Pointed Roofs Pilgrimage, Volume 1
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"You ought to do it in basket plaits like Sarah."
"I wish I could. I can't think how she does it."
"Ike spect it's easy enough."
"Mm."
"But you're all right, anyhow."
"Anyhow, it's no good bothering when you're plain."
"You're not plain."
Miriam looked sharply round.
"Go on, Gooby."
"You're not. You don't know. Granny said you'll be a bonny woman, and Sarah thinks you've got the best shape face and the best complexion of any of us, and cook was simply crying her eyes out last night and said you were the light of the house with your happy, pretty face, and mother said you're much too attractive to go about alone, and that's partly why Pater's going with you to Hanover, silly.... You're not plain," she gasped.
Miriam's amazement silenced her. She stood back from the mirror. She could not look into it until Harriett had gone. The phrases she had just heard rang in her head without meaning. But she knew she would remember all of them. She went on doing her hair with downcast eyes. She had seen Harriett vividly, and had longed to crush her in her arms and kiss her little round cheeks and the snub of her nose. Then she wanted her to be gone.
Presently Harriett took up a brooch and skated down the room, "Ta-ra-ra-la-eee-tee!" she carolled, "don't be long," and disappeared.
"I'm pretty," murmured Miriam, planting herself in front of the dressing-table. "I'm pretty—they like me—they like me. Why didn't I know?" She did not look into the mirror. "They all like me, me."
The sound of the breakfast-bell came clanging up through the house. She hurried to her side of the curtained recess. Hanging there were her old red stockinette jersey and her blue skirt... never again... just once more... she could change afterwards. Her brown, heavy best dress with puffed and gauged sleeves and thick gauged and gathered boned bodice was in her hand. She hung it once more on its peg and quickly put on her old things. The jersey was shiny with wear. "You darling old things," she muttered as her arms slipped down the sleeves.
The door of the next room opened quietly and she heard Sarah and Eve go decorously downstairs. She waited until their footsteps had died away and then went very slowly down the first flight, fastening her belt. She stopped at the landing window, tucking the frayed end of the petersham under the frame of the buckle... they were all downstairs, liking her. She could not face them. She was too excited and too shy. ... She had never once thought of their "feeling" her going away... saying goodbye to each one... all minding and sorry—even the servants. She glanced fearfully out into the garden, seeing nothing. Someone called up from the breakfast-room doorway, "Mim—my!" How surprised Mr. Bart had been when he discovered that they themselves never knew whose voice it was of all four of them unless you saw the person, "but yours is really richer"... it was cheek to say that.
"Mimm—my!"
Suddenly she longed to be gone—to have it all over and be gone.
She heard the kak-kak of Harriett's wooden heeled slippers across the tiled hall. She glanced down the well of the staircase. Harriett was mightily swinging the bell, scattering a little spray of notes at each end of her swing.
With a frightened face Miriam crept back up the stairs. Violently slamming the bedroom door, "I'm a-comin'—I'm a-comin'," she shouted and ran downstairs.
CHAPTER II
1
The crossing was over. They were arriving. The movement of the little steamer that had collected the passengers from the packet-boat drove the raw air against Miriam's face. In her tired brain the grey river and the flat misty shores slid constantly into a vision of the gaslit dining-room at home... the large clear glowing fire, the sounds of the family voices. Every effort to obliterate the picture brought back again the moment that had come at the dinner-table as they all sat silent for an instant with downcast eyes and she had suddenly longed to go on for ever just sitting there with them all.
Now, in the boat she wanted to be free for the strange grey river and the grey shores. But the home scenes recurred relentlessly. Again and again she went through the last moments... the goodbyes, the unexpected convulsive force of her mother's arms, her own dreadful inability to give any answering embrace. She could not remember saying a single word. There had been a feeling that came like a tide carrying her away. Eager and dumb and remorseful she had gone out of the house and into the cab with Sarah, and then had come the long sitting in the loop-line train... "talk about something"... Sarah sitting opposite and her unchanged voice saying "What shall we talk about?" And then a long waiting, and the brown leather strap swinging against the yellow grained door, the smell of dust and the dirty wooden flooring, with the noise of the wheels underneath going to the swinging tune of one of Heller's "Sleepless Nights." The train had made her sway with its movements. How still Sarah seemed to sit, fixed in the old life. Nothing had come but strange cruel emotions.
After the suburban train nothing was distinct until the warm snowflakes were drifting against her face through the cold darkness on Harwich quay. Then, after what seemed like a great loop of time spent going helplessly up a gangway towards "the world" she had stood, face to face with the pale polite stewardess in her cabin. "I had better have a lemon, cut in two," she had said, feeling suddenly stifled with fear. For hours she had lain despairing, watching the slowly swaying walls of her cabin or sinking with closed eyes through invertebrate dipping spaces. Before each releasing paroxysm she told herself "this is like death; one day I shall die, it will be like this."
She supposed there would be breakfast soon on shore, a firm room and a teapot and cups and saucers. Cold and exhaustion would come to an end. She would be talking to her father.
2
He was standing near her with the Dutchman who had helped her off the boat and looked after her luggage. The Dutchman was listening, deferentially. Miriam saw the strong dark blue beam of his eyes.
"Very good, very good," she heard him say, "fine education in German schools."
Both men were smoking cigars.
She wanted to draw herself upright and shake out her clothes.
"Select," she heard, "excellent staff of masters... daughters of gentlemen."
"Pater is trying to make the Dutchman think I am being taken as a pupil to a finishing school in Germany." She thought of her lonely pilgrimage to the West End agency, of her humiliating interview, of her heart-sinking acceptance of the post, the excitements and misgivings she had had, of her sudden challenge of them all that evening after dinner, and their dismay and remonstrance and reproaches—of her fear and determination in insisting and carrying her point and making them begin to be interested in her plan.
But she shared her father's satisfaction in impressing the Dutchman. She knew that she was at one with him in that. She glanced at him. There could be no doubt that he was playing the role of the English gentleman. Poor dear. It was what he had always wanted to be. He had sacrificed everything to the idea of being a "person of leisure and cultivation." Well, after all, it was true in a way. He was—and he had, she knew, always wanted her to be the same and she was going to finish her education abroad... in Germany.... They were nearing a little low quay backed by a tremendous saffron-coloured hoarding announcing in black letters "Sunlight Zeep."
3
"Did you see, Pater; did you see?"