BACKWATER
BACKWATER
BY
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
4>
AUTHOR OF " POINTED ROOFS "
LONDON
DUCKWORTH y CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
First published 1916
All rights reserved
TO
J. A. H.
BACKWATER
CHAPTER I
A SWARTHY turbaned face shone at Miriam
from a tapestry screen standing between her
and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the
bow of the window. Consulting it at intervals as
the afternoon wore on, she found that it made
very light of the quiet propositions that were
being elaborated within hearing of her inattentive
ears. Looking beyond it she could catch glimpses
between the crowded fernery, when a tram was
not jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across
the roadway and beyond the palisade of a green
level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The
trams seemed very near and noisy. When they
passed by the window, the speakers had to raise
their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room
was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned
quietness. It was full of old things, like the
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Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts
of the ladies who were sitting and talking there.
She and her mother had seemed quite modern,
fussy, worldly people when they had first come
into the room. From the moment the three
ladies had come in and begun talking to her
mother, the things in the room, and the view of
the distant row of poplars had grown more and
more peaceful, and now at the end of an hour she
felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson
too, belonged to the old-world room with its
quiet green outlook shut in by the poplars. Only
the trams were disturbing. They came busily by,
with their strange jingle- jingle, plock-plock, and
made her inattentive. Why were there so many
people coming by in trams ? Where were they
going? Why were all the trams painted that
hard, dingy blue ?
The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs
in smooth gentle voices, in small broken phrases,
frequently interrupting and correcting each other.
Miriam heard dreamily that they wanted help
with the lower school, the children from six to
eight years of age, in the mornings and afternoons,
and in the evenings a general superintendence of
the four boarders. They kept on saying that the
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work was very easy and simple ; there were no
naughty girls — hardly a single naughty girl — in
the school ; there should be no difficult superin-
tendence, no exercise of authority would be
required.
By the time they had reached the statement of
these modifications Miriam felt that she knew
them quite well. The shortest, who did most
of the talking and who had twinkling eyes and
crooked pince-nez and soft reddish cheeks and a
little red-tipped nose, and whose small coil of
sheeny grey hair was pinned askew on the top of
her head — stray loops standing out at curious
angles — was Miss Jenny, the middle one. The
very tall one sitting opposite her, with a delicate
wrinkled creamy face and coal-black eyes and a
peak of ringletted smooth coal-black hair, was
the eldest, Miss Deborah. The other sister, much
younger, with neat smooth green-grey hair and a
long sad greyish face and faded eyes, was Miss
Haddie. They were all three dressed in thin
fine black material and had tiny hands and little
softly moving feet. What did they think of the
trams ?
" Do you think you could manage it, chickie ? "
said Mrs, Henderson suddenly.
4 BACKWATER
" I think I could."
" No doubt, my dear, oh, no doubt," said Miss
Jenny with a little sound of laughter as she
tapped her knee with the pince-nez she had
plucked from their rakish perch on the reddened
bridge of her nose.
" I don't think I could teach Scripture."
An outbreak of incoherent little sounds and
statements from all three taught her that Miss
DSborah took the Bible classes of the whole
school.
" How old is Miriam ? "
" Just eighteen. She has put up her hair to-
day."
" Oh, poor child, she need not have done that."
" She is a born teacher. She used to hold little
classes amongst her schoolfellows when she was
only eight years old."
Miriam turned sharply* to her mother. She
was sitting with her tired look — bright eyes,
and moist flushed face. How had she heard about
the little classes ? Had there been little classes ?
She could not remember them.
" She speaks French like a Parisienne."
That was that silly remark made by the woman
in the train coming home from Hanover,
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" Eh — we thought — it was in Germany she
was "
" Yes, but I learned more French."
The sisters smiled provisionally.
" She shared a room with the mademoiselle."
" Oh — er — hee — hay — perhaps she might speak
French with the gels."
" Oh no, I couldn't speak:9
There was a tender little laugh.
" I don't know French conversation."
" Well, well."
The sisters brought the discussion to an end
by offering twenty pounds a year in return for
Miriam's services, and naming the date of the
beginning of the autumn term.
On the way to the front door they all looked
into the principal schoolroom. Miriam saw
a long wide dining-room table covered with
brown American cloth. Shelves neatly crowded
with books lined one wall from floor to ceiling.
Opposite them at the far end of the room was a
heavy grey marble mantelpiece, on which stood
a heavy green marble clock frame. At its centre
a gold-faced clock ticked softly. Opposite the
6 BACKWATER
windows were two shallow alcoves. In one
stood a shrouded blackboard on an easel. The
other held a piano with a high slender back.
The prancing outward sweep of its lid
gave Miriam the impression of an afternoon
dress.
Miss Deborah drew up one of the Venetian
blinds. They all crowded to the window and
looked out on a small garden backed by trees and
lying in deep shadow. Beyond were more
gardens and the brownish backs of small old brick
houses. Low walls separated the school garden
from the gardens on either side.
" On our right we have a school for the deaf
and dumb," said Miss Perne ; " on the other side
is a family of Polish Jews."
3
" Mother, why did you pile it on ? "
They would soon be down at the corner of
Banbury Park where the tram lines ended and
the Favorite omnibuses were standing in the
muddy road under the shadow of the railway
bridge. Through the jingling of the trams, the
dop-dop of the hoofs of the tram-horses and the
noise of a screaming train thundering over the
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bridge, Miriam made her voice heard, gazing
through the spotted veil at her mother's quivering
features.
" They might have made me do all sorts of
things I can't do."
Mrs. Henderson's voice, breathless with walk-
ing, made a little sound of protest, a narrowed
sound that told Miriam her amusement was half
annoyance. The dark, noisy bridge, the clatter
and rattle and the mud through which she must
plunge to an omnibus exasperated her to the
limit of her endurance.
" I'd got the post," she said angrily ; " you
could see it was all settled and then you went
saying those things."
Glancing at the thin shrouded features she saw
the faint lift of her mother's eyebrows and the
firmly speechless mouth.
" Piccadilly — jump on, chickie."
" Let's go outside now it's fine," said Miriam
crossly.
Reaching the top of the omnibus she hurried
to the front seat on the left hand side.
" That's a very windy spot."
" No it isn't, it's quite hot. The sun's come
out now. It's rained for weeks. It won't rain
8 BACKWATER
any more. It'll be hot. You won't feel the wind.
Will you have the corner, mother ? "
" No, chick, you sit there."
Miriam screwed herself into the corner seat,
crossing her knees and grazing the tips of her
shoes.
" This is the only place on the top of a
bus."
Mrs. Henderson sat down at her side.
" I always make Harriett come up here when we
go up to the West End."
"Of course it's the only place," she insisted
in response to her mother's amused laugh. " No
one smoking or talking in front ; you can see out
in front and you can see the shops if there are
any, and you're not falling off all the time. The
bus goes on the left side of the road and tilts to
the left."
The seats were filling up and the driver ap-
peared clambering into his place.
" Didn't you ever think of that ? Didn't you
ever think of the bus tilting that way ? " per-
sisted Miriam to her mother's inattentive face.
" Fancy never thinking of it. It's beastly on
the other side."
The omnibus jerked forward.
BACKWATER 9
" You ought to be a man, Mimmy."
" I liked that little short one," said Miriam
contentedly as they came from under the roar of
the bridge. " They were awfully nice, weren't
they? They seemed to have made up their
mind to take me before we went. ... So I
think they like us. I wonder why they like us.
Didn't you think they liked us ? Don't you think
they are awfully nice ? "
" I do. They are very charming ladies."
" Yes, but wasn't it awfully rum their liking
us in that funny way ? "
" I'm sure I don't see why they should not."
" Oh, mother, you know what I mean. I like
them. I'm perfectly sure I shall like them.
D'you remember the little one saying all girls
ought to marry ? Why did she say that ? "
" They are dear funny little O.M.'s," said Mrs.
Henderson merrily. She was sitting with her
knees crossed, the stuff of her brown canvas dress
was dragged across them into an ugly fold by
the weight of the velvet panel at the side of the
skirt. She looked very small and resourceless.
And there were the Pernes with their house and
their school. They were old maids. Of course.
What then ?
io BACKWATER
" I never dreamed of getting such a big
salary."
" Oh, my chickie, I'm afraid it isn't much."
" It is, mother, it's lovely."
" Oh— eh—well."
Miriam turned fiercely to the roadway on
her left.
4
She had missed the first swing forward of the
vehicle and the first movements of the compact
street.
They were going ahead now at a steady even
trot. Her face was bathed in the flow of the
Lbreeze.
Little rivulets played about her temples, feel-
ing their way through her hair. She drew off
her gloves without turning from the flowing
roadway. As they went on and on down the
long road Miriam forgot her companion in the
tranquil sense of being carried securely forward
through the air away from people and problems.
Ahead of her, at the end of the long drive, lay
three sunlit weeks, bright now in the certainty
of the shadow that lay beyond them . . . " the
junior school " . . . " four boarders."
BACKWATER n
S
They lumbered at last round a corner and out
into a wide thoroughfare, drawing up outside a
newly-built public-house. Above it rose row
upon row of upper windows sunk in masses of
ornamental terra-cotta-coloured plaster. Branch
roads, laid with tram lines led off in every direc-
tion. Miriam's eyes followed a dull blue tram
with a grubby white-painted seatless roof jing-
ling busily off up a roadway where short trees
stood all the way along in the small dim gardens
of little grey houses. On the near corner of the
road stood a wide white building, bulging into
heavy domes against the sky. Across its side,
large gilt letters standing far apart spelled out
" Banbury Empire."
" It must be a theatre," she told herself
in astonishment. " That's what they call a
suburban theatre. People think it is really a
theatre."
The little shock sent her mind feeling out
along the road they had just left. She considered
its unbroken length, its shops, its treelessness.
The wide thoroughfare, up which they now began
to rumble, repeated it on a larger scale. The
12 BACKWATER
pavements were wide causeways reached from the
roadway by stone steps, three deep. The people
passing along them were unlike any she knew.
There were no ladies, no gentlemen, no girls or
young men such as she knew. They were all
alike. They were . . . She could find no word
for the strange impression they made. It coloured
the whole of the district through which they had
come. It was part of the new world to which
she was pledged to go on September i8th. It
was her world already ; and she had no words
for it. She would not be able to convey it to
others. She felt sure her mother had not noticed
it. She must deal with it alone. To try to speak
about it, even with Eve, would sap her courage.
It was her secret. A strange secret for all her life
as Hanover had been. But Hanover was beauti-
ful, with distant country through the saal win-
dows with its colours misty in the sunlight, the
beautiful, happy town and the woodland villages
so near. This new secret was shabby, ugly and
shabby. The half-perceived something persisted
unchanged when the causeways and shops dis-
appeared and long rows of houses streamed by,
their close ranks broken only by an occasional
cross road. They were large, high, flat- fronted
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houses with flights of grey stone steps leading to
their porchless doors. They had tiny railed-in
front gardens crowded with shrubs. Here and
there long narrow strips of garden pushed a row
of houses back from the roadway. In these
longer plots stood signboards and show-cases.
" Photographic Studio/' " Commercial College,"
" Eye Treatment," " Academy of Dancing." . . .
She read the announcements with growing dis-
quietude.
Rows of shops reappeared and densely crowded
pavements, and then more high straight houses.
She roused herself at last from her puzzled
contemplation and turned to glance at her
mother. Mrs. Henderson was looking out ahead.
The exhausted face was ready, Miriam saw, with
its faintly questioning eyebrows and tightly-held
lips, for emotional response. She turned away
uneasily to the spellbound streets.
" Useless to try to talk about anything. . . .
Mother would be somehow violent. She would
be overpowering. The strange new impressions
would be dissolved."
But she must do something, show some sign
i4 BACKWATER
of companionship. She began humming softly.
The air was so full of clamour that she could not
hear her voice. The houses and shops had dis-
appeared. Drab brick walls were passing slowly
by on either side. A goods' yard. She deepened
her humming, accentuating her phrases so that
the sound might reach her companion through
the reverberations of the clangour of shunting
trains.
7
The high brick walls were drawing away. The
end of the long roadway was in sight. Its widen-
ing mouth offered no sign of escape from the dis-
quieting strangeness. The open stretch of
thoroughfare into which they emerged was fed
by innumerable lanes of traffic. From the islands
dotted over its surface towered huge lamp stan-
dards branching out thin arms. As they rattled
noisily over the stone setts they jolted across
several lines of tramway and wove their way
through currents of traffic crossing each other in
all directions.
" I wonder where we're going — I wonder if
this is a Piccadilly bus," Miriam thought of say-
ing. Impossible to shout through the din.
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8
The driver gathered up his horses and they
clattered deafeningly over the last open stretch
and turned into a smooth wide prospect.
" Oh bliss, wood-paving," murmured Miriam.
A mass of smoke-greyed, sharply steepled stone
building appeared on the right. Her eyes rested
on its soft shadows.
On the left a tall grey church was coming to-
wards them, spindling up into the sky. It sailed
by, showing Miriam a circle of little stone pillars
built into its spire. Plumy trees streamed by,
standing large and separate on moss-green grass
railed from the roadway. Bright white-faced
houses with pillared porches shone through from
behind them and blazed white above them
against the blue sky. Wide side-streets opened
showing high balconied houses. The side streets
were feathered with trees and ended mistily.
Away ahead were edges of clean bright masonry
in profile, soft tufted heads of trees, bright green
in the clear light. At the end of the vista
the air was like pure saffron-tinted mother-of-
pearl.
Miriam sat back and drew a deep breath.
16 BACKWATER
9
" Well, chickie ? "
" What's the matter ? "
" Why, you've been very funny ! "
" How ? "
" You've been so dummel."
" No, I haven't."
" Oh— eh."
" How d'you mean I've been funny ? "
" Not speaking to poor old mum-jam."
" Well, you haven't spoken to me."
" No."
" I shan't take any of my summer things there,"
said Miriam.
Mrs. Henderson's face twitched.
" Shall I ? "
" I'm afraid you haven't very much in the way
of thick clothing."
" I've only got my plaid dress for every day
and my mixy grey for best and my dark blue
summer skirt. My velveteen skirt and my nain-
sook blouse are too old."
" You can wear the dark blue muslin blouse
with the blue skirt for a long time yet with some-
thing warm underneath."
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" My grey's very grubby."
" You look very well in it indeed."
" I don't mean that. I mean it's all gone sort
of dull and grubby over the surface when you
look down it."
" Oh, that's your imagination."
" It isn't my imagination and I can see how
Harriett's looks."
" You both look very nice."
" That's not the point."
" Don't make a mountain out of a molehill,
my chick."
" I'm not making anything. The simple fact is
that the grey dresses are piggy."
Mrs. Henderson flushed deeply, twining and
untwining her silk-gloved ringers.
" She tlnnks that's ' gross exaggeration.' That's
what she wants to say," pondered Miriam
wearily.
They t irned into Langham Place.
She glanced to see whether her mother realised
where they were.
" Look, we're in the West End, mother ! Oh,
I'm not going to think about Banbury Park till
it begins ! "
i8 BACKWATER
10
They drew up near the Maison Nouvelle.
" Stanlake is," said a refined emphatic voice
from the pavement.
Miriam did not look for the speaker. The
quality of the voice brought her a moment's
realisation of the meaning of her afternoon's
adventure. She was going to be shut up away
from the grown-up things, the sunlit world, and
the people who were enjoying it. She would be
shut up and surrounded in Wordsworth House, a
proper schooly school, amongst all those strange
roadways. It would be cold English pianos and
dreadful English children — and trams going up
and down that grey road outside.
As they went on down Regent Street she
fastened, for refuge from her thoughts, upon a
window where softly falling dresses of dull olive
stood about against a draped background of pale
dead yellow. She held it in her mind as shop
after shop streamed by.
" These shops are extremely recherche."
" It's old Regent Street, mother," said Miriam
argumentatively. " Glorious old Regent Street.
Ruby wine."
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" Ah, Regent Street."
" We always walk up one side and down the
other. Up the dolls' hospital side and down
Liberty's. Glory, glory, ruby wine."
" You are enthusiastic."
" But it's so glorious. Don't you think so ? "
" Sit back a little, chickie. One can't see the
windows. You're such a solid young woman."
" You'll see our ABC soon. You know. The
one we go to after the Saturday pops. You've
been to it. You came to it the day we came to
Madame Schumann's farewell. It's just round
here in Piccadilly. Here it is. Glorious. I must
make the others come up once more before I die.
I always have a scone. I don't like the aryated
bread. We go along the Burlington Arcade too.
I don't believe you've ever been along there.
It's simply perfect. Glove shops and fans and a
smell of the most exquisite scent everywhere."
" Dear me. It must be very captivating."
" Now we shall pass the parks. Oh, isn't the
sun Ai copper bottom ! "
Mrs. Henderson laughed wistfully.
" What delicious shade under those fine old
trees. I almost wish I had brought my en-tout-
20 BACKWATER
" Oh no, you don't really want it. There will
be more breeze presently. The bus always begins
to go quicker along here. It's the Green Park,
that one. Those are clubs that side, the West
End clubs. It's fascinating all the way along here
to Hyde Park Corner. You just see Park Lane
going up at the side. Park Lane. It goes wig-
gling away, straight into heaven. We've never
been up there. I always read the name at the
corner."
" You ridiculous chick — ah, there is the Royal
Academy of Arts."
" Oh yes, I wonder if there are any Leightons
this year."
" Or Leader. Charles Leader. I think there
is nothing more charming than those landscape
scenes by Leader."
" I've got three bally weeks. I can see Hyde
Park. We've got ages yet. It goes on being
fascinating right down through Kensington and
right on up to the other side of Putney
Bridge."
" Dear me. Isn't it fascinating after that ? "
" Oh, not all that awful walk along the Upper
Richmond Road — not until our avenue begins — "
BACKWATER 21
ii
Miriam fumbled with the fastening of the
low wide gate as her mother passed on up the
drive. She waited until the footsteps were
muffled by the fullness of the may trees linking
their middle branches over the bend in the drive.
Then she looked steadily down the sunflecked
asphalted avenue along which they had just come.
The level sunlight streamed along the empty
roadway and the shadows of the lime trees lay
across the path and up the oak palings. Her
eyes travelled up and down the boles of the trees,
stopping at each little stunted tuft of greenery.
She could no longer hear her mother's footsteps.
There was a scented coolness in the shady
watered garden. Leaning gently with her breast
against the upper bars of the gate she broke
away from the sense of her newly-made engage-
ment.
She scanned the whole length of the shrouded
avenue from end to end and at last looked freely
up amongst the interwoven lime trees. Long
she watched, her eyes roaming from the closely-
growing leaves where the green was densest to
the edges of the trees where the light shone
22 BACKWATER
through. " Gold and green," she whispered,
" green and gold, held up by firm brown stems
bathed in gold."
When she reached the open garden beyond the
bend she ran once round the large centre bed
where berberus and laurestinus bushes stood in a
clump ringed by violas and blue lobelias and
heavily scented masses of cherry-ripe. Taking
the shallow steps in two silent strides she reached
the shelter of the deep porch. The outer door
and the door of the vestibule stood open. Gently
closing the vestibule she ran across the paved
hall and opened the door on the right.
Harriett, in a long fawn canvas dress with a
deep silk sash, was standing in the middle of the
drawing-room floor with a large pot of scented
geraniums in her arms.
12
" Hullo ! " said Miriam.
Putting down her pot Harriett fixed brown
eyes upon her and began jumping lightly up and
down where she stood. The small tips of her
fawn glace kid shoes shone together between the
hem of her dress and the pale green of the
carpet.
BACKWATER 23
" What you doing ? " said Miriam quietly
shutting the door behind her and flushing with
pleasure.
Harriett hopped more energetically. The
blaze from the western window caught the paste
stone in the tortoise-shell comb crowning her
little high twist of hair and the prisms of the
lustres standing behind her on the white marble
mantelpiece.
" What you doing, booby ? "
" Old conservatory," panted Harriett.
Miriam looked vaguely down the length of the
long room to where the conservatory doors stood
wide open. As she gazed at the wet tiling
Harriett ceased hopping and kicked her delicately.
" Well, gooby ? »
Miriam grinned.
" You've got it. I knew you would. The
Misses Perne have engaged Miss Miriam Hender-
son as resident teacher for the junior school."
" Oh yes, I've got it," smiled Miriam. " But
don't let's talk about that. It's just an old school,
a house. I don't know a bit what it'll be like.
I've got three bally blooming weeks. Don't let's
talk about it."
" Awri."
24 BACKWATER
" What about Saturday ? "
" It's all right. Ted was at the club."
" Was he ! "
" Yes, old scarlet face, he were."
" I'm not."
" He came in just before closing time and
straight up to me and ast where you were. He
looked sick when I told him, and so fagged."
" It was awfully hot in town," murmured
Miriam tenderly.
She went to the piano and struck a note very
softly.
" He played a single with the duffer and lost
it."
" Oh, well, of course, he was so tired."
" Yes, but it wasn't that. It was because you
weren't there. He's simply no good when you're
not there, now. He's perfectly different."
Miriam struck her note again.
" Listen, that's E flat."
" Go on."
"That's a chord in E flat. Isn't it lovely?
It sounds perfectly different in C. Listen. Isn't
it funny ? "
" Well, don't you want to know why it's all
right about Saturday ? "
BACKWATER 25
" Yes, screamingly."
"Well, that's the perfectly flabbergasting thing.
Ted simply came to say they've got a man coming
to stay with them and can he bring him."
" My dear ! What a heavenly relief. That
makes twelve men and fourteen girls. That'll
do."
" Nan Babington's hurt her ankle, but she
swears she's coming." Harriett sniffed and sank
down on the white sheepskin, drawing her knees
up to her chin.
" You shouldn't say ' swears.' '
" Well, you bet. She simply loves our dances."
" Did she say she did ? "
" She sat on the pavilion seai with Bevan Sey-
mour all the afternoon and I was with them
when Ted was playing with the duffer. She told
Bevan that she didn't know anywhere else where
the kid» arranged the dances, and everything was
so jolly. It's screaming, my dear, she said."
" It's horrid the way she calls him ' my dear.'
Your ring is simply dazzling like that, Harry.
D'you see ? It's the sun."
" Of course it'll mean she'll sit out in a deck
chair in the garden with Bevan all the time."
" How disgusting."
26 BACKWATER
" It's her turn for the pavilion tea on Saturday.
She's coming in her white muslin and then com-
ing straight on here with two sticks and wants
us to keep her some flowers. Let's go and have
tea. It'll be nearly dinner time."
" Has Mary made a cake ? "
" I dunno. Tea was to be in the breakfast-
room when you came back."
" Why not in the conservatory ? "
" Because, you silly old crow, I'm beranging it
for Saturday."
" Shall we have the piano in there ? "
" Well, don't you think so ? "
" Twenty-six of us. Perhaps it'll be more
blissful."
" If we have the breakfast-room piano in the
hall it'll bung up the hall."
" Yes, but the Erard bass is so perfect for
waltzes."
" And the be-rilliant Collard treble is so all
right in the vatoire."
" I thought it was Eve and I talked about the
Collard treble."
" Well, I was there."
" Anyhow we'll have the grand in the con-
servatory. Oh, Bacchus ! Ta-ra-ra-boom-deay."
BACKWATER 27
" Tea," said a rounded voice near the keyhole.
" Eve ! " shouted Miriam.
The door opened slightly. " I know," said the
voice.
" Come in, Eve," commanded Miriam, trying
to swing the door wide.
" I know," said the voice quivering with the
effort of holding the door. " I know all about
the new Misses Perne and the new man — Max
Sonnenheim — Max."
" This way out," called Harriett from the con-
servatory.
" Eve," pleaded Miriam, tugging at the door,
" let me get at you. Don't be an idiot."
A gurgle of amusement made her loosen her
hold.
" I'm not trying, you beast. Take your iron
wrists away."
A small white hand waggled fingers through
the aperture.
Miriam seized and covered it. " Come in for
a minute," she begged. " I want to see you.
What have you got on ? "
" Tea."
The hand twisted itself free and Eve fled
through the hall.
28 BACKWATER
Miriam flung after her with a yell and caught
at her slender body. " I've a great mind to drag
down your old hair."
" Tea," smiled Eve serenely.
" All right, I'm coming, damn you, aren't I ? "
" Oh, Mimmy ! "
" Well, damn me, then. Somebody in the
house must swear. I say, Eve ? "
" What ? "
" Nothing, only I say."
" Urn."
CHAPTER II
MIRIAM extended herself on the drawing-
room sofa which had been drawn up
at the end of the room under the open
window.
The quintets of candles on the girandoles
hanging on either side of the high overmantel
gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the
centre of the large room the chandelier, pulled
low, held out in all directions bulbs of softly
tinted light.
In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pour-
ing from a tall standard lamp across the sheep-
skin hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle
under her arm fluttering pages on a music
stand. The family sat grouped towards herein
a circle.
On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant
light, Miriam was a retreating loop in the circle
of seated forms, all visible as she lay with her
29
30 BACKWATER
eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and
pilfer her own. The darkness brimmed in from
the window on her right. She could touch the
rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy still-
ness of the garden.
" What shall I play ? " said the guest.
" What have you there ? "
" Gluck . . . Klassische Stiicke . . . Cava-
tina."
" Ah, Gluck," said Mr. Henderson, smoothing
his long knees with outspread fingers.
" Have you got that Beethoven thing ? " asked
Sarah.
" Not here, Sally."
" I saw it — on the piano — with chords," said
Sarah excitedly.
" Chords," encouraged Miriam.
" Yes, I think so," muttered Sarah taking up
her crochet. " I daresay Pm wrong," she giggled,
throwing out a foot and hastily withdraw-
ing it.
" I can find it, dear," chanted the guest.
Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crim-
soned oval of Eve's face appeared inverted above
her own. She poked a finger into one of the
dark eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whis-
BACKWATER 31
pered voicelessly, " Make her play the Romance
first and then the Cavatina without talking in
between. . . ."
Eve's large soft mouth pursed a little, and
Miriam watched steadily until dimples appeared.
" Go on, Eve," she said, removing her hand.
" Shall I play the Beethoven first ? " enquired
the guest.
" Mm — and then the Cavatina," murmured
Miriam, as if half asleep, turning wholly towards
the garden, as Eve went to collect the piano
scores.
2
She seemed to grow larger and stronger and
easier as the thoughtful chords came musing out
into the night and hovered amongst the dark trees.
She found herself drawing easy breaths and re-
laxing completely against the support of the hard
friendly sofa. How quietly everyone was listen-
ing. . . .
After a while, everything was dissolved, past
and future and present and she was nothing but
an ear> intent on the meditative harmony which
stole out into the garden.
32 BACKWATER
3
When the last gently strung notes had ceased
she turned from her window and found Harriett's
near eye fixed upon her, the eyebrow travelling
slowly up the forehead.
" Wow," mouthed Miriam.
Harriett screwed her mouth to one side and
strained her eyebrow higher.
The piano introduction to the Cavatina
drowned the comments on the guegt's playing and
the family relaxed once more into listening.
" Pink anemones, eh," suggested Miriam softly.
Harriett drew in her chin and nodded approv-
ingly.
" Pink anemones," sighed Miriam, and turned
to watch Margaret Wedderburn standing in her
full-skirted white dress on the hearthrug in a
radiance of red and golden light. Her heavily
waving fair hair fell back towards its tightly
braided basket of plaits from a face as serene as
death. From between furry eyelashes her eyes
looked steadfastly out, robbed of their everyday
sentimental expression.
As she gazed at the broad white forehead, the
fine gold down covering the cheeks and upper
BACKWATER 33
lip, and traced the outline of the heavy chin
and firm large mouth and the steady arm that
swept out in rich 'cello-like notes the devout
theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity
of happiness.
4
. . . To-morrow the room would be lit and
decked and clear. Amongst the crowd of guests,
he wrould come across the room, walking in his
way. . . . She smiled to herself. He would
come " sloping in " in his way, like a shadow, not
looking at anyone. His strange friend would be
with him. There would be introductions and
greetings. Then he would dance with her silently
and not looking at her, as if they were strangers,
and then be dancing with someone else . . . with
smiling, mocking, tender brown eyes and talking
and answering and all the time looking about the
room. And then again with her, cool and silent
and not looking. And presently she would tell
him about going away to Banbury Park.
5
Perhaps he would look wretched and miserable
again as he had done when they were alone by
the piano the Sunday before she went to Germany.
34 BACKWATER
..." Play c Abide with me,' Miriam ; play
' Abide with me.' "...
To-morrow there would be another moment
like that. He would say her name suddenly, as
he had done last week at the Babingtons' dance,
very low, half-turning towards her. She would
be ready this time and say his name and move
instead of being turned to stone. Confidently
the music assured her of that moment.
She lay looking quietly into his imagined face
till the room had gone. Then the face grew dim
and far off and at last receded altogether into
darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was
his own life. She would never know it. However
well they got to know each other they would
always be strangers. Probably he never thought
about her when he was alone. Only of Shake-
speare and politics. What would he think if he
knew she thought of him ? But he thought of
her when he saw her. That was utterly certain ;
the one thing certain in the world. . . . That
day, coming along Putney Hill with mother,
tired and dull and trying to keep her temper,
passing his house, seeing him standing at his
BACKWATER 35
window, alone and pale and serious. The sudden
lightening of his face surprised her again, vio-
lently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole
world from end to end. He did not know that
he had looked like that. She had turned swiftly
from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow
on her heart, that one day he would kiss her.
Not for years and years. But one day he would
bend his head. She wrenched herself from the
thought, but it was too late. She thanked heaven
she had looked ; she wished she had not ; the
kiss had come ; she would forget it ; it had not
touched her, it was like the breath of the summer.
Everything had wavered ; her feet had not felt
the pavement. She remembered walking on,
exulting with hanging head, cringing close to
the ivy which hung from the top of the garden
wall, sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and
everyone who would never stand first with Ted.
7
. . . There were girls who let themselves be
kissed for fun. . . . Playing " Kiss in the Ring,"
being kissed by someone they did not mean to
always be with, all their life . . . how sad and
dreadful. Why did it not break their hearts ?
36 BACKWATER
8
Meg Wedderburn was smiling on her hearthrug,
being thanked and praised. Her brown violin
hung amongst the folds of her skirt.
" People do like us," mused Miriam, listening
to the peculiar sympathy of the family voice.
Meg was there, away from her own home,
happy with them, the front door shut, their
garden and house all round her and her strange
luggage upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice
Meg. . . .
9
After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat
in a low carpet chair at a window in the long
bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a
morning of blazing sunlight and bright blue.
She had just come up through the cool house
from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with
Harriett. A little bunch of pink anemones she
had picked for herself were set in a tumbler on
the wash-hand-stand.
She had left the door open to hear coming
faintly up from the far-away drawing-room the
tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and
Eve were stretching the drugget.
BACKWATER 37
On her knee lay her father's cigarette-making
machine and a parcel of papers and tobacco. An
empty cigarette tin stood upon the window-
sill.
She began packing tobacco into the groove of
the machine, distributing and pressing it lightly
with the tips of her fingers, watching as she
worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and
the shining of their green stalks through the water.
They were, she reflected, a little too much* out.
In the sun they would have come out still more.
They would close up at night unless the rooms
grew very hot. Slipping the paper evenly into
the slot she shut the machine and turned the
roller. As the sound of the loosely working cogs
came up to her she revolted from her self-imposed
task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It
would use up her happiness too stupidly.
She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that
she should smoke the single cigarette herself.
Why not ? Why had she never yet smoked one ?
She glanced at the slowly swinging door. No one
would come. She was alone on the top floor.
Everyone was downstairs and busy. The finished
cigarette lay on her knee. Taking it between her
fingers she pressed a little hanging thread of
38 BACKWATER
tobacco into place. The cigarette felt pleasantly
plump and firm. It was well made. As she rose
to get matches the mowing machine sounded
suddenly from the front lawn. She started and
looked out of the window, concealing the cigarette
in her hand. It was the gardener with bent
shoulders pushing with all his might. With some
difficulty she unhitched the phosphorescent
match-box from its place under the gas-bracket
and got back into her low chair, invisible from
the lawn.
The cool air flowed in garden-scented. She
held the cigarette between two fingers. The
match hissed and flared as she held it carefully
below the sill, and the flame flowed towards her
while she set the paper alight. Raising the
cigarette to her lips she blew gently outwards,
down through the tobacco. The flame twisted
and went out, leaving the paper charred. She
struck another match angrily, urging herself to
draw, and drew little panting breaths with the
cigarette well in the flame. It smoked. Blowing
out the match she looked at the end of the cigar-
ette. It was glowing all over and a delicate little
spiral of smoke rose into her face. Quickly she
applied her lips again and drew little breaths,
BACKWATER 39
opening her mouth wide between each breath
and holding the cigarette sideways away from
her. The end glowed afresh with each breath.
The paper charred evenly away and little
flecks of ash fell about her.
10
A third of the whole length was consumed.
Her nostrils breathed in smoke, and as she tasted
the burnt flavour the sweetness of the unpolluted
air all around her was a new thing. The acrid
tang in her nostrils intoxicated her. She drew
more boldly. There was smoke in her mouth.
She opened it quickly, sharply exhaling a yellow
cloud oddly different from the grey spirals wreath-
ing their way from the end of the cigarette.
She went on drawing in mouthful after mouthful
of smoke, expelling each quickly with widely-
opened lips, turning to look at the well-known
room through the yellow haze and again at the
sky, which drew nearer as she puffed at it. The
sight of the tree-tops scrolled with her little
clouds brought her a sense of power. She had
chosen to smoke and she was smoking, and the
morning world gleamed back at her. . . .
4o BACKWATER
ii
The morning gleamed. She would choose her
fate. It should be amongst green trees and sun-
shine. That daunted lump who had accepted the
post at Banbury Park had nothing to do with
her. Morning gladness flooded her, and her
gladness of the thought of the evening to come
quickened as it had done last night into certainty.
She burned the last inch of the cigarette in
the grate, wrapped with combings from the
toilet-tidy in a screw of paper. When all was
consumed she carefully replaced the summer
bundle of ornamental mohair behind the bars.
Useless to tell anyone. No one would believe
she had not felt ill. She found it difficult to
understand why anyone should feel sick from
smoking. ' Dizzy perhaps ... a little drunk.
Pater's tobacco was very strong, some people
could not smoke it. ... She had smoked a
whole cigarette of strong tobacco and liked it.
Raising her arms above her head she worked them
upwards, stretching every muscle of her body.
No, she was anything*but ill.
Leaving the window wide she went on to the
landing. The smell of tobacco was everywhere.
BACKWATER 41
She flung into each room in turn, throwing up
windows and leaving doors propped ajar.
Harriett coming up the garden with a basket
of cut flowers saw her at the cook's bedroom
window. -
" What on earth you doing thayer ! " she
shrieked putting down her basket.
Hanging from the window Miriam made a
trumpet of her hands.
" Something blew in ! "
12
All preparations for the evening were made
and the younger members of the household were
having a late tea in the breakfast-room. " We've
done the alcoves," said Sarah explosively, " in
case it rains."
Nan Babington sat up in her long chair to
bring her face round to the deep bay where
Sarah stood.
" My dear ! Seraphina ! And she's doing the
pink bows ! Will some saint take my cup ? Ta.
. . . My dear, how 'perfectly screaming."
Miriam raised her head from the petal-scattered
table, where she lay prone side by side with
Harriett, to watch Nan sitting up in her firm
42 BACKWATER
white dress beaming at ^>arah through her
slanting eye.
" What flowers you going to wear, Nan ? "
Nan patted her sleek slightly Japanese-looking
hair. " Ah . . . splashes of scarlet, my dear.
Splashes of scarlet. One in my hair and one
here." She patted the broad level of her enviable
breast towards the left shoulder.
" Almost on the shoulder, you know — arranged
flat, carft be squashed and showing as you
dance."
" Geraniums ! Oom. You've got awfully good
taste. What a frightfully good effect. Bright
red and bright white. Clean. Go on, Nan."
