Pointed Roofs .......................................................................................................................................................1

Dorothy Richardson .................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ............................................................................................................................................9

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................13

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................32

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................35

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................44

CHAPTER VII .......................................................................................................................................65

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................66

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................79

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................81

Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. The March twilight lay upon the landings, but the

staircase was almost dark. The top landing was quite dark and silent. There was no one about. It would be

quiet in her room. She could sit by the fire and be quiet and think things over until Eve and Harriett came

back with the parcels. She would have time to think about the journey and decide what she was going to say

Her new Saratoga trunk stood solid and gleaming in the firelight. Tomorrow it would be taken away and she

would be gone. The room would be altogether Harriett's. It would never have its old look again. She evaded

the thought and moved clumsily to the nearest window. The outline of the round bed and the shapes of the

maytrees on either side of the bend of the drive were just visible. There was no escape for her thoughts in

this direction. The sense of all she was leaving stirred uncontrollably as she stood looking down into the

Out in the road beyond the invisible limetrees came the rumble of wheels. The gate creaked and the wheels

It was the Thursday afternoon pianoorgan, the one that was always in tune. It was early today.

She drew back from the window as the bass chords began thumping gently in the darkness. It was better that

it should come now than later on, at dinnertime. She could get over it alone up here.

She went down the length of the room and knelt by the fireside with one hand on the mantelshelf so that she

It had begun that tune during the last term at school, in the summer. It made her think of rounders in the hot

school garden, singingclasses in the large green room, all the class shouting "Gather roses while ye may,"

hot afternoons in the shady north room, the sound of turning pages, the hum of the garden beyond the

sunblinds, meetings in the sixth form study. . . . Lilla, with her black hair and the specks of bright amber in

She stirred the fire. The windows were quite dark. The flames shot up and shadows darted.

That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and desert her, leaving nothing behind.

Tomorrow it would belong to a world which would go on without her, taking no heed. There would still be

There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and nothing to do and no end anywhere

to anything; no more sitting at the open window in the diningroom, reading Lecky and Darwin and bound

"Contemporary Reviews" with roses waiting in the garden to be worn in the afternoon, and Eve and Harriett

somewhere about, washing blouses or copying waltzes from the library packet. . . no more Harriett looking in

at the end of the morning, rushing her off to the new grand piano to play the "Mikado" and the "Holy Family"

duets. The tennisclub would go on, but she would not be there. It would begin in May. Again there would be

a white twinkling figure coming quickly along the pathway between the rows of hollyhocks every Saturday

Why had he come to tea every Sundaynever missing a single Sundayall the winter? Why did he say,

"Play 'Abide with me,'" "Play 'Abide with me'" yesterday, if he didn't care? What was the good of being so

quiet and saying nothing? Why didn't he say "Don't go" or "When are you coming back?" Eve said he looked

There was nothing to look forward to now but governessing and old age. Perhaps Miss Gilkes was right. . . .

Get rid of men and muddles and have things just ordinary and be happy. "Make up your mind to be happy.

You can be _perfectly_ happy without anyone to think about. . . ." Wearing that large cameo broochlong,

white, flatfingered hands and that quiet little laugh. . . . The pianoorgan had reached its last tune. In the

midst of the final flourish of notes the door flew open. Miriam got quickly to her feet and felt for matches.

Miriam took the parcel and subsided on to the hearthrug, looking with a new curiosity at Harriett's little,

round, firelit face, smiling tightly beneath the rim of her hard felt hat and the bright silk bow beneath her

"No, they hadn't got piquet, but they're the plain shape you like. You may thank us they didn't send you

Eve came slenderly down the room and Miriam saw with relief that her outdoor things were off. As the gas

flared up she drew comfort from her scarlet serge dress, and the soft crimson cheek and white brow of the

"I don't know," said Eve. She sighed thoughtfully and sank into a carpet chair under the gas bracket. Miriam

"Pater's only just come in. I think things are pretty rotten," declared Harriett from the hearthrug.

"Isn't it ghastlyfor all of us?" Miriam felt treacherously outspoken. It was a relief to be going away. She

knew that this sense of relief made her able to speak. "It's never knowing that's so awful. Perhaps he'll get

some more money presently and things'll go on again. Fancy mother having it always, ever since we were

"All right. I won't tell you the words he said, how he put it about the difficulty of getting the money for my

Miriam's mind went back to the phrase and her mother's agonised face. She felt utterly desolate in the warm

"I wish _I'd_ got brains," chirped Harriett, poking the fire with the toe of her boot.

"You know, I _know_ girls, that things are as absolutely ghastly this time as they can possibly be and that

something must be done. . . . But you know it's perfectly fearful to face that old school when it comes to the

"Oh, my dear, it'll be lovely," said Eve; "all new and jolly, and think how you will enjoy those lectures, you'll

"No more all day bezique. . . . No more days in the West End. . . . No more matinees . . . no more exhibitions

Two deeplyburrowing dimples fastened the clean skin tightly over the bulge of Miriam's smile.

Why did Eve use her cross voice?stupid . . . "for goodness' sake," not "for goodney." Silly of Eve to talk

"Won't marry a German professor, or won't tell mother, do you mean? . . . OoCrumbs! My old cake in the

"Poor old girl. I expect you feel horrid because you're tired with all the packing and excitement."

"Ohwellyou arranging all thisI mean answering the advertisement and settling it all."

"You must have such splendid principles to keep you straight," said Eve, and cleared her throat, "I mean, you

"Oh, well, it isn't so much what you've doneyou have such a good time. . . . Everybody admires you and all

that . . . you know what I meanyou're so clever. . . . You're always in the right."

"You're all rightyou'll come out all right. You're one of those strongminded people who have to go

"But, my _dear_," said Miriam grateful and proud, "I feel such a humbug. You know when I wrote that letter

to the Fraulein I said I was a member of the Church. I know what it will be, I shall have to take the English

"It will make me simply illI could _never_ describe to you," said Miriam, with her face aglow, "what it is

"Yes." Eve stirred uneasily and began to execute a gentle scale with her tiny tightlyknit blue and white hand

"It'll be ghastly," continued Miriam, "not having anyone to pour out toI've told you such a lot these last

Eve, easily weeping, hugged her and whispered, "You mustn't. I can't see you break

downdon'tdon'tdon't. We can't be blue your last night. . . . Think of nice things. . . . There _will_ be

Miriam pursed her lips to a tight bunch and sat twisting her long thickish fingers. Eve stood up in her tears.

Her smile and the curves of her mouth were unchanged by her weeping, and the crimson had spread and

deepened a little in the long oval of her face. Miriam watched the changing crimson. Her eyes went to and fro

"I'm going to get some hot water," said Eve, "and we'll make ourselves glorious."

Miriam watched her as she went down the long roomthe great oval of dark hair, the narrow neck, the

narrow back, tight, plump little hands hanging in profile, white, with a purple pad near the wrist.

When Miriam woke the next morning she lay still with closed eyes. She had dreamed that she had been

standing in a room in the German school and the staff had crowded round her, looking at her. They had

dreadful eyeseyes like the eyes of hostesses she remembered, eyes she had seen in trains and 'buses, eyes

from the old school. They came and stood and looked at her, and saw her as she was, without courage,

without funds or good clothes or beauty, without charm or interest, without even the skill to play a part. They

looked at her with loathing. "Board and lodgingprivilege to attend Masters' lectures and laundry

(bodylinen only)." That was all she had thought of and clutched atall along, since first she read the

Fraulein's letter. Her keep and the chance of learning . . . and GermanyGermany, das deutsche

VaterlandGermany, all woods and mountains and tendernessHermann and Dorothea in the dusk of a

And it would really be those women, expecting things of her. They would be so affable at first. She had been

through it a million timesall her lifeall eternity. They would smile those hateful women's

smilessmirksselfsatisfied smiles as if everybody were agreed about everything. She loathed women.

They always smiled. All the teachers had at school, all the girls, but Lilla. Eve did . . . maddeningly

sometimes . . . Mother . . . it was the only funny horrid thing about her. Harriett didn't. . . . Harriett laughed.

He never included her with them; or only sometimes when she pretended, or he didn't understand. . . .

She opened her eyes. It was bright morning. She saw the twist of Harriett's body lying across the edge of the

bed. With a gasp she flung herself over her own side. Harry, old Harry, jolly old Harry had remembered the

Grand Ceremonial. In a moment her own head hung, her long hair flinging back on to the floor, her eyes

gazing across the bed at the reversed snub of Harriett's face. It was flushed in the midst of the wiry hair which

stuck out all round it but did not reach the floor. "Hi!" they gurgled solemnly, "Hi. . . . Hi!" shaking their

heads from side to side. Then their four frilled hands came down and they flumped out of the high bed.

They performed an uproarious toilet. It seemed so safe up there in the bright bare room. Miriam's luggage had

been removed. It was away somewhere in the house; far away and unreal and unfelt as her parents

somewhere downstairs, and the servants away in the basement getting breakfast and Sarah and Eve always

incredible, getting quietly up in the next room. Nothing was real but getting up with old Harriett in this old

She revelled in Harriett's delicate buffoonery ("voluntary incongruity" she quoted to herself as she watched

her)the titles of some of the books on Harriett's shelf, "Ungava; a Tale of the North," "Grimm's Fairy

Tales," "John Halifax," "Swiss Family Robinson" made her laugh. The curtained recesses of the long room

She went about dimpling and responding, singing and masquerading as her large hands did their work.

She intoned the titles on her own shelfas a response to the quiet swearing and jesting accompanying

Harriett's occupations. "The Voyage of the Beeeeeeagle," she sang "Scott's Poetical _Works_."

"Books!" she responded in a low tone, and flushed as if she had given Harriett an affectionate hug. "My

rotten books. . . ." She would come back, and read all her books more carefully. She had packed some. She

"Binks," she said, and it was quite easy for them to crowd together at the little dressingtable. Harriett was

standing in her little faded red moirette petticoat and a blue flannelette dressingjacket brushing her wiry

hair. Miriam reflected that she need no longer hate her for the set of her clothes round her hips. She caught

sight of her own faded jersey and stiff, shapeless black petticoat in the mirror. Harriett's "Hinde's" lay on the

dressingtable, her own still lifted the skin of her forehead in suffused puckerings against the shank of each

Unperceived, she eyed the tiny stiff plait of hair which stuck out almost horizontally from the nape of

Harriett's neck, and watched her combing out the tightlycurled fringe standing stubbily out along her

forehead and extending like a thickset hedge midway across the crown of her head, where it stopped abruptly

against the sleeklybrushed longer strands which strained over her poll and disappeared into the plait.

"You're not. You don't know. Granny said you'll be a bonny woman, and Sarah thinks you've got the best

shape face and the best complexion of any of us, and cook was simply crying her eyes out last night and said

you were the light of the house with your happy, pretty face, and mother said you're much too attractive to go

about alone, and that's partly why Pater's going with you to Hanover, silly. . . . You're not plain," she gasped.

Miriam's amazement silenced her. She stood back from the mirror. She could not look into it until Harriett

had gone. The phrases she had just heard rang in her head without meaning. But she knew she would

remember all of them. She went on doing her hair with downcast eyes. She had seen Harriett vividly, and had

longed to crush her in her arms and kiss her little round cheeks and the snub of her nose. Then she wanted her

Presently Harriett took up a brooch and skated down the room, "Tararalaeeetee!" she carolled, "don't

"I'm pretty," murmured Miriam, planting herself in front of the dressingtable. "I'm prettythey like

methey _like_ me. Why didn't I know?" She did not look into the mirror. "They all like me, _me_."

The sound of the breakfastbell came clanging up through the house. She hurried to her side of the curtained

recess. Hanging there were her old red stockinette jersey and her blue skirt . . . never again . . . just once more

. . . she could change afterwards. Her brown, heavy best dress with puffed and gauged sleeves and thick

gauged and gathered boned bodice was in her hand. She hung it once more on its peg and quickly put on her

old things. The jersey was shiny with wear. "You darling old things," she muttered as her arms slipped down

The door of the next room opened quietly and she heard Sarah and Eve go decorously downstairs. She waited

until their footsteps had died away and then went very slowly down the first flight, fastening her belt. She

stopped at the landing window, tucking the frayed end of the petersham under the frame of the buckle . . .

they were all downstairs, liking her. She could not face them. She was too excited and too shy. . . . She had

never once thought of their "feeling" her going away . . . saying goodbye to each one . . . all minding and

sorryeven the servants. She glanced fearfully out into the garden, seeing nothing. Someone called up from

the breakfastroom doorway, "Mimmy!" How surprised Mr. Bart had been when he discovered that they

themselves never knew whose voice it was of all four of them unless you saw the person, "but yours is really

She heard the kakkak of Harriett's wooden heeled slippers across the tiled hall. She glanced down the well

of the staircase. Harriett was mightily swinging the bell, scattering a little spray of notes at each end of her

With a frightened face Miriam crept back up the stairs. Violently slamming the bedroom door, "I'm

The crossing was over. They were arriving. The movement of the little steamer that had collected the

passengers from the packetboat drove the raw air against Miriam's face. In her tired brain the grey river and

the flat misty shores slid constantly into a vision of the gaslit diningroom at home . . . the large clear

glowing fire, the sounds of the family voices. Every effort to obliterate the picture brought back again the

moment that had come at the dinnertable as they all sat silent for an instant with downcast eyes and she had

Now, in the boat she wanted to be free for the strange grey river and the grey shores. But the home scenes

recurred relentlessly. Again and again she went through the last moments . . . the goodbyes, the unexpected

convulsive force of her mother's arms, her own dreadful inability to give any answering embrace. She could

not remember saying a single word. There had been a feeling that came like a tide carrying her away. Eager

and dumb and remorseful she had gone out of the house and into the cab with Sarah, and then had come the

long sitting in the loopline train . . . "talk about something" . . . Sarah sitting opposite and her unchanged

voice saying "What shall we talk about?" And then a long waiting, and the brown leather strap swinging

against the yellow grained door, the smell of dust and the dirty wooden flooring, with the noise of the wheels

underneath going to the swinging tune of one of Heller's "Sleepless Nights." The train had made her sway

with its movements. How still Sarah seemed to sit, fixed in the old life. Nothing had come but strange cruel

After the suburban train nothing was distinct until the warm snowflakes were drifting against her face

through the cold darkness on Harwich quay. Then, after what seemed like a great loop of time spent going

helplessly up a gangway towards "the world" she had stood, face to face with the pale polite stewardess in her

cabin. "I had better have a lemon, cut in two," she had said, feeling suddenly stifled with fear. For hours she

had lain despairing, watching the slowly swaying walls of her cabin or sinking with closed eyes through

invertebrate dipping spaces. Before each releasing paroxysm she told herself "this is like death; one day I

She supposed there would be breakfast soon on shore, a firm room and a teapot and cups and saucers. Cold

He was standing near her with the Dutchman who had helped her off the boat and looked after her luggage.

The Dutchman was listening, deferentially. Miriam saw the strong dark blue beam of his eyes.

"Pater is trying to make the Dutchman think I am being taken as a pupil to a finishing school in Germany."

She thought of her lonely pilgrimage to the West End agency, of her humiliating interview, of her

heartsinking acceptance of the post, the excitements and misgivings she had had, of her sudden challenge of

them all that evening after dinner, and their dismay and remonstrance and reproachesof her fear and

determination in insisting and carrying her point and making them begin to be interested in her plan.

But she shared her father's satisfaction in impressing the Dutchman. She knew that she was at one with him in

that. She glanced at him. There could be no doubt that he was playing the r�le of the English gentleman.

Poor dear. It was what he had always wanted to be. He had sacrificed everything to the idea of being a

"person of leisure and cultivation." Well, after all, it was true in a way. He wasand he had, she knew,

always wanted her to be the same and she _was_ going to finish her education abroad . . . in Germany. . . .

They were nearing a little low quay backed by a tremendous saffroncoloured hoarding announcing in black

Glancing up she saw his face excited and important. He was not listening. He was being an English

There were Dutch faces for Miriammen, women and children coming towards her with sturdy gait.

The foreign voices, the echoes in the little narrow street, the flat waterside effect of the sounds, the bright

They had an English breakfast at the Victoria Hotel and went out and hurried about the little streets. They

bought cigars and rode through the town on a little tramway. Presently they were in a train watching the

Dutch landscape go by. One level stretch succeeded another. Miriam wanted to go out alone under the grey

She looked at the dykes and the windmills with indifferent eyes, but her desire for the flat meadows grew.

Late at night, seated wideawake opposite her sleeping companion, rushing towards the German city, she

It was a fool's errand. . . . To undertake to go to the German school and teach . . . to be going there . . . with

nothing to give. The moment would come when there would be a class sitting round a table waiting for her to

speak. She imagined one of the rooms at the old school, full of scornful girls. . . . How was English taught?

How did you begin? English grammar . . . in German? Her heart beat in her throat. She had never thought of

that . . . the rules of English grammar? Parsing and analysis. . . . AngloSaxon prefixes and suffixes . . .

gerundial infinitive. . . . It was too late to look anything up. Perhaps there would be a class tomorrow. . . .

The German lessons at school had been dreadfully good. . . . Fraulein's grave face . . . her perfect knowledge

of every rule . . . her clear explanations in English . . . her examples. . . . All these things were there, in

English grammar. . . . And she had undertaken to teach them and could not even speak German.

Monsieur . . . had talked French all the time . . . dictees . . . lectures . . . Le Conscrit . . . Waterloo . . . La

Maison Deserte . . . his careful voice reading on and on . . . until the room disappeared. . . . She must do that

for her German girls. Read English to them and make them happy. . . . But first there must be verbs . . . there

had been cahiers of them . . . first, second, third conjugation. . . . It was impudence, an impudent invasion . . .

the dreadful clever, foreign school. . . . They would laugh at her. . . . She began to repeat the English

alphabet. . . . She doubted whether, faced with a class, she could reach the end without a mistake. . . . She

There would be a moment when she must have an explanation with the Fraulein. Perhaps she could tell her

that she found the teaching was beyond her scope and then find a place somewhere as a servant. She

remembered things she had heard about German servantsthat whenever they even dusted a room they

cleaned the windows and on Sundays they waited at lunch in muslin dresses and afterwards went to balls. She

feared even the German servants would despise her. They had never been allowed into the kitchen at home

except when there was jammaking . . . she had never made a bed in her life. . . . A shop? But that would

mean knowing German and being quick at giving change. Impossible. Perhaps she could find some English

people in Hanover who would help her. There was an English colony she knew, and an English church. But

that would be like going back. That must not happen. She would rather stay abroad on any termsaway

from EnglandEnglish people. She had scented something, a sort of confidence, everywhere, in her hours in

Holland, the brisk manner of the German railway officials and the serene assurance of the travelling Germans

she had seen, confirmed her impression. Away out here, the sense of imminent catastrophe that had shadowed

all her life so far, had disappeared. Even here in this dim carriage, with disgrace ahead she felt that there was

She glanced up at her small leather handbag lying in the rack and thought of the solid money in her purse.

Twentyfive shillings. It was a large sum and she was to have more as she needed.

She glanced across at the pale face with its point of reddish beard, the long white hands laid one upon the

other on the crossed knees. He had given her twentyfive shillings and there was her fare and his, and his

return fare and her new trunk and all the things she had needed. It must be the end of taking money from him.

She was grown up. She was the strongminded one. She must manage. With a false position ahead and after

The peaceful Dutch fields came to her mind. They looked so secure. They had passed by too soon. We have

always been in a false position, she pondered. Always lying and pretending and keeping up a shownever

daring to tell anybody. . . . Did she want to tell anybody? To come out into the open and be helped and have

things arranged for her and do things like other people? No. . . . No. . . . "Miriam always likes to be

different""Society is no boon to those not sociable." Dreadful things . . . and the girls laughing together

"Society is no boon to those not sociable"on her birthdaypage in Ellen Sharpe's birthdaybook. Ellen

handed it to her going upstairs and had chanted the words out to the others and smiled her smile . . . she had

not asked her to write her name . . . was it unsociable to dislike so many of the girls. . . . Ellen's people were

in the Indian . . . her thoughts hesitated. . . . Sivvle . . . something grandAll the grand girls were horrid . . .

somehow mean and sly . . . Sivvle . . . _Sivvle_ . . . _Civil!_ Of course! Civil _what?_

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 fusswithout fuss andemotion. . . . I _am_ unsociable, I supposeshe

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 differentit'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

knewthe Poole girls, for instance, they were to be "independent" trained and certificatedshe envied

thatbut her envy vanished when she remembered how heartily she had agreed when Sarah called them

Mr. Poole was a business man . . . common . . . trade. . . . If Pater had kept to Grandpa's business they would

be trade, toowelloff, nowall married. Perhaps as it was he had thought they would marry.

She thought sleepily of her Wesleyan grandparents, gravely reading the "Wesleyan Methodist Recorder," the

shop at Babington, her father's discontent, his solitary fishing and reading, his discovery of music . . . science

. . . classical 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 peachtrees 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 kitchengarden and the

summerhouse under the oaks beyond and the pretty old gabled "town" on the river and the woods all along

the river valley and the hills shining up out of the mist. The snow man they both made in the winterthe

birth of Sarah and then Eve . . . his studies and bookbuyingand 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

troublestheir two years at the sea to retrieve . . . the disappearance of the sunlit redwalled garden always

in full summer sunshine with the sound of bees in it or dark from windows . . . the narrowing of the

houselife down to the Marine Villawith the sea creeping inwading out through the green shallows, out

and out till you were more than waist deepshrimping 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

Constitutional Club and sometimes instead of reading "The Times" or the "Globe" or the "Proceedings of the

British Association" 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 "bumped" by Timmy going the round of the long diningroom 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 tennisclub 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 Institution, 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

Dawlish for the holidays, travelling all day, from eight until seven . . . no esplanade, the old stone jetty and

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 musiclesson. 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, Fraulein's voice would sound up through the house

There would be the walk, dinner, the Saturday afternoon homeletters 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, liquidlimpidgreatsaucers, nopools . . . 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

The girl's thin fingers had come out of her furs and fastened convulsivelylike cold, throbbing claws on to

"Lehrerin!" breathed the girl. Something flinched behind her great eyes. The fingers relaxed, and Miriam

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 dressingroom in the basement, had prepared Miriam for the difference between the performance of

these German girls and nearly all the pianoplaying 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

ribbonknotted 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 firmlypoised

head, the thick creamy neck that seemed bare with its absence of collarband and the soft frill of tucker

stitched right on to the dress, the thick cable of stringcoloured hair reaching just beyond the rim of the

leathercovered music stool, the steelheaded 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 he fumbling for empty pegs as this roundfaced 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 tiptoeing

about amongst the thicklyhung 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 softlyrounded,

faintlymottled 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

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 homeher 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. Halfway up, Emma had given Miriam a shy firm hug and then gone decorously up the remainder of

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 knownmore 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

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

teatable, 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 focusthe 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

mealtimes with her, had ceased the hardeyed observation which had made the long silence of the earlier

repasts only less embarrassing 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 horsesmileMiriam provisionally called itbehind the teaurn, as

chairman. The six Englishspeaking girls, grouped as it were towards their chief, a darkskinned, athletic

looking Australian with hot, brown, slightly bloodshot eyes sitting as vicepresident 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 halfsuppressed wordless byplay 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 Fraulein's left hand, down the table to

where Mademoiselle sat next the Martins in similar relation to the vicepresident. 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 candlelit attic with its high uncurtained windows and

redcovered box beds, and standing on the one strip of matting in her fullskirted grey wincey dress with its

neat triple row of black ribbon velvet near the hem, had shown Miriam steelblue eyes smiling from a little

triangular spritelike face under a highstanding 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 educatedas

she understood educationwas the resident French governess, was seventeen years old and a Protestant.

