Books: Pointed Roofs (Pilgrimage 1)
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Dorothy Richardson >> Pointed Roofs (Pilgrimage 1)
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13 PILGRIMAGE
POINTED ROOFS
CHAPTER I
1
Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. The March
twilight lay upon the landings, but the staircase was almost dark. The
top landing was quite dark and silent. There was no one about. It
would be quiet in her room. She could sit by the fire and be quiet and
think things over until Eve and Harriett came back with the parcels.
She would have time to think about the journey and decide what she was
going to say to the Fraulein.
Her new Saratoga trunk stood solid and gleaming in the firelight.
To-morrow it would be taken away and she would be gone. The room would
be altogether Harriett's. It would never have its old look again. She
evaded the thought and moved clumsily to the nearest window. The
outline of the round bed and the shapes of the may-trees on either side
of the bend of the drive were just visible. There was no escape for her
thoughts in this direction. The sense of all she was leaving stirred
uncontrollably as she stood looking down into the well-known garden.
Out in the road beyond the invisible lime-trees came the rumble of
wheels. The gate creaked and the wheels crunched up the drive, slurring
and stopping under the dining-room window.
It was the Thursday afternoon piano-organ, the one that was always in
tune. It was early to-day.
She drew back from the window as the bass chords began thumping gently
in the darkness. It was better that it should come now than later on,
at dinnertime. She could get over it alone up here.
She went down the length of the room and knelt by the fireside with one
hand on the mantel-shelf so that she could get up noiselessly and be
lighting the gas if anyone came in.
The organ was playing "The Wearin' o' the Green."
It had begun that tune during the last term at school, in the summer.
It made her think of rounders in the hot school garden, singing-classes
in the large green room, all the class shouting "Gather roses while ye
may," hot afternoons in the shady north room, the sound of turning
pages, the hum of the garden beyond the sun-blinds, meetings in the
sixth form study. . . . Lilla, with her black hair and the specks of
bright amber in the brown of her eyes, talking about free-will.
She stirred the fire. The windows were quite dark. The flames shot up
and shadows darted.
That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and
desert her, leaving nothing behind. To-morrow it would belong to a
world which would go on without her, taking no heed. There would still
be blissful days. But she would not be in them.
There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and
nothing to do and no end anywhere to anything; no more sitting at the
open window in the dining-room, reading Lecky and Darwin and bound
"Contemporary Reviews" with roses waiting in the garden to be worn in
the afternoon, and Eve and Harriett somewhere about, washing blouses or
copying waltzes from the library packet. . . no more Harriett looking in
at the end of the morning, rushing her off to the new grand piano to
play the "Mikado" and the "Holy Family" duets. The tennis-club would go
on, but she would not be there. It would begin in May. Again there
would be a white twinkling figure coming quickly along the pathway
between the rows of holly-hocks every Saturday afternoon.
Why had he come to tea every Sunday--never missing a single Sunday--all
the winter? Why did he say, "Play 'Abide with me,'" "Play 'Abide with
me'" yesterday, if he didn't care? What was the good of being so quiet
and saying nothing? Why didn't he say "Don't go" or "When are you
coming back?" Eve said he looked perfectly miserable.
There was nothing to look forward to now but governessing and old age.
Perhaps Miss Gilkes was right. . . . Get rid of men and muddles and have
things just ordinary and be happy. "Make up your mind to be happy. You
can be _perfectly_ happy without anyone to think about. . . ."
Wearing that large cameo brooch--long, white, flat-fingered hands and
that quiet little laugh. . . . The piano-organ had reached its last
tune. In the midst of the final flourish of notes the door flew open.
Miriam got quickly to her feet and felt for matches.
2
Harriett came in waggling a thin brown paper parcel.
"Did you hear the Intermezzo? What a dim religious! We got your old
collars."
Miriam took the parcel and subsided on to the hearthrug, looking with a
new curiosity at Harriett's little, round, firelit face, smiling tightly
beneath the rim of her hard felt hat and the bright silk bow beneath her
chin.
