Dorothy M. Richardson

“ She noticed the firmly-poised head, the thick creamy neck that seemed bare with its absence of collar-band and the soft frill of tucker stitched right on to the dress, the thick cable of string-coloured hair reaching just beyond the rim of the leather-covered music stool, the steel-beaded points of the little slippers gleaming as they worked the pedals, the serene eyes steadily following the music. She played on and Miriam recognised a quality she had only heard occasionally at concerts, and in the playing of one of the music teachers at school. ”

“ 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 glass she held. Most of the girls were busily sipping. ”

“ Timorously ignoring the signal she got herself into a little low chair in the shadow of the half-closed swing door and was spreading out her woolwork on her knee when the Vorspielen began.
Emma Bergmann was playing. The single notes of the opening motif of Chopin’s Fifteenth Nocturne fell pensively into the waitingroom. Miriam, her fatigue forgotten, slid to a featureless freedom. It seemed to her that the light with which the room was filled grew brighter and clearer. She felt that she was looking at nothing and yet was aware of the whole room like a picture in a dream. Fear left her. ”

“ The drubbing went relentlessly on. Miriam steadied her head against it and gradually warmth and ease began to return to her shivering, clenched body. Her hair was gathered into the steaming basin—dipped and rinsed and spread, a comforting compress, warm with the water, over her egg-sodden head. There was more drubbing, more dipping and rinsing. The second basin was re-filled from the kitchen, and after a final rinse in its fresh warm water, Miriam found herself standing up—with a twisted tail of wet hair hanging down over her cape of damp towel—glowing and hungry. ”

“ Clara and Minna had fastened up theirs with combs and ribbons and looked decent—frauish though, thought Miriam. Judy wore a plait. Without her fuzzy cloud she looked exactly like a country servant, a farmhouse servant. She drank her coffee noisily and furtively—she looked extraordinary, thought Miriam, and took comfort. The Martins’ brown bows appeared on their necks instead of cresting their heads—it improved them, Miriam thought. What regular features they had. Bertha looked like a youth—like a musician. ”

“ That irritated Miriam. Mademoiselle liked talking to her girls. Miriam was beginning to know that she did not want to talk to her girls. Almost from the first she had begun to know it. She felt sure that if Fräulein Pfaff had been invisibly present at any one of her solitary conversational encounters with these German girls she would have been judged and condemned. Elsa Speier had been the worst. Miriam could see as she thought of her, the angle of the high garden wall of a corner house in Waldstrasse and above it a blossoming almond tree. ”

“ The German side of the landing was uncritical. On free mornings the Germans had one preoccupation. It was generally betrayed by Emma in a loud excited whisper, aimed across the landing: “Gehen wir zu Kreipe? Do we go to Kreipe’s?” “Kreipe, Kreipe,” Minna and Clara would chorus devoutly from their respective rooms. Gertrude on these occasions always had an air of knowledge and would sometimes prophesy. To what extent Fräulein did confide in the girl and how much was due to her experience of the elder woman’s habit of mind Miriam could never determine. ”

“ There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and nothing to do and no end anywhere to anything; no more sitting at the open window in the dining-room, reading Lecky and Darwin and bound “Contemporary Reviews” with roses waiting in the garden to be worn in the afternoon, and Eve and Harriett somewhere about, washing blouses or copying waltzes from the library packet ... no more Harriett looking in at the end of the morning, rushing her off to the new grand piano to play the “Mikado” and the “Holy Family” duets. The tennis-club would go on, but she would not be there. ”

“ Judy cast an appealing flash of her eyes sideways at nothing, flushed furiously and mumbled, “Ik weiss nik—I don’t know.”
In the outcries and laughter which followed, Miriam noticed only the hoarse hacking laugh of the Australian. Her eyes flew up the table and fixed her as she sat laughing, her chair drawn back, her knees crossed—tea was drawing to an end. The detail of her terrifyingly stylish ruddy-brown frieze dress with its Norfolk jacket bodice and its shiny black leather belt was hardly distinguishable from the dark background made by the folding doors. ”

“ She reached the quiet saal. Here stood the great piano, its keyboard open under the light of the French window opposite the door through which she came. Behind the great closed swing doors the girls were talking over their raccommodage. Miriam paid no attention to them. She would ignore them all. She did not even need to try to ignore them. She felt strong and independent. She would play, to herself. She would play something she knew perfectly, a Grieg lyric or a movement from a Beethoven Sonata ... on this gorgeous piano ... and let herself go, and listen. ”

