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diff --git a/old/35282-8.txt b/old/35282-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ae78b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/35282-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9507 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther, by +Elizabeth von Arnim + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther + +Author: Elizabeth von Arnim + +Release Date: February 15, 2011 [EBook #35282] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT *** + + + + +Produced by Laura McDonald (http://www.girlebooks.com> & +Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org> at + + + + + +FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER + +BY THE AUTHOR OF + +"ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN," AND + +"THE PRINCESS PRISCILLA'S FORTNIGHT" + +NEW YORK + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +1907 + + + + +FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER + + + + +I + +Jena, Nov. 6th. + +Dear Roger,--This is only to tell you that I love you, supposing you +should have forgotten it by the time you get to London. The letter will +follow you by the train after the one you left by, and you will have it +with your breakfast the day after to-morrow. Then you will be eating the +marmalade Jena could not produce, and you'll say, 'What a very +indiscreet young woman to write first.' But look at the Dear Roger, and +you'll see I'm not so indiscreet after all. What could be more sober? +And you've no idea of all the nice things I could have put instead of +that, only I wouldn't. It is a most extraordinary thing that this time +yesterday we were on the polite-conversation footing, you, in your +beautiful new German, carefully calling me _gnädiges Fräulein_ at every +second breath, and I making appropriate answers to the Mr. Anstruther +who in one bewildering hour turned for me into Dear Roger. Did you +always like me so much?--I mean, love me so much? My spirit is rather +unbendable as yet to the softnesses of these strange words, stiff for +want of use, so forgive a tendency to go round them. Don't you think it +is very wonderful that you should have been here a whole year, living +with us, seeing me every day, practising your German on me--oh, wasn't I +patient?--and never have shown the least sign, that I could see, of +thinking of me or of caring for me at all except as a dim sort of young +lady who assisted her step-mother in the work of properly mending and +feeding you? And then an hour ago, just one hour by that absurd +cuckoo-clock here in this room where we said good-by, you suddenly +turned into something marvellous, splendid, soul-thrilling--well, into +Dear Roger. It is so funny that I've been laughing, and so sweet that +I've been crying. I'm so happy that I can't help writing, though I do +think it rather gushing--loathsome word--to write first. But then you +strictly charged me not to tell a soul yet, and how can I keep +altogether quiet? You, then, my poor Roger, must be the one to listen. +Do you know what Jena looks like to-night? It is the most dazzling place +in the world, radiant with promise, shining and dancing with all sorts +of little lovely lights that I know are only the lamps being lit in +people's rooms down the street, but that look to me extraordinarily like +stars of hope come out, in defiance of nature and fog, to give me a +glorious welcome. You see, I'm new, and they know it. I'm not the +Rose-Marie they've twinkled down on from the day I was born till +to-night. She was a dull person: a mere ordinary, dull person, climbing +doggedly up the rows of hours each day set before her, doggedly doing +certain things she was told were her daily duties, equally doggedly +circumventing certain others, and actually supposing she was happy. +Happy? She was not. She was most wretched. She was blind and deaf. She +was asleep. She was only half a woman. What is the good or the beauty of +anything, alive or dead, in the world, that has not fulfilled its +destiny? And I never saw that before. I never saw a great many things +before. I am amazed at the suddenness of my awaking. Love passed through +this house today, this house that other people think is just the same +dull place it was yesterday, and behold--well, I won't grow magnificent, +and it is what you do if you begin a sentence with Behold. But really +there's a splendor--oh well. And as for this room where you--where +I--where we--well, I won't grow sentimental either, though now I know, I +who always scoffed at it, how fatally easy a thing it is to be. That is, +supposing one has had great provocation; and haven't I? Oh, haven't I? + +I had got as far as that when your beloved Professor Martens came in, +very much agitated because he had missed you at the station, where he +had been to give you a send-off. And what do you think he said? He said, +why did I sit in this dreary hole without a lamp, and why didn't I draw +the curtains, and shut out the fog and drizzle. Fog and drizzle? It +really seemed too funny. Why, the whole sky is shining. And as for the +dreary hole--gracious heavens, is it possible that just being old made +him not able to feel how the air of the room was still quivering with +all you said to me, with all the sweet, wonderful, precious things you +said to me? The place was full of you. And there was your darling +coffee-cup still where you had put it down, and the very rug we stood on +still all ruffled up. + +'I think it's a glorious hole,' I couldn't help saying. + +'_De gustibus_' said he indulgently; and he stretched himself in the +easy-chair--the one you used to sit in--and said he should miss young +Anstruther. + +'Shall you?' said I. + +'Fräulein Rose-Marie,' said he solemnly, 'he was a most intelligent +young man. Quite the most intelligent young man I have ever had here.' + +'Really?' said I, smiling all over my silly face. + +And so of course you were, or how would you ever have found out that +I--well, that I'm not wholly unlovable? + +Yours quite, quite truly, + +R.-M. + + + +II + +Jena, Nov. 7th. + +Dear Roger,--You left on Tuesday night--that's yesterday--and you'll get +to London on Thursday morning--that's to-morrow--and first you'll want +to wash yourself, and have breakfast--please notice my extreme +reasonableness--and it will be about eleven before you are able to begin +to write to me. I shan't get the letter till Saturday, and today is only +Wednesday, so how can I stop myself from writing to you again, I should +like to know? I simply can't. Besides, I want to tell you all the heaps +of important things I would have told you yesterday, if there had been +time when you asked me in that amazing sudden way if I'd marry you. + +Do you know I'm poor? Of course you do. You couldn't have lived with us +a year and not seen by the very sort of puddings we have that we are +poor. Do you think that anybody who can help it would have _dicker Reis_ +three times a week? And then if we were not, my step-mother would never +bother to take in English young men who want to study German; she would +do quite different sorts of things, and we should have different sorts +of puddings,--proud ones, with _Schlagsahne_ on their tops--and two +servants instead of one, and I would never have met you. Well, you know +then that we are poor; but I don't believe you know _how_ poor. When +girls here marry, their parents give them, as a matter-of-course, +house-linen enough to last them all their lives, furniture enough to +furnish all their house, clothes enough for several generations, and so +much a year besides. Then, greatly impoverished, they spend the evenings +of their days doing without things and congratulating themselves on +having married off their daughter. The man need give only himself. + +You've heard that my own mother, who died ten years ago, was English? +Yes, I remember I told you that, when you were so much surprised at what +you called, in politest German, my colossally good English. From her I +know that people in England do not buy their son-in-law's carpets and +saucepans, but confine their helpfulness to suggesting Maple. It is the +husband, they think, who should, like the storks of the Fatherland, +prepare and beautify the nest for the wife. If the girl has money, so +much the better; but if she has not, said my mother, it doesn't put an +absolute stop to her marrying. + +Here, it does; and I belong here. My mother had some money, or my father +would never have let himself fall in love with her--I believe you can +nip these things in the bud if you see the bud in time--and you know my +father is not a mercenary man; he only, like the rest of us, could not +get away altogether from his bringing-up and the points of view he had +been made to stare from ever since he stared at all. It was a hundred a +year (pounds, thank heaven, not marks), and it is all we have except +what he gets for his books, when he does get anything, which is never, +and what my step-mother has, which is an annuity of a hundred and fifty +pounds. So the hundred a year will be the whole sum of my riches, for I +have no aunts. What I want you to consider is the awfulness of marrying +a woman absolutely without saucepans. Not a single towel will she be +able to add to your linen-room, not a single pot to your kitchen. All +Jena when it hears of it will say, 'Poor, infatuated young man,' and if +I had sisters all England would refuse in future to send its sons to my +step-mother. Why, if you were making a decently suitable marriage do you +suppose your _Braut_ would have to leave off writing to you at this +point, in the very middle of luminous prophecy, and hurry into the +kitchen and immerse herself in the preparation of potato soup? Yet that +is exactly what your _Braut,_ who has caught sight of the clock, is +about to do. So good-by. + +Your poor, but infinitely honest, + +R.-M. + +See how wise and practical I am today. I believe my letter last night +was rather aflame. Now comes morning with its pails of cold water, and +drenches me back into discretion. Thank God, say I, for mornings. + + + +III + +Jena, Nov. 8th. + +Dear Roger,--I can't leave you alone, you see. I must write. But though +I must write you need not read. Last night I was seized with misgivings +--awful things for a hitherto placid Fräulein to be seized with--and I +wrestled with them all night, and they won. So now, in the calm +frostiness of the early morning atmosphere, I wish to inquire very +seriously, very soberly, whether you have not made a mistake. In one +sense, of course, you have. It is absurd, from a wordly point of view, +for you to marry me. But I mean more than that: I mean, have you not +mistaken your own feelings, been hurled into the engagement by +impulsiveness, by, if you choose, some spell I may unconsciously have +put upon you? If you have even quite a faint misgiving about what you +really feel for me, tell me--oh tell me straight and plainly, and we +will both rub out that one weak hour with a sponge well soaked in common +sense. It would not hurt so much, I think, now as it might later on. Up +to last night, since you left, I've been walking on air. It is a most +pleasant form of exercise, as perhaps you know. You not only walk on +air, but you walk in what seems to be an arrested sunset, a bath of +liquid gold, breathing it, touching it, wrapped in it. It really is most +pleasant. Well, I did that till last night; then came my step-mother, +and catching at my flying feet pulled them down till they got to the +painted deal floors of Rauchgasse 5, Jena, and once having got there, +stuck there. Observe, I speak in images. My step-mother, so respectable, +so solidly Christian, would not dream of catching hold of anybody's feet +and spoiling their little bit of happiness. Quite unconsciously she blew +on that glow of sunset in which I was flying, and it went out with the +promptness and completeness of a tallow candle, and down came Rose-Marie +with a thud. Yes, I did come down with a thud. You will never be able to +pretend, however much you try, that I'm one of your fairy little women +that can be lifted about, and dandled, and sugared with dainty +diminutives, will you? Facts are things that are best faced. I stand +five feet ten without my heels, and when I fall I do it with a thud. +Said my step-mother, then, after supper, when Johanna had cleared the +last plate away, and we were sitting alone--my father is not back yet +from Weimar--she on one side of the table, I on the other, the lamp in +the middle, your chair gaping empty, she, poor herself, knitting wool +into warmth for the yet poorer at Christmas, I mending the towels you +helped to wear out, while my spirit soared and made a joyful noise +somewhere far away, up among angels and arch-angels and other happy +beings,--said my step-mother, 'Why do you look so pleased?' + +Slightly startled, I explained that I looked pleased because I was +pleased. + +'But nothing has happened,' said my step-mother, examining me over her +spectacles. 'You have been nowhere today, and not seen any one, and the +dinner was not at all good.' + +'For all that I'm pleased. I don't need to go somewhere or see some one +to be pleased. I can be it quite by myself.' + +'Yes, you are blessed with a contented nature, that is true,' said my +step-mother with a sigh, knitting faster. You remember her sighs, don't +you? They are always to me very unaccountable. They come in such odd +places. Why should she sigh because I have a contented nature? Ought she +not rather to rejoice? But the extremely religious people I have known +have all sighed an immense deal. Well, I won't probe into that now, +though I rather long to. + +'I suppose it's because it has been a fine day,' I said, foolishly going +on explaining to a person already satisfied. + +My step-mother looked up sharply. 'But it has not been fine at all, +Rose-Marie,' she said. 'The sun has not appeared once all day.' + +'What?' said I, for a moment genuinely surprised. I couldn't help being +happy, and I don't believe really happy people are ever in the least +aware that the sun is not shining. 'Oh well,' I hurried on, 'perhaps not +an Italian blue sky, but still mild, and very sweet, and November always +smells of violets, and that's another thing to be pleased about.' + +'Violets?' echoed my step-mother, who dislikes all talk about things one +can neither eat nor warm oneself with nor read about in the Bible. 'Do +you not miss Mr. Anstruther,' she asked, getting off such flabbinesses +as quickly as she could, 'with whom you were so constantly talking?' + +Of course I jumped. But I said 'yes,' quite naturally, I think. + +It was then that she pulled me down by the feet to earth. + +'He has a great future before him,' she said. 'A young man so clever, so +good-looking, and so well-connected may rise to anything. Martens tells +me he has the most brilliant prospects. He will be a great ornament to +the English diplomatic service. Martens says his father's hopes are all +centred on this only son. And as he has very little money and much will +be required, Roger,'--she said it indeed--'is to marry as soon as +possible, some one who will help him in every way, some one as wealthy +as she is well-born.' + +I murmured something suitable; I think a commendation of the plan as +prudent. + +'No one could help liking Roger,' she went on--Roger, do you like being +Rogered?--' and my only fear is, and Martens fears it too, that he will +entangle himself with some undesirable girl. Then he is ruined. There +would be no hope for him.' + +'But why-' I began; then suffocated a moment behind a towel. 'But why,' +I said again, gasping, 'should he?' + +'Well, let us hope he will not. I fear, though, he is soft. Still, he +has steered safely through a year often dangerous to young men. It is +true his father could not have sent him to a safer place than my house. +You so sensible-' oh Roger! + +'Besides being arrived at an age when serious and practical thoughts +replace the foolish sentimentalness of earlier years,'--oh Roger, I'm +twenty-five, and not a single one of my foolish sentimentalnesses has +been replaced by anything at all. Do you think there is hope for me? Do +you think it is very bad to feel exactly the same, just exactly as +calf-like now as I did at fifteen?--'so that under my roof,' went on my +step-mother, 'he has been perfectly safe. It would have been truly +deplorable if his year in Germany had saddled him with a German wife +from a circle beneath his own, a girl who had caught his passing fancy +by youth and prettiness, and who would have spent the rest of her life +dragging him down, an ever-present punishment with a faded face.' + +She is eloquent, isn't she? Eloquent with the directness that +instinctively finds out one's weak spots and aims straight at them. +'Luckily,' she concluded, 'there are no pretty faces in Jena just now.' + +Then I held a towel up before my own, before my ignominious face, +excluded by a most excellent critic from the category pretty, and felt +as though I would hide it for ever in stacks of mending, in tubs of +soup, in everything domestic and drudging and appropriate. But some of +the words you rained down on me on Tuesday night between all those +kisses came throbbing through my head, throbbing with great throbs +through my whole body--Roger, did I hear wrong, or were they not +'Lovely--lovely--lovely'? And always kisses between, and always again +that 'Lovely--lovely--lovely'? Where am I getting to? Perhaps I had +better stop. + +R.-M. + + + +IV + +Jena, Nov. 12th. + +Dearest of Living Creatures, the joy your dear, dear letters gave me! +You should have seen me seize the postman. His very fingers seemed +rosy-tipped as he gave me the precious things. Two of them--two +love-letters all at once. I could hardly bear to open them, and put an +end to the wonderful moment. The first one, from Frankfurt, was so +sweet--oh, so unutterably sweet--that I did sit gloating over the +unbroken envelope of the other for at least five minutes, luxuriating, +purring. I found out exactly where your hand must have been, by the +simple process of getting a pen and pretending to write the address +where you had written it, and then spent another five minutes most +profitably kissing the place. Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, but +there shall be no so-called maidenly simperings between you and me, no +pretences, no affectations. If it was silly to kiss that blessed +envelope, and silly to tell you that I did, why then I was silly, and +there's an end of it. + +Do you know that my mother's maiden name was Watson? Well, it was. I +feel bound to tell you this, for it seems to add to my ineligibleness, +and my duty plainly is to take you all round that and expatiate on it +from every point of view. What has the grandson of Lord Grasmere--you +never told me of Lord G. before, by the way--to do with the +granddaughter of Watson? I don't even rightly know what Watson was. He +was always for me an obscure and rather awful figure, shrouded in +mystery. Of course Papa could tell me about him, but as he never has, +and my mother rarely mentioned him, I fancy he was not anything I should +be proud of. Do not, then, require of me that I shall tear the veil from +Watson. + +And of course your mother was handsome. How dare you doubt it? Look in +the glass and be grateful to her. You know, though you may only have +come within the spell of what you so sweetly call my darling brown eyes +during the last few weeks, I fell a victim to your darling blue ones in +the first five minutes. And how great was my joy when I discovered that +your soul so exactly matched your outside. Your mother had blue eyes, +too, and was very tall, and had an extraordinarily thoughtful face. +Look, I tell you, in the glass, and you'll see she had; for I refuse to +believe that your father, a man who talks port wine and tomatoes the +whole of the first meal he has with his only son after a year's +separation, is the parent you are like. Heavens, how I shake when I +think of what will happen when you tell him about me. 'Sir,' he'll say, +in a voice of thunder--or don't angry English parents call their sons +'sir' any more? Anyhow, they still do in books--'Sir, you are far too +young to marry. Young men of twenty-five do not do such things. The +lady, I conclude, will provide the income? + +Roger, rushing to the point: She hasn't a pfenning. + +Incensed Parent: Pfenning, sir? What, am I to understand she's a German? + +Roger, dreadfully frightened: Please. + +I.P., forcing himself to be calm: Who is this young person? + +Roger: Fräulein Schmidt, of Jena. + +I.P., now of a horrible calmness: And who, pray, is Fräulein Schmidt, of +Jena? + +Roger, pale but brave: The daughter of old Schmidt, in whose house I +boarded. Her mother was English. She was a Watson. + +I.P.: Sir, oblige me by going to the-- + +Roger goes. + +Seriously, I think something of the sort will happen. I don't see how it +can help giving your father a dreadful shock; and suppose he gets ill, +and his blood is on my head? I can't see how it is to be avoided. There +is nothing to recommend me to him. He'll know I'm poor. He'll doubt if +I'm respectable. He won't even think me pretty. You might tell him that +I can cook, darn, manage as well as the thriftiest of _Hausfraus_, and I +believe it would leave him cold. You might dwell on my riper age as an +advantage, say I have lived down the first fevers of youth--I never had +them--say, if he objects to it, that Eve was as old as Adam when they +started life in their happy garden, and yet they got on very well, say +that I'm beautiful as an angel, or so plain that I am of necessity +sensible, and he'll only answer 'Fool.' Do you see anything to be done? +I don't; but I'm too happy to bother. + + +Later. + +I had to go and help get supper ready. Johanna had let the fire out, and +it took rather ages. Why do you say you feel like screaming when you +think of me wrestling with Johanna? I tell you I'm so happy that nothing +any Johanna can do or leave undone in the least affects me. I go about +the house on tiptoe; I am superstitious, and have an idea that all sorts +of little envious Furies are lying about in dusty corners asleep, put to +sleep by you, and that if I don't move very delicately I shall wake +them-- + + O Freude, habe Acht, + Sprich leise, dass nicht der Schmerz erwacht.... + +That's not Goethe. By the way, _poor_ Goethe. What an unforeseen result +of a year in the City of the Muses, half an hour's journey from the Ilm +Athens itself, that you should pronounce his poetry coarse, obvious, and +commonplace. What would Papa say if he knew? Probably that young +Anstruther is not the intelligent young man he took him for. But then +Papa is soaked in Goethe, and the longer he soaks the more he adores +him. In this faith, in this Goethe-worship, I have been brought up, and +cannot, I'm afraid, get rid of it all at once. It is even possible that +I never shall, in spite of London and you. Will you love me less if I +don't? Always I have thought Goethe uninspired. The Muse never seized +and shook him till divinenesses dropped off his pen without his knowing +how or whence, divinenesses like those you find sometimes in the pages +of lesser men, lesser all-round men, stamped with the unmistakable stamp +of heavenly birth. Goethe knew very well, very exactly, where each of +his sentences had come from. But I don't see that his poetry is either +of the three things you say. I'm _afraid_ it is not the last two, for +the world would grow very interesting if thinking and writing as he did +were so obvious that we all did it. As to its being coarse, I'm +incurably incapable of seeing coarseness in things. To me + + All is clean for ever and ever. + +Everything is natural and everything is clean, except for the person who +is afraid it isn't. Perhaps, dear Roger, you won't, as Papa says, quite +apprehend my meaning; if you cannot, please console yourself with the +reflection that probably I haven't got one. + +What you say about the money you'll have dazzles me. Why, it's a +fortune. We shall be richer than our _Bürgermeister_. You never told me +you were so rich. Five hundred pounds a year is ten thousand marks; +nearly double what we have always lived on, and we've really been quite +comfortable, now haven't we? But think of our glory when my hundred +pounds is added, and we have an income of twelve thousand marks. The +_Bürgermeister_ will be utterly eclipsed. And I'm such a good manager. +You'll see how we'll live. You'll grow quite fat. I shall give you +lovely food; and Papa says that lovely food is the one thing that ever +really makes a man give himself the trouble to rise up and call his wife +blessed. + +It is so late. Good-night. + +R.-M. + +Don't take my Goethe-love from me. I know simply masses of him, and +can't let him go. My mind is decked out with him as a garden is decked +with flowers. Now isn't that pretty? Or is it only silly? Anyhow it's +dreadfully late. Good-night. + + + +V + +Jena, Nov. 13th. + +No letter from you today. I am afraid you are being worried, and because +of me. Here am I, quiet and cheerful, nobody bothering me, and your dear +image in my heart to warm every minute of life; there are you, being +forced to think things out, to make plans for the future, decide on +courses of action, besides having to pass exams, and circumvent a parent +whom I gather you regard as refractory. How lucky I am in my dear +father. If I could have chosen, I would have chosen him. Never has he +been any trouble. Never does he bore me. Never am I forced to +criticisms. He knows that I have no brains, and has forgiven me. I know +he hasn't much common-sense, and have forgiven him. We spend our time +spoiling and petting and loving each other--do you remember how you +sometimes laughed? + +But I wish you were not worried. It is all because I'm so ineligible. If +I could come to you with a pot of money in each hand, turned by an +appreciative ruler into Baroness von Schmidt, with a Papa in my train +weighed down by Orders, and the road behind me black with carts +containing clothes, your father would be merciful unto us and bless us. +As things are, you are already being punished, you have already begun to +pay the penalty for that one little hour's happiness; and it won't be +quite paid ever, not so long as we both shall live. Do you, who think so +much, ever think of the almost indecent haste with which punishments +hurry in the wake of joys? They really seem to tumble over one another +in their eagerness each to get there first. You took me to your heart, +told me you loved me, asked me to be your wife. Was it so wrong? So +wrong to let oneself go to happiness for those few moments that one +should immediately be punished? My father will not let me believe +anything. He says--when my step-mother is not listening; when she is he +doesn't--that belief is not faith, and you can't believe if you do not +know. But he cannot stop my silently believing that the Power in whose +clutches we are is an amazing disciplinarian, a relentless grudger of +joys. And what pitiful small joys they are, after all. Pitiful little +attempts of souls doomed to eternal solitude to put out feelers in the +dark, to get close to each other, to touch each other, to try to make +each other warm. Now I am growing lugubrious; I who thought never to be +lugubrious again. And at ten o'clock on a fine November morning, of all +times in the world. + +Papa comes back from Weimar today. There has been a prolonged meeting +there of local lights about the damage done by some Goth to the +Shakespeare statue in the park; and though Papa is not a light, still he +did burn with indignation over that, and has been making impassioned +speeches, and suggesting punishments for the Goth when they shall have +caught him. I think I shall go over by the two o'clock train and meet +him and bring him home, and look in at Goethe's sponge on the way. You +know how the little black thing lies in his bedroom there, next to a +basin not much bigger than a breakfast-cup. With this he washed and was +satisfied. And whenever I feel depressed, out of countenance with myself +and life, I go and look at it and come home cheered and strengthened. I +wonder if you'll be able to make out why? Bless you my dearest. + +R.-M. + + + +VI + +Jena, Nov. 14th. + +That sponge had no effect yesterday. I stared and stared at it, and it +only remained a sponge, far too small for the really cleanly, instead of +what it has up to now been, the starting-point for a train of thrilling, +enthusiastic thoughts. I'm an unbalanced creature. Do you divide your +time too, I wonder, between knocking your head against the stars and, in +some freezing depth of blackness, listening to your heart, how it will +hardly beat for fear? Of course you don't. You are much too clever. And +then you have been educated, trained, taught to keep your thoughts +within bounds, and not let them start off every minute on fresh and +aimless wanderings. Yet the star-knocking is so wonderful that I believe +I would rather freeze the whole year round for one hour of it than go +back again to the changeless calm, the winter-afternoon sunshine, in +which I used to sit before I knew you. All this only means that you have +not written. See how variously one can state a fact. + +I have run away from the sitting-room and the round table and the lamp, +because Papa and my step-mother had begun to discuss you again, your +prospects, your probable hideous fate if you were not prudent, your +glorious career if you were. I felt guilty, wounded, triumphant, vain, +all at once. Papa, of course, was chiefly the listener. He agreed; or at +most he temporized. I tell you, Roger, I am amazed at the power a woman +has over her husband if she is in _every_ way inferior to him. It is not +only that, as we say, _der Klügere giebt nach_, it is the daily complete +victory of the coarser over the finer, the rough over the gentle, the +ignorant over the wise. My step-mother is an uneducated person, shrewd +about all the things that do not matter, unaware of the very existence +of the things that do, ready to be charitable, helpful, where the +calamity is big enough, wholly unsympathetic, even antagonistic, toward +all those many small calamities that make up one's years; the sort of +woman parsons praise, and who get tombstones put over them at last +peppered with frigid adjectives like virtuous and just. Did you ever +chance to live with a just person? They are very chilling, and not so +rare as one might suppose. And Papa, laxest, most tolerant of men, so +lax that nothing seems to him altogether bad, so tolerant that nobody, +however hard he tries, can pass, he thinks, beyond the reach of +forgiveness and love, so humorous that he has to fight continually to +suppress it, for humor lands one in odd morasses of dislike and +misconception here, married her a year after my mother died, and did it +wholly for my sake. Imagine it. She was to make me happy. Imagine that +too. I was not any longer to be a solitary _Backfisch_, with holes in +her stockings and riotous hair. There came a painful time when Papa +began to suspect that the roughness of my hair might conceivably be a +symbol of the dishevelment of my soul. Neighboring matrons pointed out +the possibility to him. He took to peering anxiously at unimportant +parts of me such as my nails, and was startled to see them often black. +He caught me once or twice red-eyed in corners, when it had happened +that the dear ways and pretty looks of my darling mother had come back +for a moment with extra vividness. He decided that I was both dirty and +wretched, and argued, I am sure during sleepless nights, that I would +probably go on being dirty and wretched for ever. And so he put on his +best clothes one day, and set out doggedly in search of a wife. + +He found her quite easily, in a house in the next street. She was making +doughnuts, for it was the afternoon of New Year's Eve. She had just +taken them out of the oven, and they were obviously successful. Papa +loves doughnuts. His dinner had been uneatable. The weather was cold. +She took off her apron, and piled them on a dish, and carried them, +scattering fragrance as they went, into the sitting-room; and the smell +of them was grateful; and they were very hot. + +Papa came home engaged. 'I am not as a rule in favor of second +marriages, Rose-Marie,' he began, breaking the news to me with elaborate +art. + +'Oh, horrid things,' I remarked, my arm round his neck, my face against +his, for even then I was as tall as he. You know how he begins abruptly +about anything that happens to cross his mind, so I was not surprised. + +He rubbed his nose violently. 'I never knew anybody with such hair as +yours for tickling a person,' he said, trying to push it back behind my +ears. Of course it would not go. 'Would it do that,' he added +suspiciously, 'if it were properly brushed?' + +'I don't know. Well, _Papachen_?' + +'Well what?' + +'About second marriages.' + +He had forgotten, and he started. In an instant I knew. I took my arm +away quickly, but put it back again just as quickly and pressed my face +still closer: it was better we should not see each other's eyes while he +told me. + +'I am not, as a rule, in favor of them,' he repeated, when he had +coughed and tried a second time to induce my hair to go behind my ears, +'but there are cases where they are--imperative.' + +'Which ones?' + +'Why, if a man is left with little children, for instance.' + +'Then he engages a good nurse.' + +'Or his children run wild.' + +'Then he gets a severe aunt to live with him.' + +'Or they grow up.' + +'Then they take care of themselves.' + +'Or he is an old man left with, say, one daughter.' + +'Then she would take care of him.' + +'And who would take care of her, Rose-Marie?' + +'He would.' + +'And if he is an incapable? An old person totally unable to notice +lapses from convention, from social customs? If no one is there to tell +her how to dress and how to behave? And she is growing up, and yet +remains a barbarian, and the day is not far distant when she must go +out, and he knows that when she does go out Jena will be astounded.' + +'Does the barbarian live in Jena?' + +'My dear, she is universal. Wherever there is a widower with an only +female child, there she is.' + +'But if she had been happy?' + +'But she had not been happy. She used to cry.' + +'Oh, of course she used to cry sometimes, when she thought more than +usual of her sweet--of her sweet--But for all that she had been happy, +and so had he. Why, you know he had. Didn't she look after him, and keep +house for him? Didn't she cook for him? Not very beautifully, perhaps, +but still she did cook, and there was dinner every day. Didn't she go to +market three times a week, and taste all the butter? Didn't she help to +do the rooms? And in the evenings weren't they happy together, with +nobody to worry them? And then, when he missed his darling wife, didn't +the barbarian always know he was doing it, and come and sit on his knee, +and kiss him, and make up for it? Didn't she? Now didn't she?' + +Papa unwound himself, and walked up and down with a desperate face. + +'Girls of sixteen must learn how to dress and to behave. A father cannot +show them that,' he said. + +'But they do dress and behave.' + +'Rose-Marie, unmended stockings are not dressing. And to talk to a +learned stranger well advanced in years with the freedom of his equal in +age and knowledge, as I saw one doing lately, is not behaving.' + +'Oh, Papa, she wouldn't do that again, I'm certain.' + +'She wouldn't have done it that once if she had had a mother.' + +'But the poor wretch hadn't got a mother.' + +'Exactly. A mother, therefore, must be provided.' + +Here, I remember, there was a long pause. Papa walked, and I watched him +in despair. Despair, too, was in his own face. He had had time to forget +the doughnuts, and how cold he had been, and how hungry. So shaken was I +that I actually suggested the engagement of a finishing governess to +finish that which had never been begun, pointing out that she, at least, +having finished would go; and he said he could not afford one; and he +added the amazing statement that a wife was cheaper. + +Well, I suppose she has been cheap: that is she has made one of Papa's +marks go as far as two of other people's; but oh how expensive she has +been in other ways! She has ruined us in such things as freedom, and +sweetness, and light. You know the sort of talk here at meals. I wish +you could have heard it before her time. She has such a strong +personality that somehow we have always followed her lead; and Papa, who +used to bubble out streams of gayety when he and I sat untidily on +either side of a tureen of horrible bad soup, who talked of all things +under heaven, and with undaunted audacity of many things in it, and who +somehow put a snap and a sparkle into whatever he said, sits like a +schoolboy invited to a meal at his master's, eager to agree, anxious to +give satisfaction. The wax cloth on the table is clean and shiny; the +spoons are bright; a cruet with clear oil and nice-looking vinegar +stands in the midst; the food, though simple, is hot and decent; we are +quite comfortable; and any of the other Jena _Hausfraus_ coming in +during a meal would certainly cry out _Wie gemüthlich_. But of what use +is it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers and +tidy shutters, when inside one's soul wanders through empty rooms, +mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings it +food, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired and +there's not a chair to sit on? + +Why I write all this I can't think; except that I feel as if I were +talking to you. You must tell me if I bore you. When I begin a letter to +you the great difficulty is to leave off again. Oh how warm it makes one +feel to know that there is one person in the world to whom one is +everything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvellous +possession. No wonder people like having them. And I used to think that +so silly. Heavens, what an absurd person I have been. Why, love is the +one thing worth having. Everything else, talents, work, arts, religion, +learning, the whole _tremblement,_ are so many drugs with which the +starved, the loverless, try to dull their pangs, to put themselves to +sleep. Good-night, and God bless you a thousand times. R.-M. + + + +VII + +Jena, Nov. 15th, 11 p.m. + +Dearest,--Your letter came this afternoon. How glad I was to get it. And +I do think it a good idea to go down into the country to those Americans +before your exam. Who knows but they may, by giving you peace at the +right moment, be the means of making you pass extra brilliantly? That +you should not pass at all is absolutely out of the question. Why have +the gods showered gifts on you if not for the proper passing of exams? +For I suppose in this as in everything else there are different ways, +ways of excellence and mediocrity. I know which way yours will be. If +only the presence of my spirit by your side on Saturday could be of use. +But that's the worst of spirits: they never seem to be the least good +unless they take their bodies with them. Yet mine burns so hotly when I +am thinking of you--and when am I not thinking of you?--that I feel as +if you actually must feel the glow of it as it follows you about. How +strange and dreadful love is. Till you know it, you are so sure the +world is very good and pleasant up in those serene, frost-bitten regions +where you stand alone, breathing the thin air of family affection, shone +upon gently by the mild and misty sun of general esteem. Then comes +love, and pulls you down. For isn't it a descent? Isn't it? Somehow, +though it is so great a glory, it's a coming-down as well--down from the +pride of absolute independence of body and soul, down from the +high-mightiness of indifference, to something fierce, and hot, and +consuming. Oh, I daren't tell you how little of serenity I have left. At +first, just at first, I didn't feel like this. I think I was stunned. My +soul seemed to stand still. Surely it was extraordinary, that +tempestuous crossing from the calm of careless friendship to the place +where love dashes madly against the rocks? Don't laugh at my images. I'm +in deadly earnest to-night. I do feel that love hurts. I do feel as if +I'd been thrown on to rocks, left by myself on them to come slowly to my +senses and find I am lying alone in a new and burning sun. It's an +exquisite sort of pain, but it's very nearly unbearable. You see, you +are so far away. And I, I'm learning for the first time in my life what +it means, that saying about eating out one's heart. + +R.-M. + + + +VIII + +Jena, Nov. 16th, 9 a.m. + +Really, my dear Roger, nicest of all _Bräutigams,_ pleasantest, best, +and certainly most charming, I don't think I'll write to you again in +the evenings. One of those hard clear hours that lie round +breakfast-time will be the most seemly for consecration to you. Moods +are such queer things, each one so distinct and real, so seemingly +eternal, and I am influenced by them to an extraordinary degree. The +weather, the time of day, the light in the room--yes, actually the light +in the room, sunlight, cloudlight, lamplight--the scent of certain +flowers, the sound of certain voices--the instant my senses become aware +of either of these things I find myself flung into the middle of a fresh +mood. And the worst part of it is the blind enthusiasm with which I am +sure that as I think and feel at that moment so will I think and feel +for ever. Nothing cures me. No taking of myself aside, no weight of +private admonishment, no bringing of my spirit within the white glare of +pure reason. Oh, women are fools; and of all fools the most complete is +myself. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to say that I +had to go to a _Kaffee-Klatsch_ yesterday at four, which is why I put +off answering your letter of the 13th till the evening. My dear Roger, +you must take no notice of that letter. Pray think of me as a young +person of sobriety; collected, discreet, cold to frostiness. Think of me +like that, my dear, and in return I'll undertake to write to you only in +my after-breakfast mood, quite the most respectable I possess. It is +nine now. Papa, in the slippers you can't have forgotten, is in his +corner by the stove, loudly disagreeing with the morning paper; he keeps +on shouting _Schafskopf._ Johanna is carrying coals about and dropping +them with a great noise. My step-mother is busy telling her how wrong it +is to drop dirty coals in clean places. I am writing on a bit of the +breakfast-table, surrounded by crumbs and coffee-cups. I will not clear +them away till I've finished my letter, because then I am sure you'll +get nothing either morbid or lovesick. Who, I'd like to know, could +flame into love-talk or sink into the mud of morbidness from a +starting-point of anything so sprightly as crumbs and coffee-cups? + +It was too sweet of you to compare me to Nausicaa in your letter +yesterday. Nobody ever did that before. Various aunts, among whom a few +years ago there was a great mortality, so that they are all now aunts in +heaven, told me in divers tones that I was much too long for my width, +that I was like the handle of a broom, like the steeple of the +_Stadtkirche_, like a tree walking; but none of them ever said anything +about Nausicaa. I doubt if they had ever heard of her. I'm afraid if +they had they wouldn't have seen that I am like her. You know the +blindness of aunts. Jena is full of them (not mine, _Gott sei Dank_, but +other people's) and they are all stone-blind. I don't mean, of course, +that the Jena streets are thick with aunts being led by dogs on strings, +but that they have that tragic blindness of the spirit that misses +seeing things that are hopeful and generous and lovely; things alight +with young enthusiasms, or beautiful with a patience that has had time +to grow gray. They also have that odd, unfurnished sort of mind that can +never forget and never forgive. Yesterday at the _Kaffee-Klatsch_ I met +them all again, the Jena aunts I know so well and who are yet for ever +strange, for ever of a ghastly freshness. It was the first this season, +and now I suppose I shall waste many a good afternoon _klatsch_ing. How +I wish I had not to go. My step-mother says that if I do not show myself +I shall be put down as eccentric. 'You are not very popular,' says she, +'as it is. Do not, therefore, make matters worse.' Then she appeals, +should a more than usual stubbornness cloud my open countenance, to +Papa. 'Ferdinand,' she says, 'shall she not, then, do as others of her +age?' And of course Papa says, bless him, that girls must see life +occasionally, and is quite unhappy if I won't. Life? God bless him for a +dear, innocent Papa. And how they talked yesterday. Papa would have +writhed. He never will talk or listen to talk about women unless they've +been dead some time, so uninteresting, so unworthy of discussion does he +consider all live females except Johanna to be. And if I hadn't had my +love-letter (I took it with me tucked inside my dress, where my heart +could beat against it), I don't think I would have survived that +_Klatsch._ You've no idea how proudly I set out. Hadn't I just been +reading the sweetest things about myself in your letter? Of course I was +proud. And I felt so important, and so impressive, and simply gloriously +good-tempered. The pavement of Jena, I decided as I walked over it, was +quite unworthy to be touched by my feet; and if the passers-by only knew +it, an extremely valuable person was in their midst. In fact, my dear +Roger, I fancied myself yesterday. Didn't Odysseus think Nausicaa was +Artemis when first he met her among the washing, so god-like did she +appear? Well, I felt god-like yesterday, made god-like by your love. I +actually fancied people would _see_ something wonderful had happened to +me, that I was transfigured, _verklärt._ Positively, I had a momentary +feeling that my coming in, the coming in of anything so happy, must +blind the _Kaffee-Klatsch_, that anything so burning with love must +scorch it. Well, it didn't. Never did torch plunged into wetness go out +with a drearier fizzle than did my little shining. Nobody noticed +anything different. Nobody seemed even to look at me. A few careless +hands were stretched out, and the hostess told me to ask the servant to +bring more milk. + +They were talking about sin. We don't sin much in Jena, so generally +they talk about sick people, or their neighbor's income and what he does +with it. But yesterday they talked sin. You know because we are poor and +Papa has no official position and I have come to be twenty-five without +having found a husband, I am a _quantité négligeable_ in our set, a +being in whose presence everything can be said, and who is expected to +sit in a draught if there is one. Too old to join the young girls in the +corner set apart for them, where they whisper and giggle and eat amazing +quantities of whipped cream, I hover uneasily on the outskirts of the +group of the married, and try to ingratiate myself by keeping on handing +them cakes. It generally ends in my being sent out every few minutes by +the hostess to the kitchen to fetch more food and things. 'Rose-Marie is +so useful,' she will explain to the others when I have been extra quick +and cheerful; but I don't suppose Nausicaa's female acquaintances said +more. The man Ulysses might take her for a goddess, but the most the +women would do would be to commend the way she did the washing. +Sometimes I have great trouble not to laugh when I see their heads, +often quite venerable, gathered together in an eager bunch, and hear +them expressing horror, sympathy, pity, in every sort of appropriate +tone, while their eyes, their tell-tale eyes, betrayers of the soul, +look pleased. Why they should be pleased when somebody has had an +operation or doesn't pay his debts I can't make out. But they do. And +after a course of _Klatsches_ throughout the winter, you are left toward +April with one firm conviction in a world where everything else is +shaky, that there's not a single person who isn't either extraordinarily +ill, or, if he's not, who does not misuse his health and strength by not +paying his servants' wages. + +Yesterday the _Klatsch_ was in a fearful flutter. It had got hold of a +tale of sin, real or suspected. It was a tale of two people who, after +leading exemplary lives for years, had suddenly been clutched by the +throat by Nature; and Nature, we know, cares nothing at all for the +claims of husbands and wives or any other lawfulnesses, and is a most +unmoral and one-idea'd person. They have, says Jena, begun to love each +other in defiance of the law. Nature has been too many for them, I +suppose. All Jena is a-twitter. Nothing can be proved, but everything is +being feared, said the hostess; from her eyes I'm afraid she wanted to +say hoped. Isn't it ugly?--_pfui_, as we say. And so stale, if it's +true. Why can't people defy Nature and be good? The only thing that is +always fresh and beautiful is goodness. It is also the only thing that +can make you go on being happy indefinitely. + +I know her well. My heart failed me when I heard her being talked about +so hideously. She is the nicest woman in Jena. She has been kind to me +often. She is very clever. Perhaps if she had been more dull she would +have found no temptation to do anything but jog along respectably--sometimes +I think that to be without imagination is to be so very safe. He has +only come to these parts lately. He used to be in Berlin, and has been +appointed to a very good position in Weimar. I have not met him, but +Papa says he is brilliant. He has a wife, and she has a husband, and +they each have a lot of children; so you see if it's true it really is +very _pfui_. + +Just as the _Kaffee-Klatsch_ was on the wane, and crumbs were being +brushed off laps, and bonnet-strings tied, in she walked. There was a +moment's dead silence. Then you should have heard the effusion of +welcoming speeches. The hostess ran up and hugged her. The others were +covered with pleasant smiles. Perhaps they were grateful to her for +having provided such thrilling talk. When I had to go and kiss her hand +I never in my life felt baser. You should have seen her looking round +cheerfully at all the Judases, and saying she was sorry to be late, and +asking if they hadn't missed her; and you should have heard the eager +chorus of assurances. + +Oh, _pfui, pfui_. + +R.-M. + +How much I love goodness, straightness, singleness of heart--_you._ + + +Later. + +I walked part of the way home with the calumniated one. How charming she +is. Dear little lady, it would be difficult not to love her. She talked +delightfully about German and English poetry. Do you think one can talk +delightfully about German and English poetry and yet be a sinner? Tell +me, do you think a woman who is very intellectual, but very _very_ +intellectual, could yet be a sinner? Would not her wits save her? Would +not her bright wits save her from anything so dull as sin? + + + +IX + +Jena, Nov. 18th. + +Dearest,--I don't think I like that girl at all. Your letter from +Clinches has just come, and I don't think I like her at all. What is +more, I don't think I ever shall like her. And what is still more, I +don't think I even want to. So your idea of her being a good friend to +me later on in London must retire to that draughty corner of space where +abortive ideas are left to eternal shivering. I'm sorry if I am +offensively independent. But then I know so well that I won't be lonely +if I'm with you, and I think rooting up, which you speak of as a +difficult and probably painful process, must be very nice if you are the +one to do it, and I am sure I could never by any possibility reach such +depths of strangeness and doubt about what to do next as would induce me +to stretch out appealing hands to a young woman with eyes that, as you +put it, tilt at the corners. I wish you hadn't told her about us, about +me. It has profaned things so, dragged them out into the streets, +cheapened them. I don't in the least want to tell my father, or any one +else. Does this sound as though I were angry? Well, I don't think I am. +On the contrary, I rather want to laugh. You dear silly! So clever and +so simple, so wise and crammed with learning, and such a dear, ineffable +goose. How old am I, I wonder? Only as old as you? Really only as old? +Nonsense: I'm fifteen, twenty years your senior, my dear sir. I've lived +in Jena, you in London I frequent _Kaffee-Klatsches_, and you the great +world. I talk much with Johanna in the kitchen, and you with heaven +knows what in the way of geniuses. Yet no male Nancy Cheriton, were his +eyelids never so tilted, would wring a word out of me about a thing so +near, so precious, so much soul of my soul as my lover. + +How would you explain this? I've tried and can't. + +Your rebellious + +ROSE-MARIE. + +Darling, darling, don't ask me to like Nancy. The thing's unthinkable. + + +Later. + +Now I know why I am wiser than you: life in kitchens and _Klatsches_ +turns the soul gray very early. Didn't one of your poets sing of +somebody who had a sad lucidity of soul? I'm afraid that is what's the +matter with me. + + + +X + +Jena, Nov. 19th. + +Oh, what nonsense everything seems,--everything of the nature of +differences, of arguments, on a clear morning up among the hills. I am +ashamed of what I wrote about Nancy; ashamed of my eagerness and heat +about a thing that does not matter. On the hills this morning, as I was +walking in the sunshine, it seemed to me that I met God. And He took me +by the hand, and let me walk with Him. And He showed me how beautiful +the world is, how beautiful the background He has given us, the +spacious, splendid background on which to paint our large charities and +loves. And I looked across the hilltops, golden, utterly peaceful, and +amazement filled me in the presence of that great calm at the way I +flutter through my days and at the noise I make. Why should I cry out +before I am hurt? flare up into heat and clamor? The pure light up there +made it easy to see clearly, and I saw that I have been silly and +ungrateful. Forgive me. You know best about Nancy, you who have seen +her; and I, just come down from that holy hour on the hills, am very +willing to love her. I will not turn my back upon a ready friend. She +can have no motive but a good one. Roger, I am a blunderer, a clumsy +creature with not one of my elemental passions bound down yet into the +decent listlessness of chains. But I shall grow better, grow more worthy +of you. Not a day shall pass without my having been a little wiser than +the day before, a little kinder, a little more patient. I wish you had +been with me this morning. It was so still and the sky so clear that I +sat on the old last year's grass as warmly as in summer. I felt +irradiated with life and love; light shining on to every tiresome +incident of life and turning it into beauty, love for the whole +wonderful world, and all the people in it, and all the beasts and +flowers, and all the happy living things. Indeed blessings have been +given me in full measure, pressed down and running over. In the whole of +that little town at my feet, so quiet, so bathed in lovely light, there +was not, there could not be, another being so happy as myself. Surely I +am far too happy to grudge accepting a kindness? I tell you I marvel at +the energy of my protest yesterday. Perhaps it was--oh Roger, after +those hours on the hills I will be honest, I will pull off the veil from +feelings that the female mind generally refuses to uncover--perhaps the +real reason, the real, pitiful, mean reason was that I felt sure somehow +from your description of her that Nancy's _blouses_ must be very perfect +things, things beyond words _very_ perfect. And I was jealous of her +blouses. There now. Good-by. + + + +XI + +Jena, Nov. 20th. + +I am glad you did not laugh at that silly letter of mine about scorching +in the sun on rocks. Indeed I gather, my dear Roger, that you liked it. +Make the most of it then, for there will be no more of the sort. A +decent woman never gets on to rocks, and if she scorches she doesn't say +so. And I believe that it is held to be generally desirable that she +should not, even under really trying circumstances, part with her +dignity. I rather think the principle was originally laid down by the +husband of an attractive wife, but it is a good one, and so long as I am +busy clinging to my dignity obviously I shall have no leisure for +clinging to you, and then you will not be suffocated with the +superabundance of my follies. + +About those two sinners who are appalling us: how can I agree with you? +To do so would cut away the ground from under my own feet. The woman +plays such a losing game. She gives so much, and gets so little. So long +as the man loves her I do see that he is worth the good opinion of +neighbors and relations, which is one of the chilliest things in the +world; but he never seems able to go on loving her once she has begun to +wither. That is very odd. She does not mind his withering. And has she +not a soul? And does not that grow always lovelier? But what, then, +becomes of her? For wither she certainly will, and years rush past at +such a terrific pace that almost before she has begun to be happy it is +over. He goes back to his wife, a person who has been either patient or +bitter according to the quantity of her vitality and the quality of her +personal interests, and concludes, while he watches her sewing on his +buttons in the corner she has probably been sitting in through all his +vagrant years, that marriage has its uses, and that it is good to know +there will be some one bound to take care of you up to the last, and who +will shed decent tears when you are buried. She goes back--but where, +and to what? They have gone long ago, her husband, her children, her +friends. And she is old, and alone. You too, like everybody else, seem +unable to remember how transient things are. Time goes, emotions wear +out. You say these people are in the hands of Fate, and can no more get +out of them and do differently than a fly in a web can walk away when it +sees the hungry spider coming nearer. I don't believe in webs and +spiders; at least, I don't today. Today I believe only in my +unconquerable soul-- + + I am the master of my fate, + I am the captain of my soul. + +And you say that a person in the grip of a great feeling should not care +a straw for circumstance, should defy it, trample it under foot. Heaven +knows that I too am for love and laughter, for the snatching of flying +opportunities, for all that makes the light and the glory of life; but +what afterwards? The Afterwards haunts me like a weeping ghost. It is +true there is still the wide world, the warm sun, seed-time and harvest, +Shakespeare, the Book of Job, singing birds, flowers; but the soul that +has transgressed the laws of man seems for ever afterwards unable to use +the gifts of God. If supreme joy could be rounded off by death, death at +the exact right moment, how easy things would be. Only death has a +strange way of shunning those persons who want him most. To long to die +seems to make you as nearly immortal as it is possible to become. Now +just think what would have happened if Tristan had not been killed, had +lived on quite healthily. King Mark, than whom I know no man in +literature more polite, would have handed Isolde over to him as he +declared himself ready to have done had he been aware of the +unfortunately complicated state of things, and he would have done it +with every expression of decent regret at the inconvenience he had +caused. Isolde would have married Tristan. There would have been no +philosophy, no divine hours in the garden, no acute, exquisite anguish +of love and sorrow. But there would presently have been the Middle Ages +equivalent for a perambulator, a contented Tristan coming to meet it, a +faded Isolde who did not care for poetry, admonishing, perhaps with +sharpness, a mediæval nursemaid, and quite quickly afterwards a Tristan +grown too comfortable to move, and an Isolde with wrinkles. Would we not +have lost a great deal if they had lived? It is certain that they +themselves would have lost a great deal; for I don't see that +contentment beaten out thin enough to cover a long life--and beat as +thin as you will it never does cover quite across the years--is to be +compared with one supreme contentment heaped in one heap on the highest, +keenest point of living we reach. Now I am apparently arguing on your +side, but I'm not really, because you, you know, think of love as a +perpetual _crescendo,_ and I, though I do hear the _crescendo_ and +follow it with a joyful clapping of hands up to the very top of its +splendor, can never forget the drop on the other side, the inevitable +_diminuendo_ to the dead level--and then? Why, the rest is not even +silence, but a querulous murmur, a querulous, confused whining, confused +complaining, not very loud, not very definite, but always there till the +last chord is reached a long time afterwards--that satisfactory common +chord of death. My point is, that if you want to let yourself go to +great emotions you ought to have the luck to die at an interesting +moment. The alternative makes such a dreary picture; and it is the +picture I always see when I hear of love at defiance with the law. The +law wins; always, inevitably. Husbands are best; always, inevitably. +Really, the most unsatisfactory husband is a person who should be clung +to steadily from beginning to end, for did not one marry him of one's +own free will? How ugly then, because one had been hasty, foolish, +unacquainted with one's usually quite worthless mind, to punish him. The +brilliant professor, the fascinating little lady, what are they but +grossly selfish people, cruelly punishing the husband and wife who had +the misfortune to marry them? Oh, it's a mercy most of us are homely, +slow of wit, heavy of foot; for so at least we stay at home and find our +peace in fearful innocence and household laws. (Please note my +familiarity with the British poets.) But isn't that a picture of frugal +happiness, of the happiness that comes from a daily simple obedience to +the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God, beside which stormy, tremendous, +brief things come off very badly? I don't believe you do in your heart +side with the two sinners. Bother them. They have made me feel like a +Lutheran pastor on a Sunday afternoon. But you know I love you. + +R.