“This is the first time I have seen a Roman Catholic church,” she said, and “how superstitious” when they came upon crutches and staves hanging behind a reredos—and all the time she breathed the incense and felt the dimness around her and going up and up and brooding, high up.
Presently they were joined by a priest. He took them into a little room, unlocking a heavy door which clanged to after them, opening out behind one of the chapels. One side of the room was lined with an oaken cupboard.
“Je frissonne.”
Miriam escaped Mademoiselle’s neighbourhood and got into an angle between the frosted window and the plaster wall. The air was still and musty—the floor was of stone, the ceiling low and white. There was nothing in the room but the oaken cupboard. The priest was showing a cross so crusted with jewels that the mounting was invisible. Miriam saw it as he lifted it from its wrappings in the cupboard. It seemed familiar to her. She did not wish to see it more closely, to touch it. She stood as thing after thing was taken from the cupboard, waiting in her corner for the moment when they must leave. Now and again she stepped forward and appeared to look, smiled and murmured. Faint sounds from the town came up now and again.
The minutes were passing; soon they must go. She wanted to stay ... more than she had ever wanted anything in her life she wanted to stay in this little musty room behind the quiet dim church in this little town.
17
At sunset they stood on a hill outside the town and looked across at it lying up its own hillside, its buildings peaking against the sky. They counted the rich green copper cupolas and sighed and exulted over the whole picture, the coloured sky, the coloured town, the shimmering of the trees.
Making their way along the outskirts of the town towards the station in the fading light they met a little troop of men and women coming quietly along the roadway. They were all dressed in black. They looked at the girls with strange mild eyes and filled Miriam with fear.
Presently the girls crossed a little high bridge over a stream, and from the crest of the bridge beyond a high-walled garden a terraced building came into sight. It was dotted with women dressed in black. One of the figures rose and waved a handkerchief. “Wave, children,” said Fräulein’s trembling voice, “wave”—and the girls collected in a little group on the crest of the bridge and waved with raised arms.
“Ghastly, isn’t it?” said Gertrude, glancing at Miriam as they moved on. Miriam was cold with apprehension. “Are they mad?” she whispered.