In a moment a brake overtook them and drove alongside in the twilight. The drivers whipped up their horses. The two vehicles raced and rumbled along keeping close together. Fräulein called to their driver to desist. The students slackened down too and began singing at random, one against the other; those on the near side standing up and bowing and laughing. A bouquet of fern fronds came in over Judy’s head, missing the awning and falling against Clara’s knees. She rose and flung it back and then everyone seemed to be standing up and laughing and throwing.
They drove home, slowly, side by side, shouting and singing and throwing. Warm, blinding masses of fragrant grass came from the students’ brake and were thrown to and fro through the darkness lit by the lamps of the two carriages.
X
Towards the end of June there were frequent excursions.
Into all the gatherings at Waldstraße the outside world came like a presence. It removed the sense of pressure, of being confronted and challenged. Everything that was said seemed to be incidental to it, like remarks dropped in a low tone between individuals at a great conference.
Miriam wondered again and again whether her companions shared this sense with her. Sometimes when they were all sitting together she longed to ask, to find out, to get some public acknowledgment of the magic that lay over everything. At times it seemed as if could they all be still for a moment—it must take shape. It was everywhere, in the food, in the fragrance rising from the opened lid of the tea urn, in all the needful unquestioned movements, the requests, the handings and thanks, the going from room to room, the partings and assemblings. It hung about the fabrics and fittings of the house. Overwhelmingly it came in through oblongs of window giving on to stairways. Going upstairs in the light pouring in from some uncurtained window, she would cease for a moment to breathe.
Whenever she found herself alone she began to sing, softly. When she was with others a head drooped or lifted, the movement of a hand, the light falling along the detail of a profile could fill her with happiness.
It made companionship a perpetual question. At rare moments there would come a tingling from head to foot, a faint buzzing at her lips and at the tip of each finger. At these moments she could raise her eyes calmly to those about her and drink in the fact of their presence, see them all with perfect distinctness, but without distinguishing one from the other. She wanted to say, “Isn’t it extraordinary? Do you realise?” She felt that if only she could make her meaning clear all difficulties must vanish. Outside in the open, going forward to some goal through sunny mornings, gathering at inns, wading through the scented undergrowth of the woods, she would dream of the secure return to Waldstraße, their own beleaguered place. She saw it opening out warm and familiar back and back to the strange beginning in the winter. They would be there again tonight, singing.
One morning she knew that there was going to be a change. The term was coming to an end. There was to be a going away. The girls were talking about “Norderney.”
“Going to Norderney, Hendy?” Jimmie said suddenly.
“Ah!” she responded mysteriously. For the rest of that day she sat contracted and fearful.
“You shall write and enquire of your good parents what they would have you do. You shall tell them that the German pupils return all to their homes; that the English pupils go for a happy holiday to the sea.”
“Oh yes,” said Miriam conversationally, with trembling breath.
“It is of course evident that since you will have no duties to perform, I cannot support the expense of your travelling and your maintenance.”
“Oh no, of course not,” said Miriam, her hands pressed against her knee.
She sat shivering in the warm dim Saal shaded by the close sun blinds. It looked as she had seen it with her father for the first time and Fräulein sitting near seemed to be once more in the heavy panniered blue velvet dress.
She waited stiff and ugly till Fräulein, secure and summer clad, spoke softly again.
“You think, my child, you shall like the profession of a teacher?”
“Oh yes,” said Miriam, from the midst of a tingling flush.
“I think you have many qualities that make the teacher. … You are earnest and serious-minded. … Grave. … Sometimes perhaps overgrave for your years. … But you have a serious fault—which must be corrected if you wish to succeed in your calling.”
Miriam tried to pull her features into an easy enquiring seriousness. A darkness was threatening her. “You have a most unfortunate manner.”
Without relaxing, Miriam quivered. She felt the blood mount to her head.
“You must adopt a quite, quite different manner. Your influence is, I think, good, a good English influence in its most general effect. But it is too slightly so and of too much indirection. You must exert it yourself, in a manner more alive, you must make it your aim that you shall have a responsible influence, a direct personal influence. You have too much of chill and formality. It makes a stiffness that I am willing to believe you do not intend.”
Miriam felt a faint dizziness.
“If you should fail to become more genial, more simple and natural as to your bearing, you will neither make yourself understood nor will you be loved by your pupils.”
“No—” responded Miriam, assuming an air of puzzled and interested consideration of Fräulein’s words. She was recovering. She must get to the end of the interview and get away and find the answer. Far away beneath her fear and indignation, Fräulein was answered. She must get away and say the answer to herself.
“To truly fulfil the most serious role of the teacher you
