15
At the end of twenty minutes, dismissed by Fräulein with a smiling recommendation to go and practise in the saal, Miriam had run upstairs for her music.
“It’s all right. I’m all right. I shall be able to do it,” she said to herself as she ran. The ordeal was past. She was, she had learned, to talk English with the German girls, at table, during walks, whenever she found herself with them, excepting on Saturdays and Sundays—and she was to read with the four—for an hour, three times a week. There had been no mention of grammar or study in any sense she understood.
She had had a moment of tremor when Fräulein had said in her slow clear English, “I leave you to your pupils, Miss Henderson,” and with that had gone out and shut the door. The moment she had dreaded had come. This was Germany. There was no escape. Her desperate eyes caught sight of a solid-looking volume on the table, bound in brilliant blue cloth. She got it into her shaking hands. It was “Misunderstood.” She felt she could have shouted in her relief. A treatise on the Morse code would not have surprised her. She had heard that such things were studied at school abroad and that German children knew the names and, worse than that, the meaning of the names of the streets in the city of London. But this book that she and Harriett had banished and wanted to burn in their early teens together with “Sandford and Merton.” ...
“You are reading ‘Misunderstood’?” she faltered, glancing at the four politely waiting girls.
It was Minna who answered her in her husky, eager voice.
“D’ja, d’ja,” she responded, “na, ich meine, yace, yace we read—so sweet and beautiful book—not?”
“Oh,” said Miriam, “yes ...” and then eagerly, “you all like it, do you?”
Clara and Elsa agreed unenthusiastically. Emma, at her elbow, made a little despairing gesture, “I can’t English,” she moaned gently, “too deeficult.”
Miriam tested their reading. The class had begun. Nothing had happened. It was all right. They each, dutifully and with extreme carefulness read a short passage. Miriam sat blissfully back. It was incredible. The class was going on. The chestnut tree budded approval from the garden. She gravely corrected their accents. The girls were respectful. They appeared to be interested. They vied with each other to get exact sounds; and they presently delighted Miriam by telling her they could understand her English much better than that of her predecessor. “So cleare, so cleare,” they chimed, “Voonderfoll.” And then they all five seemed to be talking at once. The little room was full of broken English, of Miriam’s interpolated corrections. It was going—succeeding. This was her class. She hoped Fräulein was listening outside. She probably was. Heads of foreign schools did. She remembered Madame Beck in “Villette.” But if she was not, she hoped they would tell her about being able to understand the new English teacher so well. “Oh, I am haypie,” Emma was saying, with adoring eyes on Miriam and her two arms outflung on the table. Miriam recoiled. This would not do—they must not all talk at once and go on like this. Minna’s whole face was aflame. She sat up stiffly—adjusted her pince-nez—and desperately ordered the reading to begin again—at Minna. They all subsided and Minna’s careful husky voice came from her still blissfully-smiling face. The others sat back and attended. Miriam watched Minna judicially, and hoped she looked like a teacher. She knew her pince-nez disguised her and none of these girls knew she was only seventeen and a half. “Sorrowg,” Minna was saying, hesitating. Miriam had not heard the preceding word. “Once more the whole sentence,” she said, with quiet gravity, and then as Minna reached the word “thorough” she corrected and spent five minutes showing her how to get over the redoubtable “th.” They all experimented and exclaimed. They had never been shown that it was just a matter of getting the tongue between the teeth. Miriam herself had only just discovered it. She speculated as to how long it would take for her to deliver them up to Fräulein Pfaff with this notorious stumbling-block removed. She was astonished herself at the mechanical simplicity of the cure. How stupid people must be not to discover these things. Minna’s voice went on. She would let her read a page. She began to wonder rather blankly what she was to do to fill up the hour after they had all read a page. She had just reached the conclusion that they must do some sort of writing when Fräulein Pfaff came, and still affable and smiling had ushered the girls to their mending and sent Miriam off to the saal.