" Killing" pursued Nan. " Tom said at
breakfast with his mouth absolutely/^// of sweet-
bread, ' it'll rain ' — growled, you know, with his
mouth crammed full. ' Never mind, Tommy,'
said Ella with the utmost promptitude, f they're
sure to have the alcoves.' ' Oomph,' growled
Tommy, pretending not to care. Naughty
Tommy, naughty, naughty Tommy ! "
" Any cake left ? " sighed Miriam, sinking back
amongst her petals and hoping that Nan's voice
would go on.
' You girls are the most adorable individuals
BACKWATER 43
I ever met. . . . Did anybody see Pearlie going
home this afternoon ? "
Everyone chuckled and waited.
" My dears ! My dears ! ! Be van dragged me
along to the end of the pavilion to see him enter
up the handicaps with his new automatic pen —
awfully smashing — and I was just hobbling the
last few yards past the apple trees when we saw
Pearlie hand-in-hand with the Botterford boys,
prancing along the asphalt court — prancing, my
dears ! "
Miriam and Harriett dragged themselves up
to see. Nan bridled and swayed from listener to
listener, her wide throat gleaming as she sang
out her words.
" Prancing — with straggles of grey hair stick-
ing out and that tiny sailor hat cocked almost on
to her nose. My dear, you sh'd've seen Bevan !
He put up his eyeglass, my dears, for a fraction of
a second," Nan's head went up — " Madame Pom-
padour," thought Miriam — and her slanting eyes
glanced down her nose, " and dropped it, clickety-
click. You sh'd've seen the expression on his
angelic countenance,"
" I say, she is an awful little creature, isn't
she ? " said Miriam, watching Eve bend a crimson
44 BACKWATER
face over the tea-tray on the hearthrug. ' She
put her boots on the pavilion table this afternoon
when all those men were there — about a mile
high they are—with tassels. Why does she go on
like that ? "
" Men like that sort of thing," said Sarah
lightly.
" Sally ! "
" They do. ... I believe she drinks."
"Sally! My dear!"
" I believe she does. She's always having
shandygaff with the men."
" Oh, well, perhaps she doesn't," murmured Eve.
" Chuck me a lump of sugar, Eve."
Miriam subsided once more amongst the rose
petals.
" Bevvy thinks I oughtn't to dance."
" Did he say so ? "
" Of course, my dear. But old Wyman said I
could, every third, except the Lancers."
" You sh'd've seen Bevvy's face. ' Brother
Tommy doesn't object,' I said. ' He's going to
look after me 1 ' l Is he ? ' said Bevvy in his most
superior manner."
;c What a fearful scrunching you're making,"
said Harriett, pinching Miriam's nose.
BACKWATER 45
" Let's go and dress," said Miriam, rolling off
the table,
13
" How many times has she met him ? " asked
Miriam as they went through the hall.
" I dunno. Not many."
" I think it's simply hateful."
" Mimmy ! " It was Nan's insinuating voice.
" Coming," called Miriam. " And, you know,
Tommy needn't think he can carry on with Meg
in an alcove."
" What would she think ? Let's go and tell
Meg she must dress."
" Mimmy ! "
Miriam went back and put her head round the
breakfast-room door.
" Let me see you when you're dressed."
" Why ? "
" I want to kiss the back of your neck, my dear ;
love kissing people's necks."
Miriam smiled herself vaguely out of the room,
putting away the unpleasant suggestion.
" I wish I'd got a dress like Nan's," she said,
joining Harriett in the dark lobby.
" I say, somebody's been using the * Financial
Times ' to cut up flowers on. It's all wet."
46 BACKWATER
Harriett lifted the limp newspaper from the
marble-topped coil of pipes and shook it.
" Hang it up somewhere."
" Where ? Everything's cleared up."
" Stick it out of the lavatory window and pull
the window down on it."
" Awri, you hold the door open."
Miriam laughed as Harriett fell into the room.
" Blooming boot-jack."
" Is it all right in there ? Are all the pegs
clear ? Is the washing-basin all right ? "
A faint light came in as Harriett pushed up
the frosted pane.
" Here's a pair of boots all over the floor and
your old Zulu hat hanging on a peg. The basin's
all right except a perfectly foul smell of nicotine.
It's pater's old feather."
" That doesn't matter. The men won't mind
that. My old hat can stay. There are ten pegs
out here and all the slab, and there's hardly any-
thing on the hall stand. That's it. Don't cram
the window down so as to cut the paper. That'll
do. Come on."
:< I wish I had a really stunning dress," remarked
Miriam, as they tapped across the wide hall.
" You needn't,"
BACKWATER 47
The drawing-room door was open. They sur-
veyed the sea of drugget, dark grey in the fading
light. " Pong-pong-pong de doodle, pong-pong-
pong de doodle," murmured Miriam as they stood
swaying on tiptoe in the doorway.
" Let's have the gas and two candlesticks,
Harry, on the dressing-table under the gas."
" All right," mouthed Harriett in a stage
whisper, making for the stairs as the breakfast-
room door opened.
It was Eve. " I say, Eve, I'm scared" said
Miriam, meeting her.
Eve giggled triumphantly.
" Look here. I shan't come down at first. I'll
play the first dance. I'll get them all started
with ' Bitter-Sweet.' "
" Don't worry, Mim."
" My dear, I simply don't know how to face
the evening."
" You do," murmured Eve. " You are
proud."
" What of ? "
" You know quite well."
" What ? "
" He's the nicest boy we know."
" But he's not my boy. Of course not. You're
48 BACKWATER
insane. Besides, I don't know who you're talking
about."
" Oh, well, we won't talk. We'll go and arrange
your chignon."
" I'm going to have simply twists and perhaps
a hair ornament."
Miriam reached the conservatory from the
garden door and set about opening the lid of
the grand piano. She could see at the far end
of the almost empty drawing-room a little ruddy
thick-set bearded man with a roll of music under
his arm talking to her mother. He was standing
very near to her, surrounding her with his
eager presence. " Mother's wonderful," thought
Miriam, with a moment's adoration for Mrs.
Henderson's softly-smiling girlish tremulousness.
Listening to the man's hilarious expostulating
narrative voice she fumbled hastily far her waltz
amongst the scattered piles of music on the lid
of the piano.
As she struck her opening chords she watched
her mother gently quell the narrative and steer
the sturdy form towards a group of people hesi-
tating in the doorway. " Have they had coffee f ' •
BACKWATER 49
she wondered anxiously. " Is Mary driving them
into the dining-room properly ? ': Before she
had reached the end of her second page everyone
had disappeared. She paused a moment and
looked down the brightly lit empty room — the
sight of the cold sheeny drugget filled her with
despair. The hilarious voice resounded in the
hall. There couldn't be many there yet. Were
they all looking after them properly ? For a
moment she was tempted to leave her piano and
go and make some desperate attempt at geniality.
Then the sound of the pervading voice back
again in the room and brisk footsteps coming to-
wards the conservatory drove her back to her
music. The little man stepped quickly over the
low moulding into the conservatory.
" Ah, Mariamne," he blared gently.
" Oh, Bennett, you angel, how did you get
here so early ? " responded Miriam, playing with
zealous emphasis.
" Got old Barrowgate to finish off the out-
patients," he said with a choke of amusement.
" I say, Mirry, don't you play. Let me take
it on. You go and ply the light fantastic." He
laid his hands upon her shoulders and burred the
tune she was playing like It muted euphonium
50 BACKWATER
over the top of her head. " No. It's all right.
Go and get them dancing. Get over the awful-
ness — you know."
" Get over the awfulness, eh ? Oh, I'll get
over the awfulness."
" Ssh — are there many there ? "
They both looked round into the drawing-
room.
Nan Babington was backing slowly up and down
the room supported by the outstretched arms of
Bevan Seymour, her black head thrown back
level with his, the little scarlet knot in her hair
hardly registering the smooth movements of her
invisible feet.
" They seem to have begun," shouted Bennett
in a whisper as Harriett and her fiance swung
easily circling into the room and were followed
by two more couples.
" Go and dance with Meg. She only knows
Tommy Babington."
" Like the lid up ? "
15
Miriam's rhythmic clangour doubled its reson-
ance in the tiled conservatory as the great lid of
the piano went up.
BACKWATER 51
" Magnifique, Mirry, parfaitement magnifi-
que," intoned Tommy Babington, appearing in
the doorway with Meg on his arm.
" Bonsoir, Tomasso."
" You are like an expressive metronome."
" Oh — nom d'un pipe."
" You would make a rhinoceros dance."
Adjusting his pince-nez he dexterously seized
tall Meg and swung her rapidly in amongst the
dancers.
" Sarah'll say he's had a Turkish bath," thought
Miriam, recalling the unusual clear pallor of his
rather overfed face. " Pleated shirt. That's to
impress Meg."
She felt all at once that the air seemed cold.
It was not like a summer night. How badly the
ferns were arranged. Nearly all of them to-
gether on the staging behind the end of the piano ;
not enough visible from the drawing-room. Her
muscles were somehow stiffening into the wrong
mood. Presently she would be playing badly.
She watched the forms circling past the gap in
the curtains and slowed a little. The room seemed
fairly full.
" That's it — perfect, Mim," signalled Har-
riett's partner, swinging her by. She held to the
52 BACKWATER
fresh rhythm and passing into a tender old waltz
tune that she knew by heart gave herself to her
playing. She need not watch the feet any longer.
She could go on for ever. She knew she was not
playing altogether for the dancers. She was
playing to two hearers. But she could not play
that tune if they came. They would be late.
But they must be here now. Where were they ?
Were they having coffee ? Dancing ? She flung
a terrified glance at the room and met the cold
eye of Bevan Seymour. She would not look
again. The right feeling for the dreamy old tune
came and went uncontrollably. Why did they
not come ? Presently she would be cold and sick
and done for, for the evening. She played on,
harking back to the memory of the kindly chal-
lenge in the eyes of her brother-in-law to be,
dancing gravely with a grave Harriett — fearing
her . . . writing in her album :
" She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts —
Which terminated all."
. . . cold, calm little Harriettt. Her waltz had
swung soft and low and the dancers were hushed.
Only Tommy Babington's voice still threaded
the little throng.
BACKWATER 53
Someone held back the near curtain. A voice
said quietly, " Here she is."
16
Ted's low, faintly-mocking voice filled the con-
servatory.
He was standing very near her, looking down
at her with his back to the gay room. Yesterday's
dream had come more than true, at once, at the
beginning of the evening. He had come straight
to her with his friend, not dancing, not looking
for a partner. They were in the little green en-
closure with her. The separating curtains had
fallen back into place.
Behind the friend who stood leaning against the
far end of the piano, the massed fernery gleamed
now with the glow of concealed fairy lamps. She
had not noticed it before. The fragrance of
fronds and moist warm clumps of maidenhair
and scented geraniums inundated her as she
glanced across at the light falling on hard sculp-
tured waves of hair above a white handsome
face.
Her music held them all, protecting the word-
less meeting. Her last night's extremity of con-
tent was reality, being lived by all three of them.
54 BACKWATER
It centred in herself. Ted stood within it,
happy in it. The friend watched, witnessing
Ted's confession. Ted had said nothing to him
about her, about any of them, in his usual way.
But he was disguising nothing now that he had
come.
At the end of her playing she stood up faintly
dizzy, and held out towards Max Sonnenheim's
familiar strangeness hands heavy with happiness
and quickened with the sense of Ted's touch upon
her arm. The swift crushing of the strange
hands upon her own, steadied her as the curtains
swung wide and a group of dancers crowded in.
17
" Don't tell N.B. we've scrubbed the coffin,
Miriorama — she'll sit there all the evening."
" That was my sister and my future brother-
in-law," said Miriam to Max Sonnenheim as
Harriett and Gerald ran down the steps and out
into the dark garden.
' Your sister and brother-in-law," he responded
thoughtfully.
He was standing at her side at the top of the
garden steps staring out into the garden and ap-
parently not noticing the noisy passers-by. If
BACKWATER 55
they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not
been dancing, would join them. She did not
want that. She would put off her dance with
Ted until later. The next dance she would play
herself and then perhaps dance again with Max.
Once more from the strange security of his
strongly swinging arms she would meet Ted's
eyes, watching and waiting. She must dance
once more with Max. She had never really
danced before. She would go to Ted at last and
pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not
yet.
" I will show you the front garden," she said,
running down the steps.
He joined her and they walked silently round
the side of the house, through the kitchen yard
and out into the deserted carriage drive. She
thought she saw people on the front lawn and
walked quickly, humming a little tune, on down
the drive.
Max crunched silently along a little apart from
her, singing to himself.
18
Both sides of the front gate were bolted back
and their footsteps carried them straight out on
56 BACKWATER
to the asphalted avenue extending right and left,
a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps
out in the roadway. With a sudden sense of
daring, Miriam determined to assume the de-
serted avenue as part of the garden.
The gate left behind, they made their way
slowly along the high leafy tunnel.
They would walk to the end of the long
avenue and back again. In a moment she would
cease humming and make a remark. She tasted
a new sense of ease, walking slowly along with
this strange man without " making conversa-
tion." He was taking her silence for granted.
All her experience so far had been of companions
whose uneasiness pressed unendurably for speech,
and her talking had been done with an irritated
sense of the injustice of aspersions on " women's
tongues," while no man could endure a woman's
silence . . . even Ted, except when dancing ;
no woman could, except Minna, in Germany.
Max must be foreign, of course, German- — of
course. She could, if she liked, talk of the stars
to him. He would neither make jokes nor talk
science and want her to admire him, until all
the magic was gone. Her mood expanded. He
had come just at the right moment. She would
BACKWATER 57
keep him with her until she had to face Ted.
He was like a big ship towing the little barque
of her life to its harbour.
His vague humming rose to a little song. It
was German. It was the Lorelei. For a moment
she forgot everything but pride in her ability to
take her share in both music and words.
" You understand German ! " he cried.
They had reached the end of the avenue and
the starlit roadway opened ahead, lined with
meadows.
" Ach, wie schon," breathed Max.
" Wic schon." Miriam was startled by the gay
sound of her own voice. It sounded as if she were
alone, speaking to herself. She looked up at the
spangled sky. The freshening air streamed to-
wards them from the meadows.
" We must go back," she said easily, turning in
again under the trees.
The limes seemed heavily scented after their
breath of the open. They strolled dreamily along
keeping step with each other. They would make
it a long quiet way to the gate. Miriam felt
strangely invisible. It was as if in a moment a
voice would come from the clustering lime trees
or from the cluster of stars in the imagined sky.
58 BACKWATER
" Wie siiss," murmured Max, " 1st treue
Liebe."
" How dear," she translated mentally, " is true
love." Yes, that was it, that was true, the Ger-
man phrase. Ted was dear, dear. But so far
away. Coming and going, far away.
" Is it ? " she said with a vague, sweet intona-
tion, to hear more.
" Wie suss, wie suss," he repeated firmly,
flinging his arm across her shoulders.
The wildly shimmering leafage rustled and
seemed to sing. She walked on horrified, cradled,
her elbow resting in her companion's hand as in
a cup. She laughed, and her laughter mingled
with the subdued lilting of the voice close at
her side. Ted was waiting somewhere in the
night for her. Ted. Ted. Not this stranger.
But why was he not bold like this ? Primly and
gently she disengaged herself.
She and Ted would walk along through the
darkness and it would shout to them. Day-time
colours seemed to be shining through the night.
. . . She turned abruptly to her companion.
" Aren't the lime trees jolly ? " she said con-
versationally.
c You will dance again with me ? "
BACKWATER 59
" Yes, if you like."
" I must go so early."
" Must you ? "
" To-morrow morning early I go abroad."
19
" Hullo ! "
" Where were you all that last dance ? "
Nan Babington's voice startled her as they
came into the bright hall through the open front
door.
She smiled towards Nan, sitting drearily with
a brilliant smile on her face watching the dancers
from a long chair drawn up near the drawing-
room door, and passed on into the room with her
hand on her partner's arm. They had missed a
dance and an interval. It must have been a
Lancers and now there was another waltz.
Several couples were whirling gravely about.
Amongst them she noted Bevan Seymour, up-
right and slender, dancing with Harriett with an
air of condescending vivacity, his bright teeth
showing all the time. Her eyes were ready for
Ted. She was going to meet his for the first
time — just one look, and then she would fly for
her life anywhere, to anybody. And he would
60 BACKWATER
find her and make her look at him again. Ted.
He was not there. People were glancing at her,
curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and felt
their radiance stream through her, flooding her
with strength from head to foot. How battered
and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and sick,
stamped with a pallor of sickness. How she pitied
them all.
" Let us take a short turn," said Max, and his
arms came around her. As they circled slowly
down the length of the room she stared at his
black shoulder a few inches from her eyes. His
stranger's face was just above her in the bright
light ; his strange black-stitched glove holding
her mittened hand. His arms steadied her as
they neared the conservatory.
" Let us go out," she heard him say, and her
footsteps were guided across the moulding, her
arm retained in his. Meg Wedderburn was
playing and met her with her sentimental smile.
In the gloom at her side, just beyond the shaded
candle, stood Ted ready to turn the music, his
disengaged hand holding the bole of a tall palm.
He dropped his hands and turned as they passed
him, almost colliding with Miriam. " Next
dance with me," he whispered neatly. " Will
BACKWATER 61
you show me your coffin ? " asked Max as they
reached the garden steps.
" It's quite down at the end beyond the kitchen
garden."
20
" There are raspberry canes all along here, on
both sides — trailing all over the place ; the gar-
dener puts up stakes and things but they manage
to trail all over the place."
" Ah, yes."
" Some of them are that pale yellow kind, the
colour of champagne. You can just see how
they trail. Isn't it funny how dark they are, and
yet the colour's there all the time, isn't it ? They
are lovely in the day, lovely leaves and great big
fruit, and in between are little squatty goose-
berry bushes, all kinds, yellow and egg-shaped like
plums, and little bright green round ones and
every kind of the ordinary red kind. Do you
know the little bright green ones, quite bright
green when they're ripe, like bright green
chartreuse ? "
" No. The green chartreuse of course I know.
But green ripe gooseberries I have not seen."
" I expect you only know the unripe green
ones they make April fool of."
62 . BACKWATER
" April fool ? "
" I mean gooseberry fool. Do you know why
men are like green gooseberries ? "
"No. Why are they? Tell me."
" Perhaps you would not like it. We are pass-
ing the apple trees now ; quarendens and stib-
bards."
" Tell me. I shall like what you say."
" Well, it's because women can make fools of
them whenever they like."
Max laughed ; a deep gurgling laugh that
echoed back from the wall in front of them.
" We are nearly at the end of the garden."
" I think you would not make a man a fool.
No?"
" I don't know. I've never thought about it."
" You have not thought much about men."
" I don't know."
" But they, they have thought about you."
" Oh, I'm sure I don't know."
" You do not care, perhaps ? "
" I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Here's the coffin. I'm afraid it's not very com-
fortable. It's so low."
" What is it ? "
" It's an overturned seedling box. There's
BACKWATER 63
grass all round. I wonder whether it's damp,"
said Miriam suddenly invaded by a general un-
certainty.
" Oh, we will sit down, it will not be damp.
Your future brother-in-law has not scrubbed
also the ivy on the wall," he pursued as they sat
down on the broad low seat, " it will spoil your
blouse."
Miriam leaned uncomfortably against the
intervening arm.
" Isn't it a perfectly lovely night ? " she said.
" I feel that you would not make of a man a
fool. . . ."
" Why not ? "
" I feel that there is no poison in you."
" What do you mean ? " People . . . poisonous
. . . What a horrible idea.
" Just what I say."
" I know in a way. I think I know what you
mean."
" I feel that there is no poison in you. I have
not felt that before with a woman."
" Aren't women awful ? " Miriam made a
little movement of sympathy towards the strange
defmiteness at her side.
" I have thought so. But you are not as the
64 BACKWATER
women one meets. You have a soul serene and in-
nocent. With you it should be well with a man."
" I don't know," responded Miriam. " Is he
telling me I am a fool ? " she thought. " It's
true, but no one has the courage to tell me."
" It is most strange. I talk to you here as I
will. It is simple and fatal " ; the supporting
arm became a gentle encirclement and Miriam's
heart beat softly in her ears. " I go to-morrow
to Paris to the branch of my father's business
that is managed there by my brother. And I go
then to New York to establish a branch there.
I shall be away then, perhaps a year. Shall I
find you here ? "
A quick crunching on the gravel pathway just
in front of them made them both hold their
breath to listen. Someone was standing on the
grass near Max's side of the coffin. A match spat
and flared and Miriam's heart was shaken by
Ted's new, eager, frightened voice. " Aren't
you ever going to dance with me again ? "
She had seen the whiteness of his face and his
cold, delicate, upright figure. In spirit she had
leapt to her feet and faltered his name. All the
world she knew had fallen into newness. This
was certainty. Ted would never leave her. But
BACKWATER 65
it was Max who was standing up and saying
richly in the blackness left by the burnt-out
match, " All in good time, Burton. Miss Miriam
is engaged to me for this dance." Her faint " of
course, Ted," was drowned in the words which
her partner sang after the footsteps retreating
rapidly along the gravel path: "We're just
coming ! "
'' I suppose they've begun the next dance," she
said, rising decisively and brushing at her velvet
skirt with trembling hands.
" Our dance. Let us go and dance our dance."
They walked a little apart steadily along up
through the kitchen garden, their unmatched
footsteps sounding loudly upon the gravel be-
tween remarks made by Max. Miriam heard
them and heard the voice of Max. But she neither
listened nor responded.
She began to talk and laugh at random as they
neared the lawn lit by the glaring uncurtained
windows.
Consulting his scrutinising face as they danced
easily in the as yet half-empty room, he humming
the waltz which swung with their movement, she
found narrow, glinting eyes looking into her
strange eyes that knew all about a big
own
66 BACKWATER
business and were going to Paris and New York.
His stranger's face was going away, to be
washed and shaved innumerable times, keeping
its assurance in strange places she knew nothing
about.
Here, just for these few hours, laughing at
Ted. A phrase flashed through her brain, " He's
brought Ted to his senses." She flushed and
laughed vaguely and danced with a feeling of
tireless strength and gaiety. She knew the phrase
was not her own. It was one Nan Babington
could have used. It excited her. It meant that
real things were going to happen, she could bear
herself proudly in the room. She rippled com-
placently at Max. The room was full of whirling
forms, swelling and shrinking as they crossed and
recrossed the line between the clear vision
rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright
confusion. Swift, rhythmic movement, unbroken
and unjostled, told her how well they were
dancing. She was secure, landed in life, dancing
carelessly out and out to a life of her own.
" I go ; I see you again in a year," said Max
suddenly, drawing up near the door where Mrs.
Henderson stood sipping coffee with Sarah and
Bennett.
BACKWATER 67
" Where is Burton ? " he asked in the midst of
his thanks and leave-taking.
They all hesitated. Miriam suddenly found
herself in the presence of a tribunal.
Bennett's careless " Oh, he's gone ; couldn't
stay," followed her as she flung upstairs to Meg
Wedderburn's empty room. Why had her
mother looked so self-conscious and Sarah avoided
her eye . . . standing there like a little group of
conspirators.
People were always inventing things. " Bother
— damnational silliness," she muttered, and began
rapidly calculating. Ted gone away. Little Ted
hurt and angry. To-morrow. Perhaps he
wouldn't come. If he didn't she wouldn't see
him before she went. The quiet little bead of
ruby shaded gas reproached her. Meg's eyes
would be sad and reproachful in this quiet neat-
ness. Terror seized her. She wouldn't see him.
He had finished his work at the Institution. It
was the big Norwich job next week.
CHAPTER III
MIRIAM propped "The Story of Adele"
open against the three Bibles on the dress-
ing-table. It would be wasteful to read it up-
stairs. It was the only story-book amongst the
rows of volumes which filled the shelves in the
big schoolroom and would have to last her for
tea-time reading the whole term. The " Fleurs
de PEloquence ? " Shiny brown leather covered
with little gold buds and tendrils, fresh and new
although the parchment pages were yellow with
age. The Fleurs were so short . . . that curious
page signed " Froissart " with long s's, coming
to an end just as the picture of the French count
was getting clear and interesting. That other
thing, " The Anatomy of Melancholy." Fascin-
ating. But it would take so much reading, on
and on forgetting everything ; all the ordinary
things, seeing things in some new way, some way
that fascinated people for a moment if you tried .
68
BACKWATER 69
to talk about it and then made them very angry,
made them hate and suspect you. Impossible
to take it out and have it on the schoolroom table
for tea-time reading. What had made the
Pernes begin allowing tea-time reading ? Being
shy and finding it difficult to keep conversation
going with the girls for so long ? They never did
talk to the girls. Perhaps because they did not
see through them and understand them. North
London girls. So different from the Fairchild
family and the sort of girls they had been accus-
tomed to when they were young. Anyhow, they
hardly ever had to talk to them. Not at break-
fast or dinner-time when they were all three
there ; and at tea-time when there was only one
of them, there were always the books. How
sensible. On Sunday afternoons, coming smiling
into the schoolroom, one of them each Sunday —
perhaps the others were asleep — reading aloud ;
the Fairchild family, smooth and good and happy,
everyone in the book surrounded with a sort of
light, going on and on and on towards heaven,
tea-time seeming so nice and mean and ordinary
afterwards — or a book about a place in the
north of England called Saltcoats, brine, and a
vicarage and miners ; the people in the book
70 BACKWATER
horrible, not lit up, talking about things and
being gloomy and not always knowing what to
do, never really sure about Heaven like the Fair-
child family, black brackish book. The " Fair-
child Family " was golden and gleaming.
" The Anatomy of Melancholy " would not
be golden like " The Fairchild Family " . . . " the
cart was now come alongside a wood which was
exceedingly shady and beautiful " ; " good man-
ners and civility make everybody lovely " ; but
it would be round and real, not just chilly and
moaning like " Saltcoats." The title would be
enough to keep one going at tea-time. Anat —
omy of Mel — an-choly, and the look of the close-
printed pages and a sentence here and there.
The Pernes would not believe she really wanted
it there on the table. The girls would stare.
When " The Story of Adele " was finished she
would have to find some other book ; or borrow
one. Nancie Wilkie, sitting at tea with her back
to the closed piano facing the great bay of dark
green-blinded window, reading " Nicholas Nickle-
by." Just the very one of all the Dickens
volumes that would be likely to come into her
hands. Impossible to borrow it when Nancie
had finished with it. Impossible to read a book
BACKWATER 71
with such a title. " David Copperfield " was all
right; and "The Pickwick Papers." "Little
Dorritt"— "A Tale of Two Cities "— " The
Old Curiosity Shop." There was something sus-
picious about these, too.
Adele — the story of Adele. The book had
hard, unpleasant covers with some thin cottony
material — bright lobelia blue — strained over them
and fraying out at the corners. Over the front
of the cover were little garlands and festoons of
faded gold, and in the centre framed by an oval
band of brighter gold was the word Adele, with
little strong tendrils on the lettering. There
was some secret charm about the book. The
strong sunlight striking the window just above
the coarse lace curtains that obscured its lower
half, made the gilding shine and seem to move —
a whole wild woodland. The coarse white toilet-
cover on the chest of drawers, the three Bibles,
the little cheap mahogany- framed looking-glass^
Nancie Wilkie's folding hand-glass, the ugly gas
bracket sticking out above the mirror, her own
bed in the corner with its coarse fringed coverlet,
the two alien beds behind her in the room, and
72 BACKWATER
the repellant washstand in the far corner became
friendly as the sun shone on the decorated cover
of the blue and gold book.
She propped it open again and began tidying
her hair. It must be nearly tea-time. A phrase
caught her eye. " The old chateau where the
first years of Adele's life were spent was situated
in the midst of a high-walled garden. Along one
side of the chateau ran a terrace looking out over
a lovely expanse of flower-beds. Beyond was a
little pleasaunce surrounded by a miniature wall
and threaded by little pathways lined with rose
trees. Almost hidden in the high wall was a little
doorway. When the doorway was open you
could see through into a deep orchard." The
first tea-bell rang. The figure of Adele flitting
about in an endless summer became again lines of
black print. In a moment the girls would come
rushing up. Miriam closed the book and turned
to the dazzling window. The sun blazed just
above the gap in the avenue of poplars. A bright
yellow pathway led up through the green of the
public cricket ground, pierced the avenue of
poplars and disappeared through the further
greenery in a curve that was the beginning of
its encirclement of the park lake. Coming slowly
BACKWATER 73
along the pathway was a little figure dressed
bunchily in black. It looked pathetically small
and dingy in the bright scene. The afternoon
blazed round it. It was something left over.
What was the explanation of it ? As it came near
it seemed to change. It grew real. It was hurry-
ing eagerly along, quite indifferent to the after-
noon glory, with little rolling steps that were
like the uneven toddling of a child, and carrying
a large newspaper whose great sheets, although
there was no wind, balled out scarcely controlled
by the small hands. Its feathered hat had a
wind-blown rakish air. On such a still afternoon.
It was thinking and coming along, thinking and
thinking and a little angry. What a rum little
party, murmured Miriam, despising her words
and admiring the wild thought-filled little bundle
of dingy clothes. Beastly, to be picking up that
low kind of slang — not real slang. Just North
London sneering. Goo — what a rum little party,
she declared aloud, flattening herself against the
window. Hotly flushing, she recognised that she
had been staring at Miss Jenny Perne hurrying
in to preside at tea.
74 BACKWATER
3
" We've been to Jones's this afternoon, Miss
Jenny."
Each plate held a slice of bread and butter cut
thickly all the way across a household loaf, and the
three-pound jar of home-made plum jam belong-
ing to Nancie Wilkie was going the round of the
table. It had begun with Miriam, who sat on
Miss Jenny's right hand, and had Nancie for
neighbour. She had helped herself sparingly,
unable quite to resist the enhancement of the
solid fare, but fearing that there would be no
possibility of getting anything from home to
make a return in kind. Things were so bad, the
dance had cost so much. One of Mary's cakes,
big enough for five people, would cost so much.
And there would be the postage.
Piling a generous spoonful on to her own
thick slice, Nancie coughed facetiously and re-
peated her remark which had produced no result
but a giggle from Charlotte Stubbs who sat
opposite to her.
"Eh? Eh? What?"
Miss Jenny looked down the table over the
top of her newspaper without raising her head.
BACKWATER 75
Her pince-nez were perched so that one eye ap-
peared looking through its proper circle, the
other glared unprotected just above a rim of
glass.
" Miss Haddie took us to Jones's this after-
noon," said Nancie almost voicelessly. Miriam
glanced at the too familiar sight of Nancie's
small eyes vanishing to malicious points. She
was sitting as usual very solid and upright in her
chair, with her long cheeks pink flushed and her
fine nose white and cool and twitching, her yellow
hair standing strongly back from her large white
brow. She stabbed keenly in her direction as
Miriam glanced, and Miriam turned and applied
herself to her bread and jam. If she did not eat
she would not get more than two slices from the
piled dishes before the others had consumed four
and five apiece and brought tea to an end.
" Eh ? what for ? Why are ye laughing,
Nancie ? "
" Pm not laughing, Miss Jenny." Nancie's
firm lips curved away from her large faultless
teeth. " I'm only smiling and telling you about
our visit to Jones's."
Miss Jenny's newspaper was lowered and her
pince-nez removed.
76 BACKWATER
" Eh ? What d'ye say ? Nonsense, Nancie,
you know you were laughing. Why do you say
you weren't ? What do you mean ? Eh ? "
"I'm sorry, Miss Jennie. Something tickled
me."
" Yes. Don't be nonsensical. D'ye see ? It's
nonsensical to say no when you mean yes. D'ye
understand what I mean, Nancie ? It's bad
manners." Hitching on her pince-nez, Miss
Jenny returned to her paper.
Miriam gave herself up to the luxury of reading
Adele to the accompaniment of bread and jam.
She would not hurry over her bread and jam.
As well not have it. She would sacrifice her
chance of a third slice. She reflected that it
would be a good thing if she could decide never
to have more than two slices, and have them in
peace. Then she could thoroughly enjoy her
reading. But she was always so hungry. At
home she could not have eaten thick bread and
butter. But here every slice seemed better than
the last. When she began at the hard thick edge
there always seemed to be tender places on her
gums, her three hollow teeth were uneasy and
she had to get through worrying- thoughts about
them — they would get worse as the years went by,
BACKWATER 77
and the little places in the front would grow big
and painful and disfiguring. After the first few
mouthfuls of solid bread a sort of padding
seemed to take place and she could go on forgetful.
" They'd got," said Trixie Sanderson in a
velvety tone, " they'd got some of their Christ-
mas things out, Miss Jenny." She cleared her
throat shrilly on the last word and toned off the
sound with a sigh. Inaudible laughter went
round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced
fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best
dress, a loosely made brown velveteen with a
deep lace collar round her soft brown neck. Her
neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by
lively silky brown curls. She held her small head
sideways from her book with a questioning air.
One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered
serenely with its thin lid.
She uttered a second gentle sigh and once
more cleared her throat, accompanying the sound
with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid.
Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye
which tried to search her, hating the sudden,
sharp dimpling which came high up almost under
Trixie's cheek bones in answer to her own ex-
pression.
78 BACKWATER
" Miss Jenny," breathed Trixie in a high tone,
twirling one end of the bow of black ribbon
crowning her head.
Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table
opposite the tea-tray, giggled aloud.
" Eh ? What ? Did somebody speak ? " said
Miss Jenny, looking up with a smile. " Ate ye
getting on with yer teas ? Are ye ready for
second cups ? "
" Beadie spoke," murmured Trixie, glancing
at Beadie whose neat china doll's face was half
hidden between her cup and the protruding edge
of her thatch of tight gold curls.
Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong
the irritating comedy by choking over her tea.
It was some minutes before the whole incident
was made clear to Miss Jenny. Reading was sus-
pended. Everyone watched while Charlotte
Stubbs, going carefully backwards, came to the
end at last of Miss Jenny's questions, and when
Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating — well ! you're all
very naughty children. I can't think what's the
matter with you ? Eh ? Ye shouldn't do it. I
can't think what possesses you. What is it, eh ?
Ye shouldn't do it. D'you see ? — and having
dispensed the second allowance of tea with small
BACKWATER 79
hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to
her newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking
guilty. Miriam stole a glance at the breadth of
her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she hung
over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with
her tea-drinking, and her shock of coarse brown-
gold hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck out
bushily on either side, its edges lit by the after-
noon glow from the garden behind her. The
others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the
muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly
active. She and Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque
blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of her book
with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered
on their final competition for the last few slices.
Miriam returned to her book. The story of
Adele had moved on through several unassimil-
ated pages. " My child," she read, " it is im-
portant to remember "—-she glanced on gathering
a picture of a woman walking with Adele along
the magic terrace, talking — words and phrases
that fretted dismally at the beauty of the scene.
Examining later chapters she found conversa-
tions, discussions, situations, arguments, " fusses "
— all about nothing. She turned back to the
early passage of description and caught the glow
8o BACKWATER
once more. But this time it was overshadowed
by the promise of those talking women. That
was all there was. She had finished the story of
Adele.
A resounding slam came up from the kitchen.
" Poor cook — another tooth," sighed Trixie.
Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb.
Her thwarted expectations ranged forth beyond
control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for
succour where she had learned there was none.
. . . Nancie, her parents abroad, her aunt's
house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin
from South Africa coming home to Cromer,
taking her out in a dog-cart, telling her she was
his guiding star, going back to South Africa ;
everything Nancie said and did, even her careful
hair-brushing and her energetic upright walk,
her positive brave way of entering a room, coming
out through those malicious pin-points — things
she said about the Misses Perne and the girls,
things she whispered and laughed, little rhymes
she sang with her unbearable laugh.
. . . Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent
servile glancing laughter, her stepmother, her
little half-brother who had fits, her holidays at
Margate, " you'd look neat, on the seat, of a
BACKWATER 81
bicyka made for two " — Beadie brought Miriam
the utmost sense of imprisonment within the
strange influence that had threatened her when
she first came to Banbury Park. Beadie was in
it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that
she could in some way, in some one tint or tone,
realise the whole fabric of Beadie's life on and
on to the end, no matter what should happen to
her. But she turned from the attempt — any
effort at full realisation threatened complete
despair. Trixie too, with a home just opposite
the Banbury Empire. . . . Miriam slid over this
link in her rapid reflections — a brother named
Julian who took instantaneous photographs of
girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was
sometimes " tight." . . .
Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint
suggestion of relief. Miriam fled to her as she
sat with the garden light on her hair, her linger-
ing flush of distress rekindled by her amusement,
her protective responsible smile beaming out
through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind
her painstaking life at the school was a country
home, a farm somewhere far away. Of course it
was dreadful for her to be a farmer's daughter.
She evidently knew it herself and said very little
82 BACKWATER
about it. But her large red hands, so strange
handling school-books, were comforting ; and
her holland apron with its bib under the fresh
colouring of her face — do you like butter ? A
buttercup under your chin — brought to Miriam
a picture of the farm, white amidst bright green-
ery, with a dairy and morning cock-crow and
creamy white sheep on a hillside. It was all there
with her as she sat at table reading " The Lamp-
lighter." The sound of her broad husky voice
explaining to Miss Jenny had been full of it.
But it was all past. She too had come to Ban-
bury Park. She did not seem to mind Banbury
Park. She was to study hard and be a
governess. She evidently thought she was having
a great chance — she was fifteen and quite " un-
cultured." How could she be turned into a
governess ? A sort of nursery governess, for
farms, perhaps. But farms did not want books
and worry. Miriam wanted to put her back
nto her farm, and sometimes her thoughts
wearily brushed the idea of going with her.
Perhaps, though, she had come away because her
father could not keep her ? The little problem
hung about her as she sat sweetly there, common
and good and strong. The golden light that
BACKWATER 83
seemed to belong specially to her came from a
London garden, an unreal North London garden.
Resounding in its little spaces were the blatter-
ings and shouts of the deaf and dumb next door.
4
Miss Jenny left "The Standard" with Miriam
after tea, stopping suddenly as she made her
uncertain way from the tea-table to the door and
saying absently, " Eh, you'd better read this,
my dear. There's a leader on the Education
Commission. Would ye like to ? Yes, I think
you'd better." Miriam accepted the large sheets
with hesitating expressions of thanks, wondering
rather fearfully what a leader might be and where
she should find it. She knew the word. Her
mother read " the leaders " in the evening —
" excellent leader " she sometimes said, and her
father would put down his volume of " Proceed-
ings of the British Association," or Herbert
Spencer's " First Principles," and condescend-
ingly agree. But any discussion generally ended
in his warning her not to believe a thing because
she saw it in print, and a reminder that before
she married she had thought that everything she
saw in print was true, and quite often he would
84 BACKWATER
go on to general remarks about the gullibility of
women, bringing in the story of the two large
long-necked pearly transparent drawing-room
vases with stems and soft masses of roses and
leaves painted on their sides that she had given
too much for at the door to a man who said
they were Italian. Brummagem, Brummagem, he
would end, mouthing the word and turning back
to his book with the neighing laugh that made
Miriam turn to the imagined picture of her mother
in the first year of her married life, standing in
the sunlight at the back door of the Babington
house, with the varnished coach-house door on
her right and the cucumber frames in front of
her sloping up towards the bean-rows that began
the kitchen garden ; with her little scallopped
bodice, her hooped skirt, her hair bunched in
curls up on her high pad and falling round her
neck, looking at the jugs with grave dark eyes.
And that neighing laugh had come again and
again all through the years until she sat meekly,
flushed and suffering under the fierce gaslight,
feeling every night of her life winter and summer
as if the ceiling were coming down on her head,
and read " leaders " cautiously, and knew when
they were written in •" a fine chaste dignified
BACKWATER 85
style." But that was "The Times." "The
Standard " was a penny rag and probably not
worth considering at all. In any case she would
not read it at evening study. She had never had
a newspaper in her hand before as far as she could
remember. The girls would see that she did not
know how to read it, and it would be snubby
towards them to sit there as if she were a Miss
Perne, scrumpling a great paper while they sat
with their books. So she read her text-books, a
page of Saxon Kings with a ten-line summary of
each reign, a list of six English counties with their
capitals and the rivers the capitals stood on and
the principal industries of each town, devising
ways of remembering the lists and went on to
" Bell's Standard Elocutionist." She had found
the book amongst the school books on the school-
room shelves. It was a " standard " book and
must therefore be about something she ought to
know something about if she were to hold her
own in this North London world. There had
been no " standard " books at school and the word
offended her. It suggested fixed agreement about
the things people ought to know and that she
felt sure must be wrong, and not only wrong but
" common "... standard readers . . standard
86 BACKWATER
pianoforte tutors. She had learned to read
in " Reading without Tears," and gone on to
" Classical Poems and Prose for the Young," her
arithmetic book instead of being a thin cold
paper-covered thing called Standard I, had been
a pleasant green volume called " Barnard Smith,"
that began at the beginning and went on to
compound fractions and stocks. There was no
Morris's Grammar at Banbury Park, no Wetherell
or English Accidence, no bits from " Piers Plow-
man " and pages of scraps of words with the way
they changed in different languages and quota-
tions, just sentences that had made her long for
more . . . " up-clomb "... "the mist up-clomb."
She opened " Bell's Standard Elocutionist " appre-
hensively, her mind working on possible meanings
for elocutionist. She thought of ventriloquist
and wondered dismally whether it was a book of
conjuring tricks. It was poems, poems and prose,
all mixed up together anyhow. The room was
very still, the girls all sitting reading with their
back to the table so that nobody " poked." She
could not go on vaguely fluttering pages, so she
read a solid-looking poem that was not divided
up into verses.
" Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane
BACKWATER 87
And Valmond Emperor of Allemaine, Apparelled
in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a
knight and squire, On St. John's1 eve, at vespers,
proudly sat And heard the priests chant the
Magnificat." Should she go on ? It was like the
pieces in Scott's novels, the best bits, before the
characters began to talk.
..." and bay the moon than such a Roman
and bay the moon than such a Roman," muttered
Nancie rapidly, swinging her feet. It would not
be fair to read a thing that would take her right
away and not teach her anything whilst the girls
were learning their things for Monday. She
hesitated and turned a page. The poem,- she
saw, soon began to break up into sentences with
quotation signs ; somebody making a to-do.
Turning several pages at once, she caught sight
of the word Hanover. " Hamelin Town's in
Brunswick, by famous Hanover city." That was
irresistible. But she must read it one day away
from the gassy room and the pressure of the
girls. The lines were magic ; but the rush that
took her to the German town, the sight and
smell and sound of it, the pointed houses, wood
fires, the burgers, had made her cheeks flare and
thrown her out of the proper teacher's frame of
88 BACKWATER
mind. She wanted to stand up and pull up the
blinds hiding the garden and shout the poem
aloud to the girls. They would stare and giggle
and think she had gone mad. " The mountain
has gone mad," Nancie would mutter. " There
is a mountain in Banbury Park, covered over with
yellow bark," Nancie's description of herself.
That was how the girls saw her stiff hair — and
they thought she was " about forty." Well, it
was true. She was, practically. She went on
holding Bell up before her face, open at a page
of prose, and stared at the keyboard of the piano
just beyond her crossed knees. It aroused the
sight and sense of the strangely moving hands of
the various girls whose afternoon practice it was
her business to superintend, their intent faces,
the pages of bad unclassical music, things with
horrible names, by English composers, the use-
lessness of the hours and terms and years of
practice.
5
Presently the bread and butter and milk came
up for the girls, and then there was prayers — the
three servants lined up in front of the book-
shelves ; cook wheezing heavily, tall and thin
and bent, with a sloping mob cap and a thin old
BACKWATER 89
brown face with a forehead that was like a but-
tress of shiny bone and startling dark eyes that
protruded so that they could be seen even when
she sat looking down into her lap ; and Flora
the parlourmaid, short and plump and brown
with an expression of perfectly serene despair,
this was part of Miriam's daily bread ; and Annie
the housemaid, raw pink and gold and grinning
slyly at the girls — Miss Perne, sitting at the head
of the table with the shabby family Bible and
the book of family prayers, Miss Jenny and Miss
Haddie one on each side of the fire-place, Miss
Jenny's feet hardly reaching the floor as she sat
bunched on a high schoolroom chair, Miss Haddie
in her cold slate-grey dress sitting back with her
thin hands clasped in her lap, her grey face bent
devotionally so that her chin rested on her thin
chest, her eyes darting from the servants to the
girls who sat in their places round the table
during the time it took Miss Perne to read a
short psalm. Miriam tried to cast down her
eyes and close her ears. All that went on during
that short interval left her equally excluded from
either party. She could not sit gazing at Flora,
and Miss Perne's polite unvarying tone brought
her no comfort. She sometimes thought longingly
90 BACKWATER
of prayers in Germany, the big quiet saal with
its high windows, its great dark doors, its annexe
of wooden summer-room, Fraulein's clear, brood-
ing undertone, the pensive calm of the German
girls ; the strange mass of fresh melodious sound
as they all sang together. Here there seemed
to be everything to encourage and nothing what-
ever to check the sudden murmur, the lightning
swift gesture of Nancie or Trixie.
The moment Miss Perne had finished her
psalm they all swung round on to their knees.
Miriam pressed her elbows against the cane seat
of her chair and wondered what she should say to
Miss Jenny at supper about the newspaper, while
Miss Perne decorously prayed that they might
all be fed with the sincere milk of the Word and
grow thereby.
After the Lord's Prayer, a unison of breathy
mutterings against closed fingers, they all rose.
Then the servants filed out of the room followed
by the Misses Perne. Miss Perne stopped in the
doorway to shake hands with the girls on their
way to bed before joining her sisters in the little
sitting-room across the hall. One of the servants
reappeared almost at once with a tray, distributed
its contents at the fire-place end of the long
BACKWATER 91
table and rang the little bell in the hall on her
way back to the kitchen. The Misses Perne
filed back across the hall.
" Eh, Deborah, are ye sure ? " said Miss Jenny,
getting into her chair at Miss Feme's right hand.
Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned
after all. If it were she would simply say she
had been preparing for Monday and was going
to read it after supper. Anyhow there was never
any threat with the Pernes of anything she would
not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what
there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie's
eye from across the table, assumed an air of in-
terested abstraction to cover her disappointment.
Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished
with prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream
cheese on a green-edged dessert plate, a box of
plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice and the
red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and
nice — the blancmange would be flavoured with
laurel — prussic acid — and the prunes would be
sweet in the wrong sort of way — wholesome,
just sweet fruit. Cheese — how could people eat
cheese ?
92 BACKWATER
" Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw
with my own eyes — Polly Allen and Eunice
Dupont running about in the park without their
hats."
"jEch," syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her
delicate green-grey eyebrows sharply towards
the deep line in the middle of her forehead.
She did not look up but sat frowning sourly into
her bowl of bread and milk, ladling and pouring
the milk from the spoon.
Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid pre-
occupation. No one had seen the behaviour of
her own face, how one corner of her mouth had
shot up so sharply as to bring the feeling of a
deeply denting dimple in her cheek. She sat
regulating her breathing and carefully extracting
the stone from a prune.
" Did ye speak to them ? " asked Miss Jenny,
fixing her tall sister over her pince-nez.
Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black
eyes blinking rapidly at the far-off bookshelves.
:< I did not speak to them "
" Eh, Deborah, why not ? " scolded Miss Jenny
as Miss Perne drew breath.
" I did not speak to them," went on Miss De-
borah, beaming delightedly at the bookcase, " for
BACKWATER 93
the very good reason that I was not sufficiently
near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt
pathway surrounding the lake and had just be-
come engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brink-
well, who had stopped me for the purpose of
giving me further details with regard to Con-
stance's prolonged absence from school, when I
saw Polly and Eunice apparently chasing one
another across the recreation ground in the con-
dition I have described to you."
Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie's scorn-
filled eyes playing watchfully over her, sat press-
ing the sharp edge of her high heel into her
ankle.
" Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn't speak
to them. They've no business at all in the
recreation ground where the rough boys go."
" Well, I have described to you the circum-
stances, my dear, and the impossibility of my
undertaking any kind of intervention."
" Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should
have done something. Don't you think you
ought ? Eh ? Called someone perhaps — eh ? —
or managed to get at the gels in some way — dear,
dear, what is to be done ? You see it is hardly
of any use to speak to them afterwards. You
94 BACKWATER
want to catch them red-handed and make them
feel ashamed of themselves."
" I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny,
the justice of all that you say. But I can only
repeat that in the circumstances in which I found
myself I was entirely unable to exercise any
control whatever upon the doings of the gels.
They were running ; and long before I was
free from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of
sight."
Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative
tone that seemed each moment on the point of
delighted laughter, her delicate head held high,
her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained
pleasure. Miriam saw vividly the picture in the
park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the sad
asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London
greenery, the October wind rushing through it,
Miss Feme's high stylish arrowy figure fluttered
by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs.
BrinkwelPs story, the dreadful asphalt playground
away to the left, its gaunt swings and bars —
gallows. . . . Ingoldsby — the girls rushing across
it, and held herself sternly back from a vision of
Miss Perne chasing the delinquents down the
wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triuni-
BACKWATER 95
phantly ? As much as to say There, my dear
Jenny, there's a problem you can't answer. She
enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset
about the girls. She spoke exactly as if she
were reading aloud from " Robinson Crusoe,"
Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her
eyes about as she gently spooned up her bread
and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether
Miss Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen
gravely. She was evidently angry and disgusted.
But still she could watch.
" Did ye go that way at all afterwards — the
way the girls went ? "
" I did not," beamed Miss Perne, turning to
Miss Jenny as if waiting for a judgment.
" Well, eh, I'm sure, really, it's most diffikilt.
What is one to do with these gels ? Now, Miriam,
here's something for you to exercise your wits
upon. What would ye do, eh ? "
Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb.
Of course she had never rushed about in a com-
mon park where rough boys came. At the same
time — if the girls wanted to rush about and
scream and wear no hats nobody had any right
to interfere with them . . . they ought to be
suppressed though, North London girls, capable
96 BACKWATER
of anything in the way of horridness . . . the
Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls
were in themselves, common and knowing and
horrid. " Dear, funny little O.M.'s "... they
were something much more than that. They
were wrong about the hats, but it was good,
heavenly to be here like this with them. She
turned to Miss Jenny, her mind in a warm
confusion, and smiled into the little red face
peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon
loops.
" Well ? "
" My dear Jenny," said Miss Haddie's soft
hollow voice, " how should the child judge ? "
Miriam's heart leapt. She smiled inanely and
eagerly accepted a second helping of blancmange
suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was
drawing little panting breaths and blinking
sharply at her.
" Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear,
it's a chance for you. Come along."
" Tomboys," said Miss Haddie indignantly.
Miriam drew a breath. It was wrong, they
were not tomboys — she knew they had not run
like tomboys — they had scuttled, she was sure —
horrid girls, that was what they were, nothing
BACKWATER 97
the Pernes could understand. The Pernes ought
not to be bothered with them.
" Well," she said, feeling a sudden security,
" are we responsible for them out of school
hours?"
Miss Haddie's eyebrows moved nervously, and
Miss Perne's smile turned to a dubious mouthing.
" Eh, there you are. D'ye see, Deborah.
That's it. That's the crucial point. Are we
responsible ? I'm sure I can't say. That places
the whole difficulty in a nutshell. Here are these
gels, not even day boarders. How far can we
control their general behaviour ? Eh ? I'm sure
I don't know."
" My dear Jenny," said Miss Haddie quickly,
her hollow voice reverberating as if she were
using a gargle, " it's quite obvious that we can't
have gels known to belong to the school running
about in the park with nothing on."
" I agree, my dear Haddie. But, as Jenny
says, how are we to prevent such conduct ? "
" Don't let us lose sight of Miriam's point.
Are we responsible for their play-times ? I sup-
pose we're not, you know, Deborah, really after
all. Not directly, perhaps. But sheerly we are
indirectly responsible. Sheerly. We ought to
98 BACKWATER
be able to make it impossible for them to carry
on in this unseemly fashion."
" Yes, yes," said Miss Deborah eagerly,
" sheerly."
" Is it education ? " suggested Miriam.
" That's it, my dear. It is education. That's
what's wanted. That's what these gels want.
I don't know, though. All this talk of education.
It ought to be the thing. And yet look at these
two gels. Both of them from Miss Cass's.
There's her school now. Famous all over London.
Three hundred gels. We've had several here.
And they've all had that objectionable noisy
tone. Eh, Deborah ? I don't know. How is it
to be accounted for ? Eh ? "
" I've never heard of Miss Cass's," said Miriam.
" My dear child ! It's not possible ! D'ye
mean to say ye don't know Miss Cass's high
school ? "
" Oh, if it's a high school, of course"
All three ladies waited, with their eyes on her,
making a chorus of inarticulate sounds.
" Oh well, high schools are simply fearful."
Miriam glowed in a tide of gentle cackling
laughter.
" Well, you know, I think there's something
BACKWATER 99
in it," giggled Miss Jenny softly. " It's the
number perhaps. That's what I always say,
Deborah. Treating the gels like soldiers. Like
a regiment. D'ye see ? No individual study of
the gels' characters "
' Well. However that may be, I am sure of
one thing. I am sure that on Monday Polly and
Eunice must be reprimanded. Severely repri-
manded."
* Yes. I suppose they must. They're nice
gels at heart, you know. Both of them. That's
the worst of it. Well, I hardly mean that. Only
so often the naughty gels are so thoroughly-
well— nice, likable at bottom, ye know, eh?
Pm sure. I don't know."
7
Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper
with the newspaper spread out on the brown
American cloth table cover under the gas. She
found a long column headed " The Royal Com-
mission on Education." The Queen, then, was
interesting herself in education. But in England
the sovereign had no power, was only a figure-
head. Perhaps the Queen had been advised to
interest herself in education by the Privy Council
TOO BACKWATER
and the Conservatives, people of leisure and
cultivation. A commission was a sort of com-
mand— it must be important, something the
Privy Council had decided and sent out in the
Queen's name.
She read her column, sitting comfortlessly be-
tween the window and the open door. As she
read the room grew still. The memory of the talk-
ing and clinking supper-table faded, and presently
even the ticking of the clock was no longer there.
She raised her head at last. No wonder people
read newspapers. You could read about what
was going on in the country, actually what the
Government was doing at that very moment.
Of course ; men seemed to know such a lot
because they read the newspapers and talked
about what was in them. But anybody could
know as much as the men sitting in the arm-
chairs if they chose ; read all about everything,
written down for everybody to see. That was
the freedom of the Press — Areopagitica, that the
history books said so much about and was one
of those new important things, more important
than facts and dates. Like the Independence of
Ireland. Yet very few people really talked like
newspapers. Only angry men with loud voices,
BACKWATER 101
Here was the free Press that Milton had gone to
prison for. Certainly it made a great difference.
The room was quite changed. ^ There was hardly
any pain in the silent cane- chairs. There
were really people making tne world better.
Now. At last. Perhaps it was rather a happy
fate to be a teacher in the Banbury Park school
and read newspapers. There were plenty of
people who could neither read nor write. Some-
one had a servant like that who did all the market-
ing and never forgot anything or made any mis-
take over the change — none the worse for it,
pater said, people who wanted book-learning
could get it, there must always be hewers of wood
and drawers of water, laissez faire. But Glad-
stone did not believe that. At this moment
Gladstone was saying that because the people of
England as a whole were uneducated their " con-
dition of ignorance " affected the whole of the
" body politic." That was Gladstone. He had
found that out . . . with large moist silky eyes
like a dog and pointed collars seeing things as
they were and going to change them. . . . Miriam
stirred uneasily as she felt the beating of her
heart. ... If only she were at home how she
could rush up and down the house and shout
io2 BACKWATER
about it and shake Mary by the shoulders. She
shrank into herself and sat stiffly up, suddenly
discovering she was lounging over the table. As
she moved she reflected that probably Gladstone's
being so very dark made him determined that
things should not go on as they were. In that
case Gladstonians would be dark — perhaps not
musical. Someone had said musical people were
a queer soft lot. Laissez faire. Lazy fair. But
perhaps it was possible to be fair and musical and
to be a Gladstonian too. You can't have your
cake and eat it. No. It was a good thing, one's
best self knew it was a good thing that someone
had found out why people were so awful ; like
a dentist rinding out a bad tooth however much
it hurt. Only if education was going to be the
principal thing and all teachers were to be
6 qualified ' it was no use going on. Miss Jenny
had said private schools were doomed.
8
For a long time she sat blankly contemplating
the new world that was coming. Everyone would
be trained and efficient but herself. She was not
strong enough to earn a living and qualify as a
teacher at the same time. The day's work tired
BACKWATER 103
her to death. She must hide somewhere. . . .
She would not be wanted. ... If you were not
wanted. ... If you knew you were not wanted
— you ought to get out of the way. Chloroform.
Someone had drunk a bottle of carbolic acid.
The clock struck ten. Gathering up the news-
paper she folded it neatly, put it on the hall table
and went slowly upstairs, watching the faint
reflection of the half-lowered hall gas upon the
polished balustrade. The staircase was cold and
airy. Cold rooms and landings stretched up
away above her into the darkness. She became
aware of a curious buoyancy rising within her.
It was so strange that she stood still for a moment
on the stair. For a second, life seemed to cease
in her and the staircase to be swept from under
her feet. ..." I'm alive." ... It was as if
something had struck her, struck right through
her impalpable body, sweeping it away, leaving her
there shouting silently without it. Pm alive. . . .
Pm aHve. Then with a thump her heart went on
again and her feet carried her body warm and
happy and elastic easily on up the solid stairs.
She tried once or twice deliberately to bring back
the breathless moment standing still on a stair.
Each time something of it returned. " It's me,
io4 BACKWATER
me ; this is me being alive," she murmured with
a feeling under her like the sudden drop of a lift.
But her thoughts distracted her. They were
eagerly talking to her declaring that she had had
this feeling before. She opened her bedroom
door very quietly. The air of the room told her
that Nancie and Beadie were asleep. Going
lightly across to the chest of drawers dressing-
table by the window as if she were treading on
air, she stood holding its edge in the darkness.
Two forgotten incidents flowed past her in quick
succession ; one of waking up on her seventh
birthday in the seaside villa alone in a small dark
room and suddenly saying to herself that one day
her father and mother would die and she would
still be there, and after a curious moment when
the darkness seemed to move against her, feeling
very old and crying bitterly, and another of
standing in the bow of the dining-room window
at Barnes looking at the raindrops falling from
the leaves through the sunshine and saying to
Eve, who came into the room as she watched,
" D'you know, Eve, I feel as if I'd suddenly
wakened up out of a dream." The bedroom
was no longer dark. She could see the outlines
of everything in the light coming from the street
BACKWATER 105
lamps through the half-closed Venetian blinds.
Beadie sighed and stirred. Miriam began im-
patiently preparing for bed without lighting the
gas. " What's the use of feeling like that if it
doesn't stay ? It doesn't change anything. Next
time I'll make it stay. It might whisk me right
away. There's something in me that can't be
touched or altered. Me. If it comes again. If
it's stronger every time. . . . Perhaps it goes on
getting stronger till you die."
CHAPTER IV
WHEEZING, cook had spread a plaster of
dampened ashy cinders upon the base-
ment schoolroom fire and gone bonily away
across the oilcloth in her heelless boots. As the
door closed Miriam's eye went up from her book
to the little slope of grass showing above the
concrete wall of the area. The grass gleamed
along the edge of a bank of mist. In the mist-
the area railings stood hard and solid against the
edge of empty space.' Several times she glanced
at the rich green, feeling that neither ' emerald/
4 emerald velvet,' nor ' velvety enamel ' quite
expressed it. She had not noticed that there was
a mist shutting in and making brilliant the half-
darkness of the room at breakfast-time, only
feeling that for some reason it was a good day.
" It's fog — there's a sort of fog," she said, glowing.
The fog made the room with the strange brilliant
brown light on the table, on the horsehair chairs,
106
BACKWATER 107
•
on the shabby length of brown and yellow oilcloth
running out to the bay of the low window, seem to
be rushing through space, alone. It was quite safe,
going on its journey — towards some great good.
The back door, just across the little basement
hall, scrooped inwards across the oilcloth, jingling
its little bell, and was banged to. The flounter-
crack of a raincloak smartly shaken out was fol-
lowed by a gentle scrabbling in a shoe-box, — the
earliest girl, peaceful and calm, a wonderful sort
of girl, coming into the empty basement quietly
getting off her things, with all the rabble of the
school coming along the roads, behind. The
jingling door was pushed open again just as her
•slippered feet ran upstairs. " Khoo — what a
filthy day ! " said a vibrating hard mature voice.
Miriam glanced at her time-table, history — dicta-
tion— geography — sums — writing — and shrank to
her utmost air of preoccupation lest either of the
elder girls should look in.
Sounds increased in the little hall, loud abrupt
voices, short rallying laughs, the stubbing and
stamping of feet on the oilcloth. At the ex-
pected rattling of the handle of her own door
she crouched over her book. The door opened
and was quietly closed again. A small figure
io8 BACKWATER
flung itself forward. Miriam was clutched by
harsh serge-clad arms. As she moved, startled,
firm cracked lips were pressed against her cheek-
bone. " Good morning, Burra," she said, turn-
ing to put an arm round the child. She caught
a glimpse of broad cheeks bulging firmly against
a dark bush of short hair. Large fierce bloodshot
eyes glared close to her own. " Hoo — angel."
The little gasping body stiffened against her
shoulder, pinning down her arm. The crimson
face tried to reach her breast. " Have you
changed your boots," said Miriam coldly. " Hoo
— hoo." The short hard fingers hurt her. " Go
and get them off at once." Head down Burra
rushed at the door, colliding with the incoming
figure of a neat little girl dressed in velvet-
trimmed red merino, with a rose and white face
and short gentle gold hair. She put a little pile
of books on the table and stood still near to
Miriam, with her hands behind her. They both
looked down the room out of the window, with
quiet unsmiling faces. " What have you been
doing since Friday, Gertie ? " Miriam said pre-
sently. " We went for a walk," said Gertie in a
neat liquid little voice, dimpling and faintly
raising her eyebrows.
BACKWATER 109
The eight little girls who made up the upper
class of the junior school stood in a close row as
near as possible to Miriam's chair at the head of
the table. They were silent and fresh and eagerly
crowded, waiting for her to begin. She kept
them silent for a few moments for the pleasure
of having them there with her. She knew that
Miss Perne, sitting in the window space with the
youngest class drawn up in a half-circle for their
Scripture lesson, was an approving presence,
keeping her own little class at a level of quiet
question and answer that made a background
rather than a disturbance for the adventure of
the elder girls. " Not too close together," said
Miriam at last, gathering herself with a deep
breath ; " throw back your shoulders and stand
straight. Don't lump down on your heels. Let
your weight come on the ball of your feet. Are
you all all right ? Don't poke your heads forward."
As the girls eagerly manoeuvred themselves, wil-
fully carrying out her instructions even to turning
their heads to face the opposite wall, she caught
most of the eyes in turn smiling their eager
affectionate conspiracy, and restraining her desire
to get up then and there and clasp the little
figures one by one, began the lesson. Four of
no BACKWATER
the girls, two square-built Quakeresses with
straight brown frocks, deep slow voices and dreamy
eyes, a white- faced, tawny-haired, thin child with
an eager stammer, and a brilliant little Jewess knew
the " principal facts and dates " of the reign of
Edward I by rote backwards and forwards in
response to any form of question. Burra hung her
head and knew nothing. Beadie Featherwell,
dreadfully tall, a head taller, with her twelve
years, than the tallest child in the lower school,
knew no more than Burra and stood staring at
the wall and biting her lips. A stout child with
open mouth and snoring breath answered with
perfect exactitude from the book, but her an-
swers bore no relationship to the questions, and
Gertie could only pipe replies if the questions
were so put as to contain part of the answer.
The white- faced girl was beginning to gnaw her
lingers by the time the questioning was at an
end.
" Well now, what is the difficulty," said Miriam,
" of getting hold of the events of this queer little
reign ? " Everybody laughed and was silent again
at once because Miriam's voice went on, trying
to interest both herself and the successful girls in
inventing ways of remembering all the things
BACKWATER in
that had to be " hooked on to the word Edward."
In less than ten minutes even the stout snoring
girl could repeat the reign successfully, and for
the remainder of their time they talked aimlessly.
The children standing at ease, saying whatever
occurred to them, even the snoring girl secured
from ridicule by Miriam's consideration of what-
ever was offered. Their adventure took them
away from their subject into what Miriam knew
" clever " people would call " side issues."
" Nothing is a side issue," she told herself pas-
sionately with her eyes on the green glare beyond
the window. The breaking up of Miss Feme's
class left the whole of the lower school on her
hands for the rest of the morning.
By half-past twelve she was sitting alone and
exhausted with aching throat at her place at the
head of the table.
" Khoo, isn't it a filthy day ! " Polly Allen, a
short heavy girl with a sallow pitted face, thin
ill-nourished hair and kind swiftly moving grey
eyes, marched in out of the dark hall with
flapping bootlaces. In the bay she sat down and
began to lace up her boots. The laces flicked
ii2 BACKWATER
carelessly upon the linoleum as she threaded,
profaning the little sanctuary of the window
space. " Oh me bones, me poor old bones," she
muttered. " Eunice ! " her hard mature voice
vibrated through the room. " Eunice Dupont ! "
" What's the jolly row ? " said a slow voice at
the door. " Wot's the bally shindy, beloved ? "
" Like a really beautiful Cheshire cat," Miriam
repeated to herself, propped studiously on her
elbows shrinking, and hoping that if she did not
look round, Eunice's carved brown curls, her
gleaming slithering opaque oval eyes and her
short upper lip, the strange evil carriage of her
head, the wicked lines of her figure, would be
withdrawn. " Cheshire, Cheshire," she scolded
inwardly, feeling the pain in her throat increase.
" Nothing. Wait for me. That's all. Oh, my
lungs, bones and et ceteras. It's old age, I sup-
pose, Uncle William."
" Well, hurry your old age up, that's all. I'm
ready."
" Well, don't go away, you funny cuckoo, you
can wait, can't you ? "
A party of girls straggled in one by one and
drifted towards Polly in the window space.
" It's the parties I look forward to."
BACKWATER 113
" Oh, look at her tie ! "
" My tie ? Six-three at Crisp's."
The sounds of Polly's bootlacing came to
an end. She sat holding a court. " Doesn't
look forward to parties ? She must be a funny
cuckoo ! "
" Dancing's divine," said a smooth deep smil-
ing voice. " Reversing. Khoo ! with a fella.
Khooo ! "
" You surprise me, Edie. You do indeed.
Hoh. Shocking."
" Shocking ? Why ? What do you mean,
Poll ? "
" Nothing. Nothing. Riang doo too."
" 7 don't think dancing's shocking. How can
it be ? You're barmy, my son."
" Ever heard of Lottie Collins ? "
" Ssh. Don't be silly."
" I don't see what Lottie Collins has got to
do with it. My mother thinks dancing's all right.
That's good enough for me."
" Well — I'm not your mother."
" Nor anyone else's."
" Khoo, Mabel."
" Who wants to be anyone's mother ? "
" Not me. Ug, Beastly little brats."
ii4 BACKWATER
" Oh shut up. Oh you do make me tired."
" Kids are jolly. Ai. I hope I have lots."
Surprised into amazement, Miriam looked up
to consult the face of Jessie Wheeler, the last
speaker — a tall flat-figured girl with a strong
squarish pale face, hollow cheeks, and firm colour-
less lips. Was it being a Baptist that made her
have such an extraordinary idea ? Miriam's eyes
sought refuge from the defiant beam of her sea-
blue eyes in the shimmering cloud of her hair.
The strangest hair in the school ; negroid in its
intensity of fuzziness, but saved by its fine mesh.
" Don't you adore kiddies, Miss Henderson ? "
" I think they're rather nice," said Miriam
quickly, and returned to her book.
" I should jolly well think they were," said
Jessie fervently.
" Hope your husband'll think so too, my dear,"
said Polly, getting up.
" Oh, of course, I should only have them if the
fellow wanted me to."
" You haven't got a fella yet, madam."
" Of course not, cuckoo. But I shall."
" Plenty of time to think about that."
" Hoo. Fancy never having a fellow. I should
go off my nut."
BACKWATER 115
When they had all disappeared Miriam opened
the windows. There was still someone moving
about in the hall, and as she stood in the in-
streaming current of damp air looking wearily at
the concrete — a girl came into the room. " Can
I come in a minute ? " she said, advancing to the
window. " I want to speak to you," she pursued
when she reached the bay. She stood at Miriam's
side and looked out of the window. Half-
turning, Miriam had recognized Grace Broom,
one of the elder first-class girls who attended
only for a few subjects. She was a dark short-
necked girl with thick shoulders ; a receding
mouth and boldly drawn nose and chin gave her
a look of shrewd elderliness. The heavy mass of
hair above the broad sweep of her forehead, her
heavy frame and flat-footed walk added to this
appearance. She wore a high-waisted black
serge pinafore dress with black crape vest and
sleeves.
" Do you mind me speaking to you ? " she said
in a hot voice. Her black- fringed brown eyes were
fixed on the garden railings where people passed
by and Miriam never looked.
" No," said Miriam shyly.
" You know why we're in mourning ? "
ii6 BACKWATER
Miriam stood silent with beating heart, trying
to cope with the increasing invasion.
" Our father's dead."
Hurriedly Miriam noted the superstitious tone
in the voice. . . . This is a family that revels in
plumes and hearses. She glanced at the stiff
rather full crape sleeve nearest to her and sought
about in her mind for help as she said with a
blush, " Oh, I see."
" We've just moved."
" Oh yes, I see," said Miriam, glancing fear-
fully at the heavy scroll of profile and finding it
expressive and confused.
" We've got a house about a quarter as big as
where we used to live."
Miriam found it impossible to respond to this
confession and still tried desperately to sweep
away the sense of the figure so solidly planted at
her side.
" I've asked our aunt if we can ask you to come
to tea with us."
" Thank you very much," said Miriam in one
word.
;< When could you come ? "
" Oh, Pm afraid I couldn't come. It would be
impossible."
BACKWATER 117
" Oh no. You must come. I shall ask Aunt
Lucy to write to Miss Perne."
" I really couldn't come. I shouldn't be able
to ask you back."
" That doesn't matter," panted the relentless
voice. " I've wanted to speak to you ever since
you came."
3
When next Miriam saw the black-robed Brooms
and their aunt file past the transept where were
the Wordsworth House sittings, she felt that to
visit them might perhaps not be the ordeal she
had not dared to picture. It would be strange.
Those three heavy black-dressed women. Their
small new house. She imagined them sitting at
tea in a little room. Why was Grace so deter-
mined that she should sit there too ? Grace had
a life and a home and was real. She did not
know that things were awful. Nor did Florrie
Broom, nor the aunt. But yet they did not look
like ' social ' people. They were a little different.
Not worldly. Not pious either. Nor intellectual.
