“Better leave her alone,” ruled Gertrude.
“We miss old Minna, don’t we?” concluded Bertha.
The heat grew intense.
The air was more and more oppressive as the day went on.
Clara fainted suddenly just after dinner, and Fräulein, holding a little discourse on clothing and an enquiry into wardrobes, gave a general permission for the reduction of garments to the minimum and sent everyone to rest uncorseted until teatime, promising a walk to the woods in the cool of the evening. There was a sense of adventure in the house. It was as if it were being besieged. It gave Miriam confidence to approach Fräulein for permission to rearrange her trunk in the basement. She let Fräulein understand that her removal was not complete, that there were things to do before she could be properly settled in her new room.
“Certainly, Miss Henderson, you are quite free,” said Fräulein instantly as the girls trooped upstairs.
Miriam knew she wanted to avoid an afternoon shut up with Emma and Ulrica and she did not in the least want to lie down. It seemed to her a very extraordinary thing to do. It surprised and disturbed her. It suggested illness and weakness. She could not remember having lain down in the daytime. There had been that fortnight in the old room at home with Harriett … chickenpox and new books coming and games, and Sarah reading the Song of Hiawatha and their being allowed to choose their pudding. She could not remember feeling ill. Had she ever felt ill? … Colds and bilious attacks. …
She remembered with triumph a group of days of pain two years ago. She had forgotten. … Bewilderment and pain … her mother’s constant presence … everything, the light everywhere, the leaves standing out along the tops of hedgerows as she drove with her mother, telling her of pain and she alone in the midst of it … for always … pride, long moments of deep pride. … Eve and Sarah congratulating her, Eve stupid and laughing … the new bearing of the servants … Lilla Belton’s horrible talks fading away to nothing.
Fräulein had left her and gone to her room. Every door and window on the ground floor stood wide excepting that leading to Fräulein’s little double rooms. She wondered what the rooms were like and felt sorry for Fräulein, tall and gaunt, moving about in them alone, alone with her own dark eyes, curtains hanging motionless at the windows … was it really bad to tight-lace? The English girls, except Millie and Solomon all had small waists. She wished she knew. She placed her large hands round her waist. Drawing in her breath she could almost make them meet. It was easier to play tennis with stays … how dusty the garden looked, baked. She wanted to go out with two heavy watering cans, to feel them pulling her arms from their sockets, dragging her shoulders down, throwing out her chest, to spray canful after canful through a great wide rose, sprinkling her ankles sometimes, and to grow so warm that she would not feel the heat. Bella Lyndon had never worn stays; playing rounders so splendidly, lying on the grass between the games with her arms under her head … simply disgusting, someone had said … who … a disgusted face … nearly all the girls detested Bella.
Going through the hall on her way down to the basement she heard the English voices sounding quietly out into the afternoon from the rooms above. Flat and tranquil they sounded, Bertha and Jimmie she heard, Gertrude’s undertones, quiet words from Millie. She felt she would like a corner in the English room for the afternoon, a book and an occasional remark—“Mr. Barnes of New York”—she would not be able to read her three yellowbacks in the German bedroom. She felt at the moment glad to be robbed of them. It would be much better, of course. There was no sound from the German rooms. She pictured sleeping faces. It was cooler in the basement—but even there the air seemed stiff and dusty with the heat.
Why did the hanging garments remind her of All Saints’ Church and Mr. Brough? … she must tell Harriett that in her letter … that day they suddenly decided to help in the church decorations … she remembered the smell of the soot on the holly as they had cut and hacked at it in the cold garden, and Harriett overturning the heavy wheelbarrow on the way to church, and how they had not laughed because they both felt solemn, and then there had just been the three Anwyl girls and Mrs. Anwyl and Mrs. Scarr and Mr. Brough in the church room all being silly about Birdy Anwyl roasting chestnuts, and how silly and affected they were when a piece of holly stuck in her skirt.
Coming up the basement stairs in response to the tea gong, Miriam thought there were visitors in the hall and hesitated; then there was Pastor Lahmann’s profile disappearing towards the door and Fräulein patting and dismissing two of his boys. His face looked white and clear and firm and undisturbed, Miriam wanted to arrest him and ask him something—what he thought of the weather—he looked so different from her memory of him in the Saal two Saturdays ago—two weeks—four classes she must have missed. Why? Why was she missing Pastor Lahmann’s classes? How had it happened? Perhaps she would see him in class again. Perhaps next week. …
The other visitors proved to be the Bergmanns in new dresses. Miriam gazed at Clara as she went down the schoolroom to her corner of the table. She looked like … a hostess. It seemed absurd to see her sit down to tea as a schoolgirl. The dress was a fine black muslin stamped all over with tiny fish-shaped patches of mauve. It was cut to the base of the neck and came to a point
