1
Miriam was practising on the piano in the larger of the two English
bedrooms. Two other pianos were sounding in the house, one across the
landing and the other in the saal where Herr Kapellmeister Bossenberger
was giving a music-lesson. The rest of the girls were gathered in the
large schoolroom under the care of Mademoiselle for Saturday's
_raccommodage_. It was the last hour of the week's work. Presently there
would be a great gonging, the pianos would cease, Fräulein's voice would
sound up through the house "Anziehen zum Aus--geh--hen!"
There would be the walk, dinner, the Saturday afternoon home-letters to
be written and then, until Monday, holiday, freedom to read and to talk
English and idle. And there was a new arrival in the house. Ulrica Hesse
had come. Miriam had seen her. There had been three large leather trunks
in the hall and a girl with a smooth pure oval of pale face standing
wrapped in dark furs, gazing about her with eyes for which Miriam had no
word, liquid--limpid--great-saucers, no--pools ... great round deeps....
She had felt about for something to express them as she went upstairs
with her roll of music. Fräulein Pfaff who had seemed to hover and smile
about the girl as if half afraid to speak to her, had put out a hand for
Miriam and said almost deprecatingly, "Ach, mm, dies' ist unser Ulrica."
The girl's thin fingers had come out of her furs and fastened
convulsively--like cold, throbbing claws on to the breadth of Miriam's
hand.
"Unsere englische Lehrerin--our teacher from England," smiled Fräulein.
"Lehrerin!" breathed the girl. Something flinched behind her great eyes.
The fingers relaxed, and Miriam feeling within her a beginning of
response, had gone upstairs.
As she reached the upper landing she began to distinguish against the
clangour of chromatic passages assailing the house from the echoing
saal, the gentle tones of the nearer piano, the one in the larger German
bedroom opposite the front room for which she was bound. She paused for
a moment at the top of the stairs and listened. A little swaying melody
came out to her, muted by the closed door. Her grasp on the roll of
music slackened. A radiance came for a moment behind the gravity of her
face. Then the careful unstumbling repetition of a difficult passage
drew her attention to the performer, her arms dropped to her sides and
she passed on. It was little Bergmann, the youngest girl in the school.
Her playing, on the bad old piano in the dark dressing-room in the
basement, had prepared Miriam for the difference between the performance
of these German girls and nearly all the piano-playing she had heard. It
was the morning after her arrival. She had been unpacking and had taken,
on the advice of Mademoiselle, her heavy boots and outdoor things down
to the basement room. She had opened the door on Emma sitting at the
piano in her blue and buff check ribbon-knotted stuff dress. Miriam had
expected her to turn her head and stop playing. But as, arms full, she
closed the door with her shoulders, the child's profile remained
unconcerned. She noticed the firmly-poised head, the thick creamy neck
that seemed bare with its absence of collar-band and the soft frill of
tucker stitched right on to the dress, the thick cable of
string-coloured hair reaching just beyond the rim of the leather-covered
music stool, the steel-beaded points of the little slippers gleaming as
they worked the pedals, the serene eyes steadily following the music.
She played on and Miriam recognised a quality she had only heard
occasionally at concerts, and in the playing of one of the music
teachers at school.
She had stood amazed, pretending to be fumbling for empty pegs as this
round-faced child of fourteen went her way to the end of her page. Then
Miriam had ventured to interrupt and to ask her about the hanging
arrangements, and the child had risen and speaking soft South German had
suggested and poked tip-toeing about amongst the thickly-hung garments
and shown a motherly solicitude over the disposal of Miriam's things.
Miriam noted the easy range of the child's voice, how smoothly it slid
from bird-like queries and chirpings to the consoling tones of the lower
register. It seemed to leave undisturbed the softly-rounded,
faintly-mottled chin and cheeks and the full unpouting lips that lay
quietly one upon the other before she spoke, and opened flexibly but
somehow hardly moved to her speech and afterwards closed again gradually
until they lay softly blossoming as before.
Emma had gathered up her music when the clothes were arranged, sighing
and lamenting gently, "Wäre ich nur zu Hause"--how happy one was at
home--her little voice filled with tears and her cheeks flushed,
"haypie, haypie to home," she complained as she slid her music into its
case, "where all so good, so nice, so beautiful," and they had gone,
side by side, up the dark uncarpeted stone stairs leading from the
basement to the hall. Half-way up, Emma had given Miriam a shy firm hug
and then gone decorously up the remainder of the flight.
The sense of that sudden little embrace recurred often to Miriam during
the course of the first day.
It was unlike any contact she had known--more motherly than her
mother's. Neither of her sisters could have embraced her like that. She
did not know that a human form could bring such a sense of warm
nearness, that human contours could be eloquent--or anyone so sweetly
daring.
2
That first evening at Waldstrasse there had been a performance that had
completed the transformation of Miriam's English ideas of "music." She
had caught the word "Vorspielen" being bandied about the long tea-table,
and had gathered that there was to be an informal playing of "pieces"
before Fräulein Pfaff. She welcomed the event. It relieved her from the
burden of being in high focus--the relief had come as soon as she took
her place at the gaslit table. No eye seemed to notice her. The English
girls having sat out two meal-times with her, had ceased the hard-eyed
observation which had made the long silence of the earlier repasts only
less embarrassing than Fräulein's questions about England. The four
Germans who had neither stared nor even appeared aware of her existence,
talked cheerfully across the table in a general exchange that included
tall Fräulein Pfaff smiling her horse-smile--Miriam provisionally called
it--behind the tea-urn, as chairman. The six English-speaking girls,
grouped as it were towards their chief, a dark-skinned, athletic looking
Australian with hot, brown, slightly blood-shot eyes sitting as
vice-president opposite Fräulein, joined occasionally, in solo and
chorus, and Miriam noted with relief a unanimous atrocity of accent in
their enviable fluency. Rapid _sotto voce_ commentary and
half-suppressed wordless by-play located still more clearly the English
quarter. Animation flowed and flowed. Miriam safely ignored, scarcely
heeding, but warmed and almost happy, basked. She munched her black
bread and butter, liberally smeared with the rich savoury paste of liver
sausage, and drank her sweet weak tea and knew that she was very tired,
sleepy and tired. She glanced, from her place next to Emma Bergmann and
on Fräulein's left hand, down the table to where Mademoiselle sat next
the Martins in similar relation to the vice-president. Mademoiselle,
preceding her up through the quiet house carrying the jugs of hot water,
had been her first impression on her arrival the previous night. She had
turned when they reached the candle-lit attic with its high uncurtained
windows and red-covered box beds, and standing on the one strip of
matting in her full-skirted grey wincey dress with its neat triple row
of black ribbon velvet near the hem, had shown Miriam steel-blue eyes
smiling from a little triangular sprite-like face under a high-standing
pouf of soft dark hair, and said, "Voilà!" Miriam had never imagined
anything in the least like her. She had said, "Oh, thank you," and taken
the jug and had hurriedly and silently got to bed, weighed down by
wonders. They had begun to talk in the dark. Miriam had reaped sweet
comfort in learning that this seemingly unreal creature who was, she
soon perceived, not educated--as she understood education--was the
resident French governess, was seventeen years old and a Protestant.
Such close quarters with a French girl was bewildering enough--had she
been a Roman Catholic, Miriam felt she could not have endured her
proximity. She was evidently a special kind of French girl--a Protestant
from East France--Besançon--Besançon--Miriam had tried the pretty word
over until unexpectedly she had fallen asleep.
They had risen hurriedly in the cold March gloom and Miriam had not
spoken to her since. There she sat, dainty and quiet and fresh. White
frillings shone now at the neck and sleeves of her little grey dress.
