Pointed Roofs: Pilgrimage Part 20

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 home-like.

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 about it for some extraordinary reason.

CHAPTER VII

"Don't let her _do_ it, Miss Henderson."

Fraulein Pfaff's words broke the silence accompanying the servant's progress from Gertrude whose soup-plate she had first seized, to Miriam more than half-way down the table.

Startled into observation Miriam saw the soup-spoon 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 pa.s.sed on to Clara. Clara received her with plate and spoon held firmly together and motioned her before she would relinquish them, to place her load upon the shelf of the lift.

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 soup-plates.

Presently she sat refusing absolutely to accept the judgment silently a.s.sailing her on all hands.

"You are not very domesticated, Miss Henderson."

"No," responded Miriam quietly, in joy and fear.

Fraulein gave a short laugh.

Goaded, Miriam plunged forward.

"We were never even allowed in the kitchen at home."

"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 undertones reached her from the English side. "Fool"... "simply idiotic."

"I've done it now," mused Miriam calmly, on the declining tide of her wrath.

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 suddenly, lately, she has grown worse....

CHAPTER VIII

1

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 gra.s.s 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 be a "milk-walk." 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 shadow--a shadow sloping the wrong way, a morning shadow.

She remembered the first time, the only time, she had noticed such a shadow--getting up very early one morning while Harriett and all the household were still asleep--and 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 porch--had suddenly been glad that she was alone and had wondered why that shadowed porch-peak was more beautiful than all the summer things she knew and felt at that moment that nothing could touch or trouble her again.

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. One of the girls on ahead hummed the refrain of a student-song:--

"In der Ecke steht er Seinen Schnurbart dreht er Siehst du wohl, da steht er schon Der versoff'ne Schwiegersohn."

Miriam felt very near the end of endurance.

Elsa Speier who was just behind her, became her inevitable companion when they reached the roadway. A farmhouse appeared about a quarter of a mile away.

Miriam's sense of her duties closed in on her. Trying not to see Elsa's elaborate clothes and the profile in which she could find no meaning, no hope, no rest, she spoke to her.

"Do you like milk, Elsa?" she said cheerfully.

Elsa began swinging her lace-covered parasol.

"If I like milk?" she repeated presently, and flashed mocking eyes in Miriam's direction.

Despair touched Miriam's heart.

"Some people don't," she said.

Elsa hummed and swung her parasol.

"Why should I like milk?" she stated.

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 gla.s.s she held. Most of the girls were busily sipping. She raised her gla.s.s once towards her lips, snuffed a warm reek, and turned away towards the edge of the group, to pour out the contents of her gla.s.s, unseen, upon the filth-sodden earth.

2

Pa.s.sing languidly up through the house after breakfast, unable to decide to spend her Sat.u.r.day 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 dressing-table and five pegs in a large French wardrobe. Emma was going very gravely about the room collecting her work-basket 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 smiled, pa.s.sing out, leaving Miriam standing in the wonderful room.

"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 upstairs, a member of the downstairs landing, to collect her belongings.

On the landing just outside the door of the garret bedroom stood a huge wicker travelling basket; a clumsy umbrella with a large k.n.o.bby handle, like a man's umbrella, lay on the top of it partly covering a large pair of goloshes.