A footstep sounded on the landing and there was a gentle tap on the open
door.
"Oh, come in, Eve--bring some matches. Are the collars piquet, Harry?"
"No, they hadn't got piquet, but they're the plain shape you like. You
may thank us they didn't send you things with little rujabiba frills."
Eve came slenderly down the room and Miriam saw with relief that her
outdoor things were off. As the gas flared up she drew comfort from her
scarlet serge dress, and the soft crimson cheek and white brow of the
profile raised towards the flaring jet.
"What are things like downstairs?" she said, staring into the fire.
"I don't know," said Eve. She sighed thoughtfully and sank into a
carpet chair under the gas bracket. Miriam glanced at her troubled
eyes.
"Pater's only just come in. I think things are pretty rotten," declared
Harriett from the hearthrug.
"Isn't it ghastly--for all of us?" Miriam felt treacherously outspoken.
It was a relief to be going away. She knew that this sense of relief
made her able to speak. "It's never knowing that's so awful. Perhaps
he'll get some more money presently and things'll go on again. Fancy
mother having it always, ever since we were babies."
"Don't, Mim."
"All right. I won't tell you the words he said, how he put it about the
difficulty of getting the money for my things."
"_Don't_, Mim."
Miriam's mind went back to the phrase and her mother's agonised face.
She felt utterly desolate in the warm room.
"I wish _I'd_ got brains," chirped Harriett, poking the fire with
the toe of her boot.
"So you have--more than me."
"Oh--reely."
"You know, I _know_ girls, that things are as absolutely ghastly
this time as they can possibly be and that something must be done. . . .
But you know it's perfectly fearful to face that old school when it
comes to the point."
"Oh, my dear, it'll be lovely," said Eve; "all new and jolly, and think
how you will enjoy those lectures, you'll simply love them."
"It's all very well to say that. You know you'd feel ill with fright."
"It'll be all right--for _you_--once you're there."
Miriam stared into the fire and began to murmur shamefacedly.
"No more all day bezique. . . . No more days in the West End. . . . No
more matinees . . . no more exhibitions . . . no more A.B.C. teas . . .
no more insane times . . . no more anything."
"What about holidays? You'll enjoy them all the more."
"I shall be staid and governessy."
"You mustn't. You must be frivolous."
Two deeply-burrowing dimples fastened the clean skin tightly over the
bulge of Miriam's smile.
"And marry a German professor," she intoned blithely.
"Don't--don't for _goodney_ say that before mother, Miriam."
"D'you mean she minds me going?"
"My _dear!_"
Why did Eve use her cross voice?--stupid . . . "for goodness' sake," not
"for goodney." Silly of Eve to talk slang. . . .
"All right. I won't."
"Won't marry a German professor, or won't tell mother, do you mean? . .
. Oo--Crumbs! My old cake in the oven!" Harriett hopped to the door.
"Funny Harriett taking to cookery. It doesn't seem a bit like her."
"She'll have to do something--so shall I, I s'pose."
"It seems awful."
"We shall simply have to."
"It's awful," said Miriam, shivering.
"Poor old girl. I expect you feel horrid because you're tired with all
the packing and excitement."
"Oh well, anyhow, it's simply ghastly."
"You'll feel better to-morrow."
"D'you think I shall?"
"Yes--you're so strong," said Eve, flushing and examining her nails.
"How d'you mean?"
"Oh--all sorts of ways."
"What way?"
"Oh--well--you arranging all this--I mean answering the advertisement
and settling it all."
"Oh well, you know you backed me up."
"Oh yes, but other things. . . ."
"What?"
"Oh, I was thinking about you having no religion."
"Oh."
"You must have such splendid principles to keep you straight," said Eve,
and cleared her throat, "I mean, you must have such a lot in you."
"Me?"
"Yes, of course."
"I don't know where it comes in. What have I done?"
"Oh, well, it isn't so much what you've done--you have such a good time.
