16
As she flew upstairs for her music, saying, “I’m all right. I can do it all right,” she was half-conscious that her provisional success with her class had very little to do with her bounding joy. That success had not so much given her anything to be glad about—it had rather removed an obstacle of gladness which was waiting to break forth. She was going to stay on. That was the point. She would stay in this wonderful place.... She came singing down through the quiet house—the sunlight poured from bedroom windows through open doors. She reached the quiet saal. Here stood the great piano, its keyboard open under the light of the French window opposite the door through which she came. Behind the great closed swing doors the girls were talking over their raccommodage. Miriam paid no attention to them. She would ignore them all. She did not even need to try to ignore them. She felt strong and independent. She would play, to herself. She would play something she knew perfectly, a Grieg lyric or a movement from a Beethoven Sonata ... on this gorgeous piano ... and let herself go, and listen. That was music ... not playing things, but listening to Beethoven.... It must be Beethoven ... Grieg was different ... acquired ... like those strange green figs Pater had brought from Tarring ... Beethoven had always been real.
It was all growing clearer and clearer.... She chose the first part of the first movement of the Sonata Pathétique. That she knew she could play faultlessly. It was the last thing she had learned, and she had never grown weary of practising slowly through its long bars of chords. She had played it at her last music-lesson ... dear old Stroodie walking up and down the long drilling-room.... “Steady the bass”; “grip the chords,” then standing at her side and saying in the thin light sneery part of his voice, “You can ... you’ve got hands like umbrellas” ... and showing her how easily she could stretch two notes beyond his own span. And then marching away as she played and crying out to her standing under the high windows at the far end of the room, “Let it go! Let it go!”
And she had almost forgotten her wretched self, almost heard the music....
She felt for the pedals, lifted her hands a span above the piano as Clara had done and came down, true and clean, on to the opening chord. The full rich tones of the piano echoed from all over the room; and some metal object far away from her hummed the dominant. She held the chord for its full term.... Should she play any more?... She had confessed herself ... just that minor chord ... anyone hearing it would know more than she could ever tell them ... her whole being beat out the rhythm as she waited for the end of the phrase to insist on what already had been said. As it came, she found herself sitting back, slackening the muscles of her arms and of her whole body, and ready to swing forward into the rising storm of her page. She did not need to follow the notes on the music stand. Her fingers knew them. Grave and happy she sat with unseeing eyes, listening, for the first time.
At the end of the page she was sitting with her eyes full of tears, aware of Fräulein standing between the open swing doors with Gertrude’s face showing over her shoulder—its amazement changing to a large-toothed smile as Fräulein’s quietly repeated “Prachtvoll, prachtvoll” came across the room. Miriam, after a hasty smile, sat straining her eyes as widely as possible, so that the tears should not fall. She glared at the volume in front of her, turning the pages. She was glad that the heavy sun-blinds cast a deep shadow over the room. She blinked. She thought they would not notice. Only one tear fell and that was from the left eye, towards the wall. “You are a real musician, Miss Henderson,” said Fräulein, advancing.
17
Every other day or so Miriam found she could get an hour on a bedroom piano; and always on a Saturday morning during raccommodage. She rediscovered all the pieces she had already learned. She went through them one by one, eagerly, slurring over difficulties, pressing on, getting their effect, listening and discovering. “It’s technique I want,” she told herself, when she had reached the end of her collection, beginning to attach a meaning to the familiar word. Then she set to work. She restricted herself to the Pathétique, always omitting the first page, which she knew so well and practised mechanically, slowly, meaninglessly, with neither pedalling nor expression, page by page until a movement was perfect. Then when the mood came, she played ... and listened. She soon discovered she could not always “play”—even the things she knew perfectly—and she began to understand the fury that had seized her when her mother and a woman here and there had taken for granted one should “play when asked,” and coldly treated her refusal as showing lack of courtesy. “Ah!” she said aloud, as this realisation came, “Women.”
“Of course you can only ‘play when you can,’” said she to herself, “like a bird singing.”
She sang once or twice, very quietly, in those early weeks. But she gave that up. She had a whole sheaf of songs with her. But after that first Vorspielen they seemed to have lost their meaning. One by one she looked them through. Her dear old Venetian song, “Beauty’s Eyes,” “An Old Garden”—she hesitated over that, and hummed it through—“Best of All”—“In Old Madrid”—the vocal score of the “Mikado”—her little “Chanson de Florian,” and a score of others. She blushed at her collection. The “Chanson de Florian” might perhaps hold its own at a Vorspielen—sung by Bertha Martin—perhaps.... The remainder of her songs, excepting a little bound volume of Sterndale Bennett, she put away at the bottom of her Saratoga trunk. Meanwhile, there were songs being learned by Herr Bossenberger’s pupils for which she listened hungrily; Schubert, Grieg, Brahms. She would always, during those early weeks, sacrifice her practising to listen from the schoolroom to a pupil singing in the saal.
18
The morning of Ulrica Hesse’s arrival was one of the mornings when she could “play.” She was sitting, happy, in the large English bedroom, listening. It was late. She was beginning to wonder why the gonging did not come when the door opened. It was Millie in her dressing-gown, with her hair loose and a towel over her arm.
“Oh, bitte, Miss Henderson, will you please go down to Frau Krause, Fräulein Pfaff says,” she said, her baby face full of responsibility.
Miriam rose uneasily. What might this be? “Frau Krause?” she asked.
“Oh yes, it’s Haarwaschen,” said Millie anxiously, evidently determined to wait until Miriam recognised her duty.
“Where?” said Miriam aghast.
“Oh, in the basement. I must go. Frau Krause’s waiting. Will you come?”
“Oh well, I suppose so,” mumbled Miriam, coming to the door as the child turned to go.
“All right,” said Millie, “I’m going down. Do make haste, Miss Henderson, will you?”
“All right,” said Miriam, going back into the room.
Collecting her music she went incredulously upstairs. This was school with a vengeance. This was boarding-school. It was abominable. Fräulein Pfaff indeed! Ordering her, Miriam, to go downstairs and have her hair washed ... by Frau Krause ... off-hand, without any warning ... someone should have told her—and let her choose. Her hair was clean. Sarah had always done it. Miriam’s throat contracted. She would not go down. Frau Krause should not touch her. She reached the attics. Their door was open and there was Mademoiselle in her little alpaca dressing-jacket, towelling her head.
Her face came up, flushed and gay. Miriam was too angry to note till afterwards how pretty she had looked with her hair like that.
“Ah! ... c’est le grand lavage!” sang Mademoiselle.
“Oui,” said Miriam surlily.
What could she do? She imagined the whole school waiting downstairs to see her come down to be done. Should she go down and decline, explain to Fräulein Pfaff. She hated her vindictively—her “calm” message—“treating me like a child.” She saw the horse smile and heard the caustic voice.
“It’s sickening,” she muttered, whisking her dressing-gown from its nail and seizing a towel. Mademoiselle was piling up her damp hair before the little mirror.
Slowly Miriam made her journey to the basement.
Minna and Elsa were brushing out their long hair with their door open. A strong sweet perfume came from the room.
The basement hall was dark save for the patch of light coming from the open kitchen door. In the patch stood a low table and a kitchen chair. On the table which was shining wet and smeary with soap, stood a huge basin. Out over the basin flew a long tail of hair and Miriam’s anxious eyes found Millie standing in the further gloom twisting and wringing.