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POINTED ROOFS
POINTED ROOFS
BY
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
TO
WINIFRED RAY
All rights reserved
Second Impression, 1921
INTRODUCTION
I have read "Pointed Roofs" three times.
The first time it came to me with its original wardrobe, a different
dress for every mood; and in some places the handwriting of the
manuscript clothed the thought with the ragged urgency of haste; and in
others it wore an aspect incredibly delicate and neat, as if the writer
had caressed each word before setting it down. I decided then that
"Pointed Roofs" was realism, was objective. The influence of the varying
moods I inferred from the vagaries of the holograph, inclined me to
believe that the book presented the picture of a conscious artist,
outside her material, judging, balancing, selecting.
The second time the novel came to me in typescript, in the formal,
respectable dress of the applicant for a clerkship. It was there to
answer questions; willing to be examined but replying always in a single
manner. I changed my opinion after that interview. I thought that I had
a clearer sight of the method and I swung round to a flat contradiction
of my earlier judgment. This, I thought, is the most subjective thing I
have ever read. The writer of this has gone through life with eyes that
looked inward; she has known every person and experience solely by her
own sensations and reactions.
And, now, I have read "Pointed Roofs" a third time in the form of a
printed book; suddenly ranged alongside all the other books, little and
great, and challenging comparison with them. I am no longer prejudiced
by the guise in which it comes; I have been able, within my limits, to
judge it as I would judge any other novel....
That final judgment I hesitate to set down in any detail. I do not wish
to annoy either critic or public by a superabundant eulogy. I have too
great faith in the worth of Miss Richardson's work to fall into that
extravagant praise which might well be understood as the easy escape of
the bored friend taking the line of least resistance--mainly in clichés.
But there is another side to the question due to the fact that "Pointed
Roofs" cannot be ranged either with its contemporaries or with the
classics in this kind. And I have volunteered to prepare the mind of the
reader for something that he or she might fail otherwise properly to
understand, even as I, myself, twice failed.
This statement need not provoke alarm. The possible failure to
understand will not arise from any turgid obscurity of style, but only
from a peculiar difference which is, perhaps, the mark of a new form in
fiction. In the past, we have attempted a separation of two main
categories in fiction, and in most cases the description of realist or
romantic has been applicable enough. Neither can be applied in their
ordinary usage to Miss Richardson. The romantic floats on the surface of
his imaginings, observing life from an intellectual distance through
glasses specially adapted to his own idiosyncrasies of taste. The
realist wades waist deep into the flood of humanity, and goes his way
peering and choosing, expressing himself in the material of his choice
and not in any distortion of its form.
Miss Richardson is, I think, the first novelist who has taken the final
plunge; who has neither floated nor waded, but gone head under and
become a very part of the human element she has described.
The "Miriam" of this book may be defined as a keen observer, even as I
defined her after reading that holograph. Or she may figure, as I saw
her in typescript, as a blind creature feeling her way with sensitive
fingers and reading the unseen by the emotions of her mind. The very
contradiction implies that the truth will be found in neither verdict.
Miriam is, indeed, one with life; and the unexpectedness, the
unanalysable quality of that fact may annoy the superficial critic and
prejudice him to the point of forcing "Pointed Roofs" into some
hard-and-fast category.
And it is only that one peculiarity for which I wish to prepare the
readers of this book. It is a new attitude towards fiction, and one that
I could not hope to explain in an introduction--even if I could explain
it at all; for explanation in this connexion would seem to imply a
knowledge that only the mystics can faintly realise.
"Pointed Roofs" is, I hope, but the first of many volumes which will
express the passage of Miriam through life; and I leave all further
praise of it to those who may have the insight to comprehend it.
For myself, as I have said, I have read it three times; and presently I
shall certainly read it again.
J. D. BERESFORD.
POINTED ROOFS
CHAPTER I
1
Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. The March twilight
lay upon the landings, but the staircase was almost dark. The top
landing was quite dark and silent. There was no one about. It would be
quiet in her room. She could sit by the fire and be quiet and think
things over until Eve and Harriett came back with the parcels. She would
have time to think about the journey and decide what she was going to
say to the Fräulein.
Her new Saratoga trunk stood solid and gleaming in the firelight.
