20
The snarling rattle of the coffee mill sounded out into the hall. Several voices were speaking together as she entered. Fräulein Pfaff was not there. Gertrude Goldring was grinding the coffee. The girls were sitting round the table in easy attitudes and had the effect of holding a council. Emma, her elbows on the table, her little face bunched with scorn, put out a motherly arm and set a chair for Miriam. Jimmie had flung some friendly remark as she came in. Miriam did not hear what she said, but smiled responsively. She wanted to get quietly to her place and look round. There was evidently something in the air. They all seemed preoccupied. Perhaps no one would notice how awful she looked. “You’re not the only one, my dear,” she said to herself in her mother’s voice. “No,” she replied in person, “but no one will be looking so perfectly frightful as me.”
“I say, do they know you’re down?” said Gertrude hospitably, as the boiling water snored on to the coffee.
Emma rushed to the lift and rattled the panel.
“Anna!” she ordered, “Meece Hendshon! Suppe!”
“Oh, thanks,” said Miriam, in general. She could not meet anyone’s eye. The coffee cups were being slid up to Gertrude’s end of the table and rapidly filled by her. Gertrude, of course, she noticed had contrived to look dashing and smart. Her hair, with the exception of some wild ends that hung round her face was screwed loosely on the top of her head and transfixed with a dagger-like tortoise-shell hair ornament—like a Japanese—Indian—no, Maori—that was it, she looked like a New Zealander. Clara and Minna had fastened up theirs with combs and ribbons and looked decent—frauish though, thought Miriam. Judy wore a plait. Without her fuzzy cloud she looked exactly like a country servant, a farmhouse servant. She drank her coffee noisily and furtively—she looked extraordinary, thought Miriam, and took comfort. The Martins’ brown bows appeared on their necks instead of cresting their heads—it improved them, Miriam thought. What regular features they had. Bertha looked like a youth—like a musician. Her hair was loosened a little at the sides, shading the corners of her forehead and adding to its height. It shone like marble, high and straight. Emma’s hair hung round her like a shawl. ’Lisbeth, Gretchen ... what was that lovely German name ... hild ... Brunhilde....
Talk had begun again. Miriam hoped they had not noticed her. Her “Braten” shot up the lift.
“Lauter Unsinn!” announced Clara.
“We’ve all got to do our hair in clash ... clashishsher Knoten, Hendy, all of us,” said Jimmie judicially, sitting forward with her plump hands clasped on the table. Her pinnacle of hair looked exactly as usual.
“Oh, really.” Miriam tried to make a picture of a classic knot in her mind.
“If one have classic head one can have classic knot,” scolded Clara.
“How many classic head in the school of Waldstrasse?”
Elsa gave a little neighing laugh. “Classisch head, classisch Knote.”
“That is true what you say, Clarah.”
The table paused.
“Dîtes-moi—qu’est-ce-que ce terrible classique notte? Dîtes!”
No one seemed prepared to answer Mademoiselle’s challenge.
Miriam’s mind groped ... classic—Greece and Rome—Greek knot.... Grecian key ... a Grecian key pattern on the dresses for the sixth form tableau—reading Ruskin ... the strip of glass all along the window space on the floor in the large room—edged with mosses and grass—the mirror of Venus....
“Eh bien? Eh bien!”
... Only the eldest pretty girls ... all on their hands and knees looking into the mirror....
“Classische Form—Griechisch,” explained Clara.
“Like a statue, Mademoiselle.”
“Comment! Une statue! Je dois arranger mes cheveux comme une statue? Oh, ciel!” mocked Mademoiselle, collapsing into tinkles of her sprite laughter.... “Oh-là-là! Et quelle statue par exemple?” she trilled, with ironic eyebrows, “la statue de votre Kaisère Wilhelm der Grosse peut-être?”
The Martins’ guffaws led the laughter.
“Mademoisellekin with her hair done like the Kaiser Wilhelm,” pealed Jimmie.
Only Clara remained grave in wrath.
“Einfach,” she quoted bitterly, “Simple—says Lily, so simple!”
“Simple—simpler—simplicissimusko!”
“I make no change, not at all,” smiled Minna from behind her nose. “For this Ulrica it is quite something other.... She has yes truly so charming a little head.”
She spoke quietly and unenviously.
“I too, indeed. Lily may go and play the flute.”
“Brave girls,” said Gertrude, getting up. “Come on, Kinder, clearing time. You’ll excuse us, Miss Henderson? There’s your pudding in the lift. Do you mind having your coffee mit?”
The girls began to clear up.
“Leely, Leely, Leely Pfaff,” muttered Clara as she helped, “so einfach und niedlich,” she mimicked, “ach was! Schwärmerei—das find’ ich abscheulich! I find it disgusting!”
So that was it. It was the new girl. Lily, was Fräulein Pfaff. So the new girl wore her hair in a classic knot. How lovely. Without her hat she had “a charming little head,” Minna had said. And that face. Minna had seen how lovely she was and had not minded. Clara was jealous. Her head with a classic knot and no fringe, her worn-looking sallow face.... She would look like a “prisoner at the bar” in some newspaper. How they hated Fräulein Pfaff. The Germans at least. Fancy calling her Lily—Miriam did not like it, she had known at once. None of the teachers at school had been called by their Christian names—there had been old Quagmire, the Elfkin, and dear Donnikin, Stroodie, and good old Kingie and all of them—but no Christian names. Oh yes—Sally—so there had—Sally—but then Sally was—couldn’t have been anything else—never could have held a position of any sort. They ought not to call Fräulein Pfaff that. It was, somehow, nasty. Did the English girls do it? Ought she to have said anything? Mademoiselle did not seem at all shocked. Where was Fräulein Pfaff all this time? Perhaps somewhere hidden away, in her rooms, being “done” by Frau Krause. Fancy telling them all to alter the way they did their hair.