“You are very clever Bair‑ta,” said Mademoiselle, still in French, “but you will never make a prima ballerina.”
“Hulloh!” breathed Jimmie, “she’s perking up.”
“Isn’t she,” said Miriam, feeling that she was throwing away the last shred of her dignity.
“What was the matter?” she continued, trying to escape from her confusion.
Mademoiselle’s instant response to her cry at the sight of Pastor Lahmann rang in her ears. She blushed to the soles of her feet. … How could Mademoiselle misunderstand her insane remark? What did she mean? What did she really think of her? Just kind old Lahmann—walking along there in the outside world. … She did not want to stop him. … He was a sort of kinsman for Mademoiselle … that was what she had meant. Oh, why couldn’t she get away from all these girls? … indeed—and again she saw the hurrying figure which had disappeared leaving the boulevard with its usual effect of a great strange ocean—he could have brought help and comfort to all of them if he had seen them and stopped. Pastor Lahmann—Lahmann—perhaps she would not see him again. Perhaps he could tell her what she ought to do.
“Oh, my dear,” Jimmie was saying, “didn’t you know?—a fearful row.”
Mademoiselle’s laughter tinkled out from the rear.
“A row?”
“Fearful!” Jimmie’s face came round, round-eyed under her white sailor hat that sat slightly tilted on the peak of her hair.
“What about?”
“Something about a letter or something, or some letters or something—I don’t know. Something she took out of the letter box, it was unlocked or something and Ulrica saw her and told Lily!”
“Goodness!” breathed Miriam.
“Yes, and Lily had her in her room and Ulrica and poor little Petite couldn’t deny it. Ulrica said she did nothing but cry and cry. She’s been crying all the morning, poor little pig.”
“Why did she want to take anything out of the box?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There was a fearful row anyhow. Ulrica said Lily talked like a clergyman—wie ein Pfarrer. … I don’t know. Ulrica said she was opening a letter. I don’t know.”
“But she can’t read German or English. …”
“I don’t know. Ask me another.”
“It is extraordinary.”
“What’s extraordinary?” asked Bertha from the far side of Jimmie.
“Petite and that letter.”
“Oh.”
“What did the Kiddy want?”
“Oh, my dear, don’t ask me to explain the peculiarities of the French temperament.”
“Yes, but all the letters in the letter box would be English or German, as Hendy says.”
Bertha glanced at Miriam. Miriam flushed. She could not discuss Mademoiselle with two of the girls at once.
“Rum go,” said Bertha.
“You’re right, my son. It’s rum. It’s all over now, anyhow. There’s no accounting for tastes. Poor old Petite.”
Miriam woke in the moonlight. She saw Mademoiselle’s face as it had looked at teatime, pale and cruel, silent and very old. Someone had said she had been in Fräulein’s room again all the afternoon. … Fräulein had spoken to her once or twice during tea. She had answered coolly and eagerly … disgusting … like a child that had been whipped and forgiven. … How could Fräulein dare to forgive anybody?
She lay motionless. The night was cool. The screens had not been moved. She felt that the door was shut. After a while she began in imagination a conversation with Eve.
“You see the trouble was,” she said and saw Eve’s downcast believing admiring sympathetic face, “Fräulein talked to me about manner, she simply wanted me to grimace, simply. You know—be like other people.”
Eve laughed. “Yes, I know.”
“You see? Simply.”
“Well, if you wanted to stay, why couldn’t you?”
“I simply couldn’t; you know how people are.”
“But you can act so splendidly.”
“But you can’t keep it up.”
“Why not?”
“Eve. There you are, you see, you always go back.”
“I mean I think it would be simply lovely. If I were clever like you I should do it all the time, be simply always gushing and ‘charming.’ ”
Then she reminded Eve of the day they had walked up the lane to the Heath talking over all the manners they would like to have—and how Sarah suddenly in the middle of supper had caricatured the one they had chosen. “Of course you overdid it,” she concluded, and Eve crimsoned and said, “Oh yes, I know it was my fault. But you could have begun all over again in Germany and been quite different.”
“Yes, I know I thought about that. … But if you knew as much of the world as I do. …”
Eve stared, showing a faint resentment.
Miriam thought of Eve’s many suitors, of her six months’ betrothal, of her lifelong peacemaking, her experiment in being governess to the two children of an artist—a little green-robed boy threatening her with a knife.
“Yes, but I mean if you had been about.”
“I know,” smiled Eve confidently. “You mean if I were you. Go on. I know. Explain, old thing.”
“Well, I mean of course if you are a governess in a school you can’t be jolly and charming. You can’t be idiotic or anything. … I did think about it. Don’t tell anybody. But I thought for a little while I might go into a family—one of the girls’ families—the German girls, and begin having a German manner. Two of the girls asked me. One of them was ill and went away—that Pomeranian one I told you about. Well, then, I didn’t tell you about that little one and her sister—they asked me to go to them for the holidays. The youngest said—it was so absurd—‘you shall marry my bruzzer—he is mairchant—very welty’—absurd.”
“Not absurd—you probably would have, away from that school.”
“D’you think so?”
“Yes, you would have been a regular German, fat and jolly and laughing.”
“I know. My dear I thought about it. You may imagine. I wondered if I ought.”
“Why didn’t you try?”
Why not? Why was she not going to try? Eve would, she was sure in her place. …
Why not grimace and be very “bright” and “animated” until the
