2
He was standing near her with the Dutchman who had helped her off the boat and looked after her luggage. The Dutchman was listening, deferentially. Miriam saw the strong dark blue beam of his eyes.
“Very good, very good,” she heard him say, “fine education in German schools.”
Both men were smoking cigars.
She wanted to draw herself upright and shake out her clothes.
“Select,” she heard, “excellent staff of masters ... daughters of gentlemen.”
“Pater is trying to make the Dutchman think I am being taken as a pupil to a finishing school in Germany.” She thought of her lonely pilgrimage to the West End agency, of her humiliating interview, of her heart-sinking acceptance of the post, the excitements and misgivings she had had, of her sudden challenge of them all that evening after dinner, and their dismay and remonstrance and reproaches—of her fear and determination in insisting and carrying her point and making them begin to be interested in her plan.
But she shared her father’s satisfaction in impressing the Dutchman. She knew that she was at one with him in that. She glanced at him. There could be no doubt that he was playing the rôle of the English gentleman. Poor dear. It was what he had always wanted to be. He had sacrificed everything to the idea of being a “person of leisure and cultivation.” Well, after all, it was true in a way. He was—and he had, she knew, always wanted her to be the same and she was going to finish her education abroad ... in Germany.... They were nearing a little low quay backed by a tremendous saffron-coloured hoarding announcing in black letters “Sunlight Zeep.”
3
“Did you see, Pater; did you see?”
They were walking rapidly along the quay.
“Did you see? Sunlight Zeep!”
She listened to his slightly scuffling stride at her side.
Glancing up she saw his face excited and important. He was not listening. He was being an English gentleman, “emerging” from the Dutch railway station.
“Sunlight Zeep,” she shouted. “Zeep, Pater!”
He glanced down at her and smiled condescendingly.
“Ah, yes,” he admitted with a laugh.
There were Dutch faces for Miriam—men, women and children coming towards her with sturdy gait.
“They’re talking Dutch! They’re all talking Dutch!”
The foreign voices, the echoes in the little narrow street, the flat waterside effect of the sounds, the bright clearness she had read of, brought tears to her eyes.
“The others must come here,” she told herself, pitying them all.
They had an English breakfast at the Victoria Hotel and went out and hurried about the little streets. They bought cigars and rode through the town on a little tramway. Presently they were in a train watching the Dutch landscape go by. One level stretch succeeded another. Miriam wanted to go out alone under the grey sky and walk over the flat fields shut in by poplars.
She looked at the dykes and the windmills with indifferent eyes, but her desire for the flat meadows grew.
Late at night, seated wide-awake opposite her sleeping companion, rushing towards the German city, she began to think.