. . . Everybody admires you and all that . . . you know what I
mean--you're so clever. . . . You're always in the right."
"That's just what everybody hates!"
"Well, my dear, I wish I had your mind."
"You needn't," said Miriam.
"You're all right--you'll come out all right. You're one of those
strong-minded people who have to go through a period of doubt."
"But, my _dear_," said Miriam grateful and proud, "I feel such a
humbug. You know when I wrote that letter to the Fraulein I said I was
a member of the Church. I know what it will be, I shall have to take
the English girls to church."
"Oh, well, you won't mind that."
"It will make me simply ill--I could _never_ describe to you," said
Miriam, with her face aglow, "what it is to me to hear some silly man
drone away with an undistributed middle term."
"They're not all like that."
"Oh, well, then it will be ignoratio elenchi or argumentum ad hominem--"
"Oh, yes, but they're not the _service_."
"The service I can't make head or tail of--think of the Athanasian."
"Yes." Eve stirred uneasily and began to execute a gentle scale with
her tiny tightly-knit blue and white hand upon her knee.
"It'll be ghastly," continued Miriam, "not having anyone to pour out
to--I've told you such a lot these last few days."
"Yes, hasn't it been funny? I seem to know you all at once so much
better."
"Well--don't you think I'm perfectly hateful?"
"No. I admire you more than ever. I think you're simply splendid."
"Then you simply don't know me."
"Yes I do. And you'll be able to write to me."
Eve, easily weeping, hugged her and whispered, "You mustn't. I can't
see you break down--don't--don't--don't. We can't be blue your last
night. . . . Think of nice things. . . . There _will_ be nice
things again . . . there will, will, will, _will_."
Miriam pursed her lips to a tight bunch and sat twisting her long
thickish fingers. Eve stood up in her tears. Her smile and the curves
of her mouth were unchanged by her weeping, and the crimson had spread
and deepened a little in the long oval of her face. Miriam watched the
changing crimson. Her eyes went to and fro between it and the neatly
pinned masses of brown hair.
"I'm going to get some hot water," said Eve, "and we'll make ourselves
glorious."
Miriam watched her as she went down the long room--the great oval of
dark hair, the narrow neck, the narrow back, tight, plump little hands
hanging in profile, white, with a purple pad near the wrist.
3
When Miriam woke the next morning she lay still with closed eyes. She
had dreamed that she had been standing in a room in the German school
and the staff had crowded round her, looking at her. They had dreadful
eyes--eyes like the eyes of hostesses she remembered, eyes she had seen
in trains and 'buses, eyes from the old school. They came and stood and
looked at her, and saw her as she was, without courage, without funds or
good clothes or beauty, without charm or interest, without even the
skill to play a part. They looked at her with loathing. "Board and
lodging--privilege to attend Masters' lectures and laundry (body-linen
only)." That was all she had thought of and clutched at--all along,
since first she read the Fraulein's letter. Her keep and the chance of
learning . . . and Germany--Germany, das deutsche Vaterland--Germany,
all woods and mountains and tenderness--Hermann and Dorothea in the dusk
of a happy village.
And it would really be those women, expecting things of her. They would
be so affable at first. She had been through it a million times--all
her life--all eternity. They would smile those hateful women's
smiles--smirks--self-satisfied smiles as if everybody were agreed about
everything. She loathed women. They always smiled. All the teachers
had at school, all the girls, but Lilla. Eve did . . . maddeningly
sometimes . . . Mother . . . it was the only funny horrid thing about
her. Harriett didn't. . . . Harriett laughed. She was strong and hard
somehow. . . .
Pater knew how hateful all the world of women were and despised them.
He never included her with them; or only sometimes when she pretended,
or he didn't understand. . . .
Someone was saying "Hi!" a gurgling muffled shout, a long way off.
She opened her eyes. It was bright morning. She saw the twist of
Harriett's body lying across the edge of the bed. With a gasp she flung
herself over her own side. Harry, old Harry, jolly old Harry had
remembered the Grand Ceremonial. In a moment her own head hung, her
long hair flinging back on to the floor, her eyes gazing across the bed
at the reversed snub of Harriett's face. It was flushed in the midst of
the wiry hair which stuck out all round it but did not reach the floor.