To-morrow it would be taken away and she would be gone. The room would
be altogether Harriett's. It would never have its old look again. She
evaded the thought and moved clumsily to the nearest window. The outline
of the round bed and the shapes of the may-trees on either side of the
bend of the drive were just visible. There was no escape for her
thoughts in this direction. The sense of all she was leaving stirred
uncontrollably as she stood looking down into the well-known garden.
Out in the road beyond the invisible lime-trees came the rumble of
wheels. The gate creaked and the wheels crunched up the drive, slurring
and stopping under the dining-room window.
It was the Thursday afternoon piano-organ, the one that was always in
tune. It was early to-day.
She drew back from the window as the bass chords began thumping gently
in the darkness. It was better that it should come now than later on, at
dinner-time. She could get over it alone up here.
She went down the length of the room and knelt by the fireside with one
hand on the mantel-shelf so that she could get up noiselessly and be
lighting the gas if anyone came in.
The organ was playing "The Wearin' o' the Green."
It had begun that tune during the last term at school, in the summer. It
made her think of rounders in the hot school garden, singing-classes in
the large green room, all the class shouting "Gather _ro_ses while ye
may," hot afternoons in the shady north room, the sound of turning
pages, the hum of the garden beyond the sun-blinds, meetings in the
sixth form study.... Lilla, with her black hair and the specks of bright
amber in the brown of her eyes, talking about free-will.
She stirred the fire. The windows were quite dark. The flames shot up
and shadows darted.
That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and
desert her, leaving nothing behind. To-morrow it would belong to a world
which would go on without her, taking no heed. There would still be
blissful days. But she would not be in them.
There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and
nothing to do and no end anywhere to anything; no more sitting at the
open window in the dining-room, reading Lecky and Darwin and bound
"Contemporary Reviews" with roses waiting in the garden to be worn in
the afternoon, and Eve and Harriett somewhere about, washing blouses or
copying waltzes from the library packet ... no more Harriett looking in
at the end of the morning, rushing her off to the new grand piano to
play the "Mikado" and the "Holy Family" duets. The tennis-club would go
on, but she would not be there. It would begin in May. Again there would
be a white twinkling figure coming quickly along the pathway between the
rows of holly-hocks every Saturday afternoon.
Why had he come to tea every Sunday--never missing a single Sunday--all
the winter? Why did he say, "Play 'Abide with me,'" "Play 'Abide with
me'" yesterday, if he didn't care? What was the good of being so quiet
and saying nothing? Why didn't he say "Don't go" or "When are you coming
back?" Eve said he looked perfectly miserable.
There was nothing to look forward to now but governessing and old age.
Perhaps Miss Gilkes was right.... Get rid of men and muddles and have
things just ordinary and be happy. "Make up your mind to be happy. You
can be _perfectly_ happy without anyone to think about...." Wearing that
large cameo brooch--long, white, flat-fingered hands and that quiet
little laugh.... The piano-organ had reached its last tune. In the midst
of the final flourish of notes the door flew open. Miriam got quickly to
her feet and felt for matches.
2
Harriett came in waggling a thin brown paper parcel.
"Did you hear the Intermezzo? What a dim religious! We got your old
collars."
Miriam took the parcel and subsided on to the hearthrug, looking with a
new curiosity at Harriett's little, round, firelit face, smiling tightly
between the rim of her hard felt hat and the bright silk bow beneath her
chin.
A footstep sounded on the landing and there was a gentle tap on the open
door.
"Oh, come in, Eve--bring some matches. Are the collars piquet, Harry?"
"No, they hadn't got piquet, but they're the plain shape you like. You
may thank us they didn't send you things with little rujabiba frills."
Eve came slenderly down the room and Miriam saw with relief that her
outdoor things were off. As the gas flared up she drew comfort from her
scarlet serge dress, and the soft crimson cheek and white brow of the
profile raised towards the flaring jet.
"What are things like downstairs?" she said, staring into the fire.
"I don't know," said Eve. She sighed thoughtfully and sank into a carpet
chair under the gas bracket. Miriam glanced at her troubled eyes.
"Pater's only just come in. I think things are pretty rotten," declared
Harriett from the hearthrug.
"Isn't it ghastly--for all of us?" Miriam felt treacherously outspoken.
