-..u^' 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/backwaterOOrichiala 
 
PILGRIMAGE 
 
 B ACKWATE R 
 
PILGRIMAGE 
 
 BACKWATER 
 
 BY 
 
 DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON 
 
 NEW YORK; ALFRED A. KNOPF 1917 
 
 -- 1- Ci ^J i <i 
 
TO 
 
 J. A. H. 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 WM. BRENBON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND 
 
^0 b5 
 
 n 
 
 TO 
 
 J. A. H. 
 
} BACKWATER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 I 
 
 A SWARTHY turbaned face shone at Miriam 
 
 ;^ xjL 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 
 
 ;;i 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 
 
 J the roadway and beyond the palisade of a green 
 
 ^ level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The 
 
 trams seemed very near and noisy. Whr^ 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 
 
2 BACKWATER 
 
 Gobelin screen, and old thoughts Hke 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 
 
BACKWATER 3 
 
 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 
 Httle 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 deHcate 
 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 
 Deborah 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, 
 
BACKWATER 5 
 
 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.''^ 
 
 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. 
 
 2 
 
 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 
 
BACKWATER 7 
 
 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 
 
 anymore. 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 ? 
 
lo 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— virell." 
 
 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 
 breeze. 
 
 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 fi 
 
 5 
 
 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 
 aHke. 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 
 
\ 
 
 BACKWATER 13 
 
 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. 
 
 6 
 
 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 
 
14 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. 
 
BACKWATER 15 
 
 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. 
 
i6 BACKWATER 
 
 9 
 
 " Well, chickie ? " 
 
 *' What's the matter ? » 
 
 " Why, youVe 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." 
 
BACKWATER 17 
 
 " 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 fingers. 
 
 " She thinks that's * gross exaggeration.' That's 
 what she wants to say," pondered Miriam 
 wearily. 
 
 They turned 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 
 quahty 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." 
 
BACKWATER 19 
 
 " 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- 
 casr 
 
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 Hnking 
 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. 
 " WeU, 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 
 light 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 seat with Bevan Sey- 
 mour all the afternoon and I was with them 
 when Ted was playing with the duifer. She told 
 Bevan that she didn't know anywhere else where 
 the kids arranged the dances, and everything was 
 so jolly. It's screaviing, my dear, she said." 
 
 " It's horrid the way she calls him * my dear.' 
 Your ring is simply dazzhng 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 
 
 " T^^," said a rounded voice near the keyhole. 
 
 " Eve ! " shouted Miriam. 
 
 The door opened shghtly. " 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.'' 
 
 " Um." 
 
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 her in 
 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 I'm 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 guest'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 would 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 ' 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. 
 
 6 
 
 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 vioHn 
 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 atvthe 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 Httle 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. . . . 
 
40 , 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 ever)'"where. 
 
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 Sarah 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, can't 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 full of sweet- 
 bread, ' it'll rain ' — growled, you know, with his 
 mouth crammed full. ' Never mind. Tommy,' 
 said Ella with the utmost promptitude, ' 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 I My dears ! ! Bevan 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 — francing, 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 paviHon 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 1 » 
 
 " They do. ... I believe she drinks." 
 
 "Sally! Mjdearr' 
 
 " 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 ! ' ' /j he ? ' said Bevvy in his most 
 superior manner." 
 
 " 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, ^ow^-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." 
 
 H 
 
 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 for 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 ? " 
 
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 a muted euphonium 
 
so 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 Hd 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 feeUng 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. 
 
 " Wie 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, " ist 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 siiss, wie siiss," 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. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 " 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 
 
6o 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 6i 
 
 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 f " 
 
 "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 cofhn. 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 
 definiteness 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 
 own ; strange eyes that knew all about a big 
 
6S 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 I'Eloquence ? " 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 smiHng 
 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 Hke " 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. An^^ — 
 omy of Mel — ancholy, 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 live apiece and brought tea to an end. 
 
 " Eh ? what for ? Why are ye laughing, 
 Nancie ? " 
 
 " I'm 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. 
 
id 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 
 ihem — they would get worse as the years went by. 
 
BACKWATER ']'] 
 
 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. " Are 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, Httle 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 8i 
 
 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 sHd 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 hoUand 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, vdth 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's 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 startHng 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 Feme 
 filed back across the hall. 
 
 6 
 
 " Eh, Deborah, are ye sure ? " said Miss Jenny, 
 getting into her chair at Miss Perne'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." 
 
 " Ech," 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-oif bookshelves. 
 