She looked a clean and clear miniature against the general dauby effect
of the English girls--poor though, Miriam was sure; perhaps as poor as
she. She felt glad as she watched her gentle sprite-like wistfulness
that she would be upstairs in that great bare attic again to-night. In
repose her face looked pinched. There was something about the nose and
mouth--Miriam mused ... _frugal_--John Gilpin's wife--how sleepy she
was.
3
The conversation was growing boisterous. She took courage to raise her
head towards the range of girls opposite to her. Those quite near to her
she could not scrutinise. Some influence coming to her from these German
girls prevented her risking with them any meeting of the eyes that was
not brought about by direct speech. But she felt them. She felt Emma
Bergmann's warm plump presence close at her side and liked to take food
handed by her. She was conscious of the pink bulb of Minna Blum's nose
shining just opposite to her, and of the way the light caught the blond
sheen of her exquisitely coiled hair as she turned her always smiling
face and responded to the louder remarks with, "Oh, thou _dear_ God!" or
"Is it possible!" "How charming, _charming_," or "What in life dost thou
say, rascal!"
Next to her was the faint glare of Elsa Speier's silent sallowness. Her
clear-threaded nimbus of pallid hair was the lowest point in the range
of figures across the table. She darted quick glances at one and another
without moving her head, and Miriam felt that her pale eyes fully met
would be cunning and malicious.
After Elsa the "English" began with Judy. Miriam guessed when she heard
her ask for Brödchen that she was Scotch. She sat slightly askew and ate
eagerly, stooping over her plate with smiling mouth and downcast
heavily-freckled face. Unless spoken to she did not speak, but she
laughed often, a harsh involuntary laugh immediately followed by a
drowning flush. When she was not flushed her eyelashes shone bright
black against the unstained white above her cheek-bones. She had coarse
fuzzy red-brown hair.
Miriam decided that she was negligible.
Next to Judy were the Martins. They were as English as they could be.
She felt she must have noticed them a good deal at breakfast and
dinner-time without knowing it. Her eyes after one glance at the
claret-coloured merino dresses with hard white collars and cuffs, came
back to her plate as from a familiar picture. She still saw them sitting
very upright, side by side, with the front strands of their hair
strained smoothly back, tied just on the crest of the head with brown
ribbon and going down in "rats'-tails" to join the rest of their hair
which hung straight and flat half-way down their backs. The elder was
dark with thick shoulders and heavy features. Her large expressionless
rich brown eyes flashed slowly and reflected the light. They gave Miriam
a slight feeling of nausea. She felt she knew what her hands were like
without looking at them. The younger was thin and pale and slightly
hollow-cheeked. She had pale eyes, cold, like a fish, thought Miriam.
They both had deep hollow voices.
When she glanced again they were watching the Australian with their four
strange eyes and laughing German phrases at her, "Go on, Gertrude!" "Are
you _sure_, Gertrude?" "How do you _know_, Gertrude!"
Miriam had not yet dared to glance in the direction of the Australian.
Her eyes at dinner-time had cut like sharp steel. Turning, however,
towards the danger zone, without risking the coming of its presiding
genius within the focus of her glasses she caught a glimpse of "Jimmie"
sitting back in her chair tall and plump and neat, and shaking with
wide-mouthed giggles. Miriam wondered at the high neat peak of hair on
the top of her head and stared at her pearly little teeth. There was
something funny about her mouth. Even when she strained it wide it was
narrow and tiny--rabbity. She raised a short arm and began patting her
peak of hair with a tiny hand which showed a small onyx seal ring on the
little finger. "Ask Judy!" she giggled, in a fruity squeak.
"Ask Judy!" they all chorused, laughing.
Judy cast an appealing flash of her eyes sideways at nothing, flushed
furiously and mumbled, "Ik weiss nik--I don't know."
In the outcries and laughter which followed, Miriam noticed only the
hoarse hacking laugh of the Australian. Her eyes flew up the table and
fixed her as she sat laughing, her chair drawn back, her knees
crossed--tea was drawing to an end. The detail of her terrifyingly
stylish ruddy-brown frieze dress with its Norfolk jacket bodice and its
shiny black leather belt was hardly distinguishable from the dark
background made by the folding doors. But the dreadful outline of her
shoulders was visible, the squarish oval of her face shone out--the wide
forehead from which the wiry black hair was combed to a high puff, the
red eyes, black now, the long straight nose, the wide laughing mouth
with the enormous teeth.
Her voice conquered easily.
"Nein," she tromboned, through the din.
Mademoiselle's little finger stuck up sharply like a steeple, her mouth
said, "Oh--Oh----"
Fräulein's smile was at its widest, waiting the issue.
"Nein," triumphed the Australian, causing a lull.
"Leise, kinder, leise, doucement, gentlay," chided Fräulein, still
smiling.
"Hermann, _yes_," proceeded the Australian, "aber Hugo--_né_!"
Miriam heard it agreed in the end that someone named Hugo did not wear a
moustache, though someone named Hermann did. She was vaguely shocked and
interested.
4
After tea the great doors were thrown open and the girls filed into the
saal. It was a large high room furnished like a drawing-room--enough
settees and easy chairs to accommodate more than all the girls. The
polished floor was uncarpeted save for an archipelago of mats and rugs
in the wide circle of light thrown by the four-armed chandelier. A grand
piano was pushed against the wall in the far corner of the room, between
the farthest of the three high French windows and the shining pillar of
porcelain stove.
5
The high room, the bright light, the plentiful mirrors, the long sweep
of lace curtains, the many faces--the girls seemed so much more numerous
scattered here than they had when collected in the schoolroom--brought
Miriam the sense of the misery of social occasions. She wondered whether
the girls were nervous. She was glad that music lessons were no part of
her remuneration. She thought of dreadful experiences of playing before
people. The very first time, at home, when she had played a duet with
Eve--Eve playing a little running melody in the treble--her own part a
page of minims. The minims had swollen until she could not see whether
they were lines or spaces, and her fingers had been so weak after the
first unexpectedly loud note that she could hardly make any sound. Eve
had said "louder" and her fingers had suddenly stiffened and she had
worked them from her elbows like sticks at the end of her trembling
wrists and hands. Eve had noticed her dreadful movements and resented
being elbowed. She had heard nothing then but her hard loud minims till
the end, and then as she stood dizzily up someone had said she had a
nice firm touch, and she had pushed her angry way from the piano across
the hearthrug. She should always remember the clear red-hot mass of the
fire and the bottle of green Chartreuse warming on the blue and cream
tiles. There were probably only two or three guests, but the room had
seemed full of people, stupid people who had made her play. How angry
she had been with Eve for noticing her discomfiture and with the
forgotten guest for her silly remark. She knew she had simply poked the
piano. Then there had been the annual school concert, all the girls
almost unrecognisable with fear. She had learnt her pieces by heart for
those occasions and played them through with trembling limbs and burning
eyes--alternately thumping with stiff fingers and feeling her whole hand
faint from the wrist on to the notes which fumbled and slurred into each
other almost soundlessly until the thumping began again. At the musical
evenings, organised by Eve as a winter set-off to the tennis-club, she
had both played and sung, hoping each time afresh to be able to
reproduce the effects which came so easily when she was alone or only
with Eve. But she could not discover the secret of getting rid of her
nervousness. Only twice had she succeeded--at the last school concert
when she had been too miserable to be nervous and Mr. Strood had told
her she did him credit and, once she had sung "Chanson de Florian" in a
way that had astonished her own listening ear--the notes had laughed and
thrilled out into the air and come back to her from the wall behind the
piano.... The day before the tennis tournament.
6
The girls were all settling down to fancy work, the white-cuffed hands
of the Martins were already jerking crochet needles, faces were bending
over fine embroideries and Minna Blum had trundled a mounted lace-pillow
into the brighter light.