What could they want with her ? She had soon
forgotten them and the congregation assumed
its normal look. As the service went on the
thoughts came that came every Sunday. An old
n8 BACKWATER
woman with a girl at her side were the only
people whose faces were within Miriam's line of
vision from her place at the wall end of the
Wordsworth House pew. The people in front of
them were not even in profile, and those behind
were hidden from her by the angle of the tran-
sept wall. To her right she could just see rising
above the heads in the rows of pews in front of
her the far end of the chancel screen. The faces
grouped in the transept on the opposite side of
the church were a blur. The two figures sat or
knelt or stood in a heavy silence. They neither
sang nor prayed. Their faces remained unaltered
during the whole service. To Miriam they were
its most intimate part. During the sermon she
rarely raised her eyes from the circle they filled
for her as they sat thrown into relief by the great
white pillar. Their faces were turned towards
the chancel. They could see its high dim roof
and distant altar, the light on the altar, flowers,
shining metal, embroideries, the maze of the east
window, the white choir. They showed no sign
of seeing these things. The old woman's heavy
face with its heavy jaw-bone seemed to have
been dead for years under its coffin-shaped black
bonnet. Her large body was covered by a mantle
BACKWATER 119
of thickly ribbed black material trimmed with
braid and bugles. That bright yellow colour
meant liver. Whatever she had she was dying of
it. People were always dying when they looked
like that. But it was a bad way to die. The real
way was the way of that lady trailing about over
the Heath near Roehampton^ dying by inches of
an internal complaint, with her face looking fragile
— like the little alabaster chapelle in the nursery
with a candle alight inside. She was going to
die, walking about alone on the Heath in the after-
noons. Her family going on as usual at home ;
the greengrocer calling. She knew that every-
body was alone and that all the fuss and noise
people made all day was a pretence. . . . What
to do ? To be walking about with a quiet face
meeting death. Nothing could be so alone as
that. The pain, and struggle, and darkness. . . .
That was what the old woman feared. She did
not think about death. She was afraid and sullen
all the time. Stunned, sitting there with her
cold common daughter. She had been common
herself as a girl, but more noisy, and she had
married and never thought about dying, and now
she was dying and hating her cold daughter.
The daughter, sitting there with her stiff slatey-
120 BACKWATER
blue coat and skirt, her indistinct hat tied with a
thin harsh veil to her small flat head — what a
home with her in it all the time. She would
never laugh. Her poor-looking cheeks were
yellowish, her fringe dry, without gloss. She
would move her mouth when she spoke, sideways
with a snarling curl of one-half of the upper lip
and have that resentful way of speaking that all
North Londoners have, and the maddening North
London accent. The old woman's voice would be
deep and hollow. . . . The girl moving heavily
about the house wearing boots and stiff dresses and
stiff stays showing their outline through her clothes.
They would be bitter to their servant and would
not trust her. What was the good of their being
alive ... a house and a water system and drains
and cooking, and they would take all these things
for granted and grumble and snarl . . . the gas
meter man would call there. Did men like that
resent calling at houses like that ? No. They'd
just say, " The ole party she sez to me." How
good they were, these men. Good and kind and
cheerful. Someone ought to prevent the extra-
vagance of keeping whole houses and fires going
for women like that. They ought to be in an
institution. But they never thought about that.
BACKWATER 121
They were satisfied with themselves. They were
self-satisfied because they did not know what they
were like. . . . Why should you have a house,
and tradesmen calling ?
" Jehoiakin ! " The rush of indistinct expos-
tulating sound coming from the pulpit was accom-
panied for a moment by reverberations of the
one clearly bawled word. The sense of the large
cold church, the great stone pillars, the long nar-
row windows faintly stained with yellowish green,
the harsh North London congregation stirred and
seemed to settle down more securely. She saw
the form of the vicar in the light grey stone
pulpit standing up short and neat against the
cold grey stone wall, enveloped in fine soft folds,
his small puckered hands beautifully cuffed, his
plump crumpled little face, his small bald head
fringed with little saffron-white curls, his pink
pouched busy mouth. What was it all about ?
Pompous pottering, going on and on and on — in
the Old Testament. The whole church was in
the Old Testament. . . . Honour thy father and
thy mother. How horribly the words would echo
through the great cold church. Why honour
thy father and thy mother? What had they
done that was so honourable ? Everybody was
122 BACKWATER
dying in cold secret fear. Christ, the son of
God, was part of it all, the same family . . .
vindictive. Christmas and Easter, hard white
cold flowers, no real explanation. " I came not
to destroy but to fulfil." The stagnant blood
flushed in her face and tingled in her ears as the
words occurred to her. Why didn't everybody
die at once and stop it all ?
4
Miss Haddie paused at the door of her room
and wheeled suddenly round to face Miriam who
had just reached the landing.
" You've not seen my little corner," she tweed-
led breathlessly, throwing open her door.
Miriam went in. " Oh how nice," she said fear-
fully, breathing in the freshness of a little square
sun-filled muslin-draped, blue-papered room.
Taking refuge at the white-skirted window, she
found a narrow view of the park, greener than
the one she knew. The wide yellow pathway
going up through the cricket ground had shifted
away to the right.
" It's really a — a — a dressing-room from your
room."
Oh," said Miriam vivaciously.
BACKWATER 123
' There's a door, a — a — a door. I daresay
you've noticed."
" Oh ! That's the door in our cupboard ! "
The dim door behind the hanging garments led
to nothing but to Miss Haddie's room. She
began unbuttoning her gloves.
Miss Haddie was hesitating near a cupboard,
making little sounds.
" I suppose we must all make ourselves tidy
now," said Miriam.
" I thought you didn't look very happy in church
this morning," cluttered Miss Haddie rapidly.
Miriam felt heavy with anger. " Oh," she said
clumsily, " I had the most frightful headache."
" Poor child. I thought ye didn't look yerself .".
The window was shut. But the room was
mysteriously fresh, far away from the school.
A fly was hovering about the muslin window
blind with little reedy loops of song. The oboe
... in the quintet, thought Miriam suddenly.
" I don't know," she said, listening. The flies
sang like this at home. She had heard them with-
out knowing it. She moved in her place by the
window. The fly swept up to the ceiling, waver-
ing on a deep note like a tiny gong. . . . Hot
sunny refined lawns, roses in bowls on summer-
i24 BACKWATER
house tea-tables, refined voices far away from the
Caledonian Road.
" Flies don't buzz," she said passionately.
" They don't buzz. Why do people say they
buzz ? " The pain pressing behind her temples
slackened. In a moment it would be only a glow.
Miss Haddie stood with bent head, her face
turning from side to side, with its sour hesitating
smile, her large eyes darting their strange glances
about the room.
" Won't you sit down a minute ? They haven't
sounded the first bell yet." Miriam sat down on
the one little white-painted, cane-seated chair
near the dressing-table. " Eh — eh," said Miss
Haddie, beginning to unfasten her veil. " She
doesn't approve of general conversation," thought
Miriam. " She's a female. Oh well, she'll have
to see I'm not."
;* What gave you yer headache ? "
" Oh well, I don't know. I suppose I was won-
dering what it was all about."
" I don't think I quite understand ye."
' Well, I mean — what that old gentleman was
in such a state of mind about."
" D'ye mean Mr. La Trobe ! "
" Yes. Why do you laugh ? "
BACKWATER 125
" I don't understand what ye mean."
Miriam watched Miss Haddie's thin fingers
ding for the pins in her black toque. "Of
urse not," she thought, looking at the un-
iled shrivelled cheek. ..." thirty-five years of
ing a lady."
" Oh well," she sighed fiercely.
" What is it ye mean, my dear ? "
— ' couldn't make head or tail of a thing the
1 dodderer said ' — no c old boy,' no — these
rases would not do for Miss Haddie.
" I couldn't agree with anything he said."
Miss Haddie sat down on the edge of the little
dte bed burying her face in her hands and
oothing them up and down with a wiping
wement.
;< One can always criticise a sermon," she said
Broach fully.
:t Well, why not ? "
:< I mean to say ye can," said Miss Haddie from
bind her fingers, " but, but ye shouldn't."
:< You can't help it."
:< Oh yes, ye can. If ye listen in the right
rit," gargled Miss Haddie hurriedly.
;£ Oh, it isn't only the sermon, it's the whole
ing," said Miriam crimsoning.
126 BACKWATER
" Ye mustn't think about the speaker," went
on Miss Haddie in faint hurried rebuke. " That's
wrong. That sets people running from church
to church. You must attend your own parish
church in the right spirit, let the preacher be
who — who — what he may."
" Oh, but I think that's positively dangerous"
said Miriam gravely. " It simply means leaving
your mind open for whatever they choose to say.
Like Rome."
" Eh, no — o — o," flared Miss Haddie dropping
her hands, " nonsense. Not like Rome at
all."
" But it is. It's giving up your conscience."
" You're very determined," laughed Miss
Haddie bitterly.
" I'm certainly not going to give my mind up
to a parson for him to do what he likes with.
That's what it is. That's what they do. I've
seen it again and again. I've heard people talking
about sermons," finished Miriam with vivacious
intentness.
Miss Haddie sat very still with her hands once
more pressed tightly against her face.
" Oh, my dear. This is a dreadful state of
affairs. I'm afraid you're all wrong. That's not
BACKWATER 127
it at all. If you listen only for the good, the
good will come to you."
" But these men don't know. How should
they ? They don't agree amongst themselves."
" Oh, my dear, that is a very wrong attitude.
How long have ye felt like this ? "
" Oh, all my life," responded Miriam proudly.
" I'm very sorry, my dear."
" Ever since I can remember. Always."
There were ivory-backed brushes on the dress-
ing-table. Miriam stared at them and let her
eyes wander on to a framed picture of an agonised
thorn-crowned head.
" Were you — have ye — eh — have ye been con-
firmed ? "
" Oh yes."
" Did ye discuss any of your difficulties with
yer vicar ? "
" Not I. I knew his mind too well. Had
heard him preach for years. He would have run
round my questions. He wasn't capable of an-
swering them. For instance, supposing I had
asked him what I've always wanted to know.
How can people, ordinary people, be expected
to be like Christ, as they say, when they think
Christ was supernatural ? Of course, if he was
128 BACKWATER
supernatural it was easy enough for him to be as
he was ; if he was not supernatural, then there's
nothing in the whole thing."
" My dear child ! Pm dreadfully sorry ye feel
like that. Pd no idea ye felt like that, poor child.
I knew ye weren't quite happy always ; I mean
Pve thought ye weren't quite happy in yer mind
sometimes, but Pd no idea — eh, eh, have ye ever
consulted anybody — anybody able to give ye
advice ? "
" There you are. That's exactly the whole
thing ! Who can one consult ? There isn't any-
body. The people who are qualified are the
people who have the thing called faith, which
means that they beg the whole question from the
beginning."
" Eh — dear — me — Miriam — child ! "
" Well, Pm made that way. How can I help
it if faith seems to me just an abnormal condition
of the mind with fanaticism at one end and
agnosticism at the other ? "
" My dear, ye believe in God ? "
" Well, you see, I see things like this. On one
side a prime cause with a certain object unknown
to me, bringing humanity into being ; on the
other side humanity, all more or less miserable,
BACKWATER 129
never having been consulted as to whether they
wanted to come to life. If that is belief, a South
Sea Islander could have it. But good people,
people with faith, want me to believe that one
day God sent a saviour to rescue the world from
sin and that the world can never be grateful
enough and must become as Christ. Well. If
Go'd made people he is responsible and ought to
save them."
" What do yer parents think about yer ideas ? "
" They don't know."
" Ye've never mentioned yer trouble to them ? "
" I did ask Pater once when we were coming
home from the Stabat Mater that question I've
told you about."
" What did he say ? "
" He couldn't answer. We were just by the
gate. He said he thought it was a remarkably
reasonable dilemma. He laughed."
" And ye've never had any discussion of these
things with him ? "
" No."
' Ye're an independent young woman," said
Miss Haddie.
Miriam looked up. Miss Haddie was sitting on
the edge of her bed. A faint pink flush on her
1 30 BACKWATER
cheeks made her eyes look almost blue. She was
no longer frowning. ' I'm something new — a
kind of different world. She is wondering. I
must stick to my guns,' mused Miriam.
" I'll not ask ye," said Miss Haddie quietly and
cheerfully, " to expect any help from yer fellow
creatures since ye've such a poor opinion of
them. But ye're not happy. Why not go
straight to the source ? "
Miriam waited. For a moment the sheen on
Miss Haddie's silk sleeves had distracted her by
becoming as gentle and unchallenging as the light
on her mother's dresses when there were other
people in the room. She had feared the leaping
out of some emotional appeal. But Miss Haddie
had a plan. Strange secret knowledge.
" I should like to ask ye a question."
" Yes ? "
" Well, I'll put it in this way. While ye've
watched the doings of yer fellow creatures ye've
forgotten that the truth ye're seeking is a — a
Person."
Miriam pondered.
" That's where ye ought to begin. And how
about — what — what about' — I fancy ye've been
neglecting the — the means of grace. ... I think
BACKWATER 131
ye have." Miss Haddie rose and crossed the
room to a little bookshelf at the head of her bed,
talking happily on. ' Upright as a dart,' com-
mented Miriam mentally, waiting for the fulfil-
ment of the promise of Miss Haddie's cheerful-
ness. Against the straight lines of the wall-
paper Miss Haddie showed as swaying slightly
backwards from the waist as she moved.
The first bell rang and Miriam got up to go.
Miss Haddie came forward with a small volume
in her hands and held it out, standing close by her
and keeping her own hold on the volume. " Ye'll
find no argument in it. Not but I think a few
sound arguments would do ye good. Give it a
try. Don't be stiff-necked. Just read it and
see." The smooth soft leather slipped altogether
into Miriam's hands and she felt the passing con-
tact of a cool small hand and noted a faint fine
scent coming to her from Miss Haddie's person.
In her own room she found that the soft
binding of the book had rounded corners and
nothing on the cover but a small plain gold cross
in the right-hand corner. She feasted her eyes
on it as she took off her things. When the second
bell rang she glanced inside the cover. " Pre-
paration for Holy Communion." Hurriedly
132 BACKWATER
hiding it in her long drawer under a pile of linen,
she ran to the door. Running back again she took
it out and put it, together with her prayer book
and hymn book, in the small top drawer.
5
The opportunity to use Miss Haddie's book
came with Nancie's departure for a week-end
visit. Beadie was in the deeps of her first sleep
and the room seemed empty. The book lay open
on her bed. She noted as she placed it there
when she began preparing for bed that it was
written by a bishop, a man she knew by name as
being still alive. It struck her as extraordinary
that a book should be printed and read while the
author was alive, and she turned away with a
feeling of shame from the idea of the bishop,
still going about in his lawn sleeves and talking,
while people read a book that he had written in
his study. But it was very interesting to have
the book to look at, because he probably knew
about modern people with doubts and would not
think about them as ' infidels '• — ' an honest
agnostic has my sympathy,' he might say, and it
was possible he did not believe in eternal punish-
ment. If he did he would not have had his book
BACKWATER 133
printed with rounded edges and that beautiful
little cross . . . " Line upon Line " and the
" Pilgrim's Progress " were not meant for modern
minds. Archbishop Whateley had a " chaste and
eloquent wit " and was a " great gardener." A
witty archbishop fond of gardening was simply
aggravating and silly.
Restraining her desire to hurry, Miriam com-
pleted her toilet and at last knelt down in her
dressing-gown. Its pinked neck- frill fell heavily
against her face as she leant over the bed. Tucking
it into her neck she clasped her outstretched
hands, leaving the book within the circle of her
arms. The attitude seemed a little lacking in
respect for the beautifully printed gilt-edged
pages. Flattening her entwined hands between
herself and the edge of the bed, she read very
slowly that just as for worldly communion men
cleanse and deck their bodies so for attendance
at the Holy Feast must there be a cleansing and
decking of the spirit. She knelt upright, feeling
herself grow very grave. The cold air of the bed-
room flowed round her carrying conviction. Then
that dreadful feeling at early service, kneeling
like a lump in the pew, too late to begin to be
good, the exhausted moments by the altar rail —
134 BACKWATER
the challenging light on the shining brass rod, on
the priest's ring and the golden lining of the
cup, the curious bite of the wine in the throat —
the sullen disappointed home-coming ; all the
strange failure was due to lack of preparation.
She knelt for some moments, without thoughts,
breathing in the cleansing air, sighing heavily at
intervals. What she ought to do was clear. A
certain time for preparation could be taken every
night, kneeling up in bed with the gas out if
Nancie were awake, and a specially long time on
Saturday night. The decision took her back to
her book. She read that no man can cleanse him-
self, but it is his part to examine his conscience
and confess his sins with a prayer for cleansing
grace.
The list of questions for self-examination as to
sins past and present in thought, word, and deed
brought back the sense of her body with its load
of well-known memories. Could they be got rid
of ? She could cast them off, feel them sliding
away like Christian's Burden. But was that all ?
Was it being reconciled with your brother to
throw off ill-feeling without letting him know and
telling him you were sorry for unkind deeds and
words ? Those you met would find out the change ;
BACKWATER 135
but all the others — those you had offended from
your youth up — all your family ? Write to
them. A sense of a checking of the tide that had
seemed to flow through her finger-tips came with
this suggestion, and Miriam knelt heavily on the
hard floor, feeling the weight of her well-known
body. The wall-paper attracted her attention
and the honeycomb pattern of the thick fringed
white counterpane. She shut the little book and
rose from her knees. Moving quickly about the
room, she turned at random to her washhand
basin and vigorously rewashed her hands in its
soapy water. The Englishman, she reflected as
she wasted the soap, puts a dirty shirt on a clean
body, and the Frenchman a clean shirt on a dirty
body.
CHAPTER V
i
MIRIAM felt very proud of tall Miss Perne
when she met her in the hall at the be-
ginning of her second term. Miss Perne had
kissed her and held one of her hands in two small
welcoming ones, talking in a gleeful voice. " Well,
my dear," she said at the end of a little pause,
" you'll have a clear evening. The gels do not
return until to-morrow, so you'll be able to un-
pack and settle yerself in comfortably. Come
and sit with us when ye've done. We'll have
supper in the sitting-room. M'yes." Smiling
and laughing she turned eagerly away. "Of
course, Miss Perne," said Miriam in a loud waver-
ing voice, arresting her, " I enjoyed my holidays ;
but I want to tell you how glad I am to be back
here."
" Yes, yes," said Miss Perne hilariously, " we're
all glad."
There was a little break in her voice, and
136
BACKWATER 137
Miriam saw that she would have once more taken
her in her arms.
" I like being here," she said hoarsely, looking
down, and supported herself by putting two
trembling fingers on the hall table. She was
holding back from the gnawing' of the despair
that had made her sick with pain when she heard
once more the jingle- jingle, plock-plock of the
North London trams. This strong feeling of
pride in Miss Perne was beating it down. " I'm
very glad, my dear," responded Miss Perne in a
quivering gleeful falsetto. ' If you can't have
what you like you must like what you have,' said
Miriam over and over to herself as she went with
heavy feet up the four flights of stairs.
A candle was already burning in the empty
bedroom. " Pm back. I'm bacL It's all over,"
she gasped as she shut the door. " And a jolly
good thing too. This is my place. I can keep
myself here and cost nothing and not interfere
with anybody. It's just as if I'd never been
away. It'll always be like that now. Short
holidays, gone in a minute, and then the long
term. Getting out of touch with everything,
138 BACKWATER
things happening, knowing nothing about them,
going home like a visitor, and people talking to
you about things that are only theirs now and
not wanting to hear about yours . . . not about
the little real everyday things that give you an
idea of anything but only the startling things
that are not important. You have to think of
them though to make people interested — awful,
awful, awful, really only putting people further
away afterwards when you've told the thing and
their interest dies down and you can't think of
anything else to say. c Miss Feme's hair is -per-
fectly black — as black as coal, and she's the
eldest, just fancy.' Then everybody looks up.
6 My room's downstairs, the room where I
teach, is in the basement. Directly breakfast is
over '
" ' Basement ? What a pity ! Basement rooms
are awfully bad,' and by the time you have stopped
them exclaiming and are just going to begin, you
see that they are fidgetting and thinking about
something else." . . . Eve had listened a little ;
because she wanted to tell everything about her
own place and had agreed that nobody really
wanted to hear the details. . . . The landscapes
from the windows of the big country house, all
BACKWATER 139
like pictures by Leader, the stables and laundry,
a " laundry-maid " who was sixty-five, the eldest
pupil with seven muslin dresses in the summer
and feeing scolded because she swelled out after
two helpings of meat and two of pie and cream,
and the youngest almost square in her little covert
coat and with a square face and large blue eyes and
the puppies who went out in a boat in Weston-
super-Mare and were sea-sick. . . . Eve did not
seem to mind the family being common. Eve
was changing. " They are so jolly and strong.
They enjoy life. They're like other people." . . .
" D'you think that's jolly ? Would you like to
be like that — like other people ? " " Rather. I
mean to be." " Do you ? " " Of course it can't
be done all at once. But it's good for me to be
there. It's awfully jolly to be in a house with no
worry about money and plenty of jolly food.
Mrs. Green is so strong and clever. She can do
anything. She's good for me, she keeps me
going." " Would you like to be like her ? " " Of
course. They're all so jolly — even when they're
old. Her sister's forty and she's still pretty ; not
given up hope a bit." " Eve ! "
Eve had listened ; but not agreed about the
teaching, about making the girls see how easy it
140 BACKWATER
was to get hold of the things and then letting
them talk about other things. " I see how you
do it, and I see why the girls obey you, of course."
Funny. Eve thought it was hard and inhuman.
That's what she really thought.
Two newly purchased lengths of spotted net
veiling were lying at the top of her lightly packed
trunk partly folded in uncrumpled tissue paper.
She took the crisp dye-scented net very gently
into her hands, getting, sitting alone on the floor
by her trunk, the full satisfaction that had failed
her in the shop with Harriett's surprise at her
sudden desire flowing over the counter and in-
fecting the charm of baskets full of cheap stock-
ings and common bright-bordered handkerchiefs
some of which had borders so narrow and faint
as really hardly to show when they were scrumpled
up. " Veiling, moddom ? Yes, moddom," the
assistant had retorted when bhe had asked for a
veil. " Wot on earth fower ? " . . . Without
answering Harriett she had bought two. There
was no need to have bought two. One could go
back in the trunk as a store. They would be the
beginning of gradually getting a ' suitable outfit,'
' things convenient for you.' She got up to put
a veil in the little top drawer very carefully ;
BACKWATER 141
trying it across her face first. It almost obliter-
ated her features in the dim candle-light. It
would be the greatest comfort on winter walks,
warm and like a rampart. ' You've no idea how
warm it keeps you,' she could say if anybody
said anything. She arranged her clothes very
slowly and exactly in her half of the chest of
drawers. " My appointments ought to be an
influence in the room — until all my things are
perfectly refined I shan't be able to influence the
girls as I ought. I must begin it from now. At
the end of the term I shall be stronger. From
strength to strength." She wished she could go
to bed at once and prepare for to-morrow lying
alone in the dark with the trams going up and
down outside as they would do night by night
for the rest of her life.
3
The nine o'clock post brought a letter from
Harriett. Miriam carried it upstairs after supper.
Placing it unopened on a chair by the head of her
bed under the gas bracket she tried to put away
the warm dizzy feeling it brought her in an
elaborate toilet that included the placing in
readiness of everything she would need for the
i42 BACKWATER
morning. When all was complete she was filled
with a peace that promised to remain indefinitely
as long as everything she had to do should be
carried out with unhurried exactitude. It could
be made to become the atmosphere of her life.
It would come nearer and nearer and she would
live more and more richly into it until she had
grown like those women who were called blessed.
. . . She looked about her. The plain room gave
her encouragement. It became the scene of
adventure. She tip-toed about it in her night-
gown. All the world would come to her there.
Flora knew. Flora was the same, sweeping the
floors and going to bed in an ugly room with
two other servants ; but she was in it alone some-
times and knew. . . .
" One verse to-night will be enough." Open-
ing her Bible at random she read, " And not only
so, but we glory in tribulations also : knowing
that tribulation worketh patience." Eagerly
closing the volume she knelt down smiling. " Oh
do let tribulation work patience in me," she mur-
mured, blushing, and got up staring gladly at the
wall behind her bed. Shaking her pillow length-
wise against the ironwork head of the bed, she
established herself with the bed-clothee neatly
BACKWATER 143
arranged, sitting up to read Harriett's letter
before turning out the gas :
" Toosday morning — You've not gone yet, old
tooral-ooral, but I'm writing this because I know
you'll feel blue this evening, to tell you not to.
Becos, it's no time to Easter and becos here's a
great piece of news. The last of the Neville Sub-
scription Dances comes in the Easter holidays and
you're to come. D'ye 'ear, Liza ? Gerald says if
you can't stump up he's going to get you a ticket,
and anyhow you've got to come. You'll enjoy it
just as much as you did the first and probably
more, because most of the same people will be
there. So Goodni'. Mind the lamp-post.
Harry. P'S. — Heaps of love, old silly. You're
just the same. It's no bally good pretending
you're not."
Miriam felt her heart writhe in her breast.
" Get thee behind me, Harry," she said, pushing
the letter under the pillow and kneeling up to
turn out the gas. When she lay down again her
mind was rushing on by itself. . . .
4
Harry doesn't realise a bit how short holidays
are. Easter — nothing. Just one dance and never
i44 BACKWATER
seeing the people again. I was right just now.
I was on the right track then. I must get back to
that. It's no good giving way right or left ; I must
make a beginning of my own life. ... I wish I had
been called "Patience" and had thin features. . . .
Adam Street, Adelphi. . . . " Now do you want
to be dancing out there with one of those
young fellows, my dear girl — No ? That's a very
good thing for me. I'm an old buffer who can't
manage more than every other dance or so. But
if you do me the honour of sitting here while
those young barbarians romp their Lancers ? . . .
Ah, that is excellent — I want you to talk to me.
You needn't mind me. Hey ? What ? I've
known that young would-be brother-in-law of
yours for many years and this evening I've been
watching your face. Do you mind that, dear
girl, that I've watched your face ? In all homage.
I'm a staunch worshipper of womanhood. I've
seen rough life as well as suave. I'm an old gold-
digger — Ustralia took1 many years of my life ;
but it never robbed me of my homage for
women. . . .
" That's a mystery to me. How you've allowed
your young sister to overhaul you. Perhaps you
have a Corydon hidden away somewhere — or
BACKWATER 145
don't think favourably of the bonds of matri-
mony ? Is that it ?
" You are not one to be easily happy. But that
is no reason why you should say you pity anyone
undertaking to pass through life at your side.
Don't let your thoughts and ideas allow you to
miss happiness. Women are made to find and
dispense happiness. Even intense women like
yourself. But you won't find it an easy matter
to discover your mate.
" Have you ever thought of committing your
ideas to paper ? There's a book called ' The
Confessions of a Woman.' It had a great sale
and its composition occupied the authoress for
only six weeks. You could write in your holi-
days.
" Think over what I've told you, my dear, dear
girl. And don't forget old Bob Greville's address.
You're eighteen. He's only eight ; eight Adam
Street. The old Adam. Waiting to hear from
the new Eve — whenever she's unhappy."
He would be there again, old flatterer, with
his steely blue eyes and that strong little
Dr. Conelly — Conelly who held you like a
vice and swung you round and kept putting
you back from him to say things. " If only
146 BACKWATER
you knew the refreshment it is to dance with
a girl who can talk sense and doesn't giggle.
. . . Yes yes yes, women are 'physically incapable
of keeping a secret. . . . Meredith, he's the man.
He understands woman as no other writer "
And the little dark man — De Vigne — who danced
like a snake. . . . Tired ? Divinely drowsy ?
That's what I like. Don't talk. Let yourself
go. Little snail, Harriett called him. And that
giant, Conelly's friend, whirling you round the
room like a gust, with his eyes fixed far away
in the distance and dropping you with the
chaperones at the end of the dance. If he
had suddenly said " Let yourself go "... He
too would have become a snail. God has made
life ugly. *,
Dear Mr. Greville, dear Bob. Do you know
anything about a writer called Meredith ? If
you have one of his books I should like to
read it. No. Dear Bob, I'm simply wretched.
I want to talk to you.
5
Footsteps sounded on the stairs — the servants,
coming upstairs to bed. No dancing for them.
Work, caps and aprons. And those strange
BACKWATER 147
rooms upstairs to sleep in that nobody ever saw.
Probably Miss Perne went up occasionally to look
at them and see that they were all right ; clean
and tidy. . . . They had to go up every night,
carrying little jugs of water and making no noise
on the stairs, and come down every morning.
They were the servants — and there would never
be any dancing. Nobody thought about them.
. . . They could not get away from each other,
and cook. . . .
To be a general servant would be very hard
work. Perhaps impossible. But there would be
two rooms, the kitchen at the bottom of the
house, and a bedroom at the top, your own. It
would not matter what the family was like. You
would look after them, like children, and be alone
to read and sleep. . . . Toothache. Cheap
dentists ; a red lamp " painless extractions "...
having to go there before nine in the morning,
and be alone in a cold room, the dentist doing
what he thought best and coming back to your
work crying with pain, your head wrapped up in
a black shawl. Hospitals ; being quite helpless
and grateful for wrong treatment ; coming back
to work, ill. Sinks and slops . . . quinsey, all
alone . . . growths . . . consumption.
148 BACKWATER
Go to sleep. It would be better to think in
the morning. But then this clear first impression
would be gone and school would begin and go on
from hour to hour through the term, mornings
and afternoons and evenings, dragging you along
further and further and changing you, months
and months and years until it was too late to get
back and there was nothing ahead.
The thing to remember, to keep in mind all
the time was to save money — not to spend a
single penny that could be saved, to be deter-
mined about that so that when the tempta-
tion came you could just hang on until it was
past.
No fun in the holidays, no money spent on
flowers and gloves and blouses. Keeping stiff
and sensible all the time. The family of the two
little Quaker girls had a home library, with lists,
an inventory, lending each other their books and
talking about them, and albums of pressed leaves
and flowers with the Latin names, and went on
wearing the same plain clothes. . . . You had to
be a certain sort of person to do that.
It would spoil the holidays to be like that at
home. Every penny must be spent, if only on
things for other people. Not spending would
BACKWATER 149
bring a nice strong secret feeling and a horrid
expression into one's eyes.
The only way was to give up your family and
stay at your work, like Flora, and have a box of
half-crowns in your drawer. . . . Spend and
always be afraid of " rainy days " — or save and
never enjoy life at all.
But going out now and again in the holidays,
feeling stiff and governessy and just beginning
to learn to be oneself again when it was time to
go back was not enjoying life . . . your money
was spent and people forgot you and you forgot
them and went back to your convent to begin
again.
Save, save. Sooner or later saving must begin.
Why not at once. Harry, it's no good. I'm old
already. I've got to be one of those who have
to give everything up.
I wonder if Flora is asleep ?
That's settled. Go to sleep. Get thee behind
me. Sleep . . . the dark cool room. Air ; we
breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Everybody
has air. Manna. As much as you want, full
measure, pressed down and running over. . . .
Wonderful. There is somebody giving things,
whatever goes . . . something left. . . . Somebody
ISO BACKWATER
seeing that things are not quite unbearable, . . .
but the pain, the pain all the time, mysterious
black pain. . . .
Into thy hands I commit my spirit. In manus
something. . . . You understand if nobody else
does. But why must I be one of the ones to give
everything up ? Why do you make me suffer so ?
CHAPTER VI
PIECEMEAL statements in her letter home
brought Miriam now and again a momen-
tary sense of developing activities, but she did
not recognise the completeness of the change in
her position at the school until half-way through
her second term she found herself talking to the
new pupil teacher. She had heard apathetically
of her existence during supper-table conversations
with the Misses Perne at the beginning of the
term. She was an Irish girl of sixteen, one of a
large family living on the outskirts of Dublin, and
would be a boarder, attending the first class for
English and earning pocket money by helping
with the lower school. As the weeks went on
and Miriam grew accustomed to hearing her
name — Julia Doyle — she began to associate it
with an idea of charm that brought her a sinking
of heart. She knew her position in the esteem
of the Pernes was secure. But this new young
i52 BACKWATER
teacher would work strange miracles with the
girls. She would do it quite easily and uncon-
sciously. The girls would be easy with her
and would laugh and one would have to hear
them.
However, when at last her arrival was near and
the three ladies discussed the difficulty of having
her met, Miriam plied them until they reluctantly
gave her permission to go, taking a workman's
train that would bring her to Euston station at
seven o'clock in the morning.
At the end of an hour spent pacing the half-
dark platform exhausted with cold and excitement
and the monotonously reiterated effort to imagine
the arrival of one of Mrs. Hungerford's heroines
from a train journey, Miriam, whose costume had
been described in a letter to the girl's mother,
was startled wandering amidst the vociferous
passengers at the luggage end of the newly arrived
train by a liquid colourless intimate voice at her
elbow. " I think I'll be right to say how d'you
do."
She turned and saw a slender girl in a middle-
aged toque and an ill-cut old-fashioned coat and
skirt. What were they to say to each other,
two dowdy struggling women both in the same
BACKWATER 153
box ? She must get her to B anbury Park as quickly
as possible. It was dreadful that they should be
seen together there on the platform in their rag-
bag clothes. At any rate they must not talk.
" Oh, I'm very pleased to see you. I'm glad
you've come. I suppose the train must have been
late," she said eagerly.
" Ah, we'll be late I dare venture. Haven't
an idea of the hour."
" Oh, yes," said Miriam emphatically, " I'm
sure the train's late"
" Where'll we find a core ? "
" What ? "
" We'll need a core for the luggage."
" Oh yes, a cab. We must get a cab. We'd
better find a porter."
" Ah, I've a man here seeking out my
things."
Inside the cab Julia's face shone chalky white,
and Miriam found that her eyes looked like
Weymouth Bay — the sea in general, on days
when clouds keep sweeping across the sun. When
she laughed she had dimples and the thick white
rims of her eyelids looked like piping cord round
her eyes. But she was not pretty. There were
lines in her cheeks as well as dimples, and there
154 BACKWATER
was something apologetic in her little gusty laugh.
She laughed a good deal as they started off, saying
things, little quiet remarks that Miriam could not
understand and that did not seem to be answers
to her efforts to make conversation. Perhaps she
was not going the right way to make her talk.
Perhaps she had not said any of the things she
thought she had said.
She cleared her throat and looked out of the
window thinking over a possible opening.
" I've never been so glad over anything in my
life as hearing you're one of the teachers," said
Julia presently.
" The Pernes call me by my name, so I suppose
you will too as you're a teacher," said Miriam
headlong.
" That's awfully sweet of you," replied Julia
laughing and blushing a clear deep rose. " It
makes anyone feel at home. I'll be looking out
till I hear it."
" It's " Miriam laughed. " Isn't it funny
that people don't like saying their own names."
" I wish you'd tell me about your teaching.
I'm sure you're awf'ly clever."
Miriam gave her a list of the subjects she taught
in the lower school.
BACKWATER 155
" You know all there is to know."
" Oh well, and then I take the top girls now
for German and the second class for French
reading, and two arithmetic classes in the upper
school, and a ' shell ' of two very stupid girls
to help with their College of Preceptors."
" You're frightening me."
Miriam looked out 'of the cab window, hardly
hearing Julia's next remark. The drab brick
walls of King's Cross station were coming towards
them. When they had got themselves and Julia's
luggage out of the cab and into the train for
Banbury Park she was still pondering uneasily
over her own dislike of appearing as a successful
teacher. This stranger saw her only as a teacher.
That was what she had become. If she was really
a teacher now, just that in life, it meant that she
must decide at once whether she really meant to
teach always. Everyone now would think of her
as a teacher ; as someone who was never going to
do anything else, when really she had not even
begun to think about doing any of the things that
professional teachers had to do. She was not
qualifying herself for examinations in her spare
156 BACKWATER
time as her predecessor had done. Supposing
she did. This girl Julia would certainly expect
her to be doing so. What then ? If she were
to work very hard and also develop her character,
when she was fifty she would be like Miss Cramp ;
good enough to be a special visiting teacher,
giving just a few lectures a week at several
schools, talking in a sad voice, feeling ill and
sad, having a yellow face and faded hair and not
enough saved to live on when she was too old to
work. Prospect, said the noisy train. That was
it, there was no prospect in it. There was no
prospect in teaching. What was there a prospect
in, going along in this North London train with
this girl who took her at her word ?
She turned eagerly to Julia who was saying
something and laughing unconcernedly as she
said it. " If you'd like to know what it is I've
come over for I'll tell you at once. I've come
over to learn Chopang's Funeral March. It's all
I think about. When I can play Chopang's
Funeral March I'll not call the Queen me aunt."
