Vicarage humour at first hand. Miriam laughed suitably; ensconced, an eavesdropper.
“Church workers.”
“They are the bane of a parish. Work, yes. That they most certainly do, to the accompaniment of loud complaints on the score of other people’s inactivity. Implying, of course, that they themselves hold a monopoly of intelligence and efficiency. Whereas the truth is to be found in their inability to attract helpers or to collaborate with those who really desire to take part in the work. These women are actuated solely by personal ambition, the desire to run the parish and to be openly recognised as doing so. Nothing less will content them. Nothing less. It is a most perturbing spectacle. And I, for one, have no hesitation in admitting that I am driven to the conclusion that authority is harmful to women. They grow so hard. So coldly self-important and dictatorial.”
Miriam knew she would want to run the parish, choose the music, edit the vicar’s mind, lecture the parishioners.
“In London many of them are social workers. They spend their time on committees. But not in service. They quell.”
She handled her statements as she had handled the pile of green material, pouncing, taking disdainful hold. Her sentences were sallies, each one leaving her voice halted on an interval of deprecating sounds. Her voice came from a height. She must be standing, poised, in her light way, for movement. Talking as if to herself, assuming a lack of interest. Yet the air was full of her shy desire for response.
“They must be holy terrors.”
“I fear,” chuckled Miss Holland, “that I am not completely convinced of their holiness.”
“I’ve never met any of these women. Avoid women on the whole. But I daresay I should be that type myself if I weren’t too lazy to achieve a position.”
“Believe me, you could never be official. You are much too artistic.”
Miriam was too disappointed to feel flattered. There was no illumination here. Exposing herself before the tribunal, she had been judged in a class of which the judge knew nothing. Compared to Miss Holland, she might perhaps be called artistic. But it was grievous to be supplied already with a false reputation. To be imagined as cultured in a way that was respected in vicarages.
She glanced around upon the poor things that already she loved with an immemorial love whose secret eluded her, whose going forth she knew to be blind and personal. Her eye was at once arrested by a small dark something upon the white coverlet of her bed. A ladybird. Too square. Perfectly square and motionless. Even as she called to Miss Holland to come through and observe, the sight of it thrilled her in every nerve.
A swish of the curtain and Miss Holland was at her side, bent and peering.
“Dear, dear, dear!” she moaned. “I feared, I feared. I’ll get the dustpan.”
The floor rocked with her swift departure. Miriam stood fascinated. The unspeakable thing had revealed itself, and she was not only calm but curious. A moment ago it had existed only in her mind, an ultimate she could not imagine herself seeing and surviving. It looked like a fragment of an autumn leaf. Miss Holland’s voice sounded in the further room. Miriam listened to the low tones for entertainment while she kept watch.
“I feared, I feared,” and then a swift ferretting, drowning the anxious monologue.
Weary of the scene that was holding up her installation, she turned away to the window, half expecting to be leapt upon from behind. She was vitalised by the incident; tingling from head to foot. It was strange that one could recognise at sight an unknown thing; but far stranger that within a moment of pure shock there should be life, the keen sense of living that stood away outside the bounds of everyday life.
What a set of circumstances were these that brought only vermin to give her the pang of immortality. Not a thing one could testify at a dinner-table. Why not?
When Miss Holland came back she would remind her that monkeys were timid, and fearful of small creeping things. Being a Protestant she probably revelled in Evolution—wouldn’t see that it left everything more spooky than before.
She was looking straight in at a window of the opposite house. The panes were clean and not solitude. Underneath the window was a cobbler’s shop.
“Just look here,” she cried to Miss Holland coming back preceded by her voice. The things in her own room seemed to greet, as she turned, the things in the room across the way. It was a man’s room. It had an air of waiting for an untimed return.
“I hope,” said Miss Holland, through a rapid scrunching of paper. “I trust, it was only those Church Army men.”
Miriam watched her go away, with the dustpan at arm’s length, still gravely expostulating.
“It’s dreadful,” she said to her returning form, “but also fearfully funny, to find the ultimate horror sitting contentedly, poor little thing, on the end of your bed.”
She tinkled and tinkled at that, woefully crying out through her laughter, repudiating and agreeing and contradicting.
“But I admire your spirit,” she wailed finally.
“Do look at this huge candle across the way.”
Miss Holland moved to her side and peered anxiously, frowning in anticipation.
“Very odd,” she said sceptically. “A ship’s candle, something of the kind.”
“Where did they get it? Besides, too tall, it would burn a cabin roof. Perhaps an altar candle.”
“Very eccentric.” She turned away, busily, skittishly. Pleased about something, but not interested in the candle.
Her light busy footfall was audible upstairs as Miriam faced the boxes and parcels waiting, piled amongst the furniture of the little back room, to be unpacked. … With Sunday at