Such close quarters with a French girl was bewildering enoughhad she been a Roman Catholic, Miriam

felt she could not have endured her proximity. She was evidently a special kind of French girla Protestant

from East FranceBesan onBesan onMiriam had tried the pretty word over until unexpectedly she

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 girlspoor though,

Miriam was sure; perhaps as poor as she. She felt glad as she watched her gentle spritelike wistfulness that

she would be upstairs in that great bare attic again tonight. In repose her face looked pinched. There was

something about the nose and mouthMiriam mused . . . _frugal_John Gilpin's wifehow sleepy she

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

Next to her was the faint glare of Elsa Speier's silent sallowness. Her clearthreaded 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

heavilyfreckled 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 cheekbones. She had coarse fuzzy redbrown hair.

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 dinnertime without knowing it. Her eyes after one glance at the claretcoloured

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 halfway 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 hollowcheeked. She had pale eyes, cold, like a fish, thought Miriam. They

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 dinnertime 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 widemouthed 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 tinyrabbity. 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

Judy cast an appealing flash of her eyes sideways at nothing, flushed furiously and mumbled, "Ik weiss

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 crossedtea

was drawing to an end. The detail of her terrifyingly stylish ruddybrown 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

outthe wide forehead from which the wiry black hair was combed to a high puff, the red eyes, black now,

Mademoiselle's little finger stuck up sharply like a steeple, her mouth said, "OhOh"

Miriam heard it agreed in the end that someone named Hugo did not wear a moustache, though someone

After tea the great doors were thrown open and the girls filed into the saal. It was a large high room furnished

like a drawingroomenough 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

fourarmed 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.

The high room, the bright light, the plentiful mirrors, the long sweep of lace curtains, the many facesthe

girls seemed so much more numerous scattered here than they had when collected in the

schoolroombrought 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

EveEve playing a little running melody in the trebleher 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 redhot 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 eyesalternately 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 setoff to

the tennisclub, 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 succeededat 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 earthe 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.

The girls were all settling down to fancy work, the whitecuffed hands of the Martins were already jerking

crochet needles, faces were bending over fine embroideries and Minna Blum had trundled a mounted

Miriam went to the schoolroom and fetched from her workbasket 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 Fraulein Pfaff, sitting as if enthroned on a highbacked chair in front of the

centremost of the mirrors filling the wall spaces between the long French windows, signal to her, to come to

Timorously ignoring the signal she got herself into a little low chair in the shadow of the halfclosed swing

Emma Bergmann was playing. The single notes of the opening _motif_ of Chopin's Fifteenth Nocturne fell

pensively into the waiting room. 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 candlelit 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 woolneedle and threaded it. She drew the wool through her canvas, one, three, five,

Clara Bergmann followed. Miriam watched her as she took her place at the pianohow square and stout she

looked and old, careworn, like a woman of forty. She had high square shoulders and high square hipsher

brow was low and her face thin and broad and flat. Her eyes were like the eyes of a dog and her thinlipped

mouth long and straight until it went steadily down at the corners. She wore a large fringe like

Harriett'sand 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 phrasesthe kind, Miriam noted, that had so annoyed

her father in what he called newfangled musicshe felt it was going to be a brilliant

piecefireworksexecutionstyleand sat up selfconsciously 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 trumpetcalls 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 halfindicated theme with a gentle, steady, throbbing undertow. Miriam dropped her

eyesshe seemed to have been listening longthat wonderful light was coming againshe had forgotten

her sewingwhen 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 weedgrown millwheel. . . . She recognised it

instantly. She had seen it somewhere as a childin Devonshireand never thought of it sinceand 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 itit returnedclearer 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

closecropped heads, sitting at the long table. The gas was out and the room was dim, but a readinglamp in

The playing of the two Martins brought back the familiar feeling of English selfconsciousness. 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 thenas she went triumphantly forward and let herself go so

tremendouslytractionengine, thought Miriamin 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 hollowcheeked 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. Stroodwho 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 somethingbut

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 playor

perhaps with someone in the next room listening. Perhaps she would not have even the chance of practising.

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

Jimmie's Lied brought the piano solos to an end, and Fraulein 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 mealtimes and appeared to her now for the first time

as a tall childgirl in a highwaisted, 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 shellwhite and shellpink of her complexion, her firm chubby babymouth and her wide gaze. Her face

shone in the room, even her hairdone just like the Martins', but fluffy where theirs was flat and

shinyseemed to give out light, shadowydark though it was. Her figure was straight and flat, and she

She sang, with careful precision as to the accents of her German, in a high breathy effortless soprano, a little

The younger Martin in a strong hard jolting voice sang of a lovesick Linden tree, her pale thin cheeks

"Herr Kapellmeister chooses well," smiled Fraulein 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

togethersingle 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

earhow ghastly"her thoughts exclaimed as the shouts went on. The longer sustained notes presently

reminded her of something. It was like something she had heardin the interval between the verseswhile

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.

Anna, the only servant Miriam had seen so faran enormous woman whose face, apart from the small eyes,

seemed all "bony structure," Miriam noted in a phrase borrowed from some unremembered readingbrought

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 gefallt'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

Frenchles mots si bien choisisun accent sans fauteit must be ear. She must have a very good ear. And

her English was all rightat 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 herselfshe and Harriett were, in their thoughts as well as their wordsbut she had no

provincialisms, no Londonismsshe 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

Miriam who had as yet hardly spoken to her, did not know whether to stand or to remain seated. She half rose

and then Fraulein 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 fumbledthought of dressingtables and the little

objects of which she had made so many hanging to the mirror by ribbons; "toilettidies" haunted herbut

that was not itshe smoothed out her work as if to show it to Fraulein"Na, na," came the delicate caustic

voice. "Was wird das wohl sein?" Then she remembered. "It's for a pincushion," she said. Surely she need,

"Ein Nadelkissen," corrected Fraulein, "das wird niedlich aussehen," she remarked quietly, and then in

"You must keep up your practice then, while you are with usyou must have time for practice."

Fraulein Pfaff rose and moved away. The girls were arranging the chairs in two rowsplates and cups were

collected and carried away. It dawned on Miriam that they were going to have prayers. What a wetblanket

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 sittingroom. It had been nothing at

schoolall the girls standing in the drillroom, rows of voices saying "adsum," then a Collect and the Lord's

A huge Bible appeared on a table in front of Fraulein's highbacked 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 Fraulein's clear, low, even voice, very gentle, not caustic now but with something childlike 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 pupilteacher bound to suffer all things or go home, she sat on. Presently her ear was

charmed by Fraulein's slow clear enunciation, her pure unaspirated North German. It seemed to suit the

narrativeand the narrative was new, vivid and real in this new tongue. She saw presently the little group of

Solomon Martin was at the piano. Someone handed Miriam a shabby little paperbacked hymnbook. She

fluttered the leaves. All the hymns appeared to have a little shortlined verse, under each ordinary verse, in

small print. It was in Englishshe read. She fumbled for the titlepage 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. . . . Fraulein could not know. . . . She glanced at her, but Fraulein's cavernous mouth was

serenely open and the voices of the girls sang heartily, 'Whenhy_com_eth. Whenhy_cometh, 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?

She was to have time for practisingand that English lessonthe firstOxford, decisive foreducated

Fraulein's calm voice came almost in a whisper, "Vater unser . . . der Du bist im Himmel," and the

Miriam went to bed content, wrapped in music. The theme of Carlo's solo recurred again and again; and

every time it brought something of the wonderful lightthe 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 nightgowned 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 bowedthe slightest dainty inclination, from side to side against the swaying of her

dance. She was smiling her downglancing, little sprite smile. Miriam loved her. . . .

A great plaque of sunlight lay across the breakfasttable. Miriam was too happy to trouble about her

imminent trial. She reflected that it was quite possible today and tomorrow would be free. None of the

visiting masters came, except, sometimes, Herr Bossenberger for musiclessonsthat 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 grownup girls. They probably knew all the rules and beginnings. It would be just

reading and so on. It would not be so terriblefour 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 . . .

strangewhat an adventure for all those English girlsto be just boardersMiriam 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. . . . Fraulein had spent many years in England. Perhaps that explained the breakfast of

oatmeal porridgepiled plates of thick stirabout thickly sprinkled with pale, very sweet powdery brown

She wondered whether Fraulein 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

therewhat a perfectly stupendous thing"weird and stupendous" she told herself. The sunlight poured

When breakfast was over and the girls were clearing the table, Fraulein 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 offnen konnen." 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 airas nearly as she could manageof indulgent

condescensionsaw, without turning, the figure at the window, gracefully tall, with a curious dignified

pannierlike effect about the skirt that swept from the small tightlyfitting pointed bodice, reminding her of

illustrations of heroines of serials in old numbers of the "Girls' Own Paper." The dress was of dark blue

velvetvery 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

Fraulein 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 highwalled 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 brownvarnished buds were shining whitely from each twig. The girls seemed to be

gathering in the room behind hersettling down round the tableMademoiselle's voice sounded from the

head of the table where Fraulein had lately been. It must be _raccommodage_ thought Miriamthe 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 Frenchdarning must be quite

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 direQu'estceque vous

"How dare she?" thought Miriam, with a picture before her eyes of the little greygowned thing with the

It was Fraulein's voice from within the little room. Minna was holding the door open.

At the end of twenty minutes, dismissed by Fraulein with a smiling recommendation to go and practise in the

"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 Sundaysand she was to read with the fourfor 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 Fraulein 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 solidlooking 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.

"D'ja, d'ja," she responded, "na, ich meine, _yace, yace_ we readso sweet and beautiful booknot?"

Clara and Elsa agreed unenthusiastically. Emma, at her elbow, made a little despairing gesture, "I can't

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

goingsucceeding. This was her class. She hoped Fraulein 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

dothey must not all talk at once and go on like this. Minna's whole face was aflame. She sat up

stifflyadjusted her pincenezand desperately ordered the reading to begin againat Minna. They all

subsided and Minna's careful husky voice came from her still blissfullysmiling face. The others sat back and

attended. Miriam watched Minna judicially, and hoped she looked like a teacher. She knew her pincenez

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 her to deliver them up to Fraulein Pfaff with this notorious

stumblingblock 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 Fraulein Pfaff came, and still affable and

As she flew upstairs for her music, saying, "I'm all right. I can do it all right," she was halfconscious 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 aboutit 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 housethe 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

It was all growing clearer and clearer. . . . She chose the first part of the first movement of the Sonata

Pathetique. 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 musiclesson .

. . dear old Stroodie walking up and down the long drillingroom. . . . "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

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

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,

At the end of the page she was sitting with her eyes full of tears, aware of Fraulein standing between the open

swing doors with Gertrude's face showing over her shoulderits amazement changing to a largetoothed

smile as Fraulein'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 sunblinds 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

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 Pathetique, 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 perfectlyand 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 Vorspielensung by Bertha Martinperhaps. . . . 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 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 dressinggown, with her hair loose and a towel over her

"Oh, bitte, Miss Henderson, will you please go down to Frau Krause, Fraulein Pfaff says," she said, her baby

"Oh yes, it's Haarwaschen," said Millie anxiously, evidently determined to wait until Miriam recognised her

"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?"

Collecting her music she went incredulously upstairs. This was school with a vengeance. This was

boardingschool. It was abominable. Fraulein Pfaff indeed! Ordering her, Miriam, to go downstairs and have

her hair washed . . . by Frau Krause . . . offhand, without any warning . . . someone should have told

herand 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

Her face came up, flushed and gay. Miriam was too angry to note till afterwards how pretty she had looked

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 Fraulein Pfaff. She hated her vindictivelyher "calm"

message"treating me like a child." She saw the horse smile and heard the caustic voice.

"It's sickening," she muttered, whisking her dressinggown from its nail and seizing a towel. Mademoiselle

Minna and Elsa were brushing out their long hair with their door open. A strong sweet perfume came from

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

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

largechecked 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

Soap? and horrid pudding basins of steaming water. Miriam's hair had never been washed with anything but

In full horror, "Oh," she said, in a low vague voice, "It doesn't matter about me."

Miriam's outraged head hung over the steaming basinher hair spread round it like a tent frilling out over

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 bumpcrackof 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"shhampoo" 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 basindipped and rinsed

and spread, a comforting compress, warm with the water, over her eggsodden head. There was more

drubbing, more dipping and rinsing. The second basin was refilled from the kitchen, and after a final rinse

in its fresh warm water, Miriam found herself standing upwith a twisted tail of wet hair hanging down over

Miriam gave her hair a preliminary drying, gathered her dressinggown 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 desperatelyfancy being landed with hair like that, in the middle of

the day! She could not possibly go down. . . . She must. Fraulein Pfaff would expect her toand would be

disgusted if she were not quickshe 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 downit was awfulwhat should she do? . . . She caught sight of a

soddenlooking brush on Mademoiselle's bed. Mademoiselle had put hers upshe had seen her . . . of

course . . . easy enough for her little fluffy cloudsshe could do nothing with her straight, wet lumpsshe

began to brush it outit 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 ravenousshe must manage

somehow and go down. She braided the long strands and fastened their cold mass with extra hairpins. Then

she unfastened the Hinde'stwo 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

It was all she could doshort of gas and curling tongs. Even the candle was taken away in the daytime.

It was cold and bleak upstairs. Her wet hair lay in a heavy mass against her burning head. She was painfully

The snarling rattle of the coffee mill sounded out into the hall. Several voices were speaking together as she

entered. Fraulein 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.

"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 daggerlike tortoiseshell hair ornamentlike a

JapaneseIndianno, Maorithat was it, she looked like a New Zealander. Clara and Minna had fastened

up theirs with combs and ribbons and looked decentfrauish 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 furtivelyshe looked extraordinary, thought Miriam, and took comfort. The Martins' brown

bows appeared on their necks instead of cresting their headsit improved them, Miriam thought. What

regular features they had. Bertha looked like a youthlike 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 .

Talk had begun again. Miriam hoped they had not noticed her. Her "Braten" shot up the lift.

"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.

Miriam's mind groped . . . classicGreece and RomeGreek knot. . . . Grecian key . . . a Grecian key

pattern on the dresses for the sixth form tableaureading Ruskin . . . the strip of glass all along the window

space on the floor in the large roomedged with mosses and grassthe mirror of Venus. . . .

. . . Only the eldest pretty girls . . . all on their hands and knees looking into the mirror. . . .

"Comment! Une statue! Je dois arranger mes cheveux comme une statue? Oh, ciel!" mocked Mademoiselle,

collapsing into tinkles of her sprite laughter. . . . "Ohlala! Et quelle statue par exemple?" she trilled, with

"I make no change, not at all," smiled Minna from behind her nose. "For this Ulrica it is quite something

"Brave girls," said Gertrude, getting up. "Come on, Kinder, clearing time. You'll excuse us, Miss Henderson?

_"Leelly, Leely,_ Leely Pfaff," muttered Clara as she helped, "so einfach und niedlich," she mimicked, "ach

So that was it. It was the new girl. Lily, was Fraulein 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

wornlooking sallow face. . . . She would look like a "prisoner at the bar" in some newspaper. How they

hated Fraulein Pfaff. The Germans at least. Fancy calling her LilyMiriam did not like it, she had known at

once. None of the teachers at school had been called by their Christian namesthere had been old Quagmire,

the Elfkin, and dear Donnikin, Stroodie, and good old Kingie and all of thembut no Christian names. Oh

yesSallyso there hadSallybut then Sally wascouldn't have been anything elsenever could

have held a position of any sort. They ought not to call Fraulein 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

Fraulein Pfaff all this time? Perhaps somewhere hidden away, in her rooms, being "done" by Frau Krause.

Everyone was writing Saturday lettersMademoiselle and the Germans with compressed lips and fine

careful evenly moving penpoints; 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. Today 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 notepaper 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 fortnightthe first Saturday she had spent writing to her mothera

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 mealtimes, especially the midday meal, but on the

whole she had decided to let it standthis afternoon she felt it was truer. She was beginning to belong to the

houseshe did not want to write lettersbut just to sit revelling in the sense of this room full of quietly

occupied girlsin 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

"_Hendchen,_" she articulated silently, in her curious lipless way, "mein liebes, liebes, Hendchen."

Miriam smiled timidly and sternly began fumbling at her week's lettersone 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 reread 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 Germanyto see all that went on in this wonderful house, to

see pretty, German Emma, adoring herto 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 longplaited 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 toto"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 heror if

either of the Germans had they would not think like thatthey would understandshe 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 forgetmenot blue

eyes behind her pink nose would be quite real and alive. . . . Ein Blattshe 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 heardand without looking up from her

writing quietly repeated the verse. Her voice rose and trembled slightly on the last line.

"Ein Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen Ich nahm es so im Wandern mit Auf dass es einst mir moge sagen Wie

durchtrittdurchschrittshe was not sure. It was perfectly lovelyshe read it through translating

"A leaf from summery days I took it with me on my way, So that it might remind me How loud the

But she had no leaf, nothing to remind her of her summer days. They were all past and she had nothingnot

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 Eveand

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 tomorrow, sometime when

Mademoiselle was not there. . . . The room was waking up from its letterwriting. People were moving about.

She would not write today. It was not worth while beginning. She took a fresh sheet of notepaper 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 teatime. "Wie grun der Wald." She remembered one woodthe only one she could

rememberthere were no woods at Barnes or at the seasideonly that wood, at the very beginning,

someone carrying Harriettand green green, the brightest she had ever seen, and anemones everywhere, she

could see them distinctly at this momentshe 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 therethe green

and the flowers and something in her ear buzzing and frightening her and making her cry, and somebody

Emma, in rapturesnear the window, was calling to the other Germans. Minna came and chirruped

toothere was a sound of dull scratching on the windowthen a little burst of admiration from Emma and

Minna together. Miriam looked roundin 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 likelikelike jasminethat was itjasmineand out of the jasmine face the great gaze she had

met in the morning turned halfpuzzled, halfdisappointed upon the growing group of girls examining the

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 lowbacked 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

The second Sunday they had all gone in the evening to the English church with Fraulein Pfaff . . .

rushseated 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

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 . . .

She decided she must be a Radical. Certainly she did not belong to these "refined" Englishwomen or men.

She was quite sure of that, seeing them gathered together, English Churchpeople in this foreign town.

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 middleaged.

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,

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, blackmoustached 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 Fraulein 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

gloooom" . . . Cardinal Newman coming back from Italy in a ship . . . in the end he had gone over to Rome

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 cold English things . . . Miriam suddenly became aware of Emma

Bergmann standing at her side with open hymnbook shaking with laughter. She glanced sternly at her,

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

Sitting on this third Sunday morning in the dim Schloss Kirchethe Waldstrasse pew was in one of its

darkest spaces and immediately under the shadow of a deeply overhanging galleryMiriam 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. Fraulein 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 comerunningshe could imagine

herself all her life running, at least in her mind, weekly to some churchworking 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

wrongall 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 goodeven crying. He would be kind and would pray

and smileand 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

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. . . .

Fraulein Pfaff would listen. She would smile afterwards and talk about a "schone Predigt"certainly. . . . If

What would be the good? Fraulein 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 olderand she would go respectfully to church all her

lifeMiriam had felt a horror even of the workbasket Millie had been tidying during their

conversationand 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 eyesher 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 figureskating."

It was funnyimproperthat 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 hershe, Miss Henderson, the

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 teaparty . . . everybody sitting

There was time for Miriam to read the first line and recognise the original of "Now thank we all our God','

"NundanketAlleGott." NowthankallGod. 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 knewthe hard square tune she and Eve had called itand Harriett

used to mark time to it in jerks, a jerk to each syllable, with a twisted glovefinger 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 wasLutherGermanythe Reformationsolid and quiet. She glanced up and then hung more

closely over her book. It was the stainedglass 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 everywheregreat 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. EverybodyFraulein, 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

During those early days Miriam realised that schoolroutine, as she knew itthe planned daysthe regular

unvarying succession of lessons and preparations, had no place in this new world. Even the masters' lessons,

coming in from outside and making a kind of framework of appointments over the otherwise fortuitously

occupied days, were, she soon found, not always securely calculable. Herr Kapellmeister Bossenberger would

be heard booming and intoning in the hall unexpectedly at all hours. He could be heard all over the house.

Miriam had never seen him, but she noticed that great haste was always made to get a pupil to the saal and

that he taught impatiently. He shouted and corrected and mimicked. Only Millie's singing, apparently, he left

untouched. You could hear her lilting away through her little high songs as serenely as she did at Vorspielen.

Miriam was at once sure that he found his task of teaching these girls an extremely tiresome one.

Probably most teachers found teaching tiresome. But there was something peculiar and new to her in Herr

Bossenberger's attitude. She tried to account for it . . . German men despised women. Why did they teach

The same impression, the sense of a halfimpatient, halfexasperated tuition came to her from the lectures of

Herr Winter, a thin tall witheredlooking man with shabby hair and bony hands whose veins stood up in

knots, drummed on the table as he taught botany and geography. The girls sat round bookless and politely

attentive and seemed, the Germans at least, to remember all the facts for which he appealed during the last

few minutes of his hour. Miriam could never recall anything but his weary withered face.

Herr Schraub, the teacher of history, was, she felt, almost openly contemptuous of his class. He would begin

lecturing, almost before he was inside the door. He taught from a book, sitting with downcast eyes, his round

red mass of faceexpressionless save for the bristling spikes of his tiny strawcoloured moustache and the

rapid movements of his tight rounded little lipspersistently averted from his pupils. For the last few

minutes of his time he would, ironically, his eyes fixed ahead of him at a point on the table, snap

questionsindicating his aim with a tapping finger, going round the table like a dealer at cards. Surely the

girls must detest him. . . . The Germans made no modification of their polite attentiveness. Amongst the

English only Gertrude and the Martins found any answers for him. Miriam, proud of sixthform history

essays and the full marks she had generally claimed for them, had no memory for facts and dates; but she

made up her mind that were she ever so prepared with a correct reply, nothing should drag from her any

response to these military tappings. Fraulein presided over these lectures from the corner of the sofa out of

range of the eye of the teacher and horrified Miriam by voicelessly prompting the girls whenever she could.

Miriam mused over the difference between the bearing of these men and that of the masters she remembered

and tried to find words. What was it? Had her masters been morerespectful than these Germans were? She

felt they had. But it was not only that. She recalled the men she remembered teaching week by week through

all the years she had known them . . . the little bolsterlike literature master, an albino, a friend of Browning,

reading, reading to them as if it were worth while, as if they were equals . . . interested friendsthat had

never struck her at the time. . . . But it was trueshe could not remember ever having felt a schoolgirl . . . or

being "talked down" to . . . dear Stroodie, the musicmaster, and Monsieurold whitehaired Monsieur,

dearest of all, she could hear his gentle voice pleading with them on behalf of his treasures . . . the

drillingmaster with his keen, friendly blue eye . . . the briefless barrister who had taught them arithmetic in a

What was it she missed? Was it that her old teachers were "gentlemen" and these Germans were not? She

pondered over this and came to the conclusion that the whole attitude of the Englishman and of Monsieur, her

one Frenchman, towards her sex was different from that of these Germans. It occurred to her once in a flash

during these puzzled musings that the lessons she had had at school would not have been given more

zestfully, more as if it were worth while, had she and her schoolfellows been boys. Here she could not feel

that. The teaching was grave enough. The masters felt the importance of what they taught . . . she felt that

they were formal, reverently formal, "pompous" she called it, towards the facts that they flung out down the

long schoolroom table, but that the relationship of their pupils to these facts seemed a matter of less

She began to recognise now with a glow of gratitude that her own teachers, those who were enthusiastic

about their subjectsthe albino, her dear Monsieur with his classic French prose, a young woman who had

taught them logic and the beginning of psychologythat strange, new subjectwere at least as enthusiastic

about getting her and her mates awake and into relationship with something. They cared somehow.