Miriam went to the schoolroom and fetched from her work-basket the piece
of canvas partly covered with red and black wool in diamond pattern that
was her utmost experience of fancy work.
As she returned she half saw Fräulein Pfaff, sitting as if enthroned on
a high-backed chair in front of the centremost of the mirrors filling
the wall spaces between the long French windows, signal to her, to come
to that side of the room.
Timorously ignoring the signal she got herself into a little low chair
in the shadow of the half-closed swing door and was spreading out her
woolwork on her knee when the Vorspielen began.
Emma Bergmann was playing. The single notes of the opening _motif_ of
Chopin's Fifteenth Nocturne fell pensively into the waitingroom. Miriam,
her fatigue forgotten, slid to a featureless freedom. It seemed to her
that the light with which the room was filled grew brighter and clearer.
She felt that she was looking at nothing and yet was aware of the whole
room like a picture in a dream. Fear left her. The human forms all round
her lost their power. They grew suffused and dim.... The pensive swing
of the music changed to urgency and emphasis.... It came nearer and
nearer. It did not come from the candle-lit corner where the piano
was.... It came from everywhere. It carried her out of the house, out of
the world.
It hastened with her, on and on towards great brightness.... Everything
was growing brighter and brighter....
Gertrude Goldring, the Australian, was making noises with her hands like
inflated paper bags being popped. Miriam clutched her wool-needle and
threaded it. She drew the wool through her canvas, one, three, five,
three, one and longed for the piano to begin again.
7
Clara Bergmann followed. Miriam watched her as she took her place at the
piano--how square and stout she looked and old, careworn, like a woman
of forty. She had high square shoulders and high square hips--her brow
was low and her face thin broad and flat. Her eyes were like the eyes of
a dog and her thin-lipped mouth long and straight until it went steadily
down at the corners. She wore a large fringe like Harriett's--and a thin
coil of hair filled the nape of her neck. She played, without music, her
face lifted boldly. The notes rang out in a prelude of unfinished
phrases--the kind, Miriam noted, that had so annoyed her father in what
he called new-fangled music--she felt it was going to be a brilliant
piece--fireworks--execution--style--and sat up self-consciously and
fixed her eyes on Clara's hands. "Can you see the hands?" she remembered
having heard someone say at a concert. How easily they moved. Clara
still sat back, her face raised to the light. The notes rang out like
trumpet-calls as her hands dropped with an easy fling and sprang back
and dropped again. What loose wrists she must have, thought Miriam. The
clarion notes ceased. There was a pause. Clara threw back her head, a
faint smile flickered over her face, her hands fell gently and the music
came again, pianissimo, swinging in an even rhythm. It flowed from those
clever hands, a half-indicated theme with a gentle, steady, throbbing
undertow. Miriam dropped her eyes--she seemed to have been listening
long--that wonderful light was coming again--she had forgotten her
sewing--when presently she saw, slowly circling, fading and clearing,
first its edge, and then, for a moment the whole thing, dripping,
dripping as it circled, a weed-grown mill-wheel.... She recognised it
instantly. She had seen it somewhere as a child--in Devonshire--and
never thought of it since--and there it was. She heard the soft swish
and drip of the water and the low humming of the wheel. How beautiful
... it was fading.... She held it--it returned--clearer this time and
she could feel the cool breeze it made, and sniff the fresh earthy scent
of it, the scent of the moss and the weeds shining and dripping on its
huge rim. Her heart filled. She felt a little tremor in her throat. All
at once she knew that if she went on listening to that humming wheel and
feeling the freshness of the air, she would cry. She pulled herself
together, and for a while saw only a vague radiance in the room and the
dim forms grouped about. She could not remember which was which. All
seemed good and dear to her. The trumpet notes had come back, and in a
few moments the music ceased.... Someone was closing the great doors
from inside the schoolroom. As the side behind which she was sitting
swung slowly to, she caught a glimpse, through the crack, of four boys
with close-cropped heads, sitting at the long table. The gas was out and
the room was dim, but a reading-lamp in the centre of the table cast its
light on their bowed heads.
8
The playing of the two Martins brought back the familiar feeling of
English self-consciousness. Solomon, the elder one, sat at her Beethoven
sonata, an adagio movement, with a patch of dull crimson on the pallor
of the cheek she presented to the room, but she played with a heavy
fervour, preserving throughout the characteristic marching staccato of
the bass, and gave unstinted value to the shading of each phrase. She
made Miriam feel nervous at first and then--as she went triumphantly
forward and let herself go so tremendously--traction-engine, thought
Miriam--in the heavy fortissimos,--a little ashamed of such expression
coming from English hands. The feeling of shame lingered as the younger
sister followed with a spirited vivace. Her hollow-cheeked pallor
remained unstained, but her thin lips were set and her hard eyes were
harder. She played with determined nonchalance and an extraordinarily
facile rapidity, and Miriam's uneasiness changed insensibly to the
conviction that these girls were learning in Germany not to be ashamed
of "playing with expression." All the things she had heard Mr.
Strood--who had, as the school prospectus declared, been "educated in
Leipzig"--preach and implore, "style," "expression," "phrasing," "light
and shade," these girls were learning, picking up from these wonderful
Germans. They did not do it quite like them though. They did not think
only about the music, they thought about themselves too. Miriam believed
she could do it as the Germans did. She wanted to get her own music and
play it as she had always dimly known it ought to be played and hardly
ever dared. Perhaps that was how it was with the English. They knew, but
they did not dare. No. The two she had just heard playing were, she felt
sure, imitating something--but hers would be no imitation. She would
play as she wanted to one day in this German atmosphere. She wished now
she were going to have lessons. She had in fact had a lesson. But she
wanted to be alone and to play--or perhaps with someone in the next room
listening. Perhaps she would not have even the chance of practising.
9
Minna rippled through a Chopin valse that made Miriam think of an apple
orchard in bloom against a blue sky, and was followed by Jimmie who
played the Spring Song with slightly swaying body and little hands that
rose and fell one against the other, and reminded Miriam of the finger
game of her childhood--"Fly away Jack, fly away Jill." She played very
sweetly and surely except that now and again it was as if the music
caught its breath.
Jimmie's Lied brought the piano solos to an end, and Fräulein Pfaff
after a little speech of criticism and general encouragement asked, to
Miriam's intense delight, for the singing. "Millie" was called for.
Millie came out of a corner. She was out of Miriam's range at meal-times
and appeared to her now for the first time as a tall child-girl in a
high-waisted, blue serge frock, plainly made with long plain sleeves, at
the end of which appeared two large hands shining red and shapeless with
chilblains. She attracted Miriam at once with the shell-white and
shell-pink of her complexion, her firm chubby baby-mouth and her wide
gaze. Her face shone in the room, even her hair--done just like the
Martins', but fluffy where theirs was flat and shiny--seemed to give out
light, shadowy-dark though it was. Her figure was straight and flat, and
she moved, thought Miriam, as though she had no feet.
She sang, with careful precision as to the accents of her German, in a
high breathy effortless soprano, a little song about a child and a
bouquet of garden flowers.
The younger Martin in a strong hard jolting voice sang of a love-sick
Linden tree, her pale thin cheeks pink-flushed.
"Herr Kapellmeister chooses well," smiled Fräulein at the end of this
performance.
The Vorspielen was brought to an end by Gertrude Goldring's song. Clara
Bergmann sat down to accompany her, and Miriam roused herself for a
double listening. There would be Clara's opening and Clara's
accompaniment and some wonderful song. The Australian stood well away
from the piano, her shoulders thrown back and her eyes upon the wall
opposite her. There was no prelude. Piano and voice rang out
together--single notes which the voice took and sustained with an
expressive power which was beyond anything in Miriam's experience. Not a
note was quite true.... The unerring falseness of pitch was as startling
as the quality of the voice. The great wavering shouts slurring now
above, now below the mark amazed Miriam out of all shyness. She sat up,
frankly gazing--"How dare she? She hasn't an atom of ear--how
ghastly"--her thoughts exclaimed as the shouts went on. The longer
sustained notes presently reminded her of something. It was like
something she had heard--in the interval between the verses--while the
sounds echoed in the mind she remembered the cry, hand to mouth, of a
London dustman.
