Pointed Roofs quotes

That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and desert her, leaving nothing behind. Tomorrow 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;

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

“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.

She had scented something, a sort of confidence, everywhere, in her hours in Holland, the brisk manner of the German railway officials and the serene assurance of the travelling Germans she had seen, confirmed her impression.

Away out here, the sense of imminent catastrophe that had shadowed all her life so far, had disappeared.

Even here in this dim carriage, with disgrace ahead she felt that there was freedom somewhere at hand. Whatever happened she would hold to that.

Away out here, the sense of imminent catastrophe that had shadowed all her life so far, had disappeared.

Even here in this dim carriage, with disgrace ahead she felt that there was freedom somewhere at hand. Whatever happened she would hold to that.

She glanced up at her small leather handbag lying in the rack and thought of the solid money in her purse. Twenty-five shillings. It was a large sum and she was to have more as she needed.

It was unlike any contact she had known—more motherly than her mother’s. Neither of her sisters could have embraced her like that.

She did not know that a human form could bring such a sense of warm nearness, that human contours could be eloquent⁠—or anyone so sweetly daring.

That first evening at Waldstraße there had been a performance that had completed the transformation of Miriam’s English ideas of “music.”

It seemed to her that the light with which the room was filled grew brighter and clearer. She felt that she was looking at nothing and yet was aware of the whole room like a picture in a dream.

Fear left her. The human forms all round her lost their power.

They grew suffused and dim. … The pensive swing of the music changed to urgency and emphasis. … It came nearer and nearer. It did not come from the candle-lit corner where the piano was. … It came from everywhere.

Miriam went to bed content, wrapped in music. The theme of Clara’s solo recurred again and again; and every time it brought something of the wonderful light—the sense of going forward and forward through space.

She fell asleep somewhere outside the world.

No sooner was she asleep than a voice was saying, “Bonjour, Meece,” and her eyes opened on daylight and Mademoiselle’s little night-gowned form minuetting towards her down the single strip of matting.

“A leaf from summery days I took it with me on my way, So that it might remind me How loud the nightingale had sung, How green the wood I had passed through.”

With a pang she felt it was true that summer ended in dead leaves.

But she had no leaf, nothing to remind her of her summer days. They were all past and she had nothing—not the smallest thing.

She began to wonder whether hers had been in some way a specially good school.

Things had mattered there. Somehow the girls had been made to feel they mattered.

She remembered even old Stroodie—the least attached member of the staff—asking her suddenly, once, in the middle of a music lesson what she was going to do with her life and a day when the artistic vice principal—who was a connection by marriage of Holman …

Three cups of thick-looking chocolate, each supporting a little hillock of solid cream arrived at her table. Clara ordered cakes.

At the first sip, taken with lips that slid helplessly on the surprisingly thick rim of her cup Miriam renounced all the beverages she had ever known as unworthy.

She chose a familiar-looking éclair—Clara and Emma ate cakes that seemed to be alternate slices of cream and very spongy coffee-coloured cake and then followed Emma’s lead with an open tartlet on which plump green gooseberries stood in a thick brown syrup.

… Pater always said young people always wanted to reform the universe … perhaps it was so … and nothing could be done. Clearly she was not the one to do anything.

She could do nothing even with these girls and she was nearly eighteen.

Once or twice she wondered whether they ever had thoughts about things … she felt they must; if only she were not shy, if she had a different manner, she would find out. She knew she despised them as they were. She could do nothing.

“Die Fenster auf!” she cried, in quivering tones, “Die Herzen auf!”

“Up with windows! Up with hearts!”

Her hands struggled with the hasp of the long-closed outer frame. The girls crowded round as the lattices swung wide. The air poured in.

The high garret looked wonderfully friendly and warm in the light of her single candle. It seemed full of approving voices. Perhaps one day she would go on the stage. Eve always said so.

People always liked her if she let herself go.

She would let herself go more in future at Waldstraße.

Mademoiselle was talking about translated English books she had read. Miriam was glad of her thin voice piercing the darkness—she did not want to sleep.

She loved the day that had gone; and the one that was coming.

She saw the room again as it had been when Mademoiselle had looked up towards the toiles d’araignées. She had never thought of there being cobwebs up there.

“Well, Millicent,” pressed Fräulein, “ ‘more beautiful’ and why?

Beauty is what you see and is not for everyone the same.

It is an affaire de goût. So you must tell us why to you the old towns of England are more beautiful than the old towns of Germany. It is because you prefair them?

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.

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.

The sense of the outline of his shoulders and his comforting black mannishness so near to her brought her almost to tears. Fiercely she fixed the sunlit summerhouse, “Oh, I’m not,” she said.

“I think life is perfectly appalling.”

