“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.
3
She handed the book to Ulrica, indicating the place and Ulrica read. Her voice sounded a higher pitch than Fräulein’s. It sounded out rich and full and liquid, and seemed to shake her slight body and echo against the walls of her face. It filled the room with a despairing ululation. Fräulein seemed by contrast to have been whispering piously in a corner. Listening to the beseeching tones, hearing no words, Miriam wished that the eyes could be raised, when the reading ceased, to hers and that she could go and put her hands about the beautiful head, scarcely touching it and say, “It is all right. I will stay with you always.”
She watched the little hand that was not engaged with the book and lay abandoned, outstretched, listless and shining on her knee. Solomon’s needle snapped. She frowned and roused herself heavily to secure another from the basket on the floor at her side. Miriam, flashing hatred at her, caught Fräulein’s fascinated gaze fixed on Ulrica; and saw it hastily turn to an indulgent smile as the eyes became conscious, moving for a moment without reaching her in the direction of her own low chair. A tap came at the door and Anna’s flat tones, like a voluble mechanical doll, announced a postal official waiting in the hall for Ulrica—with a package. “Ein Packet ... a-a-ach,” wailed Ulrica, rising, her hands trembling, her great eyes radiant. Fräulein sent her off with Solomon to superintend the signing and payments and give help with the unpacking.