-M. + + + +XII + +Jena, Nov. 22d. + +When do you go back to Jermyn Street? Surely today, for is not the +examination to-morrow? Your description of the Cheriton _ménage_ at +Clinches is like fairyland. No wonder you feel so happy there. My mother +used to tell me about life in England, but apparently the Watson family +did not dwell in houses like Clinches. Anyhow I had an impression of +little houses with little staircases, and oil-cloth, and a servant in a +cap with streamers, and round white balls of suet with currants in them +very often for dinner. But Clinches, beautiful and dignified in the +mists and subtleties of a November afternoon, its massed grayness +melting into that other grayness, its setting of mysterious blurred wood +and pale light of water, its spaciousness, its pleasant people, its +daughter with the dusky hair and odd gray eyes--is a vision of +fairyland. I cannot conceive what life is like in such places; nor I am +sure could any other inhabitant of Jena. What, for instance, can it be +like to live in a thing so big that you do not hear the sounds nor smell +the smells of the kitchen? Ought not people who live in such places to +have unusually beautiful ways of looking at life? of thinking? of +speaking? One imagines it all very noble, very gracious, altogether +worthy. That complete separation from the kitchen is what wrings the +biggest sigh of envy out of me. Is it my English blood that makes me +rebel against kitchens? Or is it only my unfortunate sensitiveness to +smell? I wish I had no nose. It has always been a nuisance. It is as +extravagantly delighted by exquisite scents as it is extravagantly +horrified by nasty ones. Why, a beautiful smell, if it is delicate, +subtle, intermittent, can ruin a morning for me. It fills me with a +quite unworthy rapture. Things that ought to be hard in me melt. Things +that ought to be fixed are scattered heaven knows where. I go soft, +ecstatic, basely idle. I forget that my business is to get dinner, and +not to stand still and just sniff. In March I dare not pass the house +Schiller used to live in on my way to market, because the people who +live there now have planted violets along the railings. It is the +shortest way, and it takes ten more minutes out of a busy morning to go +round by the Post Office; but really for a grown woman to stand lost in +what is mere voluptuous pleasure, leaning against somebody else's +railing while the family dinner lies still unbought in the market-place, +is conduct that I cannot justify. As for a beanfield--my dear Roger, did +you ever come across a beanfield in flower? It is the divinest +experience the nose can give us. Two years ago an Englishman came and +spent a spring and summer in the little house in the apple orchard up on +the road over the Galgenberg--the little house with the blue +shutters--and he was a great gardener. And he dug a big patch, and +planted a beanfield, and it was the first beanfield Jena had ever seen; +for those beans called broad that you eat in England and are properly +thankful for are only grown in Germany for the use of pigs, and there +are no pigs in Jena. Sow-beans they are called here, mindful of their +destiny. The Englishman, who possessed no visible sow, was a source of +astonishment to us. The things came up, and were undoubtedly sow-beans. +A great square patch of them grew up just over the fence on which Jena +leaned and pondered. The man himself was seen in his shirt-sleeves +weeding them on rainy afternoons. Jena could only suspect a pig +concealed in the parlor, and was indulgent; and it was indulgent because +no one, in its opinion, can be both English and sane. 'God made us all,' +was its invariable helpless conclusion as it went, shaking its head, +home down the hill. When in June the beanfield flowered I blessed that +Englishman. No one hung over his fence more persistently than I. It was +the first time I had smelt the like. It became an obsession. I wanted to +be there at every sort of time and under every sort of weather-condition. +At noon, when the sun shone straight down on it drawing up its perfume +in hot breaths, I was there; in the morning, so early that it was still +in the blue shadow of the Galgenberg and every gray leaf and white petal +was drenched with dew, I was there; on wet afternoons, when the scent +was crushed out of it by the beating of heavy rain, and the road for +half a mile, the slippery clay road with its puddles and amazing mud, +was turned into a bath of fragrance fit for the tenderest, most +fastidious goddess to bare her darling little limbs in, I was there; and +once after lying awake in my hot room so near the roof for hours +thinking of it, out there on the hillside in the freshness under the +stars, I got up and dressed, and crept with infinite caution past my +step-mother's door, and stole the latchkey, and slunk, my heart in my +mouth, through the stale streets, along all the railings and dusty front +gardens, out into the open country, up on to the hill, to where it stood +in straight and motionless rows sending out waves of fragrance into that +wonderful clean air you find in all the places where men leave off and +God begins. Did you ever know a woman before who risked her reputation +for a beanfield? Well, it is what I did. And I'll tell you, I am so +incurably honest that I can never for long pretend, why I write all this +about it. It is that I am sick with anxiety--oh, sick, cold, shivering +with it--about your exam. I didn't want you to know. I've tried to write +of beanfields instead. I didn't want you to be bothered. The clamorings +for news of the person not on the spot are always a worry, and I did not +want to worry. But the letter I got from you this morning never mentions +the exam, the thing on which, as you told me, everything depends for us. +You talk about Clinches, about the people there, about the shooting, the +long days in woods, the keen-wittedness of Nancy who goes with you, who +understands before you have spoken, who sympathizes so kindly about me, +who fits, you say, so strangely into the misty winter landscape in her +paleness, her thinness, her spiritualness. There was one whole page--oh, +I grudged it--about her loosely done dark hair, how softly dusky it is, +how it makes you think of twilight, and her eyes beneath it of the first +faint shining of stars. I wonder if these things really fill your +thoughts, or whether you are only using them to drive away useless worry +about Saturday. I know you are a poet, and a poet's pleasure in eyes and +hair is not a very personal thing, so I do not mind that. But to-morrow +is Saturday. Shall you send me a telegram, I wonder? A week ago I would +not have wondered; I should have been so sure you would let me have one +little word at once about how you felt it had gone off--one little word +for the person so far away, so helpless, so dependent on your kindness +for the very power to go on living. Oh, what stuff this is. Worse even +than the beanfield. But I must be sentimental sometimes, now mustn't I? +or I would not be a woman. But really, my darling, I am very anxious. + +R.-M. + + + +XIII + +Jena, Nov. 23 d. + +I have waited all day, and there has been no telegram. Well, on Monday I +shall get a letter about it, and how much more satisfactory that is. +Today after all is nearly over, and there is only Sunday to be got +through first, and I shall be helped to endure that by the looking +forward. Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It +makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and +nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the +first catch of the breath, the first gulp of misery, we turn our eyes +with all their old eagerness to a point a little further along the road. +I suppose in time the regular repetition of shocks does wear out hope, +and then I imagine one's youth collapses like a house of cards. Real old +age begins then, inward as well as outward; and one's soul, that kept so +bravely young for years after one's face got its first wrinkles, +suddenly shrivels up. Its light goes out. It is suddenly and +irrecoverably old, blank, dark, indifferent. + + +Sunday Night. + +I didn't finish my letter last night because, observing the strain I had +got into, I thought it better for your comfort that I should go to bed. +So I did. And while I went there I asked myself why I should burden you +with the dull weight of my elementary reflections. You who are so clever +and who think so much and so clearly, must laugh at their +elementariness. They are green and immature, the acid juice of an +imperfect fruit that has always hung in the shadow. And yet I don't +think you must laugh, Roger. It would, after all, be as cruel as the +laughter of a child watching a blind man ridiculously stumbling among +the difficulties of the way. + +The one Sunday post brought nothing from you. The day has been very +long. I cannot tell you how glad I am night has come, and only sleep +separates me now from Monday morning's letter. These Sundays now that +you are gone are intolerable. Before you came they rather amused +me,--the furious raging of Saturday, with its extra cleaning and +feverish preparations till far into the night; Johanna more than usually +slipshod all day, red of elbow, wispy of hair, shuffling about in her +felt slippers, her skirt girded up very high, a moist mop and an +overflowing pail dribbling soapy tracks behind her in her progress; my +step-mother baking and not lightly to be approached; Papa fled from +early morning till supper-time; and then the dead calm of Sunday, day of +food and sleep. Cake for breakfast--such a bad beginning. Church in the +University chapel, with my step-mother in her best hat with the black +feathers and the pink rose--it sounds frivolous, but you must have +noticed the awe-inspiring effect of it coming so unexpectedly on the top +of her long respectable face and oiled-down hair. A fluffy person in +that hat would have all the students offering to take her for a walk or +share their umbrella with her. My step-mother stalks along panoplied in +her excellences, and the feather waves and nods gayly at the passing +student as he slinks away down by-streets. Once last spring a silly bee +thought the rose must be something alive and honeyful, and went and +smelt it. I think it must have been a very young bee; anyhow nobody else +up to now has misjudged my step-mother like that. She sits near the door +in church, and has never yet heard the last half of the sermon because +she has to go out in time to put the goose or other Sunday succulence +safely into the oven. I wish she would let me do that, for I don't care +for sermons. When you were here and condescended to come with us at +least we could criticize them comfortably on our way home; but alone +with my step-mother I may do nothing but praise. It is the most tiring, +tiresome of all attitudes, the one of undiscriminating admiration. To +hear you pull the person who had preached to pieces, and laugh at the +things he had said that would not bear examination, used to be like +having a window thrown open in a stuffy room on a clear winter's +morning. Shall you ever forget the elaborateness of the Sunday dinner? +For that, chiefly, is Saturday sacrificed, a whole day that might be +filled with lovely leisure. I do hope you never thought that I too +looked upon it as a nice way of celebrating Sunday. How amazing it is, +the way women waste life. Men waste enough of it, heaven knows, but +never anything like so much as women. Papa and I both hate that Sunday +dinner, both dread the upheavals of Saturday made necessary by it, and +you, I know, disliked them just as much, and so has every other young +man we have had here; yet my step-mother inflicts these things on us +with an iron determination that nothing will ever alter. And why? Only +because she was brought up in the belief that it was proper, and +because, if she omitted to do the proper, female Jena would be aghast. +Well, I think it's a bad thing to be what is known as brought up, don't +you? Why should we poor helpless little children, all soft and +resistless, be squeezed and jammed into the rusty iron bands of parental +points of view? Why should we have to have points of view at all? Why +not, for those few divine years when we are still so near God, leave us +just to guess and wonder? We are not given a chance. On our pulpy little +minds our parents carve their opinions, and the mass slowly hardens, and +all those deep, narrow, up and down strokes harden with it, and the +first thing the best of us have to do on growing up is to waste precious +time rubbing and beating at the things to try to get them out. Surely +the child of the most admirable, wise parent is richer with his own +faulty but original point of view than he would be fitted out with the +choicest selection of maxims and conclusions that he did not have to +think out for himself? I could never be a schoolmistress. I should be +afraid to teach the children. They know more than I do. They know how to +be happy, how to live from day to day in god-like indifference to what +may come next. And is not how to be happy the secret we spend our lives +trying to guess? Why then should I, by forcing them to look through my +stale eyes, show them as through a dreadful magnifying glass the +terrific possibilities, the cruel explosiveness of what they had been +lightly tossing to each other across the daisies and thinking were only +toys? + +Today at dinner, when Papa had got to the stage immediately following +the first course at which, his hunger satisfied, he begins to fidget and +grow more and more unhappy, and my step-mother was conversing blandly +but firmly with the tried and ancient friend she invites to bear witness +that we too have a goose on Sundays, and I had begun to droop, I hope +poetically, like a thirsty flower let us say, or a broken lily, over my +plate, I thought--oh, how longingly I thought--of the happy past meals, +made happy because you were here sitting opposite me and I could watch +you. How short they seemed in those days. You didn't know I was watching +you, did you? But I was. And I learned to do it so artfully, so +cautiously. When you turned your head and talked to Papa I could do it +openly; when you talked to me I could look straight in your dear eyes +while I answered; but when I wasn't answering I still looked at you, by +devious routes carefully concealed, routes that grew so familiar by +practice that at last I never missed a single expression, while you, I +suppose, imagined you had nothing before you but a young woman with a +vacant face. What talks and laughs we will have about that odd, foolish +year we spent here together in our blindness when next we meet! We've +had no time to say anything at all yet. There are thousands of things I +want to ask you about, thousands of little things we said and did that +seem so strange now in the light of our acknowledged love. My heart +stands still at the thought of when next we meet. These letters have +been so intimate, and we were not intimate. I shall be deadly shy when +in your presence I remember what I have written and what you have +written. We are still such strangers, bodily, personally; strangers with +the overwhelming memory of that last hour together to make us turn hot +and tremble. + +Now I am going to bed,--to dream of you, I suppose, considering that all +day long I am thinking of you; and perhaps I shall have a little luck, +and dream that I hear you speaking. You know, Roger, I love you for all +sorts of queer and apparently inadequate reasons--I won't tell you what +they are, for they are quite absurd; things that have to do with +eyebrows, and the shape of hands, so you see quite foolish things--but +most of all I love you for your voice. A beautiful speaking voice is one +of the best of the gifts of the gods. It is so rare; and it is so +irresistible. Papa says heaps of nice poetic things, but then the +darling pipes. The most eloquent lecturer we have here does all his +eloquence, which is really very great read afterward in print, in a +voice of beer, loose, throaty, reminiscent of barrels. Not one of the +preachers who come to the University chapel has a voice that does not +spoil the merit there may be in what he says. Sometimes I think that if +a man with the right voice were to get up in that pulpit and just say, +'Children, Christ died for you,'--oh, then I think that all I have and +am, body, mind, soul, would be struck into one great passion of +gratefulness and love, and that I would fall conquered on my face before +the Cross on the altar, and cry and cry.... + + + +XIV + +Jena, Nov. 25th. Monday Night. + +The last post has been. No letter. If you had posted it in London on +Saturday after the examination I ought to have had it by now. I am +tortured by the fear that something has happened to you. Such dreadful +things do happen. Those great, blundering, blind fists of Fate, laying +about in mechanical cruelty, crushing the most precious lives as +indifferently as we crush an ant in an afternoon walk, how they terrify +me. All day I have been seeing foolish, horrible pictures--your train to +London smashing up, your cab coming to grief--the thousand things that +might so easily happen really doing it at last. I sent my two letters to +Jermyn Street, supposing you would have left Clinches, but now somehow I +don't think you did leave it, but went up from there for the exam. Do +you know it is three days since I heard from you? That wouldn't matter +so much--for I am determined never to bother you to write, I am +determined I will never be an exacting woman--if it were not for the +all-important examination. You said that if you passed it well and got a +good place in the Foreign Office you would feel justified in telling +your father about us. That means that we would be openly engaged. Not +that I care for that, or want it except as the next step to our meeting +again. It is clear that we cannot meet again till our engagement is +known. Even if you could get away and come over for a few days I would +not see you. I will not be kissed behind doors. These things are too +wonderful to be handled after the manner of kitchen-maids. I am willing +to be as silent as the grave for as long as you choose, but so long as I +am silent we shall not meet. I tell you I am incurably honest. I cannot +bear to lie. And even these letters, this perpetual writing when no one +is likely to look, this perpetual watching for the postman so that no +one will be likely to see, does not make me love myself any better. It +is true I need not have watched quite so carefully lately, need I? Oh +Roger, why don't you write? What has happened? Think of my wretched +plight if you are ill. Just left to wonder at the silence, to gnaw away +at my miserable heart. Or, if some one took pity on me and sent me +word,--your servant, or the doctor, or the kind Nancy--what could I do +even then but still sit here and wait? How could I, a person of whom +nobody has heard, go to you? It seems to me that the whole world has a +right to be with you, to know about you, except myself. I cannot wait +for the next post. The waiting for these posts makes me feel physically +sick. If the man is a little late, what torments I suffer lest he should +not be coming at all. Then I hear him trudging up the stairs. I fly to +the door, absolutely vainly trying to choke down hope. 'There will be no +letter, no letter, no letter,' I keep on crying to my thumping heart so +that the disappointment shall not be quite so bitter; and it takes no +notice, but thumps back wildly, 'Oh, there will, there will.' And what +the man gives me is a circular for Papa. + +It is quite absurd, madly absurd, the anguish I feel when that happens. +My one wish, my only wish, as I creep back again down the passage to my +work, is that I could go to sleep, and sleep and sleep and forget that I +have ever hoped for anything; sleep for years, and wake up quiet and +old, with all these passionate, tearing feelings gone from me for ever. + + + +XV + +Jena, Nov. 28th. + +Last night I got your letter written on Sunday at Clinches, a place from +which letters do not seem to depart easily. My knowledge of England's +geography is limited, so how could I guess that it was so easy to go up +to London from there for the exam, and back again the same day? As you +had no time, you say, to go to Jermyn Street, I suppose the two letters +I sent there will be forwarded to you. If they are not it does not +matter. They were only a string of little trivial things that would look +really quite too little and trivial to be worth reading in the +magnificence of Clinches. I am glad you are well; glad you are happy; +glad you feel you did not do badly on Saturday. It is a good thing to be +well and happy and satisfied, and a pleasant thing to have found a +friend who takes so much interest in you, and to whom you can tell your +most sacred thoughts: doubly pleasant, of course, when the friend +chances to be a woman, and she is pretty, and young, and rich, and +everything else that is suitable and desirable. The world is an amusing +place. My step-mother talked of you this morning at breakfast. She was, +it seems, in a prophetic mood. She shook her head after the manner of +the more gloomy of the prophets, and hoped you would steer clear of +entanglements. + +'And why should he not, _meine Liebste_?' inquired Papa. + +'Not for nothing has he got that mouth, Ferdinand,' answered she. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XVI + +Jena, Nov. 29th. + +My darling, forgive me. If I could only get it back! I who hate +unreasonableness, who hate bitterness, who hate exacting women, petty +women, jealous women, to write a thing so angry. How horrible this +letter-writing is. If I had said all that to you in a sudden flare of +wrath I would have been sorry so immediately, and at once have made +everything fair and sweet again with a kiss. And I never would have got +beyond the first words, never have reached my step-mother's silly and +rude remarks, never have dreamed of repeating the unkind, unjust things. +Now, Roger, listen to me: my faith in you is perfect, my love for you is +perfect, but I am so undisciplined, so new to love, that you must be +patient, you must be ready to forgive easily for a little while, till I +have had time to grow wise. Just think, when you feel irritated, of the +circumstances of my life. Everything has come so easily, so naturally to +you. But I have been always poor, always second-rate--oh, it's +true--shut out from the best things and people, lonely because the +society I could have was too little worth having, and the society I +would have liked didn't want me. How could it? It never came our way, +never even knew we were there. I have had a shabby, restricted, +incomplete life; I mean the last ten years of it, since my father +married again. Before that, if the shabbiness was there I did not see +it; there seemed to be sunshine every day, and room to breathe, and +laughter enough; but then I was a child, and saw sunshine everywhere. Is +there not much excuse for some one who has found a treasure, some one +till then very needy, if his anxiety lest he should be robbed makes +him--irritable? You see, I put it mildly. I know very well that +irritable isn't the right word. I know very well what are the right +words, and how horrid they are, and how much ashamed I am of their +bitter truth. Pity me. A person so unbalanced, so stripped of all +self-control that she writes things she knows must hurt to the being she +loves so utterly, does deserve pity from better, serener natures. I do +not understand you yet. I do not understand the ways yet of people who +live as you do. I am socially inferior, and therefore sensitive and +suspicious. I am groping about, and am so blind that only sometimes can +I dimly feel how dark it really is. I have built up a set of ideals +about love and lovers, absurd crude things, clumsy fabrics suited to the +conditions of Rauchgasse, and the first time you do not exactly fit them +I am desperately certain that the world is coming to an end. But how +hopeless it is, this trying to explain, this trying to undo. How shall I +live till you write that you do still love me? + +Your wretched + +ROSE-MARIE. + + + +XVII + +Jena, Nov. 30th. + +I counted up my money this morning to see if there would be enough to +take me to England, supposing some day I should wake up and find myself +no longer able to bear the silence. I know I should be mad if I went, +but sometimes one is mad. There was not nearly enough. The cheapest +route would cost more than comes in my way during a year. I have a ring +of my mother's with a diamond in it, my only treasure, that I might +sell. I never wear it; my red hands are not pretty enough for rings, so +it is only sentiment that makes it precious. And if it would take me to +you and give me just one half-hour's talk with you and sweep away the +icy fog that seems to be settling down on my soul and shutting out +everything that is wholesome and sweet, I am sure my darling mother, +whose one thought was always to make me happy, would say, 'Child, go and +sell it, and buy peace.' + + + +XVIII + +Jena, Dec. 1st. + +Last night I dreamed I did go to England, and I found you in a room with +a crowd of people, and you nodded not unkindly, and went on talking to +the others, and I waited in my corner till they should have gone, waited +for the moment when we would run into each other's arms; and with the +last group you too went out talking and laughing, and did not come back +again. It was not that you wanted to avoid me; you had simply forgotten +that I was there. And I crept out into the street, and it was raining, +and through the rain I made my way back across Europe to my home, to the +one place where they would not shut me out, and when I opened the door +all the empty future years were waiting for me there, gray, vacant, +listless. + + + +XIX + +Jena, Dec. 2d. + +These scraps of letters are not worth the postman's trouble, are not +worth the stamps; but if I did not talk to you a little every day I do +not think I could live. Yesterday you got my angry letter. If you were +not at Clinches I could have had an answer to-morrow; as it is, I must +wait till Wednesday. Roger, I am really a cheerful person. You mustn't +suppose that it is my habit to be so dreary. I don't know what has come +over me. Every day I send you another shred of gloom, and deepen the +wrong impression you must be getting of me. I know very well that nobody +likes to listen to sighs, and that no man can possibly go on for long +loving a dreary woman. Yet I cannot stop. A dreary man is bad enough, +but he would be endured because we endure every variety of man with so +amazing a patience; but a dreary woman is unforgivable, hideous. Now am +I not luminously reasonable? But only in theory. My practice lies right +down on the ground, wet through by that icy fog that is freezing me into +something I do not recognize. You do remember I was cheerful once? +During the whole of your year with us I defy you to recollect a single +day, a single hour of gloom. Well, that is really how I always am, and I +can only suppose that I am going to be ill. There is no other way of +accounting for the cold terror of life that sits crouching on my heart. + + + +XX + +Dec. 3d. + +Dearest,--You will be pleased to hear that I feel gayer to-night, so +that I cannot, after all, be sickening for anything horrid. It is an +ungrateful practice, letting oneself go to vague fears of the future +when there is nothing wrong with the present. All these days during +which I have been steeped in gloom and have been taking pains to put +some of it into envelopes and send it to you were good days in +themselves. Life went on here quite placidly. The weather was sweet with +that touching, forlorn sweetness of beautiful worn-out things, of late +autumn when winter is waiting round the corner, of leaves dropping +slowly down through clear light, of the smell of oozy earth sending up +faint whiffs of corruption. From my window I saw the hills every day at +sunset, how wonderfully they dressed themselves in pink; and in the +afternoons, in the free hour when dinner was done and coffee not yet +thought of, I went down into the Paradies valley and sat on the coarse +gray grass by the river, and watched the water slipping by beneath the +osiers, the one hurried thing in an infinite tranquillity. I ought to +have had a volume of Goethe under my arm and been happy. I ought to have +read nice bits out of _Faust_, or about those extraordinary people in +the Elective Affinities, and rejoiced in Goethe, and in the fine days, +and in my good fortune in being alive, and in having you to love. Well, +it is over now, I hope,--I mean the gloom. These things must take their +course, I suppose, and while they are doing it one must grope about as +best one can by the flickering lantern-light of one's own affrighted +spirit. My step-mother looked at me at least once on each of these +miserable days, and said: 'Rose-Marie, you look very odd. I hope you are +not going to have anything expensive. Measles are in Jena, and also the +whooping-cough.' + +'Which of them is the cheapest?' I inquired. + +'Both are beyond our means,' said my step-mother severely. + +And today at dinner she was quite relieved because I ate some _dicker +Reis_ after having turned from it with abhorrence for at least a week. +Good-by, dearest. + +Your almost cured + +ROSE-MARIE. + + + +XXI + +Jena, Dec. 4th. + +Your letter has come. You must do what you know is best. I agree to +everything. You must do what your father has set his heart on, since +quite clearly your heart is set on the same thing. All the careful words +in the world cannot hide that from me. And they shall not. Do you think +I dare not look death in the face? I am just a girl you kissed once +behind a door, giving way before a passing gust of temptation. You +cannot, shall not marry me as the price of that slight episode. You say +you will if I insist. Insist? My dear Roger, with both hands I give you +back any part of your freedom I may have had in my keeping. Reason, +expediency, all the prudences are on your side. You depend entirely on +your father; you cannot marry against his wishes; he has told you to +marry Miss Cheriton; she is the daughter of his oldest friend; she is +extremely rich; every good gift is hers; and I cannot compete. Compete? +Do you suppose I would put out a finger to compete? I give it up. I bow +myself out. + +But let us be honest. Apart from anything to do with your father's +commands, you have fallen into her toils as completely as you did into +mine. My step-mother was right about your softness. Any woman who chose +and had enough opportunity could make you think you loved her, make you +kiss her. Luckily this one is absolutely suitable. You say, in the +course of the longest letter you have written me--it must have been a +tiresome letter to have to write--that father or no father you will not +be hurried, you will not marry for a long time, that the wound is too +fresh, &c, &c. What is this talk of wounds? Nobody knows about me. I +shall not be in your way. You need observe no period of mourning for a +corpse people don't know is there. True, Miss Cheriton herself knows. +Well, she will not tell; and if she does not mind, why should you? I am +so sorry I have written you so many letters full of so many follies. +Will you burn them? I would rather not have them back. But I enclose +yours, as you may prefer to burn them yourself. I am so very sorry about +everything. At least it has been short, and not dragged on growing +thinner and thinner till it died of starvation. Once I wrote and begged +you to tell me if you thought you had made a mistake about me, because I +felt I could bear to know better then than later. And you wrote back and +swore all sorts of things by heaven and earth, all sorts of convictions +and unshakable things. Well, now you have another set of convictions, +that's all. I am not going to beat the big drum of sentiment and make a +wailful noise. Nothing is so dead as a dead infatuation. The more a +person was infatuated the more he resents an attempt to galvanize the +dull dead thing into life. I am wise, you see, to the end. And +reasonable too, I hope. And brave. And brave, I tell you. Do you think I +will be a coward, and cry out? I make you a present of everything; of +the love and happy thoughts, of the pleasant dreams and plans, of the +little prayers sent up, and the blessings called down--there were a +great many every day--of the kisses, and all the dear sweetness. Take it +all. I want nothing from you in return. Remember it as a pleasant +interlude, or fling it into a corner of your mind where used-up things +grow dim with cobwebs. But do you suppose that having given you all this +I am going to give you my soul as well? To moan my life away, my +beautiful life? You are not worth it. You are not worth anything, +hardly. You are quite invertebrate. My life shall be splendid in spite +of you. You shall not cheat me of one single chance of heaven. Now +good-by. Please burn this last one, too. I suppose no one who heard it +would quite believe this story, would quite believe it possible for a +man to go such lengths of--shall we call it unkindness? to a girl in a +single month; but you and I know it is true. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXII + +Jena, March 5th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It was extremely kind of you to remember my +birthday and to find time in the middle of all your work to send me your +good wishes. I hope you are getting on well, and that you like what you +are doing. Professor Martens seems to tell you all the Jena news. Yes, I +was ill; but we had such a long winter that it was rather lucky to be +out of it, tucked away comfortably in bed. There is still snow in the +ditches and on the shady side of things. I escaped the bad weather as +thoroughly as those persons do who go with infinite trouble during these +months to Egypt. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +My father and step-mother beg to be remembered to you. + + + +XXIII + +Jena, March 18th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is very kind indeed of you to want to know how +I am and what was the matter with me. It wasn't anything very pleasant, +but quite inoffensive æsthetically. I don't care to think about it much. +I caught cold, and it got on to my lungs and stayed on them. Now it is +over, and I may walk up and down the sunny side of the street for half +an hour on fine days. + +We all hope you are well, and that you like your work. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXIV + +Jena, March 25th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You ask me to tell you more about my illness, but +I am afraid I must refuse. I see no use in thinking of painful past +things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if +they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling +to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as +cheerful as possible--like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop +of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply +to be alive with nothing in my body hurting. To be alive with a great +many things in one's body hurting is a poor sort of amusement. It is not +at all a game worth playing. People talk of sick persons clinging to +life however sick they are, say they invariably do it, that they prefer +it on any terms to dying; well, I was a sick person who did not cling at +all. I did not want it. I was most willing to be done with it. But +Death, though he used often to come up and look at me, and once at least +sat beside me for quite a long while, went away again, and after a time +left off bothering about me altogether; and here I am walking out in the +sun every day, and listening with immense pleasure to the chaffinches. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXV. + +Jena, March 31st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yes, of course I will be friends. And if I can be +of any use in the way of admonishment, which seems to be my strong +point, pray, as people say in books, command me. Naturally we are all +much interested in you, and shall watch your career, I hope, with +pleasure. I am sorry the Foreign Office bores you so much. Do you really +have to spend your days gumming up envelopes? Not for that did you win +all those scholarships and things at Eton and Oxford, and study Goethe +and the minor German prophets so diligently here. You say it will go on +for a year. Well, if that is your fate and you cannot escape it, gum +away gayly, since gum you must. Later on when you are an ambassador and +everybody is talking to you at once, you will look back on the envelope +time as a blessed period when at least you were left alone. But I hope +you have a nice wet sponge to do it with, and are not so lost to what is +expedient as to be like a little girl I sat next to yesterday at a +coffee party, who had smudged most of the cream that ought to have gone +inside her outside her, and when I suggested a handkerchief said she +didn't hold with handkerchiefs and never had one. 'But what does one do, +then,' I asked, looking at her disgraceful little mouth, 'in a case like +this? You can't borrow somebody else's--it wouldn't be being select.' +'Oh,' she said airily, 'don't you know? You take your tongue.' And in a +twinkling the thing was done. But please do not you do that with the +envelopes. My father and step-mother send you many kind messages. Yours +sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXVI + +Jena, April 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--No, I do not in the least mind your writing to me. +Do, whenever you feel you want to talk to a friend. It is pleasant to be +told that my letters remind you of so many nice things. I expect your +year in Jena seems much more agreeable, now that you have had time to +forget the uncomfortable parts of it, than it really was. But I don't +think you would have been able to endure it if you had not been working +so hard. I am sorry you do not like your father. You say so straight +out, so I see no reason for round-aboutness. I expect he will be calmer +when you are married. Why do you not gratify him, and have a short +engagement? Yes, I do understand what you feel about the mercifulness of +being often left alone, though I have never been worried in quite the +same way as you seem to be; when I am driven it is to places like the +kitchen, and your complaint is that you are driven to what most people +would call enjoying yourself. Really I think my sort of driving is best. +There is so much satisfaction about work, about any work. But just to +amuse oneself, and to be, besides, in a perpetual hurry over it because +there is so much of it and the day can't be made to stretch, must be a +sorry business. I wonder why you do it. You say your father insists on +your going everywhere with the Cheritons, and the Cheritons will not +miss a thing; but, after all isn't it rather weak to let yourself be led +round by the nose if your nose doesn't like it? It is as though instead +of a dog wagging its tail the tail should wag the dog. And all Nature +surely would stand aghast before such an improper spectacle. + +The wind is icy, and the snow patches are actually still here, but in +the nearest garden I can get to I saw violets yesterday in flower, and +crocuses and scillas, and one yellow pansy staring up at the sun +astonished and reproachful because it had bits of frozen snow stuck to +its little cheeks. Dear me, it is a wonderful feeling, this resurrection +every year. Does one ever grow too old, I wonder, to thrill over it? I +know the blackbirds are whistling in the orchards if I could only get to +them, and my father says the larks have been out in the bare places for +these last four weeks. On days like this, when one's immortality is +racing along one's blood, how impossible it is to think of death as the +end of everything. And as for being grudging and disagreeable, the +thing's not to be done. Peevishness and an April morning? Why, even my +step-mother opened her window today and stood for a long time in the sun +watching how + + proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, + Hath put a spirit of youth in everything. + +The first part of the month with us is generally bustling and busy, a +great clatter and hustling while the shrieking winter is got away out of +sight over the hills, a sweeping of the world clear for the +marsh-marigolds and daffodils, a diligent making of room for the divine +calms of May. I always loved this first wild frolic of cold winds and +catkins and hurriedly crimsoning pollards, of bleakness and promise, of +roughness and sweetness--a blow on one cheek and a kiss on the +other--before the spring has learned good manners, before it has left +off being anything but a boisterous, naughty, charming _Backfisch_; but +this year after having been ill so long it is more than love, it is +passion. Only people who have been buried in beds for weeks getting used +to listening for Death's step on the stairs, know what it is to go out +into the stinging freshness of the young year and meet the first scilla, +and hear a chaffinch calling out, and feel the sun burn red patches of +life on their silly, sick white faces. + +My parents send you kind remembrances. They were extremely interested to +hear, through Professor Martens, of your engagement to Miss Cheriton. +They both think it a most excellent thing. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXVII + +Jena, April 20th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You tell me I do not answer your letters, but +really I think I do quite often enough. I want to make the most of these +weeks of idle getting strong again, and it is a sad waste of time +writing. My step-mother has had such a dose of me sick and incapable, of +doctor's bills and physic and beef-tea and night-lights, that she is +prolonging the convalescent period quite beyond its just limits and will +have me do nothing lest I should do too much. So I spend strange, +glorious days, days strange and glorious to me, with nothing to do for +anybody but myself and a clear conscience to do it with. The single +sanction of my step-mother's approval has been enough to clear my +conscience, from which you will see how illogically consciences can be +cleared; for have I not always been sure she has no idea whatever of +what is really good? Yet just her approval, a thing I know to be faulty +and for ever in the wrong place, is sufficient to prop up my conscience +and make it feel secure. How then, while I am busy reading Jane Austen +and Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth--books foreordained from all time +for the delight of persons getting well--shall I find time to write to +you? And you must forgive me for a certain surprise that you should have +time to write so much to me. What have I done to deserve these long +letters? How many Foreign Office envelopes do you leave ungummed to +write them? _Es ist zu viel Ehre_. It is very good of you. No, I will +not make phrases like that, for I know you do not do it for any reason +whatever but because you happen to want to. + +You are going through one of those tiresome soul-sicknesses that +periodically overtake the too comfortable, and you must, apparently, +tell somebody about it. Well, it is a form of _Weltschmerz,_ and only +afflicts the well-fed. Pray do not suppose that I am insinuating that +food is of undue interest to you; but it is true that if you did not +have several meals a day and all of them too nice, if there were doubts +about their regular recurrence, if, briefly, you were a washerwoman or a +plough-boy, you would not have things the matter with your soul. +Washerwomen and ploughboys do not have sick souls. Probably you will say +they have no souls to be sick; but they have, you know. I imagine their +souls thin and threadbare, stunted by cold and hunger, poor and pitiful, +but certainly there. And I don't know that it is not a nicer sort of +soul to have inside one's plodding body than an unwieldy, overgrown +thing, chiefly water and air and lightly changeable stuff, so +unsubstantial that it flops--forgive the word, but it does flop--on to +other souls in search of sympathy and support and comfort and all the +rest of the things washer-women waste no time looking for, because they +know they wouldn't find them. + +You are a poet, and I do not take a youthful poet seriously; but if you +were not I would laugh derisively at your comparing the entrance of my +letters into your room at the Foreign Office to the bringing in of a +bunch of cottage flowers still fresh with dew. I don't know that my +pride does not rather demand a comparison to a bunch of hot-house +flowers--a bouquet it would become then, wouldn't it?--or my romantic +sense to a bunch of field flowers, wild, graceful, easily wearied +things, that would not care at all for Foreign Offices. But I expect +cottage is really the word. My letters conjure up homely visions, and I +am sure the bunch you see is a tight posy of + +Sweet-Williams, with their homely cottage smell. + +It was charming of Matthew Arnold to let Sweet-Williams have such a nice +line, but I don't think they quite deserve it. They have a dear little +name and a dear little smell, but the things themselves might have been +manufactured in a Berlin furniture shop where upholstery in plush +prevails, instead of made in that sweetest corner of heaven from whence +all good flowers come. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXVIII + +Jena, April 26th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You seem to be incurably doleful. You talk about +how nice it must be to have a sister, a mother, some woman very closely +related to whom you could talk. You astonish me; for have you not Miss +Cheriton? Still, on reflection I think I do see that what you feel you +want is more a solid bread-and-butter sort of relationship; no +sentiment, genial good advice, a helping hand if not a guiding +one--really a good thick slice of bread-and-butter as a set-off to a +diet of constant cake. I can read between your lines with sufficient +clearness; and as I always had a certain talent for stodginess I will +waste no words but offer myself as the bread-and-butter. Somehow I think +it might work out my soul's release from self-reproach and doubts if I +can help you, as far as one creature can help another, over some of the +more tiresome places of life. Exhortation, admonishment, encouragement, +you shall have them all, if you like, by letter. In these my days of +dignified leisure I have had room to think, and so have learned to look +at things differently from the way I used to. Life is so short that +there is hardly time for anything except to be, as St. Paul says--wasn't +it St. Paul?--kind to one another. You are, I think, a most weak person. +Anything more easily delighted in the first place or more quickly tired +in the second I never in my life saw. Does nothing satisfy you for more +than a day or two? And the enthusiasm of you at the beginnings of +things. And the depression, the despair of you once you have got used to +them. I know you are clever, full of brains, intellectually all that can +be desired, but what's the good of that when the rest of you is so weak? +You are of a diseased fastidiousness. There's not a person you have +praised to me whom you have not later on disliked. When you were here I +used to wonder as I listened, but I did believe you. Now I know that the +world cannot possibly contain so many offensive people, and that it is +always so with you--violent heat, freezing cold. I cannot see you drown +without holding out a hand. For you are young; you are, in the parts +outside your strange, ill-disciplined emotions, most full of promise; +and circumstances have knitted me into an unalterable friend. Perhaps I +can help you to a greater stead-fastness, a greater compactness of soul. +But do not tell me too much. Do not put me in an inextricably difficult +position. It would not of course be really inextricable, for I would +extricate myself by the simple process of relapsing into silence. I say +this because your letters have a growing tendency to pour out everything +you happen to be feeling. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you +must rightly choose your listener. Not every one should be allowed to +listen. Certain things cannot be shouted out from the housetops. You +forget that we hardly know each other, and that the well-mannered do not +thrust their deeper feelings on a person who shrinks from them. I hope +you understand that I am willing to hear you talk about most things, and +that you will need no further warning to keep off the few swampy places. +And just think of all the things you can write to me about, all the +masses of breathlessly interesting things in this breathlessly +interesting world, without talking about people at all. Look round you +this fine spring weather and tell me, for instance, what April is doing +up your way, and whether as you go to your work through the park you too +have not seen heavy Saturn laughing and leaping--how that sonnet has got +into my head--and do not every day thank God for having bothered to make +you at all. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXIX + +Jena, April 30th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You know the little strip of balcony outside our +sitting-room window, with its view over the trees of the Paradies valley +to the beautiful hills across the river? Well, this morning is so fine, +the sun is shining so warmly, that I had my coffee and roll there, and, +now, wrapped up in rugs, am still there writing to you. I can't tell you +how wonderful it is. The birds are drunk with joy. There are blackbirds, +and thrushes, and chaffinches, and yellow-hammers, all shouting at once; +and every now and then when the clamor has a gap in it I hear the +whistle of the great tit, the dear small bird who is the very first to +sing, bringing its pipe of hope to those early days in February when the +world is at its blackest. Have you noticed how different one's morning +coffee tastes out of doors from what it does in a room? And the roll and +butter--oh, the roll and butter! So must rolls and butter have tasted in +the youth of the world, when gods and mortals were gloriously mixed up +together, and you went for walks on exquisite things like parsley and +violets. If Thoreau--I know you don't like him, but that's only because +you have read and believed Stevenson about him--could have seen the +eager interest with which I ate my roll just now, he would, I am afraid, +have been disgusted; for he severely says that it is not what you eat +but the spirit in which you eat it,--you are not, that is, to like it +too much--that turns you into a glutton. It is, he says, neither the +quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors that makes +your eating horrid. A puritan, he says, may go to his brown bread crust +with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Thus did I +go, as grossly as the grossest alderman, this morning to my crust, and +rejoiced in the sensual savor of it and was very glad. How nice it is, +how pleasant, not to be with people you admire. Admiration, veneration, +the best form of love--they are all more comfortably indulged in from a +distance. There is too much whalebone about them at close quarters with +their object, too much whalebone and not nearly enough slippers. I am +glad Thoreau is dead. I love him far too much ever to want to see him; +and how thankful I am he cannot see me. + +It is my step-mother's birthday, and trusted friends have been streaming +up our three flights of stairs since quite early to bring her hyacinths +in pots and unhappy roses spiked on wires and make her congratulatory +speeches. I hear them talking through the open window, and what they +say, wafted out to me here in the sun, sounds like the pleasant droning +of bees when one is only half awake. First there is the distant electric +bell and the tempestuous whirl of Johanna down the passage. Then my +step-mother emerges from the kitchen and meets the arriving friend with +vociferous welcoming. Then the friend is led into the room here, talking +in gasps as we all do on getting to the top of this house, and flinging +cascades of good wishes for her _liebe Emilie_ on to the _liebe +Emilie's_ head. Then the hyacinths or the roses are presented:--'I have +brought thee a small thing,' says the friend, presenting; and my +step-mother, who has been aware of their presence the whole time, but, +with careful decency, has avoided looking at them, starts, protests, and +launches forth on to heaving billows of enthusiasm. She does not care +for flowers, either in pots or on wires or in any other condition, so +her gratitude is really most creditably done. Then they settle down in +the corners of the sofa and talk about the things they really want to +talk about--neighbors, food, servants, pastors, illnesses, Providence; +beginning, since I was ill, with a perfunctory inquiry from the visitor +as to the health of _die gute_ Rose-Marie. + +'_Danke, danke_,' says my step-mother. You know in Germany whenever +anybody asks after anybody you have to begin your answer with _danke._ +Sometimes the results are odd; for instance: 'How is your poor husband +today?' 'Oh, _danke_, he is dead.' + +So my step-mother, too, says _danke_, and then I hear a murmur of +further information, and catch the word _zart_. Then they talk, still in +murmurs not supposed to be able to get through the open window and into +my ears, about the quantity of beef-tea I have consumed, the length of +the chemist's bill, the unfortunate circumstance that I am so +overgrown--'Weedy,' says my step-mother. + +'Would you call her weedy?' says the friend, with a show of polite +hesitation. + +'Weedy,' repeats my step-mother emphatically; and the friend remarks +quite seriously that when a person is so very long there is always some +part of her bound to be in a draught and catching cold. 'It is such a +pity,' concludes the friend, 'that she did not marry.' (Notice the +tense. Half a dozen birthdays back it used to be 'does not.') + +'Gentlemen,' says my step-mother, 'do not care for her.' + +'_Armes Mädchen_' murmurs the friend. + +'_Herr Gott, ja_,' says my step-mother, 'but what is to be done? I have +invited gentlemen in past days. I have invited them to coffees, to beer +evenings, to music on Sunday afternoons, to the reading aloud of +Schiller's dramas, each with his part and Rose-Marie with the heroine's; +and though they came they also went away again. Nothing was changed, +except the size of my beer bill. No, no, gentlemen do not care for her. +In society she does not please.' + +'_Armes Mädchen_' says the friend again; and the _armes Mädchen_ out in +the sun laughs profanely into her furs. + +The fact is it is quite extraordinary the effect my illness has had on +me. I thought it was bad, and I see it was good. Beyond words ghastly at +the time, terrible, hopeless, the aches of my body as nothing compared +with the amazing anguish of my soul, the world turned into one vast pit +of pain, impossible to think of the future, impossible to think of the +past, impossible to bear the present--after all that behold me awake +again, and so wide awake, with eyes grown so quick to see the wonder and +importance of the little things of life, the beauty of them, the joy of +them, that I can laugh aloud with glee at the delicious notion of +calling me an _armes Mädchen_. Three months ago with what miserable +groanings, what infinite self-pityings, I would have agreed. Now, clear +of vision, I see how many precious gifts I have--life, and freedom from +pain, and time to be used and enjoyed--gifts no one can take from me +except God. Do you know any George Herbert? He was one of the many +English poets my mother's love of poetry made me read. Do you remember + + I once more smell the dew, the rain, + And relish versing. + O, my only Light! + It cannot be + That I am he + On whom thy tempests fell all night? + +Well, that is how I feel: full of wonder, and an unspeakable relief. It +is so strange how bad things--things we call bad--bring forth good +things, from the manure that brings forth roses lovely in proportion to +6188 +its manuriness to the worst experiences that can overtake the soul. And +as far as I have been able to see (which is not very far, for I know I +am not a clever woman) it is also true that good things bring forth bad +ones. I cannot tell you how much life surprises me. I never get used to +it. I never tire of pondering, and watching, and wondering. The way in +which eternal truths lurk along one's path, lie among the potatoes in +cellars (did you ever observe the conduct of potatoes in cellars? their +desperate determination to reach up to the light? their absolute +concentration on that one distant glimmer?), peep out at one from every +apparently dull corner, sit among the stones, hang upon the bushes, come +into one's room in the morning with the hot water, come out at night in +heaven with the stars, never leave us, touch us, press upon us, if we +choose to open our eyes and look, and our ears and listen--how +extraordinary it is. Can one be bored in a world so wonderful? And then +the keen interest there is to be got out of people, the keen joy to be +got out of common affections, the delight of having a fresh day every +morning before you, a fresh, long day, bare and empty, to be filled as +you pass along it with nothing but clean and noble hours. You must +forgive this exuberance. The sun has got into my veins and has turned +everything golden. Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXX + +Jena, May 6th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--How can I help it if things look golden to me? You +almost reproach me for it. You seem to think it selfish, and talk of the +beauty of sympathy with persons less fortunately constituted. That's a +gray sort of beauty; the beauty of mists, and rains, and tears. I wish +you could have been in the meadows across the river this morning and +seen the dandelions. There was not much grayness about them. From the +bridge to the tennis-courts--you know that is a long way, at least +twenty minutes' walk--they are one sheet of gold. If you had been there +before breakfast, with your feet on that divine carpet, and your head in +the nickering slight shadows of the first willow leaves, and your eyes +on the shining masses of slow white clouds, and your ears filled with +the fresh sound of the river, and your nose filled with the smell of +young wet things, you wouldn't have wanted to think much about such gray +negations as sympathizing with the gloomy. Bother the gloomy. They are +an ungrateful set. If they can they will turn the whole world sour, and +sap up all the happiness of the children of light without giving out any +shining in return. I am all for sun and heat and color and scent--for +all things radiant and positive. If, crushing down my own nature, I set +out deliberately to console those you call the less fortunately +constituted, do you know what would happen? They would wring me quite +dry of cheerfulness, and not be one whit more cheerful for all the +wringing themselves. They can't. They were not made that way. People are +born in one of three classes: children of light, children of twilight, +children of night. And how can they help into which class they are born? +But I do think the twilight children can by diligence, by, if you like, +prayer and fasting, come out of the dusk into a greater brightness. Only +they must come out by themselves. There must be no pulling. I don't at +all agree with your notion of the efficacy of being pulled. Don't you +then know--of course you do, but you have not yet realized--that you are +to seek _first_ the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these +things shall be added unto you? And don't you know--oh, have you +forgotten?--that the Kingdom of God is within you? So what is the use of +looking to anything outside of you and separated from you for help? +There is no help, except what you dig out of your own self; and if I +could make you see that I would have shown you all the secrets of life. + +How wisely I talk. It is the wisdom of the ever-recurring grass, the +good green grass, the grass starred with living beauty, that has got +into me; the wisdom of a May morning filled with present joy, of the joy +of the moment, without any weakening waste of looking beyond. So don't +mock. I can't help it. + +Do you, then, want to be pitied? I will pity you if you like, in so many +carefully chosen words; but they will not be words from the heart but +only, as the charming little child in the flat below us, the child with +the flaunting yellow hair and audacious eyes, said of some speech that +didn't ring true to her quick ears, 'from the tip of the nose.' I cannot +really pity you, you know. You are too healthy, too young, too fortunate +for that. You ought to be quite jubilant with cheerfullest gratitude; +and, since you are not, you very perfectly illustrate the truth of _le +trop_ being _l'ennemi du bien_, or, if you prefer your clumsier mother +tongue, of the half being better than the whole. How is it that I, +bereft of everything you think worth having, am so offensively cheerful? +Your friends would call it a sordid existence, if they considered it +with anything more lengthy than just a sniff. No excitements, no +clothes, acquaintances so shabby that they seem almost moth-eaten, the +days filled with the same dull round, a home in a little town where we +all get into one groove and having got into it stay in it, to which only +faint echoes come of what is going on in the world outside, a place +where one is amused and entertained by second-rate things, second-rate +concerts, second-rate plays, and feels oneself grow cultured by +attendance at second-rate debating-society meetings. Would you not think +I must starve in such a place? But I don't. My soul doesn't dream of +starving; in fact I am quite anxious about it, it has lately grown so +fat. There is so little outside it--for the concerts, plays, debates, +social gatherings, are dust and ashes near which I do not go--that it +eagerly turns to what is inside it, and finds itself full of magic +forces of heat and light, forces hot and burning enough to set every +common bush afire with God. That is Elizabeth Barrett Browning; I mean +about the common bushes. A slightly mutilated Elizabeth Barrett +Browning, but still a quotation; and if you do not happen to know it I +won't have you go about thinking it pure Schmidt. Ought I if I quote to +warn you of the fact by the pointing fingers of inverted commas? I don't +care to, somehow. They make such a show of importance. I prefer to +suppose you cultured. Oh, I can see you shiver at that impertinence, for +I know down in your heart, though you always take pains to explain how +ignorant you are, you consider yourself an extremely cultured young man. +And so you are; cultured, I should say, out of all reason; so much +cultured that there's hardly anything left that you are able to like. +Indeed, it is surprising that you should care to write to a rough, +unscraped sort of person like myself. Do not my crudities set your teeth +on edge as acutely as the juice of a very green apple? You who love half +tones, subtleties, suggestions, who, lifting the merest fringe of +things, approach them nearer only by infinite implications, what have +you to do with the downrightness of an east wind or a green apple? Why, +I wonder that just the recollection of my red hands, knobbly and spread +with work, does not make you wince into aloofness. And my clothes? What +about my clothes? Do you not like exquisite women? Perfectly got-up +women? Fresh and dainty, constantly renewed women? It is two years since +I had a new hat; and as for the dress that sees me through my days I +really cannot count the time since it started in my company a Sunday and +a fête-day garment. If you were once, only once, to see me in the middle +of your friends over there, you would be cured for ever of wanting to +write to me. I belong to your Jena days; days of hard living, and +working, and thinking; days when, by dint of being forced to do without +certain bodily comforts, the accommodating spirit made up for it by its +own increased comfort and warmth. Probably your spirit will never again +attain to quite so bright a shining as it did that year. How can it, +unless it is amazingly strong--and I know it well not to be that--shine +through the suffocating masses of upholstery your present life piles +about it? Poor spirit. At least see to it that its flicker doesn't quite +go out. To urge you to strip your life of all this embroidery and let it +get the draught of air it needs would be, I know, mere waste of ink. + +My people send you every good wish. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXI + +Jena, May 14th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Of course I am full of contradictions. Did you +expect me to be full of anything else? And I have no doubt whatever that +in every letter I say exactly the opposite from what I said in the last +one. But you must not mind this and make it an occasion for reproof. I +do not pretend to think quite the same even two days running; if I did I +would be stagnant, and the very essence of life is to be fluid, to pass +perpetually on. So please do not hold me responsible for convictions +that I have changed by the time they get to you, and above all things +don't bring them up against me and ask me to prove them. I don't want to +prove them. I don't want to prove anything. My attitude toward life is +one of open-mouthed wonder and delight, and the open-mouthed cannot +talk. You write, too, plaintively, that some of the things I say hurt +you. I am sorry. Sorry, I mean, that you should be so soft. Can you not, +then, bear anything? But I will smooth my tongue if you prefer it +smooth, and send you envelopes filled with only sugar; talk to you about +the parks, the London season, the Foreign Office--all things of which I +know nothing--and, patting you at short intervals on the back, tell you +you are admirable. You say there is a bitter flavor about some of my +remarks. I have not felt bitter. Perhaps a little shrewish; a little +like, not a mild exhorting elder sister, but an irritated aunt. You see +I am interested enough in you to be fidgety when I hear you groan. What, +I ask myself uneasily, can be the matter with this apparently healthy, +well-cared-for young man? And then, forced to the conclusion by +unmistakable symptoms that there is nothing the matter except a surfeit +of good things, I have perhaps pounced upon you with something of the +zeal of an aunt moved to anger, and given you a spiritual slapping. You +sighed for a sister--you are always sighing for something--and asked me +to be one; well, I have apparently gone beyond the sister in decision +and authority, and developed something of the acerbity of an aunt. + +So you are down at Clinches. How beautiful it must be there this month. +I think of it as a harmony in gray and amethyst, remembering your +description of it the first time you went there; a harmony in a minor +key, that captured you wholly by its tender subtleties. When I think of +you inheriting such a place later on through your wife I do from my +heart feel that your engagement is an excellent thing. She must indeed +be happy in the knowledge that she can give you so much that is +absolutely worth having. It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the +very most beautiful things in life. I quarrel with my poverty only +because I can give so little, so seldom, and then never more than +ridiculous small trumperies. To make up for them I try to give as much +of myself as possible, gifts of sympathy, helpfulness, kindness. Don't +laugh, but I am practicing on my step-mother. It is easy to pour out +love on Papa; so easy, so effortless, that I do not feel as if it could +be worth much; but I have made up my mind, not without something of a +grim determination that seems to have little enough to do with love, to +give my step-mother as much of me, my affections, my services, as she +can do with. Perhaps she won't be able to do with much. Anyhow all she +wants she shall have. You know I have often wished I had been a man, +able to pull on my boots and go out into the wide world without let or +hindrance; but for one thing I am glad to be a woman, and that one thing +is that the woman gives. It is so far less wonderful to take. The man is +always taking, the woman always giving; and giving so wonderfully, in +the face sometimes of dreadful disaster, of shipwreck, of death--which +explains perhaps her longer persistence in clinging to the skirts of a +worn-out passion; for is not the tenderer feeling on the side of the one +who gave and blessed? Always, always on that side? Mixing into what was +sensual some of the dear divineness of the mother-love? I think I could +never grow wholly indifferent to a person to whom I had given much. He +or she would not, could not, be the same to me as other people. Time +would pass, and the growing number of the days blunt the first sharp +edge of feeling; but the memory of what I had given would bind us +together in a friendship for ever unlike any other. + +I have not thanked you for the book you sent me. It was very kind indeed +of you to wish me to share the pleasure you have had in reading it. But +see how unfortunately contrary I am: I don't care about it. And just the +passages you marked are the ones I care about least. I do not hold with +markings in books. Whenever I have come across mine after a lapse of +years I have marvelled at the distance travelled since I marked, and +shut up the book and murmured, 'Little fool.' I can't imagine why you +thought I should like this book. It has given me rather a surprised +shock that you should know me so little, and that I should know you so +little as to think you knew me better. Really all the explanations and +pointings in the world will not show a person the exact position of his +neighbor's soul. It is astonishing enough that the book was printed, but +how infinitely more astonishing that people like you should admire it. +What is the matter with me that I cannot admire it? Why am I missing +things that ought to give me pleasure? You do not, then, see that it is +dull? I do. I see it and feel it in every bone, and it makes them ache. +It is dull and bad because it is so dreary, so hopelessly dreary. Life +is not like that. Life is only like that to cowards who are temporarily +indisposed. I do not care to look at it through a sick creature's +jaundiced eyes and shudder with him at what he sees. If he cannot see +better why not keep quiet, and let us braver folk march along with our +heads in the air, held so high that we cannot bother to look at every +slimy creepiness that crawls across our path? And did you not notice how +he keeps on telling his friends in his letters not to mind when he is +dead? Unnecessary advice, one would suppose; I can more easily imagine +the friends gasping with an infinite relief. Persons who are +everlastingly claiming pity, sympathy, condolences, are very wearing. +Surely all talk about one's death is selfish and bad? That is why, +though there is so much that is lovely in them, the faint breath of +corruption hanging about Christina Rossetti's poetry makes me turn my +head the other way. What a constant cry it is that she wants to die, +that she hopes to die, that she's going to die, shall die, can die, must +die, and that nobody is to weep for her but that there are to be +elaborate and moving arrangements of lilies and roses and +winding-sheets. And at least in one place she gives directions as to the +proper use of green grass and wet dewdrops upon her grave--implying that +dewdrops are sometimes dry. I think the only decent attitude toward +one's death is to be silent. Talk about it puts other people in such an +awkward position. What is one to say to persons who sigh and tell us +that they will no doubt soon be in heaven? One's instinct is politely to +murmur, 'Oh no,' and then they are angry. 'Surely not,' also has its +pitfalls. Cheery words, of the order in speech that a slap on the +shoulder is in the sphere of physical expression, only seem to deepen +the determined gloom. And if it is some one you love who thinks he will +soon be dead and tells you so, the cruelty is very great. When death +really comes, is not what the ordinary decent dier wants quiet, that he +may leave himself utterly in the hands of God? There should be no +massing of temporarily broken-hearted onlookers about his bed, no +leave-takings and eager gatherings-up of last words, no revellings of +relatives in the voluptuousness of woe, no futile exhortations, using up +the last poor breaths, not to weep to persons who would consider it +highly improper to leave off doing it, and no administration of tardy +blessings. Any blessings the dier has to invoke should have been invoked +and done with long ago. In this last hour, at least, can one not be left +alone? Do you remember Pater's strange feeling about death? Perhaps you +do not, for you told me once you did not care about him. Well, it runs +through his books, through all their serenity and sunlight, through +exquisite descriptions of summer, of beautiful places, of heat and life +and youth and all things lovely, like a musty black riband, very poor, +very mean, very rotten, that yet must bind these gracious flowers of +light at last together, bruising them into one piteous mass of +corruption. It is all very morbid: the fair outward surface of daily +life, the gay, flower-starred crust of earth, and just underneath +horrible tainted things, things forlorn and pitiful, things which we who +still walk on the wholesome grass must soon join, changing our life in +the roomy sunshine into something infinitely dependent and helpless, +something that can only dimly live if those strong friends of ours in +the bright world will spare us a thought, a remembrance, a few minutes +from their plenty for sitting beside us, room in their hearts for yet a +little love and sorrow. 'Dead cheek by dead cheek, and the rain soaking +down upon one from above....' Does not that sound hopeless? After +reading these things, sweet with the tainted sweetness of decay, of, +ruin, of the past, the gone, it is like having fresh spring water dashed +over one on a languid afternoon to remember Walt Whitman's brave +attitude toward 'delicate death,' 'the sacred knowledge of death,' +'lovely, soothing death,' 'cool, enfolding death,' 'strong deliveress,' +'vast and well-veiled death,' 'the body gratefully nestling close to +death,' 'sane and sacred death.' That is the spirit that makes one brave +and fearless, that makes one live beautifully and well, that sends one +marching straight ahead with limbs that do not tremble and head held +high. Is it not natural to love such writers best? Writers who fill one +with glad courage and make one proud of the path one has chosen to walk +in? + +And yet you do not like Walt Whitman. I remember quite well my chill of +disappointment when you told me so. At first, hearing it, I thought I +must be wrong to like him, but thank heaven I soon got my balance again, +and presently was solaced by the reflection that it was at least as +likely you were wrong not to. You told me it was not poetry. That upset +me for a few days, and then I found I didn't care. I couldn't argue with +you on the spot and prove anything, because the only _esprit_ I have is +that tiresome _esprit d'escalier_, so brilliant when it is too late, so +constant in its habit of leaving its possessor in the dreadful +condition--or is it a place?--called the lurch; but, poetry or not, I +knew I must always love him. You, I suppose, have cultivated your taste +in regard to things of secondary importance to such a pitch of +sensitiveness that unless the outer shell is flawless you cannot, for +sheer intellectual discomfort, look at the wonders that often lie +within. I, who have not been educated, am so filled with elementary joy +when some one shows me the light in this world of many shadows that I do +not stop to consider what were the words he used while my eyes followed +his pointing finger. You see, I try to console myself for having an +unpruned intelligence. I know I am unpruned, and that at the most you +pruned people, all trim and trained from the first, do but bear with me +indulgently. But I must think with the apparatus I possess, and I think +at this moment that perhaps what you really most want is a prolonged +dose of Walt Whitman, a close study of him for several hours every day, +shut up with no other book, quite alone with him in an empty country +place. Listen to this--you shall listen: + + O we can wait no longer, + We too take ship, O soul; + Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, + Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail, + Amid the wafting winds (thou pressing me to thee, I thee + to me, O soul). + Carolling free, singing our song of God, + Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration, + O my brave soul! + O farther, farther sail! + O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? + O farther, farther sail I + +Well, how do you feel now? Can any one, can you, can even you read that +without such a tingling in all your limbs, such a fresh rush of life and +energy through your whole body that you simply must jump up and, shaking +off the dreary nonsense that has been fooling you, turn your back on +diseased self-questionings and run straight out to work at your +salvation in the sun? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXII + +Jena, May 20th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I am sorry you think me unsympathetic. Hard, I +think, was the word; but unsympathetic sounds prettier. Is it +unsympathetic not to like fruitless, profitless, barren things? Not to +like fogs and blights and other deadening, decaying things? From my +heart I pity all the people who are so made that they cannot get on with +their living for fear of their dying; but I do not admire them. Is that +being unsympathetic? Apparently you think so. How odd. There is a little +man here who hardly ever can talk to anybody without beginning about his +death. He is perfectly healthy, and I suppose forty or fifty, so that +there is every reasonable hope of his going on being a little man for +years and years more; but he will have it that as he has never married +or, as he puts it, done anything else useful, he might just as well be +dead, and then at the word Dead his eyes get just the look of absolute +scaredness in them that a hare's eyes do when a dog is after it. 'If +only one knew what came next,' he said last time he was here, looking at +me with those foolish frightened hare's eyes. + +'Nice things I should think,' said I, trying to be encouraging. + +'But to those who have deserved punishment?' + +'If they have deserved it they will probably get it,' said I cheerfully. + +He shuddered. + +'You don't look very wicked,' I went on amiably. He leads a life of +sheerest bread-and-milk, so simple, so innocent, so full of little +hearth-rug virtues. + +'But I am,' he declared angrily. + +'I shouldn't think half so bad as a great many people,' said I, bent, +being the hostess, on a perfect urbanity. + +'Worse,' said he, more angrily. + +'Oh, come now,' said I, very politely as I thought. + +Then he really got into a rage, and asked me what I could possibly know +about it, and I said I didn't know anything; and still he stormed and +grew more and more like a terrified hare, frightening himself by his own +words; and at last, dropping his voice, he confessed that he had one +particularly deadly fear, a fear that haunted him and gave him no rest, +that the wicked would not burn eternally but would freeze. + +'Oh,' said I shrinking; for it was a bitter day, and the northeast wind +was thundering among the hills. + +'Great cold,' he said, fixing me with his hare's eyes, 'seems to me +incomparably more terrible than great heat.' + +'Oh, incomparably,' I agreed, edging nearer to the stove. 'Only listen +to that wind.' + +'So will it howl about us through eternity,' said he. + +'Oh,' I shivered. + +'Piercing one's unprotected--everything about us will be unprotected +then--one's unprotected marrow, and turning it to ice within us.' + +'But we won't have any marrows,' said I. + +'No marrows? Fräulein Rose-Marie, we shall have everything that will +hurt.' + +'_Oh weh_' cried I, stopping up my ears. + +'The thought frightens you?' said he. + +'Terrifies me,' said I. + +'How much more fearful, then, will be the reality.' + +'Well, I'd like to--I'd like to give you some good advice,' said I, +hesitating. + +'Certainly; if one of your sex may with any efficacy advise one of +ours.' + +'Oh--efficacy,' murmured I with proper deprecation. 'But I'd like to +suggest--I daren't advise, I'll just suggest--' + +'Fear nothing. I am all ears and willingness to be guided,' said he, +smiling with an indescribable graciousness. + +'Well--don't go there.' + +'Not go there?' + +'And while you are here--still here, and alive, and in nice warm woolly +clothes, do you know what you want?' + +'What I want?' + +'Very badly do you want a wife. Why not go and get one?' + +His eyes at that grew more hare-like than at the thought of eternal ice. +He seized his hat and scrambled to the door. He went through it hissing +scorching things about _moderne Mädchen_, and from the safety of the +passage I heard him call me _unverschämt_. + +He hasn't been here since. I would like to go and shake him; shake him +till his brains settle into their proper place, and say while I shake, +'Oh, little man, little man, come out of the fog! Why do you choose to +die a thousand deaths rather than only one?' + +Is that being unsympathetic? I think it is being quite kind. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +What I really meant to write to you about today was to tell you that I +read your learned and technical and I am sure admirable denouncements of +Walt Whitman with a respectful attention due to so much earnestness; and +when I had done, and wondered awhile pleasantly at the amount of time +for letter-writing the Foreign Office allows its young men, I stretched +myself, and got my hat, and went down to the river; and I sat at the +water's edge in the middle of a great many buttercups; and there was a +little wind; and the little wind knocked the heads of the buttercups +together; and it seemed to amuse them, or else something else did, for I +do assure you I thought I heard them laugh. + + + +XXXIII + +Jena, May 27th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You asked me about your successor in our house, +and inquire why I have never mentioned him. Why should I mention him? +Must I mention everything? I suppose I forgot him. His name is Collins, +and some days he wears a pink shirt, and other days a blue shirt, and in +his right cuff there is a pink silk handkerchief on the pink days, and a +blue silk handkerchief on the blue days; and he has stuck up the +pictures he likes to have about him on the walls of his room, and where +your Luini used to be there is a young lady in a voluminous hat and +short skirts, and where your Bellini Madonna sat and looked at you with +austere, beautiful eyes there is the winner, complete with jockey, of +last year's Derby. + +'I made a pot of money over that,' said Mr. Collins to me the day he +pinned it up and came to ask me for the pin. + +'Did you?' said I. + +But I think I am tired just now of Luinis and Bellinis and of the sort +of spirit in a young man that clothes the walls of his room with them, +each in some elaborately simple frame, and am not at all sure that the +frank fleshliness of a Collins does not please me best. You see, one +longs so much sometimes to get down to the soil, down to plain +instincts, to rude nature, to, if you like, elemental savagery. + +But I'll go on with Mr. Collins; you shall have a dose of him while I am +about it. He has bought a canoe, and has won the cup for swimming, +wresting it from the reluctant hands of the discomfited Jena young men. +He paddles up to the weir, gets out, picks up his canoe, carries it +round to the other side, gets in, and vanishes in the windings of the +water and the folds of the hills, leaving the girls in the +tennis-courts--you remember the courts are opposite the weir--uncertain +whether to titter or to blush, for he wears I suppose the fewest clothes +that it is possible to wear and still be called dressed, and no +stockings at all. + +'_Nein, dieser Engländer_!' gasp the girls, turning down decent eyes. + +'_Höllish practisch_,' declare the young men, got up in as near an +imitation of the flannels you used to wear that they can reach, even +their hats bound about with a ribbon startlingly like your Oxford half +blue; and before the summer is over I dare say they will all be playing +tennis in the Collins canoe costume, stockingless, sleeveless, supposing +it to be the latest _cri_ in get-ups for each and every form of sport. + +Professor Martens didn't care about teaching Mr. Collins, and insisted +on handing him over to Papa. Papa doesn't care about teaching him, +either, and says he is a _dummer Bengel_ who pronounces Goethe as though +it rhymed with dirty, and who the first time our great poet was +mentioned vacantly asked, with every indication of a wandering mind, if +he wasn't the joker who wrote the play for Irving with all the devils in +it. Papa was so angry that he began a letter to Collins _père_ telling +him to remove his son to a city where there are fewer muses; but Collins +_père_ is a person who makes nails in Manchester with immense skill and +application and is terrifyingly rich, and my step-mother's attitude +toward the terrifyingly rich is one of large forgiveness; so she tore up +Papa's letter just where it had got to the words _erbärmlicher Esel_, +said he was a very decent boy, that he should stay as long as he wanted +to, but that, since he seemed to be troublesome about learning, Papa +must write and demand a higher scale of payment. Papa wouldn't; my +step-mother did; and behold Joey--his Christian name is Joey--more +lucrative to us by, I believe, just double than any one we have had yet. + +'I say,' said Joey to me this morning, 'come over to England some day, +and I'll romp you down to Epsom.' + +'Divine,' said I, turning up my eyes. + +'We'd have a rippin' time.' + +'Rather.' + +'I'd romp you down in the old man's motor.' + +'Not really?' + +'We'd be there before you could flutter an eyelash.' + +'Are you serious?' + +'Ain't I, though. It's a thirty-horse--' + +'Can't you get them in London?' + +'Get 'em in London? Get what in London?' + +'Must one go every time all the way to Epsom?' + +Joey ceased from speech and began to stare. + +'Are we not talking about salts?' I inquired hastily, feeling that one +of us was off the track. + +'Salts?' echoed Joey, his mouth hanging open. + +'You mentioned Epsom, surely?' + +'Salts?' + +'You did say Epsom, didn't you?' + +'Salts?' + +'Salts,' said I, becoming very distinct in the presence of what looked +like deliberate wilfulness. + +'What's it got to do with salts?' asked Joey, his underlip of a +measureless vacancy. + +'Hasn't it got everything?' + +'Look here, what are you drivin' at? Is it goin' to be a game?' + +'Certainly not. It's Sunday. Did you ever hear of Epsom salts?' + +'Oh--ah--I see--Eno, and all that. Castor oil. Rhubarb and magnesia. +Well, I'll forgive you as you're only German. Pretty weird, what bits of +information you get hold of. Never the right bits, somehow. I'll tell +you what, Miss Schmidt--' + +'Oh, do.' + +'Do what?' + +'Tell me what.' + +'Well, ain't I goin' to? You all seem to know everything in this house +that's not worth knowin', and not a blessed thing that is.' + +'Do you include Goethe?' + +'Confound Gerty,' said Joey. + +Such are my conversations with Joey. Is there anything more you want to +know? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXIV + +Jena, July 3d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I am sorry not to have been able to answer your +letters for so many weeks, and sorry that you should have been, as you +say, uneasy, but my telegram in reply to yours will have explained what +has been happening to us. My step-mother died a fortnight ago. Almost +immediately after I wrote last to you she began to be very ill. My +feelings toward her have undergone a complete upheaval. I cannot speak +of her. She is revenging herself, as only the dead in their utter +unresentfulness can revenge themselves, for every hard and scoffing +thought I had of her in life. I think I told you once about her annuity. +Now it is gone Papa and I must see to it that we live on my mother's +money alone. It is a hundred pounds a year, so the living will have to +be prudent; not so prudent, I hope, but that we shall have everything to +enjoy that is worth enjoying, but quite prudent enough to force us to +take thought. So we are leaving the flat, grown far too expensive for +us, as soon as we can find some other home. We have almost decided on +one already. Mr. Collins went to England when the illness grew evidently +hopeless, and we shall not take him back again, for my father does not +care, at least at present, to have strangers with us, and I myself do +not feel as though I could cook for and look after a young man in the +way my step-mother did. Not having one will make us poor, but I think we +shall be able to manage quite well, for we do not want much. + +Thank you for your kind letters since the telegram. The ones before +that, coming into this serious house filled with the nearness of Death, +and of Death in his sternest mood, his hands cruel with scourges, seemed +to me so inexpressibly--well, I will not say it; it is not fair to blame +you, who could not know in whose shadow we were sitting, for being +preoccupied with the trivialities of living. But letters sent to friends +a long way off do sometimes fall into their midst with a rather ghastly +clang of discord. It is what yours did. I read them sometimes in the +night, watching by my step-mother in the half-dark room during the +moments when she had a little peace and was allowed to slip away from +torture into sleep. By the side of that racked figure and all it meant +and the tremendous sermons it was preaching me, wordless, voiceless +sermons, more eloquent than any I shall hear again, how strange, how +far-away your echoes from life and the world seemed! Distant tinklings +of artificialness; not quite genuine writhings beneath not quite genuine +burdens; idle questionings and self-criticisms; plaints, doubts, and +complicated half-veiled reproaches of myself that I should be able to be +pleased with a world so worm-eaten that I should still be able to chant +my song of life in a major key in a world so manifestly minor and +chromatic. These things fell oddly across the gravity of that room. +Shadows in a place where everything was clear, cobwebs of unreality +where everything was real. They made me sigh, and they made me smile, +they were so very black and yet so very little. I used to wonder what +that usually excellent housemaid Experience is about, that she has not +yet been after you with her broom. You know her specialty is the pulling +up of blinds and the letting in of the morning sun. But it is unfair to +judge you. Your letters since you knew have been kindness itself. Thank +you for them. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +It seemed so strange for any one to die in June; so strange to be +lifeless in the midst of the wanton profusion of life, to grow cold in +that quivering radiance of heat. The people below us have got boxes of +calla-lilies on their balcony this year. Their hot, heavy scent used to +come in at the open window in the afternoons when the sun was on them, +the honey-sweet smell of life, intense, penetrating, filling every +corner of the room with splendid, pagan summer. And on the bed tossed my +step-mother, muttering ceaselessly to herself of Christ. + + + +XXXV + +Jena, July 15th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Our new address is Galgenberg, Jena,--rather grim, +but what's in a name? The thing itself is perfect. It is a tiny house, +white, with green shutters, on the south slope of the hill among +apple-trees. The garden is so steep that you can't sit down in it except +on the north side of the house, where you can because the house is there +to stop you from sliding farther. It is a strip of rough grass out of +which I shall make haycocks, with three apple-trees in it. There is also +a red currant bush, out of which I shall make jelly. At the bottom, +below the fence--rotten in places, but I'm going to mend that--begins a +real apple orchard, and through its leaves we can look down on the roof +of another house, white like ours, but a little bigger, and with blue +shutters instead of green. People take it for the summer, and once an +Englishman came and made a beanfield there--but I think I told you about +the beanfield. Behind us, right away up the slope, are pine trees that +brush restlessly backward and forward all day long across the clouds, +trying to sweep bits of clear blue in the sky, and at night spread +themselves out stiff and motionless against the stars. I saw them last +night from my window. We moved in yesterday. The moving in was not very +easy, because of what Papa calls the precipitous nature of the district. +He sat with his back propped against the wall of the house on the only +side on which, as I have explained, you can sit, and worked with a +pencil at his book about Goethe in Jena with perfect placidity while +Johanna and I and the man who urged the furniture cart up the hill kept +on stepping over his legs as we went in and out furnishing the house. +There was not much to furnish, which was lucky, there not being much to +furnish with. We have got rid of all superfluities, including the +canary, which I presented, its cage beautifully tied up with the blue +ribbons I wore at my first party, to the little girl with the +flame-colored hair on the second floor. As much of the other things as +any one could be induced to buy we sold, and we burnt what nobody would +buy or endure having given them. And so, pared down, we fit in here +quite nicely, and after a day or two conceded to the suavities of life, +such as the tacking up in appropriate places of muslin curtains and the +tying of them with bows, I intend to buy a spade and a watering-pot and +see what I can do with the garden. + +I wish it were not quite so steep. If I'm not on the upper side of one +of the apple-trees with my back firmly pressed against its trunk I don't +yet see how I am to garden. It must be disturbing, and a great waste of +time, to have to hold on to something with one hand while you garden +with the other. And suppose the thing gives way, and you roll down on to +the broken fence? And if that, too, gave way, there would be nothing but +a few probably inadequate apple trunks between me and the roof of the +house with the blue shutters. I should think it extremely likely that +until I've got the mountain-side equivalent for what are known as one's +sea-legs I shall very often be on that roof. I hope it is strong and +new. Perhaps there are kind people inside who will not mind. Soon +they'll get so much used to it that when they hear the preliminary rush +among their apple-trees and the cracking of the branches followed by the +thud over their heads, they won't even look up from their books, but +just murmur to each other, 'There's Fräulein Schmidt on the roof again,' +and go on with their studies. + +Now I'm talking nonsense, and the sort of nonsense you like least; but +I'm in a silly mood today, and you must take me as you find me. At any +time when I have grown too unendurable you can stop my writing to you +simply by not writing to me. Then I shall know you have at last had +enough of me, of my moods, of my odious fits of bombastic eloquence, of +my still more odious facetiousness, of my scoldings of you and of my +complacency about myself. It is true you actually seem to like my +scoldings. That is very abject of you. What you apparently resent are +the letters with sturdy sentiments in them and a robust relish of life. +It almost seems as though you didn't want me to be happy. That is very +odd of you. And I sometimes wonder if it is possible for two persons to +continue friends who have a different taste in what, for want of a nicer +word, I must call jokes. My taste in them is so elementary that an +apple-pie bed makes me laugh tears, and when I go to the play I love to +see chairs pulled away just as people are going to sit down. You, of +course, shudder at these things. They fill you with so great a +dreariness that it amounts to pain. I am at least sensible enough to +understand the attitude. But pleasantries quite high up, as I consider, +in the scale of humor have not been able to make you smile. I have seen +you sit unalterably grave while Papa was piping out the nicest little +things, and I know you never liked even your adored Professor Martens +when he began to bubble. Well, either I laugh too easily or you don't +laugh enough. I can only repeat that if I set your teeth on edge the +remedy is in your own hands. + +We are going to be vegetarians this summer. Papa, who hasn't tried it +yet, is perfectly willing, and if we live chiefly on nuts and lettuces +we shall hardly want any money at all. I read Shelley's _Vindication of +Natural Diet_ aloud to him before we left the flat to prepare his mind, +and he not only heartily agreed with every word, but went at once to the +Free Library and dug out all the books he could find about muscles and +brains and their surprising dependence on the kind of stuff you have +eaten, and brought them home for me to study. I do love Papa. He falls +in so sweetly with one's little plans, and lets me do what I want +without the least waste of time in questionings or the giving of advice. +I have read the books with profound interest. Only a person who cooks, +who has to handle meat when it is raw, pick out the internals of geese, +peel off the skins of rabbits, scrape away the scales of a fish that is +still alive--my step-mother insisted on this, the flavor, she said, +being so infinitely superior that way--can know with what a relief, what +a feeling of personal purification and turning of the back on evil, one +flings a cabbage into a pot of fair water or lets one's fingers linger +lovingly among lentils. I brought a bag of lentils up the hill with us, +and the cabbage, remnant of my last marketing, came up too in a net, and +we had our dinner today of them: lentil soup, and cabbage with +bread-and-butter--what could be purer? And for Johanna, who has not read +Shelley, there was the last of the Rauchgasse sausage for the soothing +of her more immature soul. + +That was an hour ago, and Papa has just been in to say he is hungry. + +'Why, you've only just had dinner, Papachen,' said I, surprised. + +'I know--I know,' he said, looking vaguely troubled. + +'You can't really be hungry. Perhaps it's indigestion.' + +'Perhaps,' agreed Papa; and drifted out again, still looking troubled. + +Before we took this house it had stood empty for several years, and the +man it belongs to was so glad to find somebody who would live in it and +keep it warm that he lets us have it for hardly any rent at all. I +expect what the impoverished want--and only the impoverished would live +in a thing so small--is a garden flat enough to grow potatoes in, and to +have fowls walking about it, and a pig in a nice level sty. You can't +have them here. At least, you couldn't have a sty on such a slope. The +poor pig would spend his days either anxiously hanging on with all his +claws--or is it paws? I forget what pigs have; anyhow, with all his +might--to the hillside, or huddled dismally down against the end +planks, and never be of that sublime detachment of spirit necessary to +him if he would end satisfactorily in really fat bacon. And the fowls, I +suppose, would have to lay their eggs flying--they certainly couldn't do +it sitting down--and how disturbing that would be to a person engaged, +as I often am, in staring up at the sky, for how can you stare up at the +sky under an umbrella? I asked the landlord about the potatoes, and he +said I must grow them as the last tenant did, a widow who lived and died +here, in a strip against the north side of the house where there is a +level space about two yards running from one end of the house to the +other, representing a path and keeping the hill from tumbling in at our +windows. It really is the only place, for I don't see how Johanna and I, +gifted and resourceful as we undoubtedly are, can make terraces with no +tools but a spade and a watering-pot; but it will do away with our only +path, and it does seem necessary to have a path up to one's front door. +Can one be respectable without a path up to one's front door? Perhaps +one can, and that too may be a superfluity to those who face life +squarely. I am convinced that there must be potatoes, but I am not +convinced, on reflection, that there need be a path. Have you ever felt +the joy of getting rid of things? It is so great that it is almost +ferocious. After each divestment, each casting off and away, there is +such a gasp of relief, such a bounding upward, the satisfied soul, proud +for once of its body, saying to it smilingly, 'This, too, then, you have +discovered you can do without and yet be happy.' And I, just while +writing these words to you, have discovered that I can and will do +without paths. + +Papa has been in again. 'Is it not coffee-time?' he asked. + +I looked at him amazed. 'Darling, coffee-time is never at half-past +two,' I said reproachfully. + +'Half-past two is it only? _Der Teufel_' said Papa. + +'Isn't your book getting on well?' I inquired. + +'Yes, yes,--the book progresses. That is, it would progress if my +attention did not continually wander.' + +'Wander? Whereto?' + +'Rose-Marie, there is a constant gnawing going on within me that will +not permit me to believe that I have dined.' + +'Well, but, Papachen, you have. I saw you doing it.' + +'What you saw me doing was not dining,' said Papa. + +'Not dining?' + +Papa waved his arms round oddly and suddenly. 'Grass--grass,' he cried +with a singular impatience. + +'Grass?' I echoed, still more amazed. + +'Books of an enduring nature, works of any monumentalness, cannot, never +were, and shall not be raised on a foundation of grass,' said Papa, his +face quite red. + +'I can't think what you mean,' said I. 'Where is there any grass?' + +'Here,' said Papa, quickly clasping his hands over that portion of him +that we boldly talk about and call _Magen_, and you allude to sideways, +by a variety of devious expressions. 'I have been fed today,' he said, +looking at me quite severely, 'on a diet appropriate only to the +mountain goat, and probably only appropriate to him because he can +procure nothing better.' + +'Why, you had a lentil soup--proved scientifically to contain all that +is needed--' + +'I congratulate the lentil soup. I envy it. I wish I too contained all +that is needed. But here'--he clasped his hands again--'there is +nothing.' + +'Yes there is. There is cabbage.' + +'Pooh,' said Papa. 'Green stuff. Herbage.' + +'Herbage?' + +'And scanty herbage, too--appropriate, I suppose, to the mountainous +region in which we now find ourselves.' + +'Papa, don't you want to be a vegetarian?' + +'I want my coffee,' said Papa. + +'What, now?' + +'And why not now, Rose-Marie? Is there anything more rational than to +eat when one is hungry? Let there, pray, be much--very much--bread-and- +butter with it.' + +'But, Papa, we weren't going to have coffee any more. Didn't you agree +that we would give up stimulants?' + +Papa looked at me defiantly. 'I did,' he said. + +'Well, coffee is one.' + +'It is our only one.' + +'You said you would give it up.' + +'I said gradually. To do so today would not be doing so gradually. +Nothing is good that is not done gradually.' + +'But one must begin.' + +'One must begin gradually.' + +'You were delighted with Shelley.' + +'It was after dinner.' + +'You were quite convinced.' + +'I was not hungry.' + +'You know he is all for pure water.' + +'He is all for many things that seem admirable to those who have lately +dined.' + +'You know he says that if the populace of Paris at the time of the +Revolution had drunk at the pure source of the Seine--' + +'There is no pure source of the Seine within reach of the populace of +Paris. There would only be cats. Dead cats. And cats interspersed, no +doubt, with a variety of objects of the nature of portions of crockery +and empty tins.' + +'But he says pure source.' + +'Then he says pure nonsense.' + +'He says if they had done that and satisfied their hunger at the +ever-furnished table of vegetable nature--' + +'Ever-furnished table? Holy Heaven--the good, the excellent young man.' + +'--they would never have lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription +list of Robespierre.' + +'Rose-Marie, today I care not what this young man says.' + +'He says--look, I've got the book in my pocket--' + +'I will not look.' + +'He says, could a set of men whose passions were not perverted by +unnatural stimuli--that's coffee, of course--gaze with coolness on an +_auto-da-fè_?' + +'I engage to gaze with heat on any _auto-da-fè_ I may encounter if only +you will quickly--' + +'He says--' + +'Put down the book, Rose-Marie, and see to the getting of coffee.' + +'But he says--' + +'Let him say it, and see to the coffee.' + +'He says, is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings rising +from his meal of roots--' + +'_Gott, Gott_,--meal of roots!' + +'--would take delight in sports of blood?' + +'Enough. I am not in the temper for Shelley.' + +'But you quite loved him a day or two ago.' + +'Except food, nobody loves anything--anything at all--while his stomach +is empty.' + +'I don't think that's very pretty, Papachen.' + +'But it is a great truth. Remember it if you should marry. Shape your +conduct by its light. Three times every day, Rose-Marie,--that is, +before breakfast, before dinner, and before supper,--no husband loves +any wife. She may be as beautiful as the stars, as wise as +Pallas-Athene, as cultured as Goethe, as entertaining as a circus, as +affectionate as you please--he cares nothing for her. She exists not. +Go, my child, and prepare the coffee, and let the bread-and-butter be +cut thick.' + +Well, since then I have been cutting bread-and-butter and pouring out +cups of coffee. I thought Papa would never leave off. If that is the +effect of a vegetarian dinner I don't think it can really be less +expensive than meat. Papa ate half a pound of butter, which is sixty +pfennings, and for sixty pfennings I could have bought him a +_Kalbsschnitzel_ so big that it would have lasted, under treatment, two +days. I must go for a walk and think it out. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXVI + +Galgenberg, July 21st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I assure you that we have all we want, so do not, +please, go on feeling distressed about us. Why should you feel +distressed? I am not certain that I do not resent it. Put baldly (you +will say brutally), you have no right to be distressed, uneasy, anxious, +and all the other things you say you are, about the private concerns of +persons who are nothing to you. Even a lamb might conceivably feel +nettled by persistent pity when it knows it has everything in the world +it wants. Come now, if it is a question of pity, we will have it in the +right place, and I will pity you. There is always, you know, a secret +satisfaction in the soul of him who pities. He does hug himself, and +whether he does it consciously or unconsciously depends on his aptitude +for clear self-criticism. Compared with yours I deliberately consider my +life glorious. And when will you see that there are kinds of +gloriousness that cannot be measured in money or position? It is plain +to me--and it would be so to you if you thought it over--that the less +one has the more one enjoys. We want space, time, concentration, for +getting at the true sweet root of life. And I think--and you probably do +not--that the true sweet root of life is in any one thing, no matter +what thing, on which your whole undisturbed attention is fixed. Once I +read a little French story, years ago, with my mother, when I was a +child, and I don't know now who wrote it or what it was called. It was +the story of a prisoner who found a plant growing between the flags of +the court he might walk in, and I think it was a wallflower; and it, +unfolding itself slowly and putting out one tender bit of green after +the other in that gray and stony place, stretched out little hands of +life and hope and interest to the man who had come there a lost soul. It +was the one thing he had. It ended by being his passion. With nothing +else to distract him, he could study all its wonders. From that single +plant he learned more than the hurried passer-on, free of the treasures +of the universe, learns in a life. It saved him from despair. It brought +him back to the eager interest in the marvellous world that soul feels +which is unencumbered by too heavy a weight of trappings. Why, I still +have too much; and here are you pitying me because I have not more when +I am distracted by all the claims on my attention. I can look at whole +beds of wallflowers every spring, and pass on with nothing but a vague +admiration for their massed beauty of scent and color. I get nothing out +of them but just that transient glimpse and whiff. There are too many. +There is no time for them all. But shut me up for weeks alone with one +of them in a pot, and I too would get out of it the measure of the +height and the depth and the wonder of life. + +And then you exhort me not to live on vegetables. Is it because you live +on meat? I don't think I mind your eating meat, so why should you mind +my eating vegetables? I have done it for a week now quite steadily, and +mean to give it at least a fair trial. If what the books we have got +about it say is true, health and sanity lie that way. And how delightful +to have a pure kitchen into which ghastly dead things never come. I will +not be a partaker of the nature of beasts. I will not become three parts +pig, or goose, or foolish sheep. I turn with aversion from the reddened +horror called gravy. I consider it a monstrous ugly thing to have +particles of pig rioting up and down my veins, turning into brains, +coloring my thoughts, becoming a very part of my body. Surely a body is +a wonderful thing? So wonderful that it cannot be treated with too much +care and respect? So wonderful that it cannot be too carefully guarded +from corruption? And have you ever studied the appearance and habits of +pigs? + +But I do admit that being a vegetarian is bewildering. None of the books +say a word about the odd feeling one has of not having had anything to +eat. What Papa felt that first day I have felt every day since. I am +perpetually hungry; and it is the unpleasant hunger that expresses +itself in a dislike for food, in listlessness, inability to work, +flabbiness, even faintness. At eight in the morning I begin with bread +and plums. My entire being cries out while I am eating them for coffee +with milk in it and butter on my bread. But coffee is a stimulant, and +the books say that butter contains no nourishment whatever, and since +what I most yearn for is to be nourished I will waste no time eating +stuff that doesn't do it. Instead, I eat heaps of bread and stacks of +plums, not because I want to but because I'm afraid the gnawing feeling +will follow sooner than ever if I don't. Papa sits opposite me, +breakfasting pleasantly on eggs, for he explains he is doing things +gradually and is using the eggs to build wise bridges across the gulf +between the end of meat and the beginning of what he persists in +describing as herbage. At nine I feel as if I had had no breakfast. All +the pains I took to get through the bread were of no real use. I +struggle against this for as long as possible, because the books say you +mustn't have things between meals, and then I go and eat more plums. I +am amazed when I remember that once I liked plums. No words can express +my abhorrence of them now. But what is to be done? They are the only +fruit we can get. Cherries are over. Apples have not begun. We buy the +plums from the neighbor down the hill. To add to my horror of them I +have discovered that hardly one is without a wriggly live thing inside +it. I wonder how many of them I have eaten. Can they be brought into the +category vegetarian? Papa says yes, because they have lived and moved +and had their being in an atmosphere of pure plum. They _are_ plum, says +Papa, consoling me,--bits of plum that have acquired the power to walk +about. But according to that beef must be vegetarian too,--so much grass +grown able to walk about. It is very bewildering. One day the +neighbor--he is a nice neighbor, interested in our experiment--sent us +some raspberries, a basket of them, all glowing, and downy, and +delicious with dew, and covered with a beautiful silvery cabbage leaf; +but they were afflicted in just the same way, only more so. Papa says, +why do I look? I must look now that I have seen the things once; and so +the end of the raspberries was that most of them went out into the +kitchen, and Johanna, who has no prejudices, stewed them into compote +and ate them, including the inhabitants, for her supper. + +For dinner, by which time I am curiously shaky, quite indifferent to +food, and possessed of an immense longing to lie down on a sofa and do +nothing, we have salad and potatoes and fruit--of course plums--and +lentils because they are so good for us (it is a pity they are also so +nasty), and cheese because one book says (it is an extraordinarily +convincing book) that if a man shall eat beef steadily for a whole +morning from six to twelve without stopping, he will not at the end have +taken in half the nourishing matter that he would have absorbed after +two minutes laid out judiciously on cheese. Unfortunately I don't like +cheese. After dinner I shut myself up with the works of Mr. Eustace +Miles, which tell me in invigorating language of all the money, time, +and energy I have saved, of my increase of bodily health, of how active +I am getting, how skilful and of what a tough endurance, how my brains +have grown clear and nimble, my morals risen high above the average, and +how keen my enjoyment of everything has become, including, strange to +say, my food. I read lying down, too spiritless to sit up; and Johanna +in the kitchen, who has dined on pig and beer, washes up with the +clatter of exuberant energy, singing while she does so in a voice that +shakes the house that once she _liebte ein Student._ + +It is very bewildering. The advice one gets points in such opposite +directions. For instance, the neighbor made friends the very first +evening with Papa, who walked with injudicious inattention in our garden +and slipped down through a gap in the fence into his orchard and his +arms, he being engaged in picking up the fallen plums for his wife to +make jam of; and he told me when he came in one day at dinner and found +me struggling through what he considered dark ways and I thought were +cabbages, that my salvation lay in almonds. I went down to Jena that +afternoon and bought three pounds of them. They were dear, and +dreadfully heavy to carry up the hill, and when I was panting past the +neighbor's gate his wife, a friendly lady who reads right through the +advertisements in the paper every morning and spends her evenings with a +pencil working out the acrostics, was standing at it cool and +comfortable; and she asked me, with the simple inquisitiveness natural +to our nation, what I had got in my parcel; and I, glad to stop a moment +and get my breath, told her; and she immediately scoffed both at her +husband and at the almonds, and said if I ate them I would lay up for +myself an old age steeped in a dreadful thing called xanthin poison. I +went home and consulted the books. The neighbor's wife was right. +Johanna made macaroons of the almonds, and Papa, who loves macaroons, +chose to disbelieve the neighbor's wife and ate them. + +But the books are not always so unanimous as they were about this. One +exhorted us to eat many peas and beans, which we were cheerfully +doing,--for are they not in summer pleasant things?--when I read in +another that we might as well eat poison, so full were they, too, of +qualities ending in xanthin poison. Lentils, recommended warmly by most +books, are discountenanced by two because they make you fat. Rice has +shared the same condemnation. Lettuces we may eat, but without the oil +that soothes and the vinegar that interests, and if you add salt to them +you will be thirsty, and you must never drink. An undressed lettuce--a +quite naked lettuce--is a very dull thing. Really, I would as soon eat +grass. We do refuse at present to follow this cruel advice, and have +salad every day in defiance of it, but my conscience forces me to put +less and less dressing in it each time, hoping that so shall we wean +ourselves from the craving for it--'gradually,' as Papa says. Carrots, +too, the books warn us against. I forget what it is they do to you that +is serious, but the neighbor told me they make your skin shine, and +since he told me that no carrot has crossed our threshold. Apples we may +eat, but we are not to suppose that they will nourish us; they are +useful only for preventing, by their bulk, the walls of our insides from +coming together. The walls of the vegetarian inside are very apt to come +together if the owner strikes out all the things he is warned against +from his menu, and then it is, when they are about to do that, that +fibrous bulk, most convenient in this form, should be applied; and, like +the roasted Sunday goose of our fleshlier days in Rauchgasse, the +vegetarian goes about stuffed with apples. Meanwhile there are no +apples, and I know not whither I must turn in search of bulk. Do you +think that in another week I shall be strong enough to write to you? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXVII + +Galgenberg, July 28th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--This is a most sweet evening, dripping, quiet, +after a rainy day, with a strip of clear yellow sky behind the pine +trees on the crest of the hill. I gathered up my skirts and went down +through the soaked grass to where against the fence there is a divine +straggly bush of pink China roses. I wanted to see how they were getting +on after their drenching; and as I stood looking at them in the calm +light, the fence at the back of them sodden into dark greens and blacks +that showed up every leaf and lovely loose wet flower, a robin came and +sat on the fence near me and began to sing. You will say: Well, what +next? And there isn't any next; at least, not a next that I am likely to +make understandable. It was only that I felt extraordinarily happy. You +will say: But why? And if I were to explain, at the end you would still +be saying Why? Well, you cannot see my face while I am writing to you, +so that I have been able often to keep what I was really thinking safely +covered up, but you mustn't suppose that my letters have always exactly +represented my state of mind, and that my soul has made no pilgrimages +during this half year. I think it has wandered thousands of miles. And +often while I wrote scolding you, or was being wise and complacent, or +sprightly and offensive, often just then the tired feet of it were +bleeding most as they stumbled among the bitter stones. And this evening +I felt that the stones were at an end, that my soul has come home to me +again, securely into my keeping, glad to be back, and that there will be +no more effort needed when I look life serenely in the face. Till now +there was always effort. That I talk to you about it is the surest sign +that it is over. The robin's singing, the clear light behind the pines, +the dripping trees and bushes, the fragrance of the wet roses, the +little white house, so modest and hidden, where Papa and I are going to +be happy, the perfect quiet after a stormy day, the perfect peace after +discordant months,--oh, I wanted to say thank you for each of these +beautiful things. Do you remember you gave me a book of Ernest Dowson's +poems on the birthday I had while you were with us? And do you remember +his + + Now I will take me to a place of peace, + Forget my heart's desire-- + In solitude and prayer work out my soul's release? + +It is what I feel I have done. + +But I will not bore you with these sentiments. See, I am always anxious +to get back quickly to the surface of things, anxious to skim lightly +over the places where tears, happy or miserable, lie, and not to touch +with so much as the brush of a wing the secret tendernesses of the soul. +Let us, sir, get back to vegetables. They are so safe as subjects for +polite letter-writing. And I have had three letters from you this week +condemning their use with all the fervor the English language places at +your disposal--really it is generous to you in this respect--as a +substitute for the mixed diet of the ordinary Philistine. Yes, sir, I +regard you as an ordinary Philistine; and if you want to know what that +in my opinion is, it is one who walks along in the ruts he found ready +instead of, after sitting on a milestone and taking due thought, making +his own ruts for himself. You are one of a flock; and you disapprove of +sheep like myself that choose to wander off and browse alone. You +condemn all my practices. Nothing that I think or do seems good in your +eyes. You tell me roundly that I am selfish, and accuse me, not roundly +because you are afraid it might be indecorous, but obliquely, in a mask +of words that does not for an instant hide your meaning, of wearing +Jaeger garments beneath my outer apparel. Soon, I gather you expect, I +shall become a spiritualist and a social democrat; and quite soon after +that I suppose you are sure I shall cut off my hair and go about in +sandals. Well, I'll tell you something that may keep you quiet: I'm +tired of vegetarianism. It isn't that I crave for fleshpots, for I shall +continue as before to turn my back on them, on 'the boiled and roast, +The heated nose in face of ghost,' but I grudge the time it takes and +the thought it takes. For the fortnight I have followed its precepts I +have lived more entirely for my body than in any one fortnight of my +life. It was all body. I could think of nothing else. I was tending it +the whole day. Instead of growing, as I had fondly hoped, so free in +spirit that I would be able to draw quite close to the _liebe Gott_, I +was sunk in a pit of indifference to everything needing effort or +enthusiasm. And it is not simple after all. Shelley's meal of roots +sounds easy and elementary, but think of the exertion of going out, +strengthened only by other roots, to find more for your next meal. Nuts +and fruits, things that require no cooking, really were elaborate +nuisances, the nuts having to be cracked and the fruit freed from what +Papa called its pedestrian portions. And they were so useless even then +to a person who wanted to go out and dig in the garden. All they could +do for me was to make me appreciate sofas. I am tired of it, tired of +wasting precious time thinking about and planning my wretched diet. +Yesterday I had an egg for breakfast--it gave me one of Pater's +'exquisite moments'--and a heavenly bowl of coffee with milk in it, and +the effect was to send me out singing into the garden and to start me +mending the fence. The neighbor came up to see what the vigorous +hammer-strokes and snatches of _Siegfried_ could mean, and when he saw +it was I immediately called out, 'You have been eating meat!' + +'I have not,' I said, swinging my hammer to show what eggs and milk can +do. + +'In some form or other you have this day joined yourself to the animal +kingdom,' he persisted; and when I told him about my breakfast he wiped +his hands (he had been picking fruit) and shook mine and congratulated +me. 'I have watched with concern,' he said, 'your eyes becoming daily +bigger. It is not good when eyes do that. Now they will shrink to their +normal size, and you will at last set your disgraceful garden in order. +Are you aware that the grass ought to have been made into hay a month +ago?' + +He is a haggard man, thin of cheek, round of shoulder, short of sight, +who teaches little boys Latin and Greek in Weimar. For thirty years has +he taught them, eking out his income in the way we all do in these parts +by taking in foreigners wanting to learn German. In July he shakes Eis +foreigners off and comes up here for six weeks' vacant pottering in his +orchard. He bought the house as a speculation, and lets the upper part +to any one who will take it, living himself, with his wife and son, on +the ground floor. He is extremely kind to me, and has given me to +understand that he considers me intelligent, so of course I like him. +Only those persons who love intelligence in others and have doubts about +their own know the deliciousness of being told a thing like that. I +adore being praised. I am athirst for it. Dreadfully vain down in my +heart, I go about pretending a fine aloofness from such weakness, so +that when nobody sees anything in me--and nobody ever does--I may at +least make a show of not having expected them to. Thus does a girl in a +ball-room with whom no one will dance pretend she does not want to. Thus +did the familiar fox conduct himself toward the grapes of tradition. +Very well do I know there is nothing to praise; but because I am just +clever enough to know that I am not clever, to be told that I am +clever--do you follow me?--sets me tingling. + +Now that's enough about me. Let us talk about you. You must not come to +Jena. What could have put such an idea into your head? It is a blazing, +deserted place just now, looking from the top of the hills like a basin +of hot _bouillon_ down there in the hollow, wrapped in its steam. The +University is shut up. The professors scattered. Martens is in +Switzerland, and won't be back till September. Even the Schmidts, those +interesting people, have flapped up with screams of satisfaction into a +nest on the side of a precipice. I urge you with all my elder-sisterly +authority to stay where you are. Plainly, if you were to come I would +not see you. Oh, I will leave off pretending I cannot imagine what you +want here: I know you want to see me. Well, you shall not. Why you +should want to is altogether beyond my comprehension. I believe you have +come to regard me as a sort of medicine, medicine of the tonic order, +and wish to bring your sick soul to the very place where it is +dispensed. But I, you see, will have nothing to do with sick souls, and +I wholly repudiate the idea of being somebody's physic. I will not be +your physic. What medicinal properties you can extract from my letters +you are welcome to, but pray are you mad that you should think of coming +here? When you do come you are to come with your wife, and when you have +a wife you are not to come at all. How simple. + +Really, I feel inclined to laugh when I try to picture you, after the +life you have been leading in London, after the days you are living now +at Clinches, attempting to arrange yourself on this perch of ours up +here. I cannot picture you. We have reduced our existence to the crudest +elements, to the raw material; and you, I know, have grown a very +exquisite young man. The fact is you have had time to forget what we are +really like, my father and I and Johanna, and since my step-mother's +time we have advanced far in the casual scrappiness of housekeeping that +we love. You would be like some strange and splendid bird in the midst +of three extremely shabby sparrows. That is the physical point of view: +a thing to be laughed at. From the moral it is for ever impossible. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXVIII + +Galgenberg, Aug. 7th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is pleasant of you to take the trouble to +emulate our neighbor and tell me that you too think me intelligent. You +put it, it is true, more elaborately than he does, with a greater +embroidery of fine words, but I will try to believe you equally sincere. +I make you a profound _Knix_,--it's a more expressive word than +curtsey--of polite gratitude. But it is less excellent of you to add on +the top of these praises that I am adorable. With words like that, +inappropriate, and to me eternally unconvincing, this correspondence +will come to an abrupt end. I shall not write again if that is how you +are going to play the game. I would not write now if I were less +indifferent. As it is, I can look on with perfect calm, most serenely +unmoved by anything in that direction you may say to me; but if you care +to have letters do not say them again. I shall never choose to allow you +to suppose me vile. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + +XXXIX + +Galgenberg, Aug. 13th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You need not have sent me so many pages of +protestations. Nothing you can say will persuade me that I am adorable, +and I did exactly mean the world vile. Do not quarrel with Miss +Cheriton; but if you must, do not tell me about it. Why should you +always want to tell one of us about the other? Have you no sense of what +is fit? I am nothing to you, and I will not hear these things. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XL + +Galgenberg, Aug. 18th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You must really write a book. Write a very long +one, with plenty of room for all your words. What is your bill for +postage now? Johanna, I am sure, thinks you are sending me instalments +of manuscript, and marvels at the extravagance that shuts it up in +envelopes instead of leaving its ends open and tying it up with string. +Once more I must beg you not to write about Miss Cheriton. It is useless +to remind me that I have posed as your sister, and that to your sister +you may confide anything, because I am not your sister. Sometimes I have +written of an elder-sisterly attitude toward you, but that, of course, +was only talk. I am not irascible enough for the position. I do think, +though, you ought to be surrounded by women who are cross. Six cross and +determined elder sisters would do wonders for you. And so would a mother +with an iron will. And perhaps an aunt living in the house might be a +good thing; one of those aunts--I believe sufficiently abundant--who +pierce your soul with their eyes and then describe it minutely at +meal-times in the presence of the family, expatiating particularly on +what those corners of it look like, those corners you thought so secret, +in which are huddled your dearest faults. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLI + +Galgenberg, Aug. 25th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Very well; I won't quarrel; I will be +friends,--friends, that is, so long as you allow me to be so in the only +right and possible way. Don't murder too many grouse. Think of my +disapproving scowl when you are beginning to do it, and then perhaps +your day of slaughter will resolve itself into an innocent picnic on the +moors, alone with sky and heather and a bored, astonished dog. Are you +not glad now that you went to Scotland instead of coming to Jena to find +the Schmidts not at home? Surely long days in the heather by yourself +will do much toward making you friends with life. I think those moors +must be so beautiful. Really very nearly as good as my Galgenberg. My +Galgenberg, by the bye, has left off being quite so admirably solitary +as it was at first. The neighbor is, as I told you, extremely friendly, +so is his wife, though I do not set such store by her friendliness as I +do by his, for, frankly, I find men are best; and they have a son who is +an _Assessor_ in Berlin. You know what an _Assessor_ is, don't you?--it +is a person who will presently be a _Landrath_. And you know what a +_Landrath_ is? It's what you are before you turn into a +_Regierungsrath_. And a _Regierungsrath_ is what you are before you are +a _Geheimrath_. And a _Geheimrath_, if he lives long enough and doesn't +irritate anybody in authority, becomes ultimately that impressive and +glorious being a _Wirklicher Geheimrath_--implying that before he was +only in fun--_mit dem Prädikat Excellenz_. And don't say I don't explain +nicely, because I do. Well, where was I? Oh, yes; at the son. Well, he +appeared a fortnight ago, brown and hot and with a knapsack, having +walked all the way from Berlin, and is spending his holiday with his +people. For a day or two I thought him quite ordinary. He made rather +silly jokes, and wore a red tie. Then one evening I heard lovely sounds, +lovely, floating, mellow sounds coming up in floods through the orchard +into my garden where I was propped against a tree-trunk watching a huge +yellow moon disentangling itself slowly from the mists of Jena,--oh, +but exquisite sounds, sounds that throbbed into your soul and told it +all it wanted to hear, showed it the way to all it was looking for, +talked to it wonderfully of the possibilities of life. First they drew +me on to my feet, then they drew me down the garden, then through the +orchard, nearer and nearer, till at last I stood beneath the open window +they were coming from, listening with all my ears. Against the wall I +leaned, holding my breath, spell-bound, forced to ponder great themes, +themes of life and death, the music falling like drops of liquid light +in dark and thirsty places. I don't know how long it lasted or how long +I stood there after it was finished, but some one came to the window and +put his head out into the freshness, and what do you think he said? He +said, '_Donnerwetter, wie man im Zimmer schwitzt._' And it was the son, +brown and hot, and with a red tie. + +'Ach, Fräulein Schmidt,' said he, suddenly perceiving me. 'Good evening. +A fine evening. I did not know I had an audience.' + +'Yes,' said I, unable at once to adjust myself to politenesses. + +'Do you like music?' + +'Yes,' said I, still vibrating. + +'It is a good violin. I picked it up--' and he told me a great many +things that I did not hear, for how can you hear when your spirit +refuses to come back from its journeyings among the stars? + +'Will you not enter?' he said at last. 'My mother is fetching up some +beer and will be here in a moment. It makes one warm playing.' + +But I would not enter. I walked back slowly through the long orchard +grass between the apple-trees trees. The moon gleamed along the +branches. The branches were weighed down with apples. The place was full +of the smell of fruit, of the smell of fruit fallen into the grass, that +had lain there bruised all day in the sun. I think the beauty of the +world is crushing. Often it seems almost unbearable, calling out such an +acuteness of sensation, such a vivid, leaping sensitiveness of feeling, +that indeed it is like pain. + +But what I want to talk about is the strange way good things come out of +evil. It really almost makes you respect and esteem the bad things, +doing it with an intelligent eye fixed on the future. Here is our young +friend down the hill, a young man most ordinary in every way but one, so +ordinary that I think we must put him under the heading bad, taking bad +in the sense of negation, of want of good, here he is, robust of speech, +fond of beer, red of tie, chosen as her temple by that delicate lady the +Muse of melody. Apparently she is not very particular about her temples. +It is true while he is playing at her dictation she transforms him +wholly, and I suppose she does not care what he is like in between. But +I do. I care because in between he thinks it pleasant to entertain me +with facetiousness, his mother hanging fondly on every word in the +amazing way mothers, often otherwise quite intelligent persons, do. +Since that first evening he has played every evening, and his taste in +music is as perfect as it is bad in everything else. It is severe, +exquisite, exclusive. It is the taste that plays Mozart and Bach and +Beethoven, and wastes no moments with the Mendelssohn sugar or the +lesser inspiration of Brahms. I tried to strike illumination out of him +on these points, wanted to hear his reasons for a greater exclusiveness +than I have yet met, went through a string of impressive names beginning +with Schumann and ending with Wagner and Tchaikowsky, but he showed no +interest, and no intelligence either, unless a shrug of the shoulder is +intelligent. It is true he remarked one day that he found life too short +for anything but the best--'That is why,' he added, unable to forbear +from wit, 'I only drink Pilsner.' + +'What?' I cried, ignoring the Pilsner, 'and do not these great +men'--again I ran through a string of them--'do not they also belong to +the very best?' + +'No,' he said; and would say no more. So you see he is obstinate as well +as narrow-minded. + +Of course such exclusiveness in art _is_ narrow-minded, isn't it? +Besides, it is very possible he is wrong. You, I know, used to perch +Brahms on one of the highest peaks of Parnassus (I never thought there +was quite room enough for him on it), and did you not go three times all +the way to Munich while you were with us to hear Mottl conduct the +_Ring_? Surely it is probable a person of your all-round good taste is a +better judge than a person of his very nearly all-round bad taste? +Whatever your faults may be, you never made a fault in ties, never +clamored almost ceaselessly for drink, never talked about _schwitzen_, +nor entertained young women from next door with the tricks and +facetiousness of a mountebank. I wonder if his system were carried into +literature, and life were wholly concentrated on the half dozen +absolutely best writers, so that we who spread our attention out thin +over areas I am certain are much too wide knew them as we never can know +them, became part of them, lived with them and in them, saw through +their eyes and thought with their thoughts, whether there would be gain +or loss? I don't know. Tell me what you think. If I might only have the +six mightiest books to go with me through life I would certainly have to +learn Greek because of Homer. But when it comes to the very mightiest, I +cannot even get my six; I can only get four. Of course when I loosely +say six books I mean the works of six writers. But beyond my four I +cannot get; there must be a slight drop for the other two,--very slight, +hardly a drop, rather a slight downward quiver into a radiance the +faintest degree less blazing, but still a degree less. These two would +be Milton and Virgil. The other four--but you know the other four +without my telling you. I am not sure that the _Assessor_ is not right, +and that one cannot, in matters of the spirit, be too exclusive. +Exclusiveness means concentration, deeper study, minuter knowledge; for +we only have a handful of years to do anything in, and they are quite +surely not enough to go round when going round means taking in the whole +world. + +On the other hand, wouldn't my speech become archaic? I'm afraid I would +have a tendency that would grow to address Papa in blank verse. My +language, even when praying him at breakfast to give me butter, would be +incorrigibly noble. I don't think Papa would like it. And what would he +say to a daughter who was forced by stress of concentration on six works +to go through life without Goethe? Goethe, you observe, was not one of +the two less glorious and he certainly was not one of the four +completely glorious. I begin to fear I should miss a great deal by my +exclusions. It would be sad to die without ever having been thrilled by +_Werther_, exalted by _Faust_, amazed by the _Wahlverwandtschaften_, +sent to sleep by _Wilhelm Meister_. To die innocent of any knowledge of +Schiller's _Glocke_, with no memory of strenuous hours spent getting it +by heart at school, might be quite pleasant. But I think it would end by +being tiring to be screwed up perpetually to the pitch of the greatest +men's greatest moments. Such heights are not for insects like myself. I +would hang very dismally, with drooping head and wings, on those exalted +hooks. And has not the soul too its longings at times for a +dressing-gown and slippers? And do you see how you could do without +Boswell? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + +XLII + +Galgenberg, Aug. 31st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yes, of course he does. He plays every evening. +And every evening I go and listen, either in the orchard beneath the +open window or, more ceremoniously, inside the room with or without +Papa. I find it a pleasant thing. I am living in a bath of music. And I +hope you don't expect me to agree with your criticism of music as a +stirrer-up of, on the whole, second-rate emotions. What are second-rate +emotions? Are they the ones that you have? And was it to have them +stirred that you used to journey so often to Munich and Mottl? Stirred +up I certainly am. Not in the way, I admit, in which a poem of Milton's +does it, not affected in the least as I am affected by, for instance, +the piled-up majesty of the poem on _Time_, but if less nobly still very +effectually. There; I have apparently begun to agree with you. Well, I +do see, the moment I begin to consider, that what is stirred is less +noble. I do see that what I feel when I listen to music is chiefly +_Wehmuth_, and I don't think much of _Wehmuth_. You have no word for it. +Perhaps in England you do not have just that form of sentiment. It is a +forlorn thing, made up mostly of vague ingredients,--vague yearnings, +vague regrets, vague dissatisfactions. When it comes over you, you +remember all the people who are absent, and you are sad; and the people +who are dead, and you sigh; and the times you have been naughty, and you +groan. I do see that a sentiment that makes you do that is not the +highest. It is profitless, sterile. It doesn't send you on joyfully to +the next thing, but keeps you lingering in the dust of churchyards, +barren places of the past which should never be revisited by the +wholesome-minded. Now this looks as though I were agreeing with you +quite, but I still don't. You put it so extremely. It is so horrid to +think that even my emotions may be second-rate. I long ago became aware +that my manners were so, but I did like to believe there was nothing +second-rate about my soul. Well, what is one to do? Never be soft? Never +be sad? Or sorry? Or repentant? Always stay up at the level of Milton's +_Time_ poem, or of his _At a Solemn Musick_, strung high up to an +unchanging pitch of frigid splendor and nobleness? It is what I try to +aim at. It is what I would best like. Then comes our friend of the red +tie, and in the cool of the day when the world is dim and scented shakes +a little fugue of Bach's out of his fiddle, a sparkling, sly little +fugue, frolicsome for all its minor key, a handful of bright threads +woven together, twisted in and out, playing, it would seem, at some game +of hide-and-seek, of pretending to want to catch each other into a +tangle, but always gayly coming out of the knots, each distinct and +holding on its shining way till the meeting at the end, the final +embrace when the game is over and they tie themselves contentedly +together into one comfortable major chord,--our friend plays this, this +manifestly happy thing, and my soul listens, and smiles, and sighs, and +longs, and ends by being steeped in _Wehmuth_. I choose the little fugue +of Bach as an instance, for of all music it is aimed most distinctly at +the intellect, it is the furthest removed from _Wehmuth_; and if it has +this effect on me I will not make you uncomfortable by a description of +what the baser musics do, the musics of passion, of furious exultations +and furious despairs. But my vague wish for I do not know what, gentle, +and rather sweetly resigned when the accompaniment is Bach, swells +suddenly while I listen to them into a terrifying longing that rends and +shatters my soul. + +What private things I tell you. I wouldn't if I were talking. I would be +affected by your actual presence. But writing is so different, and so +strange; at once so much more and so much less intimate. The body is +safe--far away, unassailable; and the spirit lets itself go out to meet +a fellow spirit with the frankness it can never show when the body goes +too, that grievous hinderer of the communion of saints, that officious +blunderer who can spoil the serenest intercourse by a single blush. + +Johanna came in just there. She was decked in smiles, and wanted to say +good-by till to-morrow morning. It is her night out, and she really +looked rather wonderful to one used to her kitchen condition. Her skin, +cleansed from week-day soilure, was surprisingly fair; her hair, waved +more beautifully than mine will ever be, was piled up in bright imposing +masses; her starched white dress had pink ribbons about it; she wore +cotton gloves; and held the handkerchief I lend her on these occasions +genteelly by its middle in her hand. Every second Sunday she descends +the mountain at sunset, the door-key in her pocket, and dances all night +in some convivial _Gasthof_ in the town, coming up again at sunrise or +later according to the amount of fun she was having. On the Monday I do +nearly everything alone, for she sleeps half the day, and the other half +she doesn't like being talked to. She is a good servant, and she would +certainly go if we tried to get her in again under the twelve hours. On +the alternate Sundays we allow her to have her young man up for the +afternoon and evening. He is a trumpeter in the regiment stationed in +Jena, and he brings his trumpet to fill up awkward silences. Engaged +couples of that kind don't seem able to talk much, so that the trumpet +is a great comfort to them. Whenever conversation flags he whips it out +and blows a rousing blast, giving her time to think of something to say +next. I had to ask him to do it in the garden, for the first time it +nearly blew our roof, which isn't very tightly on, off. Now he and she +sit together on a bench outside the door, and the genius down the hill +with the exclusive ears suffers, I am afraid, rather acutely. Papa and I +wander as far away as we can get among the mountains. + +It is rather dreadful when they quarrel. Then, of course, Johanna sulks +as girls will, and sulks are silent things, so that the trumpet has to +fill up a yawning gulf and never leaves off at all. Last Sunday it blew +the whole time we were out, and I expected when I got home to find the +engagement broken off. We stayed away as long as we could, climbing +higher and higher, wandering further and further, supping at last +reluctantly on cucumber salad and cold herrings in the little restaurant +up on the Schweizerhohe because the trumpet wouldn't stop and we didn't +dare go home till it did. Its blasts pursued us even into the recesses +of the dingy wooden hall we took our ears into, vainly trying to carry +them somewhere out of range. It seemed to be a serious quarrel. We had a +depressing meal. We both esteem Johanna with the craven esteem you feel +for a person, at any moment capable of giving notice, who does all the +unpleasant things you would otherwise have to do yourself. The state of +her temper seriously affects our peace. You see, the house is small, and +if her trumpeter has been unsatisfactory and she throws the saucepans +about or knocks the broom in sweeping against all the wooden things like +doors and skirting-boards, it makes an unendurable clatter and puts an +end at once to Papa's work and to my equally earnest play. If, her +nerves being already on edge, I were to suggest to her even smilingly to +be quiet, she would at once give notice--I know she would--and the +dreary search begin again for that impossible treasure you in England +call a paragon and we in Jena call a pearl. Where am I to find a clean, +honest, strong pearl, able to cook and willing to come and live in what +is something like an unopened oyster-shell, so shut-up, so cut-off so +solitary would her existence here be, for eight pounds a year? It is +easy for you august persons who never see your servants, who have so +many that by sheer force of numbers they become unnoticeable, to deride +us who have only one for being so greatly at her mercy. I know you will +deride. I see your letter already: 'Dear Fräulein Schmidt, Is not your +attitude toward the maid Johanna unworthy?' It isn't unworthy, because +it is natural. Defiantly I confess that it is also cringing. Well, it is +natural to cringe under the circumstances. So would you. I dare say if +your personal servant is a good one, and you depend much on him for +comfort, you do do it as it is. And there are very few girls in Jena who +would come out of it and take a situation on the side of a precipice for +eight pounds a year. Really the wages are small, balanced against the +disadvantages. And wages are going up. Down in Jena a good servant can +get ten pounds a year now without much difficulty. So that it behooves +us who cannot pay such prices to humor Johanna. + +About nine the trumpet became suddenly dumb. Papa and I, after waiting a +few minutes, set out for home, conjecturing as we went in what state we +should find Johanna. Did the silence mean a rupture or a making-up? I +inclined toward the rupture, for how can a girl, I asked Papa, murmur +mild words of making-up to a lover engaged in blowing a trumpet? Papa +said he didn't know; and engrossed by fears we walked home without +speaking. + +No one was to be seen. The house was dark and empty. Everything was +quiet except the crickets. The trumpeter had gone, but so, apparently, +had Johanna. She had forgotten to lock the door, so that all we--or +anybody else passing that way--had to do was to walk in. Nobody, +however,--and by nobody I mean the criminally intentioned, briefly +burglars--walks into houses perched as ours is. They would be very +breathless burglars by the time they got to our garden gate. We should +hear their stertorous breathing as they labored up well in time to lock +the door; and Papa, ever pitiful and polite, would as likely as not +unlock it again to hasten out and offer them chairs and lemonade. It was +not, then, with any misgivings of that sort that we went into our +deserted house and felt about for matches; but I was surprised that +Johanna, when she could sit comfortably level on the seat by the door, +should rather choose to go and stroll in the garden. You cannot stroll +in my garden. You can do very few of the things in it that most people +can do in most gardens, and certainly strolling is not one of them. It +is no place for lovers, or philosophers, or leisurely persons of the +sort. It is an unrestful place, in which you are forced to be energetic, +to watch where you put your feet, to balance yourself to a nicety, to be +continually on the alert. I lit a lantern, and went out in search of +Johanna strolling. I stood on the back door steps and looked right and +looked left. No Johanna. No sounds of Johanna. Only the crickets, and +the soft darting by of a bat. I went down the steps--they are six +irregular stones embedded one beneath the other in the clay and leading +to the pump from which, in buckets, we supply our need for water--and +standing still again, again heard only crickets. I went to the +mignonette beds I have made--mignonette and nasturtiums; mignonette for +scent and nasturtiums for beauty, and I hope you like nasturtiums--and +standing still again, again heard only crickets. The night was dark and +soft, and seemed of a limitless vastness. The near shrill of the +crickets made the silence beyond more intense. A cat prowled past, +velvet-footed, silent as the night, a vanishing gray streak, intent and +terrible, concentrated wholly on prey. I went on through the grass, my +shoes wet with dew, the lantern light fitfully calling out my +possessions from the blackness,--the three apple-trees, the +currant-bush, the pale group of starworts, children of some accidental +wind-dropped seed of long ago; and beside the starworts I stopped again +and listened. Still only the crickets; and presently very far away the +whistle of the night express from Berlin to Munich as it hurried past +the little station in the Paradies valley. It was extraordinarily quiet. +Once I thought my own heart-beats were the footsteps of a late wanderer +on the road. I went further, down to the very end, to the place where my +beautiful, untiring monthly-rose bush unfolds pink flower after pink +flower against the fence that separates us from our neighbor's kingdom, +and stopped again and listened. At first still only crickets, and the +anxious twitter of a bird toward whose nest that stealthy, murderous +streak of gray was drawing. It began to rain; soft, warm drops, from the +motionless clouds spread low across the sky. I forgot Johanna, and +became wholly possessed by the brooding spirit of the night, by the +feeling of oneness, of identity with the darkness, the silence, the +scent. My feet were wet with dew; my hair with the warm and gentle rain. +I lifted up my face and let the drops fall on it through the leaves of +the apple-trees, warm and gentle as a caress. Then the sudden blare of a +trumpet made me start and quiver. I quivered so much that the lantern +fell down and went out. The blare was the loudest noise I thought I had +ever heard, ripping up the silence like a jagged knife. The startled +hills couldn't get over it, but went on echoing and re-echoing it, +tossing it backward and forward to each other in an endless surprise, +and had hardly settled down again with a kind of shudder when they were +roused to frenzy by another. After that there was blare upon blare. The +man only stopped to take breath. They were louder, more rollicking than +any I had heard him produce. And they came from the neighbor's house, +from the very dwelling of him of the easily tortured ears, of him for +whom Wagner is not good enough. Well, do you know what he had done? I +ran down to question, and to extract Johanna and explain the trumpeter, +and I met the poor genius, very pale and damp-looking, his necktie +struggled up behind to the top of his collar, its bow twisted round +somehow under his left ear. He was hurrying out into the night as I +arrived, panting, on the doorstep. 'Why in the world--' I began; but a +blast drowned further speech. + +He flung up his hands, and the darkness engulfed him. + +'It's raining,' I tried to cry after his hatless figure. + +I thought I heard him call back something about Pilsner--'It's the +Pilsner,' I thought I heard him say; but the noise coming from the +kitchen was too violent for me to be sure. + +His father was in the passage, walking up and down it, his hands in his +pockets, his shoulders up to his ears as though he were shrinking from +blows. He told me what his unhappy son had done. Not able to endure the +trumpet when it was being blown up at our house earlier in the evening, +not able to endure it even softened, chastened, subdued by distance and +the intervening walls, he had directed his mother to go up and invite +the player down to her kitchen, where he was to be cajoled into eating +and drinking, because, as the son explained, full of glee at his +sagacity, no man who is eating and drinking can at the same time be +blowing a trumpet. 'Thus,' said his father, in jerks coincident with the +breath-takings of the trumpeter, 'did he hope to obtain peace.' + +'But he didn't,' said I. + +'No. For a period there was extreme, delicious quiet. Mother'--so he +invariably describes his wife--' sacrificed her best sausage, for how +shall we permit our son to be tortured? The bread was spread with butter +three centimeters deep. The trumpeter and his _Schatz_ sat quietly in +the kitchen eating it. We sat quietly on the veranda discussing great +themes. Then that good beer my son so often praises, that excellent, +barrel-kept, cellar-lodged Pilsner beer, bright as amber, clear as ice, +cool as--cool as--' + +'A cucumber,' I assisted. + +'Good. Very good. As a cucumber--as a salad of cucumbers.' + +'No, no--there's pepper in a salad. You'd better just keep to plain +cucumber,' I interrupted, always rather nice in the matter of images. + +'Cool, then, as plain cucumber--this usually admirable stuff instead of, +as we had expected, sending him gradually and pleasantly to sleep--I +mean, of course, making him gradually and pleasantly so sleepy that +thoughts of his bed, growing in affection with every glass, would cause +him to arise and depart to his barracks,--woke him up. And, my dear +Fräulein, you yourself heard--you are hearing now--how completely it did +it.' + +'Is he--is he--?' I inquired nervously. + +The neighbor nodded. 'He is,' he said; 'he has consumed fourteen +glasses.' + +And indeed he was; and I should say from the tumult, from the +formlessness of it, the tunelessness, the rollicksomeness, that never +was anybody more so. + +'I fear my son will leave us for some quieter spot before his holiday is +over,' said the neighbor, looking distressed. + +And perhaps it will convince you more than anything else I have said of +the extreme value of our Johannas, when I tell you that, goaded by the +noise and by his disappointed face to rash promises, I declared I would +dismiss the girl unless she broke off such an engagement, and he stared +at me for a moment in astonishment and then resignedly shook his head +and said with the weary conviction of a householder of thirty years' +standing, '_Das geht doch nicht._' + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLIII + +Galgenberg, Sept. 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--But it is true. Our servants do not get more than +from 100 to 250 marks a year, and indeed I think it is a great deal and +cannot see why, because you spend as much (you say you do, so I must +believe it) in a month on gloves and ties, it should make you hate +yourself. Do not hate yourself. Your doing so doesn't make us pay our +servants more. Why, how do you suppose we could get all we need out of +our hundred pounds a year--I translate our marks into your pounds for +your greater convenience--if we had to give a servant more than eight of +them and for our house more than fifteen? Papa and I do not like to be +kept hungry in the matter of books, and we shall probably spend every +penny of our income; but I know a number of families with children who +live decently and have occasional coffee-parties and put by for their +daughters' _trousseaux_ on the same sum. As for the servants themselves, +have I not described Johanna's splendid appearance on her Sundays, her +white dress and gloves, and the pink ribbons round her waist? She finds +her wages will buy these things and still leave enough for the +savings-bank. She is quite content. Only I don't know if she would +remain so if you were to come and lament over her and tell her what a +little way you make the same money go. You see, she would probably not +grasp the true significance of the admission, which is, I take it, not +that she has too little but that you spend too much. Yet how can I from +my Galgenberg judge what is necessary in gloves and ties for a splendid +young man like yourself? The sum seems to me terrific. There must be +stacks of gloves and ties constantly growing higher about your path. +You, then, spend on these two things alone almost exactly what we three +spend in a year on everything. But my astonishment is only the measure +of my ignorance. Do not hate yourself. Either spend the money without +compunction, or, if you have compunction, don't spend it. A sinner +should always, I think, sin gayly or not at all. I don't mean that you +in this are a sinner; I only mean that as a general principle +half-hearted sinners are contemptible. It is a poor creature who while +he sins is sorry. If he must sin, let him at least do it with all his +heart, and having done it waste no time in whimpers but try to turn his +back on it and his face toward the good. Please do not hate yourself. I +am sure you have to have the things. Your letter is more than usually +depressed. Please do not hate yourself. It does no good and lowers your +vitality. It is as bad as sorrow, which surely is very bad. I think +nothing great was done by any one who wasted time peering about among +his faults; but if ever you meet the pastor who prepared me for +confirmation don't tell him I said so. I don't know how it is with yours +in England, but here the pastors seem altogether unable to bear +listening to descriptions of plain facts. When they come to doctor my +soul, why may I not tell them its symptoms as badly as I tell my body's +symptoms to the physician who would heal it? He is not shocked or angry +when I show him my sore places; he recommends a plaster or a dose, +encourages, and goes away. But your spiritual doctor takes your +spiritual sore places as a kind of personal affront; at least, his +manner often shows indignation in proportion as you are frank. Instead +of being patient, he hardly lets you speak; instead of prescribing, he +denounces; instead of helping, he passionately scolds; and so you do not +go to him again, but fight through your later miseries alone. Just at +the time of my preparation for confirmation my mother died. My heart, +blank with sorrow, was very fit for religious impressions and +consolations. The preparation lasts two years, and three times every +week during that time I went to classes. For two years I was not allowed +to dance or to go to even the mildest parties. For two years, from +sixteen to eighteen, I was earnest, prayerful, humbly seeking after +righteousness. Then one day, when questionings had come upon me that my +conscience could not approve, I went to the pastor who had prepared me +as confidently as I would go with a toothache to a dentist, and bared my +sensitive conscience to him and begged to have my thoughts arranged and +my doubts and questionings settled. To my amazement and extreme fright I +beheld him shocked, angry, hardly able to endure hearing me tell all I +had been wondering. It seemed very strange. I sat at last with downcast +eyes, silent, ashamed, my heart shrunk back into reserve and frost. I +was not being helped; I was being scolded, and bitterly scolded. At last +at the door some special word of blame stung me to heat, and I cried, +'Herr Pastor, when my tongue is bad and I show it to a doctor, he gives +me a pill. Are you not the doctor of my spirit? Why, then, when I come +to you to be healed, do you, instead of giving me medicine, so cruelly +rate me?' + +And he, staring at me a moment aghast, struck his hands together above +his head. 'Thy father!' he cried, 'Thy father! It is he who speaks--it +is he speaking in thee. Such words come not unaided from the mouth of +eighteen, from the mouth of one confirmed by these very hands. _Ach_, +miserable maiden, it is not with such as thee that Paradise is peopled. +The taint of thy parentage is heavy upon thee. Thou art not, thou canst +not be, thou hast never been, a child of God.' + +And that was all I got for my pains. + +Tell me, what mood were you in when you wrote? Was it not, apart from +its dejection, one rather inclined to peevishness? You ask, for +instance, why I write so much about a tipsy trumpeter when I know you +are anxious to hear about the other things I never tell you. I can't +imagine what they are. You must let me write how and what I like--bear +with me while I discourse of roses and nasturtium-beds, of rain and +sunshine, clouds and wind, cats, birds, servants, even trumpeters. My +life holds nothing greater than these. If you want to hear from me you +must hear also of them. And why have you taken so bitter a dislike to +our gifted young neighbor down the hill, calling him contemptuously a +fiddler? He is certainly a fiddler, if to fiddle in one's hours of ease +produces one, and perhaps you would be twice as happy as you are if you +could fiddle half so wonderfully as he does. He is gone. His holiday +either came to an end or was put to an end by Johanna's _fiancé._ Now, +in these early September days, this season of mists and mellow +fruitfulness, of cloudy mornings and calm evenings and golden +afternoons, he has turned his back on the hills and forests, on the +reddening creepers and sweetening grapes, on the splash of water among +ferns and rocks, on all those fresh, quiet things that make life worth +having, and is sitting at a desk somewhere in Berlin doggedly bent on +becoming, by means of a great outlay of days and years, a _Landrath_, a +_Regierungsrath,_ a _Geheimrath_, and a _Wirklicher Geheimrath mit dem +Prädikat Excellenz_. When he has done that he will take down his hat and +go forth at last to enjoy life, and will find to his surprise that it +isn't there, that it is all behind him, a heap of dusty days piled in +the corners of offices, and that his knees shake as he goes about +looking for it, and that he can no longer even tune his fiddle by +himself but has to have it done for him by the footman. + +Isn't that what happens to all you wise men, so prudently determined to +make your way in the world? You must be very sure of another life, or +how could you bear to squander this? The things you are missing--oh, the +things you are missing!--while you so carefully add little gain to +little gain, or what I would rather call little loss to little loss. I +see no point in slaving day after day through one's best years. Suppose +you do not, in the end, have a footman to open your door--the footman +is merely a symbol, conveniently expressing the multitude of +superfluities that gather about the declining years of the person who +has got on, things bought with the sacrifice of his life, and none of +them giving him back the lost power, gone with youth, to enjoy +them--suppose, then, you do not end gloriously with a footman, what of +that? I must be blind, for I never can see the desirability of these +trappings. Yet they surely are of an immense desirability, since +everybody, really everybody, is willing to give so much in payment for +them. Our elder neighbor down the hill has actually given his eyes and +his back; he peers at life through spectacles, and walks about like +Wordsworth's leech-gatherer, bent double through poking about for years +in the muddy pools of little boys' badly written exercises; and here he +is at fifty still not satisfied with what he has earned, still going on +drudging the whole year round, except for his six short weeks in summer. +His wife is thrifty; they have only the one son; they live frugally; +long ago they must have put by enough to keep them warm and fed and +clothed without his doing another stroke of work. + +I was interrupted there by a message from him asking if I would come +down and help him gather up the windfalls in his orchard, his wife being +busy pickling beans. I went, my head full of what I had just been +writing to you, and I gathered up together with the apples a little +lesson in the foolishness of officious and hasty criticism. It was this +way: + +Our baskets being full, and our backs rested, he groaned and said that +in another week he must leave for Weimar. + +'But you like your work,' said I. + +'I detest my work,' he said peevishly. 'I detest teaching. I detest +little boys.' + +'Then why--' I began, but stopped. + +'Why? Why? Because I detest it is no reason why I should not do it.' + +'Yes, it is.' + +'What, and at my age begin another?' + +'No, no.' + +'You would not have me idle?' + +'Yes, I would.' + +He stared at me gravely through his spectacles. 'This is unprincipled,' +he said. + +I laughed. It is years since I have observed that the principled groan a +good deal and make discontented criticisms of life, and I don't think I +care to be one of them. + +'It is,' he persisted, seeing that I only laughed. + +'Is it?' said I. + +'It is man's lot to work,' said he. + +'Is it?' said I. + +'Certainly,' said he. + +'All day?' + +'If he cannot get it done in less time, certainly.' + +'_Every_ day?' + +'Certainly.' + +'All through the years of his life?' + +'All through the years of his strength, certainly.' + +'What for?' + +'My dear young lady, have you been living again on vegetables lately?' + +'Why?' + +'Your words sound as though your thoughts were watery.' + +A nettled silence fell upon me, and while I was arranging how best to +convince him of their substance he was shaking his head and saying that +it was strange how the most intelligent women are unable really to +think. 'Water,' he continued, 'is indispensable in its proper place and +good in many others where, strictly, it might be done without. I have +nothing to say against watery emotions, watery sentiments, even watery +affections, especially in ladies, who would be less charming in +proportion as they were more rigid. Ebb and flow, uncertainty, +instability, unaccountableness, are becoming to your sex. But in the +region of thought, of the intellect, of pure reason, everything should +be very dry. The one place, my dear young lady, in which I will endure +no water is on the brain.' + +I had no answer ready. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to go +home. I did go a few steps up the orchard, reflecting on the way men +have of telling you you cannot think, or are not logical, at the very +moment when you appear to yourself to be most unanswerable--a +regrettable habit that at once puts a stop to interesting +conversation,--and presently, as I was nearing our fence, he called +after me. 'Fräulein Rose-Marie,' he called pleasantly. + +'Well?' said I, looking down at him over a displeased shoulder. + +'Come back.' + +'No.' + +'Come back and dine with us.' + +'No.' + +'There is mutton for dinner, and before that a soup full of the +concentrated strength of beasts. Up there I know you will eat carrots +and stewed apples, and I shall never be able to make you see what I +see.' + +'Heaven forbid that I ever should.' + +'What, you do not desire to be reasonable?' + +'I don't choose to argue with you.' + +'Have I done anything?' + +'You are not logical enough for me,' said I, anxious to be beforehand +with the inevitable remark. + +'Come, come,' said he, his face crinkling into smiles. + +'It's true,' said I. + +'Come back and prove it.' + +'Useless.' + +'You cannot.' + +'I will not.' + +'It is the same thing.' + +I went on up the hill. + +'Fräulein Rose-Marie!' + +'Well?' + +'Come back.' + +'No.' + +'Come back, and tell me why you think I ought to give up my work and sit +for the rest of my days with hanging hands.' + +I turned and looked down at him. 'Because,' I said, 'are you not fifty? +And is not that high time to begin and get something out of life?' + +He adjusted his spectacles, and stared up at me attentively. 'Continue,' +he said. + +'I look at your life, at all those fifty years of it, and I see it +insufferably monotonous.' + +'Continue.' + +'Dull.' + +'Continue.' + +'Dusty.' + +'Continue.' + +'Dreary.' + +'Continue.' He nodded his head gently at each adjective and counted them +off on his fingers. + +'I see it full of ink-spots, dog-eared grammars, and little boys.' + +'Continue.' + +'It is a constant going over the same ground--in itself a maddening +process. No sooner do the boys reach a certain age and proficiency and +become slightly more interesting than they go on to somebody else, and +you begin again at the beginning with another batch. You teach in a +bare-walled room with enormous glaring windows, and the ring of the +electric tram-bell in the street below makes the commas in your +sentences. You have been doing this every day for thirty years. The boys +you taught at first are fathers of families now. The trees in the +playground have grown from striplings into big shady things. Everything +has gone on, and so have you--but you have only gone on getting drier +and more bored.' + +'Continue,' said he, smiling. + +'Your intelligence,' said I, coming down a little nearer, 'restless at +first, and for ever trying to push green shoots through the thick rind +of routine--' + +'Good. Quite good. Continue.' + +'--through to a wider space, a more generous light--' + +'Poetic. Quite poetic. My compliments.' + +'Thank you. Your intelligence, then, for ever--for ever--you've +interrupted me, and I don't know where I'd got to.' + +'You have got to my intelligence having green shoots.' + +'Oh, yes. Well, they're not green now. That's the point I've been +stumbling toward. They ought to be, if you had taken bigger handfuls of +leisure and had not wholly wasted your time drudging. But now they ought +to be more than shoots--great trees, in whose shade we all would sit +gratefully, and you enjoying free days, with the pleasant memory of free +years behind you and the cheerful hope of roomy years to come. And +during all that time of your imprisonment in a class-room the world +outside went on its splendid way, the seasons filled it with beauty +which you were not there to see, the sun shone and warmed other people, +the winds blew and made other people's flesh tingle and their blood +dance--you, of course, were cramped up with cold feet and a +headache--the birds sang to other people tunes of heaven, while in your +ears buzzed only the false quantities of reluctant little boys, the +delicious rain--' + +'Stop, stop. You forget I had to earn a living.' + +'Of course you had. But you know you earned your _living_ long ago. What +you are earning now is much more like your dying--the dying, the atrophy +of your soul. What does it matter if your wife has one bonnet less a +year, and no silk dress--' + +'Do not let her hear you,' he said, glancing round. + +'--or if you keep no servant, and have less to eat on Sundays than your +neighbors, give no parties, and don't cumber yourselves up with +acquaintances who care nothing for you? If you gave up these things you +could also give up drudging. You are too old to drudge. You have been +too old these twenty years. A man of your brains--' he pretended to look +grateful--'who cannot earn enough between twenty and thirty to keep him +from the necessity of slaving for the rest of his days is not--is not--' + +'Worthy of the name of man?' + +'I don't know that that's a great thing,' said I doubtfully. + +'Let it pass. It is an accepted ending to a sentence beginning as yours +did. And now, my dear young lady, you have preached me a sermon--' + +'Not a sermon.' + +'Permitted me, then, to be present at a lecture--' + +'Not a lecture.' + +'Anyhow held forth on the unworthily puny outer conditions of my +existence. Tell me, now, one thing. I concede the ink-spots, the little +boys, the monotony, the tram-bells, the regrettable number of years; +they are all there, and you with your vivid imagination see them all. +But tell me one thing: has it never occurred to you that they are the +merest shell, the merest husk and envelopment, and that it is possible +that in spite of them--' his voice grew serious--'my life may be very +rich within?' + +And you, my friend, tell me another thing. Am I not desperately, +hopelessly horrid? Short-sighted? Impertinent? The readiest jumper at +conclusions? The most arrogant critic of other people? Rich within. Of +course. Hidden with God. That is what I have never seen when I have +looked on superciliously from the height of my own idleness at these +drudging lives. And see how amazing has been my foolishness, for would +not my own life judged from outside, this life here alone with Papa, +this restricted, poor, solitary life, my first youth gone, my future +without prospects, no distractions, few friends, Papa's affection +growing vaguer as he grows older, would it not, looked at as I have been +looking at my neighbor's, seem entirely blank and desolate? Yet how +sincerely can I echo what he said--My life is very rich within. Yours +sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLIV + +Galgenberg, Sept. 16th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is kind of you to want to contradict what I +said in my last letter about the outward appearance of my life, but +really you know I _am_ past my first youth. At twenty-six I cannot +pretend to be what is known as a young girl, and I don't want to. Not +for anything would I be seventeen or eighteen again. I like to be a +woman grown, to have entered into the full possession of whatever +faculties I am to have, to know what I want, to look at things in their +true proportions. I don't know that eighteen has anything that +compensates for that. It is such a rudderless sort of age. It may be +more charming to the beholder, but it is not half so nice to the person +herself. What is the good of loving chocolate to distraction when it +only ends by making you sick? And the joy of a new frock or hat is +dashed at once when you meet the superior gorgeousness of some other +girl's frock or hat. And parties are often disappointing things. And +students, though they are deeply interesting, easily lead to tiresome +complications if they admire you, and if they don't that isn't very nice +either. Why, even the young man in the cake-shop who used so gallantly +to serve us with lemonade and had such wonderful curly eyelashes was not +much good really, for he couldn't be invited to tea, and whenever we +wanted to look at his eyelashes we had to buy a cake, and cakes are +dreadfully expensive for persons who have no money. Yes, it is a silly, +tittering, calf-like age, and I am glad it can't come back again. Please +do not think that I need comforting because it is gone, or because of +any of the other items in the list I gave you. The future looks quite +pleasant to me,--quite bright and sunny. It is only empty of what people +call prospects, by which I take them to mean husbands, but I shall fill +it with pigs instead. I have great plans. I see what can be done with +even one pig from my neighbor's example, who has dug out a sort of +terrace and put a sty on it: simply wonders. And how much more could be +done with two. I mean to be a very happy old maid. I shall fix my +attention in the mornings on remunerative objects like pigs, and spend +beautiful afternoons, quite idle physically but with my soul busy up +among the poets. Later on in distant years, when Papa doesn't want me +any more, I shall try to find a little house somewhere where it is flat, +so that I can have other creatures about me besides bees, which are the +only live stock I can keep here. And you mustn't think I shall not be +happy, because I shall. _So happy_. I am happy now, and I mean to be +happy then; and when I am very old and have to die I shall be happy +about that too. I shall 'lay me down with a will,' as the bravest of +your countrymen sang. + +Do my plans seem to you selfish? I expect they do. People so easily call +those selfish who stand a little aside and look on at life. We have a +poet of whom we are proud, but whose fame has not, I think, reached +across to England, a rugged, robust poet, not very far below Goethe, a +painter on large canvasses, best at mighty scenes, perhaps least good in +small things, in lyrics, in the things in which Heine was so exquisite; +and he for my encouragement has said, + + Bei sich selber fangt man an, + Da man nicht Allen helfen kann. + +Isn't it a nice jingle? The man's name is Hebbel, and he lived round +about the forties, and perhaps you know more of him than I do, and I +have been arrogant again; but it is a jingle that has often cheered me +when I was afraid I ought to be teaching somebody something, or making +clothes for somebody, or paying somebody domiciliary visits and talking +fluently of the _lieber Gott_. I shrink from these things; and a +shrinking visitor, shy and uncertain, cannot be so nice as no visitor at +all. Is it very wrong of me? When my conscience says it is--it does not +say so often--I try to make up by going into the kitchen and asking +Johanna kind questions about her mother. I must say she is rather odd +when I do. She not only doesn't meet me half-way, she doesn't come even +part of the way. She clatters her saucepans with an energy very like +fury, and grows wholly monosyllabic. Yet it is not her step-mother; it +is her very own mother, and it ought to be the best way of touching +responsive chords in her heart and making her feel I am not merely a +mistress but a friend. Once, struck by the way the lids of the saucepans +were falling about, I tried her with her father, but the din instantly +became so terrific that I was kept silent quite a long time, and when it +left off felt instinctively that I had better say something about the +weather. I don't think I told you that after that trumpeting Sunday, +moved to real compassion by the sufferings of him you call the fiddler +man, I took my courage in both hands and told Johanna with the +pleasantest of smiles--I daresay it was really a rather ghastly +one--that her trumpeter must not again bring his instrument with him +when he called. 