"Hi!" they gurgled solemnly, "Hi. . . . Hi!" shaking their heads from
side to side. Then their four frilled hands came down and they flumped
out of the high bed.
They performed an uproarious toilet. It seemed so safe up there in the
bright bare room. Miriam's luggage had been removed. It was away
somewhere in the house; far away and unreal and unfelt as her parents
somewhere downstairs, and the servants away in the basement getting
breakfast and Sarah and Eve always incredible, getting quietly up in the
next room. Nothing was real but getting up with old Harriett in this
old room.
She revelled in Harriett's delicate buffoonery ("voluntary incongruity"
she quoted to herself as she watched her)--the titles of some of the
books on Harriett's shelf, "Ungava; a Tale of the North," "Grimm's Fairy
Tales," "John Halifax," "Swiss Family Robinson" made her laugh. The
curtained recesses of the long room stretched away into space.
She went about dimpling and responding, singing and masquerading as her
large hands did their work.
She intoned the titles on her own shelf--as a response to the quiet
swearing and jesting accompanying Harriett's occupations. "The Voyage
of the Beeeeeeagle," she sang "Scott's Poetical _Works_."
Villette--Longfellow--Holy Bible _with_ Apocrypha--Egmont--
"Binks!" squealed Harriett daintily. "Yink grink binks."
"Books!" she responded in a low tone, and flushed as if she had given
Harriett an affectionate hug. "My rotten books. . . ." She would come
back, and read all her books more carefully. She had packed some. She
could not remember which and why.
"Binks," she said, and it was quite easy for them to crowd together at
the little dressing-table. Harriett was standing in her little faded
red moirette petticoat and a blue flannelette dressing-jacket brushing
her wiry hair. Miriam reflected that she need no longer hate her for
the set of her clothes round her hips. She caught sight of her own
faded jersey and stiff, shapeless black petticoat in the mirror.
Harriett's "Hinde's" lay on the dressing-table, her own still lifted the
skin of her forehead in suffused puckerings against the shank of each
pin.
Unperceived, she eyed the tiny stiff plait of hair which stuck out
almost horizontally from the nape of Harriett's neck, and watched her
combing out the tightly-curled fringe standing stubbily out along her
forehead and extending like a thickset hedge midway across the crown of
her head, where it stopped abruptly against the sleekly-brushed longer
strands which strained over her poll and disappeared into the plait.
"Your old wool'll be just right in Germany," remarked Harriett.
"Mm."
"You ought to do it in basket plaits like Sarah."
"I wish I could. I can't think how she does it."
"Ike spect it's easy enough."
"Mm."
"But you're all right, anyhow."
"Anyhow, it's no good bothering when you're plain."
"You're _not_ plain."
Miriam looked sharply round.
"Go on, Gooby."
"You're not. You don't know. Granny said you'll be a bonny woman, and
Sarah thinks you've got the best shape face and the best complexion of
any of us, and cook was simply crying her eyes out last night and said
you were the light of the house with your happy, pretty face, and mother
said you're much too attractive to go about alone, and that's partly why
Pater's going with you to Hanover, silly. . . . You're not plain," she
gasped.
Miriam's amazement silenced her. She stood back from the mirror. She
could not look into it until Harriett had gone. The phrases she had
just heard rang in her head without meaning. But she knew she would
remember all of them. She went on doing her hair with downcast eyes.
She had seen Harriett vividly, and had longed to crush her in her arms
and kiss her little round cheeks and the snub of her nose. Then she
wanted her to be gone.
Presently Harriett took up a brooch and skated down the room,
"Ta-ra-ra-la-eee-tee!" she carolled, "don't be long," and disappeared.
"I'm pretty," murmured Miriam, planting herself in front of the
dressing-table. "I'm pretty--they like me--they _like_ me. Why didn't
I know?" She did not look into the mirror. "They all like me, _me_."
