1
Miriam paid her first visit to a German church the next day, her third
Sunday. Of the first Sunday, now so far off, she could remember nothing
but sitting in a low-backed chair in the saal trying to read "Les
Travailleurs de la Mer" ... seas ... and a sunburnt youth striding down
a desolate lane in a storm ... and the beginning of tea-time. They had
been kept indoors all day by the rain.
The second Sunday they had all gone in the evening to the English church
with Fräulein Pfaff ... rush-seated chairs with a ledge for books,
placed very close together and scrooping on the stone floor with the
movements of the congregation ... a little gathering of English people.
They seemed very dear for a moment ... what was it about them that was
so attractive ... that gave them their air of "refinement"?...
Then as she watched their faces as they sang she felt that she knew all
these women, the way, with little personal differences, they would talk,
the way they would smile and take things for granted.
And the men, standing there in their overcoats.... Why were they there?
What were they doing? What were their thoughts?
She pressed as against a barrier. Nothing came to her from these
unconscious forms.
They seemed so untroubled.... Probably they were all Conservatives....
That was part of their "refinement." They would all disapprove of Mr.
Gladstone.... Get up into the pulpit and say "Gladstone" very loud ...
and watch the result. Gladstone was a Radical ... "pull everything up by
the roots." ... Pater was always angry and sneery about him.... Where
were the Radicals? Somewhere very far away ... tub-thumping ... the
Conservatives made them thump tubs ... no wonder.
She decided she must be a Radical. Certainly she did not belong to these
"refined" English--women or men. She was quite sure of that, seeing them
gathered together, English Church-people in this foreign town.
But then Radicals were probably chapel?
It would be best to stay with the Germans. Yes ... she would stay. There
was a woman sitting in the endmost chair just across the aisle in line
with them. She had a pale face and looked worn and middle-aged. The
effect of "refinement" made on Miriam by the congregation seemed to
radiate from her. There was a large ostrich feather fastened by a
gleaming buckle against the side of her silky beaver hat. It swept,
Miriam found the word during the Psalms, back over her hair. Miriam
glancing at her again and again felt that she would like to be near her,
watch her and touch her and find out the secret of her effect. But not
talk to her, never talk to her.
She, too, sad and alone though Miriam knew her to be, would have her way
of smiling and taking things for granted. The sermon came. Miriam sat,
chafing, through it. One angry glance towards the pulpit had shown her a
pale, black-moustached face. She checked her thoughts. She felt they
would be too savage; would rend her unendurably. She tried not to
listen. She felt the preacher was dealing out "pastoral platitudes." She
tried to give her mind elsewhere; but the sound of the voice,
unconvinced and unconvincing threatened her again and again with a tide
of furious resentment. She fidgeted and felt for thoughts and tried to
compose her face to a semblance of serenity. It would not do to sit
scowling here amongst her pupils with Fräulein Pfaff's eye commanding
her profile from the end of the pew just behind.... The air was gassy
and close, her feet were cold. The gentle figure across the aisle was
sitting very still, with folded hands and grave eyes fixed in the
direction of the pulpit. Of course. Miriam had known it. She would
"think over" the sermon afterwards.... The voice in the pulpit had
dropped. Miriam glanced up. The figure faced about and intoned rapidly,
the congregation rose for a moment rustling, and rustling subsided
again. A hymn was given out. They rose again and sang. It was "Lead,
Kindly Light." Chilly and feverish and weary Miriam listened ... "the
encircling glooo--om" ... Cardinal Newman coming back from Italy in a
ship ... in the end he had gone over to Rome ... high altars ... candles
... incense ... safety and warmth.... From far away a radiance seemed to
approach and to send out a breath that touched and stirred the stuffy
air ... the imploring voices sang on ... poor dears ... poor cold
English things ... Miriam suddenly became aware of Emma Bergmann
standing at her side with open hymn-book shaking with laughter. She
glanced sternly at her, mastering a sympathetic convulsion.
2
Emma looked so sweet standing there shaking and suffused. Her blue eyes
were full of tears. Miriam wanted to giggle too. She longed to know what
had amused her ... just the fact of their all standing suddenly there
together. She dared not join her ... no more giggling as she and
Harriett had giggled. She would not even be able afterwards to ask her
what it was.
3
Sitting on this third Sunday morning in the dim Schloss Kirche--the
Waldstrasse pew was in one of its darkest spaces and immediately under
the shadow of a deeply overhanging gallery--Miriam understood poor
Emma's confessed hysteria over the abruptly alternating kneelings and
standings, risings and sittings of an Anglican congregation. Here, there
was no need to be on the watch for the next move. The service droned
quietly and slowly on. Miriam paid no heed to it. She sat in the
comforting darkness. The unobserving Germans were all round her, the
English girls tailed away invisibly into the distant obscurity. Fräulein
Pfaff was not there, nor Mademoiselle. She was alone with the school.
She felt safe for a while and derived solace from the reflection that
there would always be church. If she were a governess all her life there
would be church. There was a little sting of guilt in the thought. It
would be practising deception.... To despise it all, to hate
the minister and the choir and the congregation and yet to
come--running--she could imagine herself all her life running, at least
in her mind, weekly to some church--working her fingers into their
gloves and pretending to take everything for granted and to be just like
everybody else and really thinking only of getting into a quiet pew and
ceasing to pretend. It was wrong to use church like that. She was
wrong--all wrong. It couldn't be helped. Who was there who could help
her? She imagined herself going to a clergyman and saying she was bad
and wanted to be good--even crying. He would be kind and would pray and
smile--and she would be told to listen to sermons in the right spirit.
She could never do that.... There she felt she was on solid ground.