Then she lost everything in the story of the Sultan's daughter and the
young Asra, and when the fullest applause of the evening was going to
Gertrude's song, she did not withhold her share.
10
Anna, the only servant Miriam had seen so far--an enormous woman whose
face, apart from the small eyes, seemed all "bony structure," Miriam
noted in a phrase borrowed from some unremembered reading--brought in a
tray filled with cups of milk, a basket of white rolls and a pile of
little plates. Gertrude took the tray and handed it about the room. As
Miriam took her cup, chose a roll, deposited it on a plate and succeeded
in abstracting the plate from the pile neatly, without fumbling, she
felt that for the moment Gertrude was prepared to tolerate her. She did
not desire this in the least, but when the deep harsh voice fell against
her from the bending Australian, she responded to the "Wie gefällt's
Ihnen?" with an upturned smile and a warm "sehr gut!" It gratified her
to discover that she could, at the end of this one day, understand or at
the worst gather the drift of, all she heard, both of German and French.
Mademoiselle had exclaimed at her French--les mots si bien choisis--un
accent sans faute--it must be ear. She must have a very good ear. And
her English was all right--at least, if she chose.... Pater had always
been worrying about slang and careless pronunciation. None of them ever
said "cut in half" or "very unique" or "ho'sale" or "phodygraff." She
was awfully slangy herself--she and Harriett were, in their thoughts as
well as their words--but she had no provincialisms, no Londonisms--she
could be the purest Oxford English. There was something at any rate to
give her German girls.... She could say, "There are no rules for English
pronunciation, but what is usual at the University of Oxford is decisive
for cultured people"--"decisive for cultured people." She must remember
that for the class.
"Na, was sticken Sie da Miss Henderson?"
It was Fräulein Pfaff.
Miriam who had as yet hardly spoken to her, did not know whether to
stand or to remain seated. She half rose and then Fräulein Pfaff took
the chair near her and Miriam sat down, stiff with fear. She could not
remember the name of the thing she was making. She flushed and
fumbled--thought of dressing-tables and the little objects of which she
had made so many hanging to the mirror by ribbons; "toilet-tidies"
haunted her--but that was not it--she smoothed out her work as if to
show it to Fräulein--"Na, na," came the delicate caustic voice. "Was
wird das wohl sein?" Then she remembered. "It's for a pin-cushion," she
said. Surely she need not venture on German with Fräulein yet.
"Ein Nadelkissen," corrected Fräulein, "das wird niedlich aussehen," she
remarked quietly, and then in English, "You like music, Miss Henderson?"
"Oh, _yes_," said Miriam, with a pounce in her voice.
"You play the piano?"
"A little."
"You must keep up your practice then, while you are with us--you must
have time for practice."
11
Fräulein Pfaff rose and moved away. The girls were arranging the chairs
in two rows--plates and cups were collected and carried away. It dawned
on Miriam that they were going to have prayers. What a wet-blanket on
her evening. Everything had been so bright and exciting so far.
Obviously they had prayers every night. She felt exceedingly
uncomfortable. She had never seen prayers in a sitting-room. It had been
nothing at school--all the girls standing in the drill-room, rows of
voices saying "adsum," then a Collect and the Lord's Prayer.
A huge Bible appeared on a table in front of Fräulein's high-backed
chair. Miriam found herself ranged with the girls, sitting in an
attentive hush. There was a quiet, slow turning of pages, and then a
long indrawn sigh and Fräulein's clear, low, even voice, very gentle,
not caustic now but with something child-like about it, "Und da kamen
die Apostel zu Ihm...." Miriam had a moment of revolt. She would not sit
there and let a woman read the Bible at her ... and in that "smarmy"
way.... In spirit she rose and marched out of the room. As the English
pupil-teacher bound to suffer all things or go home, she sat on.
Presently her ear was charmed by Fräulein's slow clear enunciation, her
pure unaspirated North German. It seemed to suit the narrative--and the
narrative was new, vivid and real in this new tongue. She saw presently
the little group of figures talking by the lake and was sorry when
Fräulein's voice ceased.
Solomon Martin was at the piano. Someone handed Miriam a shabby little
paper-backed hymn-book. She fluttered the leaves. All the hymns appeared
to have a little short-lined verse, under each ordinary verse, in small
print. It was in English--she read. She fumbled for the title-page and
then her cheeks flamed with shame, "Moody and Sankey." She was
incredulous, but there it was, clearly enough. What was such a thing
doing here?... Finishing school for the daughters of gentlemen.... She
had never had such a thing in her hands before.... Fräulein could not
know.... She glanced at her, but Fräulein's cavernous mouth was serenely
open and the voices of the girls sang heartily, "Whenhy--_com_eth.
Whenhy--_com_eth, to _make_-up his _jew_els----" These girls, Germany,
that piano.... What did the English girls think? Had anyone said
anything? Were they chapel? Fearfully, she told them over. No. Judy
might be, and the Martins perhaps, but not Gertrude, nor Jimmie, nor
Millie. How did it happen? What was the German Church? Luther--Lutheran.
She longed for the end.
She glanced through the book--frightful, frightful words and choruses.
The girls were getting on to their knees.
Oh dear, every night. Her elbows sank into soft red plush.
She was to have time for practising--and that English lesson--the
first--Oxford, decisive for--educated people....
Fräulein's calm voice came almost in a whisper, "Vater unser ... der Du
bist im Himmel," and the murmuring voices of the girls followed her.
12
Miriam went to bed content, wrapped in music. The theme of Clara's solo
recurred again and again; and every time it brought something of the
wonderful light--the sense of going forward and forward through space.
She fell asleep somewhere outside the world. No sooner was she asleep
than a voice was saying, "Bonjour, Meece," and her eyes opened on
daylight and Mademoiselle's little night-gowned form minuetting towards
her down the single strip of matting. Her hair, hanging in short
ringlets when released, fell forward round her neck as she bowed--the
slightest dainty inclination, from side to side against the swaying of
her dance. She was smiling her down-glancing, little sprite smile.
Miriam loved her....
13
A great plaque of sunlight lay across the breakfast-table. Miriam was
too happy to trouble about her imminent trial. She reflected that it was
quite possible to-day and to-morrow would be free. None of the
visiting masters came, except, sometimes, Herr Bossenberger for
music-lessons--that much she had learned from Mademoiselle. And, after
all, the class she had so dreaded had dwindled to just these four girls,
little Emma and the three grown-up girls. They probably knew all the
rules and beginnings. It would be just reading and so on. It would not
be so terrible--four sensible girls; and besides they had accepted her.
It did not seem anything extraordinary to them that she should teach
them; and they did not dislike her. Of that she felt sure. She could not
say this for even one of the English girls. But the German girls did not
dislike her. She felt at ease sitting amongst them and was glad she was
there and not at the English end of the table. Down here, hemmed in by
the Bergmanns with Emma's little form, her sounds, movements and warmth,
her little quiet friendliness planted between herself and the English,
with the apparently unobservant Minna and Elsa across the way she felt
safe. She felt fairly sure those German eyes did not criticise her.