'It can so very well stay at home,' I explained suavely. + +She immediately said she would leave on the first of October. + +'But, Johanna!' I cried. + +She repeated the formula. + +'But, Johanna! How can a clever girl like you be so unreasonable? He is +to visit you as often as before. All we beg is that it shall be done +without music.' + +She repeated the formula. + +'But, Johanna!' I expostulated again,--eloquent exclamation, expressing +the most varied sentiments. + +She once again repeated the formula; and next day I was forced to +descend into Jena, shaking an extremely rueful fist at the neighbor's +house on the way, and set about searching in the obscurity of a registry +office for the pearl we are trying all our lives to find. + +This office consists of two rooms, the first filled with servants +looking for mistresses, and the second with mistresses looking for +servants. A Fräulein of vague age but determined bearing sits at a desk +in the second room, and notes in a ledger the requirements of both +parties. They are always the same: the would-be mistress, full of a +hopefulness that crops up again and again to the end of her days, +causing attributes like _fleissig, treu, ehrlich, anständig, +arbeitslieb, kinderlieb_, to be written down together with her demands +in cooking, starching, and ironing, and often adding the information +that though the wages may appear small they are not really so, owing to +the unusually superior quality of the treatment; and the would-be maid, +briefer because without illusions, dictates her firm resolve to go +nowhere where there is cooking, washing, or a baby. + +'_Gott, diese Mädchen_,' exclaimed a waiting lady to me as I arrived, +hot and ruffled after my long tramp in the sun. I dropped into a chair +beside her; and hot and ruffled as I was, she, who had been sitting +there hours, was still more so. In her agitation she had cried out to +the first human being at hand, the Fräulein at the desk having something +too distinctly inhuman about her--strange as a result of her long and +intimate intercourse with human beings--to be lightly applied to for +sympathy. Then looking at me again she cried, 'Why, it is the good +Rose-Marie!' And I saw she was an old friend of my step-mother's, Frau +Meyer, the wife of one of the doctors at the Lunatic Asylum, who used to +come in often while you were with us, and whenever she came in you went +out. + +'Not married yet?' she asked as we shook hands, smiling as though the +joke were good. + +I smiled with an equal conviction of its goodness, and said I was not. + +'Not even engaged?' + +'Not even engaged,' said I, smiling more broadly, as if infinitely +tickled. + +'You must be quick,' said she. + +I admitted the necessity by a nod. + +'You are twenty-six--I know your age because poor Emilie'--Emilie was my +step-mother--'was married ten years, and when she married you were +sixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I had +already had four children. What do you think of that?' + +I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to the +waiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean, +honest--' + +'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyer +with a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the first +coffee-party of the season--' + +'What, in summer?' + +'It is not summer in September. If the weather chooses to pretend it is +I cannot help it. It is autumn, and I will no longer endure the want of +social gatherings. Invariably I find the time between the last Coffee of +spring and the first of autumn almost unendurable. What do you do, +Rose-Marie, up there on that horrible mountain of yours, to pass the +time?' + +Pass the time? I who am so much afraid of Time's passing me that I try +to catch at him as he goes, pull him back, make him creep slowly while I +squeeze the full preciousness out of every minute? I gazed at her +abstractedly, haunted by the recollection of flying days, days gone so +quickly, vanished before I well knew how happy I was being. 'I really +couldn't tell you,' I said. + +'Hard-working, clean, honest,--' read out the Fräulein, reminding me +that I was busy. + +'Moral,' I dictated, 'able to wash--' + +'You will never find one,' interrupted Frau Meyer again. 'At least, +never one who is both moral and able to wash. Two good things don't go +together with these girls, I find. The trouble I am in for want of one! +They are as scarce and as expensive as roses in December. Since April I +have had three, and all had to leave by the merest accident--nothing at +all to do with the place or me; but the ones in there seem to know there +have been three in the time, and make the most extravagant demands. I +have been here the whole morning, and am in despair.' + +She stopped to fan herself with her handkerchief. + +'Able to wash,' I resumed, 'iron, cook, mend--have you any one suitable, +Fräulein?' + +'Many,' was the laconic answer. + +'I'm afraid we cannot give more than a hundred and sixty marks,' said I. + +'Pooh,' said Frau Meyer; and there was a pause in the scratching of the +pen. + +'But there are no children,' I continued. + +The pen went on more glibly. Frau Meyer fanned herself harder. + +'And only two _Herrschaften_.' + +The pen skimmed over the paper. + +'We live up--we live up on the Galgenberg.' + +The pen stopped dead. + +'You will never find one who will go up there,' cried Frau Meyer +triumphantly. 'I need not fear your taking a good one away from me. They +will not leave the town.' + +The Fräulein rang a bell and called out a name. 'It is another one for +you, Frau Doctor,' she said; and a large young lady came in from the +other room. 'The general servant Fräulein Ottilie Krummacher--Frau +Doctor Meyer,' introduced the Fräulein. 'I think you may suit each +other.' + +'It is time you showed me some one who will,' groaned Frau Meyer. 'Six +have I already interviewed, and the demands of all are enough to make my +mother, who was Frau Gutsbesitzer Grosskopf of the Grosskopfs of +Grosskopfsecke, born Knoblauch, and a lady of the most exact knowledge +in household matters, turn in her grave.' + +'Town?' asked the large girl quickly, hardly allowing Frau Meyer to get +to a full stop, and obviously callous as to the Grosskopfs of +Grosskopfsecke. + +'Yes, yes--here, overlooking the market-place and the interesting statue +of the electoral founder of the University. No way to go, therefore, to +market. Enlivening scenes constantly visible from the windows--' + +'Which floor?' + +'Second. Shallow steps, and a nice balustrade. Really hardly higher than +the first floor, or even than an ordinary ground floor, the rooms being +very low.' + +'Washing?' + +'Done out of the house. Except the smallest, fewest trifles such +as--such as--ahem. The ironing, dear Fräulein, I will do mostly myself. +There are the shirts, you know--husbands are particular--' + +'How many?' + +'How many?' echoed Frau Meyer. 'How many what?' + +'Husbands.' + +'_Aber_, Fräulein,' expostulated the secretary. + +'She said husbands,' said the large girl. 'Shirts, then--how many? It's +all the same.' + +'All the same?' cried Frau Meyer, who adored her husband. + +'In the work it makes.' + +'But, dear Fräulein, the shirts are not washed at home.' + +'But ironed.' + +'I iron them.' + +'And I heat the irons and keep up the fire to heat them with.' + +'Yes, yes,' cried Frau Meyer, affecting the extreme pleasure of one who +has just received an eager assurance, 'so you do.' + +The large girl stared. 'Cooking?' she inquired, after a slightly stony +pause. + +'Most of that I will do myself, also. The Herr is very particular. I +shall only need a little--quite a little assistance. And think of all +the new and excellent dishes you will learn to make.' + +The girl waved this last inducement aside as unworthy of consideration. +'Number of persons in the household?' + +Frau Meyer coughed before she could answer. 'Oh,' said she, 'oh, +well--there is my husband, and naturally myself, and then there +are--there are--are you fond of children?' she ended hastily. + +The girl fixed her with a suspicious eye. 'It depends how many there +are,' she said cautiously. + +Frau Meyer got up and leaned over the Fräulein at the desk, and +whispered into her impassive ear. + +The Fräulein shook her head. 'I am afraid it is no use,' she said. + +Frau Meyer whispered again. The Fräulein looked up, and fastening her +eyes on a point somewhere below the large girl's chin said, 'The wages +are good.' + +'What are they?' asked the girl. + +'Considering the treatment you will receive--' the girl's eyes again +became suspicious--'they are excellent.' + +'What are they?' + +'Everything found, and a hundred and eighty marks a year.' + +The girl turned and walked toward the door. + +'Stop! Stop!' cried Frau Meyer desperately. 'I cannot see you throw away +a good place with so little preliminary reflection. Have you considered +that there would be no trudging to market, and consequently you will +only require half the boots and stockings and skirts those poor girls +have to buy who live up in the villas that look so grand and pretend to +give such high wages?' + +The girl paused. + +'And no steep stairs to climb, laden with heavy baskets? And hardly any +washing--hardly any washing, I tell you!' she almost shrieked in her +anxiety. 'And no cooking to speak of? And every Sunday--mind, _every_ +Sunday evening free? And I never scold, and my husband never scolds, and +with a hundred and eighty marks a year there is nothing a clever girl +cannot buy. Why, it is an ideal, a delightful place--one at which I +would jump if I were a girl, and this lady'--indicating me--'would jump, +too, would you not, Rose-Marie?' + +The girl wavered. 'How many children are there?' she asked. + +'Children? Children? Angels, you mean. They are perfect angels, so good +and well-behaved--are they not, Rose-Marie? Fit to go at once to +heaven--_unberufen_--without a day's more training, so little would they +differ in manner when they got there from angels who have been used to +it for years. You are fond of children, Fräulein, I am sure. Naturally +you are. I see it in your nice face. No nice Fräulein is not. And these, +I tell you, are such unusual--' + +'How many are there?' + +'_Ach Gott_, there are only six, and so small still that they can hardly +be counted as six--six of the dearest--' + +The girl turned on her heel. 'I cannot be fond of six,' she said; and +went out with the heavy tread of finality. + +Frau Meyer looked at me. 'There now,' she said, in tones of real +despair. + +'It is very tiresome,' said I, sympathizing the more acutely that I knew +my turn was coming next. + +'Tiresome? It is terrible. In two days I have my Coffee, and no--and +no--and no--' She burst into tears, hiding her face from the +dispassionate stare of the Fräulein at the desk in her handkerchief, and +trying to conceal her sobs by a ceaseless blowing of her nose. + +'I am so sorry,' I murmured, touched by this utter melting. + +An impulse seized me on which I instantly acted. 'Take Johanna,' I +cried. 'Take her for that day. She will at least get you over that. She +is excellent at a party, and knows all about Coffees. I'll send her down +early, and you keep her as late as you like. She would enjoy the outing, +and we can manage quite well for one day without her.' + +'Is that--is that the Johanna you had in the Rauchgasse?' + +'Yes--trained by my step-mother--really good in an emergency.' + +Frau Meyer flung her arms round my neck. '_Ach danke, danke, Du liebes, +gutes Kind_!' she cried, embracing me with a warmth that showed me what +heaps of people she must have asked to her party. + +And I, after the first flush of doing a good deed was over and cool +reflection had resumed its sway, which it did by the time I was toiling +up the hill on the way home after having been unanimously rejected as +mistress by the assembled maidens, I repented; for was not Johanna now +my only hope? 'Frau Meyer,' whispered Reflection in my despondent ear, +'will engage her to go to her permanently on the 1st, and she will go +because of the twenty marks more salary. You have been silly. Of course +she would have stayed with you with a little persuasion rather than have +to look for another place and spend her money at a registry-office. It +is not likely, however, that she will refuse a situation costing her +nothing.' + +But see how true it sometimes is that virtue is rewarded. Johanna went +down as I had promised, and worked all day for Frau Meyer. She was given +a thaler as a present, as much cake and coffee as she could consume, and +received the offer of a permanent engagement when she should leave us. +This she told me standing by my bedside late that night, the candle in +her hand lighting up her heated, shining face, and hair dishevelled by +exertion. 'But,' said she, 'Fräulein Rose-Marie, not for the world would +I take the place. Such a restless lady, such a nervous gentleman, such +numbers of spoilt and sprawling children. If I had not been there today +and beheld it from the inside I would have engaged myself to go. But +after this--' she waved the candle--'never.' + +'What are you going to do, then, Johanna?' I asked, thinking wistfully +of the four years we had passed together. + +'Stay here,' she announced defiantly. + +I put my arms round her neck and kissed her. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + +XLV + +Galgenberg, Sept. 23d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Today I went down to Jena with the girl from next +door who wanted to do such mild shopping as Jena is prepared for, mild +shopping suited to mild purses, and there I drifted into the bookshop in +the market-place where I so often used to drift, and there I found a +book dealing with English poetry from Chaucer onward, with pictures of +the poets who had written it. But before I go on about that--and you'll +be surprised at the amount I have to say--I must explain the girl next +door. I don't think I ever told you that there is one. The neighbor let +his house just before he left, and let it unexpectedly well, the people +taking the upper part of it for a whole year, and this is their +daughter. The neighbor went off jubilant to his little inky boys. 'See,' +said he at parting, 'my life actually threatens to become rich without +as well as within.' + +'Don't,' I murmured, turning as hot as people do when they are reminded +of past foolishness. + +The new neighbors have been here ten days, and I made friends at once +with the girl over the fence. She saw me gathering together into one +miserable haycock the September grass Johanna and I had been hacking at +in turns with a sickle for the last week, and stood watching me with so +evident an interest that at last I couldn't help smiling at her. 'This +is our crop for the winter,' I said, pointing to the haycock; I protest +I have seen many a molehill bigger. + +'It isn't much,' said the girl. + +'No,' I agreed, raking busily. + +'Have you a cow?' she asked. + +'No.' + +'A pig?' + +'No.' + +'No animals?' + +'Bees.' + +The girl was silent; then she said bees were not animals. + +'But they're live-stock,' I said. 'They're the one link that connects us +with farming.' + +'What do you make hay for, then?' + +'Only to keep the grass short, and then we try to imagine it's a lawn.' + +Raking, I came a little nearer; and so I saw she had been, quite +recently, crying. + +I looked at her more attentively. She was pretty, with the prettiness of +twenty; round and soft, fair and smooth. She had on an elaborately +masculine shirt and high stiff collar and tie and pin and belt; and from +under the edge of the hard straw hat tilted up at the back by masses of +burnished coils of hair I saw a pulpy red mouth, the tip of an +indeterminate nose, and two unhappy eyes, tired with crying. + +'How early to begin,' I said. + +'Begin what?' + +'It's not nine yet. Do you always get your crying done by breakfast +time?' + +She flushed all over her face. + +'Forgive me,' I said, industriously raking. 'I'm a rude person.' + +The girl was silent for a few moments; considering, I suppose, whether +she should turn her back on the impertinent stranger once and for all, +or forgive the indiscretion and make friends. + +Well, she made friends. She and I, alone up on the hill, the only +creatures of anything like the same age, sure to see each other +continually in the forests, on the road, over the fence, certainly we +were bound either to a tiresome system of pretending to be unaware of +each other's existence or to be friends. We are friends. It is the +wisest thing to be at all times. In ten days we have become fast +friends, and after the first six she left off crying. + +Now I'll tell you why we have done it so quickly. It is not, as perhaps +you know, my practice to fall easily on the stranger's neck. I am too +lumbering, too slow, too acutely conscious of my shortcomings for that; +really too dull and too awkward for anything but a life almost entirely +solitary. But this girl has lately been in love. It is the common fate. +It happens to us all. That in itself would not stir me to friendship. +The man, however, in defiance of German custom, so strong on this point +that the breaking of it makes a terrific noise, after being publicly +engaged to her, after letting things go so far that the new flat was +furnished, and the wedding-guests bidden, said he was afraid he didn't +love her enough and gave her up. + +When she told me that my heart went out to her with a rush. I shall not +stop to explain why, but it did rush, and from that moment I felt that I +must put my arms round her, I, the elder and quieter, take her by the +hand, help her to dry her poor silly eyes, pet her and make her happy +again. And really after six days there was no more crying, and for the +last three she has been looking at life with something of the critical +indifference that lifts one over so many tiresome bits of the road. +Unfortunately her mother doesn't like me. Don't you think it's dreadful +of her not to? She fears I am emancipated, and knows that I am Schmidt. +If I were a Wedel, or an Alvensleben, or a Schulenburg, or of any other +ancient noble family, even an obscure member of its remotest branch, she +would consider my way of living and talking merely as a thing to be +smiled at with kind indulgence. But she knows that I am Schmidt. Nothing +I can say or do, however sweet and sane, can hide that horrid fact. And +she knows that my father is a careless child of nature, lamentably +unimpressible by birth and office; that my mother was an Englishwoman +with a name inspiring little confidence; and that we let ourselves go to +an indecent indifference to appearances, not even trying to conceal that +we are poor. How useless it is to be pleasant and pretty--I really have +been very pleasant to her, and the daughter kindly tells me I am +pretty--if you are both Schmidt and poor. Though I speak with the +tongues of angels and have no family it avails me nothing. If I had +family and no charity I would get on much better in the world, in +defiance of St. Paul. Frau von Lindeberg would take me to her heart, +think me distinguished where now she thinks me odd, think me witty where +now she thinks me bold, listen to my speeches, laugh at my sallies, be +interested in my gardening and in my efforts to live without meat; but +here I am, burning, I hope, with charity, with love for my neighbors, +with ready sympathy, eager friendliness, desire to be of use, and it all +avails me nothing because my name is Schmidt. + +It is the first time I have been brought into daily contact with our +nobility. In Jena there were very few: rare bright spots here and there +on the sober background of academic middle-class; little stars whose +shining even from a distance made us blink. Now I see them every day, +and find them very chilly and not in the least dazzling. I no longer +blink. Perhaps Frau von Lindeberg feels that I do not, and cannot +forgive an unblinking Schmidt. But really, now, these pretensions are +very absurd. The free blood of the Watsons surges within me at the sight +of them. I think of things like Albion's daughters, and Britannia ruling +waves, and I feel somehow that it is a proud thing to be partly Watson +and to have had progenitors who lived in a house called The Acacias in a +street called Plantagenet Road, which is what the Watsons did. What +claims have these Lindebergs to the breathless, nay, sprawling respect +they apparently demand? Here is a retired Colonel who was an officer all +his life, and, not clever enough to go on to the higher military +positions, was obliged to retire at fifty. He belongs to a good family, +and married some one of slightly better birth than his own. She was a +Freiin--Free Lady--von Dammerlitz, a family, says Papa, large, +unpleasant, and mortgaged. It has given Germany no great warriors or +statesmen. Its sons have all been officers who did not turn that corner +round which the higher honors lie, and its daughters either did not +marry at all, being portionless, or married impossible persons, said +Papa, such as-- + +'Such as?' I inquired, expecting to hear they married postmen. + +'Pastors, my dear,' said Papa smiling. + +'Pastors?' I said, surprised, pastors having seemed to me, who view them +from their own level, eminently respectable and desirable as husbands. + +'But not from the Dammerlitz point of view, my dear,' said Papa. + +'Oh,' said I, trying to imagine how pastors would look seen from that. + +Well, here are these people freezing us into what they consider our +proper place whenever we come across them, taking no pains to hide what +undesirable beings we are in their sight, staring at Papa's hat in +eloquent silence when it is more than usually tilted over one ear, +running eyes that chill my blood over my fustian clothes--I'm not sure +what fustian is, but I'm quite sure my clothes are made of it--oddly +deaf when we say anything, oddly blind when we meet anywhere unless we +actually run into them, here they are, doing all these things every day +with a repeated gusto, and with no reason whatever that I can see to +support their pretensions. Is it so wonderful to be a _von_? For that is +all, look as I will, that I can see they have to go on. They are poor, +as the retired officer invariably is, and they spend much time +pretending they are not. They know nothing; he has spent his best years +preoccupied with the routine of his calling, which leaves no room for +anything approaching study or interest in other things, she in bringing +up her son, also an officer, and in taking her daughter to those parties +in Berlin that so closely resemble, I gather from the girl Vicki's talk, +the parties in Jena--a little wider, a little more varied, with more +cups and glasses, and with, of course, the chance we do not have in Jena +of seeing some one quite new, but on the whole the same. He is a solemn +elderly person in a black-rimmed _pince-nez_, dressed in clothes that +give one the impression of always being black. He vegetates as +completely as any one I have ever seen or dreamed of. Prolonged coffee +in the morning, prolonged newspaper-reading, and a tortoise-like turn in +the garden kill his mornings. Dinner, says Vicki, kills another hour and +a half; then there is what we call the Dinner Sleep on the sofa in his +darkened room, and that brings him to coffee time. They sit over the +cups till Vicki wants to scream, at least she wants to since she has +known me, she says; up to then, after her miserable affair, she sat as +sluggishly as the others, but huddled while they were straight, and +red-eyed, which they were not. After coffee the parents walk up the road +to a certain point, and walk back again. Then comes the evening paper, +which he reads till supper-time, and after supper he smokes till he goes +to bed. + +'Why, he's hardly alive at all,' I said to Vicki, when she described +this existence. + +She shrugged her shoulders. 'It's what they all do,' she said, 'all the +retired. I've seen it a hundred times in Berlin. They're old, and they +never can start anything fresh.' + +'We won't be like that when we're old, will we?' I said, gazing at her +wide-eyed, struck as by a vision. + +She gazed back into my eyes, misgiving creeping, into hers. 'Sleep, and +eat, and read the paper?' she murmured. + +'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper?' I echoed. + +And we stared at each other in silence, and the far-away dim years +seemed to catch up what we had said, and mournfully droned back, 'Sleep, +and eat, and read the paper....' + +But what is to be done with girls of good family who do not marry, and +have no money? They can't go governessing, and indeed it is a dreary +trade. Vicki has learned nothing except a little cooking and other +domestic drudgery, only of use if you have a house to drudge in and a +husband to drudge for; of those pursuits that bring in money and make +you independent and cause you to flourish and keep green and lusty she +knows nothing. If I had a daughter I would bring her up with an eye +fixed entirely on a husbandless future. She should be taught some trade +as carefully as any boy. Her head should be filled with as much learning +as it would conveniently hold side by side with a proper interest in +ribbons. I would spend my days impressing her with the gloriousness of +independence, of having her time entirely at her own disposal, her life +free and clear, the world open before her, as open as it was to Adam and +Eve when they turned their backs once and for all on the cloying +sweetness of Paradise, and far more interesting that it was to them, for +it would be full of inhabitants eager to give her the hearty welcome +always awaiting those rare persons, the cheery and the brave. + +'Oh,' sighed Vicki, when with great eloquence and considerable +elaboration I unfolded these views, 'how beautiful!' + +Papa was nearer the open window under which we were sitting than I had +thought, for he suddenly popped out his head. 'It is a merciful thing, +Rose-Marie,' he said, 'that you have no daughter.' + +We both jumped. + +'She would be a most dreary young female,' he went on, smiling down as +from a pulpit on our heads, and wiping his spectacles. 'Offspring +continually goaded and galvanized by a parent, hammered upon, chiselled, +beaten out flat--' + +'Dear me, Papachen,' I murmured. + +'Beaten out flat,' said Papa, waving my interruption aside with his +spectacles, 'by the dead weight of opinions already stale, the victims +of a system, the subjects of an experiment, the prisoners of prejudice, +are bound either to flare into rank rebellion on the first opportunity +or to grow continually drearier and more conspicuously stupid.' + +Vicki stared first up at Papa then at me, her soft, crumpled sort of +mouth twisted into troubled surprise. + +Papa leaned further out and hit the window sill with his hand for all +the world like a parson hitting his pulpit's cushion. 'One word,' he +said, 'one word of praise or blame, one single word from an outsider +will have more effect upon your offspring than years of trouble taken by +yourself, mountains of doctrine preached by you, rivers of good advice, +oceans of exhortations, cautions as numerous as Abraham's posterity, +well known to have been as numerous as the sea sand, private prayers, +and public admonition.' + +And he disappeared with a jerk. + +'_Ach_,' said Vicki, much impressed. + +Papa popped out his head again. 'You may believe me, Rose-Marie,' he +said. + +'I do, Papachen,' said I. + +'You have to thank me for much.' + +'And I do,' said I heartily, smiling up at him. + +'But for nothing more than for leaving you free to put forth such shoots +as your nature demanded in whatever direction your instincts propelled +you.' And he disappeared and shut the window. + +Vicki looked at me doubtfully. 'You said beautiful things,' she said, +'and he said just the opposite. Which is true?' + +'Both,' said I promptly, determined not to be outdone as a prophet by +Papa. + +Poor Vicki. It is so hard to have life turned into a smudge when one is +only twenty. She adored this man, was so proud of him, so proud of +herself for being chosen by him. She grew, in the year during which they +were engaged, into a woman, and can never now retrace her steps back to +that fairy place of sunshine and carelessness in which we so happily +wander if we are left alone for years and years after we are supposed to +be grown up. Do you realize what a blow in the face she has received, as +well as in her unfortunate little heart? All her vanities, without which +a girl is but a poor thing, shrivelled up, her self-respect gone, her +conceit, if there was any, and I suppose there was because there always +is, gone headlong after it. A betrothal here is almost as binding and +quite as solemn as a marriage. It is announced in the papers. It is +abundantly celebrated. And the parents on both sides fall on each +other's necks and think highly of one another till the moment comes for +making settlements. The Lindebergs spent all they had laid by and +borrowed more to buy the trousseau and furnish the house. Vicki cried +bitterly when she talked of her table-napkins. She says there were +twelve dozen in twelve different patterns, and each twelve was tied up +with a pink ribbon fastened by a buckle and a bow. They had to be sold +again at a grievous loss, and the family fled from Berlin and the faces +of their acquaintances, faces crooked with the effort to sympathize when +what they really wanted to do, says Vicki, was to smile, and came to +this cheap place where they can sit in obscurity darning up the holes in +their damaged fortunes. Frau von Lindeberg, who has none of the torment +of rejected love to occupy her feelings and all the bitterness of the +social and financial blow, cannot help saying hard things to Vicki, +things pointed and poisoned with reproaches that sometimes almost verge +on taunts. The man was a good _parti_ for Vicki; little money, but much +promise for the future, a good deal older than herself and already +brilliant as an officer; and during the engagement the satisfied mother +overflowed, as mothers will, with love for the creditable daughter. 'It +was so nice,' said Vicki-, dolefully sniffing. 'She seemed to love me +almost as much as she loves my brother. I was so happy. I had so much. +Then everything went at once. Mamma can't bear to think that no one will +ever want to marry me now, because I have been engaged.' + +Well, love is a cruel, horrible thing. Hardly ever do both the persons +love with equal enthusiasm, and if they do what is the use? It is all +bound to end in smoke and nothingness, put out by the steady drizzle of +marriage. And for the others, for the masses of people who do not love +equally, of whom one half is at a miserable disadvantage, at the mercy +absolutely of the other half, what is there but pain in the end? And +yet--and yet it is a pretty thing in its beginnings, a sweet, darling +thing. But, like a kitten, all charm and delicious ways at first, +innocent, soft, enchanting, it turns into a cat with appalling rapidity +and cruelly claws you. I'd like to know if there's a single being on +earth so happy and so indifferent that he has not got hidden away +beneath a brave show of clothes and trimmings the mark of Love's claws. +And I think most of the clawings are so ferocious that they are for a +long time ghastly tears that open and bleed again; and when with years +they slowly dry up there is always the scar, red and terrible, that +makes you wince if by any chance it is touched. That is what I think. +What do you think? + +Good-by. + +No, don't tell me what you think. I don't want to know. + + + +XLVI + +Galgenberg, Sept. 24th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yesterday I was so much absorbed by Vicki's woes +that I never got to what I really wanted to write about. It's that book +I found in the Jena bookshop. It was second-hand and cheap, and I bought +it, and it has unkindly revenged itself by playing havoc with my +illusions. It is a collection of descriptions of what is known of the +lives of the English poets, beginning with Chaucer, who is luckily too +far away to provide much tattle, and coming down the centuries growing +bigger with gossip as it comes, till it ends with Rossetti, and +FitzGerald, and Stevenson. Each poet has his portrait. It was for that I +bought it. I cannot tell you how eagerly I looked at them. At last I was +going to see what Wordsworth looked like, and Coleridge, and Keats, and +Shelley. One of my dreams has been to go to that National Portrait +Gallery of yours in London, described in an old Baedeker I once saw, and +gaze at the faces of those whose spirits I know so well. Now I don't +want to. Can you imagine what it is like, what an extremely blessed +state it is, only to have read the works of a poet, the filtered-out +best of him, and to have lived so far from his country and from +biographies or collections of his letters that all gossip about his +private life and criticisms of his morals are unknown to you? Milton, +Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Burns, have been to me great teachers, great +examples, before whose shining image, built up out of the radiant +materials their works provided, I have spent glorious hours in worship. +Not a cloud, not a misgiving has dimmed my worship. We need +altars--anyhow we women do--and they were mine--I have not been able to +be religious in the ordinary sense, and they have taken the place of +religion. Our own best poets, Goethe, Schiller, Heine and the rest, do +not appeal to me in the same way. Goethe is wonderful, but he leaves you +sitting somehow in a cold place from which you call out at intervals +with conviction that he is immense the while you wish he would keep the +feet of your soul a little warmer. Schiller beats his patriotic drum, +his fine eyes rolling continually toward the gallery, too +unintermittently for perfect delight. Heine the exquisite, the cunning +worker in gems, the stringer of pearls on frailest golden threads, is +too mischievous, too malicious, to be set up in a temple; and then you +can't help laughing at his extraordinary gift for maddening the +respectable, at the extraordinary skill and neatness with which he +deposits poison in their tenderest places, and how can he worship who is +being made to laugh? If I knew little about our poets' lives--inevitably +I know more than I want to--I still would feel the same. There is, I +think, in their poetry nothing heavenly. It is true I bless God for +them, thank Him for having let them live and sing, for having given us +such a noble heritage, but I can't go all the way Papa goes, and melt in +a bath of rapture whenever Goethe's name is mentioned. I remember what +you said about Goethe. It has not influenced me. I do think you were +wrong. But I do, too, think that everything really heavenly in our +nation, everything purely inspired, manifestly immortal, has gone, not +into our poetry but into our music. That has absorbed our whole share of +divine fire, and left our poets nothing but the cool and conscious +exercise of their intellects. + +Well, I am preaching. I would make a very arrogant parson, wouldn't I, +laying down the law more often than the prophets from that safe citadel, +a pulpit; but please have patience, for I want you to comfort me. The +book really has made me unhappy. It is the kind of book you must go on +reading,--angry, rebelling at every page, but never leaving it till +you've reached the last word. Then you throw it as hard as you can into +the furthest corner of the room, and shake yourself as a dog does, come +up out of muddy water, and think to shake it off as easily as he does +his mud; but you can't, because it has burned itself into your soul. I +don't suppose you will understand what I feel. When a person possesses +very few things those few things are terribly precious. See the mother +of the only child, and compare her conduct when it coughs with the +conduct of the mother of six, all coughing. See how one agonizes; and +see with what serenity the other brings out her bottle of mixture and +pours it calmly down her children's throats. Well, I'm like the first +mother, and you are like the second. I expect you knew long ago, and +have never minded knowing, the littlenesses of my gods; but I, I felt as +unsettled while I read about them, as uneasy, as fidgety, as frightened, +as a horse being driven by somebody cruel, which knows that every minute +the lash will come down in some fresh place. Think: I knew nothing about +Harriet Westbrook and her tragic life and death; I had never heard of +Emilia Viviani; of Mary; of her whose name was Eliza, but who soared +aloft in the sunshine of Shelley's admiration re-christened Portia, only +presently to descend once more into the font and come out luridly as the +Brown Demon. I never knew that Keats loved somebody called Brawne, and +that she was unwilling, that she saw little in him, in Endymion the +godlike, the divinely gifted, and that he was so persistent, so +unworthily persistent, that the only word I can find that at all +describes it is the German _zappelnd._ I had never heard of Jean Armour, +of the headlong descent from being 'him who walked in glory and in joy, +Following his plough along the mountain-side' to hopeless black years +spent in public-houses at the beck and call--think of it, think of the +divine spirit forced to it by its body--of any one who would pay for a +drink. I never knew about Coleridge's opium, or that to Carlyle he +appeared as a helpless Psyche overspun with Church of England cobwebs, +as a weak, diffusive, weltering, ineffectual man. I never knew that +Wordsworth's greeting was a languid handful of numb, unresponsive +fingers, that his speech was prolix, thin, endlessly diluted. I never +knew that Milton had three wives, that the first one ran away from him a +month after their marriage, that he was hard to his daughters, so hard +that they wished him dead. All these things I never knew; and for years +I have been walking with glorious spirits, and have been fed on +honey-dew, and drunk the milk of Paradise. When first I saw Wordsworth's +portrait I turned cold. Don't laugh; I did actually turn cold. He had +been so much in my life. I had pictured him so wonderful. Calm; +beautiful, with the loftiest kind of beauty; faintly frosty at times, +and detached, yet gently cheery and always dignified. It is the picture +from a portrait by some one called Hancock. Very bitterly do I dislike +Hancock. It is a profile. It would, if I had seen it in the flesh, +completely have hidden from my silly short sight the inner splendors. +I'm afraid--oh, I'm afraid, and I shiver with shame to think it--that I +would have regarded him only as an elderly gentleman of irreproachable +character out of whose way it was as well to get because he showed every +sign of being a bore. Will you think me irretrievably silly when I tell +you that I cried over that picture? For one dreadful moment I stared at +it in startled horror; then I banged the book to and fled up into the +forest to cry. There was a smugness--but no, I won't think of it. I'll +upset all my theories about the face being the mirror of the soul. It +can't be. If it is, Peter Bell and The Thorn are accounted for; but who +shall account for the bleak nobility, the communings with nature on +lofty heights in the light of setting suns? Or, when he comes down +nearer, for that bright world he unlocks of things dear to memory, of +home, of childhood, of quiet places, of calm affections? And for the +tenderness with which it is done? And for its beautiful, simple +goodness? + +Coleridge's picture was another disillusionment, but not so great a +shock, because I have loved him less. He was so rarely inspired. I don't +think you need more than the fingers of one hand for the doing of sums +with Coleridge's inspirations. Still, it saddened me to be told he was a +helpless Psyche. I didn't like to hear about his cobwebs. I hated being +forced to know of his weakness, of his wasted life growing steadily +dingier the farther he travelled from that East that had seen him set +out so bright with morning radiance. Really, the world would be a +peaceful place if we could only keep quiet about each other's weak +points. Why are we so restless till we have pulled down, belittled, +besmudged? You'll say that without a little malice talk would grow very +dull; you'll tell me it is the salt, the froth, the sparkle, the ginger +in the ginger-beer, the mustard in the sandwich. But you must admit that +it becomes only terrible when it can't leave the few truly great spirits +alone, when it must somehow drag them down to our lower level, pointing +out--in writing, so that posterity too shall have no illusions--the +spots on the sun, the weak places in the armor, and pushing us, who want +to be left alone praying in the fore-court of the temple, down the area +steps into the kitchen. Two nights and two days have I spent feverishly +with that book. I dare not hope that I shall forget it. I have never yet +forgotten undesirable, bad things. Now, when I take my poets up with me +into the forest, and sit on one of those dusky pine-grown slopes where +the light is subdued to a mysterious gray-green and the world is quieted +into a listening silence, and far away below the roofs of Jena glisten +in the sun, and the white butterflies, like white flowers come to life, +flutter after each other across the blue curtain of heat that hangs +beyond the trees, now when I open them and begin to read the noble, +familiar words, will not those other words, those anecdotes, those +personal descriptions, those suggestions, those button-holings, leer at +me between the lines? Shall I, straining my ears after the music, not be +shown now for ever only the instrument, and how pitifully the ivory has +come off the keys? Shall I, hungering after my spiritual food, not have +pushed upon my notice, so that I am forced to look, the saucepan, +tarnished and not quite clean, in which it was cooked? Please don't tell +me you can't understand. Try to imagine yourself in my place. Come out +of that gay world of yours where you are talking or being talked to all +day long, and suppose yourself Rose-Marie Schmidt, alone in Jena, on a +hill, with books. Suppose yourself for hours and hours every day of your +life with nothing particular that you must do, that you have no +shooting, no hunting, no newspapers, no novels. Suppose you are +passionately fond of reading, and that of all reading you most love +poetry. Suppose you have inherited from a mother who loved them as much +as you do a precious shelf-full of the poets, cheap editions, entirely +free from the blight of commentaries, foot-notes, and introductory +biographies. And suppose these books in the course of years have become +your religion, your guide, the source of your best thoughts and happiest +moments--would you look on placidly while some one scrawled malicious +truths between their lines? Oh, you would not. You would feel as I do. +Think what the writers are to me, how I have built up their +personalities entirely out of the materials they gave me in their work. +They never told me horrid things about themselves. Their spirits, which +alone they talked about, were serene and white. I knew Milton was blind, +because he chose beautifully to tell me so. I knew he must have been an +appreciative and regretful husband, because no husband who did not +appreciate and regret would go so far as to talk of his deceased wife as +his late espoused saint. I knew he was a tender friend, a friend capable +of deepest love and sorrow, for in spite of Johnson's 'It is not to be +considered as the effusion of real passion,' I was convinced by the love +and sorrow of 'Lycidas.' I knew he was a man whose spirit was dissolved +continually into the highest ecstasies, who lived with all heaven before +his eyes,--briefly, I said Amen to Wordsworth's 'His soul was like a +star, and dwelt apart.' And now a series of sordid little pictures rises +up before me and chokes my Amen. I cannot bear to think of him having +two or three olives for supper and a little cold water, and then being +cross to his daughters. Of course he must be cross on such a supper. I +can't conceive it kind to drill the daughters so strictly in languages +they did not understand that they could read them aloud to him with +extraordinary correctness. I shrink from the thought of the grumbling +there was in that house of heavenly visions, grumbling and squabbling +stamped out, it is true, by the heavy parental foot wherever noticed, +but smouldering on from one occasion to the other. I cannot believe--I +wish I could--that a child will dislike a parent without cause; the +cause may be small things, a series of trifles each of little moment, +snubs too often repeated, chills too often applied, stern looks, short +words, sarcasms,--and these, as you and I both know, are quite ordinary +dulnesses, often daily ingredients of family life; but they sit with a +strange and upsetting grace on the poet of Paradise, and I would give +anything never to have heard of them. + +And then you know I loved FitzGerald. He had one of my best altars. You +remember you read _Omar Khayyam_ twice aloud to me--once in the spring +(it was the third of April, a sudden hot day, blue and joyous, slipped +in to show God had not forgotten us between weeks of hopeless skies and +icy winds) and once last September, that afternoon we drifted down the +river past the town, away from houses and people and work and lessons, +out to where the partridges scuttled across the stubble and all the +world was golden. (That was the eleventh of September; I am rather good, +you see, at dates.) Well, now I call him Fitz, and laugh at the +description of him going about Suffolk lanes in a battered tall hat tied +on in windy weather by a handkerchief, and trailing behind him, instead +of clouds of glory, a shawl of green and black plaid. It isn't, of +course, in any way a bad thing to trail shawls after you on country +walks; there is nothing about it or him that shocks or grieves; he is +very lovable. But I don't want to laugh. I don't want to call him Fitz. +He is one of the gods in my temple, a place from which I rigorously +exclude the sense of humor. I don't like gods who are amusing. I cannot +worship and laugh simultaneously. I know that laughter is good, and I +know that even derision in small quantities is as wholesome as salt; but +I like to laugh and deride outside holy places, and not be forced to do +it while I am on my knees. + +Now don't say What on earth does the woman want? because it seems to me +so plain. What the woman wants is that present and future poets should +wrap themselves sternly in an impenetrable veil of anonymity. They +won't, but she can go on praying that they will. They won't, because of +the power of the passing moment, because of the pleasantness of praise, +of recognition, of personal influence, and, I suppose, but I'm not sure, +of money. Do you remember that merry rhymer Prior, how he sang + + 'Tis long ago + Since gods came down incognito? + +Well, I wish with all my heart they had gone on doing it a little +longer. He wasn't, I think, deploring what I deplore, the absence of a +sense for the anonymous in gods, of a sense of the dignity of +separation, of retirement, of mystery, wherever there is even one spark +of the Divine; I think he thought they had all been, and that neither +incognito nor in any other form would they appear again. He implied, and +so joined himself across the centuries to the Walrus and the Carpenter, +that there were no gods to come. Well, he has been dead over a hundred +and eighty years, and they have simply flocked since then. I'd like to +write the great names on this page, the names of the poets, first and +greatest of the gods, to raise it to dignity and confound the ghost of +Prior, but I won't out of consideration for you. + +Does not my enthusiasm, my mountain energy, make you groan with the +deadly fatigue of him who has to listen and cannot share? I'll leave +off. My letter is growing unbecomingly fat. The air up here is so +bracing that my very unhappinesses seem after all full of zest, very +vocal, healthy griefs, really almost enjoying themselves. I'll go back +to my pots. I'm busy today, though you mightn't think it, making apple +jelly out of our very own apples. I'll go back to my pots and +forget--no, I won't make a feeble joke I was just going to make, because +of what I know your face would look like when you read it. After all, I +believe I'm more than a little bit frightened of you. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLVII + +Galgenberg, Sept. 30th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--How nice of you to be so kind, to write so +consolingly, to be so patient in explaining where I am thinking wrong. I +burned the book in the kitchen fire, and felt great satisfaction in +clearing the house of its presence. You are right; I have no concern +with the body of a poet--all my concern is with his soul, and the two +shall be severely separated. I am glad you agree with me that poets +should be anonymous, but you seem to have even less hope that they ever +will be than I have. At least I pray that they may; you apparently take +no steps whatever to bring it about. You say that experience teaches +that we must not expect too much of gods; that the possible pangs of +posterity often leave them cold; that they are blind to the merits of +bushels, and discern neither honor nor profit in the use of those +vessels of extinguishment; you fear that they will not change, and you +exhort me to see to it that their weakness shall not be an occasion for +my stumbling. That is very sensible advice. But before your kind letter +came a few fresh autumn mornings had cleared a good deal of my first +dejection away. If the gods won't hide themselves I can after all shut +my eyes. If I may not rejoice in the divine in them with undistracted +attention I will try at least to get all the warmth I can from its +burning. And I can imitate my own dainty and diligent bees, and take +care to be absorbed only in their honey. You make me ashamed of my folly +in thinking I could never read Burns again now that I know about his +sins. I did secretly think so. I was sure of it. I felt quite sick to +see him tumbled from his altar into the mud. Your letter shows me that +once again I have been foolish. Why, it has verged on idiocy. I myself +have laughed at people in Jena, strictly pious people, who will not read +Goethe, who have a personally vindictive feeling against him because of +his different love-affairs, and I have listened astonished to the fury +with which the proposal of a few universal-minded persons to give Heine +a statue was opposed, and to the tone almost of hatred with which one +man whenever his name is mentioned calls out _Schmutzfink_. About our +poets I have been from the beginning quite sane. But yours were somehow +more sacred to me; sacred, I suppose, because they were more mysterious, +more distant,--glorious angel-trumpets through which God sent His +messages. I was so glad, I whose tendency is, I am afraid, to laugh and +criticise, to possess one thing at which I could not laugh, to have a +whole tract of beauty in which I could walk seriously, with downcast +eyes; and I thought I was never going to be able to be serious there +again. It was a passing fit, a violent revulsion. If I like carefully to +separate my own soul and body, why should I not do the same with those +of other sinners? It has always seemed to me so quaint the way we admit, +the good nature with which we reiterate, that we are all wretched +sinners. We do it with such an immense complacency. We agree so +heartily, with such comfortable, regretful sighs, when anybody tells us +so; but with only one wretched sinner are we of a real patience. With +him, indeed, our patience is boundless. I know this, I have always known +it, and I will not now, at an age when it is my hope to grow every year +a little better, forget it and be as insolently intolerant as the man +who shudders at the name of Heine, will not read a line of him and calls +him _Schmutzfink_. That writer's books you tell me about, the books the +virtuous in England will not read because his private life was +disgraceful, beautiful books, you say, into which went his best, in +which his spirit showed how bright it was, how he had kept it apart and +clean, I shall get them all and read them all. No sinner, cursed with a +body at variance with his soul and able in spite of it to hear the music +of heaven and give it exquisite expression, shall ever again be +identified by me with what at such great pains he has kept white. I know +at least three German writers to whom the same thing happened, men who +live badly and write nobly. My heart goes out to them. I think of them +lame and handicapped, leading their Muse by the hand with anxious care +so that her shining feet, set among the grass and daisies along the +roadside, shall not be dimmed by the foulness through which they +themselves are splashing. They are caked with impurities, but with the +tenderest watchfulness they keep her clean. She is their gift to the +world, the gift of their best, of their angel, of their share of +divinity. And the respectable, afraid for their respectability, turn +their backs in horror and go and read without blinking ugly things +written by other respectables. Why, no priest at the altar, however +unworthy, can hinder the worshipper from taking away with him as great a +load of blessings as he will carry. And a rose is not less lovely +because its roots are in corruption. And God Himself was found once in a +manger. Thank you, and good-by. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLVIII + +Galgenberg, Oct. 8th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--We are very happy here just now because Papa's new +book, at which he has been working two years, is finished. I am copying +it out, and until that is done we shall indulge in the pleasantest +day-dreams. It is our time, this interval between the finishing of a +book of his and its offer to a publisher, for being riotously happy. We +build the most outrageous castles in the air. Nothing is certain, and +everything is possible. The pains of composition are over, and the pains +of rejection are not begun. Each time we suppose they never will, and +that at last ears will be found respectfully ready to absorb his views. +Few and far between have the ears been till now. His books have fallen +as flat as books can fall. Nobody wanted to hear all, or even half, that +he could tell them about Goethe. Jena shrugged its shoulders, the larger +world was blank. The books have brought us no fame, no money, some +tragic hours, but much interest and amusement. Always tragic hours have +come when Papa clutched at his hair and raved rude things about the +German public; and when the money didn't appear there have been +uncomfortable moments. But these pass; Papa leaves his hair alone; and +the balance remains on the side of nice things. We don't really want any +more money, and Papa is kept busy and happy, and just to see him so +eager, so full of his work, seems to warm the house with pleasant +sunshine. Once, for one book, a check did come; and when we all rushed +to look we found it was for two marks and thirty pfennings--' being the +amount due,' said the accompanying stony letter, 'on royalties for the +first year of publication.' Papa thought this much worse than no check +at all, and took it round to the publisher in the molten frame of mind +of one who has been insulted. The publisher put his thumbs in the +armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, gazed with +refreshing coolness at Papa who was very hot, and said that as trade +went it was quite a good check and that he had sent one that very +morning to another author--a Jena celebrity who employs his leisure +writing books about the Universe--for ninety pfennings. + +Papa came home beaming with the delicious feeling that money was flowing +in and that he was having a boom. The universe man was a contemptuous +acquaintance who had been heard to speak lightly of Papa's books. Papa +felt all the sweetness of success, of triumph over a disagreeable rival; +and since then we have looked upon that special book as his _opus +magnum_. + +While I copy he comes in and out to ask me where I have got to and if I +like it. I assure him that I think it delightful, and so honestly I do +in a way, but I don't think it will be the public's way. It begins by +telling the reader, presumably a person in search of information about +Goethe, that Jena is a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom +nineteen thousand are apparently professors. The town certainly does +give you that impression as you walk about its little streets and at +every corner meet the same battered-looking persons in black you met at +the corner before, but what has that to do with Goethe? And the pages +that follow have nothing to do with him either that I can see, being a +disquisition on the origin and evolution of the felt hats the professors +wear--dingy, slouchy things--winding up with an explanation of their +symbolism and inevitableness, based on a carefully drawn parallel +between them and the kind of brains they have to cover. From this point, +the point of the head-wear of the learned in our present year, he has to +work back all the way to Goethe in Jena a century ago. It takes him +several chapters to get back, for he doesn't go straight, being +constitutionally unable to resist turning aside down the green lanes of +moralizing that branch so seductively off the main road and lead him at +last very far afield; and when he does arrive he is rather breathless, +and flutters for some time round the impassive giant waiting to be +described, jerking out little anecdotes, very pleasant little anecdotes, +but quite unconnected with his patient subject, before he has got his +wind and can begin. + +He is rosy with hope about this book. 