to whom its brighter-than-gold golds and unearthly colourings endeared it when in the mood. Also, some of the china had a secret lien with at least one of them: the scenery motifs spoke in particular to Clare. Their miniature vastness was of a size for her; their look of eternity could be taken in in less than a minute. She had lived within them. That she knew each landscape, to her a planet, to be linked in destructibility with the cup, bowl, or plate upon which it was, added peril to love. One saw, here, how china could break. One foresaw also how, one day or another, it must do so beyond repair.
Nor was china all. To the Army child, there was something mystic about this world of possessions. The Burkin-Joneses, in their austere, ordered movements from place to place, took with them little—brass bowls, framed photographs, trophies. Oriental rugs acquired along their course and, it might be, a scarf or two wherewith to deck yet another provided sofa or drape yet another hired piano. Round such existences, nothing but intangibles can accumulate: they do. Mrs. Piggott and Dicey had, by contrast, spun round themselves tangible webs, through whose transparency, layers deep, one glimpsed some fixed, perhaps haunted, other dimension. Feverel Cottage, from what one knew of their history, had not been their abode for long: yet who now could picture them anywhere but here? Their drawing-room bay window was tangled with muslin curtains—which, having come from some larger home, were too long and somewhat over-voluminous. Though bloused out liberally over tied-back sashes, the muslin found itself still with some yards to flow: it disposed of itself therefore in swirls and pools inside the bay and on the neighbouring floor. Muslin did not, however, entirely fill the bay, into which a delightful table had been inserted, with, at each end, space for one each of a pair of needlework stools. Further into the room, chairs dressed loosely in leafy stuff sat about in a state of sylvan indifference, sat upon or not. The walls wore a pearl-grey paper, faintly lustrous: through one of them, near a corner, had been cut what the Piggotts stigmatized as “a silly window”: a casement sentimentally diamond-paned. Despised though it might be, it had its use. It supplied with daylight the head-end of the sofa on which novels were read.
Clare, this late afternoon, came in on her own. She wound her way silently into the muslin window-cave, slid open a drawer of the table and extracted a puzzle, and sat down with it. To disturb Mrs. Piggott once she was in a novel was known to be more or less impossible; nevertheless the child, for these first minutes, worked away at the clickety puzzle with some caution. It was her favourite of several: Chinese ivory. Only a roving bluebottle, which from time to time seemed to divide and become two, stirred in the air of the room. But for the periodic flicker as she turned a page, Mrs. Piggott, diagonal on the sofa, might have been a waxwork—Clare, at a halt with the puzzle, took a contemplative look at her through the curtains. The scarlet, brand-new novel, held up, masked its wholly-commanded reader’s face. Though nominally she was “lying” on the sofa, the upper part of the body of Mrs. Piggott was all but vertical, thanks to cushions—her attitude being one of startled attention, sustained rapture, and, in a way, devotion to duty. The more flowing remainder of her was horizontal: feet, crossed at the ankles, pointing up at the end. She was as oblivious of all parts of her person as she was of herself. As for her surroundings, they were nowhere. Feverel Cottage, the sofa, the time of day not merely did not exist for Mrs. Piggott, they did not exist. This began to give Clare, as part of them, an annihilated feeling. She burned with envy of anything’s having the power to make this happen. Oh, to be as destructive as a story! … She tossed the interlocked puzzle into the air, muffed the return catch, and
Nor was china all. To the Army child, there was something mystic about this world of possessions. The Burkin-Joneses, in their austere, ordered movements from place to place, took with them little—brass bowls, framed photographs, trophies. Oriental rugs acquired along their course and, it might be, a scarf or two wherewith to deck yet another provided sofa or drape yet another hired piano. Round such existences, nothing but intangibles can accumulate: they do. Mrs. Piggott and Dicey had, by contrast, spun round themselves tangible webs, through whose transparency, layers deep, one glimpsed some fixed, perhaps haunted, other dimension. Feverel Cottage, from what one knew of their history, had not been their abode for long: yet who now could picture them anywhere but here? Their drawing-room bay window was tangled with muslin curtains—which, having come from some larger home, were too long and somewhat over-voluminous. Though bloused out liberally over tied-back sashes, the muslin found itself still with some yards to flow: it disposed of itself therefore in swirls and pools inside the bay and on the neighbouring floor. Muslin did not, however, entirely fill the bay, into which a delightful table had been inserted, with, at each end, space for one each of a pair of needlework stools. Further into the room, chairs dressed loosely in leafy stuff sat about in a state of sylvan indifference, sat upon or not. The walls wore a pearl-grey paper, faintly lustrous: through one of them, near a corner, had been cut what the Piggotts stigmatized as “a silly window”: a casement sentimentally diamond-paned. Despised though it might be, it had its use. It supplied with daylight the head-end of the sofa on which novels were read.
Clare, this late afternoon, came in on her own. She wound her way silently into the muslin window-cave, slid open a drawer of the table and extracted a puzzle, and sat down with it. To disturb Mrs. Piggott once she was in a novel was known to be more or less impossible; nevertheless the child, for these first minutes, worked away at the clickety puzzle with some caution. It was her favourite of several: Chinese ivory. Only a roving bluebottle, which from time to time seemed to divide and become two, stirred in the air of the room. But for the periodic flicker as she turned a page, Mrs. Piggott, diagonal on the sofa, might have been a waxwork—Clare, at a halt with the puzzle, took a contemplative look at her through the curtains. The scarlet, brand-new novel, held up, masked its wholly-commanded reader’s face. Though nominally she was “lying” on the sofa, the upper part of the body of Mrs. Piggott was all but vertical, thanks to cushions—her attitude being one of startled attention, sustained rapture, and, in a way, devotion to duty. The more flowing remainder of her was horizontal: feet, crossed at the ankles, pointing up at the end. She was as oblivious of all parts of her person as she was of herself. As for her surroundings, they were nowhere. Feverel Cottage, the sofa, the time of day not merely did not exist for Mrs. Piggott, they did not exist. This began to give Clare, as part of them, an annihilated feeling. She burned with envy of anything’s having the power to make this happen. Oh, to be as destructive as a story! … She tossed the interlocked puzzle into the air, muffed the return catch, and
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