Perhaps, she suggested to herself, they thought a good deal of English
people in general; and then they were in the minority, only four of
them; it was evidently a school for English girls as much as anything
... strange--what an adventure for all those English girls--to be just
boarders--Miriam wondered how she would feel sitting there as an English
boarder among the Martins and Gertrude, Millie, Jimmie and Judy? It
would mean being friendly with them. Finally she ensconced herself
amongst her Germans, feeling additionally secure.... Fräulein had spent
many years in England. Perhaps that explained the breakfast of oatmeal
porridge--piled plates of thick stirabout thickly sprinkled with pale,
very sweet powdery brown sugar--and the eggs to follow with rolls and
butter.
Miriam wondered how Fräulein felt towards the English girls.
She wondered whether Fräulein liked the English girls best.... She paid
no attention to the little spurts of conversation that came at intervals
as the table grew more and more dismantled. She was there, safely
there--what a perfectly stupendous thing--"weird and stupendous" she
told herself. The sunlight poured over her and her companions from the
great windows behind Fräulein Pfaff....
14
When breakfast was over and the girls were clearing the table, Fräulein
went to one of the great windows and stood for a moment with her hands
on the hasp of the innermost of the double frames. "Balde, balde,"
Miriam heard her murmur, "werden wir öffnen können." Soon, soon we may
open. Obviously then they had had the windows shut all the winter.
Miriam, standing in the corner near the companion window, wondering what
she was supposed to do and watching the girls with an air--as nearly as
she could manage--of indulgent condescension--saw, without turning, the
figure at the window, gracefully tall, with a curious dignified
pannier-like effect about the skirt that swept from the small
tightly-fitting pointed bodice, reminding her of illustrations of
heroines of serials in old numbers of the "Girls' Own Paper." The dress
was of dark blue velvet--very much rubbed and faded. Miriam liked the
effect, liked something about the clear profile, the sallow, hollow
cheeks, the same heavy bonyness that Anna the servant had, but finer and
redeemed by the wide eye that was so strange. She glanced fearfully, at
its unconsciousness, and tried to find words for the quick youthfulness
of those steady eyes.
Fräulein moved away into the little room opening from the schoolroom,
and some of the girls joined her there. Miriam turned to the window. She
looked down into a little square of high-walled garden. It was gravelled
nearly all over. Not a blade of grass was to be seen. A narrow little
border of bare brown mould joined the gravel to the high walls. In the
centre was a little domed patch of earth and there a chestnut tree
stood. Great bulging brown-varnished buds were shining whitely from each
twig. The girls seemed to be gathering in the room behind her--settling
down round the table--Mademoiselle's voice sounded from the head of the
table where Fräulein had lately been. It must be _raccommodage_ thought
Miriam--the weekly mending Mademoiselle had told her of. Mademoiselle
was superintending. Miriam listened. This was a sort of French lesson.
They all sat round and did their mending together--in French--darning
must be quite different done like that, she reflected.
Jimmie's voice came, rounded and giggling, "Oh, Mademoiselle! j'ai une
_potato_, pardong, pum de terre, je mean." She poked three fingers
through the toe of her stocking. "Veux dire, veux dire--Qu'est-ce-que
vous me racontez là?" scolded Mademoiselle. Miriam envied her air of
authority.
"Ah-ho! Là-là--Boum--Bong!" came Gertrude's great voice from the door.
"Taisez-vous, taisez-vous, Jair-trude," rebuked Mademoiselle.
"How dare she?" thought Miriam, with a picture before her eyes of the
little grey-gowned thing with the wistful, frugal mouth and nose.
"Na--Miss Henderson?"
It was Fräulein's voice from within the little room. Minna was holding
the door open.
15
At the end of twenty minutes, dismissed by Fräulein with a smiling
recommendation to go and practise in the saal, Miriam had run upstairs
for her music.
"It's all right. I'm all right. I shall be able to do it," she said to
herself as she ran. The ordeal was past. She was, she had learned, to
talk English with the German girls, at table, during walks, whenever she
found herself with them, excepting on Saturdays and Sundays--and she was
to read with the four--for an hour, three times a week. There had been
no mention of grammar or study in any sense she understood.
She had had a moment of tremor when Fräulein had said in her slow clear
English, "I leave you to your pupils, Miss Henderson," and with that had
gone out and shut the door. The moment she had dreaded had come. This
was Germany. There was no escape. Her desperate eyes caught sight of a
solid-looking volume on the table, bound in brilliant blue cloth. She
got it into her shaking hands. It was "Misunderstood." She felt she
could have shouted in her relief. A treatise on the Morse code would not
have surprised her. She had heard that such things were studied at
school abroad and that German children knew the names and, worse than
that, the meaning of the names of the streets in the city of London. But
this book that she and Harriett had banished and wanted to burn in their
early teens together with "Sandford and Merton." ...
"You are reading 'Misunderstood'?" she faltered, glancing at the four
politely waiting girls.
It was Minna who answered her in her husky, eager voice.
"D'ja, d'ja," she responded, "na, ich meine, _yace, yace_ we read--so
sweet and beautiful book--not?"
"Oh," said Miriam, "yes ..." and then eagerly, "you all like it, do
you?"
Clara and Elsa agreed unenthusiastically. Emma, at her elbow, made a
little despairing gesture, "I can't English," she moaned gently, "too
deeficult."
Miriam tested their reading. The class had begun. Nothing had happened.
It was all right. They each, dutifully and with extreme carefulness read
a short passage. Miriam sat blissfully back. It was incredible. The
class was going on. The chestnut tree budded approval from the garden.
She gravely corrected their accents. The girls were respectful. They
appeared to be interested. They vied with each other to get exact
sounds; and they presently delighted Miriam by telling her they could
understand her English much better than that of her predecessor. "So
cleare, so cleare," they chimed, "Voonderfoll." And then they all five
seemed to be talking at once. The little room was full of broken
English, of Miriam's interpolated corrections. It was going--succeeding.
This was her class. She hoped Fräulein was listening outside. She
probably was. Heads of foreign schools did. She remembered Madame Beck
in "Villette." But if she was not, she hoped they would tell her about
being able to understand the new English teacher so well. "Oh, I am
haypie," Emma was saying, with adoring eyes on Miriam and her two arms
outflung on the table. Miriam recoiled. This would not do--they must not
all talk at once and go on like this. Minna's whole face was aflame. She
sat up stiffly--adjusted her pince-nez--and desperately ordered the
reading to begin again--at Minna. They all subsided and Minna's careful
husky voice came from her still blissfully-smiling face. The others sat
back and attended. Miriam watched Minna judicially, and hoped she looked
like a teacher. She knew her pince-nez disguised her and none of these
girls knew she was only seventeen and a half. "Sorrowg," Minna was
saying, hesitating. Miriam had not heard the preceding word. "Once more
the whole sentence," she said, with quiet gravity, and then as Minna
reached the word "_thorough_" she corrected and spent five minutes
showing her how to get over the redoubtable "th." They all experimented
and exclaimed. They had never been shown that it was just a matter of
getting the tongue between the teeth. Miriam herself had only just
discovered it. She speculated as to how long it would take for her to
deliver them up to Fräulein Pfaff with this notorious stumbling-block
removed. She was astonished herself at the mechanical simplicity of the
cure. How stupid people must be not to discover these things. Minna's
voice went on. She would let her read a page. She began to wonder rather
blankly what she was to do to fill up the hour after they had all read a
page. She had just reached the conclusion that they must do some sort of
writing when Fräulein Pfaff came, and still affable and smiling had
ushered the girls to their mending and sent Miriam off to the saal.
16
As she flew upstairs for her music, saying, "I'm all right. I can do it
all right," she was half-conscious that her provisional success with her
class had very little to do with her bounding joy. That success had not
so much given her anything to be glad about--it had rather removed an
obstacle of gladness which was waiting to break forth. She was going to
stay on. That was the point. She would stay in this wonderful place....