'All Jena will read it,' he says, +'because they will like to hear about themselves'--I wonder if they +will--'and all Germany will read it because it will like to hear about +Goethe.' + +'It has heard a good deal about him already, you know Papachen,' I say, +trying gently to suggest certain possibilities. + +'England might like to have it. There has been nothing since that man +Lewes, and never anything really thorough. A good translation, +Rose-Marie--what do you think of that as an agreeable task for you +during the approaching winter evenings? It is a matter worthy of +consideration. You will like a share in the work, a finger in the +literary pie, will you not?' + +'Of course I would. But let me copy now, darling. I'm not half through.' + +He says that if those blind and prejudiced persons, publishers, won't +risk bringing it out he'll bring it out at his own expense sooner than +prevent the world's rightly knowing what Goethe said and did in Jena; so +there's a serious eventuality ahead of us! We really will have to live +on lettuces, and in grimmest earnest this time. I hope he won't want to +keep race-horses next. Well, one thing has happened that will go a +little way toward meeting new expenses,--I go down every day now and +read English with Vicki, at the desire of her mother, for two hours, her +mother having come to the conclusion that it is better to legalize, as +it were, my relations with Vicki who flatly refused to keep away from +us. So I am a bread-winner, and can do something to help Papa. It is +true I can't help much, for what I earn is fifty pfennings each time, +and as the reading of English on Sundays is not considered nice I can +only altogether make three marks a week. But it is something, and it is +easily earned, and last Sunday, which was the end of my first week, I +bought the whole of the Sunday food with it, dinner and supper for us, +and beer for Johanna's lover, who says he cannot love her unless the +beer is a particular sort and has been kept for a fortnight properly +cold in the coal-hole. + +Since I have read with Vicki Frau von Lindeberg is quite different. She +is courteous with the careful courtesy decent people show their +dependents; kindly, even gracious at times. She is present at the +reading, darning socks and ancient sheets with her carefully kept +fingers, and she treats me absolutely as though I were attached to her +household as governess. She is no longer afraid we will want to be +equals. She asks me quite often after the health of him she calls my +good father. And when a cousin of hers came last week to stay a night, a +female Dammerlitz on her way to a place where you drink waters and get +rid of yourself, she presented me to her with pleasant condescension as +the _kleine Engländerin_ engaged as her daughter's companion. '_Eine +recht Hebe Hausgenossin,'_ she was pleased to add, gently nodding her +head at each word; and the cousin went away convinced I was a resident +official and that the tales she had heard about the Lindeberg's poverty +couldn't be true. + +'It's not scriptural,' I complained to Vicki, stirred to honest +indignation. + +'You mean, to say things not quite--not quite?' said Vicki. + +'Such big ones,' I fumed. 'I'm not little. I'm not English. I'm not a +_Hausgenossin_. Why such unnecessary ones?' + +'Now, Rose-Marie, you do know why Mamma said "little."' + +'It's a term of condescension?' + +'And _Engländerins_ are rather grand things to have in the house, you +know--expensive, I mean. Always dearer than natives. Mamma only wants +Cousin Mienchen to suppose we are well off.' + +'Oh,' said I. + +'You don't mind?' said Vicki, rather timidly taking my hand. + +'It doesn't hurt me,' said I, putting a little stress on the me, a +stress implying infinite possible hurt to Frau von Lindeberg's soul. + +'It is horrid,' murmured Vicki, her head drooping over her book. 'I wish +we didn't always pretend we're not poor. We are. Poor as mice. And it +makes us so sensitive about it, so afraid of anything's being noticed. +We spend our lives on tenterhooks--not nice things at all to spend one's +life on.' + +'Wriggly, uncomfortable things,' I agreed. + +'I believe Cousin Mienchen isn't in the least taken in, for all our +pains.' + +'I don't believe people ever are,' said I; and we drifted into a +consideration of the probable height of our temperatures and color of +our ears if we could know how much the world we pose to really knows +about us, if we could hear with what thoroughness those of our doings +and even of our thoughts that we believed so secret are discussed. + +Frau von Lindeberg wasn't there, being too busy arranging comforts for +her cousin's journey to preside, and so it was that we drifted +unhindered from Milton into the foggier regions of private wisdom. We +are neither of us wise, but it is surprising how talking to a friend, +even to a friend as unwise as yourself, clears up your brains and lets +in new light. That is one of the reasons why I like writing to you and +getting your letters; only you mustn't be offended at my bracketing you, +you splendid young man, with poor Vicki and poor myself in the class +Unwise. Heaven knows I mean nothing to do with book-learning, in which, +I am aware, you most beautifully excel. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLIX + +Galgenberg, Oct. 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I am very sorry indeed to hear that your +engagement is broken off. I feared something of the sort was going to +happen because of all the things you nearly said and didn't in your +letters lately. Are you very much troubled and worried? Please let me +turn into the elder sister for a little again and give you the small +relief of having an attentive listener. It seems to have been rather an +unsatisfactory time for you all along. I don't really quite know what to +say. I am anyhow most sincerely sorry, but I find it extraordinarily +difficult to talk about Miss Cheriton. It is of course lamentable that +our writing to each other should have been, as you say it was, so often +the cause of quarrels. You never told me so, or I would at once have +stopped. You fill several pages with surprise that a girl of twenty-two +can be so different from what she appears, that so soft and tender an +outside can have beneath it such unfathomable depths of hardness. I +think you have probably gone to the other extreme now, and because you +admired so much are all the more violently critical. It is probable that +Miss Cheriton is all that you first thought her, unusually charming and +sympathetic and lovable, and your characters simply didn't suit each +other. Don't think too unkindly in your first anger. I am so very sorry; +sorry for you, who must feel as if your life had been convulsed by an +earthquake, and all its familiar features disarranged; sorry for your +father's disappointment; sorry for Miss Cheriton, who must have been +wretched. But how infinitely wiser to draw back in time and not, for +want of courage, drift on into that supreme catastrophe, marriage. You +mustn't suppose me cynical in calling it a catastrophe--perhaps I mean +it only in its harmless sense of _dénouement_; and if I don't I can't +see that it is cynical to recognize a spade when you see it as certainly +a spade. But do not let yourself go to bitterness, and so turn into a +cynic yourself. You say Miss Cheriton apparently prefers a duke, and are +very angry. But why if, as you declare, you have not really loved her +for months past, are you angry? Why should she not prefer a duke? +Perhaps he is quite a nice one, and you may be certain she felt at once, +the very instant, when you left off caring for her. About such things it +is as difficult for a woman to be mistaken as it is for a barometer to +be hoodwinked in matters meteorologic. It was that, and never the duke, +that first influenced her. I am as sure of it as if I could see into her +heart. Of course she loved you. But no girl with a spark of decency +would cling on to a reluctant lover. What an exceedingly poor thing in +girls she would be who did. I can't tell you how much ashamed I am of +that sort of girl, the girl who clings, who follows, who laments,--as if +the world, the splendid, amazing world, were empty of everything but one +single man, and there were no sun shining, no birds singing, no winds +blowing, no hills to climb, no trees to sit under, no books to read, no +friends to be with, no work to do, no heaven to go to. I feel now for +the first time that I would like to know Miss Cheriton. But it is really +almost impossibly difficult to write this letter; each thing I say seems +something I had better not have said. Write to me about your troubles as +often as you feel it helps you, and believe that I do most heartily +sympathize with you both, but don't mind, and forgive me, if my answers +are not satisfactory. I am unpracticed and ill at ease, clumsy, limited, +in this matter of frank writing about feelings, a matter in which you so +far surpass me. But I am always most sincerely your friend, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +L + +Galgenberg, Oct. 15th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It's not much use for the absent to send bland +advice, to exhort to peace and putting aside of anger, when they have +only general principles to go on. You know more about Miss Cheriton than +I do, and I am obliged to believe you when you tell me you have every +reason to be bitter. But I can make few comments. My mouth is +practically shut. Only, as you told me you long ago left off caring for +her, the smart you are feeling now must be, it seems to me, simply the +smart of wounded vanity, and for that I'm afraid I have no soothing +lotion ready. Also I am bound to say that I think she was quite right to +give you up once she was sure you no longer loved her. I am all for +giving up, for getting rid of things grown rotten before it is too late, +and the one less bright spot I see on her otherwise correct conduct is +that she did not do it sooner. Don't think me hard, dear friend. If I +were your mother I would blindly yearn over my boy. As it is, you must +forgive my unfortunate trick of seeing plainly. I wish things would look +more adorned to me, less palpably obvious and ungarnished. These +tiresome eyes of mine have often made me angry. I would so much like to +sympathize wholly with you now, to be able to be indignant with Miss +Cheriton, call her a minx, say she is heartless, be ready with all sorts +of healing balms and syrups for you, poor boy in the clutches of a cruel +annoyance. But I can't. If you could love her again and make it up, that +indeed would be a happy thing. As it is--and your letter sets all hopes +of the sort aside once and for ever--you have had an escape; for if she +had not given you up I don't suppose you would have given her up--I +don't suppose that is a thing one often does. You would have married +her, and then heaven knows what would have become of your unfortunate +soul. + +After all, you need not have told me you had left off loving her. I knew +it. I knew it at the time, I knew it within a week of when it happened. +And I have always hoped--I cannot tell you how sincerely--that it was +only a mood, and that you would go back to her again and be happy. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LI + +Galgenberg, Oct. 22d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--This is a world, it seems to me, where everybody +spends their time falling out of love and making their relations +uncomfortable. I have only two friends, the rest of my friends being +acquaintances, and both have done it or had it done to them. Is it then +to be wondered at that I should argue that if it happens to both my +friends in a set where there are only two, the entire world must be +divided into those who give up and those who are given up, with a Greek +chorus of lamenting and explanatory relatives as a finish? Really one +might think that love, and its caprices, and its tantrums--you see I'm +in my shrewish mood--makes up the whole of life. Here's Vicki groaning +in the throes of a relapse because some one has written that she met her +late lover at a party and that he ate only soup,--here she is overcome +by this picture which she translates as a hankering in spite of +everything after her, and wanting to write to him, and ready to console +him and crying her eyes all red again, and no longer taking the remotest +interest in _Comus_ or in those frequent addresses of mine to her on +Homely Subjects to which up to yesterday she listened with such +flattering respect; and here are you writing me the most melancholy +letters, longer and drearier than any letters ever were before, filled +with yearnings after something that certainly is not Miss Cheriton--but +beyond that certainty I can make out nothing. It is a strange and +wonderful world. I stand bewildered, with you on one side and Vicki on +the other, and fling exhortations at you in turn. I try scolding, to +brace you, but neither of you will be braced. I try sympathy, to soothe +you, but neither of you will be soothed. What am I to do? May I laugh? +Will that give too deep offence? I'm afraid I did laugh over your +father's cable from America when the news of your broken engagement +reached him. You ask me what I think of a father who just cables 'Fool' +to his son at a moment when his son is being horribly worried. Well, you +must consider that cabling is expensive, and he didn't care to put more +than one word, and if there had been two it might have made you still +angrier. But seriously, I do see that it must have annoyed you, and I +soon left off being so unkind as to laugh. It is odd how much older I +feel than either of you lamenters; quite old, and quite settled, and so +objective somehow. I hope being objective doesn't make one +unsympathetic, but I expect it really rather tends that way; and yet if +it were so, and I were as hard and husky as I sometimes dimly fear I may +be growing, would you and Vicki want to tell me your sorrows? And other +people do too. Think of it, Papa Lindeberg, hitherto a long narrow +person buttoned up silently in black, mysterious simply because he held +his tongue, a reader of rabid Conservative papers through black-rimmed +glasses, and as numb in the fingers as Wordsworth when he shakes my +respectful hand, has begun to unbend, to unfold, to expand like those +Japanese dried flowers you fling into water; and having started with +good mornings and weather comments and politics, and from them proceeded +to the satisfactorily confused state of the British army, has gone on +imperceptibly but surely to confidential criticisms of the mistakes made +here at headquarters in invariably shelving the best officers at the +very moment when they have arrived at what he describes as their prime, +and has now reached the stage when he comes up through the orchard every +morning at the hour I am due for my lesson to help me over the fence. He +comes up with much stateliness and deliberation, but he does come up; +and we walk down together, and every day the volume of his confidences +increases and he more and more minutely describes his grievances. I +listen and nod my head, which is easy and apparently all he wants. His +wife stops him at once, if he begins to her, by telling him with as much +roundness as is consistent with being born a Dammerlitz that the +calamities that have overtaken them are entirely his fault. Why was he +not as clever as those subordinates who were put over his head? she asks +with dangerous tranquillity; and nobody can answer a question like that. + +'It makes me twenty years younger,' he said yesterday as he handed me +over the fence with the same politeness I have seen in the manner of old +men handing large dowagers to their places in a set of quadrilles, 'to +see your cheerful morning face.' + +'If you had said shining morning face you'd have been quoting +Shakespeare,' said I. + +'Ah yes. I fear my Shakespeare days are done. I am now at the time of +life when serious and practical considerations take up the entire +attention of a man. Shakespeare is more suitable now for my daughter +than for me.' + +'But clever men do read him.' + +'Ah yes.' + +'Quite grown-up ones do.' + +'Ah yes.' + +'With beards.' + +'Ah yes.' + +'Real men.' + +'Ah yes, yes. Professors. Theatre people. People of no family. People +who have no serious responsibilities on their shoulders. People of the +pen, not men of the sword. But officers--and who in our country of the +well-born is not, was not, or will not be an officer?--have no time for +general literature. Of course,' he added with a slight bow, for he +regards me as personally responsible for everybody and everything +English--'we have all heard of him.' + +'Indeed?' said I. + +'When I was a boy,' he said this morning, 'I read at school of a young +woman--a mythological person--called Hebe.' + +'She was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce,' said I. + +'It may be,' he said. 'The parentages of the mythological period are +curiously intricate. But why is it, dear Fräulein Schmidt, that though I +can recollect nothing of her but her name, whenever I see you you remind +me of her?' + +Now was not that very pleasant? Hebe, the restorer of youth to gods and +men; Hebe, the vigorous and wholesome. Thoreau says she was probably the +only thoroughly sound-conditioned and robust young lady that ever walked +the globe, and that whenever she came it was spring. No wonder I was +pleased. + +'Perhaps it's because I'm healthy,' said I. + +'Is that it?' he said, obviously fumbling about in his brain for the +reason. And when he got to the house he displayed the results of his +fumbling by saying, 'But many people are healthy.' + +'Yes,' said I; and left him to think it out alone. + +So now there are two nice young women I've been compared to--you once +said I was like Nausicaa, and here a year later, a year in which various +rather salt and stinging waves have gone over my head, is somebody +comparing me to Hebe. Evidently the waves did me no harm. It is true on +the other hand that Papa Lindeberg is short-sighted. It is also true +that last night I found a beautiful shining silvery hair insolently +flaunting in the very front of my head. 'Yes, yes, my dear,' said +Papa--my Papa--when I showed it him, 'we are growing old.' + +'And settled. And objective,' said I, carefully pulling it out before +the glass. 'And yet, Papachen, inside me I feel quite young.' + +Papa chuckled. 'Insides are no safe criterion, my dear,' he said. 'It is +the outside that tells.' + +'Tells what?' + +'A woman's age.' + +Evidently I have not yet reminded my own Papa of Hebe. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LII + +Galgenberg, Oct. 28th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Well, yes, I do think you must get over it without +much help from me. You have a great deal of my sympathy, I assure you; +far more than you think. I don't put it into my letters because there's +so much of it that it would make them overweight. Also it would want a +great deal of explaining. You see it's a different sort from what you +expect, and given for other reasons than those you have in your mind; +and it is quite impossible to account for in any way you are likely to +understand. But do consider what, as regards the broken-off engagement, +you must look like from my point of view. Candidly, are you a fit object +for my compassion? I see you wandering now through Italy in its golden +autumn looking at all your dear Luinis and Bellinis and Botticellis and +other delights of your first growing up, and from my bleak hill-top I +watch you hungrily as you go. November is nearly upon us, and we shiver +under leaden clouds and driving rain. The windows are loose, and all of +them rattle. The wind screams through their chinks as though somebody +had caught it by the toes and was pinching it. We can't see out for the +raindrops on the panes. When I go to the door to get a breath of +something fresher than house air I see only mists, and wreaths of +clouds, and mists again, where a fortnight ago lay a little golden town +in a cup of golden hills. Do you think that a person with this cheerless +prospect can pity you down there in the sun? I trace your bright line of +march on the map and merely feel envy. I am haunted by visions of the +many beautiful places and climates there are in the world that I shall +never see. The thought that there are people at this moment sitting +under palm-trees or in the shadow of pyramids fanning themselves with +their handkerchiefs while I am in my clammy room--the house gets clammy, +I find, in persistent wet weather--not liking to light a lamp because it +is only three o'clock, and yet hardly able to see because of the +streaming panes and driving mist, the thought of these happy people +makes me restive. I too want to be up and off, to run through the wet +pall hanging over this terrible gray North down into places where +sunshine would dry the fog out of my hair, and brown my face, and loosen +my joints, and warm my poor frozen spirit. I would change places with +you this minute if I could. Gladly would I take the burden of your +worries on to my shoulders, and, carrying them like a knapsack, lay them +at the feet of the first Bellini Madonna I met and leave them there for +good. It would give me no trouble to lay them down, those worries +produced by other people. One little shake, and they'd tumble off. +Always things and places have been more to me than people. Perhaps it is +often so with persons who live lonely lives. Anyhow don't at once cry +out that I'm unnatural and inhuman, for things are after all only +filtered out people,--their ideas crystallized into tangibleness, their +spirit taking visible form; either they are that, or they are, I +suppose, God's ideas--after all the same thing put into shapes we can +see and touch. So that it's not so dreadful of me to like them best, to +prefer their company, their silent teaching, although you will I know +lecture me and perhaps tell me I am petrifying into a mere thing myself. +Well, it is only fair that you should lecture me, who so often lecture +you. + +Yours quite meekly, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LIII + +Galgenberg, Nov. 1st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I won't talk about it any more. Let us have done +with it. Let us think of something else. I shall get tired of the duke +if you are not careful, so please save me from an attitude so +unbecoming. This is All Saints' Day: the feast of white chrysanthemums +and dear memories. My mother used to keep it as a day apart, and made me +feel something of its mysticalness. She had a table in her bedroom, the +nearest approach that was possible to an altar, with one of those +pictures hung above it of Christ on the Cross that always make me think +of Swinburne's + + God of this grievous people, wrought + After the likeness of their race-- + +do you remember?--and candles, and jars of flowers, and many little +books; and she used on her knees to read in the little books, kneeling +before the picture. She explained to me that the Lutheran whitewash +starved her soul, and that she wanted, however clumsily, to keep some +reminder with her of the manner of prayer in England. Did I ever tell +you how pretty she was? She was so very pretty, and so adorably nimble +of tongue. Quick, glancing, vivid, she twinkled in the heavy Jena +firmament like some strange little star. She led Papa and me by the +nose, and we loved it. I can see her now expounding her rebellious +theories, sitting limply--for she was long and thin--in a low chair, but +with nothing limp about her flower-like face and eyes shining with +interest in what she was talking about. She was great on the necessity, +a necessity she thought quite good for everybody but absolutely +essential for a woman, of being stirred up thoroughly once a week at the +very least to an enthusiasm for religion and the life of the world to +come. She said there was nothing so good for one as being stirred up, +that only the well stirred ever achieve great things, that stagnation +never yet produced a soul that had shot up out of reach of fogs on to +the clear heights from which alone you can call out directions for the +guidance of those below. The cold, empty Lutheran churches were +abhorrent to her. 'They are populated on Sundays,' she said, 'solely by +stagnant women,--women so stagnant that you can almost see the duckweed +growing on them.' + +She could not endure, and I, taught to see through her eyes, cannot +endure either, the chilly blend of whitewash and painted deal pews in +the midst of which you are required here once a week to magnify the +Lord. Our churches--all those I have seen--are either like vaults or +barns, the vault variety being slightly better and also more scarce. +Their aggressive ugliness, and cold, repellent service keeping the +congealed sinner at arm's length, nearly drove my mother into the Roman +Church, a place no previous Watson had ever wanted to go to. The +churches in Jena made her think with the tenderest regard of the old +picturesque pre-Lutheran days, of the light and color and emotions of +the Catholic services, and each time she was forced into one she said +she made a bigger stride toward Rome. 'Luther was a most mischievous +person,' she would say, glancing half defiantly through long eyelashes +at Papa. But he only chuckled. He doesn't mind about Luther. Yet in case +he did, in case some national susceptibility should have been hurt, she +would get up lazily--her movements were as lazy as her tongue was +quick--and take him by the ears and kiss him. + +She died when she was thirty-five: sweet and wonderful to the last. Nor +did her beauty suffer in the least in the sudden illness that killed +her. 'A lily in a linen-clout She looked when they had laid her out,' as +your Meredith says; and on this day every year, this day of saints so +dear to us, my spirit is all the time in those long ago happy years with +her. I have no private altar in my room, no picture of a 'piteous +Christ'--Papa took that--and no white flowers in this drenched autumnal +place to show that I remember; nor do I read in the little books, except +with gentle wonderment that she should have found nourishment in them, +she who fed so constantly on the great poets. But I have gone each All +Saints' Day for ten years past to church in Jena in memory of her, and +tried by shutting my eyes to imagine I was in a beautiful place without +whitewash, or hideous, almost brutal, stained glass. + +This morning, knowing that if I went down into the town I would arrive +spattered with mud up to my ears and so bedraggled that the pew-opener +might conceivably refuse me admission on the ground that I would spoil +her pews, I set out for the nearest village across the hills, hoping +that a country congregation would be more used to mud. I found the +church shut, and nobody with the least desire to have it opened. The +rain beat dismally down on my umbrella as I stood before the blank +locked door. A neglected fence divided the graves from the parson's +front yard, protecting them, I suppose, as much as in it lay, from the +depredations of wandering cows. On the other side of it was the parson's +manure heap, on which stood wet fowls mournfully investigating its +contents. His windows, shut and impenetrable, looked out on to the +manure heap, the fowls, the churchyard, and myself. It is a very ancient +church, picturesque, and with beautiful lancet windows with delicate +traceries carefully bricked up. Not choosing to have walked five miles +for nothing, and not wishing to break a habit ten years old of praying +in a church for my darling mother's soul on this day of souls and +darling saints, I gathered up my skirts and splashed across the parson's +pools and knocked modestly at his door for the key. The instant I did it +two dogs from nowhere, two infamous little dogs of that unpleasant breed +from which I suppose Pomerania takes its name, rushed at me furiously +barking. The noise was enough to wake the dead; and since nobody stirred +in the house or showed other signs of being wakened it became plain to +my deductive intelligence that its inmates couldn't be dead. So I +knocked again. The dogs yelled again. I stood looking at them in deep +disgust, quite ashamed of the way in which the dripping stillness was +being rent because of me. A soothing umbrella shaken at them only +increased their fury. They seemed, like myself, to grow more and more +indignant the longer the door was kept shut. At last a servant opened it +a few inches, eyed me with astonishment, and when she heard my innocent +request eyed me with suspicion. She hesitated, half shut the door, +hesitated again, and then saying she would go and see what the Herr +Pastor had to say, shut the door quite. I do not remember ever having +felt less respectable. The girl clearly thought I was not; the dogs +clearly were sure I was not. Properly incensed by the shutting of the +door and the expression on the girl's face I decided that the only +dignified course was to go away; but I couldn't because of the dogs. + +The girl came back with the key. She looked as though she had a personal +prejudice against me. She opened the door just wide enough for a lean +person to squeeze through, and bade me, with manifest reluctance, come +in. The hall had a brick floor and an umbrella stand. In the umbrella +stand stood an umbrella, and as the girl, who walked in front of me, +passed it, she snatched out the umbrella and carried it with her, firmly +pressed to her bosom. I did not at once grasp the significance of this +action. She put me into an icy shut-up room and left me to myself. It +was the _gute Stube_--good room--room used only on occasions of frigid +splendor. Its floor was shiny with yellow paint, and to meet the +difficulty of the paint being spoiled if people walked on it and that +other difficulty of a floor being the only place you can walk on, strips +of cocoanut matting were laid across it from one important point to +another. There was a strip from the door to the window; a strip from the +door to another door; a strip from the door to the sofa; and a strip +from the sofa on which the caller sits to the chair on which sits the +callee. A baby of apparently brand newness was crying in an adjoining +room. I waited, listening to it for what seemed an interminable time, +not daring to sit down because it is not expected in Germany that you +shall sit in any house but your own until specially requested to do so. +I stood staring at the puddles my clothes and umbrella were forming on +the strip of matting, vainly trying to rub them out with my feet. The +wail of the unfortunate in the next room was of an uninterrupted and +haunting melancholy. The rain beat on the windows forlornly. As minute +after minute passed and no one came I grew very restless. My fingers +began to twitch, and my feet to tap. And I was cooling down after my +quick walk with a rapidity that meant a cough and a sore throat. There +was no bell, or I would have rung it and begged to be allowed to go +away. I did turn round to open the door and try to attract the servant's +notice and tell her I could wait no longer, but I found to my +astonishment that the door was locked. After that the whole of my +reflections were resolved into one chaotic Dear me, from which I did not +emerge till the parson appeared through the other door, bringing with +him a gust of wailing from the unhappy baby within and of the +characteristic smell of infant garments drying at a stove. + +He was cold, suspicious, inquisitive. Evidently unused to being asked +for permission to go into his church, and equally evidently unused to +persons passing through a village which was, for most persons, on the +way to nowhere, he endeavored with some skill to discover what I was +doing there. With equal skill I evaded answering his questions. They +included inquiries as to my name, my age, my address, my father's +profession, the existence or not of a husband, the number of my brothers +and sisters, and distinct probings into the size of our income. It +struck me that he had a great deal of time and very few visitors, except +thieves. Delicately I conveyed this impression to him, leaving out only +the thieves, by means of implications of a vaguely flattering nature. He +shrugged his shoulders, and said it was too wet for funerals, which were +the only things doing at this time of the year. + +'What, don't they die when it is wet?' I asked, surprised. + +'Certainly, if it is necessary,' said he. + +'Oh,' said I, pondering. 'But if some one does he has to be buried?' + +'We put it off,' said he. + +'Put it off?' + +'We put it off,' he repeated firmly. + +'But--' I began, in a tone of protest. + +'There's always a fine day if one waits long enough,' said he. + +'That's true,' said I, struck by a truth I had not till then consciously +observed. + +He did not ask me to sit down, a careful eye, I suppose, having gauged +the probable effect of my wet clothes on his dry chairs, so we stood +facing each other on the strip of matting throwing questions and answers +backward and forward like a ball. And I think I played quite skilfully, +for at the end of the game he knew little more than when we began. + +And so at last he gave me the key, and having with a great rattling of +its handle concealed that he was unlocking the door, and further cloaked +this process by a pleasant comment on the way doors stick in wet +weather, which I met with the cold information that ours didn't, he +whistled off the dogs, and I left him still with an inquiry in his eye. + +The church is very ancient and dates from the thirteenth century. You +would like its outside--I wonder if in your walks you ever came +here--but its inside has been spoilt by the zealous Lutherans and turned +into the usual barn. In its first state of beauty in those far-off +Catholic days what a haven it must have been for all the women and most +of the men of that lonely turnip-growing village; the one beauty spot, +the one place of mystery and enthusiasm. No one, I thought, staring +about me, could possibly have their depths stirred in the middle of so +much whitewash. The inhabitants of these bald agricultural parishes are +not sufficiently spiritual for the Lutheran faith. Black gowns and +bareness may be enough for those whose piety is so exalted that +ceremonies are only a hindrance to the purity of their devotions; but +the ignorant and the dull, if they are to be stirred, and especially the +women who have entered upon that long series of gray years that begins, +for those worked gaunt and shapeless in the fields, somewhere about +twenty-five and never leaves off again, if they are to be helped to be +less forlorn need many ceremonies, many symbols, much show, and mystery, +and awfulness. You will say that it is improbable that the female +inhabitants of such a poor parish should know what it is to feel +forlorn; but I know better. You will, turning some of my own words +against me, tell me that one does not feel forlorn if one is worked hard +enough; but I know better about that too,--and I said it only in +reference to young men like yourself. It is true the tragedy of the +faded face combined with the uncomfortably young heart, which is the +tragedy that every woman who has had an easy life has to endure for +quite a number of years, finds no place in the existence of a drudge; it +is true too that I never yet saw, and I am sure you didn't, a woman of +the laboring classes make efforts to appear younger than she is; and it +is also true that I have seldom seen, and I am sure you haven't, women +of the class that has little to do leave off making them. Ceaseless hard +work and the care of many children do away very quickly with the youth +both of face and heart of the poor man's wife, and with the youth of +heart go the yearnings that rend her whose heart, whatever her face may +be doing, is still without a wrinkle. But drudgery and a lost youth do +not make your life less, but more dreary. These poor women have not, +like their husbands, the solace of the public-house _Schnapps_. They go +through the bitterness of the years wholly without anæsthetics. Really I +don't think I can let you go on persisting that they feel nothing. Why, +we shall soon have you believing that only you in this groaning and +travailing creation suffer. Please divest yourself of these illusions. +Read, my young friend, read the British poet Crabbe. Read him much; +ponder him more. He knew all about peasants. He was a plain man, with a +knack for rhyme and rhythm that sets your brain a-jingling for weeks, +who saw peasants as they are. They must have been the very ones we have +here. In his pages no honeysuckle clambers picturesquely about their +path, no simple virtues shine in their faces. Their hearth is not snowy, +their wife not neat and nimble. They do not gather round bright fires +and tell artless tales on winter evenings. Their cheer is certainly +homely, but that doesn't make them like it, and they never call down +blessings upon it with moist uplifted eyes. Grandsires with venerable +hair are rather at a discount; the young men's way of trudging cannot be +described as elastic; and their talk, when there is any, does not +consist of praise of the local landowner. Do you think they do not know +that they are cold and underfed? And do not know they have grown old +before their time through working in every sort of weather? And do not +know where their rheumatism and fevers come from? + +I walked back through the soaking, sighing woods thinking of these +things and of how unfairly the goods of life are distributed and of the +odd tendency misfortunes have to collect themselves together in one +place in a heap. Old thoughts, you'll say,--old thoughts as stale as +life, thoughts that have drifted through countless heads, and after a +while drifted out of them again, leaving no profit behind them. But one +can't help thinking them and greatly marvelling. Make the most, you +fortunate young man, of freedom, and Italy, and sunshine, and your six +and twenty years. If I could only persuade you to let yourself go quite +simply to being happy! Our friendship, in spite of its sincerity, has up +to now been of so little use to you; and a friendship which is not +helpful might just as well not exist. I wish I knew what words of mine +would help you most. How gladly would I write them. How gladly would I +see you in untroubled waters, forging straight ahead toward a full and +fruitful life. But I am a foolish, ineffectual woman, and write you +waspish letters when I might, if I had more insight, have found out what +those words are that would set you tingling with the joy of life. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +I've been reading some of the very beautiful prayers in my mother's +English Prayer Book to make up for not having prayed in church today. +Its margins are thickly covered with pencilled comments. In parts like +the Psalms and Canticles they overflow into the spaces between the +verses. They are chiefly notes on the beauties of thought and language, +and comparisons with similar passages in the Bible. Here and there +between the pages are gummed little pictures of Madonnas and 'piteous +Christs.' But when the Athanasian Creed is reached the tone of the +comment changes. Over the top of it is written 'Some one has said there +is a vein of dry humor running through this Creed that is very +remarkable.' And at the end of each of those involved clauses that try +quite vainly, yet with an air of defying criticism, to describe the +undescribable, my mother has written with admirable caution 'Perhaps.' + + + +LIV + +Galgenberg, Nov. 7th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--So you are coming to Berlin next month. I thought +you told me in one of your letters that Washington was probably going to +be your first diplomatic post. Evidently you are glad it is not; but if +I were going to be an _attaché_ I'd much rather be it at Washington than +Berlin, the reason being that I've not been to Washington and I have +been to Berlin. Why are you so pleased--forgive me, I meant so much +pleased, but it is strange how little instinct has to do with +grammar--about Berlin? You didn't like it when you were here and went +for two days to look at it. You said it was a hard white place, full of +broad streets with nobody in them. You said it was barren, soulless, +arid, pretentious, police-ridden; that everybody was an official, and +that all the officials were rude. You were furious with a policeman who +stared at you without answering when you asked him the way. You were +scandalized by the behavior of the men in the local trains who sat and +smoked in the faces of the standing women, and by those men who walked +with their female relations in the streets and caused their parcels to +be carried by them. You came home to us saying that Jena was best, and +you were thankful to be with us again. I went to Berlin once, a little +while before you came to Germany, and didn't like it either. But I +didn't like it because it was so full, because those streets that seemed +to you so empty were bewildering to me in their tumultuous traffic,--so +you see how a place is what your own eye makes it, your Jena or your +London eye; and I didn't like it besides because we spent a sulphuric +night and morning with relations. The noise of the streets all day and +the sulphur of the relations at night spoilt it for me. We went there +for a jaunt, to look at the museums and things, and stay the night with +Papa's brother who lives there. He is Papa's younger brother, and spends +his days in a bank, handing out and raking in money through a hole in a +kind of cage. He has a pen behind his ear--I know, because we were taken +to gaze upon him between two museums--and wears a black coat on weekdays +as well as on Sundays, which greatly dazzled my step-mother, who was +with us. I believe he is eminently respectable, and the bank values him +as an old and reliable servant, and has made him rich. His salary is +eight thousand marks a year--four hundred pounds, sir; four times as +much as what we have--and my step-mother used often and fervently to +wish that Papa had been more like him. I thought him a terrifying old +uncle, a parched, machine-like person, whose soul seemed withdrawn into +unexplorable vague distances, reduced to a mere far-off flicker by the +mechanical nature of his work. He is ten years younger than Papa, but +infinitely more faded. He never laughs. He never even smiles. He is rude +to his wife. He is withering to his daughters. He made me think of owls +as he sat at supper that night in his prim clothes, with round gloomy +eyes fixed on Papa, whom he was lecturing. Papa didn't mind. He had had +a happy day, ending with two very glorious hours in the Royal Library, +and Tante Else's herring salad was much to his taste. 'Hast thou no +respect, Heinrich,' he cried at last when my uncle, warmed by beer, let +his lecture slide over the line that had till then divided it from a +rating, 'hast thou then no respect for the elder brother, and his white +and reverend hairs?' + +But Onkel Heinrich, aware that he is the success and example of the +family, and as intolerant as successes and examples are of laxer and +poorer relations, waved Papa's banter aside with contempt, and proposed +that instead of wasting any more of an already appallingly wasted life +in idle dabblings in so-called literature he too should endeavor to get +a post, however humble, in a bank in Berlin, and mend his ways, and earn +an income of his own, and cease from living on an income acquired by +marriages. + +My step-mother punctuated his words with nods of approval. + +'What, as a doorkeeper, eh, thou cistern filled with wisdom?' cried +Papa, lifting his glass and drinking gayly to Tante Else, who glanced +uneasily at her husband, he not yet having been, to her recollection, +called a cistern. + +'It is better,' said my step-mother, to whom a man so punctual, so +methodical, and so well-salaried as Onkel Heinrich seemed wholly ideal, +'it is better to be a doorkeeper in--in-' + +She was seized with doubt as to the applicability of the text, and +hesitated. + +'A bank?' suggested Papa pleasantly. + +'Yes, Ferdinand, even in a bank rather than dwell in the tents of +wickedness.' + +'That,' explained Papa to Tante Else, leaning back in his chair and +crossing his hands comfortably over what, you being English, I will call +his chest, 'is my dear wife's poetic way--' + +'Scriptural way, Ferdinand,' interrupted my step-mother. 'I know no +poetic ways.' + +'It is the same thing, _meine Liebste_. The Scriptures are drenched in +poetry. Poetic way, I say, of referring to Jena.' + +'_Ach so_,' said Tante Else, vague because she doesn't know her Bible +any better than the rest of us Germans; it is only you English who have +it at your fingers' ends; and, of course, my step-mother had it at hers. + +'Tents,' continued Tante Else, feeling that as _Hausfrau_ it was her +duty to make herself conversationally conspicuous, and anxious to hide +that she was privately at sea, 'tents are unwholesome as permanent +dwellings. I should say a situation somewhere as doorkeeper in a healthy +building was much to be preferred to living in nasty draughty things +like tents.' + +'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich, with sudden and explosive bitterness; +you remember of course that _quatsch_ is German for silly, or nonsense, +and that it is far more expressive, and also more rude, than either. + +My step-mother opened her mouth to speak, but Tante Else, urged by her +sense of duty, flowed on. 'You cannot,' she said, addressing Papa, 'be a +doorkeeper unless there is a door to keep.' + +'Let no one,' cried Papa, beating approving hands together, 'say again +that ladies are not logicians.' + +'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'And a door is commonly a--a-' She cast about for the word. + +'A necessity?' suggested Papa, all bright and pleased attention. + +'A convenience?' suggested my cousin Lieschen, the rather pretty +unmarried daughter, a girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump +red hands. + +'An ornament?' suggested my cousin Elschen, the rather pretty married +daughter, another girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump red +hands. + +'A thing you go in at?' I suggested. + +'No, no,' said Tante Else impatiently, determined to run down her word. + +'A thing you go out at, then?' said I, proud of the resourcefulness of +my intelligence. + +'No, no,' said Tante Else, still more impatiently. '_Ach Gott_, where do +all the words get to?' + +'Is it something very particular for which you are searching?' asked my +step-mother, with the sympathetic interest you show in the searchings of +the related rich. + +'Something not worth the search, we may be sure,' remarked Onkel +Heinrich. + +'_Ach Gott_,' said Tante Else, not heeding him, 'where do they--' She +clasped and unclasped her fingers; she gazed round the room and up at +the ceiling. We all sat silent, feeling that here there was no help, and +watched while she chased the elusive word round and round her brain. +Only Onkel Heinrich continued to eat herring salad with insulting +emphasis. + +'I have it,' she cried at last triumphantly. + +We at once revived into a brisk attention. + +'A door is a characteristic--' + +'A most excellent word,' said Papa encouragingly. 'Continue, my dear.' + +'It is a characteristic of buildings that are massive and that have +windows and chimneys like other buildings.' + +'Excellent, excellent,' said Papa. 'Definitions are never easy.' + +'And--and tents don't have them,' finished Tante Else, looking round at +us with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so much +about something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping. + +'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'My dear,' protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice these +comments. + +'I say it is _quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemence +startling in one so trim. + +'Really, my dear,' said Tante Else. + +'I repeat it,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'Do not think, my dear--' + +'I do not think, I know. Am I to sit silent, to have no opinion, in my +own house? At my own table?' + +'My dear--' + +'If you do not like to hear the truth, refrain from talking nonsense.' + +'My dear Heinrich--will you not try--in the presence of--of relations, +and of--of our children--' Her voice shook a little, and she stopped, +and began with great haste and exactness to fold up her table-napkin. + +'_Ach--quatsch_' said Onkel Heinrich again, irritably pushing back his +chair. + +He waddled to a cupboard--of course he doesn't get much exercise in his +cage, so he can only waddle--and took out a box of cigars. 'Come, +Ferdinand,' he said, 'let us go and smoke together in my room and leave +the dear women to the undisturbed enjoyment of their wits.' + +'I do not smoke,' said Papa briefly. + +'Come then while I smoke,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'Nay, I fear thee, Heinrich,' said Papa. 'I fear thy tongue applied to +my weak places. I fear thine eye, measuring their deficiencies. I fear +thy intelligence, known to be great--' + +'Worth exactly,' said Onkel Heinrich suddenly facing us, the cigarbox +under his arm, his cross owl's eyes rounder than ever, 'worth exactly, +on the Berlin brain market, eight thousand marks a year.' + +'I know, I know,' cried Papa, 'and I admire--I admire. But there is awe +mingled with my admiration, Heinrich,--awe, respect, terror. Go, thou +man of brains and marketableness, thou man of worth and recognition, go +and leave me here with these lesser intellects. I fear thee, and I will +not watch thee smoke.' + +And he got up and raised Tante Else's hand to his lips with great +gallantry and wished her, after our pleasant fashion at the end of +meals, a good digestion. + +But Tante Else, though she tried to smile and return his wishes, could +not get back again into her _rôle_ of serene and conversational +_Hausfrau._ My uncle waddled away, shooting a sniff of scorn over his +shoulder as he went, and my aunt endeavored to conceal the fact that she +was wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both at +once. My step-mother cleared her throat, and remarked that successful +public men often had to pay for their successes by being the victims at +home of nerves, and that their wives, whose duty it is always to be +loving, might be compared to the warm and soothing iron passed over a +shirt newly washed, and deftly, by its smooth insistence, flattening +away each crease. + +Papa gazed at my step-mother with admiring astonishment while she +elaborated this image. He had hold of Tante Else's hand and was stroking +it. His bright eyes were fixed on his wife, and I could see by their +expression that he was trying to recall the occasions on which his own +creases had been ironed out. + +With the correctness with which one guesses most of a person's thoughts +after you have lived with him ten years, my step-mother guessed what he +was thinking. 'I said public men,' she remarked, 'and I said successes.' + +'I heard, I heard, _meine Liebste_,' Papa assured her, 'and I also +completely understand.' + +He made her a little bow across the table. 'Do not heed him, Else, my +dear,' he added, turning to my aunt. 'Do not heed thy Heinrich--he is +but a barbarian.' + +'Ferdinand!' exclaimed my step-mother. + +'Oh no,' sighed Tante Else, 'it is I who am impatient and foolish.' + +'I tell thee he is a barbarian. He always was. In the nursery he was, +when, yet unable to walk, he crawled to that spot on the carpet where +stood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy with +the playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into them +made holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she saw +them, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalking +the flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistened +finger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure of +his prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent over +his desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue's sleeve +or trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while the +victim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasing +uneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolonged +absence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comrades +who served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not here +repeat. And as a husband--yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has not +lost it--he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.' + +'Oh, no, no,' sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearful +interest. + +'Ferdinand,' said my step-mother angrily, 'your tongue is doing what it +invariably does, it is running away with you.' + +'Why are married people always angry with each other?' asked Lieschen, +the unmarried daughter, in a whisper. + +'How can I tell, since I am not married?' I answered in another whisper. + +'They are not,' whispered Elschen with all the authority of the lately +married. 'It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. We +kiss.' + +'That is true,' said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not without +a touch of envy. 'I have repeatedly seen you doing it.' + +'Yes,' said Elschen placidly. + +'Is there no alternative?' I inquired. + +'No what?' + +'Alternative.' + +'I do not know what you mean by alternative, Rose-Marie,' said Elschen, +trying to twist her wedding-ring round on her finger, but it couldn't +twist because it was too deeply embedded. 'Where do you get your long +words from?' + +'Must one either quarrel or kiss?' I asked. 'Is there no serene valley +between the thunderous heights on the one hand and the swampy +enervations on the other?' + +To this Elschen merely replied, while she stared at me, '_Grosser +Gott_.' + +'You are a queer cousin,' said Lieschen, giggling again, the giggle this +time containing a touch of contempt, her giggles never being wholly +unadulterated. 'I suppose it is because Onkel Ferdinand is so poor.' + +'I expect it is,' said I. + +'He has hardly any money, has he?' + +'I believe he has positively none.' + +'But how do you live at all?' + +'I can't think. It must be a habit.' + +'You don't look very fat.' + +'How can I, when I'm not?' + +'You must come and see my baby,' said Elschen, apparently irrelevantly, +but I don't think it really was; she thought a glimpse of that, I am +sure, refreshing baby would cure most heartsicknesses. + +'Yes, yes, it is a splendid baby,' said Lieschen, brightening, 'and its +wardrobe is trimmed throughout with the best Swiss embroidery threaded +with beautiful blue ribbons. It cost many hundred marks, I assure you. +There is nothing that is not both durable and excellent. Elschen's +mother-in-law is a very rich lady. She gave it all. She keeps two +servants, and they wear washing dresses and big white aprons, just like +English servants. Elschen's mother-in-law says it is a great expense +because of the laundry bills, but that she doesn't mind. If you were +going to stay longer, and had got the necessary costumes, we might have +taken you to see her, and she might perhaps have asked you to stay to +coffee.' + +'Really?' said I, in a voice of concern. + +'Yes. It is a pity for you. You would then see how elegant Berlin people +are. I expect this--' she waved her hand--'is quite different from Jena, +and seems strange to you, but it is nothing, I assure you nothing at +all, compared to Elschen's mother-in-law's furniture and food.' + +'Really?' said I, again with concern. + +I did a dreadful thing next morning at breakfast: I broke a jug. Never +shall I forget the dismay and shame of that moment. Really I am rather a +deft person, used to jugs, and not, as a rule, of hasty or unconsidered +movements. It was, I think, the electric current streaming out of Onkel +Heinrich that had at last reached me too and galvanized me into a +nervous and twitching behavior. He came in last, and the moment he +appeared words froze, smiles vanished, eyes fell, and Papa's piping +alone continued to be heard in the cheerless air. I don't know what had +passed between him and Tante Else since last we had seen him, but his +opaque black eyes were crosser and blacker than ever. Perhaps it was +only that he had smoked more than was good for him, and the whole family +was punished for that over-indulgence. I could not help reflecting how +lucky it was that we were his relations and not hers; what must happen +to hers if they ever come to see her I dare not think. It was while I +was reflecting on their probable scorched and shrivelled condition, and +at the same time was eagerly passing him some butter that I don't think +he wanted but that I was frantically afraid he might want, that my +zealous arm swept the milk-jug off the table, and it fell on the +varnished floor, and with a hideous clatter of what seemed like +malicious satisfaction smashed itself to atoms. + +'There now,' cried my step-mother casting up her hands, 'Rose-Marie all +over.' + +'I am very sorry,' I stammered, pushing back my chair and gathering up +the pieces and mopping up the milk with my handkerchief. + +'Dear niece, it is of no consequence,' faltered Tante Else, her eyes +anxiously on her husband. + +'No consequence?' cried he--and his words sounded the more terrific from +their being the first, beyond a curt good morning, that he had uttered. +'No consequence?' + +And when my shameful head reappeared above the table and I got on to my +feet and carried the ruins to a sideboard, murmuring hysterical +apologies as I went, he pointed with a lean finger to what had once been +a jug and said with an owlish solemnity and weightiness of utterance I +have never heard equalled, 'It was very expensive.' I can't tell you how +glad, how thankful I was to get home. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LV + +Galgenberg, Nov. 15th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I shall send this to Jermyn Street, as it can no +longer catch you in Italy. Jena is not on the way from London to Berlin, +and I don't know what map persuaded you that it was. It is very faithful +and devoted of you to want so much to see Professor Martens again, but +you know he is a busy man, and for five minutes with him as he rushes +from a lecture to a private lesson it hardly seems worth while to make +such a tremendous _détour_. Why, you would be hours pottering about on +branch lines and at junctions, and would never, I am certain, see your +luggage again. Still, it is not for me to refuse your visit to Professor +Martens on his behalf who as yet knows nothing about it. I merely +advise; and you know I do not easily miss an opportunity of doing that. + +What another odd idea of yours to want to call on our Berlin relations. +Has Italy put these various warm genialities into your head? I did not +think I had made the Heinrich Schmidts attractive. I was shivering while +I wrote with renewed horror, as the remembrance of that evening with +them and of that morning rose up again before me. That the result should +be a thirst on your part for their address fills me with astonishment. +Do you want to go and do them good? Soften Onkel Heinrich, and teach him +to cherish kind Tante Else with the meek blue eyes and claret-colored +silk dress? You cannot seriously intend to set up regular social +intercourse with them. It is certain you will never meet them at any +party you go to,--no, not even Elschen's mother-in-law. The classes are +with us divided so rigorously that the needle's eye was child's play to +the camel compared to this other entering. You will, very properly, +remembering my cloistered life, inquire what I know about it; but it +seems to me, only please don't laugh, that I have seen and known quite a +good deal. When Experience leaves gaps, quick Imagination fills them up. +The straws I have noticed have been enough to show me which way the wind +was blowing; and women, pray remember, are artists at putting two and +two together. Therefore I prophesy that if you are at the English +Embassy in Berlin fifty years and meet fresh people every day of them, +among those people will never be Onkel Heinrich and Tante Else. What, +then, is the use of giving you their address? I will, if you really +seriously wish it, but I must warn you that they would be intensely +surprised by a call from you, and it would in no way add to their +comfort. The connecting thread is altogether too slender. Papa is not a +relation whose introductions they value, and to come from him is a +handicap rather than a recommendation. Do you know the only possible +conclusion they would come to?--and come to it they certainly +would--that somehow, somewhere, in a train, or a shop, or walking, you +had seen Lieschen, and had fallen in love with her. And before you knew +where you were you would be married to Lieschen. + +How sad to have to come away from the flaming Spanish chestnuts of +Italy, and turn your face toward London fogs. You don't seem to mind. +You never do seem to mind the things that would fill my heart with +leaden despair, and over other things that should not matter you cry +out. Indeed, far from minding you seem eager to be off. Yet London can't +be nice in November, and Berlin, where you so soon will be, is simply +horrid. It was in November that we were there, and we splashed about in +a raw, wet cold,--rain on the verge of sleet and snow, a bitter wind at +the corners, the omnibuses all full (we could not afford the dearer and +more respectable tram), and everybody we met had an unkind strange face +that stared at us, in spite of hurry and umbrellas, with a thoroughness +and comprehensiveness that must be peculiar to Berlin. Papa's galoshes +didn't fit and kept coming off, and they always did it at the most +difficult moment, generally when we were crossing a street, and there +they would lie, scattered beneath hoofs and wheels, till I had rescued +them again. Also his umbrella, being old and never having been very +strong, turned inside out at extra gusty corners, and we, who had come +to look and wonder, found that the Berlin people thought we had come to +be looked and wondered at. But do not let me damp your ardor with these +gloomy tales. It is such an excellent thing that you should be ardent at +all after this long while of dissatisfaction with life that I ought to +cheer you on and not talk dreary. Besides, your umbrella won't mind +corners, and you do not wear galoshes. I wish you joy, then, of your new +post, and hope you will be very happy in it. Papa was most interested to +hear you were coming so near us, and sends you many messages whose +upshot is that you are to be a good boy and do him credit. He doesn't +know about the unfortunate ending to your engagement, and I shall not +tell him, for he would be sorry; and more and more as the days and +months melt away into a dream I am anxious that he should not be made +sorry. Do you not think that old people should never be made sorry? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +I hope you will waste no precious time coming to Jena to see Professor +Martens. I heard a rumor that he was ill, or away or something, so that +you would have your long and _extremely_ tiresome journey positively for +nothing. + + + +LVI + +Galgenberg, Nov. 23d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Was it so short? I don't remember. This one shall +be longer, then. Tell me, do you think there is any use in trying to +cure a person of being in love? I have come to the conclusion that it's +hopeless. Such cures must be made from the inside outward, and not from +the outside inward. I thought I was going to stir Vicki to a noble +independence, and you should have heard the speeches I made her. +Sometimes I had to laugh at them myself, they were such extraordinarily +heroic and glowing things for one dripping Fräulein with none too brave +a heart to hurl at another dripping Fräulein with no brave heart at all, +as they trotted along with shortened skirts and umbrellas through +wind-racked, howling forests. Vicki has gone all to pieces again, and +her eyes are redder than ever. I don't know whether it is these November +mists that have done it, but certainly after all my hauling of her up +the rocks of proud self-sufficiency she has flopped back again deeper +than before into the morass in which I found her. It's a perfect bog of +sentiment she's sunk in now. I make her go for ten-mile walks, and aim +at doing them in two hours, thus hoping to bring out her love-sickness +in the form of healthy perspiration, but it's no good. 'Oh,' gasps +Vicki, when we start off up the sombre aisles of pines, and see them +stretching away before us into a gray infinity, and mark their reeking +trunks, black with damp, hoar with lichen, and hear their sighings and +their creakings through the patter of rain on our umbrellas, and feel +their wet breath on our cheeks, 'oh what an empty, frightening world it +is.' + +Then I tell her, with what enthusiasm I may, that it's not, that it's +beautiful, that we are young and strong, that our life can be made just +exactly as glorious as we are energetic enough to make it. And she +doesn't believe a word; she simply shakes her head, and moans that she +isn't energetic. + +'But you are,' I say with a fine show of confidence. 'Come, let us walk +faster. Who would dare say you were not who saw you now?' + +'Oh,' wails Vicki; and trots along blowing her nose. + +Poor little soul. I've tried kissing her, and it did no good either. I +petted her for a whole day; sat with my arms round her; had her head on +my shoulder; whispered every consolation I could think of; but +unfortunately the only person who has ever petted her was the faithless +one, and it made her think of him with renewed agony, and opened +positive sluices of despair. I've tried scolding her--the 'My dear +Vicki, really for a woman grown' tone, but she gets so much of that from +her mother, and besides she isn't a woman grown, but only a poor, +unhappy, cheated little child. But how dull, how dry, how profitless are +the comfortings of one woman for another. I feel it in every nerve the +whole time I am applying them. One kiss from the wretched man himself +and the world blazes into radiance. A thousand of the most beautiful and +eminent verities enunciated by myself only collect into a kind of frozen +pall that hangs about her miserable little head and does nothing more +useful than suffocate her. She has been inclined to feel bad ever since +the fatal letter about the soup, but there were intervals in which with +infinite haulings I did get her up on to the rocks again, those rocks +she finds so barren, but from whose tops she can at least see clearly +and be kept dry. Now that this terrible weather has come upon us, and +every day is wetter and sadder than the last, she has collapsed +entirely. If I could write as well as Papa I would like to write an +essay on the connection between a wet November and the renewed buddings +of love. Frau von Lindeberg is dreadfully angry, and came up, and +actually came in, a thing she has not done yet, and sat on the sofa, +carefully enthroned in its middle and well spread out in case I should +so far forget myself as to want to sit upon it too, and asked me what +nonsense I had been putting into the child's head. + +'Nonsense?' I exclaimed, remembering my noble talk. + +'She was getting over it. You must have said something.' + +'Said something? Yes, indeed I said something. Never has one person said +so many things before.' + +She stared in amazement. 'What,' she cried, 'you actually--you +dared--you have the effrontery--' + +'Shall I tell you what I said?' + +And for an hour I gave the astonished lady, hemmed in on the sofa by the +table and by my chair, the outlines of my views on ideals and conduct. I +made the most of the hour. The outlines were very thick. No fidgeting or +attempts to stop me were considered. She had come to scold; she should +stay to learn. + +'Well, well,' she said, when I, tired of talking, got up and removed the +impeding table with something of the brisk politeness of a dentist +unhooking the patient's bib and screwing down his chair after he has +done his worst, 'you seem to be a good sort of girl. You have, I see, +meant no harm.' + +'Meant no harm? I neither meant it nor did I do it. Allow me to make the +point clearer--' And I prepared to push back the table upon her and +began again. + +'No, no--it is quite clear, thank you. Kindly go on endeavoring, then, +to influence my unhappy child for good. I trust your excellent father is +well. Good morning.' + +But influence as I may Vicki has given up wearing those starched shirts +with the high linen collars and neat ties in which she first dazzled me, +and has gone into nondescript woollen clothes something like mine. She +says it is because, of the washing bills, but I know it to be but a +further symbol of her despair. The one remnant of her first trimness is +her beautifully brushed hair. Stooping over her to see that her English +exercises are correct I like to lay my cheek a moment on it, so lightly +that she does not notice, for it is wonderful stuff,--soft, wavy, +shining, and ought alone without the little ear and curve of the young +cheek, without the silly pretty mouth and kind straightforward eyes, to +have immeshed that stupid man beyond all possibility of disentangling +himself. She was not made for Milton and the Muses. Nature, carving her +out, moulding her body and her mind, putting in a dimple here and giving +an eyelash an extra curl there, had a pleasant eye on a firelit future +for Vicki, a cosy, sheltered future with a fender for her feet, a baby +for each arm, and an adored husband coming in at the end of the day to +be fed and kissed. But this man has outwitted nature. He weighed, with +true German caution, Vicki and her dimples against the tiny portion +which was all he could extract from her parents, and found them not +heavy enough to make up for the alarming emptiness of that other scale. +Now Vicki's fender and babies and busy happy life have vanished into the +land of Never Will Be's. She will not find some one else to take his +place. She has a story attached to her: a fatal thing here for a girl. +Unlike your Miss Cheriton, who gently waves you aside and engages +herself without the least difficulty to a duke, Vicki is a marked +person, and will be avoided by our careful and calculating young men. +She is doomed never to spoil and tease those babies, never to spoil and +worship that husband. Instead she will, for a year, continue to range +the hills here with me, trying to listen politely to my admonishments +while inwardly she shudders at the loneliness and vastness of the +forests and of life, and then her parents' lease will be up, and they +and she will drift down into some little town in the Harz where retired +officers finish lives grown vegetable, and the years will pounce upon +her and strip her one by one of her little stock of graces. Don't +suppose I blame the man, because I don't; I only resent that he should +have so much the best of it. There is no law obliging a man to marry +because some lovesick girl wants him to--if I were a man I would never +marry--but I do deplore the exceeding number of the girls who want him +to. If each girl would say her prayers and go her own way, go about her +business, her parents having seen to it that she should have a business +to go about, what a cheerful, tearless place the world would be. And you +must forgive my vociferousness, but really I have had a woeful morning +with Vicki, who cried so bitterly into the pages of my Milton that the +best part of _Samson Agonistes_ is stuck together, and all the red has +come off the edges. + +Papa Lindeberg came in at the end of the lesson to offer me his umbrella +to go home with. 'It is a wet day, Fräulein Hebe,' said he, looking +round. + +'It is,' said I, gazing ruefully at my poor Milton. + +'Even the daughters of the gods,' said he--thus mildly do we continue to +joke together--'must sometimes use umbrellas.' + +'Yes,' said I, smiling at this pleasant old man, this old man I thought +at first so disagreeable; and he went with me to the door, and asked me +in an anxious whisper what I thought of Vicki. 'It lasts long--it lasts +long,' said he, helplessly. + +'Yes,' said I, standing under the umbrella in the rain, while he in the +porch rubbed one hand mechanically over the other and stared at me. + +'You are a very fortunate young lady,' he said wistfully. + +'I?' + +'Our poor Vicki--if she were more like you--' + +'Like me?' + +'It is so clear that you have never known this terrible malady of love. +You have the face of a joyful _Backfisch_.' + +'Oh,'--I began to laugh; and laughed, and laughed till the umbrella +shook showers of raindrops off each of its points. + +He stood watching me thoughtfully. 'It is true,' he said. + +'Oh,' was all I could ejaculate; for indeed the idea made me very merry. + +'No member of our sex,' said he, 'has ever even for a moment caught what +is still a bright and untouched maiden fancy.' + +'There was a young man once,' I began, 'in the Jena cake-shop--' + +'_Ach_' he interrupted, waving the young man and his cakes away with an +impatient movement of the hand. + +'I didn't know,' said I, 'that you could read people's past.' + +'Yours is easy enough to read. It is shining so clearly in your eyes, it +is reflected so limpidly in your face--' + +'How nice,' said I, interrupting in my turn, for my feet were getting +grievously wet; and you note, I hope, with what industriousness I +preserve and record anything of a flattering nature that any one ever +says to me. + +But you shall hear the other side too; for I turned away, and he turned +away, and before I had gone a yard my shoelace came undone and I had to +go back to the shelter of the porch to tie it up, and while I had my +foot on the scraper and was bending down tying a bow and a knot that +should last me till I got home I heard Frau von Lindeberg from the +parlor off the passage make him the following speech: + +'I am constantly surprised, Ludwig, at the amount of time and +conversation I see you bestow on Fräulein Schmidt. I can hardly call it +impertinence, but there is something indescribable about her +manners,--an unbecoming freedom, an almost immodest frankness, an almost +naked naturalness, that is perilously near impertinence. People of that +class do not understand people of ours; and she will, if you are kinder +than is absolutely necessary, certainly take advantage of it. Let me beg +you to be careful.' + +And Ludwig, beginning then and there, never answered a word. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +What do you think? Papa's book has been refused by the Jena publisher, +by three Berlin publishers, by two in Stuttgart, and one in Leipzig. It +is now journeying round Leipzig to the remaining publishers. The first +time it came back we felt the blow and drooped; the second time we felt +it but did not droop; the third time we felt nothing; the fourth time we +laughed. 'Foolish men,' chuckled Papa, tickled by such blindness to +their own interests, 'if none will have it we will translate it and send +it to England, what?' + +'Who is we, darling?' I asked anxiously. + +'We is you, Rose-Marie,' said Papa, pulling my ear. + +'Oh,' said I. + +Scene closes. + + + +LVII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 1st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is strange to address this letter to Berlin, +and to know that by the time it gets there you will be there too. Well, +let it welcome you very heartily back to the Fatherland. I think I know +the street you are in; it is facing the Thiergarten, isn't it, and looks +north? Quite close to the Brandenburg Thor? I remember it because we +trudged, among other places, also about the Thiergarten on our memorable +visit, and Papa's eye caught the name of your street and he stood for +ten minutes in the rain giving us a spirited sketch of the man's life +and claims to have a street called after him. My step-mother waited with +a grim patience, her skirts firmly clutched in each hand. She had come +to sight-see and to have things explained to her, so that it would be +waste of a railway fare not to look and listen. Papa was in great +splendor that day, so obviously superior, in the universatility of his +knowledge, to either of us damp womenfolk. You won't get much sun there +unless your rooms are at the back, but on the other hand it is +undoubtedly a street for the exclusive and well-to-do, as even I could +see to whom marble steps and wrought-iron gates convey the usual lesson. +I, however, would sooner live in a kennel facing south than in a palace +where the sun never came; but then, as you know, my tendencies are +incurably kennelwards. + +Today I am humble and hanging my head, for I have discovered to my pain +and horror that Papa and I are living well beyond our income. I expect +we have bought too many books, and spent too much in stamps to be used +by publishers; but it is certain that we've already consumed over +seventy pounds of our yearly hundred, and that we only took five months +to do it in. What do you think of that? We have been squandering money +right and left somehow. There were no clothes to buy, for what we have +will last us at least two years, and where it has all gone to I can't +imagine. Indeed I am a useless person if I cannot even manage a tiny +house like this and make such sufficient means do. Papa has written to +Professor Martens to tell him he is willing to take in a young man +again. Willing? He is eager, hungry for a young man, for he sees that +without one things will go badly with us. And I, remembering the wealth +we enjoyed while Mr. Collins was with us, have written to him to ask if +he cares to come back and finish learning German. I don't know if he +still wants to, or rather if his father still wants him to, for German +to Joey was as the fly in the apothecary's ointment, in its extreme +offensiveness, nor have I told Papa that I wrote, because of the +peculiar horror with which he regards Joey; but I couldn't resist when I +know that six months of Joey would deliver us for two whole years from +all young men whatever, and I hope when the time comes, if it ever does, +and Joey with it, to persuade Papa by judicious argument of the eminent +desirability of this particular young man. + +There are, however, certain difficulties in the way. Our house has two +bedrooms, two sitting-rooms, an attic, a kitchen, and a coal-hole. +Johanna inhabits the attic. One sitting-room is sacred to Papa and his +work. The other is a scrap room in which we have our meals and receive +Frau von Lindeberg when she calls, and I write letters and read books +and darn stockings. Where, then, will Joey sleep? The answer is as clear +as daylight and very startling: Joey must sleep with Papa. Now that this +truth has dawned upon me I spend hours lost in thoughts of things like +screens and dividing curtains, besides preparing elaborate speeches for +the bringing of Papa to reason. He himself was the first to declare we +must positively take in a young man again, and he surely will see, when +it is pointed out to him, that any one we have must sleep at the +intervals appointed by nature. I'm afraid he'll see it in the case of +every one except the fruitful Joey. It is most unfortunate that Joey +should be so foolish about Goethe, for we really do want somebody who +doesn't mind about money, and I remember several poor boys in the past +who were so very poor that on the days when my step-mother demanded +payment I used to have to go out early and wander among the hills till +evening, unable to endure the sound of the thalers being wrung out of +them. Oh, money is the most horrid of all necessities. I am ashamed to +think of the many bright hours of life soiled by anxieties about it, by +meannesses about it. Wherever even a question of it arises Love and the +Graces fly affrighted, followed closely, by the entire troop of equally +terrified Muses, out of the nearest window. I detest it. I do not want +it. But with all my defiance of it I am crushed beneath the yoke of the +penny as completely as everybody else. Well do I know that penny, and +how much it is when there's one over, and what worlds away when there's +one too few. + +Here comes Johanna to lay the dinner. We are rankly vegetarian again, +Papa leading the way with immense determination, for he has set his +heart at this unfortunate juncture on a new biography of Goethe that +must needs come out just now, a big thing in two volumes costing a +terrible number of marks, very well done, full of the result of original +digging among archives; but he dare not buy it, he says, in the present +state of our affairs. 'Dost thou not think, Rose-Marie,' he said, his +face in grievous puckers at the prospect, 'that a renewed and careful +course of herbage may quickly-set the matter right?' + +'Not quickly,' said I, shaking my head, and pondering privately what, +exactly, he meant by the word renewed. + +He looked crestfallen. + +'But ultimately,' I said, wishing to cheer him. + +'Ultimately--ultimately,' he echoed peevishly. 'The word has a +knell-like sound about it that I do not like. When we have reached thy +Ultimately I shall no longer be in a state to desire or appreciate +Bielschowsky's _Goethe_. My brain, by then, will be clothed with grass, +and my veins be streams of running water.' + +'Well, darling,' said I, putting my arm through his, 'you'll be at least +very nice and refreshing, and extraordinarily like a verse of the +Psalms.' + +And for two days he has held out undaunted, and here comes our lentil +soup and roast apples, so good-by. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LVIII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 4th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--This morning I woke up and wondered at the strange +hush that had fallen on our house, set so near to a sighing, restless +forest; and I looked out of the window and it was the first snow. All +night it must have snowed, for there was the most beautiful smooth bank +of it without a knob anywhere to show where lately I had been digging, +from beneath my window up into the forest. Each pine tree was a fairy +tree, its laden branches one white sparkle. The clouds were gone, and by +the time I had done breakfast there was a brilliant blue sky, and the +hills round Jena stood out so sharply against it that they looked as if +somebody had been at them with a hatchet. Never was there such a serene +and silent world as the one I stepped out into, shovel in hand. I had +come to clear a pathway from the kitchen to the pump; instead I stood as +silent as everything else, the shovel beneath my arm, gazing about me +and drinking in the purity in a speechless ecstasy. Oh the air, Mr. +Anstruther, the air! Unhappy young man, who did not breathe it. It was +like nothing you've got in Berlin, of that you may be very certain. It +was absolutely calm; not a breath stirring. It was icy, yet crisp and +_frappé du soleil_. And then how wonderful the world looked after the +sodden picture of yesterday still in my mind. Each twig of the orchard +trees had its white rim on the one side, exact and smooth, drawn along +it by the finger of the north wind. The steps down from the back door +had vanished beneath the loveliest, sleekest white covering. The pump, +till the day before and ever since I have known it, a bleakly impressive +object silhouetted in all its lankness and gauntness against a +background of sky and mountain, was grown grotesque, bulky, almost +playful, its top and long iron handle heaped with an incredible pile of +snow, its spout hung about with a beard of icicles. Frau von Lindeberg's +kitchen smoke went up straight and pearly into the golden light. The +roofs of Jena were in blue shadow. Our neighbor's roof flashed with a +million diamonds in the sun. Two rooks cawed to each other from the pine +tree nearest our door; and Rose-Marie Schmidt said her morning prayers +then and there, still clinging to her shovel. Then she pulled off her +coat, hung her hat on the door-handle, and began in a sort of high +rapture to make a pathway to the pump. What are the joys of summer to +these? There is nothing like it, nothing, nothing in the world. I know +no mood of Nature's that I do not love--or think I do when it is +over--but for keenness of feeling, for stinging pleasure, for +overflowing life, give me a winter's day with the first snow, a clear +sky, and the thermometer ten degrees Réaumur below zero. + +Vicki called out from her doorway--you could hear the least call this +morning at an extraordinary distance--to ask if I were snowed up too +much to come down as usual. + +'I'm coming down, and I'm making the path to do it with,' I called back, +shovelling with an energy that set my hair dancing about my ears. + +She shouted back--her very shout was cheerful, and I did not need to see +her face to know that today there would be no tears--that she too would +make a path up to meet mine; and presently I heard the sounds of another +joyful shovel. + +Underneath, the ground was hard with frost; it had frozen violently for +several hours before the snow came up on the huge purple wings of the +north wind. The muddy roads, the soaked forest, the plaintive patter of +the rain, were wiped out of existence between a sleeping and a waking. +This was no world in which to lament. This was no place in which sighs +were possible. The thought that a man's marrying one or not could make +so much as the faintest smudge across the bright hopefulness of life +made me laugh aloud with healthiest derision. Oh, how my shovel rang +against the frozen stones! The feathery snow was scattered broadcast at +each stroke. My body glowed and tingled. My hair grew damp about my +forehead. The sun smiled broadly down upon my back. Papa flung up his +window to cheer me on, but shut it again with a slam before he had well +got out his words. Johanna came for an instant to the door, peeped out, +gasped that it was cold--_unheimlich kalt_ was her strange expression: +_unheimlich=dismal_, uncanny; think of it!--and shut the door as +hurriedly as Papa had shut the window. An hour later two hot and smiling +young women met together on the path they had shovelled, and +straightened themselves up, and looked proudly at the results of their +work, and laughed at each other's scarlet faces and at the way their +noses and chins were covered with tiny beads. 'As if it were August and +we'd been reaping,' said Vicki; and the big girl laughed at this, and +the small girl laughed at this, with an excessiveness that would have +convinced a passer-by that somebody was being very droll. + +But there was no passer-by. You don't pass by if snow lies on the roads +three feet deep. We are cut off entirely from Jena and shops. This +letter won't start for I haven't an idea how long. Milk cannot come to +us, and we cannot go to where there is a cow. I have flour enough to +bake bread with for about ten days unless the Lindebergs should have +none, in which case it will last less than five. The coal-hole is stored +with cabbages and carrots, buried, with cunning circumvention of decay, +in sand. Potatoes abound in earth-covered heaps out of doors. Apples +abound in Johanna's attic. We vegetarians come off well on occasions +like this, for the absence of milk and butter does not afflict the +already sorely afflicted, and of course the absence of meat leaves us +completely cold. + +Vicki and I have been mending a boy's sled we found in the lumber room +of their house, I suppose the sled used in his happier days by the +_Assessor_ now chained to a desk in Berlin, and with this we are going +out after coffee this afternoon when the sky turns pale green and stars +come out and blink at us, to the top of the road where it joins the +forest, dragging the sled up as best we can over the frozen snow, and +then, tightly clutching each other, and I expect not altogether in +silence, we intend to career down again as far as the thing will career, +flashing, we hope, past her mother's gate at a speed that will prevent +all interference. Perhaps we shall not be able to stop, and will be +landed at last in the middle of the market-place in Jena. I'll take this +letter with me in case that happens, because then I can post it. +Good-by. It's going to be glorious. Don't you wish you had a sled and a +mountain too? + +Yours in a great hurry, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LIX + +Galgenberg, Dec. 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--We are still in sunshine and frost up here, and +are all very happy, we three Schmidts--Johanna is the third--because +Joey arrives to-morrow and we shall once more roll in money. I hasten to +tell you this, for there were signs in your last two letters that you +were taking our position to heart. It is wonderfully kind, I think, the +way you are interested in our different little pains and pleasures. I am +often more touched than I care to tell you by the sincerity of your +sympathy with all we do, and feel very grateful for so true a friend. I +was so glad you gave up coming to Jena on your way to Berlin, for it +showed that you try to be reasonable, and then you know Professor +Martens goes to Berlin himself every now and then to take sweet counsel +with men like Harnack, so you will be sure to see him sooner or later, +and see him comfortably, without a rush to catch a train. You say you +did not come because I urged you not to, and that in all things you want +to please me. Well, I would prefer to suppose you a follower of that +plain-faced but excellent guide Common Sense. Still, being human, the +less lofty and conscientious side of me does like to know there is some +one who wishes to please me. I feel deliciously flattered--when I let +myself think of it; nearly always I take care to think of something +else--that a young man of your undoubted temporal and spiritual +advantages should be desirous of pleasing an obscure person like me. +What would Frau von Lindeberg say? Do you remember Shelley's wife's +sister, the Miss Westbrook who brushed her hair so much, with her +constant 'Gracious Heavens, what would Miss Warne say?' I feel inclined +to exclaim the same thing about Frau von Lindeberg, but with an opposite +meaning. And it is really very surprising that you should be so kind, +for I have been a shrew to you often, and have been absorbed in my own +affairs, and have not erred on the side of over-sympathy about yours. +Some day, when we are both very old, perhaps you will get a few hours' +leave from the dowager duchess you'll marry when you are forty, and will +come and look at my pigs and my garden and sit with me before the fire +and talk over our long friendship and all the long days of our life. And +I, when I hear you are coming, shall be in a flutter, and will get out +my best dress, and will fuss over things like asparagus and a salad, and +tell the heated and awe-stricken maid that His Britannic Majesty's +Ambassador at the Best Place to be an Ambassador in in the World is +coming to supper; and we shall feel how sweet it is to be old dear +friends. + +Meanwhile we are both very busy with the days we have got to now. Today, +for instance, has been so violently active that every bone I possess is +aching. I'll tell you what happened, since you so earnestly assure me +that all we do interests you. The snow is frozen so hard that far from +being cut off as I had feared from shops and food there is the most +glorious sledding road down to Jena; and at once on hearing of Joey's +imminence Vicki and I coasted down on the sled and I bought the book +Papa has been wanting and a gigantic piece of beef. Then we persuaded a +small but strong boy, a boy of open countenance and superior manners +whom we met in the market-place, to drag the sled with the beef and the +book up the hill again for us; and so we set out homeward, walking gayly +one on each side of him, encouraging him with loud admiration of his +prowess. 'See,' said I, when I knew a specially steep bit was coming, +'see what a great thing it is to be able to draw so much so easily.' + +A smirk and renewed efforts were the result of this speech at first; but +the smirk grew smaller as the hill grew steeper, and the efforts +dwindled to vanishing point with the higher windings of the road. At +last there was no smirk at all, and at my sixth repetition of the +encouragement he stopped dead. 'If it is such a great thing,' he said, +wiping his youthful forehead with a patched sleeve, and looking at me +with a precociousness I had not till then observed in his eyes, 'why do +you not do it yourself?' + +Vicki and I stared at each other in silent wonder. + +'Because,' I said, turning a reproachful gaze on him, 'because, my dear +little boy, I desire you to have the chance of earning the fifty +pfennings we have promised to give you when we get to the top.' + +He began to pull again, but no longer with any pride in his performance. +Vicki and I walked in silence behind, and at the next steep bit, instead +of repeating a form of words I felt had grown vain, I skilfully unhooked +the parcel of meat hanging on the right-hand runner and carried it, and +Vicki, always quick to follow my example, unhooked the biography of +Goethe from the left-hand runner and carried that. The sled leaped +forward, and for a space the boy climbed with greater vigor. Then came +another long steep bit, and he flagged again. + +'Come, come,' said I, 'it is quite easy.' + +He at once stopped and wiped his forehead. 'If it is easy,' he asked, +'why do you not do it yourself?' + +'Because, my dear little boy,' said I, trying to be patient, but meat is +heavy, and I knew it to be raw, and I feared every moment to feel a +dreadful dampness oozing through the paper, and I was out of breath, and +no longer completely calm, 'you engaged to pull it up for us, and having +engaged to do it it is your duty to do it. I will not come between a boy +and his duty.' + +The boy looked at Vicki. 'How she talks,' he said. + +Vicki and I again stared at each other in silent wonder, and while we +were staring he pulled the sled sideways across the road and sat down. + +'Come, come,' said I, striving after a brisk severity. + +'I am tired,' he said, leaning his chin on his hand and studying first +my face and then Vicki's with a detached, impartial scrutiny. + +'We too are tired,' said I, 'and see, yet we carry the heavy parcels for +you. The sled, empty, is quite light.' + +'Then why do you not pull it yourself?' he asked again. + +'Anyhow,' said Vicki, 'while he sits there we needn't hold these great +things.' And she put the volumes on the sled, and I let the meat drop on +it, which it did with a horrible, soft, heavy thud. + +The boy sat motionless. + +'Let him get his wind,' said Vicki, turning away to look over the edge +of the road at the view. + +'I'm afraid he's a bad little boy,' said I, following her and gazing too +at the sparkling hills across the valley. 'A bad little boy, encased in +an outer semblance of innocence.' + +'He only wants his wind,' said Vicki. + +'He shows no symptoms of not having got it,' said I; for the boy was +very calm, and his mouth was shut sweetly in a placid curve. + +We waited, looking at the view, humanely patient as became two highly +civilized persons. The boy got up after a few minutes and shook himself. +'I am rested,' he announced with a sudden return to the politeness that +had charmed us in Jena. + +'It certainly was rather a long pull up,' said I kindly, softened by his +manner. + +'Yes,' said he, 'but I will not keep the ladies waiting longer.' + +And he did not, for he whisked the sled round, sat himself upon it, and +before we had in the least understood what was happening he and it and +the books for Papa and the beef for Joey were darting down the hill, +skimming along the track with the delicious swiftness none knew and +appreciated better than we did. At the bend of the road he gave a joyful +whoop and waved his cap. Then he disappeared. + +Vicki and I stared at each other once more in silent wonder. 'What an +abandoned little boy,' she gasped at last--he must have been almost in +Jena by the time we were able to speak. + +'The poor beef,' said I very ruefully, for it was a big piece and had +cost vast sums. + +'Yes, and the books,' said Vicki. + +'Yes, and the _Assessor's_ sled,' said I. + +There was nothing for it but to hurry down after him and seek out the +authorities and set them in pursuit; and so we hurried as much as can be +hurried over such a road, tired, silent, and hungry, and both secretly +nettled to the point of madness at having been so easily circumvented by +one small boy. + +'Little boys are more pestilential than almost anything I know,' said +Vicki, after a period of speechless crunching over the snow. + +'Far more than anything I know,' said I. + +'I'm thankful I did not marry,' said she. + +'So am I,' said I. + +'The world's much too full of them as it is,' said she. + +'Much,' said I. + +'Oh,' she cried suddenly, stamping her foot, 'if I could only get hold +of him--wicked, wicked little wretch!' + +'What would you do?' I asked, curious to see if her plans were at all +like mine. + +'Gr--r--r--r--r,' said Vicki, clenching all those parts of her, such as +teeth and fists, that would clench. + +'Oh so would I!' I cried. + +We were almost at the bottom; the road was making its final bend; and, +as we turned the corner, behold the boy, his cap off, his head bent, his +shoulders straining at the rope, pulling the sled laboriously up again. +And there was the beef hung on one runner, and there were the books hung +on the other. We both stopped dead, arrested by this spectacle. He was +almost upon us before he saw us, so intent was he on his business, his +eyes on the ground, the sun shining on his yellow hair, the drops of +labor rolling down his crimson cheeks. + +'What?' he panted, pausing when he saw our four boots in a row in his +path, and had looked up and recognized the rest of us, 'what, am I there +already?' + +'No,' I cried in the voice of justified anger, 'you are not there--you +are here, at the very beginning of the mountain. Now what have you to +say for yourself?' + +'Nothing,' said he, grinning and wiping his face with his sleeve. 'But +it was a good ride.' + +'You have only just escaped the police and prison,' I said, still +louder. 'We were on our way to hand you over to them.' + +'If I had been there to hand,' said he, winking at Vicki, to whom he had +apparently taken a fancy that was in no way encouraged. + +'You had stolen our sled and our parcels,' I continued, glaring down on +him. + +'Here they are. They are all here. What more do you want?' said he. 'How +she talks,' he added, turning to Vicki and thrusting out his underlip +with an expression that could only mean disgust. + +'You are a very naughty little boy,' said Vicki. 'Give me the rope and +be off.' + +'Give me my fifty pfennings.' + +'Your fifty pfennings?' we exclaimed with one voice. + +'You promised me fifty pfennings.' + +'To pull the sled up to the top.' + +'I am ready to do it.' + +'Thank you. We have had enough. Let the rope go--' + +'And get home to your mother--' + +'And ask her to give you a thorough--' + +'A bargain is a bargain,' said the boy, planting himself squarely in +front of me, while I adjusted the rope over my shoulders and prepared to +pull. + +'Now run away, you very naughty little boy,' said I, pulling sideways to +pass him by. + +He stepped aside too, and faced me again. 'You promised me fifty +pfennings,' he said. + +'To pull the sled up.' + +'I am willing to do it.' + +'Yes, and coast down again as soon as you have got to the top. Be off +with you. We are not playing games.' + +'A promise is a promise,' said the boy. + +'Vicki, remove him from my path,' said I. + +Vicki took him by the arm and gingerly drew him on one side, and I +started up the hill, surprised to find what hard work it was. + +'I am coming too,' said the boy. + +'Are you?' said Vicki. + +'Yes. To fetch my fifty pfennings.' + +We said no more. I couldn't, because I was so breathlessly pulling, and +Vicki marched by my side in indignant silence, with a jealous eye +divided between the parcels and the boy. He, unencumbered, thrust his +hands into his pockets and beguiled the way by shrilly whistling. + +At each winding of the road when Vicki and I changed places he renewed +his offer to fulfil his first bargain; but we, more and more angry as we +grew hotter and hotter, refused with an ever increasing wrath. + +'Come, come,' said he, when a very steep bit had forced me to pause and +struggle for breath. + +'Come, come--' and he imitated my earlier manner--'it is quite easy.' + +I looked at him with what of majesty I could, and answered not a word. + +At Vicki's gate he was still with us. 'I will see you safely home,' +Vicki said to me when we got there. + +'This where you live?' inquired the boy, peeping through the bars of the +gate with cheerful interest. 'Nice little house.' + +We were silent. + +'I will see her home,' he said to Vicki, 'if you don't want to. But she +can surely take care of herself, a great girl like that?' + +We were silent. + +At my gate he was still with us. 'This where she lives?' he asked Vicki, +again peeping through the bars with cheerful interest. 'Funny little +house.' + +We were silent. In silence we opened the gate and dragged the sled in. +He came too. + +'You cannot come in here,' said Vicki. 'This is private property.' + +'I only wish to fetch my fifty pfennings,' said he. 'It will save you +trouble if I come to the door.' + +We went in in silence, and together carried the sled inside, a thing we +had not yet done, and took it with immense exertions into the parlor, +and put it under the table, and tied it by each of its four corners to +each of the table's four legs. + +'There,' said Vicki, scrambling to her feet again and looking at her +knots with satisfaction, 'that's safe if anything is.' + +I went with her to the door. The boy was still there, cap in hand, very +polite, very patient. 'And my fifty pfennings?' he asked pleasantly. + +I cannot explain what we did next. I pulled out my purse and paid him, +which was surprising enough, but Vicki, to whom fifty pfennings are also +precious, pulled out hers too and gave him fifty on her own account. I +am quite unable to explain either her action or mine. The boy made us +each the politest bow, his cap sweeping the snow. 'She,' he said to +Vicki, jerking his head my way, 'may think she is the prettiest, but you +are certainly the best.' + +And he left us to settle it between us, and walked away shrilly +whistling. + +And I am so tired that my very pen has begun to ache, so good-by. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Oh, I must tell you that Papa refused to have Joey sleep in his room +with a flatness that put a stop to my arguments before they were even +begun. 'Nay,' he cried, 'I will not.' And when I opened my mouth to +produce the arguments--' 'Nay,' he cried again, 'I will not.' He drowned +my speech. He would not listen. He would not reason. Parrot-like through +the house resounded his cry--'Nay, I will not.' I was in despair. But +everything has arranged itself. Joey is to have the _Assessor's_ room on +the ground floor of our neighbor's house, and will come up here for +lessons and meals. He is only to sleep down there, and will be all day +here. We telegraphed to Weimar to ask about it, and the ever kind owner +immediately agreed. Frau von Lindeberg is displeased, for she says no +Dammerlitz has ever yet been known to live in a house where there was a +lodger,--a common lodger she said first, but corrected herself, and +covered up the common with a cough. + + + +LX + +Galgenberg, Dec. 12th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I must write to-night, though it is late, to tell +you of my speechless surprise when I came in an hour ago and found you +had been here. I knew you had the moment I came in. At once I recognized +the smell of the cigarettes you smoke. I went upstairs and called +Johanna, for I was not sure that you were not still here, in the parlor, +and frankly I was not going down if you were, for I do not choose to +have my fastnesses stormed. She told me of your visit; how you had come +up on foot soon after Vicki and Joey and I had started off for an +afternoon's tobogganing on the hills, how you had stayed talking to +Papa, and talking and talking, till you had to hurry down to catch the +last train. 'And he bade me greet you for him,' finished Johanna. +'Indeed?' said I. + +Do you like winter excursions into the country? Is Berlin boring you +already? I shook my head in grave disapproval as Johanna proceeded with +her tale. I am all for a young man's attending to his business and not +making sudden wild journeys that take him away for a whole day and most +of a night. Papa was delighted, I must say, to have had at last, as he +told me with disconcerting warmth, at last after all these months an +intelligent conversation, but with his delight the success of your visit +ends, for when I heard of it I was not delighted at all. Why did you go +into the kitchen? Johanna says you would go, and then that you went out +hatless at the back door and down to the bottom of the garden and that +you stood there leaning against the fence as though it were summer. +'Still without a hat,' said Johanna, in her turn shaking her head, '_bei +dieser Kälte_.' + +_Bei dieser Kälte_, indeed. Yes; what made you do it? I am glad I was +out, for I do not care to look on while the usually reasonable behave +unaccountably. I don't think I can be friends with you for a little +after this. I think I really must quarrel, for it isn't very decent to +drop unexpectedly upon a person who from time to time has told you with +the frankness that is her most marked feature that she doesn't want to +be dropped upon. No doubt you wished to see Papa as well, and, on your +way through Jena, Professor Martens; but I will not pretend to suppose +your call was not chiefly intended for me, for it is to me and not to +either of those wiser ones that you have written every day for months +past. You are a strange young man. Heaven knows what you have accustomed +yourself to imagining me to be. I almost wish now that you had seen me +when I came in from our violent exercise, a touzled, short-skirted, +heated person. It might have cured you. I forgot to look in the glass, +but of course my hair and eyelashes were as white with hoar-frost as +Vicki's and Joey's, and from beneath them and from above my turned-up +collar must have emerged just such another glowing nose. Even Papa was +struck by my appearance--after having gazed, I suppose, for hours on +your composed correctness--and remarked that living in the country did +not necessarily mean a complete return to savage nature. + +The house feels very odd to-night. So do I. It feels haunted. So do I. I +want to scold you, and yet I cannot. I have the strangest desire to cry. +It is the thought that you came this long way, toiled up this long hill, +waited those long hours, all to see some one who is glad to have missed +you, that makes me want to. The night is so black outside my window, and +somewhere through that blackness you are travelling at this moment, +disappointed, across the endless frozen fields and forests that you must +go through inch by inch before you reach Berlin. Why did you do a thing +so comfortless? And here have I actually begun to cry,--I think because +it is so dark, and you are not yet home. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXI + +Galgenberg, Dec. 16th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I don't quite understand. Purely motherly, I +should say. Perhaps our notions of the exact meaning of the word friend +are different. I include in it a motherly and sisterly interest in +bodily well-being, in dry socks, warm feet, regular meals. I do not like +my friend to be out on a bitter night, to take a tiring journey, to be +disappointed. My friend's mother would have, I imagine, precisely the +same feeling. My friend should not, then, mistake mere motherliness for +other and less comfortable sentiments. But I am busy today, and have no +time to puzzle out your letter. It must have been the outcome of a +rather strange mood. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Tell me more about your daily life in Berlin, the people you see, the +houses you go to, the attitude, kind or otherwise, of your chief. Tell +me these things, instead of swamping me with subtleties of sentiment. I +don't understand subtleties, and I fear and despise sentiment as a +certain spoiler of plain bread-and-butter happiness. There should be no +sentiment between friends. The moment there is they leave off being just +friends; and is not that what we both most want to be? + + + +LXII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 19th. + +Oh, I can do nothing with you. You are bent, I'm afraid, on losing your +friend. Don't write me such letters--don't, don't, don't! My heart sinks +when I see you deliberately setting about strangling our friendship. Am +I to lose it then, that too? Your last letters are like bad dreams, so +strange and unreasonable, so without the least order or self-control. I +read them with my fingers in my ears,--an instinctive foolish movement +of protection against words I do not want to hear. Dear friend, do not +take your friendship from me. Give yourself a shake; come out from those +vain imaginings your soul has gone to dwell among. What shall I talk to +you about this bright winter's morning? Yes, I will write you longer +letters; you needn't beg so hard, as though the stars couldn't get along +in their courses if I didn't. See, I am willing to do anything to keep +my friend. You are my only one, the only person in the world to whom I +tell the silly thoughts that come into my head and so get rid of them. +You listen, and you are the only person in the world who does. You help +me, and I in my turn want to be allowed to go on helping you. Do not put +an end to what is precious,--believe me it will grow more and more +precious with years. Do not, in the heat and impatience of youth, kill +the poor goose who, if left alone, will lay the most beautiful golden +eggs. What shall I talk to you about to turn your attention somewhere +else, somewhere far removed from that unhappy bird? Shall I tell you +about Papa's book, finally refused by every single publisher, come back +battered and draggled to be galvanized by me into fresh life in an +English translation? Shall I tell you how I sit for three hours daily +doing it, pen in hand, ink on fingers, hair pushed back from an anxious +brow, Papa hovering behind with a dictionary in which, full of distrust, +he searches as I write to see if it contains the words I have used? +Shall I tell you about Joey, whose first disgust at finding himself once +more with us has given place by degrees that grow visibly wider to a +rollicking enjoyment. Less and less does he come up here. More and more +does he stay down there. He hurries through his lessons with a speed +that leaves Papa speechless, and is off and hauling the sled up past our +gate with Vicki walking demurely beside him and is whizzing down again +past our gate with Vicki sitting demurely in front of him before Papa is +well through the list of adjectives he applies to him once at least +every day. I never see the sled now nearer than in the distance. Vicki +wears her stiff shirts again, and her neat ties again, and the sporting +belt that makes her waist look so very trim and tiny. If anything she is +more aggressively starched and boyish than before. Her collars seem to +grow higher and cleaner each time I see her. Her hat is tilted further +forward. Her short skirts show the neatest little boots. She is +extraordinarily demure. She never cries. Joey reads _Samson Agonistes_ +with us, and points out the jokes to Vicki. Vicki says why did I never +tell her it was so funny? I stare first at one and then at the other, +and feel a hundred years old. + +'I say,' said Joey, coming into the kitchen just now. + +'Well, what?' said I. + +'I'm going to Berlin for a day.' + +'Are you indeed?' + +'Tell the old man, will you?' + +'Tell the who?' + +'The old man. I shan't be here for the lesson to-morrow, thank the Lord. +I'm off by the first train.' + +'Indeed,' said I. + +There was a silence, during which Joey fidgeted about among the culinary +objects scattered around him. I went on peeling apples. When he had +fidgeted as much as he wanted to be lit a cigarette. + +'No,' said I. 'Not in kitchens. A highly improper thing to do.' + +He threw it into the dustbin. 'I say,' he said again. + +'Well, what?' said I again. + +'What do you think--what do you think--' He paused. I waited. As he +didn't go on I thought he had done. 'What do I think?' I said. 'You'd be +staggered if I told you, it's such a lot, and it's so terrific.' + +'What do you think,' repeated Joey, taking no heed of me, but, with his +hands in his pockets, kicking a fallen apple aimlessly about on the +floor, 'what do you think the little girl'd like for Christmas and that, +don't you know?' + +I stopped peeling and gazed at him, knife and apple suspended in +mid-air. 'The little girl?' I inquired. 'Do you mean Johanna?' + +Joey stared. Then he grinned at me monstrously. 'You bet,' was his +cryptic reply. + +'What am I to bet?' I asked patiently. + +Joey gave the fallen apple a kick. Looking down I observed that it was +the biggest and the best, and stooped to rescue it. 'It's not pretty,' +said I, rebuking him, 'to kick even an apple when it's down.' + +'Oh, I say,' said Joey impatiently, 'do be sensible. There never was any +gettin' much sense out of you I remember. And you're only pretendin'. +You know I mean Vicki.' + +'Vicki?' + +He had the grace to blush. 'Well, Fräulein What's her name. You can't +expect any one decent to get the hang of these names of yours. They +ain't got any hang, so how's one to get it? What'd she like for +Christmas? Don't you all kick up a mighty fuss here over Christmas? +Trees, and presents, and that? Plummier plum-puddings than we have, and +mincier mince-pies, what?' + +'If you think you will get even one plum-pudding or mince-pie,' said I, +thoughtfully peeling, 'you are gravely mistaken. The national dish is +carp boiled in beer.' + +Joey looked really revolted. 'What?' he cried, not liking to credit his +senses. + +'Carp boiled in beer,' I repeated distinctly. 'It is what I'm going to +give you on Christmas Day.' + +'No you're not,' he said hastily. + +'Yes I am,' I insisted. 'And before it and after it you will be +required, in accordance with German custom, to sing chorales.' + +'I'd like to see myself doin' it. You'll have to sing 'em alone. I'm +invited to feed down there.' + +And he jerked his head toward that portion of the kitchen wall beyond +which, if you passed through it and the intervening coal-hole and garden +and orchard, you would come to the dwelling of the Lindebergs. + +'Oh,' said I; and looked at him thoughtfully. + +'Yes,' said he, trying to meet my look with an equal calm, but +conspicuously failing. 'That bein' so,' he went on hurriedly, 'and my +droppin', so to speak, into the middle of somebody's Christmas tree and +that, it seems to me only decent to give the little girl somethin'. What +shall I get her? Somethin' to put on, I suppose. A brooch, or a pin, +what?' + +'Or a ring,' said I, thoughtfully peeling. + +'A ring? What, can one--oh I say, don't let's waste time rottin'--' + +And glancing up through cautious eyelashes I saw he was very red. + +'It'd be easy enough if it was you,' he said revengefully. + +'What would?' + +'Hittin' on what you'd like.' + +'Would it?' + +'All you'd want to do the trick would be a dictionary.' + +'Now Mr. Collins that's unkind,' said I, laying down my knife. + +He began to grin again. 'It's true,' he insisted. + +'It suggests such an immeasurable stuffiness,' I complained. + +'It isn't my fault,' said he grinning. + +'But perhaps I deserve it because I mentioned a ring. Let me tell you, +as man to man, that you must buy no brooches for Vicki.' + +'A pin, then?' + +'No pins.' + +'A necklace, then?' + +'Nothing of the sort. What would her parents say? Give her chocolates, a +bunch of roses, perhaps a book--but nothing more. If you do you'll get +into a nice scrape.' + +Joey looked at me. 'What sort of scrape?' he asked curiously. + +'Gracious heavens, don't you see? Are you such a supreme goose? My poor +young man, the parents would immediately ask you your intentions.' + +'Oh would they,' said Joey, in his turn becoming thoughtful; and after a +moment he said again, 'Oh would they.' + +'It's as certain as anything I know,' said I. + +'Oh is it,' said Joey, still thoughtful. + +'It's a catastrophe young men very properly dread,' said I. + +'Oh do they,' said Joey, sunk in thought. + +'Well, if you're not listening--' And I shrugged my shoulders, and went +on with my peeling. + +He pulled his cap out of the pocket into which it had been stuffed, and +began to put it on, tugging it first over one ear and then over the +other in a deep abstraction. + +'You're in my kitchen,' I observed. + +'Sorry,' he said, snatching it off. 'I forgot. You always make me feel +as if I were out of doors.' + +'How very odd,' said I, interested and slightly flattered. + +'Ain't it. East wind, you know--decidedly breezy, not to say nippin'. +Well, I must be goin'.' + +'I think so too,' said I coldly. + +'Don't be dull while I'm away,' said Joey; and departed with a nod. + +But he put in his head again the next moment. 'I say, Miss Schmidt--' + +'Well, what?' + +'You think I ought to stick to chocolates, then?' 'If you don't there'll +be extraordinary complications,' said I. + +'You're sure of that?' + +'Positive.' + +'You'd swear it?' + +I threw down my knife and apple. 'Now what's the matter with the boy!' I +exclaimed impatiently. 'Do I ever swear?' + +'But if you did you would?' + +'Swear what?' + +'That a bit of jewelry would bring the complications about?' + +'Oh--dense, dense, dense! Of course it would. You'd be surprised at the +number and size of them. You can't be too careful. Give her a hymn-book. + +Joey gave a loud whoop. + +'Well, it's safe,' said I severely, 'and it appeals to parents.' + +'You bet,' said Joey, screwing his face into a limitlessly audacious +wink. + +'I wish,' said I, very plaintively, 'that I knew exactly what it is I am +to bet. You constantly tell me to do so, but never add the necessary +directions.' + +'Oh, I'm goin',' was Joey's irrelevant reply; and his head popped out as +suddenly as it had popped in. + +Or shall I tell you--I am anxious to make this letter long enough to +please you--about Frau von Lindeberg, who spent two days elaborately +cutting Joey, the two first days of his appearance in their house as +lodger, persuaded, I suppose, that no one even remotely and by business +connected with the Schmidts could be anything but undesirable, and how, +meeting him in the passage, or on his way through the garden to us, the +iciest stare was all she felt justified in giving him in return for his +friendly grin, and how on the third day she suddenly melted, and stopped +and spoke pleasantly to the poor solitary, commiserating with his +situation as a stranger in a foreign country, and suggesting the +alleviation to his loneliness of frequent visits to them? No one knows +the first cause of this melting. I think she must have heard through her +servant of the number and texture of those pink and blue silk +handkerchiefs, of his amazing piles of new and costly shirts, of the +obvious solidity of the silver on everything of his that has a back or a +stopper or a handle or a knob. Anyhow on that third morning she came up +and called on us, asking particularly for Papa. 