Pointed Roofs: Pilgrimage Part 21

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 had come to nothing.

Evidently Fraulein approved of her, after all.

3

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 half-smile, watched her eyebrows flicker faintly up and the little despairing shrug she gave as she went on with her mending.

"Ah, mamma_zell_chen c'est pas mal, ne soyez triste, mein Gott mammazellchen es ist aber nichts!" chided Emma consolingly from her place near the window.

"Oh! je ne veux pas, je ne veux pas," sobbed Mademoiselle.

No one spoke; Mademoiselle lay snuffling and shuddering. Solomon's scissors fell on to the floor. "Mais pour_quoi_ pas, Mademoiselle?" she interrogated as she recovered them.

"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 she sobbed.

"Probably a widder, Mademoiselle," ventured Bertha Martin, "oon voove."

"_Verve,_ Bertha," came Millie's correcting voice and Miriam's interest changed to excited thoughts of Fraulein--not hating her, and choosing Mademoiselle to sleep with the servant, a new servant--the things on the landing--Mademoiselle 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 down-flung 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 Harriett? Not unless it were suggested to them.

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 sleep with a servant."

"Why can't the servant sleep in one of the back attics?" asked Solomon.

"Not furnished, my sweetheart," said Gertrude, "and you know Kinder you're all running on very fast about servants--the good Frau is our housekeeper."

"Will she have meals with us?"

"Gewiss Jimmie, meals."

"Mon Dieu, vous etes terribles, toutes!" came Mademoiselle's voice.

It seemed to bite into the table. "Oh, eest grossiere!" She gathered herself up and escaped into the little schoolroom.

"Armes, armes, Momzell," wailed Ulrica gently gazing out of the window.

"Som one should go, go you, Henchen," urged Emma.

"Don't, for goodness' sake, Hendy," begged Jimmie, "not you, she's wild about you going downstairs," she whispered.

Miriam struggled with her gratification. "Oh go, som one; go you, Clara!"

"Better leave her alone," ruled Gertrude.

"We miss old Minna, don't we?" concluded Bertha.

4

The heat grew intense.

The air was more and more oppressive as the day went on.

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 tea-time, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt.

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... chicken-pox 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 tight-lace? 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 e 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 gra.s.s between the games with her arms under her head... simply disgusting, someone had said...

who... a disgusted face... nearly all the girls detested Bella.

Going through the hall on her way down to the bas.e.m.e.nt 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 bas.e.m.e.nt--but 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 church-room all being silly about Birdy Anwyl roasting chestnuts, and how silly and affected they were when a piece of holly stuck in her skirt.

5

Coming up the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs in response to the tea-gong, 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 something--what he thought of the weather--he looked so different from her memory of him in the saal two Sat.u.r.days ago--two weeks--four cla.s.ses she must have missed. Why? Why was she missing Pastor Lahmann's cla.s.ses?

How had it happened? Perhaps she would see him in cla.s.s again. Perhaps next week....

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 school-girl. The dress was a fine black muslin stamped all over with tiny fish-shaped 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 to-day 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 tea-time. Emma was sweet, pink and bright after her rest in a bright light brown muslin dress dotted with white spots....

Funny German dresses, thought Miriam, funny... and old. Her mind hovered and wondered over these German dresses--did she like them or not--something about them--she 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 sky-blue 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 girls--and yet the dresses were ugly--and the English girls'

dresses were not that... they were nothing... plain cottons and zephyrs with lace tuckers--no ruches. It was something somehow in the ruches--the ruches and the little peaks of neck.

A faint scent of camphor came from the Martins across the way, sitting in their cool creased black-and-white 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 camphor-scented 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 was to the Martins' check dresses that she glanced.