She recalled the albino, his face and voice generally separated from his class by a book held vertically, close

to his left eye, while he blocked the right eye with his free handhis faintly wheezy tones bleating

triumphantly out at the end of a passage from "The Ring and the Book," as he lowered his volume and bent

beaming towards them all, his right eye still blocked, for response. Miss Donne, her skimpy skirt powdered

with chalk, explaining a syllogism from the blackboard, turning quietly to them, her face all aglow, her

chalky hands gently pressed together, "Do you _see?_ Does anyone _see?"_ Monsieur, spoiling them,

sharpening their pencils, letting them cheat over their pages of rules, knowing quite well that each learned

only one and directing his questioning accordingly, Monsieur dreaming over the things he read to them,

repeating passages, wandering from his subject, making allusions here and thereand all of them, she, at any

rate, and Lillashe knew, oftenin paradise. How rich and friendly and helpful they all seemed.

She began to wonder whether hers had been in some way a specially good school. Things had mattered there.

Somehow the girls had been made to feel they mattered. She remembered even old Stroodiethe least

attached member of the staffasking her suddenly, once, in the middle of a musiclesson what she was

going to do with her life and a day when the artistic viceprincipalwho was a connection by marriage of

Holman Hunt's and had met Ruskin, Miriam knew, several timeshad gone from girl to girl round the

collected fifth and sixth forms asking them each what they would best like to do in life. Miriam had answered

at once with a conviction born that moment that she wanted to "write a book." It irritated her when she

remembered during these reflections that she had not been able to give to Fraulein Pfaff's public questioning

any intelligible account of the school. She might at least have told her of the connection with Ruskin and

Browning and Holman Hunt, whereas her muddled replies had led Fraulein to decide that her school had been

"a kind of high school." She knew it had not been this. She felt there was something questionable about a

high school. She was beginning to think that her school had been very good. Pater had seen to thatthat was

one of the things he had steered and seen to. There had been a school they might have gone to higher up the

hill where one learned needlework even in the "first class" as they called it instead of the sixth form as at her

school, and "Calisthenics" instead of drillingand something called elocutionwhere the girls were

"finished." It was an expensive school. Had the teachers there taught the girls . . . as if they had no minds?

Perhaps that school was more like the one she found herself in now? She wondered and wondered. What was

she going to do with her life after all these years at the good school? She began bit by bit to understand her

agony on the day of leaving. It was there she belonged. She ought to go back and go on.

One day she lay twisted and convulsed, face downwards on her bed at the thought that she could never go

back and begin. If only she could really begin now, knowing what she wanted. . . . She would talk now with

those teachers. . . . Isn't it all wonderful! Aren't things wonderful! Tell me some more. . . . She felt sure that if

she could go back, things would get clear. She would talk and think and understand. . . . She did not linger

over that. It threatened a storm whose results would be visible. She wondered what the other girls were

doingLilla? She had heard nothing of her since that last term. She would write to her one day, perhaps.

Perhaps not. . . . She would have to tell her that she was a governess. Lilla would think that very funny and

Woven through her retrospective appreciations came a doubt. She wondered whether, after all, her school had

been right. Whether it ought to have treated them all so seriously. If she had gone to the other school she was

sure she would never have heard of the Aesthetic Movement or felt troubled about the state of Ireland and

India. Perhaps she would have grown up a Churchwoman . . . and "ladylike." Never.

She could only think that somehow she must be "different"; that a sprinkling of the girls collected in that

school were different, too. The school she decided was newmodernRuskin. Most of the girls perhaps

had not been affected by it. But some had. She had. The thought stirred her. She had. It was mysterious. Was

it the school or herself? Herself to begin with. If she had been brought up differently, it could not, she felt

sure, have made her very differentfor longnor taught her to be affableto smile that smile she hated so.

The school had done something to her. It had not gone against the things she found in herself. She wondered

once or twice during these early weeks what she would have been like if she had been brought up with these

German girls. What they were going to do with their lives was only too plain. All but Emma, she had been

astounded to discover, had already a complete outfit of houselinen to which they were now adding fine

embroideries and laces. All could cook. Minna had startled her one day by exclaiming with lit face, "Ach, ich

koche so _schrecklich_ gern!" Oh, I am so frightfully fond of cooking. . . . And they were placid and serene,

secure in a kind of security Miriam had never met before. They did not seem to be in the least afraid of the

future. She envied that. Their eyes and their hands were serene. . . . They would have houses and things they

could do and understand, always. . . . How they must want to begin, she mused. . . . What a prison school

She thought of their comfortable German homes, of ruling and shopping and directing and being looked up

That thought she shirked. Emma in particular she could not contemplate in relation to a German husband.

In any case one day these girls would be middleaged . . . as Clara looked now . . . they would look like the

In the end she ceased to wonder that the German masters dealt out their wares to these girls so superciliously.

And yet . . . German music, a line of German poetry, a sudden light on Clara's face. . . .

There was one other teacher, a Swiss and some sort of minister she supposed as everyone called him the Herr

Pastor. She wondered whether he was in any sense the spiritual adviser of the school and regarded him with

provisional suspicion. She had seen him once, sitting short and very black and white at the head of the

schoolroom table. His black beard and dark eyes as he sat with his back to the window made his face gleam

like a mask. He had spoken very rapidly as he told the girls the lifestory of some poet.

The time that was not taken up by the masters and the regular succession of rich and savoury

mealswastefully plentiful they seemed to Miriamwas filled in by Fraulein Pfaff with occupations

devised apparently from hour to hour. On a master's morning the girls collected in the schoolroom one by one

as they finished their bedmaking and dusting. On other days the time immediately after breakfast was full of

uncertainty and surmise. Judging from the interchange between the four firstfloor bedrooms whose doors

were always open during this bustling interval, Miriam, listening apprehensively as she did her share of work

on the top floor, gathered that the lack of any planned programme was a standing annoyance to the English

girls. Millie, still imperfectly acclimatised, carrying out her duties in a large bibbed apron, was plaintive

about it in her conscientious German nearly every morning. The Martins, when the sense of Fraulein as

providence was strong upon them made their beds vindictively, rapping out sarcasms to be alternately

mocked and giggled at by Jimmie who was generally heard, as the gusts subsided, dispensing the comforting

assurance that it wouldn't last for ever. Miriam once heard even Judy grumbling to herself in a mumbling

undertone as she carried the lower landing's collective "wasche" upstairs to the back attic to await the

The German side of the landing was uncritical. On free mornings the Germans had one preoccupation. It was

generally betrayed by Emma in a loud excited whisper, aimed across the landing: "Gehen wir zu Kreipe? Do

we go to Kreipe's?" "Kreipe, Kreipe," Minna and Clara would chorus devoutly from their respective rooms.

Gertrude on these occasions always had an air of knowledge and would sometimes prophesy. To what extent

Fraulein did confide in the girl and how much was due to her experience of the elder woman's habit of mind

Fraulein, who generally went to the basement kitchen from the breakfasttable, would be heard on the

landing towards the end of the busy halfhour, rallying and criticising the housemaids in her gentle caustic

voice. She never came to the top floor. Miriam and Mademoiselle, who agreed in accomplishing their duties

with great despatch and spending any spare time sitting in their jackets on their respective beds reading or

talking, would listen for her departure. There was always a moment when they knew that the excitement was

over and the landing stricken into certainty. Then Mademoiselle would flit to the top of the stairs and

demand, leaning over the balustrade, "Eh bien! Eh bien!" and someone would retail directions.

Sometimes Anna would appear in her short, chequered cotton dress, shawled and with her market basket on

her arm, and would summon Gertrude alone or with Solomon Martin to Fraulein's room opposite the saal on

the ground floor. The appearance of Anna was the signal for bounding anticipations. It nearly always meant a

During the cold weeks after Miriam's arrival there were no expeditions; and very commonly uncertainty was

prolonged by a provisional distribution of the ten girls between the kitchen and the five pianos. In this case

neither she nor Mademoiselle received any instructions. Mademoiselle would go to the saal with needlework,

generally the lighter household mending. The saal piano at practising time was allotted to the pupil to whom

the next music lesson was due, and Mademoiselle spent the greater part of her time installed, either awaiting

the possible arrival of Herr Bossenberger or presiding over his lessons when he came. Miriam, unprovided

for, sitting in the schoolroom with a book, awaiting events, would watch her disappear unconcernedly

through the folding doors, every time with fresh wonder. She did not want to take her place, though it would

have meant listening to Herr Bossenberger's teaching and a quiet alcove of freedom from the apprehensive

uncertainty that hung over so many of her hours. It seemed to her odd, not quite the thing, to have a third

person in the room at a music lesson. She tried to imagine a lesson being given to herself under these

conditions. The thought was abhorrent. And Mademoiselle, of all people. Miriam could see her sitting in the

saal, wrapped in all the coolness of her complete insensibility to music, her eyes bent on her work, the quick

movements of her small, thin hands, the darting gleam of her thimble, the dry way she had of clearing her

throat, a gesture that was an accentuation of the slightly metallic quality of her voice, and expressed, for

Miriam, in sound, that curious sense of circumspect frugality she was growing to realise as characteristic of

The saal doors closed, the little door leading into the hall became the centre of Miriam's attention. Before

long, sometimes at the end of ten minutes, this door would open and the day become eventful. She had

already taken Clara, with Emma, to make a third, three times to her masseuse, sitting for half an hour in a

room above a chemist's shop so stuffy beyond anything in her experience that she had carried away nothing

but the sense of its closelyinterwoven odours, a dim picture of Clara in a saffroncoloured wrapper and the

shocked impression of the resounding thwackings undergone by her. Emma was paying a series of visits to

the dentist and might appear at the schoolroom door with frightened eyes, holding it open"Hendchen! Ich

muss zum Zahnarzt." Miriam dreaded these excursions. The first time Miriam had accompanied her Emma

had had "gas." Miriam, assailed by a loud scream followed by the peremptory voices of two whitecoated,

fiercely moustached operators, one of whom seemed to be holding Emma in the chair, had started from her

sofa in the background. "Brutes!" she had declared and reached the chairside voluble in unintelligible

German to find Emma serenely emerging from unconsciousness. Once she had taken Gertrude to the

dentistanother dentist, an elderly man, practising in a frockcoat in a heavilyfurnished room with high

sash windows, the lower sashes filled with stained glass. There had been a driving March wind and Gertrude

with a shawl round her face had battled gallantly along shouting through her shawl. Miriam had made out

nothing clearly, but the fact that the dentist's wife had a title in her own right. Gertrude had gone through her

trial, prolonged by some slight complication, without an anesthetic, in alternations of tense silence and great

gusts of her hacking laughter. Miriam, sitting strained in the far background near a screen covered with a

mass of strange embroideries, wondered how she really felt. That, she realised with a vision of Gertrude

The thing Miriam dreaded most acutely was a visit with Minna to her aurist. She learned with horror that

Minna was obliged every few months to submit to a series of small operations at the hands of the tall,

scholarlylooking man, with large, clear, impersonal eyes, who carried on his practice high up in a great

block of buildings in a small faded room with coarse coffeecoloured curtains at its smudgy windows. The

character of his surroundings added a great deal to her abhorrence of his attentions to Minna.

The room was densely saturated with an odour which she guessed to be that of stale cigarsmoke. It seemed

so tangible in the room that she looked about at first for visible signs of its presence. It was like an invisible

Coming and going upon the dense staleness of the room and pervading the immediate premises was a strange

savoury pungency. Miriam could not at first identify it. But as the visits multiplied and she noticed the same

odour standing in faint patches here and there about the stairways and corridors of the block, it dawned upon

her that it must be onionsonions freshly frying but with a quality of accumulated richness that she could

not explain. But the fact of the dominating kitchen side by side with the consultingroom made her speculate.

She imagined the doctor's wife, probably in that kitchen, a hardbrowed bony North German woman. She

saw the cleareyed man at his meals; and imagined his slippers. There were dingy books in the room where

She compared this entourage with her recollection of her one visit to an oculist in Harley Street. His stately

house, the exquisite freshness of his appointments and his person stood out now. The English she assured

herself were more refined than the Germans. Even the local doctor at Barnes whose effect upon her mother's

perpetual illhealth, upon Eve's nerves and Sarah's mysterious indigestion was so impermanent that the very

sound of his name exasperated her, had something about him that she failed entirely to find in this

Germansomething she could respect. She wondered whether the professional classes in Germany were all

like this specialist and living in this way. Minna's parents she knew were paying large fees.

Her liking for Minna grew with each visit. She wondered at her. Here she was with her nose and her earshe

was subject to rheumatism tooit would always, Miriam reflected, be doctor's treatment for her. She

wondered at her perpetual cheerfulness. She saw her with a pang of pity, going through life with her illnesses,

capped in defiance of all the care she bestowed on her person, with her disconcerting nose, a nose she

On several occasions a little contingent selected from the pianos and kitchen had appeared in the schoolroom

and settled down to read German with Fraulein. Miriam had been despatched to a piano. After these readings

the midmorning lunchingplates of sweet custardlike soup or chocolate soup or perhaps glasses of sweet

syrup and biscuitswere, if Fraulein were safely out of earshot, voluble indignation meetings. If she were

known to be in the room beyond the little schoolroom, lunch was taken in silence except for Gertrude's

sallies, cheerful generalisations from Minna or Jimmie, and grudging murmurs of response.

On the mornings of Fraulein's German readings the school never went to Kreipe's. Going to Kreipe's Miriam

They had been twice since her coming. Sitting at a little marbletopped table with the Bergmanns near the

window and overlooking the full flood of the Georgstrasse Miriam felt a keen renewal of the sense of being

abroad. Here she sat, in the little enclosure of this upper room above a shopful of strange Delikatessen,

securely adrift. Behind her she felt, not home but the German school where she belonged. Here they all sat,

free. Germany was all around them. They were in the midst of it. Fraulein Pfaff seemed far away. . . . How

strange of her to send them there. . . . She glanced towards the two tables of English girls in the centre of the

room wondering whether they felt as she did. . . . They had come to Germany. They were sharing it with her.

It must he changing them. They must be different for having come. They would all go back she supposed.

But they would not be the same as those who had never come. She was sure they felt something of this. They

were sitting about in easy attitudes. How English they all looked . . . for a moment she wanted to go and sit

with themjust sit with them, rejoice in being abroad; in having got away. She imagined all their people

looking in and seeing them so thoroughly at home in this little German restaurant free from home influences,

in a little world of their own. She felt a pang of response as she heard their confidently raised voices. She

Gertrude had taken everyone's choice between coffee and chocolate and given an order.

Orders for schocolade were heard from all over the room. There were only women therewonderful German

women in twos and threesladies out shopping, Miriam supposed. She managed intermittently to watch

three or four of them and wondered what kind of conversation made them so emphaticwhether it was

because they held themselves so well and "spoke out" that everything they said seemed so important. She had

never seen women with so much decision in their bearing. She found herself drawing herself up.

She heard German laughter about the room. The sounds excited her and she watched eagerly for laughing

faces. . . . They were different. . . . The laughter sounded differently and the laughing faces were different.

The eyes were expressionless as they laughedor evil . . . they had that same knowing way of laughing as

though everything were settledbut they did not pretend to be refined as Englishwomen did . . . they had the

same horridness . . . but they were . . . jolly. . . . They could shout if they liked.

Three cups of thicklooking chocolate, each supporting a little hillock of solid cream arrived at her table.

At the first sip, taken with lips that slid helplessly on the surprisingly thick rim of her cup Miriam renounced

She chose a familiarlooking eclairClara and Emma ate cakes that seemed to be alternate slices of cream

and very spongy coffeecoloured cake and then followed Emma's lead with an open tartlet on which plump

During dinner Fraulein Pfaff went the round of the table with questions as to what had been consumed at

Kreipe's. The whole of the table on her right confessed to one Kuchen with their chocolate. In each case she

smiled gravely and required the cake to be described. The meaning of the pilgrimage of enquiry came to

Miriam when Fraulein reached Gertrude and beamed affectionately in response to her careless "Schokolade

Even walks were incalculable excepting on Saturdays, when at noon Anna turned out the schoolrooms.

Thenunless to Miriam's great satisfaction it rained and they had a little festival shut in in holiday mood in

the saal, the girls playing and singing, Anna loudly obliterating the weekdays next door and the secure

harbour of Sunday aheadthey went methodically out and promenaded the streets of Hanover for an hour.

These Saturday walks were a recurring humiliation. If they had occurred daily, some crisis, she felt sure

The little party would file out under the leadership of GertrudeFraulein Pfaff smiling parting directions

adjuring them to come back safe and happy to the beehive and stabbing at them all the while, Miriam felt,

with her keen eyethrough the high doorway that pierced the high wall and thencharge down the street.

Gertrude alone, having been in Hanover and under Fraulein Pfaff's care since her ninth year, was instructed

as to the detail of their tour and she swung striding on ahead, the ends of her long fur boa flying out in the

March wind, making a flourishing scrollwork round her hounding tailorclad formthe Martins,

shortskirted and thickbooted, with hard cloth jackets and hard felt hats, and short thick pelerines almost

running on either side, Jimmie, Millie and Judy hard behind. Miriam's everrecurring joyous sense of

emergence and her longing to go leisurely and alone along these wonderful streets, to go on and on at first

and presently to look, had to give way to the necessity of keeping Gertrude and her companions in sight. On

they went relentlessly through the Saturday throng along the great Georgstrassea foreign paradise, with its

great bright cafes and the strange promising detail of its shopstantalisingly half seen.

She hated, too, the discomfort of walking thus at this pace through streets along pavements in her winter

clothes. They hampered her horribly. Her heavy threequarter length coat made her too warm and bumped

against her as she hurried alongthe little fur pelerine which redeemed its plainness tickled her neck and she

felt the outline of her stiff hat like a board against her uneasy forehead. Her inflexible boots soon tired her. . .

. But these things she could have endured. They were not the main source of her trouble. She could have

renounced the delights all round her, made terms with the discomforts and looked for alleviations. But it was

during these walks that she began to perceive that she was making, in a way she had not at all anticipated, a

complete failure of her r�le of English teacher. The three weeks' haphazard curriculum had brought only one

repetition of her English lesson in the smaller schoolroom; and excepting at meals, when whatever

conversation there was was general and polyglot, she was never, in the house, alone with her German pupils.

The cessation of the fixed readings arranged with her that first day by Fraulein Pfaff did not, in face of the

general absence of method, at all disturb her. Mademoiselle's classes had, she discovered, except for the

weekly mending, long since lapsed altogether. These walks, she soon realised, were supposed to be her and

her pupils' opportunity. No doubt Fraulein Pfaff believed that they represented so many hours of English

conversationand they did not. It was cheating, pure and simple. She thought of feepaying parents, of the

Her growing conviction and the distress of it were confirmed each week by a spectacle she could not escape

and was rapidly growing to hate. Just in front of her and considerably behind the flying van, her full wincey

skirt billowing out beneath what seemed to Miriam a dreadfully thin little closefitting stockinette jacket,

trotted Mademoiselleone hand to the plain brim of her large French hat, and obviously conversational with

either Minna and Elsa or Clara and Emma on either side of her. Generally it was Minna and Elsa, Minna

brisk and trim and decorous as to her neat plaid skirt, however hurried, and Elsa showing her distress by the

frequent twisting of one or other of her ankles which looked, to Miriam, like sticks above her highheeled

shoes. Mademoiselle's broad hatbrim flapped as her head turned from one companion to the other.

Sometimes Miriam caught the mocking tinkle of her laughter. That all three were interested, too, Miriam

gathered from the fact that they could not always be relied upon to follow Gertrude. The little party had

returned one day in two separate groups, fortunately meeting before the Waldstrasse gate was reached, owing

to Mademoiselle's failure to keep Gertrude in sight. There was no doubt, too, that the medium of their

intercourse was French, for Mademoiselle's knowledge of German had not, for all her six months at the

school, got beyond a few simple and badly managed words and phrases. Miriam felt that this French girl was

perfectly carrying out Fraulein Pfaff's design. She talked to her pupils, made them talk; the girls were amused

and happy and were picking up French. It was admirable and it was wonderful to Miriam because she felt

quite sure that Mademoiselle had no clear idea in her own mind that she was carrying out any design at all.

That irritated Miriam. Mademoiselle liked talking to her girls. Miriam was beginning to know that she did not

want to talk to her girls. Almost from the first she had begun to know it. She felt sure that if Fraulein Pfaff

had been invisibly present at any one of her solitary conversational encounters with these German girls she

would have been judged and condemned. Elsa Speier had been the worst. Miriam could see as she thought of

her, the angle of the high garden wall of a corner house in Waldstrasse and above it a blossoming almond

tree. "How lovely that tree is," she had said. She remembered trying hard to talk and to make her talk and

making no impression upon the girl. She remembered monosyllables and the pallid averted face and Elsa's

dreadful ankles. She had walked along intent and indifferent and presently she had felt a sort of irritation rise

through her struggling. And then further on in the walk, she could not remember how it had arisen, there was

a moment when Elsa had said with unmoved, averted face hurriedly, "My fazzer is offitser"and it seemed

to Miriam as if this were the answer to everything she had tried to say, to her remark about the almondtree

and everything else; and then she felt that there was nothing more to be said between them. They were both

quite silent. Everything seemed settled. Miriam's mind called up a picture of a middleaged man in a Saxon

blue uniformall voice and no brainsand going to take to gardening in his old ageand longed to tell

Elsa of her contempt for all military men. Clearly she felt Elsa's and Elsa's mother's feeling towards herself.

Elsa's mother had thin ankles, too, and was like Elsa intent and cold and dead. She could imagine Elsa in

society nowhard and thin and glitteryshe would be stylishmilitary men's women always were. The

girl had avoided being with her during walks since then, and they never voluntarily addressed one another.

Minna and the Bergmanns had talked to her. Minna responded to everything she said in her eager husky

voicenot because she was interested Miriam felt, but because she was polite, and it had tired her once or

twice dreadfully to go on "making conversation" with Minna. She had wanted to like being with these three.

She felt she could give them something. It made her full of solicitude to glance at either of them at her side.

She had longed to feel at home with them and to teach them things worth teaching; they seemed pitiful in

some way, like children in her hands. She did not know how to begin. All her efforts and their efforts left

Each occasion left her more puzzled and helpless. Now and again she thought there was going to he a change.

She would feel a stirring of animation in her companions. Then she would discover that someone was being

discussed, generally one of the girls; or perhaps they were beginning to tell her something about Fraulein

Pfaff, or talking about food. These topics made her feel ill at ease at once. Things were going wrong. It was

not to discuss such things that they were together out in the air in the wonderful streets and boulevards of

And then, suddenly, within a day or so of each other, dreadful things had happened.