It was a relief to be going away. She knew that this sense of relief
made her able to speak. "It's never knowing that's so awful. Perhaps
he'll get some more money presently and things'll go on again. Fancy
mother having it always, ever since we were babies."
"Don't, Mim."
"All right. I won't tell you the words he said, how he put it about the
difficulty of getting the money for my things."
"_Don't_, Mim."
Miriam's mind went back to the phrase and her mother's agonised face.
She felt utterly desolate in the warm room.
"I wish _I'd_ got brains," chirped Harriett, poking the fire with the
toe of her boot.
"So you have--more than me."
"Oh--reely."
"You know, I _know_ girls, that things are as absolutely ghastly this
time as they can possibly be and that something must be done.... But you
know it's perfectly fearful to face that old school when it comes to the
point."
"Oh, my dear, it'll be lovely," said Eve; "all new and jolly, and think
how you will enjoy those lectures, you'll simply love them."
"It's all very well to say that. You know you'd feel ill with fright."
"It'll be all right--for _you_--once you're there."
Miriam stared into the fire and began to murmur shamefacedly.
"No more all day bézique.... No more days in the West End.... No more
matinées ... no more exhibitions ... no more A.B.C. teas ... no more
insane times ... no more anything."
"What about holidays? You'll enjoy them all the more."
"I shall be staid and governessy."
"You mustn't. You must be frivolous."
Two deeply-burrowing dimples fastened the clean skin tightly over the
bulge of Miriam's smile.
"And marry a German professor," she intoned blithely.
"Don't--don't for _goodney_ say that before mother, Miriam."
"D'you mean she minds me going?"
"My _dear_!"
Why did Eve use her cross voice?--stupid ... "for goodness' sake," not
"for goodney." Silly of Eve to talk slang....
"All right. I won't."
"Won't marry a German professor, or won't tell mother, do you mean?...
Oo--Crumbs! My old cake in the oven!" Harriett hopped to the door.
"Funny Harriett taking to cookery. It doesn't seem a bit like her."
"She'll have to do something--so shall I, I s'pose."
"It seems awful."
"We shall simply have to."
"It's awful," said Miriam, shivering.
"Poor old girl. I expect you feel horrid because you're tired with all
the packing and excitement."
"Oh well, anyhow, it's simply ghastly."
"You'll feel better to-morrow."
"D'you think I shall?"
"Yes--you're so strong," said Eve, flushing and examining her nails.
"How d'you mean?"
"Oh--all sorts of ways."
"What way?"
"Oh--well--you arranging all this--I mean answering the advertisement
and settling it all."
"Oh well, you know you backed me up."
"Oh yes, but other things...."
"What?"
"Oh, I was thinking about you having no religion."
"Oh."
"You must have such splendid principles to keep you straight," said Eve,
and cleared her throat, "I mean, you must have such a lot in you."
"Me?"
"Yes, of course."
"I don't know where it comes in. What have I done?"
"Oh, well, it isn't so much what you've done--you have such a good
time.... Everybody admires you and all that ... you know what I
mean--you're so clever.... You're always in the right."
"That's just what everybody hates!"
"Well, my dear, I wish I had your mind."
"You needn't," said Miriam.
"You're all right--you'll come out all right. You're one of those
strong-minded people who have to go through a period of doubt."
"But, my _dear_," said Miriam grateful and proud, "I feel such a humbug.
You know when I wrote that letter to the Fräulein I said I was a member
of the Church. I know what it will be, I shall have to take the English
girls to church."
"Oh, well, you won't mind that."
"It will make me simply ill--I could _never_ describe to you," said
Miriam, with her face aglow, "what it is to me to hear some silly man
drone away with an undistributed middle term."
"They're not all like that."
"Oh, well, then it will be ignoratio elenchi or argumentum ad
hominem----"
"Oh, yes, but they're not the _service_."
"The service I can't make head or tail of--think of the Athanasian."
"Yes." Eve stirred uneasily and began to execute a gentle scale with her
tiny tightly-knit blue and white hand upon her knee.
"It'll be ghastly," continued Miriam, "not having anyone to pour out
to--I've told you such a lot these last few days."
"Yes, hasn't it been funny? I seem to know you all at once so much
better."
