Pointed Roofs: Pilgrimage Part 2

"Yes I do. And you'll be able to write to me."

Eve, easily weeping, hugged her and whispered, "You mustn't. I can't see you break down--don't--don't--don't. We can't be blue your last night.... Think of nice things.... There _will_ be nice things again...

there will, will, will, _will_."

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 between it and the neatly pinned ma.s.ses of brown hair.

"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 room--the 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.

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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 eyes--eyes 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 lodging--privilege to attend Masters' lectures and laundry (body-linen only)." That was all she had thought of and clutched at--all along, since first she read the Fraulein's letter. Her keep and the chance of learning... and Germany--Germany, das deutsche Vaterland--Germany, all woods and mountains and tenderness--Hermann and Dorothea in the dusk of a happy village.

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 times--all her life--all eternity. They would smile those hateful women's smiles--smirks--self-satisfied 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. She was strong and hard somehow....

Pater knew how hateful all the world of women were and despised them.

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

Someone was saying "Hi!" a gurgling m.u.f.fled shout, a long way off.

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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 room.

She revelled in Harriett's delicate buffoonery ("voluntary incongruity"

she quoted to herself as she watched her)--the t.i.tles 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 stretched away into s.p.a.ce.

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

She intoned the t.i.tles on her own shelf--as a response to the quiet swearing and jesting accompanying Harriett's occupations. "The Voyage of the Beeeeeeagle," she sang "Scott's Poetical _Works_."

Villette--Longfellow--Holy Bible _with_ Apocrypha--Egmont--

"Binks!" squealed Harriett daintily. "Yink grink binks."

"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 could not remember which and why.

"Binks," she said, and it was quite easy for them to crowd together at the little dressing-table. Harriett was standing in her little faded red moirette petticoat and a blue flannelette dressing-jacket 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 dressing-table, her own still lifted the skin of her forehead in suffused puckerings against the shank of each pin.

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 tightly-curled 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 sleekly-brushed longer strands which strained over her poll and disappeared into the plait.

"Your old wool'll be just right in Germany," remarked Harriett.

"Mm."

"You ought to do it in basket plaits like Sarah."

"I wish I could. I can't think how she does it."

"Ike spect it's easy enough."

"Mm."

"But you're all right, anyhow."

"Anyhow, it's no good bothering when you're plain."

"You're _not_ plain."

Miriam looked sharply round.

"Go on, Gooby."

"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 to be gone.

Presently Harriett took up a brooch and skated down the room, "Ta-ra-ra-la-eee-tee!" she carolled, "don't be long," and disappeared.

"I'm pretty," murmured Miriam, planting herself in front of the dressing-table. "I'm pretty--they like me--they _like_ me. Why didn't I know?" She did not look into the mirror. "They all like me, _me_."

The sound of the breakfast-bell 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 sleeves.

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 sorry--even the servants. She glanced fearfully out into the garden, seeing nothing. Someone called up from the breakfast-room doorway, "Mim--my!" 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 richer"... it was cheek to say that.

"Mimm--my!"

Suddenly she longed to be gone--to have it all over and be gone.

She heard the kak-kak 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 swing.

With a frightened face Miriam crept back up the stairs. Violently slamming the bedroom door, "I'm a-comin'--I'm a-comin'," she shouted and ran downstairs.

CHAPTER II

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