3
When they were safely ensconced round the drawing-room fire Mrs. Staple-Craven sat very upright in her chair with her plump little hands on either arm and her eyes fixed on the blaze. Joey pleading toothache had said good night and gone away with her coffee. There was a moment’s silence.
“You’d never think I’d been fairly banged to death by the spirits last night,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven in a thick flat reproachful narrative tone. It sounds like a housekeeper giving an order to a servant she knows won’t obey her, thought Miriam, swishing more comfortably into her chair. If Mrs. Craven would talk there would be no need to do anything.
“Ah-ha,” said Mrs. Craven, still looking at the fire, “something’s pleasing Miss Henderson.”
“Is she rejoicin’? Tell us about the spirits, Mélie. I’m deadly keen. Deadly. She mustn’t be too delighted. I’ve told her she’s not to get engaged.”
“Engaged?” enquired Mrs. Craven, of the fire.
“She’s promised,” said Mrs. Corrie, turning off the lights until only one heavily shaded lamp was left, throwing a rosy glow over Mélie’s compact form.
“She won’t, if she’s not under the star, to be sure.”
“Oh, she mustn’t think about stars. Why should she marry?”
Miriam looked a little anxiously from one to the other.
“You’ve shocked her, Julia,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven. “Never mind at all, my dear. You’ll marry if you’re under the star.”
“Star, star, beautiful star, a handsome one with twenty thousand a year,” sang Mrs. Corrie.
“I don’t think a man has any right to be handsome,” said Miriam desperately—she must manage to keep the topic going. These women were so terrible—they filled her with fear. She must make them take back what they had said.
“A handsome man’s much handsomer than a pretty woman,” said Mrs. Craven.
“It’s cash, cash, cash—that’s what it is,” chanted Mrs. Corrie softly.
“Oh, do you?” said Miriam. “I think a handsome man’s generally so weak.”
Mrs. Craven stared into the fire.
“You take the one who’s got the ooftish, my friend,” said Mrs. Corrie.
“But you say I’m not to marry.”
“You shall marry when my poor little old kiddies are grown up. We’ll find you a very nice one with plenty of money.”
“Then you don’t think marriage is a failure,” said Miriam, with immense relief.
Mrs. Corrie leaned towards her with laughter in her clear light eyes. It seemed to fill the room. “Have some more coffy-drink?”
“No, thanks,” said Miriam, shivering.
“Sing us something—she sings, Mélie—German songs. Isn’t she no end clever?”
“Does she?” said Mrs. Craven. “Yes. She’s got a singing chin. Sing us a pretty song, my dear.”
As she fluttered the leaves of her Schumann album she saw Mrs. Craven sit back with closed eyes, and Mrs. Corrie still sitting forward in her chair with her hands clasped on her knees gazing with a sad white face into the flames.
“Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht,” sang Miriam, and thought of Germany. Her listeners did not trouble her. They would not understand. No English person would quite understand—the need, that the Germans understood so well—the need to admit the beauty of things ... the need of the strange expression of music, making the beautiful things more beautiful and of words when they were together in the beauty of the poems. Music and poetry told everything—whether you understood the music or the words—they put you in the mood that made things shine—then heart-break or darkness did not matter. Things go on shining in the end; German landscapes and German sunshine and German towns were full of this knowledge. In England there was something besides—something hard.
“’Menjous, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Corrie, as she rose from the piano.
“If we lived aright we should all be singing,” said Mrs. Craven, “it’s natural.”