20
“There are raspberry canes all along here, on both sides—trailing all over the place; the gardener 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 gooseberry 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.”
“I mean gooseberry fool. Do you know why men are like green gooseberries?”
“No. Why are they? Tell me.”
“Perhaps you would not like it. We are passing the apple trees now; quarendens and stibbards.”
“Tell me. I shall like what you say.”
“Well, it’s because women can make fools of them whenever they like.”
Max laughed; a deep gurgling laugh that echoed back from the wall in front of them.
“We are nearly at the end of the garden.”
“I think you would not make a man a fool. No?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“You have not thought much about men.”
“I don’t know.”
“But they, they have thought about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“You do not care, perhaps?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Here’s the coffin. I’m afraid it’s not very comfortable. It’s so low.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an overturned seedling box. There’s grass all round. I wonder whether it’s damp,” said Miriam suddenly invaded by a general uncertainty.
“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 women one meets. You have a soul serene and innocent. 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 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 between 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 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 complacently 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.
“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 neatness. Terror seized her. She wouldn’t see him. He had finished his work at the Institution. It was the big Norwich job next week.