5
They were late for tea and had it by themselves at a table in the window of the little smoking-room looking out on the garden. Miss Meldrum called cheerily down through the house to tell them when they came in. They went into the little unknown room and the cook brought up a small silver tea-pot and a bright cosy. Outside was the stretch of lawn where the group had been taken in the morning a year ago. It had been a seaside town lawn, shabby and brown, with the town behind it; unnoticed because the fresh open sea and sky were waiting on the other side of the house ... seaside town gardens were not gardens ... the small squares of greenery were helpless against the bright sea ... and even against shabby rooms, when the sun came into the rooms off the sea ... sea-rooms.... The little smoking-room was screened by the shade of a tree against whose solid trunk half of the French window was thrown back.
When the cook shut the door of the little room the house disappeared. The front rooms bathed in bright light and hot with the afternoon heat, the wide afterglow along the front, the vast open lid of the sky, were in another world.... Miriam pushed back the other half of the window and they sat down in a green twilight on the edge of the garden. If others had been there Mrs. Henderson would have remarked on the pleasantness of the situation and tried to respond to it and been dreadfully downcast at her failure and brave. Miriam held her breath as they settled themselves. No remark came. The secret was safe. When she lifted the cosy the little tea-pot shone silver-white in the strange light. A thick grey screen of sky must be there, above the trees, for the garden was an intensity of deep brilliance, deep bright green and calceolarias and geraniums and lobelias, shining in a brilliant gloom. It was not a seaside garden ... it was a garden ... all gardens. They took their meal quietly and slowly, speaking in low tones. The silent motionless brilliance was a guest at their feast. The meal-time, so terrible in the hopelessness of home, such an effort in the mocking glare of the boarding-house was a great adventure. Mrs. Henderson ate almost half as much as Miriam, serenely. Miriam felt that a new world might be opening.