1
Miriam felt very proud of tall Miss Perne when she met her in the hall at the beginning 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 unpack 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 wavering 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 Miriam saw that she would have once more taken her in her arms.
“I like 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.
2
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, 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 Perne’s hair is perfectly 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 like pictures by Leader, the stables and laundry, a “laundry-maid” who was sixty-five, 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 listened; but not agreed about the teaching, about making the girls see how easy it 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 infecting the charm of baskets full of cheap stockings 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; trying it across her face first. It almost obliterated 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.