 " I did not speak to them " 
 
 " Eh, Deborah, why not ? " scolded Miss Jenny 
 as Miss Perne drew breath. 
 
 " I did 7iot 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 Perne's high stylish arrowy figure fluttered 
 by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. 
 Brinkwell's 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 trium- 
 
BACKWATER 95 
 
 phantly ? As much as to say There, my dear 
 Jenny, there's a problem you can't answer. She 
 enjoyed telHng 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 difiikilt. 
 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 ? 
 I'm sure. I don't know." 
 
 7 
 
 Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper 
 with the newspaper spread out on the brov/n 
 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 
 
100 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 loi 
 
 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-seated chairs. There 
 were really people making the 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 /aire. 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 
 
102 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 t\dt someone 
 had found out why people were so awful ; like 
 a dentist finding out a bad tooth however much 
 it hurt. Only if education was going to be the 
 principal thing and all teachers were to be 
 * 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 quahfy 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. I'm alive. . . . 
 I'm alive. Then with a thump her heart went on 
 again and her fee.t 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, 
 
I04 BACKWATER 
 
 me ; this is me being alive," she murmured with 
 a feeling under her Hke the sudden drop of a lift. 
 But her thoughts distracted her. They were 
 eagerly talking to her declaring that she had had 
 this feehng before. She opened her bedroom 
 door very quietly. The air of the room told her 
 that Nancie and Beadie were asleep. Going 
 Hghtly 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 faUing 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 Hghting 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,' 
 ' 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, 
 
 1 06 
 
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, v^dth 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 
 fingers 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 Perne'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 
 
112 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." 
 
 " I don't think dancing's shocking. How can 
 it be ? You're barmy, my son." 
 
 " Ever heard of Lottie ColHns ? " 
 
 " 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, Maheir 
 
 " Who wants to be anyone's mother ? " 
 
 " Not me. Ug. Beastly httle brats." 
 
114 BACKWATER 
 
 " Oh shut wp. 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, I'm 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 
 
ij8 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 cofhn-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 I " 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- 
 
124 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 ? " ii 
 
BACKWATER 125 
 
 " I don't understand what ye mean." 
 
 Miriam watched Miss Haddie's thin fingers 
 feeHng for the pins in her black toque. "Of 
 course not," she thought, looking at the un- 
 veiled shrivelled cheek. ..." thirty-five years of 
 being a lady." 
 
 " Oh well," she sighed fiercely. 
 
 " What is it ye mean, my dear ? " 
 
 — ' couldn't make head or tail of a thing the 
 old dodderer said ' — no ' old boy,' no — these 
 phrases would not do for Miss Haddie. 
 
 " I couldn't agree with anything he said." 
 
 Miss Haddie sat down on the edge of the little 
 white bed burying her face in her hands and 
 smoothing them up and down with a wiping 
 movement. 
 
 " One can always criticise a sermon," she said 
 reproachfully. 
 
 " Well, why not ? " 
 
 " I mean to say ye r^«," said Miss Haddie from 
 behind her fingers, " but, but ye shouldn't." 
 
 " You can't help it." 
 
 " Oh yes, ye can. li jq listen in the right 
 spirit," gargled Miss Haddie hurriedly. 
 
 " Oh, it isn't only the sermon, it's the whole 
 thing," 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 Hke 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 ! I'm dreadfully sorry ye feel 
 like that. I'd no idea ye felt like that, poor child. 
 I knew ye weren't quite happy always ; I mean 
 I've thought ye weren't quite happy in yer mind 
 sometimes, but I'd 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, I'm 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 w^hether they 
 wanted to come to Hfe. 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 
 God 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 
 
I30 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 Httle 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'U 
 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 
 Uttle 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, kneehng 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 
 
 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 Hke 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. " I'm back. I'm back. 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. * Miss Feme's hair is per- 
 fectly black — as black as coal, and she's the 
 eldest, just fancy.'' Then everybody looks up. 
 * 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-live, the eldest 
 pupil with seven muslin dresses in the summer 
 and being 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 Hstened ; 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 she 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 
 
142 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 Ufe. 
 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 vsdll 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-clothe* 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 hoHdays 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 reahse a bit how short hoHdays 
 are. Easter — nothing. Just one dance and never 
 
144 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. Fm 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 took 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 hoU- 
 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 
 
150 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 
 
 I 
 
 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 
 
152 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 Banbury 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'U 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 oif , 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 feehng 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, /)jw," 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 i6i 
 
 " 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 
 
i62 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. 
 
