Fräulein came in very soon and turned out the light with a formal good-night greeting. For a while after all the lights were out, she continued pacing up and down.
Across the landing someone began to sneeze rapidly sneeze after sneeze. “Ach, die Millie!” muttered Emma sleepily. For several minutes the sneezing went on. Sighs and impatient movements sounded here and there. “Ruhig, Kinder, ruhig. Millie shall soon sleep peacefully as all.”
9
Miriam could not remember hearing Fräulein Pfaff go away when she woke in the darkness feeling unendurably oppressed. She flung her sheet aside and turned her pillow over and pushed her frilled sleeves to her elbows. How energetic I am, she thought and lay tranquil. There was not a sound. “I shall never be able to sleep down here, it’s too awful,” she murmured, and puffed and shifted her head on the pillow.
The win-ter may—pass.... The win-ter ... may pass. The winter may ... pass. The Academy ... a picture in very bright colours ... a woman sitting by the roadside with a shawl round her shoulders and a red skirt and red cheeks and bright green country behind her ... people moving about on the shiny floor, someone just behind saying, “that is plein-air, these are the plein-airistes”—the woman in the picture was like the housekeeper....
A brilliant light flashed into the room ... lightning—how strange the room looked—the screens had been moved—the walls and corners and little beds had looked like daylight. Someone was talking across the landing. Emma was awake. Another flash came and movements and cries. Emma screamed aloud, sitting up in bed. “Ach Gott! Clara! Clara!” she screamed. Cries came from the next room. A match was struck across the landing and voices sounded. Gertrude was in the room lighting the gas and Clara tugging down the blind. Emma was sitting with her hands pressed to her eyes, quickly gasping, “Ach Clara! Mein Gott! Ach Gott!” On Ulrica’s bed nothing was visible but a mound of bedclothes. The whole landing was astir. Fräulein’s voice called up urgently from below.
10
Miriam was the last to reach the schoolroom. The girls were drawn up on either side of the gaslit room—leaving the shuttered windows clear. She moved to take a chair at the end of the table in front of the saal doors. “Na!” said Fräulein sharply from the sofa-corner. “Not there! In full current!” Her voice shook. Miriam drew the chair to the end of the row of figures and sat down next to Solomon Martin. The wind rushed through the garden, the thunder rattled across the sky. “Oh, Clara! Fräulein! Nein!” gasped Emma. She was sitting opposite, between Clara and Jimmie with flushed face and eyes strained wide, twisting her linked hands against her knees. Jimmie patted her wrist, “It’s all right, Emmchen,” she muttered cheerfully. “Nein, Christina!” jerked Fräulein sharply. “I will not have that! To touch the flesh! You understand, all! That you know. All! Such immodesty!”
Miriam leaned forward and glanced. Fräulein was sitting very upright on the sofa in a shapeless black cloak with her hands clasped on her breast. Near her was Ulrica in her trailing white dressing-gown, her face pressed against the back of the sofa. In the far corner, the other side of Fräulein sat Gertrude in her grey ulster, her knees comfortably crossed, a quilted scarlet silk bedroom-slipper sticking out under the hem of her ulster.
The thunder crashed and pounded just above them. Everyone started and exclaimed. Emma flung her arms up across her face and sat back in her chair with a hooting cry. From the sofa came a hidden sobbing and gasping. “Ach Himmel! Ach Herr Jé-sus! Ach du lie-ber, lie-ber Gott!”