"Well--don't you think I'm perfectly hateful?"
"No. I admire you more than ever. I think you're simply splendid."
"Then you simply don't know me."
"Yes I do. And you'll be able to write to me."
Eve, easily weeping, hugged her and whispered, "You mustn't. I can't see
you break down--don't--don't--don't. We can't be blue your last
night.... Think of nice things.... There _will_ be nice things again ...
there will, will, will, _will_."
Miriam pursed her lips to a tight bunch and sat twisting her long
thickish fingers. Eve stood up in her tears. Her smile and the curves of
her mouth were unchanged by her weeping, and the crimson had spread and
deepened a little in the long oval of her face. Miriam watched the
changing crimson. Her eyes went to and fro between it and the neatly
pinned masses of brown hair.
"I'm going to get some hot water," said Eve, "and we'll make ourselves
glorious."
Miriam watched her as she went down the long room--the great oval of
dark hair, the narrow neck, the narrow back, tight, plump little hands
hanging in profile, white, with a purple pad near the wrist.
3
When Miriam woke the next morning she lay still with closed eyes. She
had dreamed that she had been standing in a room in the German school
and the staff had crowded round her, looking at her. They had dreadful
eyes--eyes like the eyes of hostesses she remembered, eyes she had seen
in trains and 'buses, eyes from the old school. They came and stood and
looked at her, and saw her as she was, without courage, without funds or
good clothes or beauty, without charm or interest, without even the
skill to play a part. They looked at her with loathing. "Board and
lodging--privilege to attend Masters' lectures and laundry (body-linen
only)." That was all she had thought of and clutched at--all along,
since first she read the Fräulein's letter. Her keep and the chance of
learning ... and Germany--Germany, das deutsche Vaterland--Germany, all
woods and mountains and tenderness--Hermann and Dorothea in the dusk of
a happy village.
And it would really be those women, expecting things of her. They would
be so affable at first. She had been through it a million times--all her
life--all eternity. They would smile those hateful women's
smiles--smirks--self-satisfied smiles as if everybody were agreed about
everything. She loathed women. They always smiled. All the teachers had
at school, all the girls, but Lilla. Eve did ... maddeningly sometimes
... Mother ... it was the only funny horrid thing about her. Harriett
didn't.... Harriett laughed. She was strong and hard somehow....
Pater knew how hateful all the world of women were and despised them.
He never included her with them; or only sometimes when she pretended,
or he didn't understand....
Someone was saying "Hi!" a gurgling muffled shout, a long way off.
She opened her eyes. It was bright morning. She saw the twist of
Harriett's body lying across the edge of the bed. With a gasp she flung
herself over her own side. Harry, old Harry, jolly old Harry had
remembered the Grand Ceremonial. In a moment her own head hung, her long
hair flinging back on to the floor, her eyes gazing across under the bed
at the reversed snub of Harriett's face. It was flushed in the midst of
the wiry hair which stuck out all round it but did not reach the floor.
"Hi!" they gurgled solemnly, "Hi.... Hi!" shaking their heads from side
to side. Then their four frilled hands came down and they flumped out of
the high bed.
They performed an uproarious toilet. It seemed so safe up there in the
bright bare room. Miriam's luggage had been removed. It was away
somewhere in the house; far away and unreal and unfelt as her parents
somewhere downstairs, and the servants away in the basement getting
breakfast and Sarah and Eve always incredible, getting quietly up in the
next room. Nothing was real but getting up with old Harriett in this old
room.
She revelled in Harriett's delicate buffoonery ("voluntary incongruity"
she quoted to herself as she watched her)--the titles of some of the
books on Harriett's shelf, "Ungava; a Tale of the North," "Grimm's Fairy
Tales," "John Halifax," "Swiss Family Robinson" made her laugh. The
curtained recesses of the long room stretched away into space.
She went about dimpling and responding, singing and masquerading as her
large hands did their work.
She intoned the titles on her own shelf--as a response to the quiet
swearing and jesting accompanying Harriett's occupations. "The Voyage
of the Beeeeeeagle," she sang "Scott's Poetical _Works_."
Villette--Longfellow--Holy Bible _with_ Apocrypha--Egmont----
"Binks!" squealed Harriett daintily. "Yink grink binks."