The first had come on the second occasion of her going with Minna to see Dr. Dieckel. Minna, as they were

walking quietly along together had suddenly begun in a broken English which soon turned to shy, fluent,

animated German, to tell about a friend, an _apotheker,_ a man, Miriam gatheredmissing many links in her

amazementin a shop, the chemist's shop where her parents dealt, in the little country town in Pomerania

which was her home. Minna was so altered, looked so radiantly happy whilst she talked about this man that

Miriam had wanted to put out a hand and touch her. Afterwards she could recall the sound of her voice as it

was at that moment with its yearning and its promise and its absolute confidence. Minna was so certain of her

happinessat the end of each hurried little phrase her voice sounded like a chordlike three strings

And soon afterwards Emma had told her very gravely, with Clara walking a little aloof, her doglike eyes

shining as she gazed into the distance, of a "most beautiful man" with a brown moustache, with whom Clara

was in love. He was there in the town, in Hanover, a hairspecialist, treating Clara's thin short hair.

Even Emma had a "jungling." He had a very vulgar surname, too vulgar to be spoken; it was breathed against

Miriam's shoulder in the halflight. Miriam was begged to forget it at once and to remember only the

At the time she had timidly responded to all these stories and had felt glad that the confidences had come to

But after these confidences there were no more serious attempts at general conversation.

Miriam felt ashamed of her share in the hairdresser and the chemist. Emma's jungling might possibly be a

student. . . . She grieved over the things that she felt were lying neglected, "things in general" she felt sure she

ought to discuss with the girls . . . improving the world . . . leaving it better than you found it . . . the

importance of life . . . sleeping and dreaming that life was beauty and waking and finding it was duty . . .

making things better, reforming . . . being a reformer. . . . Pater always said young people always wanted to

reform the universe . . . perhaps it was so . . . and nothing could be done. Clearly she was not the one to do

anything. She could do nothing even with these girls and she was nearly eighteen.

Once or twice she wondered whether they ever had thoughts about things . . . she felt they must; if only she

were not shy, if she had a different manner, she would find out. She knew she despised them as they were.

She could do nothing. Her fine ideas were no good. She did less than silly little Mademoiselle. And all the

time Fraulein thinking she was talking and influencing them was keeping her . . . in Germany.

Fraulein Pfaff came to the breakfasttable a little late in a grey stuff dress with a creamcoloured ruching

about the collarband and ruchings against her long brown wrists. The girls were already in their places, and

"Martins' spongebags"her face creased for her cavernous smile"are both large and strongbeautiful

The table listened intently. Miriam tried to remember the condition of her side of the garret. She saw Judy's

"Millie," went on Fraulein, "is the owner of a dampproof holdall for the bath which is a veritable

Fraulein raised her voice slightly, still smiling. Miriam heard her own name and stiffened. "Miss Henderson

is an Englishwoman tooand our little Ulrica joins the English party." Fraulein's voice had thickened and

grown caressing. Perhaps no one was in trouble. Ulrica bowed. Her wideopen startled eyes and the outline

of her pale face remained unchanged. Still gentle and tendervoiced Fraulein reached Judy and the Germans.

All was well. Soaps and sponges could go in the English bags. Judy's downcast crimson face began to recover

its normal clear flush, and the Germans joined in the general rejoicing. They were to go, Miriam gathered, in

the afternoon to the baths. . . . She had never been to a public baths. . . . She wished Fraulein could know

there were two bathrooms in the house at Barnes, and then wondered whether in German baths one was left

Fraulein jested softly on about her children and their bath. Gertrude and Jimmie recalled incidents of former

bathingsthe stories went on until breakfast had prolonged itself into a sitting of happy adventurers. The

room was very warm, and coffeescented. Clara at her corner sat with an outstretched arm nearly touching

Fraulein Pfaff who was sitting forward glowing and shedding the light of her dark young eyes on each in

turn. There were many elbows on the table. Judy's head was raised and easy. Miriam noticed that the

whiteness of her neck was whiter than those strange bright patches where her eyelashes shone. Ulrica's eyes

went from face to face as she listened and Miriam fed upon the outlines of her head.

She wished she could place her hands on either side of its slenderness and feel the delicate skull and gaze

"Die Fenster auf!" she cried, in quivering tones, "Die Herzen auf!" "Up with windows! Up with hearts!"

Her hands struggled with the hasp of the longclosed outer frame. The girls crowded round as the lattices

Miriam stood in a vague crowd seeing nothing. She felt the movement of her own breathing and the cool

"That's a thrush," she heard Bertha Martin say as a chattering flew across a distant gardenand Fraulein's

halfsinging reply, "Know you, children, what the thrush says? Know you?" and Minna's eager voice

sounding out into the open, "D'ja, d'ja, ich, weissRitzifizier, sagt sie, Ritzifizier, das vierundzwanzigste

Miriam found herself with her hands on the doors leading into the saal, pushing them gently. Why not?

Everything had changed. Everything was good. The great doors gave, the sunlight streamed from behind her

into the quiet saal. She went along the pathway it made and stood in the middle of the room. The voices from

the schoolroom came softly, far away. She went to the centre window and pushing aside its heavy curtains

saw for the first time that it had no second pane like the others, but led directly into a sort of summerhouse,

open in front and leading by a wooden stairway down to the garden plot. Up the railing of the stairway and

over the entrance of the summerhouse a creeping plant was putting out tiny leaves. It was in shadow, but the

sun caught the sharply peaked gable of the summerhouse and on the left, the tops of the high shrubs lining

the pathway leading to the wooden door and the great balls finishing the high stone gateway shone yellow

with sunlit lichen. She heard the schoolroom windows close and the girls clearing away the breakfast things

Before she had finished her duties a summons came. Jimmie brought the message, panting as she reached the

"What do you mean?" Miriam began apprehensively as she turned to go. "Oh, Jimmie" she tried to

laugh ingratiatingly. "_Do_ tell me what you mean?" Jimmie turned and raised a plump hand with a

"You're going to readGerty, or somethingno idiots admitted. You're going it, Hendy. Tata. Fly! Don't

She was to read Goethe . . . with Fraulein Pfaff. . . . Fraulein knew she would be one of the few who would

"Here she is," was Fraulein's greeting. The little groupUlrica, Minna and Solomon Martin were sitting

about informally in the sunlit window space, Minna and Solomon had needleworkUlrica was gazing out

into the garden. Miriam sank into the remaining lowseated wicker chair and gave herself up. Fraulein began

to read, as she did at prayers, slowly, almost below her breath, but so clearly that Miriam could distinguish

each word and her face shone as she bent over her book. It was a poem in blank verse with long undulating

lines. Miriam paid no heed to the sense. She heard nothing but the even swing, the slight rising and falling of

the clear low tones. She felt once more the opening of the schoolroom windowshe saw the little brown

summerhouse and the sun shining on the woodwork of its porch. Summer coming. Summer coming in

Germany. She drew a long breath. The poem was telling of someone getting away out of a room, out of

"narrow conversation" to a meadowcovered plainof a white pathway winding through the green.

Minna put down her sewing and turned her kind blue eyes to Fraulein Pfaff's face.

Ulrica sat drooping, her head bent, her great eyes veiled, her hands entwined on her lap. . . . The little

She handed the book to Ulrica, indicating the place and Ulrica read. Her voice sounded a higher pitch than

Fraulein's. It sounded out rich and full and liquid, and seemed to shake her slight body and echo against the

walls of her face. It filled the room with a despairing ululation. Fraulein seemed by contrast to have been

Listening to the beseeching tones, hearing no words, Miriam wished that the eyes could be raised, when the

reading ceased, to hers and that she could go and put her hands about the beautiful head, scarcely touching it

She watched the little hand that was not engaged with the book and lay abandoned, outstretched, listless and

shining on her knee. Solomon's needle snapped. She frowned and roused herself heavily to secure another

from the basket on the floor at her side. Miriam, flashing hatred at her, caught Fraulein's fascinating gaze

fixed on Ulrica; and saw it hastily turn to an indulgent smile as the eyes became conscious, moving for a

moment without reaching her in the direction of her own low chair. A tap came at the door and Anna's flat

tones, like a voluble mechanical doll, announced a postal official waiting in the hall for Ulricawith a

package. "Ein Packet . . . aaach," wailed Ulrica, rising, her hands trembling, her great eyes radiant.

Fraulein sent her off with Solomon to superintend the signing and payments and give help with the

"The little heiress," she said devoutly, with her wide smile as she returned from the door.

"Sie, nun, Miss Henderson," concluded Fraulein, handing her the book and indicating the passage Ulrica had

just read. "Nun, Sie," she repeated brightly, and Minna drew her chair a little nearer making a small group.

"Schiller" she saw at the top of the page and the title of the poem "Der Spaziergang." Miriam laid the book on

the end of her knee, and leaning over it, read nervously. Her tones reassured her. She noticed that she read

very slowly, breaking up the rhythm into sentencesand authoritatively as if she were recounting an

experience of her own. She knew at first that she was reading like a cultured person and that Fraulein would

recognise this at once, she knew that the perfect assurance of her pronunciation would make it seem that she

understood every word, but soon these feelings gave way to the sense half grasped of the serpentine path

winding and mounting through a wood, of a glimpse of a distant valley, of flocks and villages, and of her

unity with Fraulein and Minna seeing and feeling all these things together. She finished the

passageFraulein quietly commended her reading and Minna said something about her earnestness.

Miriam, who had sat up in her bath when the drumming came at the door, answered sleepily, "No, I shan't be

All Jimmie's fingers seemed to be playing exercises against the panels. Miriam wished she would restrain

"I shan't be a minute," she shouted crossly, and let her shoulders sink once more under the comforting water.

It was the first warm water she had encountered since that night when Mademoiselle had carried the jugs

upstairs. Her soap, so characterless in the chilly morning basin lathered freely in the warmth and was fragrant

in the steamy air. When Jimmie's knocking came she was dreaming blissfully of baths with Harriettthe

dissipated baths of the last six months between tea and dinner with a theatre or a dance ahead. Harriett, her

hair strained tightly into a white crocheted net, her snub face shining through the thick steam, tubbing and

jesting at the wide end of the huge porcelain bath, herself at the narrow end commanding the taps under the

steamdimmed beams of the redglobed gasjets . . . spongefights . . . and those wonderful summer bathings

when they had come in from long tennisplaying in the sun, filled the bath with cold water and sat in the

Seeing no sign of anything she could recognise as a towel, she pulled at a huge drapery hanging like a

counterpane in front of a coil of pipes extending halfway to the ceiling. The pipes were too hot to touch and

the heavy drapery was more than warm and obviously meant for drying purposes. Sitting wrapped in its folds,

dizzy and oppressed, she longed for the flourish of a rough towel and a window open at the top. She could see

no ventilation of any kind in her white cell. By the time her heavy outdoor things were on she was faint with

exhaustion, and hurried down the corridor towards the shouts and splashings echoing in the great, open,

glassroofed swimmingbath. She was just in time to see a figure in scarlet and white, standing out on the

high gallery at the end of a projecting board which broke the little white balustrade, throw up its arms and

leap out and flashits joined hands pointed downwards towards the water, its white feet sweeping up like

the tail of a swooping birdcleave the green water and disappear. The huge bath was empty of bathers and

smoothly rippling save where the flying body had cleaved it and left wavelets and bubbles. The girlsmost

of them in their outdoor thingswere gathered in a little group near the marble steps leading down into the

water farthest from where the diver had dropped, stirring and exclaiming. As Miriam was approaching them a

redcapped head came cleanly up out of the water near the steps and she recognised the strong jaw and

gleaming teeth of Gertrude. She neither spluttered nor shook her head. Her eyes were wide and smiling, and

Miriam paused under the overhanging gallery. Her eyes went, incredulously, up to the springboard. It

seemed impossible . . . and all that distance above the water. . . . Her gaze was drawn to the flicking of the

"Hullo, Hendy, let me get into my cubicle." Gertrude stood before her dripping and smiling.

"However on earth did you do it?" said Miriam, gazing incredulously at the ruddy wet face.

Gertrude's smile broadened. "Go on," she said, shaking the drops from her chin, "it's all in the day's work."

In the hard clear light Miriam saw that the teeth that looked so gleaming and strong in the distance were

slightly ribbed and fluted and had serrated edges. Large stoppings showed like shadows behind the thin shells

of the upper front ones. Even Gertrude might be ill one day; but she would never be ill and sad and helpless.

Miriam's eyes went back to the row of little curtained recesses in the gallery. The drapery that had flapped

was now half withdrawn, the light from the glass roof fell upon the top of a head flung back and shaking its

mane of hair. The profile was invisible, but the sheeny hair rippled in thick gilded waves almost to the floor. .

. . How hateful of her, thought Miriam. . . . How beautiful. I should be just the same if I had hair like that . . .

that's Germany. . . . Lohengrin. . . . She stood adoring. "Stay and talk while I get on my togs," came

Miriam glanced towards the marble steps. The little group had disappeared. She turned helplessly towards

Gertrude's curtains. She could not think of anything to say to her. She was filled with apprehension. "I

The billows of gold hair in the gallery were being piled up by two little handswhite and plump like Eve's,

but with quick clever irritating movements, and a thin sweet selfconscious voice began singing "Du, meine

_Seele._" Miriam lost interest in the vision. . . . They were all the same. Men liked creatures like that. She

"Lily and his wife were great friends," Gertrude was saying. "She's dead, you know."

"She used to be always coming when I first came over, Scots whablowgot a pin, Hendy? We shan't have

his . . . thanks, you're a saint . . . his boys in the schoolroom any more now."

"Are those Pastor Lahmann's boys?" said Miriam, noticing Gertrude's hair was coarse, each hair a separate

"Well," said Gertrude, switching back her curtain to lace her boots. "Long may Lily beam. I like summer

Miriam turned away. Gertrude halfdressed behind the curtains was too clever for her. She could not face her

"You're right, my friend. Hullo! There's Emmchen looking for you. I expect the Germans have just finished

their annual. They never come into the Schwimmbad, they're always too late. I should think you'd better

"We go as we are ready, from this establishment, just anyhow as long as we're not in ones or twosLily

won't have twos, as I dare say you've observed. Be good, my chehild," she said heartily, drawing on her

"Thank you," laughed Miriam. Emma's hands were on her muff, stroking it eagerly. "Hendchen, Hendchen,"

The child linked arms with her and pulled Miriam towards the corridor. Once out of sight under the gallery

she slipped her arm round Miriam's waist. "Oh, Hendchen, my darling beautiful, you have so lovely teint

after your badthoh, I am zo hangry, oh Hendchen, I luff you zo, I am zo haypie, kiss me one small, small

"What a baby you are," said Miriam, half turning as the girl's warm lips brushed the angle of her jaw. "Yes,

The corridor was almost airless. She longed to get out into the open. They found Minna at a table in the

entrance hall her head propped on her hand, snoring gently. Clara sat near her with closed eyes.

As the little party of four making its way home, cleansed and hungry, united and happy, stood for a moment

on a treeplanted island halfway across a wide open space, Minna with her eager smile said, gazing, "Oh, I

would like a glass Bier." Miriam saw very distinctly the clear sunlight on the boles of the trees showing every

ridge and shade of colour as it had done on the peaked summerhouse porch in the morning. The girls closed

"Dear Hendchen! We are alone! Just we nice four! Just only one most little small glass! Just one! Kind best,

Hendchen!" she heard. She pushed her way through the little group pretending to ignore their pleadings and

to look for obstacles to their passage to the opposite curb. She felt her disgust was absurd and was asking

herself why the girls should not have their beer. She would like to watch them, she knew; these little German

Fraustobe serenely happy at their bier table on this bright afternoon. They closed in on her again. Emma in

the gutter in front of her. She felt arms and hands, and the pleading voices besieged her again. Emma's

upturned tragic face, her usually motionless lips a beseeching tunnel, her chin and throat moving to her ardent

words made Miriam laugh. It _was_ disgusting. "No, no," she said hastily, backing away from them to the

end of the island. "Of course not. Come along. Don't be silly." The elder girls gave in. Emma kept up a little

solo of reproach hanging on Miriam's arm. "Very strict. Cold English. No bier. I want to home. I have bier to

This refrain threatening for the third time, three or four of the girls led by Bertha Martin, supplied it in a

subdued singsong without waiting for Pastor Lahmann's slow voice. Miriam had scarcely attended to his

discourse. He had begun in flat easy tones, describing his visit to Geneva, the snowclad mountains, the quiet

lake, the spring flowers. His words brought her no vision and her mind wandered, half tethered. But when he

began reading the poem she sank into the rhythm and turned towards him and fixed expectant eyes upon his

face. His expression disturbed her. Why did he read with that halfsmile? She felt sure that he felt they were

"young ladies," "demoiselles," "jeunes filles." She wanted to tell him she was nothing of the kind and take the

book from him and show him how to read. His eyes, soft and brown, were the eyes of a child. She noticed

that the lower portion of his flat white cheeks looked broader than the upper without giving an effect of

squareness of jaw. Then the rhythm took her again and with the second "sur l'eau, si beau," she saw a very

blue lake and a little boat with lateen sails, and during the third verse began to forget the lifeless voice. As the

murmured refrain came from the girls there was a slight movement in Fraulein's sofacorner. Miriam did not

turn her eyes from Pastor Lahmann's face to look at her, but half expected that at the end of the next verse her

low clear devout tones would be heard joining in. Part way through the verse with a startling sweep of

draperies against the leather covering of the sofa, Fraulein stood up and towered extraordinarily tall at Pastor

Lahmann's right hand. Her eyes were wide. Miriam thought she had never seen anyone look so pale. She was

speaking very quickly in German. Pastor Lahmann rose and faced her. Miriam had just grasped the fact that

she was taking the French master to task for reading poetry to his pupils and heard Pastor Lahmann slowly

and politely enquire of her whether she or he were conducting the lesson when the two voices broke out

together. Fraulein's fiercely voluble and the Herr Pastor's voluble and mocking and polite. The two voices

continued as he made his way, bowing gravely, down the far side of the table to the saal doors. Here he

turned for a moment and his face shone black and white against the dark panelling. "Na, Kinder," crooned

Fraulein gently, when he had disappeared, "a walka walk in the beautiful sunshine. Make ready quickly."

"My sainted uncle," laughed Bertha as they trooped down the basement stairs. "Ohmy stars!"

"Hurry up, madshuns, we'll have a ripping walk. We'll see if we can go Tiergartenstrasse."

"Does this sort of thing often happen?" asked Miriam, finding herself bending over a bootbox at Gertrude's

Breakfast the next morning was a gay feast. The mood which had seized the girls at the lavishly decked

teatable awaiting them on their return from their momentous walk the day before, still held them. They all

had come in feeling a little apprehensive, and Fraulein behind her teaurn had met them with the fullest

expansion of smiling indulgence Miriam had yet seen. After tea she had suggested an evening's entertainment

For Miriam it was an evening of pure delight. At the end of the first charade, when the girls were standing at

a loss in the dimlylit hall, she made a timid suggestion. It was enthusiastically welcomed and for the rest of

the evening she was allowed to take the lead. She found herself making up scene after scene surrounded by

eager faces. She wondered whether her raised voice, as she disposed of proffered suggestions"no, that

wouldn't be clear, _this_ is the thing we've got to bring out"could be heard by Fraulein sitting waiting with

the Germans under the lowered lights in the saal, and she felt Fraulein's eye on her as she plunged from the

hall into the dim schoolroom rapidly arranging effects in the open space in front of the long table which had

Towards the end of the evening, dreaming alone in the schoolroom near the closed door of the little room

whence the scenes were lit, she felt herself in a vast space. The ceilings and walls seemed to disappear. She

wanted a big scene, something quiet and seriousquite different from the fussy little absurdities they had

been rushing through all the evening. A statue . . . one of the Germans. "You think of something this time,"

Ulrica. She must manage to bring in Ulrica without giving her anything to do. Just to have her to look at. The

height of darkened room above her rose to a sky. An animated discussion, led by Bertha Martin, was going

They had chosen "beehive." It would be a catch. Fraulein was always calling them her Bienenkorb and the

girls would guess Bienenkorb and not discover that they were meant to say the English word.

"The old things can't possibly get it. It'll be a lark, just for the end," said Jimmie.

"That'll be awfully long. Four bits altogether, if they don't guess from the syllables," objected Solomon

Rapidly planning farcical scenes for the syllables she carried her tired troupe to a vague appreciation of the

final tableau for Ulrica. Shrouding the last syllable beyond recognition, she sent a messenger to the audience

Ulrica came, serenely wondering, her great eyes alight with her evening's enjoyment and was induced by

"You've only to stand and look downnothing else." To mount the schoolroom table in the dimness and

standing with her hands on the back of a draped chair to gaze down at Romeo's upturned face.

Bertha Martin's pale profile, with her fair hair drawn back and tied at the nape of her neck and a loose cloak

round her shoulders would, it was agreed, make the best presentation of a youth they could contrive, and

Miriam arranged her, turning her upturned face so that the audience would catch its clear outline. But at the

last minute, urged by Solomon's disapproval of the scene, Bertha withdrew. Miriam put on the cloak, lifted its

collar to hide her hair and standing with her back to the audience flung up her hands towards Ulrica as the gas

behind the little schoolroom door was turned slowly up. Standing motionless, gazing at the pale oval face

bending gravely towards her from the gloom, she felt for a moment the radiance of stars above her and heard

the rustle of leaves. Then the guessing voices broke from the saal. "Ach! ach! Wie schon! Romeo! That is

beautifoll. Romeo! Who is our Romeo?" and Fraulein's smiling, singing, affectionate voice, "Who is Romeo!

Taking the top flight three stairs at a time Miriam reached the garret first and began running about the room

at a quick trot with her fists closed, arms doubled and elbows back. The high garret looked wonderfully

friendly and warm in the light of her single candle. It seemed full of approving voices. Perhaps one day she

People always liked her if she let herself go. She would let herself go more in future at Waldstrasse.

"Qu'estce que vous avez?" appealed Mademoiselle, laughing at the door with open face. Miriam continued

her trot. Mademoiselle put the candle down on the dressingtable and began to run, too, in little quick

dancing steps, her wincey skirt bellowing out all round her. Their shadows bobbed and darted, swelling and

shrinking on the plaster walls. Soon breathless, Mademoiselle sank down on the side of her bed, panting and

volleying raillery and broken tinkles of laughter at Miriam standing goosestepping on the strip of matting

with an open. umbrella held high over her head. Recovering breath, she began to lament. . . . Miriam had not

during the whole evening of dressing up seen the Martins' summer hats. . . . They were wonderful. Shutting

her umbrella Miriam went to her dressingtable drawer. . . . It would be impossible, absolutely impossible . .

. to imagine hats more beautiful. . . . Miriam sat on her own bed punctuating through a papercovered comb. .

. . Mademoiselle persisted . . . non, ecoutezfigurezvousthe hats were of a pale straw . . . the colour of

pepper . . . "Bee . . ." responded the comb on a short low wheeze. "And the trimmingsah, of a charm that

no one could describe." . . . "Beem!" squeaked the comb . . . "stalks of barley" . . . "beembeem" . . . "of a

perfect naturalness" . . . "and the flowers, poppies, of a beauty""beeeeembeeem" . . . "oh, oh,

vraiment"Mademoiselle buried her face in her pillow and put her fingers to her ears.

Miriam began playing very softly "The March of the Men of Harlech," and got to her feet and went marching

gently round the room near the walls. Sitting up, Mademoiselle listened. Presently she rounded her eyes and

Miriam ceased playing and her eyes went up to the little window frames high in the wall, farthest away from

the island made by their two little beds and the matting and toilet chests and scarcely visible in the flickering

"Les toiles d'araignees," she breathed, straining her eyes to their utmost size. They gazed at each other. "Les

Mademoiselle's laughter came first. They sat holding each other's eyes, shaken with laughter, until

Mademoiselle said, sighing brokenly, "Et c'est la cloche qui va sonner immediatement." As they undressed,

she went on talking"the night comes the black night . . . we must sleep . . . we must sleep in peace . . . we

are safe . . . we are protected . . . nous craignons Dieu, n'est ce pas?" Miriam was shocked to find her at her

elbow, in her nightgown, speaking very gravely. She looked for a moment into the serious eyes challenging

They blew out the candle when the bell sounded and got into bed. Miriam imagined the Martins' regular

features under their barley and poppy trimmed hats. She knew exactly the kind of English hat it would be.

