Pointed Roofs: Pilgrimage Part 4

Miriam groaned. She was a governess now. Someone would ask her that question. She would ask Pater before he went.... No, she would not. ...

If only he would answer a question simply, and not with a superior air as if he had invented the thing he was telling about. She felt she had a right to all the knowledge there was, without fuss... oh, without fuss--without fuss and--emotion.... I _am_ unsociable, I suppose--she mused. She could not think of anyone who did not offend her. I don't like men and I loathe women. I am a misanthrope. So's Pater. He despises women and can't get on with men. We are different--it's us, him and me.

He's failed us because he's different and if he weren't we should be like other people. Everything in the railway responded and agreed. Like other people... horrible.... She thought of the fathers of girls she knew--the Poole girls, for instance, they were to be "independent"

trained and certificated--she envied that--but her envy vanished when she remembered how heartily she had agreed when Sarah called them "sharp" and "knowing."

Mr. Poole was a business man... common... trade.... If Pater had kept to Grandpa's business they would be trade, too--well-off, now--all married.

Perhaps as it was he had thought they would marry.

7

She thought sleepily of her Wesleyan grandparents, gravely reading the "Wesleyan Methodist Recorder," the shop at Babington, her father's discontent, his solitary fis.h.i.+ng and reading, his discovery of music...

science... cla.s.sical music in the first Novello editions... Faraday...

speaking to Faraday after lectures. Marriage... the new house... the red brick wall at the end of the garden where young peach-trees were planted... running up and downstairs and singing.. . both of them singing in the rooms and the garden... she sometimes with her hair down and then when visitors were expected pinned in coils under a little cap and wearing a small hoop... the garden and lawns and shrubbery and the long kitchen-garden and the summer-house under the oaks beyond and the pretty old gabled "town" on the river and the woods all along the river valley and the hills s.h.i.+ning up out of the mist. The snow man they both made in the winter--the birth of Sarah and then Eve... his studies and book-buying--and after five years her own disappointing birth as the third girl, and the coming of Harriett just over a year later...

her mother's illness, money troubles--their two years at the sea to retrieve... the disappearance of the sunlit red-walled garden always in full summer suns.h.i.+ne with the sound of bees in it or dark from windows... the narrowing of the house-life down to the Marine Villa--with the sea creeping in--wading out through the green shallows, out and out till you were more than waist deep--shrimping and prawning hour after hour for weeks together... poking in the rock pools, watching the sun and the colours in the strange afternoons... then the sudden large house at Barnes with the "drive" winding to the door.... He used to come home from the City and the Const.i.tutional Club and sometimes instead of reading "The Times" or the "Globe" or the "Proceedings of the British a.s.sociation" or Herbert Spencer, play Pope Joan or Jacoby with them all, or Table Billiards and laugh and be "silly" and take his turn at being "b.u.mped" by Timmy going the round of the long dining-room table, tail in the air; he had taken Sarah and Eve to see "Don Giovanni"

and "Winter's Tale" and the new piece, "Lohengrin." No one at the tennis-club had seen that. He had good taste. No one else had been to Madame Schumann's Farewell... sitting at the piano with her curtains of hair and her dreamy smile... and the Philharmonic Concerts. No one else knew about the lectures at the Royal Inst.i.tution, beginning at nine on Fridays.... No one else's father went with a party of scientific men "for the advancement of science" to Norway or America, seeing the Falls and the Yosemite Valley. No one else took his children as far as Dawli travelling all day, from eight until seven... no esplanade, the old stone jetty and coves and cowrie sh.e.l.ls....

CHAPTER III

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 Sat.u.r.day's _raccommodage_. It was the last hour of the week's work. Presently there would be a great gonging, the pianos would cease, Fraulein's voice would sound up through the house "Anziehen zum Aus-geh-hen!"

There would be the walk, dinner, the Sat.u.r.day 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. Fraulein 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 Fraulein.

"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 pa.s.sages a.s.sailing 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 repet.i.tion of a difficult pa.s.sage drew her attention to the performer, her arms dropped to her sides and she pa.s.sed 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 st.i.tched 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-headed 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 birdlike 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, "Ware 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 Waldstra.s.se 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 Fraulein 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 embarra.s.sing than Fraulein'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 Fraulein 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 Fraulein, 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 Fraulein'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, "Voila!" 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--Besanon--Besanon--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 s.h.i.+ning 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_ G.o.d!" 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 Brodchen 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 coa.r.s.e 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!_"

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 gla.s.ses 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 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 s.h.i.+ny 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----"