"Books!" she responded in a low tone, and flushed as if she had given
Harriett an affectionate hug. "My rotten books...." She would come back,
and read all her books more carefully. She had packed some. She could
not remember which and why.
"Binks," she said, and it was quite easy for them to crowd together at
the little dressing-table. Harriett was standing in her little faded red
moirette petticoat and a blue flannelette dressing-jacket brushing her
wiry hair. Miriam reflected that she need no longer hate her for the set
of her clothes round her hips. She caught sight of her own faded jersey
and stiff, shapeless black petticoat in the mirror. Harriett's "Hinde's"
lay on the dressing-table, her own still lifted the skin of her forehead
in suffused puckerings against the shank of each pin.
Unperceived, she eyed the tiny stiff plait of hair which stuck out
almost horizontally from the nape of Harriett's neck, and watched her
combing out the tightly-curled fringe standing stubbily out along her
forehead and extending like a thickset hedge midway across the crown of
her head, where it stopped abruptly against the sleekly-brushed longer
strands which strained over her poll and disappeared into the plait.
"Your old wool'll be just right in Germany," remarked Harriett.
"Mm."
"You ought to do it in basket plaits like Sarah."
"I wish I could. I can't think how she does it."
"Ike spect it's easy enough."
"Mm."
"But you're all right, anyhow."
"Anyhow, it's no good bothering when you're plain."
"You're _not_ plain."
Miriam looked sharply round.
"Go on, Gooby."
"You're not. You don't know. Granny said you'll be a bonny woman, and
Sarah thinks you've got the best shape face and the best complexion of
any of us, and cook was simply crying her eyes out last night and said
you were the light of the house with your happy, pretty face, and mother
said you're much too attractive to go about alone, and that's partly why
Pater's going with you to Hanover, silly.... You're not plain," she
gasped.
Miriam's amazement silenced her. She stood back from the mirror. She
could not look into it until Harriett had gone. The phrases she had just
heard rang in her head without meaning. But she knew she would remember
all of them. She went on doing her hair with downcast eyes. She had seen
Harriett vividly, and had longed to crush her in her arms and kiss her
little round cheeks and the snub of her nose. Then she wanted her to be
gone.
Presently Harriett took up a brooch and skated down the room,
"Ta-ra-ra-la-eee-tee!" she carolled, "don't be long," and disappeared.
"I'm pretty," murmured Miriam, planting herself in front of the
dressing-table. "I'm pretty--they like me--they _like_ me. Why didn't I
know?" She did not look into the mirror. "They all like me, _me_."
The sound of the breakfast-bell came clanging up through the house. She
hurried to her side of the curtained recess. Hanging there were her old
red stockinette jersey and her blue skirt ... never again ... just once
more ... she could change afterwards. Her brown, heavy best dress with
puffed and gauged sleeves and thick gauged and gathered boned bodice was
in her hand. She hung it once more on its peg and quickly put on her old
things. The jersey was shiny with wear. "You darling old things," she
muttered as her arms slipped down the sleeves.
The door of the next room opened quietly and she heard Sarah and Eve go
decorously downstairs. She waited until their footsteps had died away
and then went very slowly down the first flight, fastening her belt. She
stopped at the landing window, tucking the frayed end of the petersham
under the frame of the buckle ... they were all downstairs, liking her.
She could not face them. She was too excited and too shy.... She had
never once thought of their "feeling" her going away ... saying good-bye
to each one ... all minding and sorry--even the servants. She glanced
fearfully out into the garden, seeing nothing. Someone called up from
the breakfast-room doorway, "Mim--my!" How surprised Mr. Bart had been
when he discovered that they themselves never knew whose voice it was of
all four of them unless you saw the person, "but yours is really richer"
... it was cheek to say that.
"Mim--my!"
Suddenly she longed to be gone--to have it all over and be gone.
She heard the kak-kak of Harriett's wooden heeled slippers across the
tiled hall. She glanced down the well of the staircase. Harriett was
mightily swinging the bell, scattering a little spray of notes at each
end of her swing.
With a frightened face Miriam crept back up the stairs. Violently
slamming the bedroom door, "I'm a-comin'--I'm a-comin'," she shouted and
ran downstairs.