Pointed Roofs · Chapter 6 (1/5)

VI

Fräulein Pfaff came to the breakfast table a little late in a grey stuff dress with a cream-coloured ruching about the collar-band and ruchings against her long brown wrists. The girls were already in their places, and as soon as grace was said she began talking in a gentle decisive voice.

“Martins’ sponge bags”⁠—her face creased for her cavernous smile⁠—“are both large and strong⁠—beautiful gummi-bags, each large enough to contain a family of sponges.”

The table listened intently. Miriam tried to remember the condition of her side of the garret. She saw Judy’s scarlet flush across the table.

“Millie,” went on Fräulein, “is the owner of a damp-proof holdall for the bath which is a veritable monument.”

“Monument?” laughed a German voice apprehensively.

“Fancy a monument on your washstand,” tittered Jimmie.

Fräulein raised her voice slightly, still smiling. Miriam heard her own name and stiffened. “Miss Henderson is an Englishwoman too⁠—and our little Ulrica joins the English party.” Fräulein’s voice had thickened and grown caressing. Perhaps no one was in trouble. Ulrica bowed. Her wide-open startled eyes and the outline of her pale face remained unchanged. Still gentle and tender-voiced Fräulein 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 Fräulein could know there were two bathrooms in the house at Barnes, and then wondered whether in German baths one was left to oneself or whether there, too, there would be some woman superintending.

Fräulein jested softly on about her children and their bath. Gertrude and Jimmie recalled incidents of former bathings⁠—the stories went on until breakfast had prolonged itself into a sitting of happy adventurers. The room was very warm, and coffee-scented. Clara at her corner sat with an outstretched arm nearly touching Fräulein 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 undisturbed into the eyes.

Fräulein Pfaff rose at last from the table.

“Na, Kinder,” she smiled, holding her arms out to them all.

She turned to the nearest window.

“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 long-closed outer frame. The girls crowded round as the lattices swung wide. The air poured in.

Miriam stood in a vague crowd seeing nothing. She felt the movement of her own breathing and the cool streaming of the air through her nostrils. She felt comely and strong.

“That’s a thrush,” she heard Bertha Martin say as a chattering flew across a distant garden⁠—and Fräulein’s half-singing 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 weiß⁠—Ritzifizier, sagt sie, Ritzifizier, das vierundzwanzigste Jahr!” and voices imitating.

“Spring! Spring! Spring!” breathed Clara, in a low singsong.

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 and escaped upstairs singing.

Before she had finished her duties a summons came. Jimmie brought the message, panting as she reached the top of the stairs.

“Hurry up, Hendy!” she gasped. “You’re one of the distinguished ones, my dear!”

“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 sharply-quirked little finger and a dangle of lace-edged handkerchief.

“You’re a swell, my dear. You’re in with the specials and the classic knot.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to read⁠—Gerty, or something⁠—no idiots admitted. You’re going it, Hendy. Ta‑ta. Fly! Don’t stick in the mud, old slow coach.”

“I’ll come in a second,” said Miriam, adjusting hairpins.

She was to read Goethe⁠ ⁠… with Fräulein Pfaff.⁠ ⁠… Fräulein knew she would be one of the few who would do for a Goethe reading. She reached the little room smiling with happiness.

“Here she is,” was Fräulein’s greeting. The little group⁠—Ulrica, Minna and Solomon Martin were sitting about informally in the sunlit window space, Minna and Solomon had needlework⁠—Ulrica was gazing out into the garden. Miriam sank into the remaining low-seated wicker chair and gave herself up. Fräulein 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 window⁠—she 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 meadow-covered plain⁠—of a white pathway winding through the green.

Minna put down her sewing and turned her kind blue eyes to Fräulein Pfaff’s face.

Ulrica sat drooping, her head bent, her great eyes veiled, her hands entwined on her lap.⁠ ⁠… The little pathway led to a wood. The wide landscape disappeared. Fräulein’s voice ceased.

She handed the book to Ulrica, indicating the place and Ulrica read. Her voice sounded a higher pitch than Fräulein’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. Fräulein seemed by contrast to have been whispering piously in a corner. 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 and say, “It is all right. I will stay with you always.”

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 Fräulein’s fascinated 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 Ulrica⁠—with a package. “Ein Paket⁠ ⁠… a‑a‑ach,” wailed Ulrica, rising, her hands trembling, her great eyes radiant. Fräulein sent her off with Solomon to superintend the signing and payments and give help with the unpacking.

“The little heiress,” she said devoutly, with her wide smile as she returned from the door.

“Oh⁠ ⁠…” said Miriam politely.

“Sie, nun, Miss Henderson,” concluded Fräulein, 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 sentences⁠—and 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 Fräulein 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 Fräulein and Minna seeing and feeling all these things together. She finished the passage⁠—Fräulein quietly commended her reading and Minna said something about her earnestness.

“Miss Henderson is always a little earnest,” said Fräulein affectionately.

“Are you dressed, Hendy?”

Miriam, who had sat up in her bath when the drumming came at the door, answered sleepily, “No, I shan’t be a minute.”

“Don’t you want to see the diving?”

All Jimmie’s fingers seemed to be playing exercises against the panels. Miriam wished she would restrain them and leave her alone. She did not in the least wish to see the diving.

“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 Harriett⁠—the 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 steam-dimmed beams of the red-globed gas jets⁠ ⁠… sponge fights⁠ ⁠… and those wonderful summer bathings when they had come in from long tennis-playing in the sun, filled the bath with cold water and sat in the silence of broad daylight immersed to the neck, confronting each other.

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, glass-roofed swimming bath. 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 flash⁠—its joined hands pointed downwards towards the water, its white feet sweeping up like the tail of a swooping bird⁠—cleave 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 girls⁠—most of them in their outdoor things⁠—were 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 red-capped 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 her raucous laugh rang out above the applause of the group of girls.

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 curtain of one of the little compartments lining the gallery.

“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. That was clear from the neat way she plunged in through her curtains.⁠ ⁠…

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 Gertrude’s voice from behind her curtains.

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 wonder what we shall do tomorrow,” she presently murmured.

“I don’t,” gasped Gertrude, towelling.

Miriam waited for the prophecy.

“Old Lahmann’s back from Geneva,” came the harsh panting voice.

“Pastor Lahmann?” repeated Miriam.

“None other, Madame.”

“Have you seen him?” went on Miriam dimly, wishing that she might be released.

“Scots wha hae, no! But I saw Lily’s frills.”

The billows of gold hair in the gallery were being piled up by two little hands⁠—white and plump like Eve’s, but with quick clever irritating movements, and a thin sweet self-conscious voice began singing “Du, meine Seele.” Miriam lost interest in the vision.⁠ ⁠… They were all the same. Men liked creatures like that. She could imagine that girl married.

“Lily and his wife were great friends,” Gertrude was saying. “She’s dead, you know.”

“Is she,” said Miriam emphatically.

“She used to be always coming when I first came over, Scots wha⁠—blow⁠—got 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 that Gertrude’s hair was coarse, each hair a separate thread. “She’s the wiry plucky kind. How she must despise me,” said her mind.