12
Early next morning Judy came in to tell Emma and Ulrica to get up at once and come and help the housekeeper make the rooms tidy and prepare breakfast. Miriam lay motionless while Emma unfolded and arranged the screens. Then she gazed at the ceiling. It was pleasant to lie tranquil, open-eyed and unchallenged while others moved busily about. Two separate, sudden and resounding garglings almost startled her to thought, but she resisted, and presently she was alone in the strange room. She supposed it must be cooler after the storm. She felt strong and languid. She could feel the shape and weight of each limb; sounds came to her with perfect distinctness; the sounds downstairs and a low-voiced conversation across the landing, little faint marks that human beings were making on the great wide stillness, the stillness that brooded along her white ceiling and all round her and right out through the world; the faint scent of her soap-tablet reached her from the distant wash-stand. She felt that her short sleep must have been perfect, that it had carried her down and down into the heart of tranquillity where she still lay awake, and drinking as if at a source. Cool streams seemed to be flowing in her brain, through her heart, through every vein, her breath was like a live cool stream flowing through her.
She remembered that she had dreamed her favourite dream—floating through clouds and above tree-tops and villages. She had almost brushed the tree-tops, that had been the happiest moment, and had caught sight of a circular seat round the trunk of a large old tree and a group of white cottages.
She stirred; her hands seemed warm on her cool chest and the warmth of her body sent up a faint pleasant sense of personality. “It’s me,” she said, and smiled.
“Look here, you’d better get up, my dear,” she murmured.
She wanted to have the whole world in and be reconciled. But she knew that if anyone came, she would contract and the expression of her face would change and they would hate her or be indifferent. She knew that if she even moved she would be changed.
“Get up.”
She listened for a while to two voices across the landing. Millie’s thick and plaintive with her hay-fever and Bertha’s thin and cold and level and reassuring.... Bertha’s voice was like the morning, clean and cool.... Then she got up and shut the door.
The sky was a vivid grey—against its dark background the top of heavy masses of cloud were standing up just above the roof-line of the houses beyond the neighbouring gardens. The trees and the grey roofs and the faces of the houses were staringly bright. They were absolutely stiff, nothing was moving, there were no shadows.
A soft distant rumble of thunder came as she was dressing.... The storm was still going on ... what an extraordinary time of day for thunder ... the excitement was not over ... they were still a besieged party ... all staying at the Bienenkorb together.... How beautiful it sounded rumbling away over the country in the morning. When she had finished struggling with her long thick hair and put the hairpins into the solid coil on the top of her head and tied the stout doubled door-knocker plait at her neck, she put on the rose-madder blouse. The mirror was lower and twice as large as the one in the garret, larger than the one she had shared with Harriett. “How jolly I look,” she thought, “jolly and big somehow. Mother would like me this morning. I am German-looking to-day, pinky red and yellow hair. But I haven’t got a German expression and I don’t smile like a German.... She smiled.... Silly, baby-face! Doll! Never mind. I look jolly. She looked gravely into her eyes.... There’s something about my expression.” Her face grew wistful. “It isn’t vain to like it. It’s something. It isn’t me. It’s something I am, somehow. Oh, do stay,” she said, “do be like that always.” She sighed and turned away saying in Harriett’s voice, “Oo—crumbs! This is no place for me.”