She came singing down through the quiet house--the sunlight poured from
bedroom windows through open doors. She reached the quiet saal. Here
stood the great piano, its keyboard open under the light of the French
window opposite the door through which she came. Behind the great closed
swing doors the girls were talking over their _raccommodage_. Miriam
paid no attention to them. She would ignore them all. She did not even
need to try to ignore them. She felt strong and independent. She would
play, to herself. She would play something she knew perfectly, a Grieg
lyric or a movement from a Beethoven Sonata ... on this gorgeous piano
... and let herself go, and listen. That was music ... not playing
things, but listening to Beethoven.... It must be Beethoven ... Grieg
was different ... acquired ... like those strange green figs Pater had
brought from Tarring ... Beethoven had always been real.
It was all growing clearer and clearer.... She chose the first part of
the first movement of the Sonata Pathétique. That she knew she could
play faultlessly. It was the last thing she had learned, and she had
never grown weary of practising slowly through its long bars of chords.
She had played it at her last music-lesson ... dear old Stroodie walking
up and down the long drilling-room.... "Steady the bass"; "grip the
chords," then standing at her side and saying in the thin light sneery
part of his voice, "You can ... you've got hands like umbrellas" ... and
showing her how easily she could stretch two notes beyond his own span.
And then marching away as she played and crying out to her standing
under the high windows at the far end of the room, "Let it go! Let it
go!"
And she had almost forgotten her wretched self, almost heard the
music....
She felt for the pedals, lifted her hands a span above the piano as
Clara had done and came down, true and clean, on to the opening chord.
The full rich tones of the piano echoed from all over the room; and some
metal object far away from her hummed the dominant. She held the chord
for its full term.... Should she play any more?... She had confessed
herself ... just that minor chord ... anyone hearing it would know more
than she could ever tell them ... her whole being beat out the rhythm as
she waited for the end of the phrase to insist on what already had been
said. As it came, she found herself sitting back, slackening the muscles
of her arms and of her whole body, and ready to swing forward into the
rising storm of her page. She did not need to follow the notes on the
music stand. Her fingers knew them. Grave and happy she sat with
unseeing eyes, listening, for the first time.
At the end of the page she was sitting with her eyes full of tears,
aware of Fräulein standing between the open swing doors with Gertrude's
face showing over her shoulder--its amazement changing to a
large-toothed smile as Fräulein's quietly repeated "Prachtvoll,
prachtvoll" came across the room. Miriam, after a hasty smile, sat
straining her eyes as widely as possible, so that the tears should not
fall. She glared at the volume in front of her, turning the pages. She
was glad that the heavy sun-blinds cast a deep shadow over the room. She
blinked. She thought they would not notice. Only one tear fell and that
was from the left eye, towards the wall. "You are a real musician, Miss
Henderson," said Fräulein, advancing.
17
Every other day or so Miriam found she could get an hour on a bedroom
piano; and always on a Saturday morning during _raccommodage_. She
rediscovered all the pieces she had already learned. She went through
them one by one, eagerly, slurring over difficulties, pressing on,
getting their effect, listening and discovering. "It's _technique_ I
want," she told herself, when she had reached the end of her collection,
beginning to attach a meaning to the familiar word. Then she set to
work. She restricted herself to the Pathétique, always omitting the
first page, which she knew so well and practised mechanically, slowly,
meaninglessly, with neither pedalling nor expression, page by page until
a movement was perfect. Then when the mood came, she played ... and
listened. She soon discovered she could not always "play"--even the
things she knew perfectly--and she began to understand the fury that had
seized her when her mother and a woman here and there had taken for
granted one should "play when asked," and coldly treated her refusal as
showing lack of courtesy. "Ah!" she said aloud, as this realisation
came, "Women."
"Of course you can only 'play when you _can_,'" said she to herself,
"like a bird singing."
She sang once or twice, very quietly, in those early weeks. But she gave
that up. She had a whole sheaf of songs with her. But after that first
Vorspielen they seemed to have lost their meaning. One by one she looked
them through. Her dear old Venetian song, "Beauty's Eyes," "An Old
Garden"--she hesitated over that, and hummed it through--"Best of
All"--"In Old Madrid"--the vocal score of the "Mikado"--her little
"Chanson de Florian," and a score of others. She blushed at her
collection. The "Chanson de Florian" might perhaps hold its own at a
Vorspielen--sung by Bertha Martin--perhaps.... The remainder of her
songs, excepting a little bound volume of Sterndale Bennett, she put
away at the bottom of her Saratoga trunk. Meanwhile, there were songs
being learned by Herr Bossenberger's pupils for which she listened
hungrily; Schubert, Grieg, Brahms. She would always, during those early
weeks, sacrifice her practising to listen from the schoolroom to a pupil
singing in the saal.
18
The morning of Ulrica Hesse's arrival was one of the mornings when she
could "play." She was sitting, happy, in the large English bedroom,
listening. It was late. She was beginning to wonder why the gonging did
not come when the door opened. It was Millie in her dressing-gown, with
her hair loose and a towel over her arm.
"Oh, bitte, Miss Henderson, will you please go down to Frau Krause,
Fräulein Pfaff says," she said, her baby face full of responsibility.
Miriam rose uneasily. What might this be? "Frau Krause?" she asked.
"Oh yes, it's Haarwaschen," said Millie anxiously, evidently determined
to wait until Miriam recognised her duty.
"Where?" said Miriam aghast.
"Oh, in the basement. I _must_ go. Frau Krause's waiting. Will you
come?"
"Oh well, I suppose so," mumbled Miriam, coming to the door as the child
turned to go.
"All right," said Millie, "I'm going down. Do make haste, Miss
Henderson, will you?"
"All right," said Miriam, going back into the room.
Collecting her music she went incredulously upstairs. This was school
with a vengeance. This was boarding-school. It was abominable. Fräulein
Pfaff indeed! Ordering her, Miriam, to go downstairs and have her hair
washed ... by Frau Krause ... off-hand, without any warning ... someone
should have told her--and let her choose. Her hair was clean. Sarah had
always done it. Miriam's throat contracted. She would not go down. Frau
Krause should not touch her. She reached the attics. Their door was open
and there was Mademoiselle in her little alpaca dressing-jacket,
towelling her head.
Her face came up, flushed and gay. Miriam was too angry to note till
afterwards how pretty she had looked with her hair like that.
"Ah! ... c'est le grand lavage!" sang Mademoiselle.
"Oui," said Miriam surlily.
What could she do? She imagined the whole school waiting downstairs to
see her come down to be done. Should she go down and decline, explain
to Fräulein Pfaff. She hated her vindictively--her "calm"
message--"treating me like a child." She saw the horse smile and heard
the caustic voice.
"It's sickening," she muttered, whisking her dressing-gown from its nail
and seizing a towel. Mademoiselle was piling up her damp hair before the
little mirror.
Slowly Miriam made her journey to the basement.
Minna and Elsa were brushing out their long hair with their door open. A
strong sweet perfume came from the room.
The basement hall was dark save for the patch of light coming from the
open kitchen door. In the patch stood a low table and a kitchen chair.
On the table which was shining wet and smeary with soap, stood a huge
basin. Out over the basin flew a long tail of hair and Miriam's anxious
eyes found Millie standing in the further gloom twisting and wringing.
19
No one else was to be seen. Perhaps it was all over. She was too late.
Then a second basin held in coarse red hands appeared round the kitchen
door and in a moment a woman, large and coarse, with the sleeves of her
large-checked blue and white cotton dress rolled back and a great
"teapot" of pale nasturtium coloured hair shining above the third of
Miriam's "bony" German faces had emerged and plumped her steaming basin
down upon the table.
Soap? and horrid pudding basins of steaming water. Miriam's hair had
never been washed with anything but cantharides and rose-water on a tiny
special sponge.
In full horror, "Oh," she said, in a low vague voice, "it doesn't matter
about me."
"Gun' Tak' Fr'n," snapped the woman briskly.
