Ulrica broke into steady weeping.
Fräulein read Psalms, ejaculating the short phrases as if they were petitions, with a pause between each. When the thunder came she raised her voice against it and read more rapidly.
As the storm began to abate a little party of English went to the kitchen and brought back milk and biscuits and jam.
“You will be asleep, Miss Hendershon.” Miriam started at the sound of Ulrica’s wailing whisper. Fräulein had only just gone. She had been sitting on the end of Emma’s bed talking quietly of self-control and now Emma was asleep. Ulrica’s corner had been perfectly quiet. Miriam had been lying listening to the steady swishing of the rain against the chestnut leaves.
“No; what is it?”
“Oh, most wonderful. Ich bin so empfindlich. I am so sensible.”
“Sensitive?”
“Oh, it was most wonderful. Only hear and I shall tell you. This evening when the storm leave himself down it was exactly as my Konfirmation.”
“Yes.”
“It was as my Konfirmation. I think of that wonderful day, my white dress, the flower bouquet and how I weeped always. Oh, it was all of most beautifullest. I am so sensible.”
“Oh, yes,” whispered Miriam.
“I weeped so! All day I have weeped! The all whole day! And my mozzer she console me I shall not weep. And I weep. Ach! It was of most beautifullest.”
Miriam felt as if she were being robbed. … This was Ulrica. … “You remember the Konfirmation, miss?”
“Oh, yes, I remember.”
“Have you weeped?”
“We say cry, not weep, except in poetry—weinen, to cry.”
“Have you cry?”
“No, I didn’t cry. But we mustn’t talk. We must go to sleep. Good night.”
“Gute Nacht. Ach, wie empfindlich bin ich, wie empfindlich. …”
Miriam lay thinking of how she and Harriett on their confirmation morning had met the vicar in the Upper Richmond Road, having gone out, contrary to the desire expressed by him at his last preparation class, and how he had stopped and greeted them. She had tried to look vague and sad and to murmur something in spite of the bull’s-eye in her cheek and had suddenly noticed as they stood grouped that Harriett’s little sugar-loaf hat was askew and her brown eye underneath it was glaring fixedly at the vicar above the little knob in her cheek—and how they somehow got away and went, gently reeling and colliding, moaning and gasping down the road out of hearing.
Early next morning Judy came in to tell Emma and Ulrica to get up at once and come and help the housekeeper make the rooms tidy and prepare breakfast. Miriam lay motionless while Emma unfolded and arranged the screens. Then she gazed at the ceiling. It was pleasant to lie tranquil, open-eyed and unchallenged while others moved busily about. Two separate, sudden and resounding garglings almost startled her to thought, but she resisted, and presently she was alone in the strange room. She supposed it must be cooler after the storm. She felt strong and languid. She could feel the shape and weight of each limb; sounds came to her with perfect distinctness; the sounds downstairs and a low-voiced conversation across the landing, little faint marks that human beings were making on the great wide stillness, the stillness that brooded along her white ceiling and all round her and right out through the world; the faint scent of her soap tablet reached her from the distant washstand. She felt that her short sleep must have been perfect, that it had carried her down and down into the heart of tranquillity where she still lay awake, and drinking as if at a source. Cool streams seemed to be flowing in her brain, through her heart, through every vein, her breath was like a live cool stream flowing through her.
She remembered that she had dreamed her favourite dream—floating through clouds and above treetops and villages. She had almost brushed the treetops, that had been the happiest moment, and had caught sight of a circular seat round the trunk of a large old tree and a group of white cottages.
She stirred; her hands seemed warm on her cool chest and the warmth of her body sent up a faint pleasant sense of personality. “It’s me,” she said, and smiled.
“Look here, you’d better get up, my dear,” she murmured.
She wanted to have the whole world in and be reconciled. But she knew that if anyone came, she would contract and the expression of her face would change and they would hate her or be indifferent. She knew that if she even moved she would be changed.
“Get up.”
She listened for a while to two voices across the landing. Millie’s thick and plaintive with her hay fever and Bertha’s thin and cold and level and reassuring. … Bertha’s voice was like the morning, clean and cool. … Then she got up and shut the door.
The sky was a vivid grey—against its dark background the top of heavy masses of cloud were standing up just above the roofline of the houses beyond the neighbouring gardens. The trees and the grey roofs and the faces of the houses were staringly bright. They were absolutely stiff, nothing was moving, there were no shadows.
A soft distant rumble of thunder came as she was dressing. … The storm was still going on … what an extraordinary time of day for thunder … the excitement was not over … they were still a besieged party … all staying at the Bienenkorb together. … How beautiful it sounded rumbling away over the country in the morning. When she had finished struggling with her long thick hair and put the hairpins into the solid coil on the top of her head and tied the stout doubled doorknocker plait at her neck, she put on the rose-madder blouse. The mirror was lower and twice as large as the one in the garret, larger than the one she had shared with Harriett. “How jolly I look,” she thought, “jolly and big somehow. Mother would like me