“ Millie was smug. Millie would smile when she was a little older—and she would go respectfully to church all her life—Miriam had felt a horror even of the work-basket Millie had been tidying during their conversation—and Millie had gone upstairs, she knew, feeling that they had “begun to be friends” and would be different the next time they met. It was her own fault. What had made her speak to her? She was like that.... Eve had told her. She got excited and interested in people and then wanted to throw them up. ”

“ Gertrude smiled, but made no further response.
“Peectures,” murmured Minna. “Peectures always are beautiful. All towns are beautiful, perhaps. Not?”
“There may be bits, perhaps,” blurted Miriam, “but not whole towns and nothing anywhere a bit like Hoddenheim, I’m perfectly certain.”
“Oh, well, not the same,” complained Millie, “but just as beautiful—more beautiful.”
“Oh-ho, Millississimo.”
“Of course there are, Bertha, there must be.”
“Well, Millicent,” pressed Fräulein, “‘more beautiful’ and why? Beauty is what you see and is not for everyone the same. It is an affaire de goût. ”

“ The inn appeared at last standing back from the wide roadway along which they had come, creamy-white and grey-roofed, long and low and with overhanging eaves, close against the forest. They pulled up and Pastor Lahmann dropped the steps and got out. Miriam who was sitting next to the door felt that the long sitting in two rows confronted in the hard afternoon light, bumped and shaken and teased with the crunchings and slitherings of the wheels the grinding and squeaking of the brake, had made them all enemies. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Fräulein left the saal by the small door and Miriam felt her way to the schoolroom. The girls were gathering there ready for a walk. Some were in the hall and Fräulein’s voice was giving instructions: “Machen Sie schnell, Miss Henderson,” she called.
Fräulein had never before called to her like that. It had always been as if she did not see her but assumed her ready to fall in with the general movements.
Now it was Fräulein calling to her as she might do to Gertrude or Solomon. There was no hurried whisper from Jimmie telling her to “fly for her life.” ”

“ Elsa’s mother had thin ankles, too, and was like Elsa intent and cold and dead. She could imagine Elsa in society now—hard and thin and glittery—she would be stylish—military men’s women always were. The girl had avoided being with her during walks since then, and they never voluntarily addressed one another. Minna and the Bergmanns had talked to her. Minna responded to everything she said in her eager husky voice—not because she was interested Miriam felt, but because she was polite, and it had tired her once or twice dreadfully to go on “making conversation” with Minna. ”

“ 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. Fräulein 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.” ”

“ Presently Ulrica raised her head, as Elsa and Clara broke into words and laughter near her, and her drooping lips flattened gently back into their place in the curve of her face. She gazed out through the doorway of the summer-house with her great despairing eyes ... the housekeeper was rather like a Dutch doll ... but that was not it.
7 The sun had set. Miriam had found a little thin volume of German poetry in her pocket. She sat fumbling the leaves. She felt the touch of her limp straightening hair upon her forehead. It did not matter. Twilight would soon come, and bed-time. ”

“ Fräulein, who generally went to the basement kitchen from the breakfast-table, would be heard on the landing towards the end of the busy half-hour, rallying and criticising the housemaids in her gentle caustic voice. She never came to the top floor. Miriam and Mademoiselle, who agreed in accomplishing their duties with great despatch and spending any spare time sitting in their jackets on their respective beds reading or talking, would listen for her departure. There was always a moment when they knew that the excitement was over and the landing stricken into certainty. ”

“ Pater always said young people always wanted to reform the universe ... perhaps it was so ... and nothing could be done. Clearly she was not the one to do anything. She could do nothing even with these girls and she was nearly eighteen.
Once or twice she wondered whether they ever had thoughts about things ... she felt they must; if only she were not shy, if she had a different manner, she would find out. She knew she despised them as they were. She could do nothing. Her fine ideas were no good. She did less than silly little Mademoiselle. ”

“ Just in front of her and considerably behind the flying van, her full wincey skirt billowing out beneath what seemed to Miriam a dreadfully thin little close-fitting stockinette jacket, trotted Mademoiselle—one hand to the plain brim of her large French hat, and obviously conversational with either Minna and Elsa or Clara and Emma on either side of her. ”

“ Mademoiselle’s laughter came first. They sat holding each other’s eyes, shaken with laughter, until Mademoiselle said, sighing brokenly, “Et c’est la cloche qui va sonner immédiatement.” As they undressed, she went on talking—“the night comes ... the black night ... we must sleep ... we must sleep in peace ... we are safe ... we are protected ... nous craignons Dieu, n’est ce pas?” Miriam was shocked to find her at her elbow, in her nightgown, speaking very gravely. ”