“What an odd girl she is-isn’t she?” said Miriam. She laughed as she spoke-a derogatory sort of laugh which was intended to put Jenny in her place.
Richard did not reply. He was too angry. The derogatory tone in which Miriam referred to Jenny, and the fact that she relied on him to second her, gave him so hotly partisan a feeling that it was all he could do to restrain himself from a candour of free speech which would not have gone down at all well.
Miriam stared at him. She was quite enjoying herself. If Richard disagreed with her he could say so, couldn’t he? She was not troubled with any delicacy of feeling herself. She laughed and said, “Oh well, if she doesn’t want to come, I suppose we can do without her,” and left it at that.
Richard let her out of the front door and returned. In reply to Miriam’s attempt to tie him down to the picnic-lunch on Monday he had said firmly that he would find out what Jenny was doing and let her know.
With an inward determination to avoid the occasion even if he had to be rude he found Jenny in the kitchen. She neither turned nor looked at him as he came in.
“Where’s Caroline?” he said.
“She’s gone into the garden for some flowers. Do you want her?”
She didn’t look at him. Why didn’t she? He came up close.
“If I see much of that girl I shall be rude to her,” he said.
Jenny felt a lightening of the spirit. He didn’t really like Miriam-he couldn’t. She was a horrid girl. She went on washing china with most particular attention. She was rather pale.
He said, “Jenny-” and then Caroline Danesworth came in with a bunch of roses in her hand.
There was no more opportunity for private speech. Jenny clung to Caroline, and Caroline gave them no more opportunities. She was quite aware of Richard’s desire to be alone with Jenny, and she had no intention of giving way to it, or of making things easy for him. Jenny wanted time, and Richard had no business to stampede her.
She was very pleased to find that Jenny revived as the day went on. They went down the village and shopped, and then they came back and cooked their lunch, and afterwards when the things were all cleared away Jenny curled up in a big chair with a book and forgot that she was running away. She really forgot everything except that every now and then the thought of Richard stabbed in and took her breath. Where were they going? Was it the same way? Did he want her to go with him? He didn’t really want her at all.
And then there came the thought of Mac. It was such a little time ago that he had filled her world. She hadn’t been here for a week yet, and it was only that length of time since she had heard him talking with Mrs. Forbes on the other side of the schoolroom curtains. It was just as if their words had had a corrosive quality which had burned out her picture of Mac. It wasn’t a true picture. She knew that now. It wasn’t true, and it never had been true. She had taken all the things she liked, his height, his fair complexion, and the pleasant tones of his voice, and she had made them into a picture of what she thought he was. And then as she sat behind the curtain in the schoolroom the real Mac had come out from behind the picture she had made of him, and this real Mac was- horrible.
She shuddered away from the picture, but she couldn’t forget it. Nearly a week had gone by, and she had had time to think. It hadn’t been a conscious sort of thought, but for all that the processes of healing and adjustment had gone on. The Mac whom she had imagined and loved, or come very near to loving, had never existed at all. He was a romantic fancy. She said it to herself, and it did her good.
Her mind turned to Richard. It wasn’t his fault that that odious girl Miriam was next door. As far as she could see, it would take them all their time ever to get a minute to themselves. Miriam was the most unabashed person she had ever come across in her life. Short of getting up very early in the morning and escaping for the day before Miriam was up, she could see no chance of their ever eluding her. It was nice to feel on the same side as Richard. What she hadn’t been able to bear was the feeling that he and Miriam were on one side, with Jenny a long, long way off on the other and a great thick hedge all set with thorns between them.
Caroline had gone in to see a sick neighbour. When she returned they had tea. It was a day which Jenny was often to look back to in the days that were to come. There was no hint of those days now.
When tea was over and washed up Caroline and Jenny talked. Jenny told her about Garsty and about the little girls, but she didn’t mention Mrs. Forbes or the two boys. Caroline was a very easy person to talk to. She didn’t pounce on what you told her and try to make it mean more or less, like Mrs. Merridew did. She spoke very little, but you felt a flowing tide of sympathy and understanding. The time passed very quickly.
It was just as it was getting dark that Miriam came. They had been sitting in the dusk, but now Caroline got up and turned on the electric light. At once the half-seen dusk outside retreated and became vague and dark.
“Richard’s not back?” said Miriam. “Cousin Laura’s gone to some meeting or other. They do have them at inconvenient hours, don’t they? I wanted to see Richard.”
Jenny did not say anything. Miss Danesworth at the front windows looked over her shoulder to say,
“He’s not back yet. I never do expect him until I see him.”
“Oh-that’s very inconvenient, isn’t it? Well, I can wait for a little, but not for very long.” She sat down in the most comfortable of the easy chairs and continued to talk in her rather loud voice. “It’s not very complimentary to you, Jenny, his going off like that for the whole day, is it?” she said. “I mean, I shouldn’t feel flattered if I was visiting in a house with a young man and he made off like that.”
Caroline finished drawing the curtains and turned round.
“Oh, he didn’t really want to go,” she said in a laughing voice. “We fairly drove him, didn’t we, Jenny?”
Jenny lifted her head. She felt defenceless. But Caroline was defending her. She couldn’t defend herself. She wouldn’t do it. Miriam could say anything she liked, Jenny wouldn’t answer her. She had been mending a pair of stockings until the light got so bad. Now she picked them up again. The neat interwoven stitches were soothing to do. She would leave Miriam to do the talking.
And Miriam talked.
She talked about her sisters and her home, about the last place she had been in, and about how sorry they were when she made up her mind to leave.
“I suppose I shall have to think about getting something else,” she said. “Such a nuisance! I think employers are simply the limit-don’t you? And what they expect of one!”
She discoursed in this vein for some time. And then, suddenly looking at the clock, she said, “Is that right?”
“Yes, it keeps excellent time.”
“Oh-then I must go. Tell Richard I want to see him, will you? Not tonight-I’m doing something else. But if he’d like to he can come round in the morning.” She was already on her feet and out of the door as she finished speaking.
Jenny wondered a little. She thought that Miriam was a very odd girl, and she was very much relieved to see the last of her. If she had known that she was indeed seeing the last of her she would have had a more painful feeling.
Chapter XX
Miriam went out of the front door. Coming from the brightly lighted hall, she blinked at the sudden darkness. The door behind her shut, and she stood for a moment to get her bearings. The two houses were at the end of the road. There was nothing beyond Mrs. Merridew’s, a fact upon which she was apt to be complacent: “Here I am, just on the edge of the common, and no one can build beyond me. At the same time, with that nice quiet Miss Danesworth next door I have all the advantages of company.”