“Are all here?”
Jimmie answered and Fräulein came to the table and stood leaning for a moment upon one hand.
The door opened and the housekeeper shone hard and bright in the doorway.
“Wäsche angekommen!”
“Na, gut,” responded Fräulein quietly.
The housekeeper disappeared.
“Fräulein looks like a dead body,” thought Miriam.
Apprehension overtook her … “there’s going to be some silly fuss.”
“I shall speak in English, because the most that I shall say concerns the English members of this household and its heavy seriousness will be by those who are not English, sufficiently understood.”
Miriam flushed, struggling for self-possession. She determined not to listen. … “Damn … Devil …” she exhorted herself … “humbugging creature …” She felt the blood throbbing in her face and her eyes and looked at no one. She was conscious that little movements and sounds came from the Germans, but she heard nothing but Fräulein’s voice which had ceased. It had been the clear-cut low-breathing tone she used at prayers. “Oh, Lord, bother, damnation,” she reiterated in her discomfiture. The words echoing through her mind seemed to cut a way of escape. …
“That dear child,” smiled Fräulein’s voice, “who has just left us, came under this roof … nearly a year ago.
“She came, a tender girl (Mademoiselle—Mademoiselle, oh, goodness!) from the house of her pious parents, fromme Eltern, fromme Eltern.” Fräulein breathed these words slowly out and a deep sigh came from one of the Germans, “to reside with us. She came in the most perfect confidence with the aim to complete her own simple education, the pious and simple nurture of a Protestant French girl, and with the aim also to remove for a period something of the burden lying upon the shoulders of those dear parents in the upbringing of herself and her brothers and sisters.” (And then to leave home and be married—how easy, how easy!)
“Honourably—honourably she has fulfilled each and every duty laid upon her as institutrice in this establishment.
“Sufficient to indicate this fulfilment of duty is the fact that she was happy and that she made happy others—”
Fräulein’s voice dropped to its lowest note and grew fuller in tone.
“Would that I could here complete what I have to say of the sojourn of little Aline Ducorroy under this roof. … But that I cannot do.
“That I cannot do.
“It has been the experience of this pure and gentle soul to come, under this roof, in contact with things not pure.”
Fräulein’s voice had become breathless and shaking. Both her hands sought the support of the table.
“This poor child has had unwillingly to suffer the fact of associating with those not pure.”
“Ach, Fräulein! What you say!” ejaculated Clara.
In the silence the leaves of the chestnut tree tapped one against the other. Miriam listened to them … there must be a little breeze blowing across the garden. Why had she not noticed it before? Were they all hearing it?
“With—those—not pure.”
“Here, in this my school.”
Miriam’s heart began to beat angrily.
“She has been forced, here, in this school, to hear talking”—Fräulein’s voice thickened—“of men. …”
“Männer‑geschichten … here!”
“Männer‑geschichten.” Fräulein’s voice rang out down the table. She bent forward so that the light from both the windows behind her fell sharply across her grey-clad shoulders and along the top of her head. There was no condemnation Miriam felt in those broad grey shoulders—they were innocent. But the head shining and flat, the wide parting, the sleekness of the hair falling thinly and flatly away from it—angry, dreadful skull. She writhed away from it. She would not look any more. She felt her neck was swelling inside her collar band.
Fräulein whispered low.
“Here in my school, here standing round this table are those who talk of—men.
“Young girls … who talk … of men.”
While Fräulein waited, trembling, several of the girls began to snuffle and sob.
“Is there, can there be in the world anything that is more base, more vile, more impure? Is there? Is there?”
Miriam wished she knew who was crying. She tried to fix her thoughts on a hole in the table cover. “It could be darned. … It could be darned.”
“You are brought here together, each and all of you here together in the time of your youth. It is, it should be for you the most beautiful occasion. Can you find anything more terrible than that such occasion where all may work and influence each other—for all life—in purity and goodness—that such occasion should be used—impurely? Like a dawn, like a dawn for purity should be the life of a maiden. Calm, and pure and with holy prayer.”
Miriam repeated these words in her mind trying to dwell on the beauty of Fräulein’s middle tones. “And the day shall come, I shall wish, for all of you, that the sanctity of a home shall be within your hands. What then shall be the shame, what the regret of those who before the coming of that sacred time did think thoughts of men, did speak of them? Shame, shame,” whispered Fräulein amidst the sobbing of the girls.
“With the thoughts of those who have this impure nature I can do nothing. For them it is freely to acknowledge this evil in the heart and to pray that the heart may be changed and made clean.
“But a thing I can do and I do. … I will have no more of this talking. In my school I will have no more. … Do you hear, all? Do you hear?”
She struck the table with both fists and brandished them in midair.
“Eh‑h,” she sneered. “I know, I know who are the culprits. I have always known.” She gasped. “It shall cease—these talks—this vile talk of men. Do you understand? It shall cease. I—will—not—have—it. … The school shall be clean … from pupil to pupil … from room to room. … Every day … every hour. … Shameless!”