3
" Well, my dear child, I'm sure I wish I could
arrange your life for ye," said Miss Haddie that
BACKWATER 157
evening. She was sitting on the edge of the
schoolroom table, having come in at ten o'clock
to turn out the gas and found Miriam sitting
unoccupied. The room was cold and close with
the long-burning gas, and Miriam had turned
upon her with a scornful half laugh when she
had playfully exclaimed at finding her there so
late. Miss Haddie was obviously still a little
excited. She had presided at schoolroom tea
and Julia had filled the room with Dublin — the
bay, the streets, the jarveys and their outside cars,
her journey, the channel boat, her surprise at
England.
" Eh, what's the matter, Miriam, my dear ? "
For some time Miriam had parried her questions,
fiercely demanding that her mood should be
understood without a clue. Presently they had
slid into an irritated discussion of the respective
values of sleep before and sleep after midnight,
in the midst of which Miriam had said savagely,
" I wish to goodness I knew what to do about
things."
Miss Haddie's kindly desire gave her no relief.
What did she mean but the hopelessness of im-
agining that anybody could do anything about
anything. Nobody could ever understand what
158 BACKWATER
anyone else really wanted. Only some people
were fortunate. Miss Haddie was one of the
fortunate ones. She had her share in the school
and many wealthy relatives and the very best
kind of good clothes and a good deal of strange
old-fashioned jewelry. And whatever happened
there was money and her sisters and relatives to
look after her without feeling it a burden because
of the expense. And there she sat at the table
looking at what she thought she could see in
another person's life.
"If only one knew in the least what one ought
to do," said Miriam crossly.
Miss Haddie began speaking in a halting mur-
mur, and Miriam rushed on with flaming face.
" I suppose I shall have to go on teaching all my
life, and I can't think how on earth I'm going to
do it. I don't see how I can work in the evenings,
my eyes get so tired. If you don't get certificates
there's no prospect. And even if I did my
throat is simply agonies at the end of each
morning."
" Eh ! my dear child ! I'm sorry to hear that.
Why have ye taken to that ? Is it something
fresh ? "
" Oh no, my throat always used to get tired.
BACKWATER 159
Mother's is the same. We can't either of us talk
for ten minutes without feeling it. It's perfectly
awful."
" But, my dear, oughtn't ye to see someone —
have some advice ? I mean ye ought to see a
doctor."
Miriam glanced at Miss Haddie's concerned
face and glanced away with a flash of hatred.
" Oh no. I s'pose I shall manage."
" D'ye think yer wise — letting it go on ? "
Miriam made no reply.
" Well now, my dear," said Miss Haddie,
getting down off the table, " I think it's time ye
went to bed."
" Phm," said Miriam impatiently, " I suppose
it is."
Miss Haddie sat down again. " I wish I could
help ye, my dear," she said gently.
" Oh, no one can do that," said Miriam in a
hard voice.
" Oh yes," murmured Miss Haddie cheerfully,
" there's One who can."
" Oh yes," said Miriam, tugging a thread out
of the fraying edge of the table cover. " But it's
practically impossible to discover what on earth
they mean you to do."
i6o BACKWATER
" N — aiche, my dear," she said in an angry
guttural, " ye're always led."
Miriam tugged at the thread and bit her lips.
" Why do ye suppose ye'll go on teaching all
yer life ? Perhaps ye'll marry."
" Oh no."
" Ye can't tell."
" Oh, I never shall — in any case now."
" Have ye quarrelled with him ? "
" Oh, well, him" said Miriam roundly, dig-
ging a pencil point between the grainings of
the table-cover. " It's they, I think, goodness
knows, I don't know ; it's so perfectly extra-
ordinary."
" You're a very funny young lady."
" Well, I shan't marry now anyhow."
" Have ye refused somebody ? "
" Oh well — there was someone — who went
away — went to America — who was coming back
to see me when he came back "
" Yes, my dear ? "
" Well, you see, he's handed in his checks."
" Eh, my dear — I don't understand," said Miss
Haddie thwarted and frowning.
" Aw," said Miriam, jabbing the table, " kicked
the bucket."
BACKWATER 161
" My dear child, you use such strange language
— I can't follow ye."
" Oh well, you see, he went to America. It
was in New York. I heard about it in January.
He caught that funny illness. You know. In-
fluenza— and died."
" Eh, my poor dear child, I'm very sorry for
ye. Ye do seem to have troubles."
" Ah well, yes, and then the queer thing is
that he was really only the friend of my real
friend. And it was my real friend who told
me about it and gave me a 'message he sent
me and didn't like it, of course. Natur-
ally."
" Well really, Miriam," said Miss Haddie,
blushing, with a little laugh half choked by a
cough.
" Oh yes, then of course one meets people— at
dances. It's appalling."
" I wish I understood ye, my dear."
" Oh well, it doesn't make any difference now.
I shall hardly ever meet anybody now."
Miss Haddie pondered over the table with
features that worked slightly as she made little
murmuring sounds. " Eh no. Ye needn't think
that. Ye shouldn't think like that. . . . Things
M
1 62 BACKWATER
happen sometimes . . . just when ye least expect
it."
" Not to me."
" Oh, things will happen to ye — never fear.
. . . Now, my dear child, trot along with ye off
to bed."
Miriam braced herself against Miss Haddie's
gentle shaking of her shoulders and the quiet kiss
on her forehead that followed it.
4
The strengthening of her intimacy with Miss
Haddie was the first of the many changes brought
to Miriam by Julia Doyle. At the beginning of
the spring term her two room mates were trans-
ferred to Julia's care. The two back rooms be-
came a little hive of girls over which Julia seemed
to preside. She handled them all easily. There
was rollicking and laughter in the back bedrooms,
but never any sign that the girls were " going too
far," and their escapades were not allowed to reach
across the landing. Her large front room was,
Miriam realised as the term went on, being
secretly and fiercely guarded by Julia.
The fabric of the days too had changed. All
BACKWATER 163
day — during the midday constitutional when she
often found Julia at her side walking in her
curious springy lounging way and took the walk
in a comforting silence resting her weary throat,
during the evenings of study and the unemployed
intervals of the long Sundays — Julia seemed to
come between her and the girls. She mastered
them all with her speech and laughter. Miriam
felt that when they were all together she was
always in some hidden way on the alert. She
never jested with Miriam but when they were
alone, and rarely then. Usually she addressed
her in a low tone and as if half beside herself
with some overpowering emotion. It was owing
too to Julia's presence in the school that an
unexpected freedom came to Miriam every day
during the hour between afternoon school and
tea-time.
Persuaded by the rapid increase towards the end
of the winter term of the half-feverish exhaus-
tion visiting her at the end of each day she had
confided in her mother, who had wept at this
suggestion of an attack on her health and called
in the family doctor. " More air," he said testily,
" air and movement." Miriam repeated this to
Miss Perne, who at once arranged that she should
1 64 BACKWATER
be free if she chose to go out every afternoon be-
tween school and tea-time.
At first she went into the park every day. It
was almost empty during the week at that hour.
The cricket green was sparsely decked with chil-
dren and their maids. A few strollers were left
along the poplar avenue and round the asphalt-
circled lake ; but away on the further slopes
usually avoided in the midday walks because the
girls found them oppressive, Miriam discovered
the solitary spring air. Day by day she went as
if by appointment to meet it. It was the same
wandering eloquent air she had known from the
beginning of things. Whilst she walked along the
little gravel pathways winding about over the
clear green slopes in the flood of afternoon light
it stayed with her. The day she had just passed
through was touched by it ; it added a warm
promise to the hours that lay ahead — tea-time,
the evening's reading, the possible visit of Miss
Haddie, the quiet of her solitary room, the
coming of sleep.
One day she left the pathways and strayed
amongst pools of shadow lying under the great
trees. As she approached the giant trunks and
the detail of their shape and colour grew clearer
BACKWATER 165
her breathing quickened. She felt her prim bear-
ing about her like a cloak. The reality she had
found was leaving her again. Looking up un-
easily into the forest of leaves above her head she
found them strange. She walked quickly back
into the sunlight, gazing reproachfully at the
trees. There they were as she had always known
them ; but between them and herself was her
governess' veil, close drawn, holding them
sternly away from her. The warm comforting
communicative air was round her, but she could
not recover its secret. She looked fearfully about
her. To get away somewhere by herself every
day would not be enough. If that was all she
could have, there would come a time when there
would be nothing anywhere. For a day or two
she came out and walked feverishly about in
other parts of the park, resentfully questioning
the empty vistas. One afternoon, far away, but
coming towards her as if in answer to her question,
was the figure of a man walking quickly. For a
moment her heart cried out to him. If he would
come straight on and, understanding, would walk
into her life and she could face things knowing
that he was there, the light would come back and
would stay until the end — and there would be
1 66 BACKWATER
other lives, on and on. She stood transfixed,
trembling. He grew more and more distinct and
she saw a handbag and the outline of a bowler
hat ; a North London clerk hurrying home to
tea. With bent head she turned away and
dragged her shamed heavy limbs rapidly towards
home.
5
Early in May came a day of steady rain. En-
veloped in a rain-cloak and sheltered under her
lowered umbrella she ventured down the hill
towards the shops. Near the railway arch the
overshadowed street began to be crowded with
jostling figures. People were pouring from the
city trams at the terminus and coming out of
the station entrance in a steady stream. Hard
intent faces, clashing umbrellas, the harsh snarl-
ing monotone of the North London voice gave
her the feeling of being an intruder. Everything
seemed to wonder what she was doing down there
instead of being at home in the schoolroom. A
sudden angry eye above a coarse loudly talking
mouth all but made her turn to go with instead
of against the tide ; but she pushed blindly on
and through and presently found herself in a
BACKWATER 167
quiet side street just off the station road looking
into a shop window. . . . " I Ib. super cream-
laid boudoir note — with envelopes — is." Her
eyes moved about the window from packet to
packet, set askew and shining with freshness. If
she had not brought so much note-paper from
home she could have bought some. Perhaps she
could buy a packet as a Christmas present for Eve
and have it in her top drawer all the time. But
there was plenty of note-paper at home. She
half turned to go, and turning back fastened her-
self more closely against the window meaning-
lessly reading the inscription on each packet.
Standing back at last she still lingered. A little
blue-painted tin plate sticking out from the
side of the window announced in white letters
" Carter Paterson." Miriam dimly wondered at
the connection. Underneath it hung a card-
board printed in ink, " Circulating Library, zd.
weekly." This was still more mysterious. She
timidly approached the door and met the large
pleasant eye of a man standing back in the door-
way.
" Is there a library here ? " she said with beat-
ing heart.
She stood so long reading and re-reading half
168 BACKWATER
familiar titles, " Cometh up as a Flower," " Not
like other Girls," " The Heir of Redcliffe," books
that she and Harriett had read and books that she
felt were of a similar type, that tea was already
on the schoolroom table when she reached Words-
worth House with an unknown volume by Mrs.
Hungerford under her arm. Hiding it upstairs,
she came down to tea and sat recovering her com-
posure over her paper-covered " Cinq Mars," a
relic of the senior Oxford examination now grown
suddenly rich and amazing. To-day it could not
hold her. " The Madcap " was upstairs, and be-
yond it an unlimited supply of twopenny volumes
and Ouida. Red-bound volumes of Ouida on the
bottom shelf had sent her eyes quickly back to
the safety of the upper rows. Through the whole
of tea-time she was quietly aware of a discussion
going on at the back of her mind as to who
it was who had told her that Ouida's books
were bad ; evil books. She remembered her
father's voice saying that Ouida was an extremely
able woman, quite a politician. Then of course
her books were all right, for grown-up people.
It must have been someone at a dance who had
made her curious about them, someone she had
forgotten. In any case, whatever they were,
BACKWATER 169
there was no one now to prevent her reading
them if she chose. She would read them if she
chose. Write to Eve about it first. No. Cer-
tainly not. Eve might say " Better not, my dear.
You will regret it if you do. You won't be the
same." Eve was different. She must not be led
by Eve in any case. She must leave off being led
by Eve — or anybody. The figures sitting round
the table, bent over their books, quietly disin-
clined for conversation or mischief under the
shrewd eye of Miss Haddie, suddenly looked
exciting and mysterious. But perhaps the man
in the shop would be shocked. It would be im-
possible to ask for them ; unless she could pre-
tend she did not know anything about them.
For the last six weeks of the summer term she
sat up night after night propped against her up-
right pillow and bolster under the gas jet reading
her twopenny books in her silent room. Almost
every night she read until two o'clock. She felt
at once that she was doing wrong ; that the secret
novel-reading was a thing she could not confess,
even to Miss Haddie. She was spending hours of
170 BACKWATER
the time that was meant for sleep, for restful
preparation for the next day's work, in a " vicious
circle " of self-indulgence. It was sin. She had
read somewhere that sin promises a satisfaction
that it is unable to fulfil. But she found when
the house was still and the trams had ceased
jingling up and down outside that she grew steady
and cool and that she rediscovered the self she
had known at home, where the refuge of silence
and books was always open. Perhaps that self,
leaving others to do the practical things, erecting
a little wall of unapproachability between her-
self and her family that she might be free to
dream alone in corners had always been wrong.
But it was herself, the nearest most intimate self
she had known. And the discovery that it was
not dead, that her six months in the German
school and the nine long months during which
Banbury Park life had drawn a veil even over the
little slices of holiday freedom, had not even
touched it, brought her warm moments of reas-
surance. It was not perhaps a " good " self, but
it was herself, her own familiar secretly happy
and rejoicing self — not dead. Her hands lying
on the coverlet knew it. They were again at
these moments her own old hands, holding very
BACKWATER 171
firmly to things that no one might touch or even
approach too nearly, things, everything, the great
thing that would some day communicate itself
to someone through these secret hands with the
strangely thrilling finger-tips. Holding them up
in the gaslight she dreamed over their wisdom.
They knew everything and held their secret, even
from her. She eyed them, communed with them,
passionately trusted them. They were not
" artistic " or " clever " hands. The fingers did
not " taper " nor did the outstretched thumb
curl back on itself like a frond — like Nan Babing-
ton's. They were long, the tips squarish and
firmly padded, the palm square and bony and
supple, and the large thumb joint stood away
from the rest of the hand like the thumb joint
of a man. The right hand was larger than the
left, kindlier, friendlier, wiser. The expres-
sion of the left hand was less reassuring. It
was a narrower, lighter hand, more flexible,
less sensitive and more even in its touch — more
smooth and manageable in playing scales. It
seemed to belong to her much less than the right ;
but when the two were firmly interlocked they
made a pleasant curious whole, the right clasping
more firmly, its thumb always uppermost, its
172 BACKWATER
fingers separated firmly over trie back of the
left palm, the left hand clinging, its fingers
close together against the hard knuckles of the
right.
It was only when she was alone and in the
intervals of quiet reading that she came into
possession of her hands. With others they op-
pressed her by their size and their lack of feminine
expressiveness. No one could fall in love with
such hands. Loving her, someone might come to
tolerate them. They were utterly unlike Eve's
plump, white, inflexible little palms. But they
were her strength. They came between her and
the world of women. They would be her com-
panions until the end. They would wither. But
the bones would not change. The bones would
be laid unchanged and wise, in her grave.
7
She began her readings with Rosa Nouchette
Carey. Reading her at home, after tea by the
breakfast-room fireside with red curtains drawn
and the wind busy outside amongst the ever-
green shrubs under the window, it had seemed
quite possible that life might suddenly develop
BACKWATER 173
into the thing the writer described. From some-
where would come an adoring man who believed
in heaven and eternal life. One would grow
very good ; and after the excitement and interest
had worn off one would go on, with firm happy
lips being good and going to church and making
happy matches for other girls or quietly disap-
proving of everybody who did not believe just
in the same way and think about good girls and
happy marriages and heaven, keeping such people
outside. Smiling, wise and happy inside in the
warm ; growing older, but that did not matter
because the adored man was growing older
too.
Now it had all changed. The quiet house and
fireside, gravity, responsibility, a greying husband,
his reading profile always dear, both of them
going on towards heaven, " all tears wiped away,"
tears and laughter of relief after death, still
seemed desirable, but " women." . . . Those
awful, awful women, she murmured to herself
stirring in bed. I never thought of all the awful
women there would be in such a life. I only
thought of myself and the house and the garden
and the man. What an escape ! Good God in
heaven, what an escape ! Far better to be alone
i74 BACKWATER
and suffering and miserable here in the school,
alive. . . .
Then there'll be whole heaps of books, millions
of books I can't read — perhaps nearly all the
books. She took one more volume of Rosa, in
hope, and haunted its deeps of domesticity.
" I've gone too far." ... If Rosa Nouchette
Carey knew me, she'd make me one of the bad
characters who are turned out of the happy
homes. I'm some sort of bad unsimple woman.
Oh, damn, damn, she sighed. I don't know.
Her hands seemed to mock her, barring her
way.
8
Then came a series of Mrs. Hungerford — all
the volumes she had not already read. She read
them eagerly, inspirited. The gabled country
houses, the sunlit twilit endless gardens, the deep
orchards, the falling of dew, the mists of the
summer mornings, masses of flowers in large
rooms with carved oaken furniture, wide stair-
cases with huge painted windows throwing down
strange patches of light on shallow thickly car-
petted stairs. These were the things she wanted ;
gay house-parties, people with beautiful wavering
BACKWATER 175
complexions and masses of shimmering hair
catching the light, fragrant filmy diaphanous
dresses ; these were the people to whom she be-
longed— a year or two of life like that, dancing
and singing in and out the houses and gardens ;
and then marriage. Living alone, sadly estranged,
in the house of a husband who loved her and
with whom she was in love, both of them think-
ing that the other had married because they had
lost their way in a thunderstorm or spent the
night sitting up on a mountain-top or because of
a clause in a will, and then one day both finding
out the truth. . . . That is what is meant by
happiness . . . happiness. But these things could
only happen to people with money. She would
never have even the smallest share of that sort of
life. She might get into it as a governess — some
of Mrs. Hungerford's heroines were governesses
— but they had clouds of hair and were pathetic-
ally slender and appealing in their deep mourning.
She read volume after volume, forgetting the
titles — the single word ' Hunger ford ' on a cover
inflamed her. Her days became an irrelevance
and her evenings a dreamy sunlit indulgence.
Now and again she wondered what Julia Doyle
would think if she knew what she was reading
176 BACKWATER
and how it affected her — whether she would still
watch her in the way she did as she went about
her work pale and tired, whether she would go on
guarding her so fiercely ?
9
At last exasperated, tired of the mocking park,
the mocking happy books, she went one day to
the lower shelf, and saying very calmly, " I think
I'll take a Ouida," drew out " Under Two Flags "
with a trembling hand. The brown-eyed man
seemed to take an interminable time noting the
number of the book, and when at last she got
into the air her limbs were heavy with sadness.
That night she read until three o'clock and finished
the volume the next night at the same hour,
sitting upright when the last word was read,
refreshed. From that moment the red-bound
volumes became the centre of her life. She read
" Moths " and " In Maremma " slowly word by
word, with an increasing steadiness and certainty.
The mere sitting with the text held before her
eyes gave her the feeling of being strongly con-
fronted. The strange currents which came when-
ever she was alone and at ease flowing to the tips
of her fingers, seemed to flow into the book as
BACKWATER 177
she held it and to be met and satisfied. As soon
as the door was shut and the gas alight, she would
take the precious, solid trusty volume from her
drawer and fling it on her bed, to have it under
her eyes while she undressed. She ceased to read
her Bible and to pray. Ouida, Ouida, she would
muse with the book at last in her hands. I want
bad things — strong bad things. ... It doesn't
matter, Italy, the sky, bright hot landscapes,
things happening. I don't care what people
think or say. I am older than anyone here in
this house. I am myself.
10
... If you had loved, if you loved, you could
die, laughing, gasping out your life on a battle-
field, fading by inches in a fever-swamp, or
living on, going about seamed and old and ill.
Whatever happened to you, if you had cared,
fearing nothing, neither death nor hell. God
came. He would welcome and forgive you.
Life, struggle, pain. Happy laughter with
twisted lips — all waiting somewhere outside,
beyond. It would come. It must be made to
come.
N
178 BACKWATER
ii
Who was there in the world ? Ted had failed.
Ted belonged to the Rosa Nouchette Carey world.
He would marry one of those women. Bob knew.
Bob Greville's profile was real. Sitting on the
wide stairs at the Easter Subscription Dance, his
soft fine white hair standing up, the straight line
of polished forehead, the fine nose and compressed
lips, the sharp round chin with the three firm
folds underneath it, the point of his collar cutting
across them, the keen blue eyes looking straight
out ahead, across Australia. The whole face
listening. He had been listening to her nearly
all the evening. Now and again quiet questions.
She could go on talking to him whenever she
liked. Go to him and go on talking, and talking,
safely, being understood. Talking on and on.
But he was old. Living old and alone in chambers
in Adam Street — Adelphi.
12
One day just before the end of the summer
term, Miss Perne asked Miriam to preside over
the large schoolroom for the morning. The first
and second-class girls were settled there at their
BACKWATER 179
written examination in English history. Round-
ing the schoolroom door she stood for a moment
in the doorway. The sunlight poured in through
the wide bay window and the roomful of quiet
girls seemed like a field. Jessie Wheeler's voice
broke the silence. " It's the Hen," she shouted
gently. " It's the blessed Hen ! Oh, come on.
You going to sit with us ? "
" Yes. Be quiet," said Miriam.
"Oh, thank goodness," groaned Jessie, sup-
ported by groans and murmurs from all over the
room.
" Be quiet, girls, and get on with your papers,"
said Miriam in a tone of acid detachment from
the top of her tide. She sat feeling that her arms
were round the entire roomful, that each girl
struggling alone with the list of questions was
resting against her breast. " I'm going away
from them. I must be going away from them,"
ran her thoughts regretfully. " They can't keep
me. This is the utmost. I've won. There'll
never be anything more than this, here. It would
always be the same — with different girls. Cer-
tainty. Even the sunlight paid a sort of homage
to the fathomless certainty she felt. The sun-
light in this little schoolroom was telling her of
180 BACKWATER
other sunlights, vast and unbroken, somewhere —
coming, her own sunlights, when she should have
wrenched herself away. It was there ; she glanced
up again and again to watch it breaking and
splashing all over the room. It would come again,
but how differently. Quite soon. She might
have spared herself all her agonising. The girls
did not know where she belonged. They were
holding her. But she would go away, to some
huge open space. Leave them — ah, it was
unkind. But she had left them already in
spirit.
If they could all get up together now and sing,
let their voices peal together up and up, throw all
the books out of the window, they might go on
together, forward into the sunshine, but they
would not want to do that. Hardly any of them
would want to do that. They would look at her
with knowing eyes, and look at the door, and stay
where they were.
The room was very close. Polly Allen and
Eunice Dupont, sitting together at a little card-
table in the darkest corner of the room, were
whispering. With beating heart Miriam got up
and went and stood before them. " You two
are talking," she said with her eyes on the thick-
BACKWATER 181
ness of Polly's shoulders as she sat in profile to
the room. Eunice, opposite her, against the wall,
flashed up at her her beautiful fugitive grin as
from the darkness of a wood. History, thought
Miriam. What has Eunice to do with history,
laws, Henry II, the English Constitution ? " You
don't talk," she said coldly, feeling as she watched
her that Eunice's pretty clothes were stripped
away and she were stabbing at her soft rounded
body, " at examinations. Can't you see that ? J!
Eunice's pale face grew livid. " First because it
isn't fair and also because it disturbs other
people." You can tell all the people who cheat
by their smile, she reflected on her way back.
Eunice chuckled serenely two or three times.
"What have these North London girls to
do with studies ? " . . . There was not a single
girl like Eunice at Barnes. Even the very
pretty girls were . . . refined.
13
That afternoon Miriam spent her hour of
leisure in calling on the Brooms to enquire for
Grace, who had been ill the whole of the term.
She found the house after some difficulty in one
of a maze of little rows and crescents just off
182 BACKWATER
the tram-filled main road. " She's almost per-
fect— almost perfection," said Mrs. Philps, the
Aunt Lucy Miriam had heard of and seen in
church.
They had been together in the little drawing-
room talking about Grace from the moment
when Miriam was shown in to Mrs. Philps sitting
darning a duster in a low chair by the closed con-
servatory door. The glazed closed door with the
little strips of window on either side giving on
to a crowded conservatory made the little room
seem dark. To Miriam it seemed horribly re-
mote. Her journey to it had been through im-
mense distances. Threading the little sapling-
planted asphalt -pavemented roadways between
houses whose unbroken frontage was so near
and so bare as to forbid scrutiny, she felt she
had reached the centre, the home and secret of
North London life. Off every tram-haunted
main road, there must be a neighbourhood like
this where lived the common-mouthed harsh-
speaking people who filled the pavements and
shops and walked in the parks. To enter one of
the little houses and speak there to its inmates
would be to be finally claimed and infected by
the life these people lived, the thing that made
BACKWATER 183
them what they were. At Wordsworth House
she was held up by the presence of the Pernes
and Julia Doyle. Here she was helpless and alone.
When she had discovered the number she sought
and, crossing the little tiled pathway separated
from the pathway next door by a single iron rail,
had knocked with the lacquered knocker against
the glazed and leaded door, her dreams for the
future faded. They would never be realised.
They were just a part of the radiance that shone
now from the spacious houses she had lived in
in the past. The things she had felt this morning
in the examination room were that, too. They
had nothing to do with the future. All the space
was behind. Things would grow less and less.
H
Admitted to the dark narrowly echoing tiled
passage, she stated her errand and was conducted
past a closed door and the opening of a narrow
staircase which shot steeply, carpeted with a
narrow strip of surprisingly green velvet carpet-
ing, up towards an unlit landing and admitted
to Mrs. Philps.
" Wait a minute, Vashti," said Mrs. Philps,
holding Miriam's hand as she murmured her
184 BACKWATER
errand. " You'll stay tea ? Well, if you're sure
you can't I'll not press you. Bring the biscuits
and the sherry and two white wine-glasses,
Vashti. Get them now and bring them in at
once. Sit down, Miss Henderson. She's little
better than a step-girl. They're all the same."
Whilst she described her niece's illness, Miriam
wondered over the immense bundle of little even
black sausage-shaped rolls of hair which stuck
out, larger than her head and smoothed to a
sphere by a tightly drawn net, at the back of her
skull. She was short and stout and had bright
red cheeks that shone in the gloom and rather
prominent large blue eyes that roamed as she
talked, allowing Miriam to snatch occasional
glimpses of china-filled what-nots and beaded
ottomans. Presently Vashti returned clumsily
with the wine, making a great bumping and
rattling round about the door. " You stupid
thing, you've brought claret. Don't you know
sherry when you see it ? It's at the back — behind
the Harvest Burgundy." " I shall have to go
soon," said Miriam, relieved at the sight of
the red wine and longing to escape the sherry.
Vashti put down the tray and stood with open
mouth. Even with her very high heels she looked
BACKWATER 185
almost a dwarf. The room seemed less oppres-
sive with the strange long-necked decanter and
the silver biscuit box standing on a table in the
curious greenish light. Mrs. Philps accepted
the claret and returned busily to her story,
whilst Miriam sipped and glanced at a large
print in a heavy black frame leaning forward low
over the small white marble mantelpiece. It
represented a young knight in armour kneeling at
an altar with joined and pointed hands held to
his lips. An angel standing in mid-air was touch-
ing his shoulder with a sword. " Why doesn't
she kiss the top of his head," thought Miriam as
she sipped her wine. The distant aisles and pillars
of the church made the room seem larger than it
was. " I suppose they all look into that church
when they want to get away from each other,"
she mused as Mrs. Philps went on with her long
sentences beginning " And Dr. Newman said — "
And there was a little mirror above a bulging
chiffonier which was also an escape from the
confined space. Looking into it, she met Mrs.
Philps's glowing face with the blue eyes widely
staring and fixed upon her own, and heard her
declare, with her bunched cherry-coloured lips,
that Grace was ' almost perfection.' " Is she ? "
186 BACKWATER
she responded eagerly, and Mrs. Philps elabo-
rated her theme. Grace, then, with her heavy-
body and strange hot voice, lying somewhere
upstairs in a white bed, was the most important
thing in this dark little house. " She was very
near to death then," Mrs. Philps was saying
tearfully, " very near, and when she came round
from her delirium, one of the first things she
said to me as soon as she was strong enough
to whisper, *was that she was perfectly certain
about there being another life." Mrs. Philps's
voice faded and she sat with trembling lips and
eyes downcast. " Did she ! " Miriam almost
shouted, half-rising from her seat and turning
from contemplating Mrs. Philps in the mirror to
look her full in the face. The dim green light
streaming in from the conservatory seemed like
a tide that made everything in the room rock
slightly. A touch would sweep it all away and
heaven would be there all round them. " Did
she," whispered Miriam in a faint voice that
shook her chest. " ' Aunt,' she said," went on
Mrs. Philps steadily, as the room grew firm round
Miriam and the breath she drew seemed like an
early morning breath, " ' I want to say some-
thing quickly,' she said, * in case I die. It's that
BACKWATER 187
I know — for a positive fact, there is another
life.' "
6 What a perfectly stupendous thing," said
Miriam. - " It's so important."
" I was much impressed. Of course, I knew
she was nearly perfect. But we've not been in
the habit of talking about religion. I asked her
if she would like to see the vicar. ' Oh no,' she
said, ' there's no need. He knows.' I doubt if
he knows as much as she does. But I didn't make
a point of it."
" Oh, but it's simply wonderful. It's much
more important than anything a vicar could say.
It's their business to say those things."
" I don't know about that. But she was so
weak that I didn't press it."
" But it's so important. What a wonderful
thing to have in your family. Did she say any-
thing more ? "
" She hasn't returned to the subject again.
She's very weak."
Wild clutching thoughts shook at Miriam. If
only Grace could suddenly appear in her night-
gown, to be questioned. Or if she herself could
stay on there creeping humbly about in this little
house, watering the conservatory and darning
1 88 BACKWATER
dusteib, being a relative of the Brooms, devoting
herself to Grace, waiting on her, hearing all she
had to say. What did it matter that the Brooms
wore heavy mourning and gloated over funerals
if Grace upstairs in her room had really seen the
white light away in the distance far away beyond
the noise of the world ?
CHAPTER VII
HARRIETT'S ringed fingers had finished
dipping and drying the blue and white
tea-service. She sat for a moment staring ahead
down -stream. Sitting opposite her, Gerald
watched her face with a half smile. Miriam
waited sitting at her side. It was the first moment
of silence since she had come home at midday.
From the willow-curtained island against which
they were moored came little crepitations and
flittings. Ahead of them the river blazed gold
and blue, hedged by high spacious trees. " Come-
to-tea, row^-to-tea, hurryup-dear," said a bird
suddenly from the island thicket.
" D'you know what bird that is, Gerald ? "
asked Miriam.
" Not from Adam," breathed Gerald, swaying
on his seat with a little laugh. " It's a bird.
That's all I know."
" We'd better unmoor, silly," muttered Har-
riett briskly, gathering up the tiller ropes.
189
190 BACKWATER
" Right, la reine."
" Look here, let me do something this time,
pull or something."
" You sit still, my dear."
" But I should simply love to."
" You shall pull down-stream if you like later
on when the bally sun's down. My advice to
you now is to go and lounge in the bow."
" Oh yes, Mim, you try it. Lie right down.
It's simply heavenly."
The boat glided deliciously away up-stream as
Miriam, relinquishing her vision of Harriett
sitting very upright in the stern in her white
drill dress, and Gerald's lawn-shirted back and
long lean arms grasping the sculls, lay back on
the bow cushions with her feet comfortably
outstretched under the unoccupied seat in front
of her. Six hours ago, shaking hands with a
roomful of noisy home-going girls — and now
nothing to do but float dreamily out through the
gateway of her six weeks' holiday. The dust of
the school was still upon her ; the skin of her face
felt strained and tired, her hands were tired and
hot, her blouse dim with a week of school wear,
and her black skirt oppressed her with its in-
visible burden of grime. But she was staring up
BACKWATER 191
at a clean blue sky fringed with tree-tops. She
stretched herself out more luxuriously upon her
cushions. The river smoothly moving and lap-
ping underneath the boat was like a cradle. The
soft fingers of the air caressed her temples and
moved along the outlines of her face and neck.
Forty-two days . . . like this. To-morrow she
would wake up a new person . . . sing, and shout
with Harriett. She closed her eyes. The gently
lifting water seemed to come nearer; the in-
vading air closed in on her. She gave herself
ecstatically to its touch ; the muscles of her
tired face relaxed and she believed that she
could sleep ; cry or sleep.
It was Gerald who had worked this miraculous
first day for her. " Boating " hitherto had meant
large made-up parties of tennis-club people, a
fixed day, uneasy anticipations as to the weather,
the carrying of hampers of provisions and crock-
ery, spirit lamps and kettles, clumsy hired ran-
dans, or little fleets of stupidly competing canoes,
lack of space, heavy loads to pull, the need for
ceaseless chaff, the irritating triumphs of clever
" knowing " girls in smart clothes, the Pooles, or
i92 BACKWATER
really beautiful people, like Nan Babington and
her cousin. Everything they said sounding won-
derful and seeming to improve the scenery ; the
jokes of the men, even Ted always joked all the
time, the misery of large noisy picnic teas on the
grass, and in the end great weariness and disap-
pointment, the beauty of the river and the trees
only appearing the next day or perhaps long after-
wards.
This boat was Gerald's own private boat, a
double-sculling skiff, slender and gold-brown,
beautifully fitted and with a locker containing
everything that was wanted for picnicking. They
had arranged their expedition at lunch-time,
trained to Richmond, bought fruit and cakes and
got the boat's water-keg filled by one of Redknap's
men. Gerald knew how to do things properly.
He had always been accustomed to things like
this boat. He would not care to have anything
just anyhow. " Let's do the thing decently, la
reine." He would keep on saying that at intervals
until Harriett had learned too. How he had
changed her since Easter when their engagement
had been openly allowed. The clothes he had
bought for her, especially this plain drill dress
with its neat little coat. The long black tie
BACKWATER 193
fastened with the plain heavy cable broach
pinned in lengthwise half-way down the ends of
the tie, which reached almost to her black belt.
That was Gerald. Her shoes, the number of
pairs of light, expensive, beautifully made shoes.
Her bearing, the change in her voice, a sort of
roundness about her old Harryish hardness. But
she was the same Harry, the Harry he had seen
for the first time snorting with anger over Mr.
Marth's sentimental singing at the Assembly
Rooms concert. " My hat, wasn't la reine
fuming ! " He would forgive her all her ignor-
ance. It was her triumph. What an extra-
ordinary time Harry would have. Gerald was
well-off. He had a private income behind his
Canadian Pacific salary. His grandfather had
been a diplomatist, living abroad nearly all the
time, and his wealthy father and wealthy mother
with a large fortune of her own had lived in a
large house in Chelsea, giving dinner parties and
going to the opera until nearly all the capital
had gone, both dying just in time to leave
enough to bring Gerald in a small income
when he left Haileybury. And the wonderful
thing was that Gerald liked mouching about
and giggling. He liked looking for hours in shop
i94 BACKWATER
windows and strolling on the Heath eating
peppermints.
3
Everything had disappeared into a soft black-
ness ; only on the water a faint light was left.
It came and went ; sometimes there was nothing
but darkness and the soft air. The small paper
lantern swinging at the bow made a little blot of
light that was invisible from the stroke seat. The
boat went swiftly and easily. Miriam felt she
could go on pulling for hours at the top of her
strength through the night. Leaning forward,
breasting the featureless darkness, sweeping the
sculls back at the full reach of her arms, leaning
back and pressing her whole weight upwards
from the footboard against the pull of the water,
her body became an outstretched elastic system of
muscles, rhythmically working against the smooth
dragging resistance of the dark water. Her
sleeves were rolled up, her collar-stud unfastened,
her cool drowsy lids drooped over her cool eyes.
