Pointed Roofs

predecessor. “So cleare, so cleare,” they chimed, “Voonderfoll.” And then they all five seemed to be talking at once. The little room was full of broken English, of Miriam’s interpolated corrections. It was going⁠—succeeding. This was her class. She hoped Fräulein was listening outside. She probably was. Heads of foreign schools did. She remembered Madame Beck in Villette. But if she was not, she hoped they would tell her about being able to understand the new English teacher so well. “Oh, I am haypie,” Emma was saying, with adoring eyes on Miriam and her two arms outflung on the table. Miriam recoiled. This would not do⁠—they must not all talk at once and go on like this. Minna’s whole face was aflame. She sat up stiffly⁠—adjusted her pince-nez⁠—and desperately ordered the reading to begin again⁠—at Minna. They all subsided and Minna’s careful husky voice came from her still blissfully-smiling face. The others sat back and attended. Miriam watched Minna judicially, and hoped she looked like a teacher. She knew her pince-nez disguised her and none of these girls knew she was only seventeen and a half. “Sorrowg,” Minna was saying, hesitating. Miriam had not heard the preceding word. “Once more the whole sentence,” she said, with quiet gravity, and then as Minna reached the word “thorough” she corrected and spent five minutes showing her how to get over the redoubtable th. They all experimented and exclaimed. They had never been shown that it was just a matter of getting the tongue between the teeth. Miriam herself had only just discovered it. She speculated as to how long it would take for her to deliver them up to Fräulein Pfaff with this notorious stumbling block removed. She was astonished herself at the mechanical simplicity of the cure. How stupid people must be not to discover these things. Minna’s voice went on. She would let her read a page. She began to wonder rather blankly what she was to do to fill up the hour after they had all read a page. She had just reached the conclusion that they must do some sort of writing when Fräulein Pfaff came, and still affable and smiling had ushered the girls to their mending and sent Miriam off to the Saal.

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As she flew upstairs for her music, saying, “I’m all right. I can do it all right,” she was half-conscious that her provisional success with her class had very little to do with her bounding joy. That success had not so much given her anything to be glad about⁠—it had rather removed an obstacle of gladness which was waiting to break forth. She was going to stay on. That was the point. She would stay in this wonderful place.⁠ ⁠… She came singing down through the quiet house⁠—the sunlight poured from bedroom windows through open 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. That was music⁠ ⁠… not playing things, but listening to Beethoven.⁠ ⁠… It must be Beethoven⁠ ⁠… Grieg was different⁠ ⁠… acquired⁠ ⁠… like those strange green figs Pater had brought from Tarring⁠ ⁠… Beethoven had always been real.

It was all growing clearer and clearer.⁠ ⁠… She chose the first part of the first movement of the Sonata Pathétique. That she knew she could play faultlessly. It was the last thing she had learned, and she had never grown weary of practising slowly through its long bars of chords. She had played it at her last music lesson⁠ ⁠… dear old Stroodie walking up and down the long drilling room.⁠ ⁠… “Steady the bass”; “grip the chords,” then standing at her side and saying in the thin light sneery part of his voice, “You can⁠ ⁠… you’ve got hands like umbrellas”⁠ ⁠… and showing her how easily she could stretch two notes beyond his own span. And then marching away as she played and crying out to her standing under the high windows at the far end of the room, “Let it go! Let it go!”

And she had almost forgotten her wretched self, almost heard the music.⁠ ⁠…

She felt for the pedals, lifted her hands a span above the piano as Clara had done and came down, true and clean, on to the opening chord. The full rich tones of the piano echoed from all over the room; and some metal object far away from her hummed the dominant. She held the chord for its full term.⁠ ⁠… Should she play any more?⁠ ⁠… She had confessed herself⁠ ⁠… just that minor chord⁠ ⁠… anyone hearing it would know more than she could ever tell them⁠ ⁠… her whole being beat out the rhythm as she waited for the end of the phrase to insist on what already had been said. As it came, she found herself sitting back, slackening the muscles of her arms and of her whole body, and ready to swing forward into the rising storm of her page. She did not need to follow the notes on the music stand. Her fingers knew them. Grave and happy she sat with unseeing eyes, listening, for the first time.

At the end of the page she was sitting with her eyes full of tears, aware of Fräulein standing between the open swing doors with Gertrude’s face showing over her shoulder⁠—its amazement changing to a large-toothed smile as Fräulein’s quietly repeated “Prachtvoll, prachtvoll” came across the room. Miriam, after a hasty smile, sat straining her