Pointed Roofs: Pilgrimage Part 28

... Flights of s.h.i.+ning steps, shallow and very wide--going up and up and growing fainter and fainter, and far away at the top a faint old face with great rays shooting out all round it... the picture in the large "Pilgrim's Progress."... G.o.d in heaven.... I belong to Apollyon... a horror with expressionless eyes... darting out little spiky flames... if only it would come now... instead of waiting until the end....

She clasped her hands closely one in the other. They felt large and strong. She stopped her thoughts and stared for a long while at the faint light in the room... "It's physically impossible" someone had said... the only h.e.l.l thinkable is remorse... remorse....

Sighing impatiently she turned about... and sighed again, breathing deeply and rattling and feeling very hungry.... There will be breakfast, even for me.... If they knew me they would not give me breakfast.... no one would... I should be in a little room and one after another would come and be reproachful and shocked... and then they would go away and be happy and forget....

Sarah would come. Whatever it was, Sarah would come. She read the Bible and marked pieces.... But she would rush in without saying anything, with a red face and bang down a plate of melon.... What did G.o.d do about people like Sarah? Perhaps Apollyon could be made to come at once--sweeping in like a large bat--be torn to bits--those men at that college said he had come to them. They swore--one after the other and the devil came in through one of the carved windows and carried one of them away.... I have my doubts... Pater's face laughing--I have my doubts, ooof--P-ooof. She flung off the outer covering and felt the strong movements of her limbs. Hang! Hang! _Hang!_ d.a.m.n....

If there's no G.o.d, there's no Devil... and everything goes on....

Fraulein goes on having her school.... What does she really think?.

.. Out in the world people don't think.... They grimace.... Is there anywhere where there are no people?... be a gipsy.... There are always people....

8

"What a perfect morning... what a perfect morning," Miriam kept telling herself, trying to see into the garden. There was a bowl of irises on the breakfast-table--it made everything seem strange. There had never been flowers on the table before. There was also a great dish of pumpernickel besides the usual food. Fraulein had enjoined silence. The silence made the impression of the irises stay. She hoped it might be a new rule. She glanced at Fraulein two or three times. She was pallid white. Her face looked thinner than usual and her eyes larger and keener. She did not seem to notice anyone. Miriam wondered whether she were thinking about cancer. Her face looked as it had done when once or twice she had said, "Ich bin so bange vor Krebs." She hoped not. Perhaps it was the problem of evil. Perhaps she had thought of it when she put the irises on the table.

She gazed at them, half-feeling the flummery petals against the palm of her hand. Fraulein seemed cancelled. There was no need to feel self-conscious. She was not thinking of any of them. Miriam found herself looking at high grey stone basins with ornamental stems like wine-gla.s.ses and large square fluted pedestals, filled with geraniums and calceolarias. They had stood in the suns.h.i.+ne at the corners of the lawn in her grandmother's garden. She could remember nothing else but the scent of a greenhouse and its steamy panes over her head... lemon thyme and scented geranium.

How lovely it would be to-day at the end of the day. Fraulein would feel happy then... or did elderly people fear cancer all the time.... It was a great mistake. You should leave things to Nature.... You were more likely to have things if you thought about them. But Fraulein would think and worry... alone with herself... with her great dark eyes and bony forehead and thin pale cheeks... always alone, and just cancer coming... I shall be like that one day... an old teacher and cancer coming. It was silly to forget all about it and see Granny's calceolarias in the sun... all that had to come to an end.... To forget was like putting off repentance. Those who did not put it off saw when the great waters came, a s.h.i.+ning figure coming to them through the flood.... If they did not they were like the man in a night-cap, his mouth hanging open--no teeth--and skinny hands, playing cards on his death-bed.

9

After bed-making, Fraulein settled a mending party at the window-end of the schoolroom table. She sent no emissary but was waiting herself in the schoolroom when they came down. She hovered about putting them into their places and enquiring about the work of each one.

She arranged Miriam and the Germans at the saal end of the table for an English lesson. Mademoiselle was not there. Fraulein herself took the head of the table. Once more she enjoined silence--the whole table seemed waiting for Miriam to begin her lesson.

The three or four readings they had done during the term alone in the little room had brought them through about a third of the blue-bound volume. Hoa.r.s.ely whispering, then violently clearing her throat and speaking suddenly in a very loud tone Miriam bade them resume the story.

They read and she corrected them in hoa.r.s.e whispers. No one appeared to be noticing. A steady breeze coming through the open door of the summer-house flowed past them and along the table, but Miriam sat stifling, with beating temples. She had no thoughts. Now and again in correcting a simple word she was not sure that she had given the right English rendering. Behind her distress two impressions went to and fro--Fraulein and the raccommodage party sitting in judgment and the whole roomful waiting for cancer.

Very gently at the end of half an hour Fraulein dismissed the Germans to practise.

Herr Schraub was coming at eleven. Miriam supposed she was free until then and went upstairs.

On the landing she met Mademoiselle coming downstairs with mending.

"Bossy coming?" she said feverishly in French; "are you going to the saal?"

Mademoiselle stood contemplating her.

"I've just been giving an English lesson, oh, Mon Dieu," she proceeded.

Mademoiselle still looked gravely and quietly.

Miriam was pa.s.sing on. Mademoiselle turned and said hurriedly in a low voice. "Elsa says you are a fool at lessons."

"Oh," smiled Miriam.

"You think they do not speak of you, hein? Well, I tell you they speak of you. Jimmie says you are as fat as any German. She laughed in saying that. Gertrude, too, thinks you are a fool. Oh, they say things. If I should tell you all the things they say you would not believe."

"I dare say," said Miriam heavily, moving on.

"Everyone, all say things, I tell you," whispered Mademoiselle turning her head as she went on downstairs.

10

Miriam ran into the empty summer-house tearing open a well-filled envelope. There was a long letter from Eve, a folded half-sheet from mother. Her heart beat rapidly. Thick straight rain was seething down into the garden.

"Come and say good-bye to Mademoiselle, Hendy."

"Is she _going?"_

"Umph."

"Little Mademoiselle?"

"Poor little beast!"

"Leaving!"

"Seems like it--she's been packing all the morning."

"Because of that letter business?"

"Oh, I dunno. Anyhow there's some story of some friend of Fraulein's travelling through to Besancon today and Mademoiselle's going with her and we're all to take solemn leave and she's not coming back next term.

Come on."

Mademoiselle, radiantly rosy under her large black French hat, wearing her stockinette jacket and grey dress, was standing at the end of the schoolroom table--the girls were all a.s.sembled and the door into the hall was open.

The housekeeper was laughing and shouting and imitating the puffing of a train. Mademoiselle stood smiling beside her with downcast eyes.

Opposite them was Gertrude with thin white face, blue lips and hotly blazing eyes fixed on Mademoiselle. She stood easily with her hands clasped behind her.

She must have an appalling headache thought Miriam. Mademoiselle began shaking hands.

"I say, Mademoiselle," began Jimmie quietly and hurriedly in her lame French, as she took her hand. "Have you got another place?"

"A place?"

"I mean what are you going to do next term, pet.i.te?"