Every other day or so Miriam found she could get an hour on a bedroom piano; and always on a Saturday morning during raccommodage. She rediscovered all the pieces she had already learned. She went through them one by one, eagerly, slurring over difficulties, pressing on, getting their effect, listening and discovering. “It’s technique I want,” she told herself, when she had reached the end of her collection, beginning to attach a meaning to the familiar word. Then she set to work. She restricted herself to the Pathétique, always omitting the first page, which she knew so well and practised mechanically, slowly, meaninglessly, with neither pedalling nor expression, page by page until a movement was perfect. Then when the mood came, she played … and listened. She soon discovered she could not always “play”—even the things she knew perfectly—and she began to understand the fury that had seized her when her mother and a woman here and there had taken for granted one should “play when asked,” and coldly treated her refusal as showing lack of courtesy. “Ah!” she said aloud, as this realisation came, “Women.”
“Of course you can only ‘play when you can,’ ” said she to herself, “like a bird singing.”
She sang once or twice, very quietly, in those early weeks. But she gave that up. She had a whole sheaf of songs with her. But after that first Vorspielen they seemed to have lost their meaning. One by one she looked them through. Her dear old Venetian song, “Beauty’s Eyes,” “An Old Garden”—she hesitated over that, and hummed it through—“Best of All”—“In Old Madrid”—the vocal score of the “Mikado”—her little “Chanson de Florian,” and a score of others. She blushed at her collection. The “Chanson de Florian” might perhaps hold its own at a Vorspielen—sung by Bertha Martin—perhaps. … The remainder of her songs, excepting a little bound volume of Sterndale Bennett, she put away at the bottom of her Saratoga trunk. Meanwhile, there were songs being learned by Herr Bossenberger’s pupils for which she listened hungrily; Schubert, Grieg, Brahms. She would always, during those early weeks, sacrifice her practising to listen from the schoolroom to a pupil singing in the Saal.
The morning of Ulrica Hesse’s arrival was one of the mornings when she could “play.” She was sitting, happy, in the large English bedroom, listening. It was late. She was beginning to wonder why the gonging did not come when the door opened. It was Millie in her dressing gown, with her hair loose and a towel over her arm.
“Oh, bitte, Miss Henderson, will you please go down to Frau Krause, Fräulein Pfaff says,” she said, her baby face full of responsibility.
Miriam rose uneasily. What might this be? “Frau Krause?” she asked.
“Oh yes, it’s Haarwaschen,” said Millie anxiously, evidently determined to wait until Miriam recognised her duty.
“Where?” said Miriam aghast.
“Oh, in the basement. I must go. Frau Krause’s waiting. Will you come?”
“Oh well, I suppose so,” mumbled Miriam, coming to the door as the child turned to go.
“All right,” said Millie, “I’m going down. Do make haste, Miss Henderson, will you?”
“All right,” said Miriam, going back into the room.
Collecting her music she went incredulously upstairs. This was school with a vengeance. This was boarding school. It was abominable. Fräulein Pfaff indeed! Ordering her, Miriam, to go downstairs and have her hair washed … by Frau Krause … offhand, without any warning … someone should have told her—and let her choose. Her hair was clean. Sarah had always done it. Miriam’s throat contracted. She would not go down. Frau Krause should not touch her. She reached the attics. Their door was open and there was Mademoiselle in her little alpaca dressing jacket, towelling her head.
Her face came up, flushed and gay. Miriam was too angry to note till afterwards how pretty she had looked with her hair like that.
“Ah! … c’est le grand lavage!” sang Mademoiselle.
“Oui,” said Miriam surlily.
What could she do? She imagined the whole school waiting downstairs to see her come down to be done. Should she go down and decline, explain to Fräulein Pfaff. She hated her vindictively—her “calm” message—“treating me like a child.” She saw the horse smile and heard the caustic voice.
“It’s sickening,” she muttered, whisking her dressing gown from its nail and seizing a towel. Mademoiselle was piling up her damp hair before the little mirror.
Slowly Miriam made her journey to the basement.
Minna and Elsa were brushing out their long hair with their door open. A strong sweet perfume came from the room.
The basement hall was dark save for the patch of light coming from the open kitchen door. In the patch stood a low table and a kitchen chair. On the table which was shining wet and smeary with soap, stood a huge basin. Out over the basin flew a long tail of hair and Miriam’s anxious eyes found Millie standing in the further gloom twisting and wringing.
No one else was to be seen. Perhaps it was all over. She was too late. Then a second basin held in coarse red hands appeared round the kitchen door and in a moment a woman, large and coarse, with the sleeves of her large-checked blue and white cotton dress rolled back and a great “teapot” of pale nasturtium-coloured hair shining above the third of