They were certainly not pretty hatsshe wondered at Mademoiselle's French eyes being so impressed. She

knew they must be hats with very narrow brims, the trimming coming nearly to the edge and Solomon's she

felt sure inclined to be boatshaped. Mademoiselle was talking about translated English books she had read.

Miriam was glad of her thin voice piercing the darknessshe did not want to sleep. She loved the day that

had gone; and the one that was coming. She saw the room again as it had been when Mademoiselle had

looked up towards the toiles d'araignees. She had never thought of there being cobwebs up there. Now she

saw them dangling in corners, high up near those mysterious windows unnoticed, looking down on her and

Mademoiselle . . . Fraulein Pfaff's cobwebs. They were hers now, had been hers through cold dark nights. . . .

Mademoiselle was asking her if she knew a most charming English book . . . "La Premiere Priere de Jessica"?

"Oh, the most beautiful book it would be possible to read." An indrawn breath, "Le Secret de Lady Audley."

After the gay breakfast Miriam found herself alone in the schoolroom. listening inadvertently to a

conversation going on apparently in Fraulein Pfaff's room beyond the little schoolroom. The voices were low,

but she knew neither of them, nor could she distinguish words. The sound of the voices, boxed in, filling a

little space shut off from the great empty hall made the house seem very still. The saal was empty, the girls

were upstairs at their housework. Miriam restlessly rising early had done her share before breakfast. She took

Harriett's last letter from her pocket and fumbled the disarranged leaves for the conclusion.

"We are sending you out two blouses. Don't you think you're lucky?" Miriam glanced out at the young

chestnut leaves drooping in tight pleats from black twigs . . . "real grand proper blouses the first you've ever

had, and a skirt to wear them with . . . won't you be within an inch of your life! Mother got them at

Grigg'sone is squashed strawberry with a sort of little catherinewheely design in black going over it but

not too much, awfully smart; and the other is a sort of buffy; one zephyr, the other cotton, and the skirt is a

sort of mixey pepper and salt with lumps in the weavingyou know how I mean, something like our prawn

dresses only lighter and much more refined. The duffer is going to join the tennisclubhe was at the

The little German garden was disappearing from Miriam's eyes. . . . It was cruel, cruel that she was not going

to wear her blouses at home, at the tennisclub . . . with Harriett. . . . It was all beginning again, after allthe

spring and tennis and presently boatingthings were going on . . . the smash had not come . . . why had she

not stayed . . . just one more spring? . . . how silly and hurried she had been, and there at home in the garden

lilac was quietly coming out and syringa and guelder roses and May and laburnum and . . . everything . . . and

she had run away, proud of herself, despising them all, and had turned herself into Miss Henderson, . . . and

no one would ever know who she was. . . . Perhaps the blouses would make a differenceit must be

extraordinary to have blouses. . . . Slommucky . . . untidy and slommucky Lilla's mother had called them . . .

One of the voices rose to a sawing like the shrill whir of wood being cut by machinery. . . . A derisive laugh

broke into the strange sound. It was Fraulein Pfaff's laughter and was followed by her voice thinner and

shriller and higher than the other. Miriam listened. What could be going on? . . . both voices were almost

screaming . . . together . . . one against the other . . . it was like mad women. . . . A door broke open on a

shriek. Miriam bounded to the schoolroom door and opened it in time to see Anna lurch, shouting and

screaming, part way down the basement stairs. She turned, leaning with her back against the wall, her eyes

halfclosed, sawing with fists in the direction of Fraulein, who stood laughing in her doorway. After one

"Ja," screamed Fraulein"Sie konnen ihre paar Groschen haben!Ihre paar Groschen! Ihre paar

Groschen!" and then the two voices shrieked incoherently together until Fraulein's door slammed to and

Miriam had crept back to the schoolroom window. She stood shivering, trying to forget the taunting words,

and the cruel laughter. "You can have your ha'pence!" Poor Anna. Her poor wages. Her bony face. . .

"I say, Henderson, come on down and help me pack up lunch. We're all going to Hoddenheim for the day, the

Miriam stood looking at her laughing face and listening to her hoarse, whispering voice. Gertrude turned and

Miriam followed her, cold and sick and shivering, and presently glad to be her assistant as she bustled about

Starting out along the dusty fieldgirt roadway leading from the railway station to the little town of

Hoddenheim through the hot sunshine, Miriam was already weary and fearful of the hours that lay ahead.

They would bring tests; and opportunities for Fraulein to see all her incapability. Fraulein had thrown her

thick gauze veil back over her large hat and was walking with short footsteps, quickly along the centre of the

roadway throwing out exclamations of delight, calling to the girls in a singing voice to cast away the winter,

Miriam could not remember having seen men working in fields. They troubled her. They looked up with

strange eyes. She wished they were not there. She wanted the fields to be stilland smaller. Still green fields

There was a moment of relief for her here. She could look easily at the scatter of poultry and the little pigs

She talked to the nearest German girl, of these and of the calves standing in the shelter of a rick, carefully

repeating the English names. As her eyes reached the rick she found that she did not know what to say. Was it

Fraulein passed on leading the way, down the road handinhand with Emma. The girls straggled after her.

Making some remark to Minna, Miriam secured her companionship and dropped a little behind the group.

Minna gave her one eager beam from behind her nose, which was shining rosily in the clear air, and they

Miriam noticed large rounded puffs of white cloud standing up sharp and still upon the horizon. Cottages

Standing and moving in the soft air was the strong sour smell of baking schwarzbrot. A big bonybrowed

woman came from a dark cottage and stood motionless in the low doorway, watching them with kindly body.

Miriam glanced at her faceher eyes were small and expressionless, like Anna's . . . evillooking.

Presently they were in a narrow street. Miriam's footsteps hurried. She almost cried aloud. The fa ades of the

dwellings passing slowly on either hand were higher, here and there one rose to a high peak, pierced

geometrically with tiny windows. The street widening out ahead showed an open cobbled space and

crossroads. At every angle stood high quiet peaked houses, their faces shining warm cream and milkwhite,

They overtook the others drawn up in the roadway before a long low wooden house. Miriam had time to see

little gilded figures standing out in niches in rows all along the fa ade and rows of scrollwork dimly painted,

as she stood still a moment with beating heart behind the group. She heard Fraulein talking in English of

councillors and centuries and assumed for a moment as Fraulein's eye passed her a look of intelligence; then

they had all moved on together deeper into the town. She clung to Minna, talking at random . . . did she like

Hoddenheim . . . and Minna responded to the full, helping her, talking earnestly and emphatically about food

and the sunshine, isolating the two of them; and they all reached the cobbled open space and stood still and

Miriam turned a radiant face to Fraulein Pfaff's table and made some movement with her lips.

"She has, she has," said Minna from the little arbour where she sat with Millie. "She is not English."

They had eaten their lunch at a little group of arboured tables at the back of an old wooden inn. Fraulein had

talked history to those nearest to her and sat back at last with her gauze veil in place, tall and still in her

arbour, sighing happily now and again and making her little sounds of affectionate raillery as the girls

finished their coffee and jested and giggled together across their wormeaten, greenpainted tables.

"You have beautiful old towns and villages in England," said Fraulein, yawning slightly.

"Then they're hidden from view, my dear Mill, not visible to the naked eye," laughed Gertrude.

"Tell us, my Millie," encouraged Fraulein, "say what you have in mind. Perhaps Gairtrud does not know the

"I can't tell you the names of the places," said Millie, "but I have seen pictures."

"Peectures," murmured Minna. "Peectures always are beautiful. All towns are beautiful, perhaps. Not?"

"There may he bits, perhaps," blurted Miriam, "but not whole towns and nothing anywhere a bit like

"Oh, well, not the _same,_" complained Millie, "but just as beautifulmore beautiful."

"Well, Millicent," pressed Fraulein, "'more beautiful' and why? Beauty is what you see and is not for

everyone the same. It is an _affaire de go t._ So you must tell us why to you the old towns of England are

more beautiful than the old towns of Germany. It is because you prefair them? They are your towns, it is

Solomon stirred heavily and looked up, flushing, her eyes avoiding the German arbours.

"Go on, Elsa," rattled Bertha. "Germans are all right, me dear. I think it's rather a lark when they sing out

"Because it makes me forget I'm in Germany and only remember I've got to go back."

"But, Millie, best child, it's just the very thing that makes you know you're here."

"Our Millie is glad to be in Germany," ruled Fraulein, rising. "She and I agreeI go most gladly to England.

"Of course I do," roared Gertrude, crossing her knees and tilting her chair. "What do you think? Was denkt

"I don't believe she really cares for it a bit," was Miriam's mental comment. Her heart was warm towards

Millie, looking so outlandish with her English vicarage air in this little German beergarden, with her strange

love of Germany. Of course there wasn't anything a bit like Germany in England. . . . So silly to make

They made their way back to the street through a long low roomful of men drinking at little tables. Heavy

clouds of smoke hung and moved in the air and mingled with the steady odour of German food, braten, onion

and buttersodden, beer and rich sour bread. A tinkling melody supported by rhythmic timemarking bass

notes that seemed to thump the wooden floor came from a large glassframed musical box. The dark rafters

ran low, just above them. Faces glanced towards them as they all filed avertedly through the room. There

were two or three guttural greetings"N' Morgen, Meine Damen. . . ." A large limber woman met them in

the front room with their bill and stood talking to Fraulein as the girls straggled out into the sunshine. She

was wearing a neat shortskirted crimsonandbrown check dress and a large blue apron and her haggard

face was lit with radiantly kind strong dark eyes. Miriam envied her. She would like to pour out beer for

those simple men and dispense their food . . . quietly and busily. . . . No need to speak to them, or be clever.

They would like her care and would understand. "Meine Damen" hurt her. She was not DameWas

Fraulein? Elsa? Millie was. Millie would condescend to these men without feeling uncomfortable. She could

see Millie at village teas. . . . The girls looked very small as they stood in groups about the roadway. . . . Their

clothes . . . their funny confidence . . . being so sure of themselves . . . what was it . . . what were they so sure

of? There was nothing . . . and she was afraid of them all, even of Minna and Emma sometimes.

They trailed, Minna once more safely at her side, slowly on through the streets of the closebuilt peaked and

gabled, carved and cobbled town. It came nearer to her than Barnes, nearer even than the old first house she

had kissed the morning they came awaythe flowerfilled garden, the river, the woods.

They turned aside and up a little mounting street and filed into a churchyard. Fraulein tried and opened the

great carved doorway of the church . . . incense. . . . They were going into a Roman Catholic church. How

easy it was; just to walk in. Why had one never done it before? There was one at Roehampton. But it would

"Pas convenable," she heard Mademoiselle say just behind her, "non, je connais ces gensla, je vous promets

. . . vraiment j'en ai peur. . . ." Elsa responded with excited enquiries. They all trooped quietly in and the great

Miriam saw a point of red light shining like a ruby far ahead in the gloom. She went round the church with

Fraulein Pfaff and Minna, and was shown stations and chapels, altars hung with offerings, a dusty

tinseldecked, gailypainted Madonna, an alcove railed off and fitted with an iron chandelier furnished with

spikesfilled halfway up its height by a solid mass of waxen drippingsbanners and paintings and

artificial flowers, rich dark carvings. She looked at everything and spoke once or twice.

"This is the first time I have seen a Roman Catholic church," she said, "and 'how superstitious' when they

came upon crutches and staves hanging behind a reredosand all the time she breathed the incense and felt

Presently they were joined by a priest. He took them into a little room, unlocking a heavy door which clanged

to after them, opening out behind one of the chapels. One side of the room was lined with an oaken cupboard.

Miriam escaped Mademoiselle's neighbourhood and got into an angle between the frosted window and the

plaster wall. The air was still and mustythe floor was of stone, the ceiling low and white. There was

nothing in the room but the oaken cupboard. The priest was showing a cross so crusted with jewels that the

mounting was invisible. Miriam saw it as he lifted it from its wrappings in the cupboard. It seemed familiar to

her. She did not wish to see it more closely, to touch it. She stood as thing after thing was taken from the

cupboard, waiting in her corner for the moment when they must leave. Now and again she stepped forward

and appeared to look, smiled and murmured. Faint sounds from the town came up now and again.

The minutes were passing; soon they must go. She wanted to stay . . . more than she had ever wanted

anything in her life she wanted to stay in this little musty room behind the quiet dim church in this little town.

At sunset they stood on a hill outside the town and looked across at it lying up its own hillside, its buildings

peaking against the sky. They counted the rich green copper cupolas and sighed and exulted over the whole

Making their way along the outskirts of the town towards the station in the fading light they met a little troop

of men and women coming quietly along the roadway. They were all dressed in black. They looked at the

Presently the girls crossed a little high bridge over a stream, and from the crest of the bridge beyond a

highwalled garden a terraced building came into sight. It was dotted with women dressed in black. One of

the figures rose and waved a handkerchief. "Wave, children," said Fraulein's trembling voice, "wave"and

the girls collected in a little group on the crest of the bridge and waved with raised arms.

"Ghastly, isn't it?" said Gertrude, glancing at Miriam as they moved on. Miriam was cold with apprehension.

For a week the whole of the housework and cooking was done by the girls under the superintendence of

Gertrude, who seemed to be all over the house acting as forewoman to little gangs of workers. Miriam took

but a small part in the workMinna was paying long visits to the aurist every daybut she shared the

depleted table and knew that the whole school was taking part in weathering the storm of Fraulein's

illhumour that had broken first upon Anna. She once caught a glimpse of Gertrude flushed and downcast,

confronting Fraulein's reproachful voice upon the stairs; and one day in the basement she heard Ulrica

tearfully refuse to clean her own boots and saw Fraulein stand before her bowing and smiling, and with the

Her blouses came at the beginning of the week. She carried them upstairs. Her hands took them incredulously

from their wrappages. The "squashed strawberry" lay at the top, soft warm clear madderrose, covered with a

black arabesque of tiny leaves and tendrils. It was compactly folded, showing only its turneddown collar,

shoulders and breast. She laid it on her bed side by side with its buff companion and shook out the underlying

skirt. . . . How sweet of them to send her the things . . . she felt tears in her eyes as she stood at her small

lookingglass with the skirt against her body and the blouses held in turn above it . . . they both went

perfectly with the light skirt. . . . She unfolded them and shook them out and held them up at arms' length by

the shoulder seams. Her heart sank. They were not in the least like anything she had ever worn. They had no

shape. They were square and the sleeves were like bags. She turned them about and remembered the

shapeliness of the stockinette jerseys smocked and small and clinging that she had worn at school. If these

were blouses then she would never be able to wear blouses. . . . "They're so flountery!" she said, frowning at

them. She tried on the rosecoloured one. It startled her with its brightness. . . . "It's no good, it's no good,"

she said, as her hands fumbled for the fastenings. There was a hook at the neck; that was all. Frightful . . . she

fastened it, and the collar set in a soft roll but came down in front to the base of her neck. The rest of the

blouse stuck out all round her . . . "it's got no cut . . . they couldn't have looked at it." . . . She turned

helplessly about, using her handglass, frowning and despairing. Presently she saw Harriett's quizzical eyes

and laughed woefully, tweaking at the outstanding margin of the material. "It's all very well," she murmured

angrily, "but it's all I've _got_." . . . She wished Sarah were there. Sarah would do something, alter it or

something. She heard her encouraging voice saying, "You haven't half got it on yet. It'll be all right." She

unfastened her black skirt, crammed the flapping margin within its band and put on the beaded black stuff

The blouse bulged back and front shapelessly and seemed to be one with the shapeless sleeves which ended

in hard loose bands riding untrimmed about her wrists with the movements of her hands. . . . "It's like a

nightdress," she said wrathfully and dragged the fulnesses down all round under her skirt. It looked better so

in front; but as she turned with raised handglass it came riding up at the side and back with the movement of

Minna was calling to her from the stairs. She went on to the landing to answer her and found her on the top

"Ach!" she whispered as Miriam drew back. "Jetzt mag' ich sie leiden. _Now_ I like you."

She ran back to her room. There was no time to change. She fixed a brooch in the collar to make it come a

Going downstairs she saw Pastor Lahmann hanging up his hat in the hall. His childish eyes came up as her

Miriam was amazed to see him standing there as though nothing had happened. She did not know that she

She went on downstairs listening to his voice, repeating his words over and over in her mind.

"The blouse is all right, my dear, but it's all round your ears and you've got all the fulness in the wrong place.

There. . . . Bless the woman, you've got no drawstring! And you must pin it at the back! And haven't you got

Minna and Miriam ambled gently along together. Miriam had discarded her little fur pelerine and her

doublebreasted jacket bulged loosely over the thin fabric of her blouse. She breathed in the leafscented air

and felt it playing over her breast and neck. She drew deep breaths as they went slowly along under the

Waldstrasse limetrees and looked up again and again at the leaves brilliant opaque green against white

plaster with sharp black shadows behind them, or brilliant transparent green on the hard blue sky. She felt

that the scent of them must be visible. Every breath she drew was like a long yawning sigh. She felt the easy

expansion of her body under her heavy jacket. . . . "Perhaps I won't have any more fitted bodices," she mused

and was back for a moment in the stale little sittingroom of the Barnes dressmaker. She remembered deeply

breathing in the odour of fabrics and dust and dankness and cracking her newly fitted lining at the pinholes

"But you never want to go like that, my dear child," old Miss Ottridge had laughed, readjusting the pins; "just

Perhaps Lilla's mother was right about blouses . . . perhaps they were "slommucky." She remembered phrases

she had heard about people's figures . . . "falling abroad" . . . "the middleaged sprawl" . . . that would come

early to her as she was so old and worried . . . perhaps that was why one had to wear boned bodices . . . and

never breathe in gulps of air like this? . . . It was as if all the worry were being taken out of her temples. She

felt her eyes grow strong and clear; a coolness flowed through herobstructed only where she felt the heavy

pad of hair pinned to the back of her head, the line of her hat, the hot line of compression round her waist and

They were approaching the Georgstrasse with its longvistaed width and its shops and cafes and pedestrians.

An officer in pale blue Prussian uniform passed by flashing a single hard preoccupied glance at each of them

in turn. His eyes seemed to Miriam like opaque blue glass. She could not remember such eyes in England.

They began to walk more quickly. Miriam listened abstractedly to Minna's anticipations of three days at a

friend's house when she would visit her parents at the end of the week. Minna's parents, her faraway home

on the outskirts of a little town, its garden, their little carriage, the spring, the beautiful country seemed unreal

and her efforts to respond and be interested felt like a sort of treachery to her present bliss. . . . Everybody,

Suddenly she was aware that Minna was asking her whether, if it was decided that she should leave school at

Miriam beamed incredulously. Minna, crimsonfaced, with her eyes on the pavement and hurrying along

explained that she was alone at home, that she had never made friendsher mother always wanted her to

make friendsbut she could notthat her parents would be so delightedthat she, she wanted Miriam,

Minna's garden, her secure country house, her rich parents, no worries, nothing particular to do, seemed for a

moment to Miriam the solution and continuation of all the gay day. There would be the rest of the

termincreasing spring and summerFraulein divested of all mystery and fear and then freedomwith

She glanced at Minnathe cheerful pink face and the pink bulb of nose came round to her and in an excited

"I should love to comesimply love it," said Miriam enthusiastically, feeling that she would not entirely

give up the idea yet. She would not shut off the offered refuge. It would be a plan to have in reserve. She had

been daunted as Minna murmured by a picture of Minna and herself in that remote gardenshe receiving

confidences about the apothekerno one else therethe Waldstrasse household blotted outherself and

Miriam almost ran home from seeing Minna into the three o'clock train . . . dear beautiful, beautiful Hanover .

. . the sunlight blazed from the rainsprinkled streets. Everything shone. Bright confident shops, happy

German cafes moved quickly by as she fled along. Sympathetic eyes answered hers. She almost laughed once

or twice when she met an eye and thought how funny she must look "tearing along" with her long, thick,

black jacket bumping against her. . . . She would leave it off tomorrow and go out in a blouse and her long

black lace scarf. She imagined Harriett at her sideHarriett's long scarf and longed to do the "crab walk" for

She heard the sound of her boot soles tapping the shining pavement as she hurried along . . . she would write

a short note to her mother "a girl about my own age with very wealthy parents who wants a companion" and

enclose a note for Eve or Harriett . . . Eve, "Imagine me in Pomerania, my dear" . . . and tell her about the

coffee parties and the skating and the sleighing and Minna's German Christmasses. . . .

She saw Minna's departing face leaning from the carriage window, its new gay boldness: "I shall no more

When she got back to Waldstrasse she found Anna's successor newly arrived cleaning the neglected front

doorstep. Her lean yellow face looked a vacant response to Miriam's enquiry for Fraulein Pfaff.

How quiet the house seemed. The girls, after a morning spent in turning out the kitchen for the reception of

the new _magd_ were out for a long ramble, including _Schocolade mit Schlagsahne_ until teatime.

The empty house spread round her and towered above her as she took off her things in the basement and the

schoolroom yawned bright and empty as she reached the upper hall. She hesitated by the door. There was no

"I'm not a LehrerinI'm notI'mnot," she hummed as she collected her music . . . she would bring her

"Pomeraineeya," she hummed, swinging herself round the great door into the saal. Pastor Lahmann was

standing near one of the windows. The rush of her entry carried her to the middle of the room and he met her

there smiling quietly. She stared easily and comfortably up into his great mild eyes, went into them as they

remained quietly and gently there, receiving her. Presently he said in a soft low tone, "You are vairy happy,

Miriam moved her eyes from his face and gazed out of the window into the little sunlit summerhouse. The

sense of the outline of his shoulders and his comforting black mannishness so near to her brought her almost

She moved awkwardly to a little chiffonier and put down her music on its marble top.

Miriam glanced at his solid white profile as he stood with hands clasped, near her music, on the chiffonier.

"I, too, am from the land. I grew up on a farm. I love the land and think to return to itto have my little strip

He turned towards her and Miriam smiled into the soft brown eyes and tried to think of something to say.

Miriam looked, eagerly listening, into the brown eyes that came round to meet hers, smiling:

Miriam seemed to gaze long at a pallid, rounded man with smiling eyes. She saw a garden and fields, a firelit

interior, a little woman smiling and busy and agreeable moving quickly about. . . . and Pastor

Lahmannpresiding. It filled her with fury to be regarded as one of a world of little tame things to be

summoned by little men to be wellwilled wives. She must make him see that she did not even recognise

such a thing as "a wellwilled wife." She felt her gaze growing fixed and moved to withdraw it and herself.

"I have a severe myopic astigmatism," she announced, gathering up her music and feeling the words as little

"Dear me . . . I wonder whether the glasses are really necessary. . . . May I look at them? . . . I know

Miriam detached her tightly fitting pincenez and having given them up stood with her music in hand

anxiously watching. Half her vision gone with her glasses, she saw only a dim blackcoated knowledge, near

"Poor child, poor child, and you must have passed through all your schooling with those lame, lame eyes . . .

