Pointed Roofs · Chapter 6 (4/5)

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 picture, the coloured sky, the coloured town, the shimmering of the trees.

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 girls with strange mild eyes and filled Miriam with fear.

Presently the girls crossed a little high bridge over a stream, and from the crest of the bridge beyond a high-walled 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 Fräulein’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. “Are they mad?” she whispered.

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 work⁠—Minna was paying long visits to the aurist every day⁠—but she shared the depleted table and knew that the whole school was taking part in weathering the storm of Fräulein’s ill-humour that had broken first upon Anna. She once caught a glimpse of Gertrude flushed and downcast, confronting Fräulein’s reproachful voice upon the stairs; and one day in the basement she heard Ulrica tearfully refuse to clean her own boots and saw Fräulein stand before her bowing and smiling, and with the girls gathered round, herself brush and polish the slender boots.

She was glad to get away with Minna.

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 madder-rose, covered with a black arabesque of tiny leaves and tendrils. It was compactly folded, showing only its turned-down 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 looking glass 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 rose-coloured 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 hand glass, 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 belt.

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 hand glass it came riding up at the side and back with the movement of her arm.

Minna was calling to her from the stairs. She went on to the landing to answer her and found her on the top flight dressed to go out.

“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 little higher at the join.

Going downstairs she saw Pastor Lahmann hanging up his hat in the hall. His childish eyes came up as her step sounded on the lower flight.

Miriam was amazed to see him standing there as though nothing had happened. She did not know that she was smiling at him until his face lit up with an answering smile.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle.”

Miriam did not answer and he disappeared into the Saal.

She went on downstairs listening to his voice, repeating his words over and over in her mind.

Jimmie was sweeping the basement floor with a duster tied round her hair.

“Hullo, Mother Bunch,” she laughed.

“It is weird, isn’t it? Not a bit the kind I meant to have.”

“The blouse is all right, my dear, but it’s all round your ears and you’ve got all the fullness 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 a proper leather belt?”

Minna and Miriam ambled gently along together. Miriam had discarded her little fur pelerine and her double-breasted jacket bulged loosely over the thin fabric of her blouse. She breathed in the leaf-scented air and felt it playing over her breast and neck. She drew deep breaths as they went slowly along under the Waldstraße lime trees 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 sitting room 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 and saying, “It is too tight there”⁠—crack-crack. “I can’t go like that.”⁠ ⁠…

“But you never want to go like that, my dear child,” old Miss Ottridge had laughed, readjusting the pins; “just breathe in your ordinary way⁠—there, see? That’s right.”

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 middle-aged 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 her⁠—obstructed 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 the confinement of her inflexible boots.

They were approaching the Georgstraße with its long-vistaed width and its shops and cafés 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, even docile Minna, always seemed to want to talk about something else.⁠ ⁠…

Suddenly she was aware that Minna was asking her whether, if it was decided that she should leave school at the end of the term, she, Miriam, would come and live with her.

Miriam beamed incredulously. Minna, crimson-faced, with her eyes on the pavement and hurrying along explained that she was alone at home, that she had never made friends⁠—her mother always wanted her to make friends⁠—but she could not⁠—that her parents would be so delighted⁠—that she, she wanted Miriam, “You, you are so different, so reasonable⁠—I could live with you.”

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 term⁠—increasing spring and summer⁠—Fräulein divested of all mystery and fear and then freedom⁠—with Minna.

She glanced at Minna⁠—the cheerful pink face and the pink bulb of nose came round to her and in an excited undertone she murmured something about the Apotheker.

“I should love to come⁠—simply 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 garden⁠—she receiving confidences about the Apotheker⁠—no one else there⁠—the Waldstraße household blotted out⁠—herself and Minna finding pretexts day after day to visit the chemist’s in the little town.

Miriam almost ran home from seeing Minna into the three o’clock train⁠ ⁠… dear beautiful, beautiful Hanover⁠ ⁠… the sunlight blazed from the rain-sprinkled streets. Everything shone. Bright confident shops, happy German cafés 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 side⁠—Harriett’s long scarf and longed to do the “crab walk” for a moment or the halfpenny dip, hippety-hop. She did them in her mind.

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 we are at home call you Miss Henderson.”

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 Fräulein Pfaff.

“Ist Fräulein zu Hause,” she repeated. The girl shook her head vaguely.

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 Schokolade 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 sound anywhere.⁠ ⁠… She would play⁠ ⁠… on the Saal piano.

“I’m not a Lehrerin⁠—I’m not⁠—I’m⁠—not,” she hummed as she collected her music⁠ ⁠… she would bring her songs too.⁠ ⁠… “I’m going to Pom-pom-pom-Pom‑erain‑eeya.”

“Pom‑erain‑eeya,” 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, mademoiselle.”

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 to tears. Fiercely she fixed the sunlit summerhouse, “Oh, I’m not,” she said.

“Not? Is it possible?”

“I think life is perfectly appalling.”

She moved awkwardly to a little chiffonier and put down her music on its marble top.

He came safely following her and stood near again.

“You do not like the life of the school?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You are from the country, mademoiselle.”

Miriam fumbled with her music.⁠ ⁠… Was she?

“One sees that at once. You come from the land.”

Miriam glanced at his solid white profile as he stood with hands clasped, near her music, on the chiffonier. She noticed again that strange flatness of the lower part of the face.

“I, too, am from the land. I grew up on a farm. I love the land and think to return to it⁠—to have my little strip when I am free⁠—when my boys have done their schooling. I shall go back.”

He turned towards her and Miriam smiled into the soft brown eyes and tried to think of something to say.

“My grandfather was a gentleman farmer.”

“Ah⁠—that does not surprise me⁠—but what a very English expression!”

“Is it?”

“Well, it sounds so to us. We Swiss are very democratic.”

“I think I’m a radical.”

Pastor Lahmann lifted his chin and laughed softly.

“You are a vairy ambitious young lady.”

“Yes.”

Pastor Lahmann laughed again.

“I, too, am ambitious. I have a good Swiss ambition.”

Miriam smiled into the mild face.

“You have a beautiful English provairb which expresses my ambition.”

Miriam looked, eagerly listening, into the brown eyes that came round to meet hers, smiling:

“A little land, well-tilled,

A little wife, well-willed,

Are great riches.”

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 Lahmann⁠—presiding. 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 well-willed wives. She must make him see that she did not even recognise such a thing as “a well-willed wife.” She felt her gaze growing fixed and moved to withdraw it and herself.

“Why do you wear glasses, mademoiselle?”

The voice was full of sympathetic wistfulness.

“I have a severe myopic astigmatism,” she announced, gathering up her music and feeling the words as little hammers on the newly seen, pallid, rounded face.

“Dear me⁠ ⁠… I wonder whether the glasses are really necessary.⁠ ⁠… May I look at them?⁠ ⁠… I know something of eye work.”

Miriam detached her tightly fitting pince-nez 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 black-coated knowledge, near at hand, going perhaps to help her.

“You wear them always⁠—for how long?

“Poor child, poor child, and you must have passed through all your schooling with those lame, lame eyes⁠ ⁠… let me see the eyes⁠ ⁠… turn a little to the light⁠ ⁠… so.”