Minna rippled through a Chopin valse that made Miriam think of an apple orchard in bloom against a blue sky, and was followed by Jimmie who played the Spring Song with slightly swaying body and little hands that rose and fell one against the other, and reminded Miriam of the finger game of her childhood—“Fly away Jack, fly away Jill.” She played very sweetly and surely except that now and again it was as if the music caught its breath.
Jimmie’s lied brought the piano solos to an end, and Fräulein Pfaff after a little speech of criticism and general encouragement asked, to Miriam’s intense delight, for the singing. “Millie” was called for. Millie came out of a corner. She was out of Miriam’s range at mealtimes and appeared to her now for the first time as a tall child-girl in a high-waisted, blue serge frock, plainly made with long plain sleeves, at the end of which appeared two large hands shining red and shapeless with chilblains. She attracted Miriam at once with the shell-white and shell-pink of her complexion, her firm chubby baby mouth and her wide gaze. Her face shone in the room, even her hair—done just like the Martins’, but fluffy where theirs was flat and shiny—seemed to give out light, shadowy-dark though it was. Her figure was straight and flat, and she moved, thought Miriam, as though she had no feet.
She sang, with careful precision as to the accents of her German, in a high breathy effortless soprano, a little song about a child and a bouquet of garden flowers.
The younger Martin in a strong hard jolting voice sang of a lovesick linden tree, her pale thin cheeks pink-flushed.
“Herr Kapellmeister chooses well,” smiled Fräulein at the end of this performance.
The Vorspielen was brought to an end by Gertrude Goldring’s song. Clara Bergmann sat down to accompany her, and Miriam roused herself for a double listening. There would be Clara’s opening and Clara’s accompaniment and some wonderful song. The Australian stood well away from the piano, her shoulders thrown back and her eyes upon the wall opposite her. There was no prelude. Piano and voice rang out together—single notes which the voice took and sustained with an expressive power which was beyond anything in Miriam’s experience. Not a note was quite true. … The unerring falseness of pitch was as startling as the quality of the voice. The great wavering shouts slurring now above, now below the mark amazed Miriam out of all shyness. She sat up, frankly gazing—“How dare she? She hasn’t an atom of ear—how ghastly”—her thoughts exclaimed as the shouts went on. The longer sustained notes presently reminded her of something. It was like something she had heard—in the interval between the verses—while the sounds echoed in the mind she remembered the cry, hand to mouth, of a London dustman.
Then she lost everything in the story of the Sultan’s daughter and the young Asra, and when the fullest applause of the evening was going to Gertrude’s song, she did not withhold her share.
Anna, the only servant Miriam had seen so far—an enormous woman whose face, apart from the small eyes, seemed all “bony structure,” Miriam noted in a phrase borrowed from some unremembered reading—brought in a tray filled with cups of milk, a basket of white rolls and a pile of little plates. Gertrude took the tray and handed it about the room. As Miriam took her cup, chose a roll, deposited it on a plate and succeeded in abstracting the plate from the pile neatly, without fumbling, she felt that for the moment Gertrude was prepared to tolerate her. She did not desire this in the least, but when the deep harsh voice fell against her from the bending Australian, she responded to the “Wie gefällt’s Ihnen?” with an upturned smile and a warm “sehr gut!” It gratified her to discover that she could, at the end of this one day, understand or at the worst gather the drift of, all she heard, both of German and French. Mademoiselle had exclaimed at her French—les mots si bien choisis—un accent sans faute—it must be ear. She must have a very good ear. And her English was all right—at least, if she chose. … Pater had always been worrying about slang and careless pronunciation. None of them ever said “cut in half” or “very unique” or “ho’sale” or “phodygraff.” She was awfully slangy herself—she and Harriett were, in their thoughts as well as their words—but she had no provincialisms, no Londonisms—she could be the purest Oxford English. There was something at any rate to give her German girls. … She could say, “There are no rules for English pronunciation, but what is usual at the University of Oxford is decisive for cultured people”—“decisive for cultured people.” She must remember that for the class.
“Na, was sticken Sie da, Miss Henderson?”
It was Fräulein Pfaff.
Miriam who had as yet hardly spoken to her, did not know whether to stand or to remain seated. She half rose and then Fräulein Pfaff took the chair near her and Miriam sat down, stiff with fear. She could not remember the name of the thing she was making. She flushed and fumbled—thought of dressing tables and the little objects of which she had made so many hanging to the mirror by ribbons; “toilet-tidies” haunted her—but that was not it—she smoothed out her work as if to show it to Fräulein—“Na, na,” came the delicate caustic voice. “Was wird das wohl sein?” Then she remembered. “It’s for a pincushion,” she said. Surely she need not venture on German with Fräulein yet.
“Ein Nadelkissen,” corrected
