Backwater (Pilgrimage, Vol. 2)

MP3 Audio CD. Backwater (Pilgrimage, Vol. 2)

CHAPTER I


1

A swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam from a tapestry screen standing
between her and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the bow of
the window. Consulting it at intervals as the afternoon wore on, she
found that it made very light of the quiet propositions that were being
elaborated within hearing of her inattentive ears. Looking beyond it she
could catch glimpses between the crowded fernery, when a tram was not
jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across the roadway and beyond
the palisade of a green level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The
trams seemed very near and noisy. When they passed by the window, the
speakers had to raise their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room
was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned quietness. It was full of
old things, like the Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts
of the ladies who were sitting and talking there. She and her mother had
seemed quite modern, fussy, worldly people when they had first come into
the room. From the moment the three ladies had come in and begun talking
to her mother, the things in the room, and the view of the distant row
of poplars had grown more and more peaceful, and now at the end of an
hour she felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson too, belonged
to the old-world room with its quiet green outlook shut in by the
poplars. Only the trams were disturbing. They came busily by, with their
strange jingle-jingle, plock-plock, and made her inattentive. Why were
there so many people coming by in trams? Where were they going? Why were
all the trams painted that hard, dingy blue?

The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs in smooth gentle
voices, in small broken phrases, frequently interrupting and correcting