Each time she leaned backwards against her
stroke, pressing the foot-board, the weight of her
body dragged at a line of soreness where the
sculls pressed her hands, and with the final fling
of the water from the sculls a little stinging pain
BACKWATER 195
ran along the pads of her palms. To-morrow
there would be a row of happy blisters.
" You needn't put more beef into it than you
like, Mirry." Gerald's voice came so quietly out
of the darkness that it scarcely disturbed Miriam's
ecstacy. She relaxed her swing, and letting the
sculls skim and dip in short easy strokes, sat
glowing.
" I've never pulled a boat alone before."
" It shows you can't be a blue-stocking, thank
the Lord," laughed Gerald.
" Who said I was ? "
" I've always understood you were a very wise
lady, my dear."
" Nobody told you she was a blue-stocking,
silly. You invented the word yourself."
" I ? I invented blue-stocking ? "
" Yes, you, silly. It's like your saying women
never date their letters just because your cousins
don't."
" Vive la reine. The Lord deliver me from
blue-stockings, anyhow."
" All right, what about it ? There aren't any
here ! "
" You're not one, anyhow."
196 BACKWATER
4
The next day after tea Eve arrived home from
Gloucestershire.
Miriam had spent the day with Harriett. After
breakfast, bounding silently up and downstairs,
they visited each room in turn, chased each other
about the echoing rooms and passages of the base-
ment and all over the garden. Miriam listened
speechlessly to the sound of Harriett's heels soft
on the stair carpet, ringing on the stone floors of
the basement, and the swish of her skirts as she
flew over the lawn following surrounding re-
sponding to Miriam's wild tour of the garden.
Miriam listened and watched, her eyes and ears
eagerly gathering and hoarding visions. It could
not go on. Presently some claim would be made
on Harriett and she would be alone. But when
they had had their fill of silently rushing about,
Harriett piloted her into the drawing-room and
hastily began opening the piano. A pile of
duets lay on the lid. She had evidently gathered
them there in readiness. Wandering about the
room, shifting the familiar ornaments, flinging
herself into chair after chair, Miriam watched
her and saw that her strange quiet little snub face
BACKWATER 197
was lit and shapely. Harriett, grown-up, serene
and well-dressed and going to be married in the
spring, was transported by this new coming to-
gether. When they had played the last of the
duets that they knew well, Harriett fumbled at
the pages of a bound volume of operas in obvious
uncertainty. At any moment Miriam might get
up and go off and bring their sitting together on
the long cretonne-covered duet stool to an end.
" Come on," roared Miriam gently, " let's try
this " ; and they attacked the difficult pages.
Miriam counted the metre, whispered it intoned
and sang it, carrying Harriett along with shouts
" go on, go on " when they had lost each other.
They smashed their way along by turns play-
ing only a single note here and there into the
framework of Miriam's desperate counting, or
banging out cheerful masses of discordant tones,
anything to go on driving their way together
through the pages while the sunlight streamed
half seen into the conservatory and the flower-
filled garden crowded up against the windows,
anything to come out triumphantly together at
the end and to stop satisfied, the sounds of the
house, so long secretly known to them both,
low now around them, heard by them together,
198 BACKWATER
punctuating their joy. The gong sounded for
lunch. " Eve," Miriam remembered suddenly,
" Eve's coming this afternoon." The thought
set gladness thundering through her as she rose
from the piano. " Let's go for a walk after
lunch," she muttered. Harriett blushed.
" Awri," she responded tenderly.
5
The mile of gently rising roadway leading to
the Heath was overarched by huge trees. Shadowy
orchards, and the silent sunlit outlying meadows
and park land of a large estate streamed gently by
them beyond the trees as they strode, along through
the cool leaf-scented air. They strode speech-
lessly ahead as if on a pilgrimage, keeping step.
Harriett's stylish costume had a strange unreal
look in the great lane, under the towering trees.
Miriam wondered if she found it dull and was
taking it so boldly because they were walking
along it together. Obviously she did not want
to talk. She walked along swiftly and erect, look-
ing eagerly ahead as if, when they reached the
top and the Heath and the windmill, they would
find something they were both looking for.
Miriam felt she could glance about unnoticed
BACKWATER 199
and looked freely, as she had done so many hun-
dreds of times before, at the light on the distant
meadows and lying along the patches of under-
growth between the trunks of the trees. They
challenged and questioned her silently as they
had always done and she them, in a sort of pas-
sionate sulkiness. They gave no answer, but the
scents in the cool tree-filled air went on all the
time offering steady assurance, and presently as
walking became an unconscious rhythm and the
question of talk or no talk had definitely decided
itself, the challenge of the light was silenced and
the shaded roadway led on to paradise. Was
there anyone anywhere who saw it as she did ?
Anyone who looking along the alley of white road
would want to sit down in the roadway or kneel
amongst the undergrowth and shout and shout ?
In the north of London there were all those
harsh street voices infesting the trees and the
parks. No ! they did not exist. There was no
North London. Let them die. They did not
know the meaning of far-reaching meadows,
park-land, deer, the great silent Heath, the silent
shoulders of the windmill against the far-off
softness of the sky. Harsh streetiness . . . cunning,
knowing ... do you blame me ? ... or char-
200 BACKWATER
womanishness, smarmy ; churchy or chapelish
sentimentality. Sentimentality. No need to
think about them.
" Never the time and the place and the loved
one all together." Who said that ? Was it true ?
Dreadful. It couldn't be. So many people had
seen moonlit gardens, together. All the happy
people who were sure of each other. " I say,
Harriett," she said at the top of her voice, bring-
ing Harriett curvetting in the road just in front
of her. " I say, listen." Harriett ran up the
remaining strips of road and out on to the Heath.
It was ablaze with sunlight — as the river and the
trees had been yesterday— -a whole day of light
and Eve on her way home, almost home. Harriett
must not know how she was rushing to Eve ;
with what tingling fingers. " Oh, what I was
going to ask you was whether you can see the
moonlight like it is when you are alone, when
Gerald is there."
" ... It isn't the same as when you are alone,"
said Harriett quietly, arranging the cuff of her
glove.
:< Do explain what you mean."
" Well, it's different."
" I see. You don't know how."
BACKWATER 201
" It's quite different."
" Does Gerald like the moonlight ? "
" / dunno. I never asked him."
" Fancy the Roehampton people living up
here all the time."
" There's their old washing going flip-flap over
there."
Harriett was finding out that she was back in
the house with Eve.
" Let's rush to the windmill. Let's sing."
" Come on ; only we can't rush and sing too."
" Yes we can, come on." Running up over
hillocks and stumbling through sandy gorse-grown
hollows they sang a hunting song, Miriam leading
with the short galloping phrases, Harriett's
thinner voice dropping in, broken and uncertain,
with a strange brave sadness in it that went to
Miriam's heart.
6
" Eve, you look exactly like Dudley's gracious
lady in these things. Don't you feel like it ? "
Eve stopped near the landing window and stood
in her light green canvas dress with its pale green
silk sleeves shedding herself over Miriam from
under her rose-trimmed white chip hat. Miriam
was carrying her light coat and all the small litter
202 BACKWATER
of her journey. " Go on up," she said, " I want
to talk," and Eve hurried on, Miriam stumblingly
following her, holding herself in, eyes and ears
wide for the sight and sound of the slender
figure flitting upstairs through the twilight. The
twilight wavered and seemed to ebb and flow,
suggesting silent dawn and full midday, and the
house rang with a soundless music.
" It was Mrs. Wallace who suggested my
wearing all my best things for the journey,"
panted Eve ; " they don't get crushed with pack-
ing and they needn't get dirty if you're careful."
" You look exactly like Dudley's gracious lady.
You know you do. You know it perfectly well."
" They do seem jolly now I'm back. They
don't seem anything down there. Just ordinary
with everybody in much grander things."
" How do you mean, grander ? What sort of
things ? "
" Oh, all sorts of lovely white dresses."
" It is extraordinary about all those white
dresses," said Miriam emphatically, pushing her
way after Eve into Sarah's bedroom. " Can I
come in ? I'm coming in. Sarah says it's because
men like them and she gets simply sick of girls
in white and cream dresses all over the place in
BACKWATER 203
the summer, and it's a perfect relief to see anyone
in a colour in the sun. They have red sunshades
sometimes, but Sarah says that's not enough ;
you want people in colours. I wonder if there's
anything in it ? "
" Of course there is," said Sarah, releasing the
last strap of Eve's trunk.
" They'd all put on coloured things if it weren't
for that."
" Men tell them."
" Do they ? "
" The engaged men tell them — or brothers."
" I can't think how you get to know these
things, sober Sally."
" Oh, you can tell."
" Well, then, why do men like silly white and
cream dresses, pasty, whitewashy clothes alto-
gether ? "
" It's something they want ; it looks different
to them."
" Sarah knows all sorts of things," said Miriam
excitedly, watching the confusion of the room
from the windows. " She says she knows why the
Pooles look down and smirk ; their dimples and
the line of their chins ; that men admire them
looking down like that. Isn't it frightful. Dis-
204 BACKWATER
gusting. And men don't seem to see through
them."
" It's those kind of girls get on best."
Miriam sighed.
" Oh well, don't let's think about them. Not
to-night, anyhow," cooed Eve.
" Sarah says there are much more awful
reasons. I can't think how she finds them all
out. Sober Sally. I know she's right. It's too
utterly sickening somehow, for words."
" Mim."
" Pooh — barooo, baroooo"
« Mim "
" Damnation."
" Mimmy — Jim."
" I Said DAMNATION."
" Oh, it's all right. What have we got to do
with horrid knowing people."
" Well, they're there, all the time. You can't
get away from them. They're all over the place.
Either the knowing ones or the simpering ones.
It's all the same in the end."
Eve quietly began to unpack. " Oh well,"
she smiled, " we're all different when there are
men about to when we're by ourselves. We all
make eyes in a way."
BACKWATER 205
" Eve ! What a perfectly beastly thing to say."
" It isn't, my dear," said Eve pensively. " You
should see yourself ; you do."
" Sally, doll"
7
"Of course you do," giggled Eve quietly, " as
much as anybody."
" Then I'm the most crawling thing on the
face of the earth," thought Miriam, turning
silently to the tree-tops looming softly just out-
side the window ; " and the worst of it is I only
know it at moments now and again." The tree-
tops serene with some happy secret cast her off,
and left her standing with groping crisping
fingers unable to lift the misery that pressed
upon her heart. " God, what a filthy world !
God what a filthy world ! " she muttered. " Every-
one hemmed and hemmed and hemmed into it."
Harriett came in and stepped up on to the
high canopied bed. " Ullo," she said in general,
sitting herself up tailor- fashion in the middle of
the bed so that the bright twilight fell full upon
her head and the breast and shoulders of her
light silk-sleeved dress. Humming shreds of a
violin obligato, Eve rustled out layer after layer
of paper-swathed garments, to be gathered up
206 BACKWATER
by Sarah moving solidly about between the ward-
robe and the chest of drawers in her rather heavy
boots. There would not be any talk. But
silently the room rilled and overflowed. Turning
at last from her window, Miriam glanced at her
sisters and let her thoughts drop into the flowing
tide. Harry, sitting there sharp and upright in
the fading light, coming in to them with her
future life streaming out behind her spreading
and shining and rippling, herself the radiant
point of that wonderful life, actually there,
neatly enthroned amongst them, one of them,
drawing them all with her out towards its easy
security ; Eve, happy with her wardrobe of dainty
things, going fearlessly forward to some unseen
fate, not troubling about it. Sarah's strange
clean clear channel of wisdom. Where would it
lead ? It would always drive straight through
everything.
All these things meant that the mere simple
awfulness of things at home had changed. These
three girls she had known so long as fellow-
prisoners, and who still bore at moments in their
eyes, their movements, the marks of the terrors
and uncertainties amongst which they had all
grown up, were going on, out into life, scored
BACKWATER 207
and scarred, but alive and changeable, able to
become quite new. Memories of strange crises
and the ageing deadening shifts they had in-
vented to tide them over humiliating situations
were here crowded in the room together with
them all. But these memories were no longer
as they had so often been, the principal thing
in the room whenever they were all gathered
silently together. If Eve and Harriett had got
away from the past and now had happy eyes and
mouths. . . . Sarah's solid quiet cheerfulness,
now grown so large and free that it seemed even
when she was stillest to knock your mind about like
something in a harlequinade. . . . Why had they
not all known in the past that they would change ?
Why had they been so oppressed whenever they
stopped to think ?
Those American girls in " Little Women "
and " Good Wives " made fun out of everything.
But they had never had to face real horrors and
hide them from everybody, mewed up.
8
When it was nearly dark Sarah lit the gas.
Harriett had gone downstairs. Miriam lowered
the Venetian blinds, shutting out the summer.
208 BACKWATER
To-morrow it would be there again, waiting for
them when they woke in the morning. In her
own and Harriett's room the daylight would be
streaming in through the Madras muslin curtains,
everything in the room very silent and distinct ;
nothing to be heard but the little flutterings of
birds under the eaves. You could listen to it for
ever if you kept perfectly still. When you drew
back the curtains the huge day would be standing
outside clear with gold and blue and dense with
trees and flowers.
Sarah's face was uneasy. She seemed to avoid
meeting anyone's eyes. Presently she faced them,
sitting on a low rocking chair with her tightly
clasped hands stretched out beyond her knees.
She glanced fearfully from one to the other and
bit her lips. " What now," thought Miriam.
The anticipated holidays disappeared. Of course.
She might have known they would. For a
moment she felt sick, naked and weak. Then she
braced herself to meet the shock. I must sit
tight, I must sit tight and not show anything.
Eve's probably praying. Oh, make haste, Sally,
and get it over.
" What's the matter, Sally ? " said Eve in a
low voice.
BACKWATER 209
" Oh, Eve and Mini, I'm awfully sorry."
" You'd better tell us at once," said Eve,
crimsoning.
" Haven't you noticed anything ? "
Miriam looked at Sarah's homely prosperous
shape. It couldn't be anything. It was a night-
mare. She waited, pinching her wrist.
" What is it, Sally ? " breathed Eve, tapping
her green-clad knee. Clothes and furniture and
pictures . . . houses full of things and people
talking in the houses and having meals and pre-
tending, talking and smiling and pretending.
" It's mother."
" What on earth do you mean, Sarah ? " said
Miriam angrily.
" She's ill. Bennett took her to a specialist.
There's got to be — she's got to have an opera-
tion."
Miriam drew up the blind with a noisy rattle,
smiling at Eve frowning impatiently at the
noise. Driving the heavy sash up as far as it
would go, she leaned her head against the open
frame. The garden did not seem to be there.
The tepid night air was like a wall, a black wall.
For a moment a splintered red light, like the light
that comes from a violent blow on the forehead,
210 BACKWATER
flashed along it. Sarah and Eve were talking in
strange voices, interrupting each other. It would
be a relief to do something, faint or something
selfish. But she must hear what they were say-
ing ; listen to both the voices cutting through
the air of the hot room. Propped weak-limbed
against the window open-mouthed for air she
forced herself to hear, pressing her cold hands
closely together. The gas light that had seemed
so bright hardly seemed to light the room at all.
Everything looked small, even Grannie's old
Chippendale bedstead and the double- fronted
wardrobe. The girls were little monkey ghosts
babbling together beside Eve's open trunk. Did
they see that it was exactly like a grave ?
9
The sun shone through the apple trees, making
the small half-ripe apples look as though they were
coated with enamel.
It was quite clear that if they did go away
together, the four of them, she, Eve, Gerald and
Harriett to Brighton or somewhere, they would
be able to forget. You could tell that from the
strange quiet easy tone of Harriett's and Gerald's
voices. There would be the aquarium. She
BACKWATER 211
supposed they would go to the aquarium with
its strange underground smell of stagnant sea
air and stare into the depths of those strange
green tanks and watch the fish flashing about like
shadows or skimming by near the front of the
tank with the light full on their softly tinted
scales. Harriett sat steadily at her side on the
overturned seed-box, middle-aged and responsible,
quietly discussing the details of the plan with
Gerald, cross-legged at their feet on the grass
plot. They had not said anything about the
reasons for going ; but of course Gerald must
know all that. He knew everything now, all
about the money troubles, all the awful things,
and it seemed to make no difference to him.
He made light of it. It was humiliating to think
that he had come just as things had reached their
worst, the house going to be sold, Pater and
mother and Sarah going into lodgings in Septem-
ber, and the maddening helpless worry about
mother and all the money for that. And yet it
was a good thing he had known them all in the
old house and seen them there, even pretending
to be prosperous. And yet the house and garden
was nothing to him. Just a house and garden.
Harriett's house and garden, and he was going to
212 BACKWATER
take Harriett away. The house and garden did
not matter.
She glanced at the sunlit fruit trees, the
thickets of the familiar kitchen garden, the rising
grass bank at the near end of the distant lawn,
the eloquent back of the large red house. He
( ould not see all the things there were there, all
ihe long years, or know what it was to have that
cut away and nothing ahead but Brighton aquar-
ium with Harriett and Eve, and then the school
again, and disgraceful lodgings in some strange
place, no friends and everybody looking down on
them. She met his eyes and they both smiled.
" Keep her perfectly quiet for the next few
weeks, that's the idea, and when it's all over
she'll be better than she's ever been in her life."
" D'you think so ? "
" I don't think, I know she will ; people always
are. Ifve known scores of people have operations.
It's nothing nowadays. Ask Bennett."
" Does he think she'll be better ? "
" Of course."
" Did he say so ? "
" Of course he did."
" Well, I s'pose we'd really better go."
" Of course, we're going."
BACKWATER 213
" I'm going to look for a place in a family
after next term. I shall give notice when I get
back. You get more money in a family Eve says,
and home life, and if you haven't a home they're
only too glad to have you there in the holidays
too."
" You take my advice, my dear girl. Don't go
into a family. Eve'll find it out before she's
much older."
" I must have more money."
" Mirry's so silly. She insists on paying her
share of Brighton. Isn't she an owl ? "
" Oh well, of course, if she's going to make a
point of spending her cash when she needn't she'd
better find a more paying job. That's certain
sure."
CHAPTER VIII
" V/X)U know I'm funny. I never talk to
A young ladies."
Miriam looked leisurely at the man walking at
her side along the grass-covered cliff ; his well-
knit frame, his well-cut blue serge, the trimness
of collar and tie, his faintly blunted regular
features, clean ruddy skin and clear expressionless
German blue eyes. Altogether he was rather like
a German, with his red and white and gold and
blue colouring and his small military moustache.
She could imagine him snapping abruptly in a
booming chest voice, " Mit Frauen spreche ich
iiberbaupt nicht." But he spoke slowly and
languidly, he was an Englishman and somehow
looked like a man who was accustomed to refined
society. It was true he never spoke at the board-
ing-house meals, excepting an occasional word
with his friend, and he had been obliged to join
their Sunday walk because his friend was so
214
BACKWATER 215
determined to come. Still he was not awkward
or clumsy either at table or now. Only absolutely
quiet, and then saying such a startling rather rude
thing quite suddenly. One could stare at him
to discover the reason of his funny speech, because
evidently he was quite common, not a bounder
but quite a common young man, speaking of
women as ' young ladies.' Then how on earth
did he manage to look distinguished. Oppressed
and ill at ease she turned away to the far-reaching
green levels and listened to the sea tumbling
heavily far below against the cliffs. Away ahead
Eve and her little companion walking jauntily
along, his tight dust-coloured curls exposed to
the full sunlight, his cane swinging round as he
talked and laughed, seemed to be turning inland
towards the downs. They had seen Ovingdean
in the distance, stupid Ovingdean that everybody
had talked about at breakfast, and were finding
the way. How utterly silly. They did not see
how utterly silly it was to make up your mind
to " go to Ovingdean " and then go to Oving-
dean. How utterly silly everybody and every-
thing was.
Eve looked very straight and slim and was
walking happily, bending her head a little as she
216 BACKWATER
always did when she was listening. Their backs
looked happy. And here she was forced to walk
with this nice-looking strange solid heavyish man
and his cold insulting remark ; almost the only
thing he had said since they had been alone to-
gether. It had been rather nice wralking along
the top of the cliff side by side saying nothing.
They walked exactly in step and his blunted
features looked quite at ease ; and she had gone
easily along disposing of him with a gentle feeling
of proprietorship, and had watched the gentle
swing and movement of the landscape as they
swung along. It seemed secure and painless and
was gradually growing beautiful, and then sud-
denly she felt that he must have his thoughts,
men were always thinking, and would be expect-
ing her to be animated and entertaining. Lump-
ishly she had begun about the dullness of the
beach and promenade on Sundays and the need
to find something to do between dinner and tea —
lies. All conversation was a lie. And somehow
she had led him to his funny German remark.
" How do you mean ? " she said at last anxiously.
It was very rude intruding upon him like that.
He had spoken quite simply. She ought to have
laughed and changed the conversation. But it
BACKWATER 217
was no laughing matter. He did not know what
he was saying or how horribly it hurt. A worldly
girl would chaff and make fun of him. It was
detestable to make fun of men ; just a way of
flirting. But Sarah said that being rude to men
or talking seriously to them was flirting just as
much. Not true. Not true. And yet it was
true, she did want to feel happy walking along
with this man, have some sort of good under-
standing with him, him as a man with her as a
woman. Was that flirting ? If so she was just
a more solemn underhand flirt than the others,
that was all. She felt very sad. Anyhow she had
asked her question now. She looked at his profile.
Perhaps he would put her off in some way. Then
she would walk slower and slower until Harriett
and Gerald caught them up and come home
walking four in a row, taking Harriett's arm.
His face had remained quite expressionless.
" Well," he said at length in his slow well-
modulated tone, " I always take care to get out
of the way when there are any young ladies
about."
" When do you mean ? " / didn't ask you to
come, / don't want to talk to you you food-loving,
pipe-loving, comfort-loving beast, she thought.
218 BACKWATER
But it would be impossible to finish the holiday
and go back to the school with this strange state-
ment uninvestigated.
" Well, when my sisters have young ladies in
in the evening I always get out of the way."
Ah, thought Miriam, you are one of those men
who flirt with servants and shop-girls . . . perhaps
those awful women. . . . Either she must catch
Eve up or wait for Harriett . . . not be alone any
longer with this man.
" I see. You simply run away from them,"
she said scornfully ; " go out for a walk or some-
thing." A small Brixton sitting-room full of
Brixton girls — Gerald said that Brixton was
something too chronic for words, just like Clap-
ham, and there was that joke about the man
who said he would not go to heaven even if he
had the chance because of the strong Clapham
contingent that would be there — after all ...
" I go and sit in my room."
" Oh," said Miriam brokenly, " in the winter ?
Without a fire ? "
Mr. Parrow laughed. " I don't mind about
that. I wrap myself up and get a book."
" What sort of book ? "
" I've got a few books of my own ; and there's
BACKWATER 219
generally something worth reading in ' Tit-
Bits.' "
How did he manage to look so refined and cul-
tured ? Those girls were quite good enough for
him, probably too good. But he would go on
despising them and one of them would marry
him and give him beef-steak puddings. And here
he was walking by the sea in the sunlight, con-
fessing his suspicions and fears and going back to
Brixton.
" You'll have to marry one of those young
ladies one day," she said abruptly.
" That's out of the question, even if I was a
marrying man."
" Nonsense," said Miriam, as they turned down
the little pathway leading towards the village.
Poor man, how cruel to encourage him to take
up with one of those giggling dressy girls.
" D'you mean to say you've been never speci-
ally interested in anybody ? "
" Yes. I never have."
Ovingdean had to be faced. They were going
to look at Ovingdean and then walk back to the
boarding-house to tea. Now that she knew all
220 BACKWATER
about his home-life she would not be able to
meet his eyes across the table. Two tired elm
trees stood one on either side of the road at the
entrance to the village. Here they all gathered
and then went forward in a strolling party.
When they turned at last to walk home and
fell again into couples as before, Miriam searched
her empty mind for something to say about the
dim, cool musty church, the strange silent deeps
of it there amongst the great green downs, the
waiting chairs, the cold empty pulpit and the
little cold font, and the sunlit front of the old
Grange where King Charles had taken refuge.
Mr. Parrow would know she was speaking in-
sincerely if she said anything about these things.
There was a long, long walk ahead. For some
time they walked in silence. " D'you know any-
thing about architecture ? " she said at last
angrily . . . cruel silly question. Of course he
didn't. But men she walked with ought to know
about architecture and be able to tell her things.
" No. That's a subject I don't know anything
about."
" D'you like churches ? "
" I don't know that I've ever thought about
BACKWATER 221
" Then you probably don't."
" Oh, well, I don't know about that. I don't
see any objection to them."
" Then you're probably an atheist."
" I don't know, I'm sure."
" Do you go to church ? "
" I can't say I do in the usual way, unless I'm
on a holiday."
" Perhaps you go for walks instead ? "
" Well, I generally stay in bed and have a
rest."
That dreadful room with the dreadful man
hiding in it and reading " Tit-Bits " and staying
in bed in it on bright Sunday mornings.
How heavily they were treading on the orange
and yellow faces of the Tom Thumbs scattered
over the short green grass.
" How much do you think people could marry
on ? " said Mr. Parrow suddenly in a thin voice.
" Oh well, that depends on who they are."
" I suppose it does do that."
" And where they are going to live."
" D'you think anyone could marry on a hun-
dred and fifty ? "
" Of course," said Miriam emphatically, men-
tally shivering over the vision of a tiresome deter-
222 BACKWATER
mined cheerful woman with a thin pinched
reddish nose, an everlasting grey hat and a faded
ulster going on year after year ; two or three
common children she would never be able to
educate, with horribly over-developed characters.
It was rather less than the rent of their house.
" Of course, everything would depend on the
woman," she said wisely. After all a hundred
and fifty, with no doubt and anxiety about it
was a very wonderful thing to have. Probably
everybody was wasteful, buying the wrong things
and silly things, ornaments and brooches and
serviette rings ; . . . and not thinking things out
and not putting things down in books and not
really enjoying managing the hundred and fifty
and always wanting more. It ought to be quite
jolly being thoroughly common and living in a
small way and having common neighbours doing
the same.
" But you think if a man could find a young
lady who could agree about prices it would be
possible."
" Of course it would."
The houses on the eastern ridges of Brighton
came into sight in the distance and stood blazing
in the sunlight. There was a high half broken-
BACKWATER 223
down piece of fencing at the edge of the cliff to
their left a little ahead of them, splintered and
sunlit.
" How much a week is a hundred and fifty a
year ? "
" Three pound."
They gravitated towards the fence and stood
vaguely near it looking out across the unruffled
glare of the open sea. Why had she always
thought that the bright blue and gold ripples
seen from the beach and the promenade on jolly
weekdays was the best of the sea ? It was much
more lovely up there, the great expanse in its
quiet Sunday loneliness. You could see and think
about far-off things instead of just dreaming on
the drowsy hot sands, seeing nothing but the
rippling stripes of bright blue and bright gold.
She put her elbows on the upper bar. Mr.
Parrow did the same and they stood gazing out
across the open sea — Mr. Parrow was probably
wondering how long they were going to stand
silently there and thinking about his tea ... of
course ; let him stand — until Eve's voice sounded
near them in a dimpling laugh. They walked
home in a row, Eve and Mr. Green in the centre,
asking riddles one against the other. Every time
224 BACKWATER
Miriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made
some little responsive sound.
3
When Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow went back
to London at the end of the week Eve and Miriam
saw them off at the station. The four went off
boldly together down the flight of white stone
steps and made their way up into the town.
" Good-bye," called Miss Meldrum affection-
ately from the doorway. " I shall send both of
you a copy of the photograph."
" It's most generous of Miss Meldrum to go
to all that expense to give us a pleasant memento,"
said Mr. Green in his small ringing voice as
they all swung out into the clean bare roadway.
Miriam felt as if they were a bit of the photo-
graph walking up the hill, and went freely and
confidently along with a sense of being steered
and guided by Miss Meldrum. Why had she
had the group taken — so odd and bold of her,
having the photographer waiting in the garden
for them before they had finished breakfast, and
then laughing and talking and pushing them all
about as if they were her dearest friends.
It was whilst they were all out in the garden
BACKWATER 225
together, hanging about and being arranged,
with the photographer's voice like the voice
of a ventriloquist, knocking them coldly about,
that Gerald and Mr. Green had arranged about
the evening at the Crystal Palace on the last
day of Miriam's holiday. Miriam had held back
from the group, feeling nervous about her hair,
there had been no time to go to their rooms,
and had forced Eve to do the same. Harriett,
with a cheerful shiny face, was sitting on the
grass with Gerald in a line with the traveller
from Robinson and Cleaver's, and his thin-voiced
sheeny-haired mocking fiancee. They all looked
very small and bald. The fiancee kept clearing
her throat and rearranging her smart feet and
rattling her bangles. The traveller's heavy waxed
moustache was crooked and his slippery blue eyes
looked like the eyes of an old man. Next to him
were two newly arrived restively sneering young
men, one on either side of the saintly-faced
florist's assistant from Wigmore Street, who sat
in an easy pose with her skirt draping gracefully
over her feet and her long white chin propped
on her hands. She looked reproachfully about
amongst the laughing and talking and seemed to
feel that they were all in church.
Q
226 BACKWATER
Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald
Scotch chemists who went out every evening to
look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from
Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey
curls bunched in a cherry-coloured velvet band
seemed to say " death — death " to Miriam more
dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than
when she suddenly caught sight of them at table,
sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the squatters
on the grass. At the last moment she and Eve
were obliged to fall in at the back of the group
with Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow, and now the
four of them were walking in a row up the staring
white hill with the evening at the Crystal Palace
ahead of them in far-away London. It was quite
right. They were being like * other people.'
People met and made friends and arranged to
meet again. And then things happened. It was
quite right and ordinary and safe and warm. Of
course Eve and Mr. Green must meet again. He
was evidently quite determined that they should.
That was what was carrying them all so con-
fidently up the hill. Perhaps he would in the
end turn into another Gerald. When they
turned off into the unfamiliar Brighton streets
Eve and Mr. Green went on ahead. Walking
BACKWATER 227
quickly in step along the narrow pavement
amongst the unconcerned Brighton townspeople
they looked so small and pitiful.
4
The brilliant sunlight showed up all the shabbi-
ness of Mr. Green's London suit. He looked even
smalkr than he did in his holiday tweed. Miriam
wanted to call to them and stop them, stop Eve's
bright figure and her mop of thickly twisted brown
hair and ask her what she was dreaming of, leave
the two men there and go back, go out away
alone with Eve down to the edge of the sea.
She hesitated in her walking, not daring even to
glance at her companion who was trudging along
with bent head, carrying his large brown leather
bag. The street was crowded and she manoeuvred
so that everyone they met should pass between
them. Perhaps they would be able to reach the
station without being obliged to speak to each
other. Farrow. It was either quite a nice name
or pitiful; like a child trying to say sparrow.
Did he know that to other people it was a strange,
important sort of name, rounded like the padding
in the shoulders of his coat and his blunted
features ?
228 BACKWATER
Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single
person in the world. If he were run over and
killed on the way to the station, nobody would
ever have known anything about him. . . . People
did die like that . . . probably most people ; in a
minute, alone and unknown ; too late to speak.
Something was coming slowly down the middle
of the roadway from amongst the confusion of
the distant traffic ; an elephant — a large grey
elephant. Firmly delicately undisturbed by the
noise of the street, the huge crimson gold-braided
howdah it carried on its back, and the strange,
coloured things coming along behind it, the
thickening of people on the pavement and the
suddenly increased noise of the town, it came
stepping. It was wonderful. " Wise and beauti-
ful ! Wise and beautiful ! " cried a voice far
away in Miriam's brain. It's a circus said another
voice within her. . . . He doesn't know he's in
a circus. . . . She hurried forward to reach Eve.
Eve turned a flushed face. " I say ; it's a circus,"
said Miriam bitingly. The blare of a band broke
out farther up the street. People were jostled
against them by a clown who came bounding
and leaping his way along the crowded pavement
crying incoherent words with a thrilling blatter
BACKWATER 229
of laughter. The elephant was close upon them
alone in the road space cleared by its swinging
walk. ... If only everyone would be quiet they
could hear the soft padding of its feet. Slowly,
gently, modestly it went by followed by a crowd
of smaller things ; sad-eyed monkeys on horseback
in gold coatlets, sullen caged beasts on trolleys
drawn by beribboned unblinkered human-looking
horses, tall white horses pacing singly by, bearing
bobbing princesses and men in masks and cloaks.
5
Here and there in the long sunlit hours of the
holiday by the Brighton sea Miriam found the
far-away seaside holidays of her childhood.
Going out one afternoon with Eve and Miss
Stringer walking at Eve's side, listening to the
conversation of the two girls, she had felt when
they reached the deserted end of the esplanade
and proposed turning round and walking home,
an uncontrollable desire to be alone, and had left
them, impatiently, without a word of excuse
and gone on down the grey stone steps and out
among the deserted weed-grown sapphire-pooled
chalk hummocks at the foot of the cliffs. For a
while she was chased by little phrases from Miss
23o BACKWATER
Stringer's quiet talking — " if you want people to
be interested in you, you must be interested in
them " ; " you can get on with everybody if
you make up your mind to " — and by the memory
of her well-hung clothes and her quiet regular
features spoilt by the nose that Gerald said was
old-maidish, and her portmanteau full of finery,
unpacked on the first-floor landing outside the
tiny room she occupied — piles of underlinen
startlingly threaded with ribbons.
At the end of half an hour's thoughtless wander-
ing over the weed-grown rocks she found herself
sitting on a little patch of dry silt at the end of a
promontory of sea-smoothed hummocks with the
pools of bright blue-green fringed water all about
her watching the gentle rippling of the retreating
waves over the weedy lower levels. She seemed
long to have been listening and watching, her
mind was full of things she felt she would never
forget, the green-capped white faces of the cliffs,
a patch of wet sand dotted with stiffly waiting
seagulls, the more distant wavelets ink black and
golden pouring in over the distant hummocks,
the curious whispering ripples near her feet.
She must go back. Her mind slid out making a
strange half-familiar compact with all these
BACKWATER 231
things. She w?s theirs, she would remember
them all, always. They were not alone because
she was with them and knew them. She had
always known them she reflected, remembering
with a quick pang a long, unpermitted wander-
ing out over the cliff edge beyond Dawlish, the
sun shining on pinkish sandy scrub, the expression
of the bushes ; hurrying home with the big
rough spaniel that belonged to the house they
had hired. She must have been about six years
old. She had gone back with a secret, telling
them nothing of the sunlight or the bushes, only
of a strange lady, sitting on the jetty as she came
down over the sands, who had caught her in her
arms and horribly kissed her. She had forgotten
the lady and been so happy when she reached home
that no one had scolded her. And when they
questioned her it seemed that there was only the
lady to tell them about. Her mother had looked
at her and kissed her. And now she must go back
again, and say nothing. The strange promise, the
certainty she felt out here on the rocks must be
tak,en back to the Brighton front and the board-
ing-house. It would disappear as soon as she got
back. Here on the Brighton rocks it was not so
strong as it had been in Dawlish. And it would
232 BACKWATER
disappear more completely. There had been
during the intervening years holidays with Sarah
and Eve and Harriett in seaside lodgings, over
which the curious conviction that possessed her
now had spread like a filmy veil. But now it
would hardly ever come ; there were always
people talking, the strangers one worked for, or
the hard new people like Miss Stringer, people who
had a number of things they were always saying.
She tried to remember when the strange in-
dependent joy had begun and thought she could
trace it back to a morning in the garden at Bab-
ington, the first thing she could remember, when
she had found herself toddling alone along the
garden path between beds of flowers almost on a
level with her head and blazing in the sunlight.
Bees with large bodies were sailing heavily across
the path from bed to bed, passing close by her
head and making a loud humming in the air.
She could see the flowers distinctly as she walked
quickly back through the afternoon throng on
the esplanade ; they were sweet williams and
" everlasting " flowers, the sweet williams smell-
ing very strongly sweet in her nostrils, and one
sheeny brown everlasting flower that she had
touched with her nose, smelling like hot paper.