Listening to sermons was wrong ... people ought to refuse to be preached
at by these men. Trying to listen to them made her more furious than
anything she could think of, more base in submitting ... those men's
sermons were worse than women's smiles ... just as insincere at any rate
... and you could get away from the smiles, make it plain you did not
agree and that things were not simple and settled ... but you could not
stop a sermon. It was so unfair. The service might be lovely, if you did
not listen to the words; and then the man got up and went on and on from
unsound premises until your brain was sick ... droning on and on and
getting more and more pleased with himself and emphatic ... and nothing
behind it. As often as not you could pick out the logical fallacy if you
took the trouble.... Preachers knew no more than anyone else ... you
could see by their faces ... sheeps' faces.... What a terrible life ...
and wives and children in the homes taking them for granted....
4
Certainly it was wrong to listen to sermons ... stultifying ... unless
they were intellectual ... lectures like Mr. Brough's ... that was as
bad, because they were not sermons.... Either kind was bad and ought not
to be allowed ... a homily ... sermons ... homilies ... a quiet homily
might be something rather nice ... and have not _Charity_--sounding
brass and tinkling cymbal.... Caritas ... I have _none_ I am sure....
Fräulein Pfaff would listen. She would smile afterwards and talk about a
"schöne Predigt"--certainly.... If she should ask about the sermon?
Everything would come out then.
What would be the good? Fräulein would not understand. It would be
better to pretend. She could not think of any woman who would
understand. And she would be obliged to live somewhere. She must pretend
to somebody. She wanted to go on, to see the spring. But must she always
be pretending? Would it always be that ... living with exasperating
women who did not understand ... pretending ... grimacing?... Were
German women the same? She wished she could tell Eve the things she was
beginning to feel about women. These English girls were just the same.
Millie ... sweet lovely Millie.... How she wished she had never spoken
to her. Never said, "Are you fond of crochet?" ... Millie saying, "You
must know all my people," and then telling her a list of names and
describing all her family. She had been so pleased for the first moment.
It had made her feel suddenly happy to hear an English voice talking
familiarly to her in the saal. And then at the end of a few moments she
had known she never wanted to hear anything more of Millie and her
people. It seemed strange that this girl talking about her brothers'
hobbies and the colour of her sister's hair was the Millie she had first
seen the night of the Vorspielen with the "Madonna" face and no feet.
Millie was smug. Millie would smile when she was a little older--and she
would go respectfully to church all her life--Miriam had felt a horror
even of the work-basket Millie had been tidying during their
conversation--and Millie had gone upstairs, she knew, feeling that they
had "begun to be friends" and would be different the next time they met.
It was her own fault. What had made her speak to her? She was like
that.... Eve had told her. She got excited and interested in people and
then wanted to throw them up. It was not true. She did not want to throw
them up. She wanted them to leave her alone.... She had not been excited
about Millie. It was Ulrica, Ulrica ... Ulrica ... Ulrica ... sitting up
at breakfast with her lovely head and her great eyes--her thin fingers
peeling an egg.... She had made them all look so "common." Ulrica was
different. Was she? Yes, Ulrica was different ... Ulrica peeling an egg
and she, afterwards like a mad thing had gone into the saal and talked
to Millie in a vulgar, familiar way, no doubt.
And that had led to that dreadful talk with Gertrude. Gertrude's voice
sounding suddenly behind her as she stood looking out of the saal window
and their talk. She wished Gertrude had not told her about Hugo Wieland
and the skating. She was sure she would not have liked Erica Wieland.
She was glad she had left. "She was my chum," Gertrude had said, "and he
taught us all the outside edge and taught me figure-skating."
It was funny--improper--that these schoolgirls should go skating with
other girls' brothers. She had been so afraid of Gertrude that she had
pretended to be interested and had joked with her--she, Miss Henderson,
the governess had said--knowingly, "Let's see, he's the clean-shaven
one, isn't he?"
"_Rather_," Gertrude had said with a sort of winking grimace....
5
They were singing a hymn. The people near her had not moved. Nobody had
moved. The whole church was sitting down, singing a hymn. What wonderful
people.... Like a sort of tea-party ... everybody sitting about--not
sitting up to the table ... happy and comfortable.
Emma had found her place and handed her a big hymn-book with the score.
There was time for Miriam to read the first line and recognise the
original of "Now thank we all our God" before the singing
had reached the third syllable. She hung over the book.
"Nun--dank--et--Al--le--Gott." Now--thank--all--God. She read that first
line again and felt how much better the thing was without the "we" and
the "our." What a perfect phrase.... The hymn rolled on and she
recognised that it was the tune she knew--the hard square tune she and
Eve had called it--and Harriett used to mark time to it in jerks, a jerk
to each syllable, with a twisted glove-finger tip just under the book
ledge with her left hand, towards Miriam. But sung as these Germans sang
it, it did not jerk at all. It did not sound like a "proclamation" or an
order. It was ... somehow ... everyday. The notes seemed to hold her up.
This was--Luther--Germany--the Reformation--solid and quiet. She glanced
up and then hung more closely over her book. It was the stained-glass
windows that made the Schloss Kirche so dark. One movement of her head
showed her that all the windows within sight were dark with rich colour,
and there was oak everywhere--great shelves and galleries and juttings
of dark wood, great carved masses and a high dim roof and strange spaces
of light; twilight, and light like moonlight and people, not many
people, a troop, a little army under the high roof, with the great
shadows all about them. "Nun danket alle Gott." There was nothing to
object to in that. Everybody could say that. Everybody--Fräulein,
Gertrude, all these little figures in the church, the whole world. "Now
thank, all, God!" ... Emma and Marie were chanting on either side of
her. Immediately behind her sounded the quavering voice of an old woman.
They all felt it. She must remember that.... Think of it every day.