The happiness that came when they were even bleaker was a presage. Of what? Someone says there is nothing meaner than making the best of things. But happiness is incurable. A thing you can’t help. Perhaps it is the result of being a woman. One of Wells’ crawling cabs waiting to be hailed? Bosh. If I wait for anyone it is for one who will show himself to have been hailed by the same kind of happiness.
Mrs. Cameron running singing up the stairs, pushed open the door and stood tall, a bright questing figure; determinedly bright, a deliberately cheerful blue overall covering all but the sleeves of her multicoloured gown; hanging from her arm a great basket of primroses.
“Good morning,” she laughed. “How ist with thee?”
Miriam delighted in the gaiety of colour she made standing there in the flood of top-light; in the heroic tilt of her head, in everything but the deliberately rousing, deliberately gloom-flouting ring of her laugh, which yet so frequently breaking forth, was the thing that compelled her tired eyes, tired bright hair and thin face into harmony with the gay colours of her house and clothing.
She smiled from her place at the table, made room for Mrs. Cameron in her mind and prepared to squander, in seeing life with her, a bit more of the morning hour. Mrs. Cameron came in pleased, and began at once with her legends. Miriam read off in her own thoughts legends to match. It was a clear shape, deliberate. A way of ignoring all but the shining surfaces. Of setting everything, even the old woman dying penniless in the Mews, in a light that made surfaces shine.
But her way of denying gloom brought gloom in the end. Spread it everywhere. Miriam felt herself drooping, was glad when she rose spindling up to her full gay height and settling herself on her feet with a little spring that made the primrose bunches jostle each other in the basket.
“I’m off to kirk with Donald. A special service. There’s a call,” for the first time her face clouded, “a need abroad in the air for intercession, Mr. Groat says, a wonderful turning for help and guidance. Such a hopeful sign.”
“Yes,” said Miriam sympathetically, “certainly it is.” But her mind was arguing that there is nothing in the world that is not a hopeful sign.
“The state of society,” breathed Mrs. Cameron, eagerly dropping her voice. But Miriam had left her. The whole day would not be long enough for the enterprise of getting Mrs. Cameron down to underlying things. She wanted the bright figure to stay, gathering the beams of the spring sunlight before her eyes, but Mrs. Cameron had read the opposition in her face.
“Fare thee well, lassie,” she chanted in hillside voice and flung, as she went, a bunch of primroses on to the table. Miriam pursued her for a word of thanks. From halfway down the stairs she turned with a piercing smile, and sang out:
“It’s your life you are living here, lassie, and flowers are for all.”
Miriam turned back. The small bunch lying upon the scatter of charts and letters was there to brighten her life that was spending itself, had spent itself for the ten years since she left home, the years that are called “the best.” So Mrs. Cameron saw it. So perhaps everyone would see it. She herself the only blind spectator. It was true. This scene that she persisted in seeing as a background, stationary, not moving on, was her life, was counting off years. The unlimited future she meted out for the life she was one day to lead appeared to Mrs. Cameron defined, a short span.
A tap at the door and Eve coming in with the midmorning soup and her look of adoring care. She moved in the room with a restrained eagerness. Taking her time. Never still, yet waiting, savouring as Miriam was savouring, their perfect interchange, the sudden lift into happiness that came to them in each other’s presence. Miriam stood motionless, suddenly conscious of herself as standing considering Mrs. Cameron’s judgment with bent head, and then as utterly relieved of it by Eve who passed to and fro close by her as if she were not there, and was gone with a light click of the gently closing door. And there had been an endless moment of communion, a moment for both of them, of oblivion and renewal in the presence of a lover.
It was part of Eve’s wonderfulness that she should have come in just then, to answer Mrs. Cameron. Miriam held the image of her in her mind, her gently rounded, ever so little stocky and stumpy figure; the deep rose flush on her cheeks over which the cloudy black hair cast a margin of shadow; the pure serenity that radiated from her, that was independent and ultimate. Past accounting for, and independent of knowledge. That was itself knowledge.
And ever since, a year ago, she had first appeared in the house, she had come punctually at bad moments, into the room. And had grown shyly and quite silently to know how near she was and how precious. She had come so unobtrusively, replacing the jaunty careless Ellen gone away with the Orlys. It was strange, one of those strange hints life brought that she should have appeared at the very time of the other Eve’s unbearable death, bearing not only her name, but her gentle certainties. And her way of gathering all spears to her own breast.
Miss Holland’s reply came by hand at teatime. Victorian handwriting, with a difference. Something of rounded warmth in the longish uprights. She strongly deprecated the unfriendly tone of Miriam’s note. In after teatime mood, her mind flooded with the bright