"And sensitive to light, too. You were vairy, vairy blonde, even more blonde than you are now, as a child,

Miriam was pleased at the thought of being grouped with him in the eyes of Fraulein Pfaff. As she took her

glasses from his outstretched hand she felt that Fraulein would recognise that they had established a kind of

friendliness. She halted for a moment at the door, adjusting her glasses, amiably uncertain, feeling for

Pastor Lahmann was standing in the middle of the room examining his nails. Fraulein, at the window, was

twitching a curtain into place. She turned and drove Miriam from the room with speechless waiting eyes.

The sunlight was streaming across the hall. It seemed gay and homelike. Pastor Lahmann had made her

forget she was a governess. He had treated her as a girl. Fraulein's eyes had spoiled it. Fraulein was angry

Fraulein Pfaff's words broke the silence accompanying the servant's progress from Gertrude whose

Startled into observation Miriam saw the soupspoon of her neighbour whisked, dripping, from its plate to

the uppermost of Marie's pile and Emma shrinking back with a horrified face against Jimmie who was

leaning forward entranced with watching. . . . The whole table was watching. Marie, having secured Emma's

plate to the base of her pile clutched Miriam's spoon. Miriam moved sideways as the spoon swept up, saw the

desperate hard, lean face bend towards her for a moment as her plate was seized, heard an exclamation of

annoyance from Fraulein and little sounds from all round the table. Marie had passed on to Clara. Clara

received her with plate and spoon held firmly together and motioned her before she would relinquish them, to

Miriam felt she was in disgrace with the whole table. . . . She sat, flaring, rapidly framing phrase after phrase

for the lips of her judges . . . "slow and awkward" . . . "never has her wits about her". . . .

"Don't let her do it, Miss Henderson. . . ." Why should Fraulein fix upon _her_ to teach her common

servants? Struggling through her resentment was pride in the fact that she did not know how to handle

soupplates. Presently she sat refusing absolutely to accept the judgment silently assailing her on all hands.

"I see. You and your sisters were brought up like Countesses, wie Grafinnen," observed Fraulein Pfaff drily.

Miriam's whole body was on fire . . . "and your sisters and your sisters," echoed through and through her.

Holding back her tears she looked full at Fraulein and met the brown eyes. She met them until they turned

away and Fraulein broke into smiling generalities. Conversation was released all round the table. Emphatic

Pretending to be occupied with those about her she sat examining the look Fraulein had given her . . . she

hates me. . . . Perhaps she did from the first. . . . She did from the first. . . . I shall have to go . . . and

Walking along a narrow muddy causeway by a little river overhung with willows, girls ahead of her in single

file and girls in single file behind, Miriam drearily recognised that it was June. The month of roses, she

thought, and looked out across the flat green fields. It was not easy to walk along the slippery pathway. On

one side was the little grey river, on the other long wet grass repelling and depressing. Not far ahead was the

roadway which led, she supposed to the farm where they were to drink new milk. She would have to walk

with someone when they came to the road, and talk. She wondered whether this early morning walk would

come, now, every day. Her heart sank at the thought. It had been too hot during the last few days for any

going out at midday, and she had hoped that the strolling in the garden, sitting about under the chestnut tree

and in the little wooden garden room off the saal had taken the place of walks for the summer.

She had got up reluctantly, at the surprise of the very early gonging. Mademoiselle had guessed it would he a

"milkwalk." Pausing in the bright light of the top landing as Mademoiselle ran downstairs she had seen

through the landing window the deep peak of a distant gable casting an unfamiliar shadowa shadow

sloping the wrong way, a morning shadow. She remembered the first time, the only time, she had noticed

such a shadowgetting up very early one morning while Harriett and all the household were still

asleepand how she had stopped dressing and gazed at it as it stood there cool and quiet and alone across

the mellow face of a neighbouring stone porchhad suddenly been glad that she was alone and had

wondered why that shadowed porchpeak was more beautiful than all the summer things she knew and felt at

She could not find anything of that feeling in the early day outside Hanover. She was hemmed in, and the

fields were so sad she could not bear to look at them. The sun had disappeared since they came out. The sky

was grey and low and it seemed warmer already than it had been in the midday sun during the last few days.

"In der Ecke steht er Seinen Schnurbart dreht er Siehst du wohl, da steht er schon Der versoff'ne

Elsa Speier who was just behind her, became her inevitable companion when they reached the roadway. A

Miriam's sense of her duties closed in on her. Trying not to see Elsa's elaborate clothes and the profile in

"If I like milk?" she repeated presently, and flashed mocking eyes in Miriam's direction.

The muddy farmyard, lying back from the roadway and below it, was steamy and choking with odours.

Miriam who had imagined a cool dairy and cold milk frothing in pans, felt a loathing as warmth came to her

fingers from the glass she held. Most of the girls were busily sipping. She raised her glass once towards her

lips, snuffed a warm reek, and turned away towards the edge of the group, to pour out the contents of her

Passing languidly up through the house after breakfast, unable to decide to spend her Saturday morning as

usual at a piano in one of the bedrooms, Miriam went, wondering in response to a quiet call from Fraulein

Pfaff into the large room shared by the Bergmanns and Ulrica Hesse. Explaining that Clara was now to take

possession of the half of Elsa Speier's room that had been left empty by Minna"poor Minna now with her

good parents seeking health in the Swiss mountains, schooldays at an end, at an end, at an end," she repeated

mournfully, Fraulein explained that Clara's third of the large room would now be Miriam's.

Miriam stood incredulous at her side as she indicated a large empty chest of drawers, a white covered bed in a

deep corner away from the window, a small drawer in the dressingtable and five pegs in a large French

wardrobe. Emma was going very gravely about the room collecting her workbasket and things for

_raccommodage._ She flung one ecstatic glance at Miriam as she went away with these.

"I shall hold you responsible here amongst these dear children, Miss Henderson," fluted Fraulein, quietly

gathering up a few last things of Minna's collected on the bed, "our dear Ulrica and our little Emma," she

"My goodney," she breathed, gathering gently clenched fists close to her person. She stood for a few

moments; she felt like a visitor . . . embroidered toilet covers, polished furniture, gold and cream crockery,

lace curtains, white beds, the large screen cutting off her third of the room . . . then she rushed headlong

On the landing just outside the door of the garret bedroom stood a huge wicker travelling basket; a clumsy

umbrella with a large knobby handle, like a man's umbrella, lay on the top of it partly covering a large pair of

She was tired and very warm by the time everything was arranged in her new quarters.

Taking a last look round she caught the eye of Eve's photograph gazing steadily at her from the chest of

drawers. . . . It would be quite easy now that this had happened to write and tell them that the Pomerania plan

In the schoolroom she found the _raccommodage_ party gathered round the table. At its head sat

Mademoiselle, her arms flung out upon the table and her face buried against them.

"Cheer up, Mademoiselle," said Jimmie as Miriam took an empty chair between Gertrude and the Martins.

Timidly meeting Gertrude's eye Miriam received her halfsmile, watched her eyebrows flicker faintly up and

"Ah, mamma_zell_chen c'est pas mal, ne soyez triste, mein Gott mammazellchen es ist aber nichts!" chided

No one spoke; Mademoiselle lay snuffling and shuddering. Solomon's scissors fell on to the floor. "Mais

"Pourquoi, pourquoi!" choked Mademoiselle. Her suffused little face came up for a moment towards

Solomon. She met Miriam's gaze as if she did not see her. "Vous me demandez pourquoi je ne veux pas

partager ma chambre avec une femine mariee?" Her head sank again and her little grey form jerked sharply as

"_Verve,_ Bertha," came Millie's correcting voice and Miriam's interest changed to excited thoughts of

Frauleinnot hating her, and choosing Mademoiselle to sleep with the servant, a new servantthe things on

the landingMademoiselle refusing to share a room with a married woman . . . she felt about round this idea

as Millie's prim, clear voice went on . . . her eyes clutched at Mademoiselle, begging to understand . . . she

gazed at the little downflung head, fine little tendrils frilling along the edge of her hair, her little hard grey

shape, all miserable and ashamed. It was dreadful. Miriam felt she could not bear it. She turned away. It was

a strange new thought that anyone should object to being with a married woman . . . would she object? or

Was there some special refinement in this French girl that none of them understood? Why should it be refined

to object to share a room with a married woman? A cold shadow closed in on Miriam's mind.

"I don't care," said Millie almost quickly, with a crimson face. "It's a special occasion. I think Mademoiselle

ought to complain. If I were in her place I should write home. It's not right. Fraulein has no right to make her

"Not furnished, my sweetheart," said Gertrude, "and you know Kinder you're all running on very fast about

"Mon Dieu, vous etes terribles, toutes!" came Mademoiselle's voice. It seemed to bite into the table. "Oh, eest

"Don't, for goodness' sake, Hendy," begged Jimmie, "not you, she's wild about you going downstairs," she

Clara fainted suddenly just after dinner, and Fraulein, holding a little discourse on clothing and an enquiry

into wardrobes, gave a general permission for the reduction of garments to the minimum and sent everyone to

rest uncorseted until teatime, promising a walk to the woods in the cool of the evening. There was a sense of

adventure in the house. It was as if it were being besieged. It gave Miriam confidence to approach Fraulein

for permission to rearrange her trunk in the basement. She let Fraulein understand that her removal was not

complete, that there were things to do before she could be properly settled in her new room.

"Certainly, Miss Henderson, you are quite free," said Fraulein instantly as the girls trooped upstairs.

Miriam knew she wanted to avoid an afternoon shut up with Emma and Ulrica and she did not in the least

want to lie down. It seemed to her a very extraordinary thing to do. It surprised and disturbed her. It

suggested illness and weakness. She could not remember having lain down in the daytime. There had been

that fortnight in the old room at home with Harriett . . . chickenpox and new books coming and games, and

Sarah reading the Song of Hiawatha and their being allowed to choose their pudding. She could not

remember feeling ill. Had she ever felt ill? . . . Colds and bilious attacks. . . .

She remembered with triumph a group of days of pain two years ago. She had forgotten. . . . Bewilderment

and pain . . . her mother's constant presence . . . everything, the light everywhere, the leaves standing out

along the tops of hedgerows as she drove with her mother, telling her of pain and she alone in the midst of it .

. . for always . . . pride, long moments of deep pride. . . . Eve and Sarah congratulating her, Eve stupid and

laughing . . . the new bearing of the servants . . . Lily Belton's horrible talks fading away to nothing.

Fraulein had left her and gone to her room. Every door and window on the ground floor stood wide excepting

that leading to Fraulein's little double rooms. She wondered what the rooms were like and felt sorry for

Fraulein, tall and gaunt, moving about in them alone, alone with her own dark eyes, curtains hanging

motionless at the windows . . . was it really bad to tightlace? The English girls, except Millie and Solomon

all had small waists. She wished she knew. She placed her large hands round her waist. Drawing in her breath

she could almost make them meet. It was easier to play tennis with stays . . . how dusty the garden looked,

baked. She wanted to go out with two heavy wateringcans, to feel them pulling her arms from their sockets,

dragging her shoulders down, throwing out her chest, to spray canful after canful through a great wide rose,

sprinkling her ankles sometimes, and to grow so warm that she would not feel the heat. Bella Lyndon had

never worn stays; playing rounders so splendidly, lying on the grass between the games with her arms under

her head . . . simply disgusting, someone had said . . . who . . . a disgusted face . . . nearly all the girls detested

Going through the hall on her way down to the basement she heard the English voices sounding quietly out

into the afternoon from the rooms above. Flat and tranquil they sounded, Bertha and Jimmie she heard,

Gertrude's undertones, quiet words from Millie. She felt she would like a corner in the English room for the

afternoon, a book and an occasional remark"Mr. Barnes of New York"she would not be able to read her

three yellow books in the German bedroom. She felt at the moment glad to be robbed of them. It would be

much better, of course. There was no sound from the German rooms. She pictured sleeping faces. It was

cooler in the basementbut even there the air seemed stiff and dusty with the heat.

Why did the hanging garments remind her of All Saints' Church and Mr. Brough? . . . she must tell Harriett

that in her letter . . . that day they suddenly decided to help in the church decorations . . . she remembered the

smell of the soot on the holly as they had cut and hacked at it in the cold garden, and Harriett overturning the

heavy wheelbarrow on the way to church, and how they had not laughed because they both felt solemn, and

then there had just been the three Anwyl girls and Mrs. Anwyl and Mrs. Scarr and Mr. Brough in the

churchroom all being silly about Birdy Anwyl roasting chestnuts, and how silly and affected they were

Coming up the basement stairs in response to the teagong, Miriam thought there were visitors in the hall and

hesitated; then there was Pastor Lahmann's profile disappearing towards the door and Fraulein patting and

dismissing two of his boys. His face looked white and clear and firm and undisturbed, Miriam wanted to

arrest him and ask him somethingwhat he thought of the weatherhe looked so different from her

memory of him in the saal two Saturdays agotwo weeksfour classes she must have missed. Why? Why

was she missing Pastor Lahmann's classes? How had it happened? Perhaps she would see him in class again.

The other visitors proved to be the Bergmanns in new dresses. Miriam gazed at Clara as she went down the

schoolroom to her corner of the table. She looked like . . . a hostess. It seemed absurd to see her sit down to

tea as a schoolgirl. The dress was a fine black muslin stamped all over with tiny fishshaped patches of

mauve. It was cut to the base of the neck and came to a point in front where the soft white ruching was

fastened with a large cameo brooch. Clara's pallid worried face had grown more placid during the hot inactive

days, and today her hard mouth looked patient and determined and responsible. She seemed quite

independent of her surroundings. Miriam found herself again and again consulting her calm face. Her

presence haunted Miriam throughout teatime. Emma was sweet, pink and bright after her rest in a bright

Funny German dresses, thought Miriam, funny . . . and old. Her mind hovered and wondered over these

German dressesdid she like them or notsomething about themshe glanced at Elsa, sitting opposite in

the dull faint electric blue with black lace sleeves she had worn since the warm weather set in. Even Ulrica,

thin and straight now . . . like a pole . . . in a tight flat dress of saffron muslin sprigged with brown leaves,

seemed to be included in something that made all these German dresses utterly different from anything the

English girls could have worn. What was it? It was crowned by the Bergmanns' dresses. It had begun in a

summer dress of Minna's, black with a tiny skyblue spot and a heavy ruche round the hem. She thought she

liked it. It seemed to set the full tide of summer round the table more than the things of the English

girlsand yet the dresses were uglyand the English girls' dresses were not that . . . they were nothing . . .

plain cottons and zephyrs with lace tuckersno ruches. It was something somehow in the ruchesthe

A faint scent of camphor came from the Martins across the way, sitting in their cool creased blackandwhite

check cotton dresses. They still kept to their hard white collars and cuffs. As tea went on Miriam found her

eyes drawn back and back again to these newly unpacked camphorscented dresses . . . and when

conversation broke after moments of stillness . . . shadowy foliage . . . the still hot garden . . . the sunbaked

wooden room beyond the sunny saal, the light pouring through three rooms and bright along the table . . . it

It was intensely hot, but the strain had gone out of the day; the feeling of just bearing up against the heat and

getting through the day had gone; they all sat round . . . which was which? . . . Miriam met eye after

eyehow beautiful they all were looking out from faces and meeting hersand her eyes came back

unembarrassed to her cup, her solid butterbrot and the sunlit angle of the garden wall and the bit of tree just

over Fraulein Pfaff's shoulder. She tried to meet Mademoiselle's eyes, she felt sure their eyes could meet. She

wondered intensely what was in Elsa's mind behind her faint hard blue dress. She wanted to hear

Mademoiselle's voice; Mademoiselle was almost invisible in her corner near the door, the new housekeeper

was sitting at her side very upright and close to the table. Once or twice she felt Fraulein's look; she sustained

it, and glowed happily under it without meeting it; she referred back contentedly to it after hearing herself

laugh out once just as she would do at home; once or twice she forgot for a moment where she was. The way

the light shone on the housekeeper's hair, bright brown and plastered flatly down on either side of her bright

whiteandcrimson face, and the curves of her chocolate and white striped cotton bodice, reminded her

sharply of something she had seen once, something that had charmed her . . . it was in the hair against the

hard white of the forehead and the flat broad cheeks with the hard, clear crimson colouring nearly covering

them . . . something in the way she sat, standing out against the others. . . . Judy on her left hand with almost

Tea was over. Fraulein decided against a walk and they all trooped into the saal. No programme was

suggested; they all sat about unoccupied. There was no centre; Fraulein Pfaff was one of them. The little

group near her in the shady half of the sunlit summerhouse was as quietly easy as those who sat far back in

the saal. Miriam had got into a low chair near the saal doors whence she could see across the room through

the summerhouse window through the gap between the houses across the way to the faroff afternoon

country. Its colours gleamed, a soft confusion of tones, under the heathaze. For a while she sat with her eyes

on Fraulein's thin profile, clean and cool and dry in the intense heat . . . "she must be looking out towards the

limetrees." . . . Ulrica sat drooped on a low chair near her knees . . . "sweet beautiful head" . . . the weight of

her soft curved mouth seemed too much for the delicate angles of her face and it drooped faintly, breaking

their sharp lines. Miriam wished all the world could see her. . . . Presently Ulrica raised her head, as Elsa and

Clara broke into words and laughter near her, and her drooping lips flattened gently back into their place in

the curve of her face. She gazed out through the doorway of the summerhouse with her great despairing

eyes . . . the housekeeper was rather like a Dutch doll . . . but that was not it.

The sun had set. Miriam had found a little thin volume of German poetry in her pocket. She sat fumbling the

leaves. She felt the touch of her limp straightening hair upon her forehead. It did not matter. Twilight would

soon come, and bedtime. But it must have been beginning to get like that at teatime. Perhaps the weather

would get even hotter. She must do something about her hair . . . if only she could wear it turned straight

There was a stirring in the room; beautiful forms rose and stood and spoke and moved about. Someone went

to the door. It opened gently with a peaceful sound on to the quiet hall and footsteps ran upstairs. Two figures

going out from the saal passed in front of the two still sitting quietly grouped in the light of the

summerhouse. They were challenged as they passed and turned soft profiles and stood talking. Behind the

voices,flutings, single notes, broken phrases, long undisturbed warblings came from the garden.

Clara was at the piano. Tall behind her stood Millie's gracious shapeless babyform.

As Millie's voice climbing carefully up and down the even stages of Solveig's song reached the second verse,

Miriam tried to separate the music from the words. The words were wrong. She half saw a fair woman with a

great crown of plaited hair and very broad shoulders singing the song in the Hanover concertroom in

Norwegian. She remembered the moment of taking her eyes away from the singer and the platform, and

feeling the crowded room and the airlessness, and then the song going steadily on from note to note as she

listened . . . no trills and no tune . . . saying something. It stood in the air. All the audience were saying it.

And then the fairhaired woman had sung the second verse as though it was something about

herselftragically . . . tragic muse. . . . It was not her song, standing there in the velvet dress. . . . She

stopped it from going on. There was nothing but the movement of the lace round her shoulders and chest, her

expanded neck, quivering, and the pressure in her voice. . . . And then there had been Herr Bossenberger,

hammering and shouting it out in the saal with Millie, and everything in the schoolroom, even the dust on the

paperrack, standing out clearer and clearer as he bellowed slowly along. And then she had got to know that

everybody knew about it; it was a famous song. There were people singing it everywhere in German and

French and Englisha girl singing about her lover. . . . It was not that; even if people sang it like that, if a

real girl had ever sung something like that, that was not what she meant . . . "the winter may pass" . . . yes,

that was all rightand mountains with green slopes and narrow torrentsand a voice going strongly out and

ceasing, and all the sky filled with the soundand the song going on, walking along, thinking to itself. . . .

She looked about as Millie's voice ceased trembling on the last high note. She hoped no one would hum the

refrain. There was no one there who knew anything about it. . . . Judy? Judy knew, perhaps. Judy would never

hum or sing anything. If she did, it would be terrible. She knew so much. Perhaps Judy knew everything. She

was sitting on the low sill of the window behind the piano sewing steel beads on to a shot silk waistband held

very close to her eyes. Minna could. Minna might be sitting in her plaid dress on the windowseat with her

The housekeeper brought in the milk and rolls and went away downstairs again. The cold milk was very

refreshing but the room grew stifling as they all sat round near the little centre table with the French window

nearly closed, shutting off the summerhouse and garden. Everybody in turn seemed to be saying "Ik kenne

meine Tasse sie ist svatz." Bertha had begun it, holding up her white glass of milk as she took it from the tray

"Platt Deutsch sprichtsie, ja?" Clara had said. It seemed as if there were no more to be said about the

housekeeper. At prayers when they were all saying "Vater unser," she heard Jimmie murmur, "Ik kenne

Fraulein Pfaff came upstairs behind the girls and ordered silence as they went to their rooms. "Hear, all,

children," she said in German in the quiet clear even tone with which she had just read prayers, "no one to

speak to her neighbour, no one to whisper or bustle, nor tonight to brush her hair, but each to compose her

mind and go quietly to her rest. Thus acting the so great heat shall injure none of us and peaceful sleep will

Answering voices came from the bedrooms. She entered each room, shifting screens, opening each window

"Each her little corner," she said in Miriam's room, "fresh water set for the morning. The heavens are all

Gently sighing and moaning Ulrica moved about in her corner. Emma dropped a slipper and muttered

consolingly. Thankfully Miriam listened to Fraulein's short, deprecating footsteps pacing up and down the

landing. She was safe from the dreadful challenge of conversation with her pupils. She felt hemmed in in the

stifling room with the landing full of girls all round her. She wanted to push away her screen, push up the hot

white ceiling. She wished she could be safely upstairs with Mademoiselle and the height of the candlelit

garret above her head. It could not possibly be hotter up there than in this stifling room with its draperies and

Fraulein came in very soon and turned out the light with a formal goodnight greeting. For a while after all

Across the landing someone began to sneeze rapidly sneeze after sneeze. "Ach, die Millie!" muttered Emma

sleepily. For several minutes the sneezing went on. Sighs and impatient movements sounded here and there.

Miriam could not remember hearing Fraulein Pfaff go away when she woke in the darkness feeling

unendurably oppressed. She flung her sheet aside and turned her pillow over and pushed her frilled sleeves to

her elbows. How energetic I am, she thought and lay tranquil. There was not a sound. "I shall never be able to

sleep down here, it's too awful," she murmured, and puffed and shifted her head on the pillow.

The Winter maypass. . . . The winter . . . may pass. The winter may . . . pass. The Academy . . . a picture

in very bright colours . . . a woman sitting by the roadside with a shawl round her shoulders and a red skirt

and red cheeks and bright green country behind her . . . people moving about on the shiny floor, someone just

behind saying, "that is pleinair, these are the pleinairistes"the woman in the picture was like the

A brilliant light flashed into the room . . . lightninghow strange the room lookedthe screens had been

movedthe walls and corners and little beds had looked like daylight. Someone was talking across the

landing. Emma was awake. Another flash came and movements and cries. Emma screamed aloud, sitting up

in bed. "Ach Gott! Clara! _Clara!_" she screamed. Cries came from the next room. A match was struck

across the landing and voices sounded. Gertrude was in the room lighting the gas and Clara tugging down the

blind. Emma was sitting with her hands pressed to her eyes, quickly gasping, "Ach Clara! Mein Gott! Ach

Gott!" On Ulrica's bed nothing was visible but a mound of bedclothes. The whole landing was astir.

Miriam was the last to reach the schoolroom. The girls were drawn up on either side of the gaslit

roomleaving the shuttered windows clear. She moved to take a chair at the end of the table in front of the

saal doors. "Na!" said Fraulein sharply from the sofacorner. "Not there! In full current!" Her voice shook.