 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 
 
i64 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 Hke 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 
 
i66 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 lb. 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, 2d. 
 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 
 
i68 BACKWATER 
 
 familiar titles, " Cometh up as a Flower," " Not 
 like other Girls," " The Heir of RedcHffe," 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*8 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 
 
lyo 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 the 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 beHeved 
 in heaven and eternal life. One would grow 
 very good ; and after the excitement and interest 
 had worn off one would go on, v^th 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 
 
174 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 ' Hungerford ' 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 ahght, 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. 
 
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 
 
i8o 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 i8i 
 
 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 H, 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 ? " 
 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 f " . . . 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 
 
i82 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 JuHa 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 
 
i84 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 ? " 
 
i86 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.' " 
 
 " 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 
 
i88 BACKWATER 
 
 dusters, 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, come-to-tesL, hurryup-dear," said a bird 
 suddenly from the island thicket. 
 
 " D'you know what bird that is, Gerald f " 
 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. 
 
 1^9 
 
19© 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 
 
192 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-scuUing 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 
 
194 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 hy 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 chapeUsh 
 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. IsuH 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, doir' 
 
 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 windov;' ; " 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 
 
2o6 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 filled 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. 
 
2o8 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 Mim, 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 rh'-ps rnd people 
 talking in the hci;':<- ■■ ' ' rr* rre- 
 
 tending, talk' 
 
 " It'5 mothfcx-. ' 
 
 ""What on earth a;.- ^, .. ......... . 
 
 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, 
 p 
 
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 hy 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 sunUt 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. I've 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 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " "VrOU 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 
 uherhaupt 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 
 
2i6 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 walking 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 — 
 hes. 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. 
 
 " W^ell," 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. 
 
2i8 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 wajk 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 Hving 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 cHif to 
 their left a Httle ahead of them, spHntered and 
 sunht. 
 
 " How much a week is a hundred and fifty a 
 year f " 
 
 " 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 Hke 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. 
 
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 
 smaller 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. Parrow. 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 cUffs. For a 
 while she was chased by little phrases from Miss 
 
230 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 underHnen 
 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 stiflly 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 was 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 
 taken 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 
 wa8 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 sv/eep 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 
 telling 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 Httle 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 eyery 
 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— A:z7/~A:z7/.^'" 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 for her to join the others. 
 They straggled along past booths and 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 Hke 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 httle 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." 
 
 2 
 
 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 ? " 
 
 " That's the toboggan run. We ought to go 
 on that." 
 
 '' What is it like ? " 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " 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 dhsolutely 
 glorious, she yelled as they shot down through 
 the darkness. Oh^ 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 
 
2s6 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, ' 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. 
 ' 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 Banbury 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 
 s 
 
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 
 
i6o 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 Pernes' 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 Httle 
 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 completer' 
 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 ' 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 
 finding 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 JuHa disUked. Julia, with all her 
 success was not the answer to the problem of why 
 Englishwomen were abominable. She left out 
 so much. " JuHa, 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 little afraid of Julia, the 
 children, the boarders whom she managed so 
 high-handedly with her laughter, even the Femes. 
 
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 
 EngHshwomen 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 Hps, 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 crispees, 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,' 
 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 Pernes about 
 it and making it all easy. 
 
274 BACKWATER 
 
 8 
 
 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 
 
 JuHa 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 — * 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.' . . . 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 reaHty 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 finding all the table eagerly 
 watching and saying suddenly to Miss Perne 
 * 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 thfe school for whom 
 she had an active aversion. She put one or two 
 questions about them, * You really like going 
 there ? ' ' 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 famiUes 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 
 scroUy 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. 
 
 13 
 
 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 Hsteners 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. 
 
 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 Pernes 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 Perne'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 
 Perne'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. 
 
 Note. — A further instalment of this book is in 
 preparation. 
 
 PRINTED IK GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH 
 
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 \%^4'\ 
 
 WAX2 21957 
 of CO M^*- 
 
 UJ^uRL MAY3 0i96^ 
 
 . MAY 3 1 igdf 
 
 iMT II )9|f > 
 
 AUG 2 1935 
 NOV 10 19^2 
 
 NOV \ 9 
 
 MAY 7 - 1943 
 
 MAY 3i 1^'^.5 
 ,JAN ^ i 1947 
 
 Form L-9-10»?-5,'28 
 
 MftV i7'i96a 
 
 Kapri 
 
 9MI 
 
i REGIONAL UBRARYFAClinY 
 
 A 000 555 969 5 
 
 m^j^ 
 
«•>: