1
The next afternoon they all drove in a high, wide brake with an awning, five miles out into the country to have tea at a forest-inn. The inn appeared at last standing back from the wide roadway along which they had come, creamy-white and grey-roofed, long and low and with overhanging eaves, close against the forest. They pulled up and Pastor Lahmann dropped the steps and got out. Miriam who was sitting next to the door felt that the long sitting in two rows confronted in the hard afternoon light, bumped and shaken and teased with the crunchings and slitherings of the wheels the grinding and squeaking of the brake, had made them all enemies. She had sat tense and averted, seeing the general greenery, feeling that the cool flowing air might be great happiness, conscious of each form and each voice, of the insincerity of the exclamations and the babble of conversation that struggled above the noise of their going, half seeing Pastor Lahmann opposite to her, a little insincerely smiling man in an alpaca suit and a soft felt hat. She got down the steps without his assistance. With whom should she take refuge? ... no Minna. There were long tables and little round tables standing about under the trees in front of the inn. Some students in Polytechnik uniform were leaning out of an upper window.
The landlord came out. Everyone was out of the brake and standing about. Tall Fräulein was taking short padding steps towards the inn-door. A strong grip came on Miriam’s arm and she was propelled rapidly along towards the farther greenery. Gertrude was talking to her in loud rallying tones, asking questions in German and answering them herself. Miriam glanced round at her face. It was crimson and quivering with laughter. The strong laughter and her strong features seemed to hide the peculiar roughness of her skin and coarseness of her hair. They made the round of one of the long tables. When they were on the far side Gertrude said, “I think you’ll see a friend of mine to-day, Henderson.”
“There’s his chum anyhow at yondah window.”
“Oh, I say.”
“Hah! Spree, eh? Happy thought of Lily’s to bring us here.”
Miriam pondered, distressed. “You must tell me which it is if we see him.”
Their party was taking possession of a long table near by. Returning to her voluble talk, Gertrude steered Miriam towards them.
As they settled round the table under the quiet trees the first part of the waltz movement of Weber’s “Invitation” sounded out through the upper window. The brilliant tuneless passages bounding singly up the piano, flowing down entwined, were shaped by an iron rhythm.
Everyone stirred. Smiles broke. Fräulein lifted her head until her chin was high, smiled slowly until the fullest width was reached and made a little chiding sound in her throat.
Pastor Lahmann laughed with raised eyebrows. “Ah! la valse ... les étudiants.”
The window was empty. The assault settled into a gently-leaping, heavily-thudding waltz.
As the waiter finished clattering down a circle of cups and saucers in front of Fräulein, the unseen iron hands dropped tenderly into the central melody of the waltz. The notes no longer bounded and leaped but went dreaming along in an even slow swinging movement.
It seemed to Miriam that the sound of a far-off sea was in them, and the wind and the movement of distant trees and the shedding and pouring of far-away moonlight. One by one, delicately and quietly the young men’s voices dropped in, and the sea and the wind and the trees and the pouring moonlight came near.
When the music ceased Miriam hoped she had not been gazing at the window. It frightened and disgusted her to see that all the girls seemed to be sitting up and ... being bright ... affected. She could hardly believe it. She flushed with shame.... Fast, horrid ... perfect strangers ... it was terrible ... it spoilt everything. Sitting up like that and grimacing.... It was different for Gertrude. How happy Gertrude must be. She was sitting with her elbows on the table laughing out across the table about something.... Millie was not being horrid. She looked just as usual, pudgy and babyish and surprised and half resentful ... it was her eyebrows. Miriam began looking at eyebrows.
There was a sudden silence all round the table. Standing at Fräulein’s side was a young student holding his peaked cap in his hand and bowing with downcast eyes. Above his pallid scarred face his hair stood upright. He bowed at the end of each phrase. Miriam’s heart bounded in anticipation. Would Fräulein let them dance after tea, on the grass?
But Fräulein with many smiles and kind words denied the young man’s formally repeated pleadings. They finished tea to the strains of a funeral march.