Miriam gave herself up.
"Gooten Mawgen, Frau Krause," said Millie's polite departing voice.
Miriam's outraged head hung over the steaming basin--her hair spread
round it like a tent frilling out over the table.
For a moment she thought that the nausea which had seized her as she
surrendered would, the next instant, make flight imperative. Then her
amazed ears caught the sharp bump--crack--of an eggshell against the rim
of the basin, followed by a further brisk crackling just above her. She
shuddered from head to foot as the egg descended with a cold slither
upon her incredulous skull. Tears came to her eyes as she gave beneath
the onslaught of two hugely enveloping, vigorously drubbing
hands--"sh--ham--poo" gasped her mind.
The drubbing went relentlessly on. Miriam steadied her head against it
and gradually warmth and ease began to return to her shivering, clenched
body. Her hair was gathered into the steaming basin--dipped and rinsed
and spread, a comforting compress, warm with the water, over her
egg-sodden head. There was more drubbing, more dipping and rinsing. The
second basin was re-filled from the kitchen, and after a final rinse in
its fresh warm water, Miriam found herself standing up--with a twisted
tail of wet hair hanging down over her cape of damp towel--glowing and
hungry.
"Thank you," she said timidly to Frau Krause's bustling presence.
"Gun' Tak' Fr'n," said Frau Krause, disappearing into the kitchen.
Miriam gave her hair a preliminary drying, gathered her dressing-gown
together and went upstairs. From the schoolroom came unmistakable
sounds. They were evidently at dinner. She hurried to her attic. What
_was_ she to do with her hair? She rubbed it desperately--fancy being
landed with hair like that, in the middle of the day! She could not
possibly go down.... She must. Fräulein Pfaff would expect her to--and
would be disgusted if she were not quick--she towelled frantically at
the short strands round her forehead, despairingly screwed them into
Hinde's and towelled at the rest. What had the other girls done? If only
she could look into the schoolroom before going down--it was awful--what
should she do?... She caught sight of a sodden-looking brush on
Mademoiselle's bed. Mademoiselle had put hers up--she had seen her ...
of course ... easy enough for her little fluffy clouds--she could do
nothing with her straight, wet lumps--she began to brush it out--it
separated into thin tails which flipped tiny drops of moisture against
her hands as she brushed. Her arms ached; her face flared with her
exertions. She was ravenous--she must manage somehow and go down. She
braided the long strands and fastened their cold mass with extra
hairpins. Then she unfastened the Hinde's--two tendrils flopped limply
against her forehead. She combed them out. They fell in a curtain of
streaks to her nose. Feverishly she divided them, draped them somehow
back into the rest of her hair and fastened them.
"Oh," she breathed, "my _ghastly_ forehead."
It was all she could do--short of gas and curling tongs. Even the candle
was taken away in the day-time.
It was cold and bleak upstairs. Her wet hair lay in a heavy mass against
her burning head. She was painfully hungry. She went down.
20
The snarling rattle of the coffee mill sounded out into the hall.
Several voices were speaking together as she entered. Fräulein Pfaff was
not there. Gertrude Goldring was grinding the coffee. The girls were
sitting round the table in easy attitudes and had the effect of holding
a council. Emma, her elbows on the table, her little face bunched with
scorn, put out a motherly arm and set a chair for Miriam. Jimmie had
flung some friendly remark as she came in. Miriam did not hear what she
said, but smiled responsively. She wanted to get quietly to her place
and look round. There was evidently something in the air. They all
seemed preoccupied. Perhaps no one would notice how awful she looked.
"You're not the only one, my dear," she said to herself in her mother's
voice. "No," she replied in person, "but no one will be looking so
perfectly frightful as me."
"I say, do they know you're down?" said Gertrude hospitably, as the
boiling water snored on to the coffee.
Emma rushed to the lift and rattled the panel.
"Anna!" she ordered, "Meece Hendshon! Suppe!"
"Oh, thanks," said Miriam, in general. She could not meet anyone's eye.
The coffee cups were being slid up to Gertrude's end of the table and
rapidly filled by her. Gertrude, of course, she noticed had contrived to
look dashing and smart. Her hair, with the exception of some wild ends
that hung round her face was screwed loosely on the top of her head and
transfixed with a dagger-like tortoise-shell hair ornament--like a
Japanese--Indian--no, Maori--that was it, she looked like a New
Zealander. Clara and Minna had fastened up theirs with combs and ribbons
and looked decent--frauish though, thought Miriam. Judy wore a plait.
Without her fuzzy cloud she looked exactly like a country servant, a
farmhouse servant. She drank her coffee noisily and furtively--she
looked extraordinary, thought Miriam, and took comfort. The Martins'
brown bows appeared on their necks instead of cresting their heads--it
improved them, Miriam thought. What regular features they had. Bertha
looked like a youth--like a musician. Her hair was loosened a little at
the sides, shading the corners of her forehead and adding to its height.
It shone like marble, high and straight. Emma's hair hung round her like
a shawl. 'Lisbeth, Gretchen ... what was that lovely German name ...
hild ... Brunhilde....
Talk had begun again. Miriam hoped they had not noticed her. Her
"Braten" shot up the lift.
"Lauter Unsinn!" announced Clara.
"We've all got to do our hair in clash ... clashishsher Knoten, Hendy,
all of us," said Jimmie judicially, sitting forward with her plump hands
clasped on the table. Her pinnacle of hair looked exactly as usual.
"Oh, really." Miriam tried to make a picture of a classic knot in her
mind.
"If one have classic head one can have classic knot," scolded Clara.
"Who have classic head?"
"How many classic head in the school of Waldstrasse?"
Elsa gave a little neighing laugh. "Classisch head, classisch Knote."
"That is true what you say, Clarah."
The table paused.
"Dîtes-moi--qu'est-ce-que ce terrible classique notte? Dîtes!"
No one seemed prepared to answer Mademoiselle's challenge.
Miriam's mind groped ... classic--Greece and Rome--Greek knot....
Grecian key ... a Grecian key pattern on the dresses for the sixth form
tableau--reading Ruskin ... the strip of glass all along the window
space on the floor in the large room--edged with mosses and grass--the
mirror of Venus....
"Eh bien? Eh bien!"
... Only the eldest pretty girls ... all on their hands and knees
looking into the mirror....
"Classische Form--Griechisch," explained Clara.
"Like a statue, Mademoiselle."
"Comment! Une statue! Je dois arranger mes cheveux comme une statue? Oh,
ciel!" mocked Mademoiselle, collapsing into tinkles of her sprite
laughter.... "Oh-là-là! Et quelle statue par exemple?" she trilled, with
ironic eyebrows, "la statue de votre Kaisère Wilhelm der Grosse
peut-être?"
The Martins' guffaws led the laughter.
"Mademoisellekin with her hair done like the Kaiser Wilhelm," pealed
Jimmie.
Only Clara remained grave in wrath.
"Einfach," she quoted bitterly, "Simple--says Lily, so simple!"
"Simple--simpler--simplicissimusko!"
"I make no change, not at all," smiled Minna from behind her nose. "For
this Ulrica it is quite something other.... She has yes truly so
charming a little head."
She spoke quietly and unenviously.
"I too, indeed. Lily may go and play the flute."
"Brave girls," said Gertrude, getting up. "Come on, Kinder, clearing
time. You'll excuse us, Miss Henderson? There's your pudding in the
lift. Do you mind having your coffee _mit_?"
The girls began to clear up.
"_Leely, Leely_, Leely Pfaff," muttered Clara as she helped, "so einfach
und niedlich," she mimicked, "ach _was_! Schwärmerei--das find' ich
abscheulich! I find it disgusting!"
