brow downcast. Us’ll wander out this evening shall us, murmured Miriam in a lover-like undertone. It was a grimace at the wide-open door of Canadian life; an ironic kick à la Harriet. Her heart beat recklessly round the certainty of writing and posting her letter. If he cared he would understand. Mrs. Hurd had come to show her Canadian society, brushing away the tangles and stains of accidental contacts; putting everything right. Of course we will, bridled Miss Dear rebuking her vulgarity. Nothing mattered now but filling up the time.
The table was breaking up; the Hurds retiring in a backward-turning group talking to Mrs. Bailey, towards the door. The others were standing about the room. The Hurds had gone. Oh-no, that’s all right, Mrs. Bailey; I’ll be all right. It was the wandering voice. … It went on, up and down, the most curious different singing
