IV
Miriam paid her first visit to a German church the next day, her third Sunday. Of the first Sunday, now so far off, she could remember nothing but sitting in a low-backed chair in the Saal trying to read Les Travailleurs de la Mer … seas … and a sunburnt youth striding down a desolate lane in a storm … and the beginning of teatime. They had been kept indoors all day by the rain.
The second Sunday they had all gone in the evening to the English church with Fräulein Pfaff … rush-seated chairs with a ledge for books, placed very close together and scrooping on the stone floor with the movements of the congregation … a little gathering of English people. They seemed very dear for a moment … what was it about them that was so attractive … that gave them their air of “refinement”? …
Then as she watched their faces as they sang she felt that she knew all these women, the way, with little personal differences, they would talk, the way they would smile and take things for granted.
And the men, standing there in their overcoats. … Why were they there? What were they doing? What were their thoughts?
She pressed as against a barrier. Nothing came to her from these unconscious forms.
They seemed so untroubled. … Probably they were all Conservatives. … That was part of their “refinement.” They would all disapprove of Mr. Gladstone. … Get up into the pulpit and say “Gladstone” very loud … and watch the result. Gladstone was a Radical … “pull everything up by the roots.” … Pater was always angry and sneery about him. … Where were the Radicals? Somewhere very far away … tub-thumping … the Conservatives made them thump tubs … no wonder.
She decided she must be a Radical. Certainly she did not belong to these “refined” English—women or men. She was quite sure of that, seeing them gathered together, English Church-people in this foreign town.
But then Radicals were probably chapel?
It would be best to stay with the Germans. Yes … she would stay. There was a woman sitting in the endmost chair just across the aisle in line with them. She had a pale face and looked worn and middle-aged. The effect of “refinement” made on Miriam by the congregation seemed to radiate from her. There was a large ostrich feather fastened by a gleaming buckle against the side of her silky beaver hat. It swept, Miriam found the word during the Psalms, back over her hair. Miriam glancing at her again and again felt that she would like to be near her, watch her and touch her and find out the secret of her effect. But not talk to her, never talk to her.
She, too, sad and alone though Miriam knew her to be, would have her way of smiling and taking things for granted. The sermon came. Miriam sat, chafing, through it. One angry glance towards the pulpit had shown her a pale, black-moustached face. She checked her thoughts. She felt they would be too savage; would rend her unendurably. She tried not to listen. She felt the preacher was dealing out “pastoral platitudes.” She tried to give her mind elsewhere; but the sound of the voice, unconvinced and unconvincing threatened her again and again with a tide of furious resentment. She fidgeted and felt for thoughts and tried to compose her face to a semblance of serenity. It would not do to sit scowling here amongst her pupils with Fräulein Pfaff’s eye commanding her profile from the end of the pew just behind. … The air was gassy and close, her feet were cold. The gentle figure across the aisle was sitting very still, with folded hands and grave eyes fixed in the direction of the pulpit. Of course. Miriam had known it. She would “think over” the sermon afterwards. … The voice in the pulpit had dropped. Miriam glanced up. The figure faced about and intoned rapidly, the congregation rose for a moment rustling, and rustling subsided again. A hymn was given out. They rose again and sang. It was “Lead, Kindly Light.” Chilly and feverish and weary Miriam listened … “the encircling glooo‑om” … Cardinal Newman coming back from Italy in a ship … in the end he had gone over to Rome … high altars … candles … incense … safety and warmth. … From far away a radiance seemed to approach and to send out a breath that touched and stirred the stuffy air … the imploring voices sang on … poor dears … poor cold English things … Miriam suddenly became aware of Emma Bergmann standing at her side with open hymnbook shaking with laughter. She glanced sternly at her, mastering a sympathetic convulsion.
Emma looked so sweet standing there shaking and suffused. Her blue eyes were full of tears. Miriam wanted to giggle too. She longed to know what had amused her … just the fact of their all standing suddenly there together. She dared not join her … no more giggling as she and Harriett had giggled. She would not even be able afterwards to ask her what it was.
Sitting on this third Sunday morning in the dim Schlosskirche—the Waldstraße pew was in one of its darkest spaces and immediately under the shadow of a deeply overhanging gallery—Miriam understood poor Emma’s confessed hysteria over the abruptly alternating kneelings and standings, risings and sittings of an Anglican congregation. Here, there was no need to be on the watch for the next move. The service droned quietly and slowly on. Miriam paid no heed to it. She sat in the comforting darkness. The unobserving Germans were all round her, the English girls tailed away invisibly into the distant obscurity. Fräulein Pfaff was not there, nor Mademoiselle. She was alone with the school. She felt safe for a while and derived solace from the reflection that there would always be church.