BACKWATER 233
6
She wanted to speak to someone of these
things. Until she could speak to someone about
them she must always be alone. Always quite
alone, she thought, looking out as she walked
across the busy stretch of sea between the two
piers, dotted with pleasure boats. It would be
impossible to speak to anyone about them unless
one felt perfectly sure that the other person
felt about them in the same way and knew that
they were more real than anything else in the
world, knew that everything else was a fuss about
nothing. But everybody else seemed to be
really interested in the fuss. That was the extra-
ordinary thing. Miss Meldrum presiding at the
boarding-house table with her white padded hair
and her white face and bright steady brown eyes,
listening to everybody and making jokes with
everybody and keeping things going, sometimes
looked as if she knew it was all a pretence, but if
you spoke to her she would think you were talking
about religion and would kiss you. She had
already kissed Miriam once — for playing accom-
paniments to the hymns on a Sunday evening,
and made her feel as if there were some sly secret
234 BACKWATER
between them. If she played the hymns again
she would play them stonily . . . mother would
look as she always did if you suddenly began to
talk anything about things in general as if you
were going to make some confession she had been
waiting for all her life. Now, with the operation
and all the uncertainty ahead she would probably
cry. She would want to explain in some way, as
she had done one day long ago ; how dreadful it
had been . , . mother, I never feel tired, not
really tired, and however I behave I always feel
frightfully happy inside . . . my blessed chick, it's
your splendid health — and the influence of the
Holy Spirit. . . . But I hate everybody. . . .
What foolish nonsense. You mustn't think such
things. You will make yourself unpopular. . . .
She must keep her secret to herself. This
Brighton life crushed it back more than anything
there had been in Germany or at Banbury Park.
In Germany she had found it again and again,
and at Banbury Park, though it could never come
out and surround her, it was never far off. It
lurked just beyond the poplars in the park, at
the end of the little empty garden at twilight,
amongst the books in the tightly packed book-
case. It was here, too, in and out the sunlit
BACKWATER 235
days. As one opened the door of the large,
sparely furnished breakfast-room it shone for a
moment in the light pouring over the table full
of seated forms ; it haunted the glittering scat-
tered sand round about the little blank platform
where the black and white minstrels stood singing
in front of their harmonium, and poured out
across the blaze of blue and gold sea ripples, when
the town band played Anitra's Dance or the
moon song from the Mikado ; it lay all along the
deserted promenade and roadway as you went
home to lunch, and at night it spoke in the flump
flump of the invisible sea against the lower wood-
work of the pier pavilion.
7
But every day at breakfast over the eggs,
bacon and tomatoes — knowing voices began their
day's talking, the weary round of words and ugly
laughter went steadily on, narrow horrible sounds
that made you feel conscious of the insides of
people's throats and the backs of their noses —
as if they were not properly formed. The talk
was like a silly sort of battle. . . . Innuendo,
Miriam would say to herself, feeling that the word
was too beautiful for what she wanted to express ;
236 BACKWATER
double entendre was also unsatisfactory. These
people were all enemies pretending to be friends.
Why did they pretend ? Why not keep quiet ?
Or all sing between their eating, different songs,
it would not matter. She and Eve and Harriett
and Gerald did sometimes hum the refrains of
the nigger minstrels' songs, or one of them would
hum a scrap of a solo and all three sing the chorus.
Then people were quiet, listening and smiling
their evil smiles and Miss Meldrum was delighted.
It seemed improper and half-hearted as no one
else joined in ; but after the first few days the
four of them always sang between the courses
at dinner. Gerald did not seem to mind the
chaffy talk and the vulgar jokes, and would gener-
ally join in ; and he said strange disturbing things
about the boarders, as if he knew all about them.
And he and Harriett talked to the niggers too
and found out about them. It spoilt them when
one knew that they belonged to small London
musical halls, and had wives and families and
illnesses and trouble. Gerald and Harriett did
not seem to mind this. They did not seem to
mind anything out of doors. They were free
and hard and contemptuous of everyone except
the niggers and a few very stylish-looking people
BACKWATER 237
who sailed along and took no notice of anybody.
Gerald said extraordinary, disturbing things about
the girls on the esplanade. Miriam and Eve were
interested in some of the young men they saw.
They talked about them and looked out for them.
Sometimes they exchanged glances with them.
Were she and Eve also " on show " ; waiting to
be given " half an inch " ; would she or Eve be
" perfectly awful in the dark " ? Did the young
men they specially favoured with their notice say
things about them ? When these thoughts buzzed
about in Miriam's brain she wanted to take a
broom and sweep everybody into the sea. . . .
She discovered that a single steady unexpected
glance, meeting her own, from a man who had
the right kind of bearing — something right about
the set of the shoulders — could disperse all the
vague trouble she felt at the perpetual spectacle
of the strolling crowds, the stiffly waiting many-
eyed houses, the strange stupid bathing-machines,
and send her gaily forward in a glad world where
there was no need to be alone in order to be
happy. A second encounter was sad, shameful,
ridiculous ; the man became absurd and lost his
dignity ; the joyous sense of looking through him
right out and away to an endless perspective, of
238 BACKWATER
being told that the endlessness was there and
felling that the endlessness was there had gone ;
the eyes were eyes, solid and mocking and help-
less— to be avoided in future ; and when they had
gone, the sunset or the curious quivering line
along the horizon were no longer gateways, but
hard barriers, until by some chance one was tran-
quilly alone again — when the horizon would
beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across
the sea at sunset call to your feet until they
tingled and ached.
Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the
sea and of the evenings and mornings must be
given up. It would fade more and more. What
was life ? Either playing a part all the time in
order to be amongst people in the warm or stand-
ing alone with the strange true real feeling — alone
with a sort of edge of reality on everything ;
even on quite ugly common things — cheap board-
ing-houses face towels and blistered window
frames.
8
Since Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow had left,
they had given up going to pier entertainments
and had spent most of their time sitting in a
close row and talking together, in the intervals
BACKWATER 239
of the black and white minstrel concerts and the
performances of the town band. They had drifted
into this way of spending their time ; there was
never any discussion or alteration of the day's
programme. It worked like a charm and there
was no sign of the breaking of the charm. Miriam
was sometimes half afraid just as they settled
themselves down that someone, probably Gerald
or Eve might say ' Funny, isn't it, how well we
four get on,' and that strange power that held
them together and kept everything away would
be broken before the holiday came to an end.
But no one did and they went on sitting together
in the morning on the hot sand — the moving
living glinting sand that took the sting as soon as
you touched it with your hand out of everything
there might be in the latest letter from home —
hearing the niggers from ten to eleven, bathing
from eleven to twelve, sitting afterwards fresh
and tingling and drowsy in canopied chairs near
the band until dinner-time, prowling and paddling
in the afternoon and ranging themselves again in
chairs for the evening.
They said nothing until almost the end of
their time about the passage of the days ; but
they looked at each other, each time they settled
240 BACKWATER
down, with conspiring smiles and then sat, side
by side, less visible to each other than the great
sunlit sea or the great clean salt darkness, stranded
in a row with four easy idle laughing commenting
voices, away alone and safe in the gaiety of the
strong forgetful air — talking things over. The
far-away troublesome crooked things, all cramped
and painful and puzzling came out one by one
and were shaken and tossed away along the clean
wind. And there was so much for Gerald to hear.
He wanted to hear everything — any little thing
— "Just like a girl; it's awfully jolly for Harry
he's like that. She'll never be lonely," agreed
Miriam and Eve privately. ..." He's a per-
fect dear." One night towards the end of their
time they talked of the future. It had begun to
press on them. There seemed no more time for
brooding even over Eve's fascinating little pictures
of life in the big country house, or Miriam's stories
and legends of Germany — she said very little
about Banbury Park fearing the amazement and
disgust of the trio if anything of the reality of
North London should reach them through her
talk and guessing the impossibility of their realis-
ing the Pernes — or Gerald's rich memories of the
opulence of his early home life, an atmosphere of
BACKWATER 241
spending and operas and banquets and receptions
and distinguished people. During the evening,
in a silent interval, just as the band was tuning
up to begin its last tune, Gerald had said with
quiet emphasis, " Well, anyhow, girls, you mark
my words the old man won't make any more
money. Not another penny. You may as well
make up your minds to that." Then the band
had broken into their favourite Hungarian dance.
Three of them sat blissfully back in their deck
chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably
propped forward, eagerly thinking. The music
rushed on, she saw dancers shining before her
in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shout-
ing, their feet scarcely touching the earth and a
wild light darted about them as they shouted
and leapt. " Set Mirry up in some sort of
business," quoted her mind from one of Gerald's
recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not
want that. But the dancing forms told her of
the absurdity of going back without protest to
the long aching days of teaching in the little
school amongst those dreadful voices which were
going, whatever she did for them, to be dreadful
all their lives. Nothing she could do would make
any difference to them. They did not want her.
242 BACKWATER
They were quite happy. Her feelings and
thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire
for space and beautiful things and music and
quietude would never be their desire. Reverence
for things — had she reverence? She felt she
must have because she knew they had not ; even
the old people ; only superstition . . . North
London would always be North London, hard,
strong, sneering, money-making, noisy and
trammy. Perhaps the difference between the
north and the south and her own south-west of
London was like the difference between the north
and the south of England. . . . Green's " History
of the English People" . . . spinning- Jennys began
in the Danish north, hard and cold, with later
sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace.
North London meant twenty pounds a year and
the need for resignation and determination every
day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge
garden and new books and music ... a book
called " Music and Morals " and interesting
people staying in the house. And Eve had not
been to Germany and could not talk French.
" You are an idiot to go on doing it. it's wrong.
Lazy," laughed the dancers crowding and fling-
ing all round her. " I ought," she responded
BACKWATER 243
defiantly, " to stay on and make myself into a
certificated teacher." " Certificated ? " they
screamed wildly sweeping before her in strange
lines of light. " If you do you will be like Miss
Cramp. Certificates — little conceited papers,
and you dead. Certificates would finish you off
— Kill— Kill—Kill— Kill— Kill!!" Bang. The
band stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair
wounding her flesh. The trail of the dancers
flickered away across the sea and her brain was
busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne : " and
therefore I am obliged, however reluctantly, to
take this step, as it is absolutely necessary for me
to earn a larger salary at once."
CHAPTER IX
THE Henderson party found Mr. Green and
Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim plank-
floored corridor leading from the station to the
main building of the Crystal Palace. When the
quiet greetings were over and they had arranged
a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case
any of the party should be lost, they all tramped
on up the resounding corridor. Miriam found
herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow.
They were going on up the corridor, through the
Palace and out into the summer evening. They
had all come to go out into the summer evening
and see the fireworks. All but she had come
meaning to get quite near to the ' set pieces '
and to look at them. She had not said anything
about meaning to get as far away from the fire-
works as possible. She had been trusting to Mr.
Parrow for that. Now that she was with him
she felt that perhaps it was not quite fair. He
244
BACKWATER 245
had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would
be disappointed. She would be obliged to tell
him presently, when they got out into the night.
They were all tramping quickly up along the
echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking,
just feet, tramp, tramp on the planking, rather
quickly. It was like the sound of workmen's feet
on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house.
The corridor was like something in the Hospital
for Incurables . . . that strange old woman sitting
in the hall with bent head laughing over her
crochet, and Miss Garrett whom they had come
to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in a
ward, with a pleated mob cap all over the top of
her head and half-way down her forehead, sitting
back against large square pillows with her hands
clasped on the neat bed-clothes and a " sweet,
patient " look on her face, coughing gently and
spitting, spitting herself to death . . . rushing
away out of the ward to wait for mother down-
stairs in the hall with the curious smells and the
dreadful old woman. . . . What was it, chick ?
. . . Sick, mother, I felt sick, I couldn't stay.
It was rage ; rage with that dreadful old woman.
People probably told her she was patient and
sweet, and she had got that trick of putting her
246 BACKWATER
head on one side. She was not sweet. She was
one of the worst of those dreadful people who
would always make people believe in a particular
way, all the time. She had a great big frame.
If she had done anything but sit as she sat, in
that particular way, one could have stayed.
They were all standing looking at some wonder-
ful sort of clock, a calendar-clock — * a triumph
of ingenuity,' said Mr. Green's bright reedy
voice. The building had opened out and rushed
up, people were passing to and fro. " We don't
want to stay inside ; let's go out," said Gerald.
The group broke into couples again and passed
on. Miriam found herself with Mr. Parrow once
more. Of course she would be with him all the
evening. She must tell him at once about the
fireworks. She ought not to have come, if she
did not mean to see the fireworks. It was mean
and feeble to cheat him out of his evening.
Why had she come ; to wander about with him,
not seeing the fireworks. What an idiotic and
abominable thing. Now that she was here at his
side it was quite clear that she must endure the
fireworks. Anything else would be like asking
him to wander about with her alone. She did
not want to wander about with him alone. She
BACKWATER 247
took an opportunity of joining Eve for a moment.
They had just walked through a winter garden
and were standing at the door of a concert room,
all quite silent and looking very shy. " Eve,"
she said hurriedly in a low tone, " d'you want
to see the beastly fireworks ? "
" Beastly ? Oh, of course, I do," said Eve in a
rather loud embarrassed tone. How dreadfully
self-conscious they all were. Somebody seemed to
be speaking. " What sticks my family are — I had
no idea," muttered Miriam furiously into Eve's
face. Eve's eyes filled with tears, but she stood
perfectly still, saying nothing. Miriam wheeled
round and stared into the empty concert room.
It was filled with a faint bluish light and beyond
the rows of waiting chairs and the empty platform
a huge organ stood piled up towards the roof.
The party were moving on. What a queer
place the Crystal Palace is ... what a perfectly
horrible place for a concert . . . pianissimo pas-
sages and those feet on those boards tramping
about outside. . . . What a silly muddle. Mr.
Parrow was waiting fof her to join the others.
They straggled along past booths ard stalls,
meeting groups of people, silent and lost like
themselves. Now they were passing some kind
248 BACKWATER
of stonework things, reliefs, antique, roped off
like the seats in a church. Just in front of them
a short man holding the red cord in his hands
was looking at a group with some ladies. " Why"
he said suddenly in a loud cheerful voice, stretch-
ing an arm out across the rope and pointing to
one of the reliefs, " it's Auntie and Grandma ! "
Miriam stared at him as they passed, he was so
short, shorter than any of the ladies he was with.
" It's the only way to see these things," he said
in the same loud harsh cheerful voice. Miriam
laughed aloud. What a clever man.
" Do you like statues ? " said Mr. Parrow in a
low gentle tone.
" I don't know anything about them," said
Miriam.
" I can't bear fireworks," she said hurriedly.
They were in the open at last. In the deepen-
ing twilight many people were going to and fro.
In the distance soft dark masses of trees stood
out against the sky in every direction. Not far
away the ghostly frames of the set pieces reared
against the sky made the open evening seem as
prison-like as the enclosure they had just left.
Round about the scaffolding of these pieces dense
little crowds were collecting.
BACKWATER 249
" Don't you want to see the fireworks ? "
" I want to get away from them."
" All right, we'll get lost at once."
" It isn't," she explained a little breathlessly,
in relief, suddenly respecting him, allowing him
to thread a way for her through the increasing
crowd towards the open evening, " that I don't
want to see the fireworks, but I simply can't
stand the noise."
" I see," laughed Mr. Parrow gently. They
were making towards the open evening along a
narrow gravel pathway, like a garden pathway.
Miriam hurried a little, fearing that the fireworks
might begin before they got to a safe distance.
" I never have been able to stand a sudden
noise. It's torture to me to walk along a plat-
form where a train may suddenly shriek."
" I see. You're afraid of the noise."
" It isn't fear — I can't describe it. It's agony.
It's like pain. But much much worse than pain.
It's — it's — annihilating."
" I see ; that's very peculiar."
Their long pathway was leading them towards
a sweet-scented density, dim bowers and leafy
arches appeared just ahead.
" It was much worse even than it is now when
250 BACKWATER
I was a little thing. When we went to the sea-
side I used to sit in the train nearly dead until
it had screamed and started. And there was a
teacher who sneezed — a noise like a hard scream
— at school. She used to go on sneezing — twenty
times or so. I was only six and I dreaded going
to school just for that. Once I cried and they
took me out of the room. I've never told anyone.
Nobody knows."
" You've told me."
" Yes."
" It's very interesting. You shan't go any-
where near the fireworks."
A large rosy flare, wavering steadily against
the distant trees showed up for a moment the
shapes and traceries of climbing plants surround-
ing their retreat. A moment afterwards with a
dull boom a group of white stars shot up into
the air and hovered, melting one by one as the
crowd below moaned and crackled its applause.
Miriam laughed abruptly. " That's jolly.
How clever people are. But it's much better
up here. It's like not being too near at the
theatre."
BACKWATER 251
" I think we've got the best view certainly."
" But we shall miss the set pieces."
' The people down there won't see the rosary."
" What's that black thing on our left down
there ? "
4 That's the toboggan run. We ought to go
on that."
" What is it like ? "
r< It's -fine ; you just rush down. We must
try it."
" Not for worlds."
Mr. Parrow laughed. " Oh you must try the
toboggan ; there's no noise about that."
" I really couldn't."
" Really ? "
" Absolutely. I mean it. Nothing under the
sun would induce me to go on a toboggan."
They sat watching the fireworks until they were
tired of the whistling rockets, showers of stars
and golden rain, the flaming bolts that shot up
from the Battle of the Nile, the fizzlings and fire
spurtings of the set pieces and the recurrent
moanings and faint patterings of applause from
the crowd.
:c I wish they'd do some more coloured flares
of light up the trees like they did at first. It
252 BACKWATER
was beautiful — more real than these things.
' Feu d'artifice ' artificial fire — all these noisy
things. Why do people always like a noise ?
Men. All the things men have invented, trains
and canons and things make a frightful noise."
" The toboggan's not noisy. Come and try
the toboggan."
" Oh no."
« Well— there's the lake down there. We
might have a boat."
" Do you know how to manage a boat ? "
" I've been on once or twice ; if you like to
try I'll manage."
" No ; it's too dark." What a plucky man.
But the water looked cold. And perhaps he would
be really stupid.
A solitary uniformed man was yawning and
whistling at the top of the deserted toboggan
run. The faint light of a lamp fell upon the
square platform and the little sled standing in
place at the top of a shiny slope which shot steeply
down into blackness.
" We'd better get on," said Miriam trembling.
" Well, you're very graceful at giving in," re-
marked Mr. Parrow, handing her into the sled and
settling with the man.
BACKWATER 253
He got that sentence out of a book, thought
Miriam wildly as she heard the man behind them
say " Ready ? Off you go ! " . . . Out of a
book a book a book — Oh — ooooh — how absolutely
glorious, she yelled as they shot down through
the darkness. 0£, she squealed into the face
laughing and talking beside her. She turned
away, shouting, for the final rush, they were
flying— involuntarily her hand flung out, they
were tearing headlong into absolute darkness, and
was met and firmly clasped. They shot slacken-
ing up a short incline and stood up still hand in
hand, laughing incoherently.
" Let's walk back and try again," said Mr.
Parrow.
" Oh no ; I enjoyed it most frightfully ; but
we mustn't go again. Besides, it must be fear-
fully late."
She pulled at her hand. The man was too near
and too big. His hand was not a bit uncertain
like his speech, and for a moment she was glad
that she pulled in vain. " Very well," said Mr.
Parrow, " but we must find our way off the grass
and strike the pathway." Drawing her gently
along, he peered about for the track. " Let me
go," said her hand dragging gently at his. " No "
254 BACKWATER
said the firm enclosure, tightening " not yet."
What does it matter ? flashed her mind. Why
should I be such a prude ? The hand gave her
confidence. It was firm and strong and perfectly
serious. It was a hand like her own hand and
comfortingly strange and different. Gently and
slowly he guided her over the dewy grass. The
air that had rushed so wildly by them a few
minutes ago was still and calm and friendly ;
the distant crowd harmless and insignificant.
The fireworks were over. The pathway they had
missed appeared under their feet and down it
they walked soberly, well apart, but still hand in
hand until they reached the borders of the dis-
persing crowd.
CHAPTER X
WHEN Miriam sat talking everything over
with the Pernes at supper, on the first
night of the term, detached for ever from the
things that engrossed them, the school-work,
Julia Doyle's future, the peculiarities of the
visiting teachers, the problem of the " unnatural
infatuation " of two of the boarders with each
other, the pros and cons of a revolutionary plan
for taking the girls in parties to the principal
London museums, she made the most of her
triumphant assertion that she had absolutely
nothing in view. She found herself decorously
waiting, armed at all points, through the silent
interval while the Pernes took in the facts of her
adventurous renunciation. She knew at once
that she would have to be desperately determined.
. . . But after all they could not do anything
with her.
Sitting there, in the Perne boat, still taking an
oar and determined to fling herself into the sea
255
256 BACKWATER
... she ought not to have told them she was
leaving them just desperately, without anything
else in prospect ; because they were so good, not
like employers. They would all feel for her. It
was just like speaking roughly at home. Well, it
was done. She glanced about. Miss Haddie,
across the table behind her habitual bowl of
bread and milk had a face — the face of a child
surprised by injustice. ' I was right — I was
right,' Miriam gasped to herself as the light
flowed in. * I'm escaping — just in time. . . .
Emotional tyranny. . . . What a good expression.
. . . that's the secret of Miss Haddie. It was
awful. She's lost me. I'm free. Emotional
tyranny.' . . . ' My hat, Mirry, you're beyond
me. How much do you charge for that one.
Say it again,' she seemed to hear Gerald's
friendly voice. Go away Gerald. True. True.
All the truth and meaning of her friendship with
Miss Haddie in one single flash. How fearfully
interesting life was. Miss Haddie wrestling with
her, fighting for her soul ; praying for her, almost
driving her to the early service and always ready
to quiver over her afterwards and to ask her if
she had been happy. . . . And now angry be-
cause she was escaping.
BACKWATER 257
She appealed to Miss Deborah and met a
flash of her beautiful soft piercing eyes. Her
delicate features quivered and wrinkled almost
to a smile. But Miss Deborah was afraid of Miss
Jenny who was already thinking and embarking
on little sounds. Miriam got away for a moment
in a tumult, with Miss Deborah. ' Oh,' she
shouted to her in the depths of her heart, 4 you
are heavenly young. You know. Life's like
Robinson Crusoe. Your god's a great big Robin-
son Crusoe. You know that anything may happen
any minute. And it's all right. She laughed
and shook staring at the salt-cellar and then
across at Miss Haddie whose eyes were full of
dark fear. Miss Haddie was alone and outraged.
4 She thinks I'm a fraud besides being vulgar
. . . life goes on and she'll wonder and wonder
about me puzzled and alone.' . . . She smiled
at her her broadest, happiest, home smile, one
she had never yet reached at B anbury Park.
Flushing scarlet Miss Haddie smiled in return.
" Eh — my dear girl," Miss Jenny was saying
diffidently at her side, " isn't it a little unwise —
very unwise — under the circumstances — with the
difficulties — well, in fact with all ye've just told
us — have ye thought ? " When Miriam reached
258 BACKWATER
her broad smile Miss Jenny stopped and suddenly
chuckled. " My dear Miriam ! I don't know.
I suppose we don't know ye. I suppose we
haven't really known ye as ye are. But come, have
ye thought it out ? No, ye haven't," she ended
gravely, looking along the table and flicking with
her forefinger the end of her little red nose.
Miriam glanced at her profile and her insecure
disorderly bunch of hair. Miss Jenny was for-
midable. She would recommend certificates.
Her eye wavered towards Miss Deborah.
" My dear Jenny," said Miss Deborah promptly,
" Miriam is not a child. She must do as she
thinks best."
" But don't ye see my point, my dear De-
borah ? I don't say she's a child. She's a mad-
cap. That's it." She paused. " Of course I
daresay she'll fall on her feet. Ye're a most
extraordinary gel. I don't know. Of course ye
can come back — or stay here in yer holidays. Ye
know that, my dear," she concluded, suddenly
softening her sharp little voice.
" I don't want to go," cried Miriam with tear-
filled eyes. They were one person in the grip of
a decision. Miss Haddie sat up and moved her
elbows about. All four pairs of eyes held tears.
BACKWATER 259
" My dear — I wish we could give ye more,
Miriam," murmured Miss Jenny ; " we don't
want to lose ye, ye've pulled the lower school
together in a remarkable way " ; Miss Deborah
was drawing little breaths of protest at this
descent into gross detail ; " the children are
interested. We hear that from the parents. We
shall be able to give ye excellent testimonials."
" Oh, I don't care about that," responded
Miriam desperately. ' Fancy — Great Scott —
parents — behind all my sore throats — I've never
heard about that. It's all coming out now,' she
thought.
" Well — my dear — now " began Miss
Jenny hesitatingly. Feeling herself slipping,
Miriam clung harshly to her determination and
drew herself up to offer the set of the pretty
blouse Gerald and Harriett had bought her in
Brighton as a seal on her irrevocable decision to
break with Banbury Park. It was a delicate sheeny
green silk, with soft tuckers.
" What steps have ye taken ? " asked Miss Jenny
in a quizzical business-like tone.
" It's very kind of you," said Miriam formally,
and went on to hint vaguely and convincingly at
the existence of some place in a family in the
260 BACKWATER
country that would be sure to fall to her lot
through the many friends to whom Eve had
written on her behalf, turning away from the
feast towards the freedom of the untenanted
part of the room. The sitting had to be brought
to an end. ... In a moment she would be utterly
routed. . . . Her lame statements were the end
of the struggle. She knew she was demonstrating
in her feeble broken tones a sort of blind strength
they knew nothing of and that they would leave
it at that, whatever they thought, if only there
were no more talk.
2
When they had left the room and Flora came
in for the supper things, instead of sitting as
usual at the far end of the table pretending to
read, she stood planted on the hearthrug watching
her. Flora's hands were small and pale and
serenely despairing like her face. She cleared the
table quietly. She had nothing to hope for.
She did not know she had nothing to hope for.
Whatever happened she would go quietly on
doing things ... in the twilight ... on a sort of
edge. People would die. Perhaps people had
already died in her family. But she would always
be the same. One day she would die, perhaps of
BACKWATER 261
something hard and slow and painful with that
small yellowish constitution.
She would not be able to go on looking serene
and despairing with people round her bed helping
her. When she died she would wait quietly with
nothing to do, blind and wondering. Death
would take her into a great festival — things for her
for herself. She would not believe it and would
put up her hands to keep it off. But it would
be all round her in great laughter, like the deep
roaring and crying of a flood. Then she would
cry like a child.
Why was it that for some people, for herself,
life could be happy now. It was possible now
to hear things laugh just by setting your teeth
and doing things ; breaking into things, chucking
things about, refusing to be held. It made even
the dreadful past seem wonderful. All the days
here, the awful days, each one awful and hateful
and painful.
Flora had gathered up her tray and disappeared,
quietly closing the door. But Flora had known
and somehow shared her triumph, felt her posi-
tion in the school as she stood planted and happy
in the middle of the Femes' hearthrug.
262 BACKWATER
3
" An island is a piece of land entirely sur-
rounded by water."
Miriam kept automatically repeating these
words to herself as the newly returned children
clung about her the next morning in the school-
room. It was a morning of heavy wind and rain
and the schoolroom was dark, and chilly with
its summer-screened fireplace. The children
seemed to her for the first time small and
pathetic. She was deserting them. After fifteen
months of strange intimacy she was going away
for ever.
During the usual routine days the little girls
always seemed large and formidable. She was
quite sure they were not so to the other teachers,
and she hesitated when she thought over this
difference, between the explanation which ac-
counted for their size and redoubtableness by
her own feebleness and the one to which she
inclined when she felt her success as a teacher.
She had discovered that the best plan was to
stand side by side with the children in face of
the things they had to learn, treating them as
equals and fellow-adventurers, giving explana-
BACKWATER 263
tions when these were necessary, as if they were
obvious and might have been discovered by the
children themselves, never as if they were pos-
sessions of her own, to be imparted, never claim-
ing a knowledge superior to their own. ' The
business of the teacher is to make the children
independent, to get them to think for them-
selves, and that's much more important than
whether they get to know facts,' she would say
irrelevantly to the Pernes whenever the question
of teaching came up. She bitterly resented their
vision of children as malleable subordinates. And
there were many moments when she seemed to
be silently exchanging this determination of hers
with her pupils. Good or bad, she knew it was
the secret of her influence with them, and so
long as she was faithful to it both she and they
enjoyed their hours together. Very often she
was tired, feeble with fatigue and scamping all
opportunities ; this too they understood and
never took advantage of her. One or two of them
would even when she failed try to keep things
going on her own method. All this was sheer
happiness to her, the bread and wine of her days.
But now and again, perhaps during the mid-
morning recess, this impersonal relationship gave
264 BACKWATER
way and the children clung fawning all round her,
passionately competing for nearness, touching and
clinging and snatching for kisses. There was no
thought or uprightness or laughter then, their
hands were quick and eloquent and their eyes
wide and deeply smiling with those strange
women's smiles. Sometimes she could respond
in kind, answering to their smiles and caresses,
making gentle foolish sounds and feeling their
passion rise to a frenzy of adoration. The little
deprecating consoling sounds that they made as
they clung told her that if she chose steadily to
remain always gentle and deprecating and con-
soling and reproachful she could dominate them
as persons and extort in the long run a complete
personal obedience to herself, so that they would
do their work for her sake and live by and through
her, adoring her — as a goddess — and hating her.
Even as they fawned she knew they were fighting
between their aching desire for a perfection of
tenderness in her and their fear lest she should
fulfil the desire. She was always tempted for an
instant to yield and fling herself irrevocably into
the abyss, letting the children go on one by one
into the upper school, carrying as her gift only a
passionate memory such as she herself had for
BACKWATER 265
one of her nursemaids ; leaving her downstairs
with an endless succession of new loves, different,
but always the same. She would become like a
kind of nun, making a bare subsistence, but so
beloved always, so quivering and tender and re-
sponsive that human love would never fail her,
and when strength failed there would be hands
held out to shelter her decline. But the vision
never held her for more than a moment. There
was something in the thought of such pure per-
sonal sentiment that gave her a feeling of treachery
towards the children. Mentally she flung them
out and off, made them stand upright and es-
tranged. She could not give them personal love.
She did not want to ; nor to be entangled with
them. They were going to grow up into North
London women, most of them loudly scorning
everything that was not materially profitable ;
these would remember her with pity — amuse-
ment. A few would escape. These would remem-
ber her at strange moments that were coming
for them, moments when they would recognise
the beauty of things like ' the Psalm of Life '
that she had induced them to memorise without
understanding it.
This morning a sense of their softness and
266 BACKWATER
helplessness went to her heart. She had taught
them so little. But she had forced them to be
impersonal. Almost savagely she had done that.
She had never taken them by a trick. . . .
4
And now they were going to be Julia's children.
Julia would teach them — alone there in the
room with them, filling the room for them — in
her own way. . . .
There would be no more talk about general
ideas. . . .
She would have to keep on the " object "
lessons, because the Pernes had been so pleased
with the idea and the children had liked them.
There would still be those moments, with balls
for the solar system and a candle for the sun, and
the blinds down. But there would not be any-
thing like that instant when all the eyes round
the table did nothing but watch the movement
of a shadow on a ball . . . the relief afterwards,
the happiness and the moment of intense love
in the room — never to be forgotten, all of them
knowing each other, all their differences gone
away, even the clever watchful eyes of the
cheating little Jewess, real and unconscious for a
BACKWATER 267
moment. Julia would be watching the children
as much as the shadow, and the children would
never quite forget Julia. She would get to know
a great deal about the children, but there would
be no reverence for big cold outside things. She
would teach them to be kind. " Little dorlings."
She thought all children were darlings and talked
to them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring
way. If one or two were not, it was the fault
of the way they were treated, something in the
* English ' way of dealing with them. Nearly
all the elder girls she disapproved of, they were
no longer children — they were English. She was
full of contempt and indignant laughter for them,
and of pity for the ' wee things ' who were
growing up. Yet she got on with them all and
had the secret of managing them without letting
them see her feelings.
There was something specially bad in the Eng-
lish way of bringing up children. Not the
{ education ' exactly, but something else, some-
thing in the way they were treated. Something
in the way they were brought up made English
women so awful — with their smiles. Julia did
not smile or smirk. She laughed a great deal,
often to tears. And she would often suddenly
268 BACKWATER
beam. It was like a light coming from under her
thick white skin. Was Julia the answer to the
awfulness of Englishwomen ? If, as Julia said,
the children were all right and only the girls and
grown-ups awful, it must be something in the
way the children were treated.
5
Yet Julia was not impersonal.
Miss Deborah, . . . teaching the whole school
to be i good ' in the Fairchild way ; with her
beautiful quivering nodding black head held high
— blinking, and not looking at the girls separately
— in a grave voice, full of Scripture history, but
broken all the time, quivering with laughter and
shoutings which she never uttered . . . hilarious,
. . . she taught a system of things she had been
brought up in. But all the same, she rushed along
sweeping the girls with her . . . and the girls
believed her. If I taught her system I should
have false lips and the girls would not believe
me. If ever anyone had the courage to tell her
of any dreadful thing, she would weep it all
away ; and the person would begin all over again
certainly, as much as possible in the Fairchild
way . . . again and again until they died. Sup-
BACKWATER 269
posing a murderer came and sat down in the
hall ? Supposing Miss Deborah had been brought
up as a Thug — killing people from behind ? . . .
Miss Jenny, exasperatedly trying to wake all
the girls up to the importance of public life,
sitting round in their blouses and skirts, half-
amused and sometimes trying to argue, because
the tone of Miss Jenny's voice made them sorry
for the other side. Politics, politics, reading
history and the newspapers, the importance of
history if you wanted to have any understanding
of your own times. To come into the room to
take the class after Miss Jenny always meant
rinding her stating and protesting and tapping
the end of her nose, and the air hot and excited,
and the girls in some sort of state of excitement
which could only be got over by being very quiet
and pretending not to notice them except to be
very surprised if there were any disturbance.
Miss Haddie, in horror of their badness, teach-
ing them to master little set tasks because it was
shocking to be an idler ; loving the sinner but
hating the sin much more, with a sort of horror
like a girl, a horror in her eyes that was the same
as the horror of insects, fearing God who was so
close in the room, gloomily, all the time — wanting
270 BACKWATER
to teach them all to fawn on Christ. Christ
would make everything all right if you made up
to him. " Faint not nor fear, his arms are near.
He faileth not and thou art dear." Awful . . .
And then Julia, making the children love her,
herself, as a person. They would all love her in
time. Even Burra after her first grief would
fling herself upon Julia . . . Gertie would not
though, ever. Cold, quiet little Gertie, the
doctor's daughter. She would make no response
however much she were kissed and called a little
darling. Gertie even as a child was the English
thing that Julia disliked. Julia, with all her
success was not the answer to the problem of why
Englishwomen were abominable. She left out
so much. " Julia, you know, I think things are
more important than people. Much more.
People, if you let them for one single instant,
grin and pounce upon you and try to make you
forget things. But they're there all the time and
you have to go back to them," and Julia laughing
suddenly aloud, " Ah — you're a duck — a tonic."
And everyone was a liftle afraid of Julia, the
children, the boarders whom she managed so
high-handedly with her laughfer, even the Pernes.
BACKWATER 271
6
Perhaps Julia's ' personal ' way and the English
' personal ' way were somehow both wrong and
horrid . . . girls, schools were horrid, bound
to be horrid, sly, mean, somehow tricky and
poisonous. It was a hopeless problem. The
English sentimental way was wrong, the way of
Englishwomen with children — it made them
grow up with those treacherous smiles.
The scientific and ' aesthetic ' way, the way of
the Putney school — ah, blessed escape ! . . . But
it left nearly all the girls untouched.
Julia's sentimental way was better than the
English sentimental way ; its smiles had tears and
laughter too, they were not so hypocritical.
