Page 260 - sons-and-lovers

rather tottering, where they say Mary Queen of Scots was
imprisoned.
‘Think of the Queen going up here!’ said Miriam in a low
voice, as she climbed the hollow stairs.
‘If she could get up,’ said Paul, ‘for she had rheumatism
like anything. I reckon they treated her rottenly.’
‘You don’t think she deserved it?’ asked Miriam.
‘No, I don’t. She was only lively.’
They continued to mount the winding staircase. A high
wind, blowing through the loopholes, went rushing up the
shaft, and filled the girl’s skirts like a balloon, so that she
was ashamed, until he took the hem of her dress and held
it down for her. He did it perfectly simply, as he would have
picked up her glove. She remembered this always.
Round the broken top of the tower the ivy bushed out,
old and handsome. Also, there were a few chill gillivers, in
pale cold bud. Miriam wanted to lean over for some ivy, but
he would not let her. Instead, she had to wait behind him,
and take from him each spray as he gathered it and held it
to her, each one separately, in the purest manner of chiv-
alry. The tower seemed to rock in the wind. They looked
over miles and miles of wooded country, and country with
gleams of pasture.
The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful, and in
perfect preservation. Paul made a drawing: Miriam stayed
with him. She was thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking
with her strained, hopeless eyes, that could not understand
misery, over the hills whence no help came, or sitting in this
crypt, being told of a God as cold as the place she sat in.