Chapter 10 No.10

That first evening at Waldstrasse there had been a performance that had completed the transformation of Miriam's English ideas of "music." She had caught the word "Vorspielen" being bandied about the long tea-table, and had gathered that there was to be an informal playing of "pieces" before Fraulein Pfaff. She welcomed the event. It relieved her from the burden of being in high focus-the relief had come as soon as she took her place at the gaslit table. No eye seemed to notice her.

The English girls having sat out two meal-times with her, had ceased the hard-eyed observation which had made the long silence of the earlier repasts only less embarrassing than Fraulein's questions about England. The four Germans who had neither stared nor even appeared aware of her existence, talked cheerfully across the table in a general exchange that included tall Fraulein Pfaff smiling her horse-smile-Miriam provisionally called it-behind the tea-urn, as chairman. The six English-speaking girls, grouped as it were towards their chief, a dark-skinned, athletic looking Australian with hot, brown, slightly blood-shot eyes sitting as vice-president opposite Fraulein, joined occasionally, in solo and chorus, and Miriam noted with relief a unanimous atrocity of accent in their enviable fluency. Rapid sotto voce commentary and half-suppressed wordless by-play located still more clearly the English quarter. Animation flowed and flowed. Miriam safely ignored, scarcely heeding, but warmed and almost happy, basked. She munched her black bread and butter, liberally smeared with the rich savoury paste of liver sausage, and drank her sweet weak tea and knew that she was very tired, sleepy and tired. She glanced, from her place next to Emma Bergmann and on Fraulein's left hand, down the table to where Mademoiselle sat next the Martins in similar relation to the vice-president. Mademoiselle, preceding her up through the quiet house carrying the jugs of hot water, had been her first impression on her arrival the previous night. She had turned when they reached the candle-lit attic with its high uncurtained windows and red-covered box beds, and standing on the one strip of matting in her full-skirted grey wincey dress with its neat triple row of black ribbon velvet near the hem, had shown Miriam steel-blue eyes smiling from a little triangular sprite-like face under a high-standing pouf of soft dark hair, and said, "Voila!" Miriam had never imagined anything in the least like her. She had said, "Oh, thank you," and taken the jug and had hurriedly and silently got to bed, weighed down by wonders. They had begun to talk in the dark. Miriam had reaped sweet comfort in learning that this seemingly unreal creature who was, she soon perceived, not educated-as she understood education-was the resident French governess, was seventeen years old and a Protestant. Such close quarters with a French girl was bewildering enough-had she been a Roman Catholic, Miriam felt she could not have endured her proximity. She was evidently a special kind of French girl-a Protestant from East France-Besanon-Besanon-Miriam had tried the pretty word over until unexpectedly she had fallen asleep.

They had risen hurriedly in the cold March gloom and Miriam had not spoken to her since. There she sat, dainty and quiet and fresh. White frillings shone now at the neck and sleeves of her little grey dress. She looked a clean and clear miniature against the general dauby effect of the English girls-poor though, Miriam was sure; perhaps as poor as she. She felt glad as she watched her gentle sprite-like wistfulness that she would be upstairs in that great bare attic again to-night. In repose her face looked pinched. There was something about the nose and mouth-Miriam mused... frugal-John Gilpin's wife-how sleepy she was.