She moved awkwardly to a little chiffonier and put down her music on its marble top.

Miriam seemed to gaze long at a pallid, rounded man with smiling eyes. She saw a garden and fields, a firelit interior, a little woman smiling and busy and agreeable moving quickly about … and Pastor Lahmann—presiding.

It filled her with fury to be regarded as one of a world of little tame things to be summoned by little men to be well-willed wives.

She must make him see that she did not even recognise such a thing as “a well-willed wife.” She felt her gaze growing fixed and moved to withdraw it and herself.

The sunlight was streaming across the hall. It seemed gay and homelike.

Pastor Lahmann had made her forget she was a governess. He had treated her as a girl.

Fräulein’s eyes had spoiled it. Fräulein was angry about it for some extraordinary reason.

… and Fräulein, holding a little discourse on clothing and an enquiry into wardrobes, gave a general permission for the reduction of garments to the minimum and sent everyone to rest uncorseted until teatime, promising a walk to the woods in the cool of the evening.

There was a sense of adventure in the house. It was as if it were being besieged.

It gave Miriam confidence to approach Fräulein for permission to rearrange her trunk in the basement. She let Fräulein understand that her removal was not complete, that there were things to do before she could be properly settled in her new room.

“Look here, you’d better get up, my dear,” she murmured.

She wanted to have the whole world in and be reconciled.

But she knew that if anyone came, she would contract and the expression of her face would change and they would hate her or be indifferent. She knew that if she even moved she would be changed.

Pathways led away in all directions. It was growing lighter. There were faint chequers of light and shade about them as they walked.

The forest was growing golden all round them, lifting and opening, gold and green, clearer and clearer.

There were bright jewelled patches in amongst the trees; the boles of the trees shone out sharp grey and silver and flaked with sharp green leaves away and away until they melted into a mist of leafage. Singing sounded suddenly away in the wood;

Presently her eyes were drawn to meet Fräulein’s and she read there a disgust and a loathing such as she had never seen.

The woods receded, the beauty dropped out of them.

The crunching of the wheels sounded out suddenly. What was the good of the brake load of grimacing people? Miriam wanted to stop it and get out and stroll home along the edge of the wood with the quiet man.

Towards the end of June there were frequent excursions.

Into all the gatherings at Waldstraße the outside world came like a presence.

It removed the sense of pressure, of being confronted and challenged. Everything that was said seemed to be incidental to it, like remarks dropped in a low tone between individuals at a great conference.

Whenever she found herself alone she began to sing, softly. When she was with others a head drooped or lifted, the movement of a hand, the light falling along the detail of a profile could fill her with happiness.

It made companionship a perpetual question.

At rare moments there would come a tingling from head to foot, a faint buzzing at her lips and at the tip of each finger.

At these moments she could raise her eyes calmly to those about her and drink in the fact of their presence, see them all with perfect distinctness, but without distinguishing one from the other. She wanted to say, “Isn’t it extraordinary? Do you realise?”

She felt that if only she could make her meaning clear all difficulties must vanish.

Outside in the open, going forward to some goal through sunny mornings, gathering at inns, wading through the scented undergrowth of the woods, she would dream of the secure return to Waldstraße, their own beleaguered place.

Efforts to good kindliness and thought for others must be encouraged.

The teacher shall be sunshine, human sunshine, encouraging all effort and all lovely things in the personality of the pupil.

”

Someone had said she had been in Fräulein’s room again all the afternoon. … Fräulein had spoken to her once or twice during tea. She had answered coolly and eagerly … disgusting … like a child that had been whipped and forgiven. …

How could Fräulein dare to forgive anybody?

She lay motionless. The night was cool. The screens had not been moved. She felt that the door was shut. After a while she began in imagination a conversation with Eve.

… There were green trees outside in the moonlight … in Luther’s Germany … trees and fields and German towns and then Holland. She breathed more easily. Her eyes opened serenely.

Tranquil moonlight lay across the room. It surprised her like a sudden hand stroking her brow.

It seemed to feel for her heart. If she gave way to it her thoughts would go. Perhaps she ought to watch it and let her thoughts go.

Ah‑eh if I were strong I could show you how to enjoy life. …” Delicate little mother, running quickly downstairs clearing her throat to sing. But mother did not know. She had no reasoning power. She could not help because she did not know.

The moonlight was sad and hesitating.

Miriam closed her eyes again. Luther … pinning up that notice on a church door. … (Why is Luther like a dyspeptic blackbird?

… Some said it was true … some not. They could not both be right. It was probably true … only old-fashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just that—monkeys fighting. But who began it? Who made Fräulein? Tough leathery monkey. …

Then nothing matters. Just one little short life.

…