But it was wrong. It was the strongest thing
though in the Wordsworth House school.
7
Julia was not happy. She dreamed fearful
dreams. . . . Why did she speak of them as if
they were something that no one in this English
world into which she had come would under-
stand ? She had her strange nights all to herself
there across the landing ; either lying awake or
272 BACKWATER
sleeping and moaning all the time. The girls
in her room slept like rocks and did not know
that she moaned. They knew she had night-
mares and sometimes cried out and woke them.
But passing the open door late at night one could
hear her moaning softly on every breath with
closed lips. That was Julia, her life, all laid bare,
moaning. . . . She knows she is alive and that
there is no escape from being alive. But it has
never made her feel breathless with joy. She
laughs all day, at everybody and everything, and
at night when she is naked and alone she moans ;
moan, moan, moan, heart-broken ; wind and rain
alone in the dark in a great open space.
She sometimes hinted at things, those real un-
known things that were her own life unshared
by anybody ; in a low soft terrible broken voice,
with eyes dilated and quivering lips ; quite sud-
denly, with hardly any words. And she would
speak passionately about the sea, how she hated
it and could not look at it or listen to it ; and of
woods, the horror of woods, the trees and the
shadowiness, making her crisp her hands — ah
yes, les mains cris'pees, that was the word ;
and she had laughed when it was explained
to her.
BACKWATER 273
It was not that she had troubles at home.
Those things she seemed to find odd and amusing,
like a story of the life of some other person —
poverty and one of her sisters ' very peculiar,5
another engaged to a scamp and another going
to be a shop-assistant, and two more, ' doties '
very young, being brought up in the country
with an aunt. Everything that happened to
people and all the things people did seemed to her
funny and amusing, " tickled her to death."
Harriett's engagement amused her really, though
she pretended to be immensely interested and
asked numbers of questions in a rich deep awe-
struck voice . . . blarney. . . . But she wanted to
hear everything, and she never forgot anything
she was told. And she had been splendid about
the operation — really anxious, quite conscious
and awake across the landing that awful night
and really making you feel she was glad after-
wards. " Poor Mrs. Henderson — I was never so
glad in my life " — and always seeming to know
her without having her explained. She was real
there, and so strange in telling the Femes about
it and making it all easy.
274 BACKWATER
Miriam leaned upon Julia more and more as
the term went on, hating and fearing her for her
secret sorrow and wondering and wondering why
she appeared to have such a curious admiration
and respect for herself. She could understand
her adoration for the Pernes ; she saw them as
they were and had a phrase which partly ex-
plained them, " no more knowledge of the world
than babes " — but what was it in herself that
Julia seemed so fiercely and shyly to admire ?
She knew she could not let Julia know how she
enjoyed washing her hands, in several soapings,
in the cold water, before dinner. They would
go their favourite midday walk, down the long
avenue in the park through the little windings of
the shrubbery and into the chrysanthemum show,
strolling about in the large green-house, all the
girls glad of the escape from a set walk, reading
over every day the strange names on the little
wooden stakes, jokes and gigglings and tiresome-
nesses all kept within bounds by the happiness
that there was, inside the great quiet steamy
glass-house, in the strange raw bitter scent of the
great flowers, in the strange huge way they stood,
BACKWATER 275
and with all their differences of shape and colour
staring quietly at you, all in the same way with
one expression. They were startling, amongst
their grey leaves ; and they looked startled and
held their heads as if they knew they were beauti-
ful. The girls always hurried to get to the
chrysanthemums and came away all of them
walking in twos relieved and happy back through
the cold park to dinner. But Julia, who loved
the flowers, though she made fun of their names in
certain moods and dropped them sotto voce into
the general conversation at the dinner-table
would have, Miriam felt sure, scorned her own
feeling of satisfaction in the great hand-washing
and the good dinner. And she detested pease
pudding with the meat, and boiled suet pudding
with treacle.
9
She ate scarcely anything herself, keeping her
attention free and always seeming to be waiting
for someone to say something that was never said.
Her broad-shouldered, curiously buoyant, heavy,
lounging, ill-clad form, her thick white skin, her
eyes like a grey-blue sea, her dark masses of fine
hair had long been for Miriam the deepest nook
in the meal-time gatherings — she rested there
276 BACKWATER
unafraid of anything the boarders might say or do.
She would never be implicated. Julia would take
care of that, heading everything off and melting
up the difficulties into some absurdity that would
set all the Pernes talking. Julia lounged easily
there, controlling the atmosphere of the table.
And the Pernes knew it unconsciously, they must
know it ; any English person would know it
. . . though they talked about her untidiness
and lack of purpose and application. Julia was a
deep, deep nook, full of thorns.
10
Julia had spoiled the news of Sarah's engage-
ment to Bennett Brodie. It had been such a
wonderful moment. The thick envelope coming
at midday in Bennett's hand-writing — such a
surprise — asking Miss Perne's permission to read
it at the dinner-table — reading the startling
sentences in the firm curved hand — i assert my
privilege as your prospective brother-in-law by
announcing that I'm on the track of a job that I
think will suit you down to the ground,' the
curious splash, gravy on the cloth as somebody
put the great dish on the table, far-away vexa-
tion and funny familiar far-away discomfort all
BACKWATER 277
round the table, ' no more of this until I've got
full particulars on the tapis ; but it may, oh
Grecian Mariamne, not be without interest to
you to hear that that sister of yours does not
appear to be altogether averse to taking over the
management of the new house and the new
practice and the new practitioner, and that the
new practitioner is hereby made anew in a sense
that is more of an amazement to him than it
doutbless will be to your intuitive personality.
That life and such happiness in store for him is
not the least of the many surprises that have
come his way. He can only hope to prove not
unworthy ; and so a hearty au revoir from yours
affectionately.5 . . . Then Bennett would always
be there amongst the home things . . . with his
strange way of putting things ; he would give
advice and make suggestions . . . and Sarah's
letter ... a glance at it showing short sentences,
things spoken in a low awe-struck voice. . . .
' We had been to an entertainment together. . . .
Coming home along the avenue. I was so sur-
prised. He was so quiet and serious and humble.'
... all the practical things gone away in a mo-
ment, leaving only a sound of deep music, . . .
mornings and evenings. Sarah alone now, at
278 BACKWATER
last, a person, with mornings and evenings and
her own reality in everything. No one could
touch her or interfere any more. She was stand-
ing aside, herself. She would always be Sarah,
someone called Sarah. She need never worry
any more, but go on doing things. . . . And
then looking up and rinding all the table eagerly
watching and saying suddenly to Miss Perne
6 another of my sisters is engaged ' and every-
body, even Trixie and Beadie, excited and inter-
ested.
ii
The news, the great great news, wonderful
Sarah away somewhere in the background with
her miracle — telling it out to the table of women
was a sort of public announcement that life was
moving out on to wider levels. They all knew it,
pinned there ; and how dear and glad they were,
for a moment, making it real, acknowledging by
their looks how wonderful it was. Sarah, floating
above them all, caught up out of the darkness of
everyday life. . . . And then Julia's eyes — veiled
for a moment while she politely stirred and
curved her lips to a smile — cutting through it
all, seeming to say that nothing was really touched
or changed. But when the table had turned to
BACKWATER 279
jealousy and resentment and it was time to pretend
to hide the shaft of light and cease to listen to
the music, Julia, cool and steady, covered every-
thing up and made conversation.
12
And the thought of Julia was always a dis-
turbance in going to tea with the Brooms. Grace
Broom was the only girl in the school for whom
she had an active aversion. She put one or two
questions about them, * You really like going
there ? ' c You'll go on seeing them after you
leave ? ' and concluded carelessly ' that's a
mystery to me '
Sitting at tea shut in in the Brooms' little
dining-room with the blinds down and the dark
red rep curtains drawn and the gas-light and
brilliant fire-light shining on the brilliantly
polished davenport in the window-space and the
thick bevelled glass of the Satsuma-laden mahogany
sideboard, the dim cracked oil-painting of Shakes-
peare above the mantel-shelf, the dark old land-
scapes round the little walls, the new picture of
Queen Victoria leaning on a stick and supported
by Hindu servants, receiving a minister, the solid
silver tea-service, the fine heavily edged linen
28o BACKWATER
table-cover, the gleaming, various, delicately
filled dishes, the great bowl of flowers, the heavy,
carven, unmoved, age-long dreaming faces of
the three women with their living interested eyes,
she would suddenly, in the midst of a deep, calm
undisturbing silence become aware of Julia.
Julia would not be impressed by the surroundings,
the strange silent deeps of the room. She would
discover only that she was with people who
revered " our Queen " and despised " the working
classes." It would be no satisfaction to her to
sit drinking from very exquisite old china, cup
after cup of delicious very hot tea, laughing to
tears over the story of the curate who knelt in-
securely on a high kneeling stool at evening
service in a country church and crashing suddenly
down in the middle of a long prayer went on
quietly intoning from the floor, or the madeira
cake that leapt from the cake-dish on an at-home
day and rolled under the sofa. She would laugh,
but she would look from face to face, privately,
and wonder. She would not really like the three
rather dignified seated forms with the brilliant,
tear-filled eyes, sitting on over tea, telling anec-
dotes, and tales of long strange illnesses suffered by
strange hidden people in quiet houses, weddings,
BACKWATER 281
deaths, the stories of families separated for life
by quarrels over money, stories of far-off holidays
in the country ; strange sloping rooms and farm-
house adventures ; the cow that walked into the
bank in a little country town. . . . Mrs. Philps'
first vision, as a bride, of the English Lakes, the
tone of her voice as she talked about all these
things.
The getting together and sitting about and
laughing in the little room would never be to her
like being in a world that was independent of all
the other worlds. She would not want to go
again and again and sit, just the four women, at
tea, talking. The silent, beautifully kept, ex-
perienced old furniture all over the house would
not fill her with fear and delight and strength.
It would be no satisfaction to her to put on her
things in front of the huge plate glass of the
enormous double- fronted wardrobe in the spare-
room with its old Bruges ware and its faded
photographs of the interiors of unknown churches,
rows and rows of seats and a faded blur where
the altar was, thorn-crowned heads and bold
scrolly texts embroidered in crimson and gold
silken mounted and oak- framed. And when she
went home alone along the quiet, dark, narrow,
282 BACKWATER
tree-filled little roadways she would not feel gay
and strong and full of personality.
On prize-giving day, Miriam's last day, Julia
seemed to disappear. For the first time since
she had come to the school it was as if she were
not there. She was neither talking nor watching
nor steering anything at all. Again and again
during the ceremonies Miriam looked at her
sitting or moving about, pale and plain and
shabby, one of the crowd of girls.
The curious power of the collected girls, their
steady profiles, their movements, their uncon-
cerned security rose and flooded round Miriam
as it had done when she first came to the school.
But she no longer feared it. It was going on,
harsh and unconscious and determined, next
term. She was glad of it ; the certainty thrilled
her ; she wanted to convey some of her gladness
to Julia, but could not catch her eye.
Her gladness carried her through the most
tedious part of the day's performances, the sitting
in a listening concourse, doors open, in the school-
room, while some ten of the girls went one by
one with stricken faces into the little drawing-
BACKWATER 283
room and played the piece they had learned during
the term. Their shame and confusion, the anger
and desperation of their efforts, the comments
of the listeners and their violent ironic applause
roused her to an intensity of sympathy. How
they despised the shame- faced tinkling ; how they
admired the martyrs.
Their strong indifference seemed to centre in
the cold pale scornful face of Jessie Wheeler,
sitting squarely there with defiant eyes, waiting
for the future ; the little troop of children she
dreamed of.
These North London girls would be scornful
mocking fiancees. They would be adored by
their husbands. Secretly they would forget
their husbands in their houses and children and
friends.
14
Julia was the last player. She sidled swiftly
out of the room ; even her habitual easy halting
lounge seemed to have deserted her ; and almost
once, slow and tragic and resignedly weeping
came the opening notes of Chopin's Funeral
March. Sitting in the front row of the little
batch of children from the lower school who
faced the room from the window bay, Miriam
284 BACKWATER
saw, in fancy, Julia's face as she sat at the drawing-
room piano — the face she had when she talked of
the woods and the sea. The whole of the long
march, including the major passage, was the voice
of Julia's strange desolation. She played pain-
fully, very slowly and carefully, with tender
respectful attention^ almost without emphasis.
She was not in the least panic-stricken ; anyone
could feel that ; but she had none of the musical
assurance that would have filled the girls with
uneasy admiration and disgust. They were
pleased and amused. And far away, Julia was
alone with life and death. She made two worlds
plain, the scornful world of the girls and her own
shadow-filled life.
Miriam longed for the performance to be at an
end so that the girls might reassert themselves.
15
An important stirring was going on at the little
table where Miss Cramp sat with the Pernes ;
only their heads and shoulders showing above the
piles of prize-books. Miss Perne stood up and
faced the room smiling and gently muttering.
Presently her voice grew clear and she was making
little statements and pronouncing names, clearly
BACKWATER 285
and with gay tender emphasis, the names of tall
bold girls in the first class. One by one they
struggled to the table and stood gentle and dis-
turbed with flushed enlightened faces. Not a
single girl could stand unconcerned before Miss
Perne. Even Polly Allen's brow was shorn of
its boldness.
The girls knew. They would remember some-
thing of what the Femes had tried to give them.
The room was unbearably stuffy. The prize-
giving was at an end. Miriam's own children
had struggled to the table and come back to her
for the last time.
Miss Perne was making a little speech . . .
about Miss Henderson's forthcoming departure.
Why did people do these formal things ? She
would be expected to make some response. For
a moment she had the impulse to get up and rush
away through the hall, get upstairs and pack and
send for a four-wheeler. But from behind came
hands dragging at a fold of her dress and the
sound of Burra's hard sobbing. She felt the child's
head bowed against her hip. A child at her side
twisted its hands together and sat with its head
held high, drawing sharp breaths. Miss Feme's
voice went on. She was holding up an umbrella,
286 BACKWATER
a terrible, expensive, silver-mounted one. The
girls had subscribed.
Miriam sat with beating heart waiting for Miss
Feme's voice to cease, pressing back towards the
support of Burra and other little outstretched
clutchings and the general snuffling of her class,
grappling with the amazement of hearing from
various quarters of the room violent and repeated
nose-blowings, and away near the door in the
voice of a girl she had hardly spoken to a deep
heavy contralto sobbing.
Presently she was on her feet with the tightly-
rolled silken twist of the umbrella heavy in her
hands. Her stiff lips murmured incoherent
thanks in a strange thin voice — Harriett's voice
with the life gone from it.
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" We have nothing but praise for this book of love poems." — English
Review.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
A UNIFORM EDITION OF THE
Works of D. H. Lawrence
Cloth Gilt. Crown 8vo, 6s. each
Sons and Lovers. A Novel
The Prussian Officer, and other Stories
The Trespasser. A Novel
The White Peacock. A Novel
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd. A Play
(35. 6d. net)
Love Poems (55. net)
" D. H. Lawrence is a master." — Daily Telegraph.
" ' Sons and Lovers ' is a great book." — Standard.
"No novel of recent years is the equal of 'The Trespasser.'" —
Observer.
" Mr. Lawrence, with this volume (' The Prussian Officer '), takes his
place in the first flight of modern writers." — English Review.
"' The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd' has the qualities of finished crafts-
manship. It is packed with significance and suggestion. It has the
power to exalt and enrich the mind and the emotions."— Times.
'"The White Peacock' aroused enthusiasm and now 'The Tres-
passer ' has appeared. It is no common novel. Helena is a grand full
length portrait. There are pieces of writing which could not be sur-
passed. ... A picture as powerful as any painted by an artist in
words." — Saturday Review, in a review of " The Trespasser."
"Evidently written at a white heat of inspiration. Wonderfully sus-
tained. A remarkable book to be read by the discriminating and the
experienced."— The Morning Post, in a review of "The Trespasser."
" A wonderful piece of portraiture. Strong, admirable and pathetic."
— Daily Telegraph, in a review of " Sons and Lovers."
"A study of warring loves and passions, containing much beauty.
The sheer hard matter of living is vividly presented ; the toil of existence
in village and town, the solace of nature, the joy of respite from labour
admirably realised and presented." — Times, in a review of "Sons and
Lovers."
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
THE READERS' LIBRARY
New Volume
PRINCE KROPOTKIN
Ideals and Realities in Rus-
sian Literature. By PR:NCE PETER
KROPOTKIN. New and Revised Edition. Type Reset. In
the Readers' Library. Crown 8vo, 25. 6d. net; postage, $d.
This very important book has been unobtainable for some
time, but it now appears with author's alterations and correc-
tions, so that it is entirely up to date.
The interest in Russian literature which has grown so
remarkably during the last few years is likely to increase
still further in the near future. Until the nineties, the Russian
writers, with the single exception of Tolstoi, were unknown
in this country. To-day translations of Russian fiction and
drama are published very frequently, and the writings of
Tourgueniev, Dostoieffsky, Tchekoff, Gorky are known to a
great number of readers.
In order to appreciate and understand Russian literature
an authoritative volume such as this is essential to the reader.
Prince Kropotkin surveys the whole field — Early folk litera-
ture— Folklore — Songs — Sagas — Poetry — Drama and Fiction
— right to the present day. He gives full biographical informa-
tion concerning the outstanding figures, with a full and critical
account of their work and ideas. The lesser figures are
treated proportionately, so as to form a full and informative
as well as critical volume. The tone of the book is "popular"
in the sense that it is very easily read and apprehended.
This does not mean that the subject is treated in any way
superficially.
A work of sound criticism which should be in every public
and private library.
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3
THE READERS' LIBRARY— Continued
New Volume
FRANCIS STOPFORD
Life's Great Adventure. BY FRANCIS
STOPFORD, author of "The Toil of Life." Crown 8vo,
2S. 6d. net; postage, $d.
Mr. Francis Stopford's ideas on life and service are expressed
in these essays for those on the threshold of life. They are
addressed primarily to those who have yet to face the more
serious problems of life, not the very young, but those enter-
ing on the responsibilities of parentage, or those who are to
be counted on as being in charge of the succeeding generation.
\* A full descriptive booklet of over forty volumes of the Readers'
Library r, illustrated with portraits, can be had free on request.
An American Poet
WALT MASON
Horse Sense. Poems. By WALT MASON.
With Prefatory Letter by JOHN MASEFIELD. Fcap. &vo,
2S. 6d. net; postage, ^d.
Walt Mason's verse has attracted a great deal of attention
when it has appeared from time to time in the daily press.
He has been described as the high priest of ' horse sense,' and
this collection of his prose poems is calculated to reveal him
particularly in the light of a practical man of vigorous mind,
whose sense of values is sound and who expresses his views
tersely and emphatically. He writes with singular facility,
and has complete mastery of rhythm and rhyme. His range
is from grave to gay, from wholehearted endorsement of some
homely virtue to vigorous condemnation of cant, fraud, and
shams of all kinds.
Mr. John Masefield writes :— " I read Walt Mason with great delight.
His poems have wonderful fun and kindliness, and I have enjoyed them
the more for their having so strongly all the qualities I liked so much in
my American friends when I was living in the United States.
" I don't know any book which has struck me as so genuine a voice of
the American nature.
" I am glad that his work is gaining a wider and wider recognition."
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
4
South America as it is To-day
ROGER W. BABSON
The Future of South America.
By ROGER W. BABSON. With 16 Illustrations and Two
Maps. 407 pages. Crown Svo, 75. 6d. net; postage, 6d.
There is astonishingly little in the literature about South
America which explains what that continent really means to
business people who are open to extend their trade in foreign
markets. Such an interpretation is given in this book,
together with an interesting account of the picturesque and
romantic sides of South American life, its history, customs
and resources, also information for the business man. Mr.
Babson is known as a writer on economic questions and as
an interpreter of statistical data and industrial and business
conditions. He has for 3^ears methodically studied South
America and its business possibilities. He is peculiarly fitted
to draw conclusions about South America as an economic
problem, which will be of the utmo:t value to the banker,
manufacturer, exporter, investor, and the general student of
foreign relations, affairs, and trade.
The book is especially authoritative and official on account
of the fact that leading government officials, usually the
Presidents of the various countries, have co-operated with
Mr. Babson.
As a result his book should prove a suggestive volume for
all having or hoping to have business relations with the
countries described and also for the general reader who is
interested in the economic side of the problem.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
5
CHARLES M. DOUGHTY
The Titans. A Dramatic Poem. By
CHARLES M. DOUGHTY, author of "Travels in Arabia
Deserta," "The Dawn in Britain," "The Cliffs," "The
Clouds," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 55. net; postage, $d.
SOME PRESS OPINIONS ON MR. DOUGHTrS
EARLIER WORKS
"The sense of England is the burning thing in these two dramas ; the
sense of England as only wartime can make it, which glows through all
the magnificent monologue with which ' The Cliffs ' open, or which
brightens into most exquisite flame in ' The Clouds.' "
LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE, in the Quarterly Review.
"Mr. Doughty occupies a position by himself. The vigorous impulse
and imaginative strength of his genius have created their own medium.
Work which owes its power to the bigness of its design and the sheer
weight of imagination and intellect.
" This is an amazingly vivid picture of the fury and wreckage of war.
In part of the poem Mr. Doughty approaches more nearly to the idyllic
than in any other of his works. It is a great work, full of faith and
thought and compelling sincerity, and rich poetic beauty " — Spectator.
" Mr. Doughty is the prophet of Patriotism. Wandering in the Muses'
Garden, he has received the divine call to chant patriot hymns, and it is
his mission to rouse his country to a sense of the wrath to come in the
guise of ' air-flying Eastlanders.' ' The Clouds,' is a passionate plea for
the nation. His verse is astoundingly vivid and vehement, every now
and then breaking into a startling beauty." — English Review.
"Mr. Doughty's ideas and his outlook might be those of Nelson's cap-
tains could they be called back to life. He thrills our imagination. His
historical sense is so vital and far-reaching, his patriotic imagination so
deeply rooted in the soil of our forbears' achievements. ... A poem that,
we venture to think, will become a classic. ' The Clouds,' as an achieve-
ment, possesses a creative actuality, a breadth of vision, an intensity of
imaginative life. The effect of the poem is cumulative, and no quotation
can convey any idea of the atmosphere of the whole varied picture." — The
Nation.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
6
A New Impression
JOHN MORSE
An Englishman in the Russian
Ranks : Ten Months' Fighting in Po-
land. By JOHN MORSE, tfh printing. Crown &vo, 6s.
SOME PRESS OPINIONS
" This remarkably impressive book is probably the most notable piece
of war literature the war has yet produced." — The Times.
" Tolstoy's pictures of Sebastopol or Dostoievsky's account of Siberia do
not haunt one much more than episodes in this book." — Spectator.
" Those who wish to see the war without any illusion cannot afford to
miss this the most impressive book that has so far appeared about it." —
Country Life.
" This book is one of the most remarkable the war has yet given us.
.... He keeps us spellbound with his artless narrative. . . . This is
decidedly a war book to be read." — Daily News.
" We can but offer our sincere congratulations to Mr. Morse on his
splendid achievement ; through him the name of Englishman will stand
firmer in Russia, firmer in the world." — Saturday Review.
"The war continues to provide incidentally many vivid narratives
.... and this narrative .... must certainly be reckoned one of the
most interesting out of many." — Evening Standard.
" It is a most astonishing book." — Daily Express.
" Having served for ten months as a volunteer in the Russian Army,
the author has had such strange adventures that his experiences have pro-
vided material for what is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable books
concerning the war." — Outlook.
" As a witness of what actually happened on the Russian frontier Mr.
Morse comes forward with a book of engrossing interest. . . . The story
of his escape and privations which followed is thrilling in the extreme and
related with a quiet restraint and modesty which, as in every chapter of
the book, are an earnest of truth." — Daily Telegraph.
"Mr. Morse has written a book which, as far as I know, is unique. It is
an extraordinarily vivid account of an Englishman who enlisted in the
Russian rank- and fought all through the early— and they were in many
ways the most terrible — months of the war. Asa picture of war it is
literally haunting. Mr. Morse writes with the conviction of one who has
seen all he desires to prove. Apart from the book's value as a personal
narrative, it is notable for the fine description it gives of life in the Russian
Army ; while those who thirst for adventure will find no book of fiction
stir them more greatly than this author's account of how he was captured
and how he escaped." — Tatler.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
7
THEOLOGY
THE REV. CANON RASHDALL, F.B.A.
Conscience and Christ. ByTHE
REV. CANON HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.Litt. (Oxon), D.C.L.
(Durham), F.B.A., author of " Philosophy and Religion/'
etc. Crown Svo, 55. net; postage, $d.
The book is an attempt to answer the question " in what relation does
the authority of Conscience, which most Christians acknowledge, stand
to the authority of Jesus Christ ? " The first chapter is a brief enquiry
into the nature of Conscience on the one hand and of various forms of
external authority on the other. The answer given is that no external
authority can be taken as an absolutely final guide for conduct unless it
does commend itself to the enlightened Conscience : it is contended that
the teaching of Jesus Christ does so commend itself. In the second
chapter is attempted the investigation of the recent teaching which makes
" Eschatology " the answer of Christ's message, and treats his moral
teaching as a mere " Interimsethik." The third chapter examines the
actual contents of that teaching ; the fourth deals with some commonly
urged objections to the Christian Ethic— the finality of this Ethic is
asserted upon condition that the necessity of development is fully recog-
nised. The fifth chapter examines the nature of the development which
the fundamental principles taught by Jesus have received and must con-
tinue to receive in the Christian Church. The sixth chapter is devoted
to a brief examination of other ethical systems, philosophical and reli-
gious, and endeavours to show that not one of them can be regarded as a
satisfactory substitute for Christianity while the permanent elements of
each are recognised and included in the Christian ideal. It is also con-
tended that the highest ethical influence of Christianity is inseparable
from a reverent following of the personal Christ.
THE REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, D.D.
Faith and Immortality. ByTHE
REV. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, B.A., D.D., Principal of the
United Independent College, Bradford. Author of
"The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War,"
" The Ascent Through Christ." Crown Svot 35. 6d. net;
postage, $d.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
8
STUDIES IN THEOLOGY— New Volumes
THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.
History of the Study of The-
By the late CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS,
D.D., D.Litt., of the Union Theological Seminary, New
York. In Two Volumes. Crown Svo, 25. 6d, net each
volume; postage, 50!.
THE REV. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, M.A., D.D.
The Justification of God. BY
The Rev. PRINCIPAL P. T. FORSYTH, M.A., D.D., of the
Hackney Theological College, University of London.
Crown Svo, 25. 6d. net; postage, $d.
Other Volumes already published in the Series are : —
The Theology of the Gospels.
By JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., D.Litt.
History of Christian Thought
since Rant. By EDWARD CALD-
WELL MOORE, D.D.
The Doctrine of the Atone-
ment. By J. K. MOZLEY, M.A.
Revelation and Inspiration. By
JAMES ORR, D.D.
A Critical Introduction to the
New Testament. By ARTHUR
SAMUEL PEAKE, D.D.
Philosophy and Religion. By
HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.Litt.
(Oxon),D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A.
The Holy Spirit. By T. REES,
M.A. (Lond.), B.A. (Oxon.).
The Religious Ideas of the Old
Testament. By H. WHEELER
ROBINSON, M.A.
The Text and Canon of the
New Testament. By ALEXAN-
DER SOUTER, D.Litt.
Christian Thought to the Re-
formation. By HERBERT B.
WORKMAN, D.Litt.
Christianity and Ethics. By
ARCHIBALD B. D. ALEXANDER,
M.A., D.D.
The Environment of Early
Christianity. By S. ANGUS,
M.A., Ph.D.
The Christian Hope : A Study
in the Doctrine of the Last
Things. By W. ADAMS BROWN,
Ph.D., D.D."
Christianity and Social Ques-
tions. By WILLIAM CUNNING-
HAM, F.B.A., D.D., D.Sc.
A Handbook of Christian Apolo-
getics. By A. E. GARVIE, D.D.
A Critical Introduction to the
Old Testament. By GEORGE
BUCHANAN GRAY, D.D., D.Litt.
Gospel Origins. By WILLIAM
WEST HOLDSWORTH, M.A.
Faith and Its Psychology. By
WILLIAM R. INGE, D.D.
Christianity and Sin. By ROBERT
MACKINTOSH, D.D.
Protestant Thought before Kant.
By A. C. McGiFFERT, Ph.D., D.D.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
9
FICTION
BERNARD CAPES
If Age COUld. By BERNARD CAPES, author
of " A Jay of Italy," " The Lake of Wine," etc.
Mr. Bernard Capes' new novel, " If Age Could," will rank
among the most important of the many popular books which
bear his name —
"If Youth but Knew"
"If Age Could"
Eustace Ward discovered that his ward Veronica appealed
more to his senses than he had ever thought possible. He
had come to think he was proof against the effects of feminine
charm except in a detached and esthetic way. He is, how-
ever, held back by the fear that she regards him as old. The
aloof and self-centred attitude towards life of both him and his
ward with their ample means is shown without insistence,
while the events of August 1914 dp not greatly disturb their
self-sufficiency. The subsequent bombardment of the North-
East coast brings tragedy very near to Ward's country seat.
It is then that they for the first time consciously and on an
impulse do an action which is for another's benefit and which
involves their own complete sacrifice.
TEMPLE BAILEY
Contrary Mary. A Novel. BY TEMPLE
BAILEY. 352 pages. Crown 8vo, 6s.
" Contrary Mary " will win her way to the hearts of all who
meet her, and the story of the fortunes of her family will pro-
vide restful enjoyment for a very large circle of readers. It is
seldom that a clean, sweet story is not open to the criticism
of being "pretty." " Contrary Mary " is, however, an ex-
ceptional book, and while it shows the best side of human
nature it can never be charged with being mawkish or sugary.
While it has no bad characters, and only one unfortunate one,
the reader is aware that the author has a firm grip on life. It
is clever work, and shows the author as a writer of depth and
feeling.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
10
BEY SOMERVILLE
The Passing of Nahla. A story
of the Desert. By BEY SOMERVILLE. Crown 8w, 6s.
This story of Nahla a native girl child, and of the white
man who educates and makes a companion of her, is full of
atmosphere. The baby girl is an amusing companion for the
educated, temperamental poet, and to see her develop under
his guidance and tuition is for him of unfailing interest. In
the intense life of the East she is very quickly a grown
woman. Her devotion is pathetic in its self abasement, and
she is ready to accept either life or death at his hands. The
inevitable tragedy is when the desire comes to the man to
return to his own people and their code of life. It is then he
has to reckon with Nahla's jealousy and fierce devotion.
Apart from the story the book is worth reading for its ren-
dering of the call and influence of the desert on a highly
developed personality. The author feels its magic spell and
is very successful in transmitting it to the reader.
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
A Novel. By DOROTHY M.
RICHARDSON, author of "Pointed Roofs." Crown &vo, 6s.
Those who read " Pointed Roofs " will remember taking
leave of Miriam as she got in the train for home, after her
term as assistant teacher in a German school was ended.
" Backwater " continues the narrative of Miriam's life, the
period now being the emotional period of life, when life is at
its fullest.
The reception given to " Pointed Roofs " has given Miss
Richardson a status. She is recognized as a writer whose
method is original and " different," and who is thereby suc-
cessful in conveying by means of a few strokes the vital
experiences of her characters and their action on one another.
Mr. J. D. Beresford, who contributed an introduction to
" Pointed Roofs," admitted having read the story three times,
the pleasure he experienced at the first being increased by
subsequent readings. He considers *' Backwater" even more
interesting.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
1 1
E. C. BOOTH
A Novel. By E. C. BOOTH, author
of "The Cliff End," "The Doctor's Lass." Crown Svo, 6s.
This story of Fondie Bassiemoor, his life, and also that of the
inhabitants of Wiwle, a Yorkshire village, is a big novel in every
way. Mr. Booth's unhurried method requires a large canvas, and
although the story is long for a modern novel the feeling of the
reader at the finish is that on no account would he have it shorter.
Mr. Booth pictures the everyday life of a rural village in York-
shire with all its types and characters clearly and lovingly drawn ;
the comedy and tragedy of life painted with the sure hand of an
artist and master craftsman. The natural tone and accent of
speech is reproduced, but there is nothing irritating in its trans-
cription as the author renders the Yorkshire dialect in such manner
and so naturally that no unusual effort is required to read it.
The note of comedy is preserved through the greater part of the
book, but the sadness of life is not ignored. To each their place.
The author's previous books have been unreservedly praised,
but it is thought by competent judges that " Fondie " is a particular
advance on any of his earlier work. For a comparison one must
go to the early work of Thomas Hardy. Perhaps " Far from the
Madding Crowd " is the closest. Mr. Booth's " Fondie " will stand
the comparison very well.
MARY AGNES HAMILTON
By MARY AGNES HAMIL-
TON, author of "Less than the Dust," "Yes." Crown
Svo, 6s.
This novel has been described by critics who have read it in
manuscript as both clever and brilliant. It is notably modern in
its feeling and outlook, its detail and allusions revealing its
author's interest in the artistic and social ideas which were current
in 1914. The action of the story begins before the war, but is
carried past August 1914, and finishes towards the end of 1915.
It gives a very effective picture of an educated and bohemian
coterie whose sophisticated attitude towards life is sharply chal-
lenged by the realization of the need to fight for national existence.
DUCKWORTH & Co., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
12
MILDRED GARNER
A Novel. By MILDRED GARNER,
Crown Svo, 6s.
The scent of old-fashioned flowers, the drowsy hum of bees,
and the quiet spell of the countryside is realized in every
page of " Harmony." Peacewold is a harbour of refuge where
gather those in need of the sympathy which the Little Blue
Lady unfailingly has for her friends when they are distressed
in spirit or body. To her comes Star worn out witK months,
of settlement work in Bethnal Green, and Harmony whose
sight is restored after years of blindness. Robin Grey, the
austere Richard Wentworth and his son Bede, all come and
she gives to each from the fulness of her spirit and faith.
Willow, whose story the book is, also has reason to love the
Little Blue Lady who has been as a mother to her.
The book is distinguished for its shining faith and belief in-
the inherent goodness of human nature when subject to right
influences. The searchings of heart when love comes and
temporarily wrecks the harmony of Peacewold are shown to
be for the good of those concerned and helpful to them in
their development.
" Harmony '* is essentially a novel of sentiment and should
certainly find many readers. It is earnest and sincere, and
promises well for the author's future as a successful novelist.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Somewhere in France, stories.
By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, author of " With the
Allies," etc., etc. Illustrated. Crown Svo, 35. 6d. net.
A new .volume by the popular war correspondent. The
stories are varied in theme, and are not solely devoted to
war. The title of the book is obtained from the first story
which is of spying and spies during the German advance
on Paris.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C
13
LESLIE MONTGOMERY
Mr. Wildridge of the Bank.
An Irish Novel. By LESLIE MONTGOMERY. Crown
8vot 6s.
Mr. Leslie Montgomery will be welcomed as an acquisition
to the ranks of humorous novelists. Like George Birmingham
he writes of the North of Ireland and shows the everyday
life of a small town. The competition of the local managers
of the two banks to secure the account of the heir to a fortune
is very amusing and always strictly probable. How Mr.
Wildridge gets the capital subscribed for the woollen factory:
how the confiding Rector and his daughter are saved from
dishonour, and how Orangemen and Sinn Feiners, Protestants
and Catholics are cunningly induced to work for the pros-
perity of the town in order to * dish ' each other are all
related in an easy and convincing way. The story is told in
light comedy vein, at times becoming madcap farce, and yet it
cannot be said that the bounds of possibility are ever sur-
passed. There is not an unpleasant or disagreeable character
in the book, and the humour is at the expense of everyone in
the town. Anthony Wildridge is always cultivated, adroit
and audacious, and deserves all his success. At the close
he discovers that he is younger and more susceptible than he
thought he was.
DUCKWORTH & CO., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C
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PR Richardson, Dorothy Miller
6035 Backwater
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