So that was it. It was the new girl. Lily, was Fräulein Pfaff. So the
new girl wore her hair in a classic knot. How lovely. Without her hat
she had "a charming little head," Minna had said. And that face. Minna
had seen how lovely she was and had not minded. Clara was jealous. Her
head with a classic knot and no fringe, her worn-looking sallow face....
She would look like a "prisoner at the bar" in some newspaper. How they
hated Fräulein Pfaff. The Germans at least. Fancy calling her
Lily--Miriam did not like it, she had known at once. None of the
teachers at school had been called by their Christian names--there had
been old Quagmire, the Elfkin, and dear Donnikin, Stroodie, and good old
Kingie and all of them--but no Christian names. Oh yes--Sally--so there
had--Sally--but then Sally _was_--couldn't have been anything
else--never could have held a position of any sort. They ought not to
call Fräulein Pfaff that. It was, somehow, nasty. Did the English girls
do it? Ought she to have said anything? Mademoiselle did not seem at all
shocked. Where was Fräulein Pfaff all this time? Perhaps somewhere
hidden away, in her rooms, being "done" by Frau Krause. Fancy telling
them all to alter the way they did their hair.
21
Everyone was writing Saturday letters--Mademoiselle and the Germans with
compressed lips and fine careful evenly moving pen-points; the English
scrawling and scraping and dashing, their pens at all angles and
careless, eager faces. An almost unbroken silence seemed the order of
the earlier part of a Saturday afternoon. To-day the room was very
still, save for the slight movements of the writers. At intervals
nothing was to be heard but the little chorus of pens. Clara, still
smouldering, sitting at the window end of the room looked now and again
gloomily out into the garden. Miriam did not want to write letters. She
sat, pen in hand, and note-paper in front of her, feeling that she loved
the atmosphere of these Saturday afternoons. This was her second. She
had been in the school a fortnight--the first Saturday she had spent
writing to her mother--a long letter for everyone to read, full of first
impressions and enclosing a slangy almost affectionate little note for
Harriett. In her general letter she had said, "If you want to think of
something jolly, think of me, here." She had hesitated over that
sentence when she considered meal-times, especially the midday meal, but
on the whole she had decided to let it stand--this afternoon she felt it
was truer. She was beginning to belong to the house--she did not want to
write letters--but just to sit revelling in the sense of this room full
of quietly occupied girls--in the first hours of the weekly holiday. She
thought of strange Ulrica somewhere upstairs and felt quite one of the
old gang. "Ages" she had known all these girls. She was not afraid of
them at all. She would not be afraid of them any more. Emma Bergmann
across the table raised a careworn face from her two lines of large neat
lettering and caught her eye. She put up her hands on either side of her
mouth as if for shouting.
"_Hendchen_," she articulated silently, in her curious lipless way,
"mein liebes, liebes, Hendchen."
Miriam smiled timidly and sternly began fumbling at her
week's letters--one from Eve, full of congratulations and
recommendations--"Keep up your music, my dear," said the conclusion,
"and don't mind that little German girl being fond of you. It is
impossible to be too fond of people if you keep it all on a high level,"
and a scrawl from Harriett, pure slang from beginning to end. Both these
letters and an earlier one from her mother had moved her to tears and
longing when they came. She re-read them now unmoved and felt aloof from
the things they suggested. It did not seem imperative to respond to them
at once. She folded them together. If only she could bring them all for
a minute into this room, the wonderful Germany that she had achieved. If
they could even come to the door and look in. She did not in the least
want to go back. She wanted them to come to her and taste Germany--to
see all that went on in this wonderful house, to see pretty, German
Emma, adoring her--to hear the music that was everywhere all the week,
that went, like a garland, in and out of everything, to hear her play,
by accident, and acknowledge the difference in her playing. Oh yes,
besides seeing them all she wanted them to hear her play.... She must
stay ... she glanced round the room. It was here, somehow, somewhere, in
this roomful of girls, centring in the Germans at her end of the table,
reflected on to the English group, something of that influence that had
made her play. It was in the sheen on Minna's hair, in Emma's
long-plaited schoolgirlishness, somehow in Clara's anger. It was here,
here, and she was in it.... She must pretend to be writing letters or
someone might speak to her. She would hate anyone who challenged her at
this moment. Jimmie might. It was just the kind of thing Jimmie would
do. Her eyes were always roving round.... There were a lot of people
like that.... It was all right when you wanted anything or
to--to--"create a diversion" when everybody was quarrelling. But at the
wrong times it was awful.... The Radnors and Pooles were like that. She
could have killed them often. "Hullo, Mim," they would say, "Wake up!"
or "What's the row!" and if you asked why, they would laugh and tell you
you looked like a dying duck in a thunderstorm.... It was all right. No
one had noticed her--or if either of the Germans had they would not
think like that--they would understand--she believed in a way, they
would understand. At the worst they would look at you as if they were
somehow with you and say something sentimental. "Sie hat Heimweh" or
something like that. Minna would. Minna's forget-me-not blue eyes behind
her pink nose would be quite real and alive.... Ein Blatt--she dipped
her pen and wrote Ein Blatt ... aus ... Ein Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen
... that thing they had begun last Saturday afternoon and gone on and on
with until she had hated the sound of the words. How did it go on? "Ein
Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen," she breathed in a half whisper. Minna
heard--and without looking up from her writing quietly repeated the
verse. Her voice rose and trembled slightly on the last line.
"Oh, chuck it, Minna," groaned Bertha Martin.
"Tchookitt," repeated Minna absently, and went on with her writing.
Miriam was scribbling down the words as quickly as she could--
"Ein Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen
Ich nahm es so im Wandern mit
Auf dass es einst mir möge sagen
Wie laut die Nachtigall geschlagen
Wie grün der Wald den ich--durchtritt--"
durchtritt--durchschritt--she was not sure. It was perfectly lovely--she
read it through translating stumblingly--
"A leaf from summery days
I took it with me on my way,
So that it might remind me
How loud the nightingale had sung,
How green the wood I had passed through."
With a pang she felt it was true that summer ended in dead leaves.
But she had no leaf, nothing to remind her of her summer days. They were
all past and she had nothing--not the smallest thing. The two little
bunches of flowers she had put away in her desk had all crumbled
together, and she could not tell which was which.... There was nothing
else--but the things she had told Eve--and perhaps Eve had forgotten ...
there was nothing. There were the names in her birthday book! She had
forgotten them. She would look at them. She flushed. She would look at
them to-morrow, sometime when Mademoiselle was not there.... The room
was waking up from its letter-writing. People were moving about. She
would not write to-day. It was not worth while beginning. She took a
fresh sheet of note-paper and copied her verse, spacing it carefully
with a wide margin all round so that it came exactly in the middle of
the page. It would soon be tea-time. "Wie grün der Wald." She remembered
one wood--the only one she could remember--there were no woods at Barnes
or at the seaside--only that wood, at the very beginning, someone
carrying Harriett--and green green, the brightest she had ever seen, and
anemones everywhere, she could see them distinctly at this moment--she
wanted to put her face down into the green among the anemones. She could
not remember how she got there or the going home, but just standing
there--the green and the flowers and something in her ear buzzing and
frightening her and making her cry, and somebody poking a large finger
into the buzzing ear and making it very hot and sore.
The afternoon sitting had broken up. The table was empty.
Emma, in raptures--near the window, was calling to the other Germans.
Minna came and chirruped too--there was a sound of dull scratching on
the window--then a little burst of admiration from Emma and Minna
together. Miriam looked round--in Emma's hand shone a small antique
watch encrusted with jewels; at her side was the new girl. Miriam saw a
filmy black dress, and above it a pallid face. What was it like? It was
like--like--like jasmine--that was it--jasmine--and out of the jasmine
face the great gaze she had met in the morning turned half-puzzled,
half-disappointed upon the growing group of girls examining the watch.