2
Fräulein Pfaff rose at last from the table.
“Na, Kinder,” she smiled, holding her arms out to them all.
She turned to the nearest window.
“Die Fenster auf!” she cried, in quivering tones, “Die Herzen auf!” “Up with windows! Up with hearts!”
Her hands struggled with the hasp of the long-closed outer frame. The girls crowded round as the lattices swung wide. The air poured in.
Miriam stood in a vague crowd seeing nothing. She felt the movement of her own breathing and the cool streaming of the air through her nostrils. She felt comely and strong.
“That’s a thrush,” she heard Bertha Martin say as a chattering flew across a distant garden—and Fräulein’s half-singing reply, “Know you, children, what the thrush says? Know you?” and Minna’s eager voice sounding out into the open, “D’ja, d’ja, ich weiss—Ritzifizier, sagt sie, Ritzifizier, das vierundzwanzigste Jahr!” and voices imitating.
“Spring! Spring! Spring!” breathed Clara, in a low sing-song.
Miriam found herself with her hands on the doors leading into the saal, pushing them gently. Why not? Everything had changed. Everything was good. The great doors gave, the sunlight streamed from behind her into the quiet saal. She went along the pathway it made and stood in the middle of the room. The voices from the schoolroom came softly, far away. She went to the centre window and pushing aside its heavy curtains saw for the first time that it had no second pane like the others, but led directly into a sort of summer-house, open in front and leading by a wooden stairway down to the garden plot. Up the railing of the stairway and over the entrance of the summer-house a creeping plant was putting out tiny leaves. It was in shadow, but the sun caught the sharply peaked gable of the summer-house and on the left the tops of the high shrubs lining the pathway leading to the wooden door and the great balls finishing the high stone gateway shone yellow with sunlit lichen. She heard the schoolroom windows close and the girls clearing away the breakfast things and escaped upstairs singing.
Before she had finished her duties a summons came. Jimmie brought the message, panting as she reached the top of the stairs.
“Hurry up, Hendy!” she gasped. “You’re one of the distinguished ones, my dear!”
“What do you mean?” Miriam began apprehensively as she turned to go. “Oh, Jimmie——” she tried to laugh ingratiatingly. “Do tell me what you mean?” Jimmie turned and raised a plump hand with a sharply-quirked little finger and a dangle of lace-edged handkerchief.
“You’re a swell, my dear. You’re in with the specials and the classic knot.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to read—Gerty, or something—no idiots admitted. You’re going it, Hendy. Ta-ta. Fly! Don’t stick in the mud, old slow-coach.”
“I’ll come in a second,” said Miriam, adjusting hairpins.
She was to read Goethe ... with Fräulein Pfaff.... Fräulein knew she would be one of the few who would do for a Goethe reading. She reached the little room smiling with happiness.
“Here she is,” was Fräulein’s greeting. The little group—Ulrica, Minna and Solomon Martin were sitting about informally in the sunlit window space, Minna and Solomon had needlework—Ulrica was gazing out into the garden. Miriam sank into the remaining low-seated wicker chair and gave herself up. Fräulein began to read, as she did at prayers, slowly, almost below her breath, but so clearly that Miriam could distinguish each word and her face shone as she bent over her book. It was a poem in blank verse with long undulating lines. Miriam paid no heed to the sense. She heard nothing but the even swing, the slight rising and falling of the clear low tones. She felt once more the opening of the schoolroom window—she saw the little brown summer-house and the sun shining on the woodwork of its porch. Summer coming. Summer coming in Germany. She drew a long breath. The poem was telling of someone getting away out of a room, out of “narrow conversation” to a meadow-covered plain—of a white pathway winding through the green.
Minna put down her sewing and turned her kind blue eyes to Fräulein Pfaff’s face.
Ulrica sat drooping, her head bent, her great eyes veiled, her hands entwined on her lap.... The little pathway led to a wood. The wide landscape disappeared. Fräulein’s voice ceased.