The sound of the breakfast-bell came clanging up through the house. She
hurried to her side of the curtained recess. Hanging there were her old
red stockinette jersey and her blue skirt . . . never again . . . just
once more . . . she could change afterwards. Her brown, heavy best
dress with puffed and gauged sleeves and thick gauged and gathered boned
bodice was in her hand. She hung it once more on its peg and quickly
put on her old things. The jersey was shiny with wear. "You darling
old things," she muttered as her arms slipped down the sleeves.
The door of the next room opened quietly and she heard Sarah and Eve go
decorously downstairs. She waited until their footsteps had died away
and then went very slowly down the first flight, fastening her belt.
She stopped at the landing window, tucking the frayed end of the
petersham under the frame of the buckle . . . they were all downstairs,
liking her. She could not face them. She was too excited and too shy.
. . . She had never once thought of their "feeling" her going away . . .
saying goodbye to each one . . . all minding and sorry--even the
servants. She glanced fearfully out into the garden, seeing nothing.
Someone called up from the breakfast-room doorway, "Mim--my!" How
surprised Mr. Bart had been when he discovered that they themselves
never knew whose voice it was of all four of them unless you saw the
person, "but yours is really richer" . . . it was cheek to say that.
"Mimm--my!"
Suddenly she longed to be gone--to have it all over and be gone.
She heard the kak-kak of Harriett's wooden heeled slippers across the
tiled hall. She glanced down the well of the staircase. Harriett was
mightily swinging the bell, scattering a little spray of notes at each
end of her swing.
With a frightened face Miriam crept back up the stairs. Violently
slamming the bedroom door, "I'm a-comin'--I'm a-comin'," she shouted and
ran downstairs.
CHAPTER II
1
The crossing was over. They were arriving. The movement of the little
steamer that had collected the passengers from the packet-boat drove the
raw air against Miriam's face. In her tired brain the grey river and
the flat misty shores slid constantly into a vision of the gaslit
dining-room at home . . . the large clear glowing fire, the sounds of
the family voices. Every effort to obliterate the picture brought back
again the moment that had come at the dinner-table as they all sat
silent for an instant with downcast eyes and she had suddenly longed to
go on for ever just sitting there with them all.
Now, in the boat she wanted to be free for the strange grey river and
the grey shores. But the home scenes recurred relentlessly. Again and
again she went through the last moments . . . the goodbyes, the
unexpected convulsive force of her mother's arms, her own dreadful
inability to give any answering embrace. She could not remember saying
a single word. There had been a feeling that came like a tide carrying
her away. Eager and dumb and remorseful she had gone out of the house
and into the cab with Sarah, and then had come the long sitting in the
loop-line train . . . "talk about something" . . . Sarah sitting
opposite and her unchanged voice saying "What shall we talk about?" And
then a long waiting, and the brown leather strap swinging against the
yellow grained door, the smell of dust and the dirty wooden flooring,
with the noise of the wheels underneath going to the swinging tune of
one of Heller's "Sleepless Nights." The train had made her sway with
its movements. How still Sarah seemed to sit, fixed in the old life.
Nothing had come but strange cruel emotions.
After the suburban train nothing was distinct until the warm snowflakes
were drifting against her face through the cold darkness on Harwich
quay. Then, after what seemed like a great loop of time spent going
helplessly up a gangway towards "the world" she had stood, face to face
with the pale polite stewardess in her cabin. "I had better have a
lemon, cut in two," she had said, feeling suddenly stifled with fear.
For hours she had lain despairing, watching the slowly swaying walls of
her cabin or sinking with closed eyes through invertebrate dipping
spaces. Before each releasing paroxysm she told herself "this is like
death; one day I shall die, it will be like this."
She supposed there would be breakfast soon on shore, a firm room and a
teapot and cups and saucers. Cold and exhaustion would come to an end.
She would be talking to her father.
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 r™le 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.
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