Startled into observation Miriam saw the soupspoon of her neighbour whisked, dripping, from its plate to the uppermost of Marie’s pile and Emma shrinking back with a horrified face against Jimmie who was leaning forward entranced with watching. … The whole table was watching. Marie, having secured Emma’s plate to the base of her pile clutched Miriam’s spoon. Miriam moved sideways as the spoon swept up, saw the desperate hard, lean face bend towards her for a moment as her plate was seized, heard an exclamation of annoyance from Fräulein and little sounds from all round the table. Marie had passed on to Clara. Clara received her with plate and spoon held firmly together and motioned her before she would relinquish them, to place her load upon the shelf of the lift.
Miriam felt she was in disgrace with the whole table. … She sat, flaring, rapidly framing phrase after phrase for the lips of her judges … “slow and awkward” … “never has her wits about her. …”
“Don’t let her do it, Miss Henderson. …” Why should Fräulein fix upon her to teach her common servants? Struggling through her resentment was pride in the fact that she did not know how to handle soup plates. Presently she sat refusing absolutely to accept the judgment silently assailing her on all hands.
“You are not very domesticated, Miss Henderson.”
“No,” responded Miriam quietly, in joy and fear.
Fräulein gave a short laugh.
Goaded, Miriam plunged forward.
“We were never even allowed in the kitchen at home.”
“I see. You and your sisters were brought up like Countesses, wie Gräfinnen,” observed Fräulein Pfaff drily.
Miriam’s whole body was on fire … “and your sisters and your sisters,” echoed through and through her. Holding back her tears she looked full at Fräulein and met the brown eyes. She met them until they turned away and Fräulein broke into smiling generalities. Conversation was released all round the table. Emphatic undertones reached her from the English side. “Fool” … “simply idiotic.”
“I’ve done it now,” mused Miriam calmly, on the declining tide of her wrath.
Pretending to be occupied with those about her she sat examining the look Fräulein had given her … she hates me. … Perhaps she did from the first. … She did from the first. … I shall have to go … and suddenly, lately, she has grown worse. …
VIII
Walking along a narrow muddy causeway by a little river overhung with willows, girls ahead of her in single file and girls in single file behind, Miriam drearily recognised that it was June. The month of roses, she thought, and looked out across the flat green fields. It was not easy to walk along the slippery pathway. On one side was the little grey river, on the other long wet grass repelling and depressing. Not far ahead was the roadway which led, she supposed to the farm where they were to drink new milk. She would have to walk with someone when they came to the road, and talk. She wondered whether this early morning walk would come, now, every day. Her heart sank at the thought. It had been too hot during the last few days for any going out at midday, and she had hoped that the strolling in the garden, sitting about under the chestnut tree and in the little wooden garden room off the Saal had taken the place of walks for the summer.
She had got up reluctantly, at the surprise of the very early gonging. Mademoiselle had guessed it would be a “milk walk.” Pausing in the bright light of the top landing as Mademoiselle ran downstairs she had seen through the landing window the deep peak of a distant gable casting an unfamiliar shadow—a shadow sloping the wrong way, a morning shadow. She remembered the first time, the only time, she had noticed such a shadow—getting up very early one morning while Harriett and all the household were still asleep—and how she had stopped dressing and gazed at it as it stood there cool and quiet and alone across the mellow face of a neighbouring stone porch—had suddenly been glad that she was alone and had wondered why that shadowed porch peak was more beautiful than all the summer things she knew and felt at that moment that nothing could touch or trouble her again.
She could not find anything of that feeling in the early day outside Hanover. She was hemmed in, and the fields were so sad she could not bear to look at them. The sun had disappeared since they came out. The sky was grey and low and it seemed warmer already than it had been in the midday sun during the last few days. One of the girls on ahead hummed the refrain of a student song:—
“In der Ecke steht er
Seinen Schnurrbart dreht er
Siehst du wohl, da steht er schon
Der versoff’ne Schwiegersohn.”
Miriam felt very near the end of endurance.
Elsa Speier who was just behind her, became her inevitable companion when they reached the roadway. A farmhouse appeared about a quarter of a mile away.
Miriam’s sense of her duties closed in on her. Trying not to see Elsa’s elaborate clothes and the profile in which she could find no meaning, no hope, no rest, she spoke to her.
“Do you like milk, Elsa?” she said cheerfully.
Elsa began swinging her lace-covered parasol.
“If I like milk?” she repeated presently, and flashed mocking eyes in Miriam’s direction.
Despair touched Miriam’s heart.
“Some people don’t,” she said.
Elsa hummed and swung her parasol.
“Why should I like milk?” she stated.
The muddy farmyard, lying back from the roadway and below it, was steamy and choking with odours. Miriam who had imagined a cool dairy and cold milk frothing in pans, felt a loathing as warmth came to her fingers from the glass she held. Most of the
