Backwater
By Dorothy M. Richardson.
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I
A swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam from a tapestry screen standing between her and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the bow of the window. Consulting it at intervals as the afternoon wore on, she found that it made very light of the quiet propositions that were being elaborated within hearing of her inattentive ears. Looking beyond it she could catch glimpses between the crowded fernery, when a tram was not jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across the roadway and beyond the palisade of a green level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The trams seemed very near and noisy. When they passed by the window, the speakers had to raise their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned quietness. It was full of old things, like the Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts of the ladies who were sitting and talking there. She and her mother had seemed quite modern, fussy, worldly people when they had first come into the room. From the moment the three ladies had come in and begun talking to her mother, the things in the room, and the view of the distant row of poplars had grown more and more peaceful, and now at the end of an hour she felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson too, belonged to the old-world room with its quiet green outlook shut in by the poplars. Only the trams were disturbing. They came busily by, with their strange jingle-jingle, plock-plock, and made her inattentive. Why were there so many people coming by in trams? Where were they going? Why were all the trams painted that hard, dingy blue?
The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs in smooth gentle voices, in small broken phrases, frequently interrupting and correcting each other. Miriam heard dreamily that they wanted help with the lower school, the children from six to eight years of age, in the mornings and afternoons, and in the evenings a general superintendence of the four boarders. They kept on saying that the work was very easy and simple; there were no naughty girls—hardly a single naughty girl—in the school; there should be no difficult superintendence, no exercise of authority would be required.
By the time they had reached the statement of these modifications Miriam felt that she knew them quite well. The shortest, who did most of the talking and who had twinkling eyes and crooked pince-nez and soft reddish cheeks and a little red-tipped nose, and whose small coil of sheeny grey hair was pinned askew on the top of her head—stray loops standing out at curious angles—was Miss Jenny, the middle one. The very tall one sitting opposite her, with a delicate wrinkled creamy face and coal-black eyes and a peak of ringletted smooth coal-black hair, was the eldest, Miss Deborah. The other sister, much younger, with neat smooth green-grey hair and a long sad greyish face and faded eyes, was Miss Haddie. They were all three dressed in thin fine black material and had tiny hands and little softly moving feet. What did they think of the trams?
“Do you think you could manage it, chickie?” said Mrs. Henderson suddenly.
“I think I could.”
“No doubt, my dear, oh, no doubt,” said Miss Jenny with a little sound of laughter as she tapped her knee with the pince-nez she had plucked from their rakish perch on the reddened bridge of her nose.
“I don’t think I could teach Scripture.”
An outbreak of incoherent little sounds and statements from all three taught her that Miss Deborah took the Bible classes of the whole school.
“How old is Miriam?”
“Just eighteen. She has put up her hair today.”
“Oh, poor child, she need not have done that.”
“She is a born teacher. She used to hold little classes amongst her schoolfellows when she was only eight years old.”
Miriam turned sharply to her mother. She was sitting with her tired look—bright eyes, and moist flushed face. How had she heard about the little classes? Had there been little classes? She could not remember them.
“She speaks French like a Parisienne.”
That was that silly remark made by the woman in the train coming home from Hanover.
“Eh—we thought—it was in Germany she was—”
“Yes, but I learned more French.”
The sisters smiled provisionally.
“She shared a room with the mademoiselle.”
“Oh—er—hee—hay—perhaps she might speak French with the gels.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t speak.”
There was a tender little laugh.
“I don’t know French conversation.”
“Well, well.”
The sisters brought the discussion to an end by