Miriam drew the chair to the end of the room of figures and sat down next to Solomon Martin. The wind

rushed through the garden, the thunder rattled across the sky. "Oh, Clara! Fraulein! Nein!" gasped Emma.

She was sitting opposite, between Clara and Jimmie with flushed face and eyes strained wide, twisting her

linked hands against her knees. Jimmie patted her wrist, "It's all right, Emmchen," she muttered cheerfully.

"Nein, Christina!" jerked Fraulein sharply. "I will not have that! To touch the flesh! You understand, all! That

Miriam leaned forward and glanced. Fraulein was sitting very upright on the sofa in a shapeless black cloak

with her hands clasped on her breast. Near her was Ulrica in her trailing white dressinggown, her face

pressed against the back of the sofa. In the far corner, the other side of Fraulein sat Gertrude in her grey

ulster, her knees comfortably crossed, a quilted scarlet silk bedroomslipper sticking out under the hem of

The thunder crashed and pounded just above them. Everyone started and exclaimed. Emma flung her arms up

across her face and sat back in her chair with a hooting cry. From the sofa came a hidden sobbing and

Miriam wished they could see the lightning and be prepared for the crashes. If she were alone she would

watch for the flashes and put her fingers in her ears after each flash. The shock of the sound was intolerable

to her. Once it had broken, she drank in the tumult joyfully. She sat tense and miserable longing to get to bed.

She wondered whether it would be of any use to explain to Fraulein that they would be safer in their iron

bedsteads than anywhere in the house. She tried to distract her thoughts. . . . Fancy Jimmie's name being

Christina. . . . It suited her exactly sitting there in her little striped dressinggown with its "toby" frill. How

Harriett would scream if she could see them all sitting round. But she and Harriett had once lain very quiet

and frightened in a storm by the seathe thunder and lightning had come together and someone had looked

in and said, "There won't be another like that, children." "My boots, I should hope not," Harriett had said.

For a while it seemed as though cannon balls were being thumped down and rumbled about on the floor

above; then came another deafening crash. Jimmie laughed and put up her hand to her looselypinned

topknot as if to see whether it was still there. Outcries came from all over the room. After the first shock

which had made her sit up sharply and draw herself convulsively together, Miriam found herself turning

towards Solomon Martin who had also stirred and sat forward. Their eyes met full and consulted. Solomon's

lips were compressed, her perspiring face was alight and determined. Miriam felt that she looked for long into

those steady, oily halfsmiling brown eyes. When they both relaxed she sat back, catching a sympathetic

challenging flash from Gertrude. She drew a deep breath and felt proud and easy. Let it bang, she said to

herself. I must think of doors suddenly bangingthat never makes me jumpyand she sat easily breathing.

Fraulein had said something in German in a panting voice, and Bertha had stood up and said, "I'll get the

"It's really perfectly all right, Fraulein," said Bertha, getting quietly to the door.

As Fraulein opened the great book on her knees the rain hissed down into the garden.

"Gott sei Dank," she said, in a clear childlike voice. "It dot besser wenn da regnet?" enquired the

housekeeper, looking round the room. She began vigorously wiping her face and neck with the skirt of the

Fraulein read Psalms, ejaculating the short phrases as if they were petitions, with a pause between each.

As the storm began to abate a little party of English went to the kitchen and brought back milk and biscuits

"You will be asleep, Miss Hendershon." Miriam started at the sound of Ulrica's wailing whisper. Fraulein had

only just gone. She had been sitting on the end of Emma's bed talking quietly of selfcontrol and now Emma

was asleep. Ulrica's corner had been perfectly quiet. Miriam had been lying listening to the steady swishing

"Oh, it was most wonderful. Only hear and I shall tell you. This evening when the storm leave himself down

"It was as my Konfirmation. I think of that wonderful day, my white dress, the flowerbouquet and how I

"I weeped so! All day I have weeped! The all whole day! And my mozzer she console me I shall not weep.

Miriam felt as if she were being robbed. . . . This was Ulrica. "You remember the Konfirmation, miss?"

Miriam lay thinking of how she and Harriett on their confirmation morning had met the vicar in the Upper

Richmond Road, having gone out, contrary to the desire expressed by him at his last preparation class, and

how he had stopped and greeted them. She had tried to look vague and sad and to murmur something in spite

of the bull'seye in her cheek and had suddenly noticed as they stood grouped that Harriett's little sugarloaf

hat was askew and her brown eye underneath it was glaring fixedly at the vicar above the little knob in her

cheekand how they somehow got away and went, gently reeling and colliding, moaning and gasping down

Early next morning Judy came in to tell Emma and Ulrica to get up at once and come and help the

housekeeper make the rooms tidy and prepare breakfast. Miriam lay motionless while Emma unfolded and

arranged the screens. Then she gazed at the ceiling. It was pleasant to lie tranquil, openeyed and

unchallenged while others moved busily about. Two separate, sudden and resounding garglings almost

startled her to thought, but she resisted, and presently she was alone in the strange room. She supposed it

must be cooler after the storm. She felt strong and languid. She could feel the shape and weight of each limb;

sounds came to her with perfect distinctness; the sounds downstairs and a lowvoiced conversation across the

landing, little faint marks that human beings were making on the great wide stillness, the stillness that

brooded along her white ceiling and all round her and right out through the world; the faint scent of her

soaptablet reached her from the distant washstand. She felt that her short sleep must have been perfect, that

it had carried her down and down into the heart of tranquillity where she still lay awake, and drinking as if at

a source. Cool streams seemed to be flowing in her brain, through her heart, through every vein, her breath

She remembered that she had dreamed her favourite dreamfloating through clouds and above treetops and

villages. She had almost brushed the treetops, that had been the happiest moment, and had caught sight of a

circular seat round the trunk of a large old tree and a group of white cottages.

She stirred; her hands seemed warm on her cool chest and the warmth of her body sent up a faint pleasant

She wanted to have the whole world in and be reconciled. But she knew that if anyone came, she would

contract and the expression of her face would change and they would hate her or be indifferent. She knew

She listened for a while to two voices across the landing. Millie's thick and plaintive with her hayfever and

Bertha's thin and cold and level and reassuring. . . . Bertha's voice was like the morning, clean and cool. . . .

The sky was a vivid greyagainst its dark background the tops of heavy masses of cloud were standing up

just above the roofline of the houses beyond the neighbouring gardens. The trees and the grey roofs and the

faces of the houses were staringly bright. They were absolutely stiff, nothing was moving, there were no

A soft distant rumble of thunder came as she was dressing. . . . The storm was still going on . . . what an

extraordinary time of day for thunder . . . the excitement was not over . . . they were still a besieged party . . .

all staying at the Bienenkorb together. . . . How beautiful it sounded rumbling away over the country in the

morning. When she had finished struggling with her long thick hair and put the hairpins into the solid coil on

the top of her head and tied the stout doubled doorknocker plait at her neck, she put on the rosemadder

blouse. The mirror was lower and twice as large as the one in the garret, larger than the one she had shared

with Harriett. "How jolly I look," she thought, "jolly and big somehow. Mother would like me this morning. I

_am_ Germanlooking today, pinky red and yellow hair. But I haven't got a German expression and I don't

smile like a German. . . . She smiled. . . . Silly, babyface! Doll! Never mind! I look jolly. She looked gravely

into her eyes. . . . There's something about my expression." Her face grew wistful. "It isn't vain to like it. It's

something. It isn't me. It's something I am, somehow. Oh, _do_ stay," she said, "do be like that always." She

sighed and turned away saying in Harriett's voice, "Oocrumbs! This is no place for _me."_

The sky seen from the summerhouse was darker still. There were no massed clouds, nothing but a hard even

dark coppergrey, and away through the gap the distant country was bright like a little painted scene. On the

horizon the hard dark sky shut down. At intervals thunder rumbled evenly, far away. Miriam stood still in the

middle of the summerhouse floor. It was halfdark; the morning saal lay in a hot sultry twilight. The air in

the summerhouse was heavy and damp. She stood with her halfclosed hands gathered against her. "How

perfectly magnificent," she murmured, gazing out through the hard halfdarkness to where the brightly

For a second Miriam did not turn. She drank in the quiet "yes, yes," the hard fixed scene seemed to move.

Who loved it too, the dark sky and the storm? Then she focussed her companion who was standing a little

behind her, and gazed at Fraulein; she hardly saw her, she seemed still to see the outdoor picture. Fraulein

made a movement towards her; and then she saw for a moment the strange grave young look in her eyes.

Fraulein had looked at her in that moment as an equal. It was as if they had embraced each other.

Fraulein sighed, looking out across the country. "We are in the hollow of His Hand," she murmured. "Come

There was no church. Late in the afternoon when the sky lifted they all went to the woods in their summer

dresses and hats. They had permission to carry their gloves and Elsa Speier's parasol and lace scarf hung from

her wrist. The sky was growing higher and lighter, but there was no sun. They entered the dark woods by a

little wellswept pathway and for a while there was a strip of sky above their heads; but presently the trees

grew tall and dense, the sky was shut out and their footsteps and voices began to echo about them as they

straggled along, grouping and regrouping as the pathway widened and narrowed, gathering their skirts clear

of the wet undergrowth. They crossed a roadway and two carriage loads of men and women talking and

laughing and shouting with shining red faces passed swiftly by, one close behind the other. Beyond the

roadway the great trees towered up in a sort of twilight. There were no flowers here, but bright fungi shone

here and there about the roots of the trees and they all stood for a moment to listen to the tinkling of a little

Pathways led away in all directions. It was growing lighter. There were faint chequers of light and shade

about them as they walked. The forest was growing golden all round them, lifting and opening, gold and

green, clearer and clearer. There were bright jewelled patches in amongst the trees; the boles of the trees

shone out sharp grey and silver and flaked with sharp green leaves away and away until they melted into a

mist of leafage. Singing sounded suddenly away in the wood; a sudden strong shouting of men's voices

Between the two exclamatory shouts, the echo rang through the woods and the listening girls heard the sharp

drip, drip and murmur of the little stream near by, then the voices swung on into the song, strongly

interwoven, swelling and lifting; dropping to a soft even staccato and swelling strongly out again.

"Wie scheinst du mir in's Herz hinein Weck'st drinnen lauter Liebeslust, Dass mir so enge wird die Brust O

When the voices ceased there was a faint distant sound of crackling twigs and the echo of talking and

"I think we ought to get back, Gertrude. Fraulein _said_ only an hour altogether and it's church tonight."

As they began to retrace their steps Clara softly sang the last line of the song, the highest note ringing, faint

"Holah!" A mighty answering shout rang through the wood. It was like a word of command.

The next afternoon they all drove in a high wide brake with an awning, five miles out into the country to have

tea at a forestinn. The inn appeared at last standing back from the wide roadway along which they had

come, creamywhite and greyroofed, long and low and with overhanging eaves, close against the forest.

They pulled up and Pastor Lahmann dropped the steps and got out. Miriam who was sitting next to the door

felt that the long sitting in two rows confronted in the hard afternoon light, bumped and shaken and teased

with the crunchings and slitherings of the wheels the grinding and squeaking of the brake, had made them all

enemies. She had sat tense and averted, seeing the general greenery, feeling that the cool flowing air might be

great happiness, conscious of each form and each voice, of the insincerity of the exclamations and the babble

of conversation that struggled above the noise of their going, half seeing Pastor Lahmann opposite to her, a

little insincerely smiling man in an alpaca suit and a soft felt hat. She got down the steps without his

assistance. With whom should she take refuge? . . . no Minna. There were long tables and little round tables

standing about under the trees in front of the inn. Some students in Polytechnik uniform were leaning out of

The landlord came out. Everyone was out of the brake and standing about. Tall Fraulein was taking short

padding steps towards the inndoor. A strong grip came on Miriam's arm and she was propelled rapidly along

towards the farther greenery. Gertrude was talking to her in loud rallying tones, asking questions in German

and answering them herself. Miriam glanced round at her face. It was crimson and quivering with laughter.

The strong laughter and her strong features seemed to hide the peculiar roughness of her skin and coarseness

of her hair. They made the round of one of the long tables. When they were on the far side Gertrude said, "I

Their party was taking possession of a long table near by. Returning to her voluble talk, Gertrude steered

As they settled round the table under the quiet trees the first part of the waltz movement of Weber's

"Invitation" sounded out through the upper window. The brilliant tuneless passages bounding singly up the

Everyone stirred. Smiles broke. Fraulein lifted her head until her chin was high, smiled slowly until the

Pastor Lahmann laughed with raised eyebrows. "Ah! la valse . . . les etudiants."

The window was empty. The assault settled into a gentlyleaping, heavilythudding waltz.

As the waiter finished clattering down a circle of cups and saucers in front of Fraulein, the unseen iron hands

dropped tenderly into the central melody of the waltz. The notes no longer bounded and leaped but went

It seemed to Miriam that the sound of a faroff sea was in them, and the wind and the movement of distant

trees and the shedding and pouring of faraway moonlight. One by one, delicately and quietly the young men's

voices dropped in, and the sea and the wind and the trees and the pouring moonlight came near.

When the music ceased Miriam hoped she had not been gazing at the window. It frightened and disgusted her

to see that all the girls seemed to be sitting up and . . . being bright . . . affected. She could hardly believe it.

She flushed with shame. . . . Fast, horrid . . . perfect strangers . . . it was terrible . . . it spoilt everything.

Sitting up like that and grimacing. . . . It was different for Gertrude. How happy Gertrude must be. She was

sitting with her elbows on the table laughing out across the table about something. . . . Millie was not being

horrid. She looked just as usual, pudgy and babyish and surprised and half resentful . . . it was her eyebrows.

There was a sudden silence all round the table. Standing at Fraulein's side was a young student holding his

peaked cap in his hand and bowing with downcast eyes. Above his pallid scarred face his hair stood upright.

He bowed at the end of each phrase. Miriam's heart bounded in anticipation. Would Fraulein let them dance

But Fraulein with many smiles and kind words denied the young man's formally repeated pleadings. They

They were driving swiftly along through the twilight. The warm scents of the woods stood across the

roadway. They breathed them in. Sitting at the forward end of the brake, Miriam could turn and see the

Underneath the awning, faces were growing dim. Warm at her side was Emma. Emma's hand was on her arm

under a mass of fern and grasses. Voices quivered and laughed. Miriam looked again and again at Pastor

Lahmann sitting almost opposite to her, next to Fraulein Pfaff. She could look at him more easily than at

either of the girls. She felt that only he could feel the beauty of the evening exactly as she did. Several times

she met and quietly contemplated his dark eyes. She felt that there was someone in those eyes who was

neither tiresome nor tame. She was looking at someone to whom those boys and that dead wife were nothing.

At first he had met her eyes formally, then with obvious embarrassment, and at last simply and gravely.

She felt easy and happy in this communion. Dimly she was conscious that it sustained her, it gave her dignity

and poise. She thought that its meaning must, if she observed it at all, be quite obvious to Fraulein and must

reveal her to her. Presently her eyes were drawn to meet Fraulein's and she read there a disgust and a loathing

such as she had never seen. The woods receded, the beauty dropped out of them. The crunching of the wheels

sounded out suddenly. What was the good of the brakeload of grimacing people? Miriam wanted to stop it

A deep voice on the steps of the brake. . . . "Have the ladies lost a wheel, perhaps?" Miriam translated

In a moment a brake overtook them and drove alongside in the twilight. The drivers whipped up their horses.

The two vehicles raced and rumbled along keeping close together. Fraulein called to their driver to desist.

The students slackened down too and began singing at random, one against the other; those on the near side

standing up and bowing and laughing. A bouquet of fern fronds came in over Judy's head, missing the awning

and falling against Clara's knees. She rose and flung it back and then everyone seemed to be standing up and

They drove home, slowly, side by side, shouting and singing and throwing. Warm, blinding masses of

fragrant grass came from the students' brake and were thrown to and fro through the darkness lit by the lamps

Into all the gatherings at Waldstrasse the outside world came like a presence. It removed the sense of

pressure, of being confronted and challenged. Everything that was said seemed to be incidental to it, like

Miriam wondered again and again whether her companions shared this sense with her. Sometimes when they

were all sitting together she longed to ask, to find out, to get some public acknowledgment of the magic that

lay over everything. At times it seemed as if could they all be still for a momentit must take shape. It was

everywhere, in the food, in the fragrance rising from the opened lid of the teaurn, in all the needful

unquestioned movements, the requests, the handings and thanks, the going from room to room, the partings

and assemblings. It hung about the fabrics and fittings of the house. Overwhelmingly it came in through

oblongs of window giving on to stairways. Going upstairs in the light pouring in from some uncurtained

Whenever she found herself alone she began to sing, softly. When she was with others a head drooped or

lifted, the movement of a hand, the light falling along the detail of a profile could fill her with happiness.

It made companionship a perpetual question. At rare moments there would come a tingling from head to foot,

a faint buzzing at her lips and at the tip of each finger. At these moments she could raise her eyes calmly to

those about her and drink in the fact of their presence, see them all with perfect distinctness, but without

distinguishing one from the other. She wanted to say, "Isn't it extraordinary? Do you realise?" She felt that if

only she could make her meaning clear all difficulties must vanish. Outside in the open, going forward to

some goal through sunny mornings, gathering at inns, wading through the scented undergrowth of the woods,

she would dream of the secure return to Waldstrasse, their own beleaguered place. She saw it opening out

warm and familiar back and back to the strange beginning in the winter. They would be there again tonight,

One morning she knew that there was going to be a change. The term was coming to an end. There was to be

"Ah!" she responded mysteriously. For the rest of that day she sat contracted and fearful.

"You shall write and enquire of your good parents what they would have you do. You shall tell them that the

German pupils return all to their homes; that the English pupils go for a happy holiday to the sea."

"It is of course evident that since you will have no duties to perform, I cannot support the expense of your

She sat shivering in the warm dim saal shaded by the close sunblinds. It looked as she had seen it with her

father for the first time and Fraulein sitting near seemed to be once more in the heavy panniered, blue velvet

She waited stiff and ugly till Fraulein, secure and summerclad, spoke softly again.

"I think you have many qualities that make the teacher. . . . You are earnest and seriousminded. . . . Grave. .

. . Sometimes perhaps overgrave for your years. . . . But you have a serious faultwhich must be corrected if

Miriam tried to pull her features into an easy enquiring seriousness. A darkness was threatening her. "You

"You must adopt a quite, quite different manner. Your influence is, I think, good, a good English influence in

its most general effect. But it is too slightly so and of too much indirection. You must exert it yourself, in a

manner more alive, you must make it your aim that you shall have a responsible influence, a direct personal

influence. You have too much of chill and formality. It makes a stiffness that I am willing to believe you do

"If you should fail to become more genial, more simple and natural as to your bearing, you will neither make

"No" responded Miriam, assuming an air of puzzled and interested consideration of Fraulein's words. She

was recovering. She must get to the end of the interview and get away and find the answer. Far away beneath

her fear and indignation, Fraulein was answered. She must get away and say the answer to herself.

"To truly fulfil the most serious r�le of the teacher you must enter into the personality of each pupil and

must sympathise with the struggles of each one upon the path on which our feet are set. Efforts to good

kindliness and thought for others must be encouraged. The teacher shall he sunshine, human sunshine,

Fraulein rose and stood, tall. Then her halftottering decorous footsteps began. Miriam had hardly listened to

"I shall say now no more. But when you shall hear from your good parents, we can further discuss our plans."

Fraulein left the saal by the small door and Miriam felt her way to the schoolroom. The girls were gathering

there ready for a walk. Some were in the hall and Fraulein's voice was giving instructions: "Machen Sie

Fraulein had never before called to her like that. It had always been as if she did not see her but assumed her

Now it was Fraulein calling to her as she might do to Gertrude or Solomon. There was no hurried whisper

"Ja, Fraulein," she cried gaily and blundered towards the basement stairs. Mademoiselle was standing averted

at the head of them; Miriam glanced at her. Her face was red and swollen with crying.

The sight amazed Miriam. She considered the swollen suffusion under the large black hat as she ran

downstairs. She hoped Mademoiselle did not see her glance. . . . Mademoiselle, standing there all disfigured

and blotchy about something . . . it was nothing . . . it couldn't be anything. . . . If anyone were dead she

would not be standing there . . . it was just some silly prim French quirk . . . her dignity . . . someone had

been "grossiere" . . . and there she stood in her black hat and black cotton gloves. . . . Hurriedly putting on her

hat and long lace scarf she decided that she would not change her shoes. Somewhere out in the sunshine a

hurdygurdy piped out the air of "Dass du mich liebst das wusst ich." She glanced at the frosted barred

window through which the dim light came into the dressingroom. The piping notes, out of tune, wrongly

emphasised, slurring one into the other, followed her across the dark basement hall and came faintly to her as

she went slowly upstairs. There was no hurry. Everyone was talking busily in the hall, drowning the sound of

her footsteps. She had forgotten her gloves. She went back into the cool grey musty rooms. A little crack in

an upper pane shone like a gold thread. The barrelorgan piped. As she stooped to gather up her gloves from

the floor she felt the cold stone firm and secure under her hand. And the house stood up all round her with its

rooms and the light lying along stairways and passages, and outside the bright hot sunshine and the roadways

How could Fraulein possibly think she could afford to go to Norderney? They would all go. Things would go

on. She could not go therenor back to England. It was cruel . . . just torture and worry again . . . with the

bright house all round herthe high rooms, the dark old pianos, strange old garret, the unopened door

As they walked she laughed and talked with the girls, responding excitedly to all that was said. They walked

along a broad and almost empty boulevard in two rows of four and five abreast, with Mademoiselle and Judy

bringing up the rear. The talk was general and there was much laughter. It was the kind of interchange that

arose when they were all together and there was anything "in the air," the kind that Miriam most disliked. She

joined in it feverishly. It's perfectly natural that they should all be excited about the holidays she told herself,

stifling her thoughts. But it must not go too far. They wanted to be jolly. . . . If I could be jolly too they would

like me. I must not be a wet blanket. . . . Mademoiselle's voice was not heard. Miriam felt that the steering of

the conversation might fall to anyone. Mademoiselle was extinguished. She must exert her influence.

Presently she forgot Mademoiselle's presence altogether. They were all walking along very quickly. . . . If she

were going to Norderney with the English girls she must be on easy terms with them.

Millie looked pensively about her with vague disapproval. Her eyebrows were up. It seemed as if anything

might happen; as if at any moment they might all begin running in different directions.

Following their eyes she found the figure of Pastor Lahmann walking swiftly bag in hand in the direction of

At once she felt that it was cruel to draw attention to Mademoiselle when she was dumpy and upset.

The group walked on for a moment or two in silence. Bertha Martin was swinging her left foot out across the

"You are very clever, Bairta," said Mademoiselle, still in French, "but you will never make a prima

"Isn't she?" said Miriam, feeling that she was throwing away the last shred of her dignity.

Mademoiselle's instant response to her cry at the sight of Pastor Lahmann rang in her ears. She blushed to the

soles of her feet. . . . How could Mademoiselle misunderstand her insane remark? What did she mean? What

did she really think of her? Just kind old Lahmannwalking along there in the outside world. . . . _She_ did

not want to stop him. . . . He was a sort of kinsman for Mademoiselle . . . that was what she had meant. Oh,

why couldn't she get away from all these girls? . . . indeedand again she saw the hurrying figure which had

disappeared leaving the boulevard with its usual effect of a great strange oceanhe could have brought help

and comfort to all of them if he had seen them and stopped. Pastor LahmannLahmannperhaps she

"Fearful!" Jimmie's face came round, roundeyed under her white sailor hat that sat slightly tilted on the peak

"Something about a letter or something, or some letters or somethingI don't know. Something she took out

of the letterbox, it was unlocked or something and Ulrica saw her _and told Lily!"_

"Yes, and Lily had her in her room and Ulrica and poor little Petite couldn't deny it. Ulrica said she did

"Oh, I don't know. There was a fearful row anyhow. Ulrica said Lily talked like a clergymanwie ein

Pfarrer. . . . I don't know. Ulrica said she was _opening_ a letter. _I_ don't know."

"Oh, my dear, don't ask me to explain the peculiarities of the French temperament."

"Yes, but all the letters in the letterbox would be English or German, as Hendy says."

Bertha glanced at Miriam. Miriam flushed. She could not discuss Mademoiselle with two of the girls at once.

"You're right, my son. It's rum. It's all over now, anyhow. There's no accounting for tastes. Poor old Petite."

Miriam woke in the moonlight. She saw Mademoiselle's face as it had looked at teatime, pale and cruel,

silent and very old. Someone had said she had been in Fraulein's room again all the afternoon. . . . Fraulein

had spoken to her once or twice during tea. She had answered coolly and eagerly . . . disgusting . . . like a

child that had been whipped and forgiven. . . . How could Fraulein dare to forgive anybody?

She lay motionless. The night was cool. The screens had not been moved. She felt that the door was shut.

"You see the trouble _was,"_ she said and saw Eve's downcast believing admiring sympathetic face,

"Fraulein talked to me about manner, she simply wanted me to grimace, _simply._ _You_ knowbe like

"I mean I think it would be simply lovely. If I were clever like you I should do it all the time, be simply

Then she reminded Eve of the day they had walked up the lane to the Heath talking over all the manners they

would like to haveand how Sarah suddenly in the middle of supper had caricatured the one they had

chosen. "Of course you overdid it," she concluded, and Eve crimsoned and said, "Oh yes, I know it was my

fault. But you could have begun all over again in Germany and been quite different."

"Yes, I know I thought about that. . . . But if you knew as much of the world as I do. . . ."

Miriam thought of Eve's many suitors, of her six months' betrothal, of her lifelong peacemaking, her

experiment in being governess to the two children of an artista little greenrobed boy threatening her with

"I know," smiled Eve confidently. "You mean if I were you. Go on. I know. Explain, old thing."

"Well, I mean of course if you are a governess in a school you _can't_ be jolly and charming. You can't be

idiotic or anything. . . . I did think about it. Don't tell anybody. But I thought for a little while I might go into

a familyone of the girls' familiesthe German girls, and begin having a German manner. Two of the girls

asked me. One of them was ill and went awaythat Pomeranian one I told you about. Well, then, I didn't tell

you about that little one and her sisterthey asked me to go to them for the holidays. The youngest saidit

Why not? Why was she not going to try? Eve would, she was sure in her place. . . .

Why not grimace and be very "bright" and "animated" until the end of the term and then go and stay with the

Bergmanns for two months and be as charming as she could? . . . Her heart sank. . . . She imagined a house,

everyone kind and blond and smiling. Emma's big tall brother smiling and joking and liking her. She would

laugh and pretend and flirt like the Pooles and make up to himand it would be lovely for a little while.

Then she would offend someone. She would offend everyone but Emmaand get tired and cross and lose

her temper. Stare at them all as they said the things everybody said, the things she hated; and she would sit

glowering, and suddenly refuse to allow the women to be familiar with her. . . . She tried to see the brother

more clearly. She looked at the screen. The Bergmanns' house would be full of German furniture. . . . At the

She tried to imagine him without the house and the family, not talking or joking or pretending . . . alone and

sad . . . despising his family . . . needing her. He loved forests and music. He had a great strong solid voice

There would be a garden and German springs and summers and sunsets and strong kind arms and a shoulder.

She would grow so happy. No one would recognise her as the same person. She would wear a band of

turquoiseblue velvet ribbon round her hair and look at the mountains. . . . No good. She could never get out

to that. Never. She could not pretend long enough. Everything would be at an end long before there was any

Certainly with a German man she would be angry at once. She thought of the men she had seenin the

streets, in cafes and gardens, the masters in the school, photographs in the girls' albums. They had all

offended her at once. Something in their bearing and manner. . . . Blind and impudent. . . . She thought of the

interview she had witnessed between Ulrica and her cousinthe cousin coming up from the estate in Erfurth,

arriving in a carriage, Fraulein's manner, her smiles and hints; Ulrica standing in the saal in her sprigged

saffron muslin dress curtseying . . . with bent head, the cousin's condescending laughing voice. It would never

do for her to go into a German home. She must not say anything about the chance of going to the

She imagined Eve sitting listening in the window space in the bow that was carpeted with linoleum to look

like parquet flooring. Beyond them lay the length of the Turkey carpet darkening away under the long table.

She could see each object on the shining sideboard. The silver biscuitbox and the large epergne made her

"You see, Eve, I thought counting it all up that if I came home it would cost less than going to Norderney and

that all the expense of my going to Germany and coming back is less than what it would have cost to keep me

She conjured up a vision of the backs of the books in the bookcase in the diningroom at home. . . . Iliad and

Odyssey . . . people going over the sea in boats and someone doing embroidery . . . that little picture of

Hector and Andromache in the corner of a page . . . he in armour . . . she, in a trailing dress, holding up her

baby. Both, silly. . . . She wished she had read more carefully. She could not remember anything in Lecky or

Darwin that would tell her what to do . . . Hudibras . . . The Atomic Theory . . . Ballads and Poems, D. G.

Rossetti . . . Kinglake's Crimea . . . Palgrave's Arabia . . . Crimea. . . . The Crimea. . . . Florence Nightingale;

a picture somewhere; a refined face, with cap and strings. . . . She must have smiled. . . . Motley's Rise of . . .

Rise of . . . Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic. . . . Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic and the Chronicles

of the SchonbergCotta family. She held to the memory of these two books. Something was coming from

them to her. She handled the shiny brown goldtooled back of Motley's Rise and felt the hard graining of the

redbound Chronicles. . . . There were green trees outside in the moonlight . . . in Luther's Germany . . . trees

and fields and German towns and then Holland. She breathed more easily. Her eyes opened serenely.

Tranquil moonlight lay across the room. It surprised her like a sudden hand stroking her brow. It seemed to

feel for her heart. If she gave way to it her thoughts would go. Perhaps she ought to watch it and let her

thoughts go. It passed over her trouble like her mother did when she said, "Don't go so deeply into

everything, chickie. You must learn to take life as it comes. Aheh if I were strong I could show you how to

enjoy life. . . ." Delicate little mother, running quickly downstairs clearing her throat to sing. But mother did

not know. She had no reasoning power. She could not help because she did not know. The moonlight was sad

and hesitating. Miriam closed her eyes again. Luther . . . pinning up that notice on a church door. . . . (Why is

Luther like a dyspeptic blackbird? Because the Diet of Worms did not agree with him) . . . and then leaving

the notice on the church door and going home to tea . . . coffee . . . some evening meal . . . Kathe . . . Kathe . .

. happy Kathe. . . . They pinned up that notice on a Roman Catholic church . . . and all the priests looked at

them . . . and behind the priests were torture and dark places . . . Luther looking up to God . . . saying you

couldn't get away from your sins by paying money . . . standing out in the world and Kathe making the meal

at home . . . Luther was fat and German. Perhaps his face perspired . . . Eine feste Burg; a firm fortress . . . a

round tower made of old brown bricks and no windows. . . . No need for Kathe to smile. . . . She had been a

nun . . . and then making a lamplit meal for Lather in a wooden German house . . . and Rome waiting to kill

Darwin had come since then. There were people . . . distinguished minds, who thought Darwin was true.

No God. No Creation. The struggle for existence. Fighting. . . . Fighting. . . . Fighting. . . . Everybody groping

and fighting. . . . Fraulein. . . . Some said it was true . . . some not. They could not both be right. It was

probably true . . . only oldfashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just thatmonkeys fighting. But

"Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories fade away; Change and decay in

Mr. Brough quoted Milton in a sermon and said he was a materialist. . . . Pater said it was a bold thing to say.

. . . Mr. Brough was a clearheaded man. She couldn't imagine how he stayed in the Church. . . . She hoped

he hated that sickening, sickening, idiot humbug, Eve . . . meek . . . with silly long hair . . . "divinely smiling"

. . . Adam was like a German . . . English too. . . . Impudent bombastic creature . . . a sort of man who would

call his wife "my dear." There was a hymn that even Pater liked . . . the tune was like a garden in the autumn.

O . . . Strengthen _Stay_up . . . Holdingall Creayaytion. . . . Who . . . ever Dost Thy . . .

selfun . . . MovedaBide. . . . Thyself unmoved abide . . . Thyself unmoved abide . . . Unmoved abide .

. . . Flights of shining steps, shallow and very widegoing 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." . . . God 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

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

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 God do

about people like Sarah? Perhaps Apollyon could be made to come at oncesweeping in like a large

batbe torn to bitsthose men at that college said he had come to them. They sworeone 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 laughingI have my doubts, ooofPooof. She flung off the outer covering and felt the

If there's no God, 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. . . .

"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 breakfasttableit 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

She gazed at them, halffeeling the flummery petals against the palm of her hand. Fraulein seemed cancelled.

There was no need to feel selfconscious. She was not thinking of any of them. Miriam found herself looking

at high grey stone basins with ornamental stems like wineglasses and large square fluted pedestals, filled

with geraniums and calceolarias. They had stood in the sunshine 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

How lovely it would be today 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 shining figure coming to them

through the flood. . . . If they did not they were like the man in a nightcap, his mouth hanging openno

After bedmaking, Fraulein settled a mending party at the windowend of the schoolroom table. She sent no

emissary but was waiting herself in the schoolroom when they came down. She hovered about putting them

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 silencethe whole table

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 bluebound volume. Hoarsely 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 hoarse

whispers. No one appeared to be noticing. A steady breeze coming through the open door of the

summerhouse 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 froFraulein and the raccommodage party

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.

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

"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

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

Miriam ran into the empty summerhouse tearing open a wellfilled envelope. There was a long letter from

Eve, a folded halfsheet from mother. Her heart beat rapidly. Thick straight rain was seething down into the

"Oh, I dunno. Anyhow there's some story of some friend of Fraulein's travelling through to Besan on today

and Mademoiselle's going with her and we're all to take solemn leave and she's not coming back next term.

Mademoiselle, radiantly rosy under her large black French hat, wearing her stockinette jacket and grey dress,

was standing at the end of the schoolroom tablethe girls were all assembled and the door into the hall was

The housekeeper was laughing and shouting and imitating the puffing of a train. Mademoiselle stood smiling

Opposite them was Gertrude with thin white face, blue lips and hotly blazing eyes fixed on Mademoiselle.

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

The room was taking leave of Mademoiselle almost in silence. The English were standing together. Miriam

heard their voices. "'Dieu, m'selle, 'dieu, m'selle," one after the other and saw hands and wrists move

vigorously up and down. The Germans were commenting, "Ah, she is engagedah, what_engaged._

Miriam dreaded her turn. Mademoiselle was coming near . . . so cheap and commonlooking with her hard

grey dress and her cheap jacket with the hat hiding her hair and making her look skinny and old. She was a

more dreadful stranger than she had been at first . . . Miriam wished she could stay. She could not let anyone

go away like this. They would not meet again and Mademoiselle was going away detesting her and them all,

going away in disgrace and not minding and going to be married. All the time there had been that waiting for

her. She was smiling now and showing her babyish teeth. How could Jimmie hold her by the shoulders?

"Why doesn't she go?" thought Miriam as Mademoiselle ran down the room. "Adieu, adieu

Jimmie answered and Fraulein came to the table and stood leaning for a moment upon one hand.

"I shall speak in English, because the most that I shall say concerns the English members of this household

and its heavy seriousness will be by those who are not English, sufficiently understood."

Miriam flushed, struggling for selfpossession. She determined not to listen. . . . Damn . . . Devil . . ." she

exhorted herself . . . "humbugging creature . . ." She felt the blood throbbing in her face and her eyes and

looked at no one. She was conscious that little movements and sounds came from the Germans, but she heard

nothing but Fraulein's voice which had ceased. It had been the clearcut lowbreathing tone she used at

prayers. "Oh, Lord, bother, damnation," she reiterated in her discomfiture. The words echoing through her

"That dear child," smiled Fraulein's voice, "who has just left us, came under this roof . . . nearly a year ago.

"She came, a tender girl (MademoiselleMademoiselle, oh, goodness!) from the house of her pious parents,

fromme Eltern, fromme Eltern." Fraulein breathed these words slowly out and a deep sigh came from one of

the Germans, "to reside with us. She came in the most perfect confidence with the aim to complete her own

simple education, the pious and simple nurture of a Protestant French girl, and with the aim also to remove

for a period something of the burden lying upon the shoulders of those dear parents in the upbringing of

herself and her brothers and sisters" (And then to leave home and be marriedhow easy, how easy!)

"Honourablyhonourably she has fulfilled each and every duty laid upon her as institutrice in this

"Sufficient to indicate this fulfilment of duty is the fact that she was happy and that she made happy

"Would that I could here complete what I have to say of the sojourn of little Aline Ducorroy under this roof. .

"It has been the experience of this pure and gentle soul to come, under this roof, in contact with things not

Fraulein's voice had become breathless and shaking. Both her hands sought the support of the table.

"This poor child has had unwillingly to suffer the fact of associating with those not pure."

In the silence the leaves of the chestnut tree tapped one against the other. Miriam listened to them . . . there

must be a little breeze blowing across the garden. Why had she not noticed it before? Were they all hearing

"She has been forced, here, in this school, to hear talking"Fraulein's voice thickened"of men . . . ."

_"Mannergeschichten."_ Fraulein's voice rang out down the table. She bent forward so that the light from

both the windows behind her fell sharply across her greyclad shoulders and along the top of her head. There

was no condemnation Miriam felt in those broad grey shouldersthey were innocent. But the head shining

and flat, the wide parting, the sleekness of the hair falling thinly and flatly away from itangry, dreadful

skull. She writhed away from it. She would not look any more. She felt her neck was swelling her

While Fraulein waited, trembling, several of the girls began to snuffle and sob.

"Is there, can there be in the world anything that is more base, more vile, more impure? Is there? Is there?"

Miriam wished she knew who was crying. She tried to fix her thoughts on a hole in the tablecover. "It could

"You are brought here together, each and all of you here together in the time of your youth. It is, it should be

for you the most beautiful occasion. Can you find anything more terrible than that such occasion where all

may work and influence each otherfor all lifein purity and goodnessthat such occasion should he

usedimpurely? Like a dawn, like a dawn for purity should be the life of a maiden. Calm, and pure and with

Miriam repeated these words in her mind trying to dwell on the beauty of Fraulein's middle tones. "And the

day shall come, I shall wish, for all of you, that the sanctity of a home shall be within your hands. What then

shall be the shame, what the regret of those who before the coming of that sacred time did think thoughts of

men, did speak of them? _Shame, shame,"_ whispered Fraulein amidst the sobbing girls.

"With the thoughts of those who have this impure nature I can do nothing. For them it is freely to

acknowledge this evil in the heart and to pray that the heart may be changed and made clean.

"But a thing I can do and I do. . . . I will have no more of this talking. In my school I will have no more. . . .

"Ehh," she sneered. "I know, _I_ know who are the culprits. I have always known." She gasped. "It shall

ceasethese talksthis vile talk of men. Do you understand? It shall cease. Iwillnothave it. . . . The

school shall be clean . . . from pupil to pupil . . . from room to room. . . . Every day . . . every hour. . . .

Shameless!" she screamed. "Shameless. Ah! I know. I know you." She stood with her arms folded, swaying,

and gave a little laugh. "You think to deceive me. You do not deceive me. I know. I have known and I shall

know. This school is mine. Mine! My place! I will have it as I will have it. That is clear and plain, and you all

Mechanically Miriam went downstairs with the rest of the party. With the full force of her nerves she resisted

the echoes of Fraulein's onslaught, refusing to think of anything she had said and blotting out her image every

time it rose. The essential was that she would be dismissed as Mademoiselle had been dismissed. That was

the upshot of it all for her. Fraulein was a mad, silly, pious female who would send her away and go on

The girls were talking all round her, excitedly. She despised them for showing that they were disturbed by

Fraulein's despotic nonsense. As they reached the basement she remembered the letter crushed in her hand

"Dearest Mim. I have a wonderful piece of news for you. I wonder what you will say? It is about Harriett.

With steady hands Miriam turned the closelywritten sheets reading a phrase here and there . . . "regularly in

the seat behind us at All Saints' for monthssaw her with the Pooles at a concert at the Assembly Rooms

and made up his mind thenthe moment he saw herjoined the tennisclubthey won the double

handicapa beautiful Slazenger racquetonly just over sixteenfor yearsof course Mother says it's just

a little foolish nonsensebut I am not sure that she really thinks soGerald took me into his

confidencemade a solemn call_admirably_ suited to each otherrather a long melancholy

goodlooking facethey look such a contrastthe big Canadian Railwaynot exactly a clerksomething

rather above that, to do with making drafts of things and so on. Very sweet and charmingmy own young

daysthat I have reached the great age of twentythreeresident post in the countrytwo little girlswe

think it very good payI shall go in Septemberplenty of timethat you should come home for the long

holidays. We are all looking forward to itthe tennisclubyour name as a holiday memberthe

American tournament in AugustHarry was the youngest lady member like youof course Harry could not

let you come without knowingfind somebody travelling throughFraulein Pfaffexpect to see you

looking like a floursack with a string tied round its waistall the dwarf roses in bloomhardly any

She looked about her like a strangereverything was as it had been the day she camethe little cramped

basement hallthe strange German girlssmall and old looking, poking about amongst the baskets. She

hardly knew them. She passed halfblindly amongst them with her eyes wide. The little dressingroom

seemed full of bright light. She saw everyone at once clearly. All the English girls were there. She knew

every line of each of them. They were her old friends. They knew her. Looking at none of them she felt she

embraced them all, closely, and that they knew it. They shone. They were beautiful. She wanted to cry aloud.

She was English and free. She had nothing to do with this German school. Baskets at her feet made her pick

her way. Solomon was kneeling at one, sorting and handing out. At a little table under the window Millie

stood jotting pencil notes on a pocketbook. Judy was at her side. The others were grouped about the piano.

Miriam looked fearlessly up at the faces that were turned towards her. Again she seemed to see all of them at

once. The circle of her vision seemed huge. It was as if the confining rim of her glasses were gone and she

saw equally from eyes that seemed to fill her face. She drew all their eyes to her. They were waiting for her to

speak. For a moment it seemed as if they stood there lifeless. She had drawn all their meaning and all their

happiness into herself. She could do as she wished with themtheir poor little lives.

They stood waiting for some word from her. She dropped her eyes and caught the flash of Gertrude's

"Mademoiselle told her some pretty things," laughed Gertrude. "Lily thinks we're lost soulsnearly all of

"It's all very well. But there's no knowing what Mademoiselle would make her believe. She'd got reams about

Her thoughts brought back a day when she had shown Mademoiselle the names in her birthdaybook and

dwelt on one page and let Mademoiselle understand that it was the pagebrown eyesles yeux brunes

foncees. Why did Mademoiselle and Fraulein think that badwant to spoil it for her? She had said nothing

about the confidences of the German girls to anyone. Elsa must have found that out from Clara.

"Well, you see there are all sorts of things happening at home. I must go. One of my sisters is engaged and

another going away. I _must_ go home for a while. Of course I _might_ come back."

Miriam struggled up out of her basket. "But I thought you all _liked_ Miss Owen!"

"You never told us you had any sisters, Hendy," said Jimmie, tapping her on the wrist.

"What a pity you're going just as we're getting to know you," Judy smiled shyly and looked on the floor.

"WellI'm off with my bundle," announced Gertrude. "To be continued in our next. Think it over, Hendy.

Don't desert us. Hurry up, my room. It'll be teatime before we're straight. Come on, Jim."

Miriam moved, with Judy following at her elbow, across the room to Millie. She looked up with her little

plaintive frown. Miriam could not remember what her plans were. "Let's see," she said, "you're going to

"I'm not going to Norderney," said Nellie almost tearfully. "I only wish I were. I don't even know I'm coming

Millie stood staring with her pout and her slightly raised eyebrows at the frosted window.

Miriam looked up at the clock dizzily as she drank the last of her coffee. It marked halfpast eleven. Fraulein

had told her to be ready at a quarter to twelve. Her hands felt large and shaky and her feet were cold. The

room was stiflingbare and brown in the gaslight. She left it and crept through the hall where her trunk

stood and up the creaking stairs. She turned up the gas. Emma lay asleep with red eyelids and cheeks. Miriam

did not look at Ulrica. Hurriedly and desolately she packed her bag. She was going home emptyhanded. She

had achieved nothing. Fraulein had made not the slightest effort to keep her. She was just nothing

againwith her Saratoga trunk and her handbag. Harriett had achieved. Harriett. She was just going home

She was ready. She looked numbly round the room. Emma looked very far away. She turned out the gas. The

dim light from the landing shone into the room. She stood for a moment in the doorway looking back. The

room seemed to be empty. There seemed to be nothing in it but the black screen standing round the bed that

In the hall Fraulein began to talk at once, talking until they were seated side by side in the dark cab.

Then Miriam gazed freely at the pale profile shining at her side. Poor Fraulein Pfaff, getting old.

Fraulein began to ask about Miriam's plans for the future. Miriam answered as to an equal, elaborating a little

account of circumstances at home, and the doings of her sisters. As she spoke she felt that Fraulein envied her

her youth and her family at home in Englandand she raised her voice a little and laughed easily and

She used sentimental German words about Harrietta description of her that might have applied to

Emmalittle emphatic tender epithets came to her from the conversations of the girls. Fraulein praised her

German warmly and asked question after question about the house and garden at Barnes and presently of her

"She's such a little thing," said Miriam, "smaller than any of us." Presently Fraulein laid her gloved hand on

Miriam frozeand looked at the gaslamps slowly swinging by along the boulevard. "Much will have

They reached a streetshuttered darkness where the shops were, and here and there the yellow flare of a

cafe. She strained her eyes to see the faces and forms of men and womenbreathing more quickly as she

Her trunk was weighed and registered. There was something to pay. She handed her purse to Fraulein and

stood gazing at the uniformed manruddy and cleareyedclear hard blue eyes and hard clean clear

yellow moustachesdecisive untroubled movements. Passengers were walking briskly about and laughing

and shouting remarks to each other. The train stood waiting for her. The ringing of an enormous bell brought

her hands to her ears. Fraulein gently propelled her up the three steps into a compartment marked

A man with a booming voice came to examine her ticket. He stood bending under the central light, uttering

sturdy German words. Miriam drank them in without understanding. He left the carriage very empty. The

great bell was ringing again. Fraulein standing on the top step pressed both her hands and murmured words of

The door was shut with a slamthe light seemed to go down. Miriam glanced at ithalf the dull green

muslin shade had slipped over the gasglobe. The carriage seemed dark. The platform outside was very

bright. Fraulein had disappeared. The train was high above the platform. Politely smiling Miriam scrambled

to the window. The platform was moving, the large bright station moving away. Fraulein's wide smile was

Standing at the window Miriam smiled sharply. Fraulein's form flowed slowly away with the platform.