'I particularly wished,' +she said to me, spreading herself out as she did the last time on the +sofa, 'to see your good father on a matter of some importance.' + +'I'll go and call him,' said I, concealing my conviction that though I +might call he would not come. + +And he would not. 'What, interrupt my work?' he cried. 'Is the woman +mad?' + +I went back and made excuses. They were very lame ones, and Frau von +Lindeberg instantly brushed them aside. 'I will go to him,' she said, +getting up. 'Your excellent father will not refuse me, I am sure.' + +Papa was sitting in his slippers before the stove, doing nothing, so far +as I could see, except very comfortably read the new book about Goethe. + +'I am sorry to disturb so busy a man,' said Frau von Lindeberg, bearing +down with smiles on this picture of peace. + +Papa sprang up, and seeing there was no escape pretended to be quite +pleased to see her. He offered her his chair, he prayed for indulgence +toward his slippers, and sitting down facing her inquired in what way he +could be of service. + +'I want to know something about the young Englishman who occupies a room +in our house,' said Frau von Lindeberg, without losing time. 'You +understand that it is not only natural but incumbent on a parent to wish +for information in regard to a person dwelling under the same roof.' + +'I can give every information,' said Papa readily. 'His name in English +is Collins. In German it is _Esel_.' + +'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg, taken aback. + +'It is, madam,' said Papa, looking very pleasant, as became a man in his +own house confronted by a female visitor. 'We have re-christened him. +And no array of words with which I am acquainted will express the +exactness of his resemblance to that useful but unintelligent beast.' + +'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg, not yet recovered. + +'The ass, madam, is conspicuous for the narrowness of its understanding. +So is Mr. Collins. The ass is exasperating to persons of normal brains. +So is Mr. Collins. The ass is lazy in regard to work, and obstinate. So +is Mr. Collins. The ass is totally indifferent to study. So is Mr. +Collins. The ass has never heard of Goethe. Neither has Mr. Collins. The +ass is useful to the poor. So is Mr. Collins. The ass, indeed, is the +poor man's most precious possession. So, emphatically, is Mr. Collins.' + +'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg again. + +'Is there anything more you wish to know?' Papa inquired politely, for +she seemed unable immediately to go on. + +She cleared her throat. 'In what way--in what way is he useful?' she +asked. + +'Madam, he pays.' + +'Yes--of course, of course. You cannot--' she smiled--'be expected to +teach him German for nothing.' + +'Far from doing that I teach him German for a great deal.' + +'Is he--do you know anything about his relations? You understand,' she +added, 'that it is not altogether pleasant for a private family like +ours to have a strange young man living under the same roof.' + +'Understand?' cried Papa. 'I understand it so thoroughly that I most +positively refused to have him under this one.' + +'Ah--yes,' said Frau von Lindeberg, a Dammerlitz expression coming into +her face. 'The cases are not--are not quite--pray tell me, who and what +is his father?' + +'A respectable man, madam, I should judge.' + +'Respectable? And besides respectable?' + +'Eminently worthy, I should say from his letters.' + +'Ah yes. And--and anything else?' + +'Honorable too, I fancy. Indeed, I have not a doubt.' + +'Is he of any family?' + +'He is of his own family, madam.' + +'Ah yes. And did you--did you say he was well off?' + +'He is apparently revoltingly rich.' + +An electric shock seemed to make Frau von Lindeberg catch her breath. +'Oh really,' she then said evenly. 'Did he inherit his wealth?' + +'Made it, madam. He is an ironmonger.' + +Another electric shock made Frau von Lindeberg catch her breath again. +Then she again said, 'Oh really.' + +There was a pause. + +'England,' she said after a moment, 'is different from Germany.' + +'I believe it is,' admitted Papa. + +'And ironmongers there may be different from ironmongers here.' + +'It is at least conceivable.' + +'Tell me, what status has an ironmonger in England?' + +'What status?' + +'In society.' + +'Ah, that I know not. I went over there seven and twenty years ago for +the purpose of marrying, and I met no ironmongers. Not consciously, that +is.' + +'Would they--would they be above the set in which you then found +yourself, or would they--' she tried to conceal a shiver--'be below it.' + +'I know not. I know nothing of society either there or here. But I do +know that money, there as here, is very mighty. It is, I should say, +merely a question of having enough.' + +'And has he enough?' + +'The man, madam, is I believe perilously near becoming that miserable +and isolated creature a millionaire. God help the unfortunate Joey.' + +'But why? Why should God help him? Why is he unfortunate? Does not he +get any share?' + +'Any share? He gets it all. He is the only child. Now I put it to you, +what chance is there for an unhappy youth with no brains-' + +'Oh, I must really go. I have taken up an unwarrantable amount of your +time. Thank you so very much, dear Herr Schmidt--no, no, do not disturb +yourself I beg--your daughter will show me the way--' + +'But,' cried Papa, vainly trying to detain this determinedly retreating +figure, 'about his character, his morals--we have not yet touched--' + +'Ah yes--so kind--I will not keep you now. Another time perhaps--' + +And Frau von Lindeberg got herself out of the room and out of the house. +Scarcely did she say good-by to me, in so great and sudden a fever was +she to be gone; but she did turn on the doorstep and give me a curiously +intense look. It began at my eyes, travelled upward to my hair, down +across my face, and from there over my whole body to my toes. It was a +very odd look. It was the most burningly critical look that has ever +shrivelled my flesh. + +Now what do you think of this enormous long letter? It has made me quite +cheerful just writing it, and I was not very cheerful when I began. I +hope the reading of it will do you as much good. Good-by. Write and tell +me you are happy. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Do, do try to be happy! + + + +LXIII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 22d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--The house is quite good enough for me, I assure +you--the 'setting' I think you call it, suggesting with pleasant +flattery that there is something precious to be set. It only has the +bruised sort of color you noticed when its background is white with +snow. In summer against the green it looks as white as you please; but a +thing must be white indeed to look so in the midst of our present +spotlessness. And it is not damp if there are fires enough. And the +rooms are not too small for me--poky was the adjective you applied to +the dear little things. And I am never lonely. And Joey is very nice, +even though he doesn't quite talk in blank verse. I feel a sort of shame +when you make so much of me, when you persist in telling me that the +outer conditions of my life are unworthy. It makes me feel so base, such +a poor thing. Sometimes I half believe you must be poking fun. Anyhow I +don't know what you would be at; do you wish me to turn up my nose at my +surroundings? And do you see any good that it would do? And the details +you go into! That coffee-pot you saw and are so plaintive about came to +grief only the day before your visit, and will, in due season, be +replaced by another. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt coffee to be poured out +of a broken spout, and it doesn't hurt us to drink it after it has +passed through this humiliation. On the contrary, we receive it +thankfully into cups, and remain perfectly unruffled. You say, and +really you say it in a kind of agony, that the broken spout, you are +sure, is symbolic of much that is invisible in my life. You say--in +effect, though your words are choicer--that if you had your way my life +would be set about with no spouts that were not whole. If you had your +way? Mr. Anstruther, it is a mercy that in this one matter you have not +got it. What an extremely discontented creature I would become if I +spent my days embedded in the luxury you, by a curious perverseness, +think should be piled around me. I would gasp ill-natured epigrams from +morning till night. I would wring my hands, and rend the air with cries +of _cui bono_. The broken spout is a brisk reminder of the +transitoriness of coffee-pots and of life. It sets me hurrying about my +business, which is first to replace it, and then by every possible +ingenuity to make the most of the passing moment. The passing moment is +what you should keep your eye on, my young friend. It is a slippery, +flighty thing; but, properly pounced upon, lends itself fruitfully to +squeezing. The upshot of your last letter is, I gather, that for some +strange reason, some extremity of perverseness, you would have me walk +in silk attire, and do it in halls made of marble. It suffocates me only +to think of it. I love my freedom and forest trampings, my short skirts +and swinging arms. I want the wind to blow on me, and the sun to burn +me, and the mud to spatter me. Away with caskets, and settings, and +frames! I am not a picture, or a jewel, whatever your poetic eye, misled +by a sly and tricky Muse, persists in seeing. It would be quite a good +plan, and of distinctly tonic properties, for you to write to Frau von +Lindeberg and beg her to describe me. She, it is certain, would do it +very accurately, untroubled by the deceptions of any Muse. + +How kind of you to ask me what I would like for Christmas, and how funny +of you to ask if you might not give me a trinket. I laughed over that, +for did I not write to you three days ago and give you an account of my +conversation with Joey on the subject of trinkets at Christmas? Is it +possible you do not read my letters? Is it possible that, having read +them, you forget them so immediately? Is it possible that proverbs lie, +and the sauce appropriate to the goose is not also appropriate to the +gander? Give me a book. There is no present I care about but that. And +if it happened to be a volume in the dark blue binding edition of +Stevenson to add to my row of him I would be both pleased and grateful. +Joey asked me what I wanted, so he is getting me the _Travels with a +Donkey_. Will you give me _Virginibus Puerisque_? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +If you'd rather, you may give me a new coffee-pot instead. + +Later. + +But only an earthenware one, like the one that so much upset you. + + + +LXIV + +Galgenberg, Dec. 26th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--We had a most cheerful Christmas, and I hope you +did too. I sent you my blessing lurking in the pages of Frenssen's new +and very wonderful book which ought to have reached you in time to put +under your tree. I hope you did have a tree, and were properly festive? +The Stevenson arrived, and I found it among my other presents, tied up +by Johanna with a bit of scarlet tape. Everything here at Christmas is +tied up with scarlet, or blue, or pink tape, and your Stevenson lent +itself admirably to the treatment. Thank you very much for it, and also +for the little coffee set. I don't know whether I ought to keep that, it +is so very pretty and dainty and beyond my deserts, but--it would break +if I packed it and sent it back again, wouldn't it? so I will keep it, +and drink your health out of the little cup with its garlands of tiny +flower-like shepherdesses. + +The audacious Joey did give Vicki jewelry, and a necklace if you please, +the prettiest and obviously the costliest thing you can imagine. What +happened then was in exact fulfilment of my prophecy; Vicki gasped with +joy and admiration, he tells me, and before she had well done her gasp +Frau von Lindeberg, with, as I gather, a sort of stately regret, took +the case out of her hands, shut it with a snap, and returned it to Joey. +'No,' said Frau von Lindeberg. + +'What's wrong with it?' Joey says he asked. + +'Too grand for my little girl,' said Frau von Lindeberg. 'We are but +humble folk.' And she tossed her head, said Joey. + +'Ah--Dammerlitz,' I muttered, nodding with a complete comprehension. + +'What?' exclaimed Joey, starting and looking greatly astonished. + +'Go on,' said I. + +'But I say,' said Joey, in tones of shocked protest. + +'What do you say?' I asked. + +'Why, how you must hate her,' said Joey, quite awestruck, and staring at +me as though he saw me for the first time. + +'Hate her?' I asked, surprised, 'Why do you think I hate her?' + +He whistled, still staring at me. + +'Why do you think I hate her?' I asked again, patient as I always try to +be with him. + +He murmured something about as soon expecting it of a bishop. + +In my turn I stared. 'Suppose you go on with the story,' I said, +remembering the hopelessness of ever following the train of Joey's +thoughts. + +Well, there appears to have been a gloom after that over the +festivities. You are to understand that it all took place round the +Christmas tree in the best parlor, Frau von Lindeberg in her black silk +and lace high-festival dress, Herr von Lindeberg also in black with his +orders, Vicki in white with blue ribbons, the son, come down for the +occasion, in the glories of his dragoon uniform with clinking spurs and +sword, and the servant starched and soaped in a big embroidered apron. +In the middle of these decently arrayed rejoicers, the candles on the +tree lighting up every inch of him, stood Joey in a Norfolk jacket, +gaiters, and green check tie. 'I was goin' to dress afterward for +dinner,' he explained plaintively, 'but how could a man guess they'd all +have got into their best togs at four in the afternoon? I felt an awful +fool, I can tell you.' + +'I expect you looked one too,' said I with cheerful conviction. + +There appears, then, to have descended a gloom after the necklace +incident on the party, and a gloom of a slightly frosty nature. Vicki, +it is true, was rather melting than frosty, her eyes full of tears, her +handkerchief often at her nose, but Papa Lindeberg was steeped in gloom, +and Frau von Lindeberg was sad with the impressive Christian sadness +that does not yet exclude an occasional wan smile. As for the son, he +twirled his already much twirled mustache and stared very hard at Joey. + +When the presents had been given, and Joey found himself staggering +beneath a waistcoat Vicki had knitted him, and a pair of pink bed-socks +Frau von Lindeberg had knitted him, and an empty photograph frame from +Papa Lindeberg, and an empty purse from the son, and a plate piled +miscellaneously with apples and nuts and brown cakes with pictures +gummed on to them, he observed Frau von Lindeberg take her husband aside +into the remotest corner of the room and there whisper with him +earnestly and long. While she was doing this the son, who knew no +English, talked with an air of one who proposed to stand no nonsense to +Joey, who knew no German, and Vicki, visibly depressed, slunk round the +Christmas tree blowing her nose. + +Papa Lindeberg, says Joey, came out of the corner far more gloomy than +he went in; he seemed like a man urged on unwillingly from behind, a man +reluctant to advance, and yet afraid or unable to go back. 'I beg to +speak with you,' he said to Joey, with much military stiffness about his +back and heels. + +'Now wasn't I right?' I interrupted triumphantly. + +'Poor old beggar,' said Joey, 'he looked frightfully sick.' + +'And didn't you?' + +'No,' said Joey grinning. + +'Most young men would have.' + +'But not this one. This one went off with him trippin' on the points of +his toes, he felt so fit.' + +'Well, what happened then?' + +'Oh, I don't know. He said a lot of things. I couldn't understand 'em, +and I don't think he could either, but he was very game and stuck to it +once he'd begun, and went on makin' my head spin and I daresay his own +too. Long and short of it was that in this precious Fatherland of yours +the Vickis don't accept valuables except from those about to become +their husbands.' + +'I should say that the Vickis in your own or any other respectable +Fatherland didn't either,' said I. + +'Well, I'm not arguin', am I?' + +'Well, go on.' + +'Well, it seemed pretty queer to think I was about to become a husband, +but there was nothin' for it--the little girl, you see, couldn't be done +out of her necklace just because of that.' + +'I see,' said I, trying to. + +'On Christmas Day too--day of rejoicin' and that, eh?' + +'Quite so,' said I. + +'So I said I was his man.' + +'And did he understand?' + +'No. He kept on sayin' 'What?' and evidently cursin' the English +language in German. Then I suggested that Vicki should be called in to +interpret. He understood that, for I waved my arms about till he did, +but he said her mother interpreted better, and he would call her +instead. I understood that, and said 'Get out.' He didn't understand +that, and while he was tryin' to I went and told his wife that he'd sent +for Vicki. Vicki came, and we got on first rate. First thing I did was +to pull out the necklace and put it round her neck. 'Pretty as paint, +ain't she?' I said to the old man. He didn't understand that either, but +Vicki did and laughed. 'You give her to me and I give the necklace to +her, see?' I said, shoutin', for I felt if I shouted loud enough he +wouldn't be able to help understandin', however naturally German he was. +'Tell him how simple it is,' I said to Vicki. Vicki was very red but +awfully cheerful, and laughed all the time. She explained, I suppose, +for he went out to call his wife. Vicki and I stayed behind, and--' + +'Well?' + +'Oh well, we waited.' + +'And what did Frau von Lindeberg say?' + +'Oh, she was all right. Asked me a lot about the governor. Said Vicki's +ancestors had fought with the snake in the Garden of Eden, or somebody +far back like that--ancient lineage, you know--son-in-law must be +impressed. I told her I didn't think my old man would make any serious +objection to that. 'To what?' she called out, looking quite scared--they +seem frightfully anxious to please the governor. 'He don't like +ancestors,' said I. 'Ain't got any himself and don't hold with 'em.' She +pretended she was smilin', and said she supposed my father was an +original. 'Well,' said I, goin' strong for once in the wit line, 'anyhow +he's not an aboriginal like Vicki's lot seem to have been.' Pretty good +that, eh? Seemed to stun 'em. Then the son came in and shook both my +hands for about half an hour and talked a terrific lot of German and was +more pleased about it than any one else, as far as I could see. And +then--well, that's about all. So I pulled off my little game rather +neatly, what?' + +'Yes, if it was your little game,' said I, with a faint stress on the +your. + +'Whose else should it be?' he asked, looking at me open-mouthed. + +'Vicki is a little darling,' was my prudent reply, 'and I congratulate +you with all my heart. Really I am more delighted about this than I can +remember ever being about anything--more purely delighted, without the +least shadow on my honest pleasure.' + +And all Joey vouchsafed as a reward for my ebullition of real feeling +was the information that he considered me quite a decent sort. + +So you see we are very happy up on the Galgenberg just now; the lovers +like a pair of beaming babies, Frau von Lindeberg, sobered by the shock +of her good fortune into the gentle kindliness that so often follows in +the wake of a sudden great happiness, Papa Lindeberg warmed out of his +tortoise-in-the-sun condition into much busy letter-writing, and Vicki's +brother so uproariously pleased that I can only conclude him to be the +possessor of many debts which he proposes to cause Joey to pay. Life is +very thrilling when Love beats his wings so near. There has been a great +writing to Joey's father, and Papa too has written, at my dictation, a +letter rosy with the glow of Vicki's praises. Joey thinks his father +will shortly appear to inspect the Lindebergs. He seems to have no fears +of parental objections. 'He's all right, my old man is,' he says +confidently when I probe him on the point; adding just now to this +invariable reply, 'And look here, Miss Schmidt, Vicki's all right too, +you see, so what's the funk about?' + +'I don't know,' said I; and I didn't even after I had secretly looked in +the dictionary, for it was empty of any explanation of the word funk. +Yours, deeply interested in life and lovers, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXV + +Galgenberg, Dec. 31st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--My heartiest good wishes for the New Year. May it +be fruitful to you in every pleasant way; bring you interesting work, +agreeable companions, bright days; and may it, above all things confirm +and strengthen our friendship. There now; was ever young man more +thoroughly fitted out with invoked blessings? And each one wished from +the inmost sincerity of my heart. + +But we can't come to Berlin as you suggest we should, and allow +ourselves to be shown round by you. Must I say thank you? No, I don't +think I will. I will not pretend conventionality with you, and I do not +thank you, for I don't like to have to believe that you really thought I +would come. And then your threat, though it amused me, vexed me too. You +say if I don't come you will be forced to suppose that I'm afraid of +meeting you. Kindly suppose anything you like. After that of course I +will not come. What a boy you are. And what an odd, spoilt boy. Why +should I be afraid of meeting you? Is it, you think, because once--see, +I am at least not afraid of speaking of it--you passed across my life +convulsively? I don't know that any man could stir me up now to even the +semblance of an earthquake. My quaking days are done; and after that one +thunderous upheaval I am fascinated by the charm of quiet weather, and +of a placid basking in a sunshine I have made with my very own hands. It +is useless for you to tell me, as I know you will, that it is only an +imitation of the real thing and has no heat in it. I don't want to be +any hotter. In this tempestuous world where everybody is so eager, here +is at least one woman who likes to be cool and slow. How strange it is +the way you try to alter me, to make me quite different. There seems to +be a perpetual battering going on at the bulwarks of my character. You +want to pull them down and erect new fabrics in their place, fabrics so +frothy and unreal that they are hardly more than fancies and would have +to be built up afresh every day. Yet I know you like me, and want to be +my friend. You make me think of those quite numerous husbands who fall +in love with their wives because they are just what they are, and after +marriage expend their energies training them into something absolutely +different. There was one in Jena while we were there who fell +desperately in love with a little girl of eighteen, when he was about +your age, and he adored her utterly because she was so divinely silly, +ignorant, soft and babyish. She knew nothing undesirable, and he adored +her for that. She knew nothing desirable either, and he adored her for +that too. He adored her to such an extent that all Jena, not given +overmuch to merriment, was distorted with mirth at the spectacle. He was +a clever man, a very promising professor, yet he found nothing more +profitable than to spend every moment he could spare adoring. And his +manner of adoring was to sit earnestly discovering, by means of repeated +experiment, which of his fingers fitted best into her dimples when she +laughed, and twisting the tendrils of her hair round his thumbs in an +endless enjoyment of the way, when he suddenly let them go, they +beautifully curled. He did this quite openly, before us all, seeing I +suppose no reason why he should dissemble his interest in his future +wife's dimples and curls. But alas for the dimples and curls once she +was married! _Oh weh,_ how quickly he grew blind to them. And as for the +divine silliness, ignorance, softness and babyishness that had so deeply +fascinated him, just those were what got most on to his nerves. He tried +to do away with them, to replace them by wit and learning combined with +brilliant achievements among saucepans and shirts, and the result was +disastrous. His little wife was scared. Her dimples disappeared from +want of practice. Her pretty colors seemed suddenly wiped out, as though +some one had passed over them roughly with a damp cloth. Her very hair +left off curling, and was as limp and depressed as the rest of her. Let +this, Mr. Anstruther, be an awful warning to you, not only when you +marry but now at once in regard to your friends. Do not attempt to alter +those long-suffering persons. It is true you would have some difficulty +in altering a person like myself, long ago petrified into her present +horrid condition, but even the petrified can and do get tired of hearing +the unceasing knocking of the reforming mallet on their skulls. Leave me +alone, dear young man. Like me for anything you find that can be liked, +express proper indignation at the rest of me, and go your way praising +God Who made us all. Really it would be a refreshment if you left off +for a space imploring me to change into something else. There is a ring +about your imploring as if you thought it was mere wilfulness holding me +back from being and doing all you wish. Believe me I am not wilful; I am +only petrified. I can't change. I have settled down, very comfortably I +must say, to the preliminary petrifaction of middle age, and middle age, +I begin to perceive, is a blessed period in which we walk along +mellowly, down pleasant slopes, with nothing gusty and fierce able to +pierce our incrustation, no inward volcanoes able to upset the +surrounding rockiness, nothing to distract our attention from the mild +serenity of the landscape, the little flowers by the way, the beauty of +the reddening leaves, the calm and sunlit sky. You will say it is absurd +at twenty-six to talk of middle age, but I feel it in my bones, Mr. +Anstruther, I feel it in my bones. It is after all simply a question of +bones. Yours are twenty years younger than mine; and did I not always +tell you I was old? + +I am so busy that you must be extra pleased, please, to get a letter +today. The translation of Papa's book has ended by interesting me to +such an extent that I can't leave off working at it. I do it officially +in his presence for an hour daily, he as full of mistrust of my English +as ever, trying to check it with a dictionary, and using picturesque +language to convey his disgust to me that he should be so imperfectly +acquainted with a tongue so useful. He has forgotten the little he +learned from my mother in the long years since her death, and he has the +natural conviction of authors in the presence of their translators that +the translator is a grossly uncultured person who will leave out all the +_nuances_. For an hour I plod along obediently, then I pretend I must go +and cook. What I really do is to run up to my bedroom, lock myself in, +and work away feverishly for the rest of the morning at my version of +the book. It is, I suppose, what would be called a free translation, but +I protest I never met anything quite so free. Papa's book is charming, +and the charm can only be reproduced by going repeatedly wholly off the +lines. Accordingly I go, and find the process exhilarating and amusing. +The thing amuses and interests me; I wonder if it would amuse and +interest other people? I fear it would not, for when I try to imagine it +being read by my various acquaintances my heart sinks with the weight of +the certainty that it couldn't possibly. I imagine it in the hands of +Joey, of Frau von Lindeberg, of different people in Jena, and the +expression my inner eye sees on their faces makes me unable for a long +while to go on with it. Then I get over that and begin working again at +my salad. It really is a salad, with Papa as the groundwork of lettuce, +very crisp and fresh, and myself as the dressing and bits of garnishing +beetroot and hard-boiled egg. I work at it half the night sometimes, so +eager am I to get it done and sent off. Yes, my young friend, I have +inherited Papa's boldness in the matter of sending off, and the most +impressive of London publishers is shortly to hold it in his sacred +hands. And if his sacred hands forget themselves so far as to hurl it +rudely back at me they yet can never take away the fun I have had +writing it. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Joey's father is expected to-morrow, and the whole Galgenberg is foggy +with the fumes of cooking. Once his consent is given the engagement will +be put in the papers and life will grow busy and brilliant for Frau von +Lindeberg. She talks of removing immediately to Berlin, there to give a +series of crushingly well-done parties to those of her friends who are +supposed to have laughed when Vicki was thrown over by her first lover. +I don't believe they did laugh; I refuse to believe in such barbarians; +but Frau von Lindeberg, grown frank about that disastrous story now that +it has been so handsomely wiped off Vicki's little slate, assures me +that they did. She doesn't seem angry any longer about it, being much +too happy to have room in her heart for wrath, but she is bent on this +one form of revenge. Well, it is a form that will gratify everybody, +revenger and revengee equally I should think. + + + +LXVI + +Galgenberg, Jan. 7th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I couldn't write before, I've been too busy. The +manuscript went this morning after real hard work day and night, and now +I feel like a squeezed lemon that yet is cheerful, if you can conceive +such a thing. Joey's father has been and gone. He arrived late one +night, inspected the Lindebergs, gave his consent, and was off +twenty-four hours later. The Lindebergs were much disconcerted by these +quick methods, they who like to move slowly, think slowly, and sit hours +over each meal; and they had not said half they wanted to say and he had +not eaten half he was intended to eat before he was gone. Also he +disconcerted them,--indeed it was more than that, he upset them utterly, +by not looking like what they had made up their minds he would look +like. The Galgenbergs expected to see some one who should be blatantly +rich, and blatant riches, it dimly felt, would be expressed by much +flesh and a thick watch chain. Instead the man had a head like Julius +Cæsar, lean, thoughtful, shrewd, and a spare body that made Papa +Lindeberg's seem strangely pulpy and as if it were held together only by +the buttons of his clothes. We were staggered. Frau von Lindeberg +couldn't understand why a man so rich should also be so thin,--' He is +in a position to have the costliest cooking,' she said several times, +looking at me with amazed eyebrows; nor could she understand why a man +without ancestors should yet make her husband, whose past bristles with +them, be the one to look as if he hadn't got any. She mused much, and +aloud. While Vicki was being run breathlessly over the mountains by her +nimble future father-in-law, with Joey, devoured by pride in them both, +in attendance, I went down to ask if I could help in the cooking, and +found her going about her kitchen like one in a dream. She let me tuck +up my sleeves and help her, and while I did it she gave vent to many +musings about England and its curious children. 'Strange, strange +people,' she kept on saying helplessly. + +But she is the happiest woman in Germany at this moment, happier far +than Vicki, for she sees with her older eyes the immense advantages that +are to be Vicki's who sees at present nothing at all but Joey. And then +the deliciousness of being able to write to all those relations grown of +late so supercilious, to Cousin Mienchen who came and played the rich, +and tell them the glorious news. Vicki basks in the sunshine of a +mother's love again, and never hears a cross word. Good things are +showered down on her, presents, pettings, admiration, all those charming +things that every girl should enjoy once before her pretty girlhood has +gone. It is the most delightful experience to see a family in the very +act of receiving a stroke of luck. Strokes of luck, especially of these +dimensions, are so very rare. It is like being present at a pantomime +that doesn't leave off, and watching the good fairy touching one gray +dull unhappy thing after another into radiance and smiles. But I lose my +friends, for they go to Berlin almost immediately, and from there to +Manchester on a visit to Mr. Collins, a visit during which the business +part of the marriage is to be settled. Also, and naturally, we lose +Joey. This is rather a blow, just as we had begun so pleasantly to roll +in his money, but where Vicki goes he goes too, and so Papa and I will +soon be left again alone on our mountain, face to face with vegetarian +economies. + +Well, it has been a pleasant interlude, and I who first saw Vicki +steeped in despair, red-eyed, piteous, slighted, talked about, shall see +her at last departing down the hill arrayed in glory as with a garment. +Then I shall turn back, when the last whisk of her shining skirts has +gleamed round the bend of the road, to my own business, to the sober +trudging along the row of days allotted me, to the making of economies, +the reading of good books, the practice of abstract excellences, the +pruning of my soul. My soul, I must say, has had some vigorous prunings. +It ought by now to be of an admirable sturdiness. You yourself once +lopped off a most luxuriant growth that was, I agree, best away, and now +these buds of friendship, of easier circumstances, are going to be +nipped off too, and when they are gone what will be left, I wonder, but +the uncompromising and the rugged? Is it possible I am so base as to be +envious? In spite of my real pleasure I can't shut out a certain +wistfulness, a certain little pang, and exactly what kind of wistfulness +it is and exactly what kind of pang I don't well know unless it is envy. +Vicki's lot is the last one I would choose, yet it makes me wistful. It +includes Joey, yet I feel a little pang. This is very odd; for Joey as a +husband, a person from whom you cannot get away, would be rather more +than I could suffer with any show of gladness. How then can I be +envious? Of course if Joey knew what I am writing he would thrust an +incredulous tongue in his cheek, wink a sceptical eye, and mutter some +eternal truth about grapes; but I, on the other hand, would watch him +doing it with the perfect calm of him who sticks unshakably to his +point. What would his cheek, his tongue, and his winking eye be to me? +They would leave me wholly unmoved, not a hair's breadth moved from my +original point, which is that Joey is not a person you can marry. But +certainly it is a good and delightful thing that Vicki thinks he is and +thinks it with such conviction. I tell you the top of our mountain is in +a perpetual rosy glow nowadays, as though the sun never left it; and the +entire phenomenon is due solely to these two joyful young persons. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXVII + +Galgenberg, Jan. 12th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I did a silly thing today: I went and mourned in +an empty house. I don't think I'm generally morbid, but today I indulged +in a perfect orgy of morbidness. Write and scold me. It is your turn to +scold, and by doing it thoroughly you will bring me back to my ordinary +cheerful state. The Lindebergs are gone, and I am feeling it absurdly. I +didn't realize how much I loved that little dear Vicki, nor in the least +the interest Frau von Lindeberg's presence and doings gave life. The +last three weeks have been so thrilling, there was so much warmth and +brightness going about that it reached even onlookers like myself and +warmed and lighted them; and now in the twinkling of an eye it is +gone,--gone, wiped out, snuffed out, and Papa and I are alone again, and +there is a northeast wind. These are the times when philosophy is so +useful; but do explain why it is that one is only a philosopher so long +as one is happy. When I am contented, and everything is just as I like +it, I can philosophize beautifully, and do it with a hearty sincerity +that convinces both myself and the person listening to me; but when the +bad days come, the empty days, the disappointing, chilly days, behold +Philosophy, that serene and dignified companion so long as the weather +was fine, clutching her academic skirts hastily together and indulging +in the form of rapid retreat known to the vulgar and the graphic as +skedaddling. 'Do not all charms fly,' your Keats inquires, 'at the mere +touch of cold Philosophy?' But I have found that nothing flies quite so +fast as cold Philosophy herself; she would win in any race when the race +is who shall run away quickest; she is of no use whatever--it is my +deliberate conclusion--except to sit with in the sun on the south side +of a sheltering wall on those calm afternoons of life when you've only +got to open your mouth and ripe peaches drop into it. I used to think if +I could love her enough she would, in her gratitude, chloroform me +safely over all the less pleasant portions of life, see to it that I was +unconscious during the passage, never let me be aware of anything but +the beautiful and the good; but either she has no gratitude or I have +little love, and the years have brought me the one conviction that she +is an artist at leaving you in the lurch. The world is strewn with +persons she has left in it, and out of the three inhabitants of a +mountain to leave one there is surely an enormous percentage. Now what +is your opinion of a woman with a healthy body, a warm room, and a +sufficient dinner, who feels as though the soul within her were an +echoing cavern, empty, cold, and dark? It is what I feel at this moment, +and it is shameful. Isn't it shameful that the sight of leaden +clouds--but they really are dreadful clouds, inky, ragged, +harassed--scudding across the sky, and of furious brown beech-leaves on +the little trees in front of the Lindebergs' deserted house being lashed +and maddened by the wind, should make me suddenly catch my breath for +pain? It is pain, quite sharp, unmistakable pain, and it is because I am +alone, and my friends gone, and the dusk is falling. This afternoon I +leaned against their gate and really suffered. Regret for the past, fear +for the future,--vague, rather terrifying fears, not wholly unconnected +with you--hurt so much that they positively succeeded in wringing a tear +out of me. It was a very reluctant tear, and only came out after a world +of wringing, and I had stood there a most morbid long time before it +appeared; but it did appear, and the vicious wind screamed round the +Lindebergs' blank house, rattled its staring naked windows, banged in +wild gusts about the road where the puddles of half melted snow +reflected the blackness of the sky, tore at my hair and dress, stung my +cheeks, shook the gate I held on to, thundered over the hills. Dear +young man, I don't want to afflict you with these tales of woe and +weakness, but I must tell you what I did next. I went up and got the key +from Johanna, in whose keeping Frau von Lindeberg had left it, and came +down again, and unlocked the door of the house lately so full of light +and life, and crept fearfully about the echoing rooms and up the dismal +stairs, and let myself go, as I tell you, to a very orgy of morbidness. +It was like a nightmare. Memories took the form of ghosts, and clutched +at me through the balusters and from behind doors with thin cold +fingers; and the happiest memories were those that clutched the coldest. +I fled at last in a sudden panic, flying out of reach of them, slamming +the door to, running for my life up the road and in at our gate. Johanna +did not let me in at once, and I banged with my fists in a frenzy to get +away from the black sky and the threatening thunder of the +storm-stricken pines. '_Herr Gott_' said Johanna when she saw me; so +that I must have looked rather wild. + +Well, I am weak, you see, just as weak and silly as the very weakest and +silliest in spite of my big words and brave face. I am writing now as +near the stove as possible in Papa's room, glad to be with him, glad to +be warm, grateful to sit with somebody alive after that hour with the +ghosts; and the result of deep considering has been to force me to face +the fact that there is much meanness in my nature. There is. Don't +bother to contradict; there is. All my forlornness since yesterday is +simply the outcome of a mixture of envy and self-pity. I do miss dear +Vicki whom I greatly loved, I do miss the cheery Joey, I miss Papa +Lindeberg who likened me to Hebe, I miss his wife who kept me in my +proper place--it is quite true that I miss these people, but that would +never of itself be a feeling strong enough to sweep me off my feet into +black pools of misery as I was swept this afternoon, and never, never +would make me, who have so fine a contempt for easy tears, cry. No, Mr. +Anstruther, bitter truths once seen have to be stared at squarely, and I +am simply comparing my lot with Vicki's and being sorry for myself. It +is amazing that it should be so, for have I not everything a reasonable +being needs, and am I not, then, a reasonable being? And the meanness of +it; for it does imply a grudging, an uneasiness in the presence of +somebody else's happiness. Well, I'm thoroughly ashamed, and that at +least is a good thing; and now that you know how badly I too need +lecturing and how I am torn by particularly ungenerous emotions perhaps +you'll see what a worthless person I am and will take me down from the +absurd high pinnacle on which you persist in keeping me and on which I +have felt so desperately uncomfortable for months past. It is infinitely +humiliating, I do assure you, to be--shall we say venerated? for +excellences one would like to possess but is most keenly aware one does +not. Persons with any tendency to be honest about themselves and with +even the smallest grain of a sense of humor should never be chosen as +idols and set up aloft in giddy places. They make shockingly bad idols. +They are divided by a desire to laugh and an immense pity for the +venerator. + +I add these observations, dear friend, to the description of my real +nature that has gone before because your letters are turning more and +more into the sort of letters that ends a placid friendship. I want to +be placid. I love being placid. I insist on being placid. And the +thought of your letters with so little placidness about them, was with +me this afternoon in that terrible house, and it added to the fear of +the future that seized me by the throat and would not let me go. Is it, +then, so impossible to be friends, just friends with a man, in the same +dear frank way one is with another woman, or a man is with a man? I +hoped you and I were going to prove the possibility triumphantly. I +even, so keenly do I desire it, prayed that we were. But perhaps there +is little use in such praying. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +You may scold me as much as you like, but you are not to comfort me. Do +not make the mistake, I earnestly beg you, of supposing that I want to +be comforted. + + + +LXVIII + +Galgenberg, Jan. 13th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Just a line to tell you that I have recovered, and +you are not to take my letter yesterday too seriously. I woke up this +morning perfectly normal, and able to look out on the day before me with +the usual interest. Then something very nice happened: my translation of +Papa's book didn't come back, but instead arrived an urbane letter +expressing a kind of reluctant willingness, if you can imagine the +mixture, to publish it. What do you think of that? The letter, it is +true, goes on to suggest, still with urbanity, that no doubt no one will +ever buy it, but promises if ever any one does to send us a certain just +portion of what was paid for it. 'Observe, Rose-Marie,' said Papa when +his first delight had calmed, 'the unerring instinct with which the +English, very properly called a nation of shopkeepers, instantly +recognize the value of a good thing when they see it. Consider the long +years during which I have vainly beaten at the doors of the German +public, and compare its deafness with the quick response of our alert +and admirable cousins across the Channel. Well do I know which was the +part that specially appealed to this man's business instinct--' + +And he mentioned, while my guilty ears burned crimson, a chapter of +statistics, the whole of which I had left out. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXIX + +Galgenberg, Jan. 14th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I see no use whatever in a friend if one cannot +tell him about one's times of gloom without his immediately proposing to +do the very thing one doesn't want him to do, which is to pay one a +call. Your telegram has upset me, you see, into a reckless use of the +word one, a word I spend hours sometimes endeavoring to circumvent, and +which I do circumvent if I am in good bodily and spiritual health, but +the moment my vitality is lowered, as it is now by your telegram, I +cease to be either strong enough or artful enough to dodge it. There are +four of it in that sentence: I fling them to you in a handful, only +remarking that they are your fault, not mine. + +Now listen to me--I will drop this playfulness, which I don't in the +least feel, and be serious:--why do you want to come and, as you +telegraph, talk things over? I don't want to talk things over; it is a +fatal thing to do. May I not tell you frankly of my moods, of my downs +as well as of my ups, without at once setting you off in the direction +of too much kindness? After I had written that letter I was afraid; and +I opened it again to tell you it was not your comfortings and pityings +that I wanted, but the sterner remedy of a good scolding; yet your +answer is a telegram to ask if you may come. Of course I telegraphed +back that I should not be here. It is quite true: I should not if you +came. I will not see you. Nothing can be gained by it, and everything +might be lost,--oh everything, everything might be lost. I would see to +it that you did not find me. The forests are big, and I can walk if +needs be for hours. You will think me quite savagely unkind, but I can't +help that. Perhaps if your letters lately had been different I would not +so obstinately refuse to see you, but I have a wretched feeling that my +poor soul is going to be pruned again, pruned of its last, most pleasant +growth, and you are on the road to saying and doing things we shall both +be for ever sorry for. I have tried my best to stop you, to pull you up, +and I hope with all my heart that I may not be going to get a letter +that will spoil things irreparably. Have not my hints been big enough? +Let me beg you not to write foolishnesses that cannot, once sent, be got +back again and burned. But at least when you sit down to write you can +consider your words, and those that have come out too impulsively can go +into the fire; while if you came here what would you do with your +tongue, I wonder? There is no means of stopping that once it is well +started, and the smallest things sets it off in terrible directions. Am +I not your friend? Will you not spare me? Must I be forced to speak with +a plainness that will, by comparison, make all my previous plainness +seem the very essence of polite artificialness? Of all the wise counsel +any one could offer you at this moment there is none half so wise, none +that, taken, would be half so precious to us both, as the counsel to +leave well alone. I offer it you earnestly; oh, more than +earnestly--with a passionate anxiety lest you should refuse it. + +Your sincere friend, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +I suppose it is true what I have often suspected, that I am a person +doomed to lose, one by one, the things that have been most dear to me. + + +LXX + +Jan. 16th. + +Well, there is no help, then. You will do it. You will put an end to it. +You have written me a love-letter, the thing I have been trying so hard +for so long to stop your doing, and there is nothing to be done but to +drop into silence. + + + +LXXI + +Jan. 17th. + +But what is there possible except silence? I will not marry you. I +cannot after this keep you my friend. + + + +LXXII + +Jan. 19th. + +Oh, I have tried, I have hoped to keep you. It has been so sweet to me. +It has made everything so different. For the second time you have wiped +the brightness out of my life. + + + +LXXIII + +Jan. 21 st. + +Leave me alone. Don't torment me with wild letters. I do not love you. I +will not marry you. I cared for you sincerely as a friend, but what a +gulf there is between that and the abandonment of worship last year in +Jena. Only just that, just that breathless passion, would make me marry, +and I would never feel it for a man I am forced to pity. Is not worship +a looking up? a rapture of faith? I cannot look up to you. I have no +faith in you. Leave me alone. + + + +LXXIV + +Jan. 22d. + +Let us consider the thing calmly. Let us try to say good-by without too +great a clamor. What is the use, after all, of being so vocal? We have +each given the other many hours of pleasure, and shall we not be +grateful rather than tragic? Here we are, got at last to the point where +we face the inevitable, and we may as well do it decently. See, here is +a woman who does not love you: would you have her marry you when she had +rather not? And you mustn't be angry with me because I don't love you, +for how can I help it? So far am I from the least approach to it that it +makes me tired just to think of a thing so strenuous, of the bother of +it, of the perpetual screwed-up condition of mind and body to a pitch +above the normal. The normal is what I want. My heart is set upon it. I +don't want ecstasies. I don't want excitement. I don't want alternations +of bliss and terror. I want to be that peaceful individual a maiden +lady,--a maiden lady looking after her aged father, tending her flowers, +fondling her bees--no, I don't think she could fondle bees,--fondling a +cat, then, which I haven't yet got. Oh, I know I have moods of a more +tempestuous nature, such as the one I was foolish enough to write to you +about the other day, stirring you up to a still more violent +tempestuousness yourself, but they roll away again when they have +growled themselves out, and the mood that succeeds them is like clear +shining after rain. I intend this clear shining as I grow older to be +more and more my surrounding atmosphere. I make the bravest resolutions; +will you not make some too? Dear late friend and sometime lover, do not +want me to give you what I have not got. We are both suffering just now; +but what about Time, that kindest soother, softener, healer, that final +tidier up of ragged edges, and sweeper away of the broken fragments of +the past? + + + +LXXV + +Jan. 23d. + +I tell you you have taken away what I held precious for the second time, +and there shall be no third. You showed me once that you could not be a +faithful lover, you have shown me now you cannot be a faithful friend. I +am not an easy woman, who can be made much of and dropped in an unending +see-saw. Even if I loved you we would be most wretched married, you with +the feeling that I did not fit into your set, I with the knowledge that +you felt so, besides the deadly fear of you, of your changes and fits of +hot and cold. But I do not love you. This is what you seem unable to +realize. Yet it is true, and it settles everything for ever. + + + +LXXVI + +Jan. 25th. + +Must there be so much explaining? It was because I thought I was making +amends that way for having, though unconsciously, led you to fancy you +cared for me last year. I wanted to be of some use to you, and I saw how +much you liked to get them. By gradual degrees, as we both grew wiser, I +meant my letters to be a help to you who have no sister, no mother, and +a father you don't speak to. I was going to be the person to whom you +could tell everything, on whose devotion and sincerity you could always +count. It was to have been a thing so honest, so frank, so clear, so +affectionate. And I've not even had time really to begin, for at first +there was my own struggling to get out of the deep waters where I was +drowning, and afterward it seemed to be nothing but a staving off, a +writing about other things, a determined telling of little anecdotes, of +talk about our neighbors, about people you don't know, about anything +rather than your soul and my soul. Each time I talked of those, in +moments of greater stress when the longing for a real friend to whom I +could write openly was stronger than I could resist, there came a letter +back that made my heart stand still. I had lost my lover, and it seemed +as if I must lose my friend. At first I believed that you would settle +down. I thought it could only be a question of patience. But you could +not wait, you could not believe you were not going to be given what you +wanted in exactly the way you wanted it, and you have killed the poor +goose after all, the goose I have watched so anxiously, who was going to +lay us such beautiful golden eggs. I am very sorry for you. I know the +horrors of loving somebody who doesn't love you. And it is terrible for +us both that you should not understand me to the point, as you say, of +not being able to believe me. I have not always understood myself, but +here everything seems so plain. Love is not a thing you can pick up and +throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a +person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of +thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying +my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love +me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did +get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in that sordid place. +Oh, call me hard, wickedly revengeful, unbelievably cruel if it makes +you feel less miserable--but will you listen to a last prophecy? You +will get over this as surely as you have got over your other similar +vexations, and you will live to say, 'Thank God that German girl--what +was her name? wasn't it Schmidt? good heavens, yes--thank God she was so +foolish as not to take advantage of an unaccountable but strictly +temporary madness.' + +And if I am bitter, forgive me. + + + +LXXVII + +Jan. 27th. + +It would be useless. + + + +LXXVIII + +Jan. 29th. + +I would not see you. + + + +LXXIX + +Jan. 31st. + +I do not love you. + + + +LXXX + +Feb. 2d. + +I will never marry you. + + + +LXXXI + +Feb. 4th. + +I shall not write again. + + +[THE END] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther, by +Elizabeth von Arnim + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT *** + +***** This file should be named 35282-8.txt or 35282-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/2/8/35282/ + +Produced by Laura McDonald (http://www.girlebooks.com> & +Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org> at + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther + +Author: Elizabeth von Arnim + +Release Date: February 15, 2011 [EBook #35282] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT *** + + + + +Produced by Laura McDonald (http://www.girlebooks.com> & +Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org> at + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h1>FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER</h1> + +<h3>BY THE AUTHOR OF</h3> + +<h3>"ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN," AND</h3> + +<h3>"THE PRINCESS PRISCILLA'S FORTNIGHT"</h3> + +<h5>NEW YORK</h5> + +<h5>CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</h5> + +<h5>1907</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>I</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right">Jena, Nov. 6th.</p> + +<p>Dear Roger,—This is only to tell you that I love you, supposing you +should have forgotten it by the time you get to London. The letter will +follow you by the train after the one you left by, and you will have it +with your breakfast the day after to-morrow. Then you will be eating the +marmalade Jena could not produce, and you'll say, 'What a very +indiscreet young woman to write first.' But look at the Dear Roger, and +you'll see I'm not so indiscreet after all. What could be more sober? +And you've no idea of all the nice things I could have put instead of +that, only I wouldn't. It is a most extraordinary thing that this time +yesterday we were on the polite-conversation footing, you, in your +beautiful new German, carefully calling me <i>gnädiges Fräulein</i> at every +second breath, and I making appropriate answers to the Mr. Anstruther +who in one bewildering hour turned for me into Dear Roger. Did you +always like me so much?—I mean, love me so much? My spirit is rather +unbendable as yet to the softnesses of these strange words, stiff for +want of use, so forgive a tendency to go round them. Don't you think it +is very wonderful that you should have been here a whole year, living +with us, seeing me every day, practising your German on me—oh, wasn't I +patient?—and never have shown the least sign, that I could see, of +thinking of me or of caring for me at all except as a dim sort of young +lady who assisted her step-mother in the work of properly mending and +feeding you? And then an hour ago, just one hour by that absurd +cuckoo-clock here in this room where we said good-by, you suddenly +turned into something marvellous, splendid, soul-thrilling—well, into +Dear Roger. It is so funny that I've been laughing, and so sweet that +I've been crying. I'm so happy that I can't help writing, though I do +think it rather gushing—loathsome word—to write first. But then you +strictly charged me not to tell a soul yet, and how can I keep +altogether quiet? You, then, my poor Roger, must be the one to listen. +Do you know what Jena looks like to-night? It is the most dazzling place +in the world, radiant with promise, shining and dancing with all sorts +of little lovely lights that I know are only the lamps being lit in +people's rooms down the street, but that look to me extraordinarily like +stars of hope come out, in defiance of nature and fog, to give me a +glorious welcome. You see, I'm new, and they know it. I'm not the +Rose-Marie they've twinkled down on from the day I was born till +to-night. She was a dull person: a mere ordinary, dull person, climbing +doggedly up the rows of hours each day set before her, doggedly doing +certain things she was told were her daily duties, equally doggedly +circumventing certain others, and actually supposing she was happy. +Happy? She was not. She was most wretched. She was blind and deaf. She +was asleep. She was only half a woman. What is the good or the beauty of +anything, alive or dead, in the world, that has not fulfilled its +destiny? And I never saw that before. I never saw a great many things +before. I am amazed at the suddenness of my awaking. Love passed through +this house today, this house that other people think is just the same +dull place it was yesterday, and behold—well, I won't grow magnificent, +and it is what you do if you begin a sentence with Behold. But really +there's a splendor—oh well. And as for this room where you—where +I—where we—well, I won't grow sentimental either, though now I know, I +who always scoffed at it, how fatally easy a thing it is to be. That is, +supposing one has had great provocation; and haven't I? Oh, haven't I?</p> + +<p>I had got as far as that when your beloved Professor Martens came in, +very much agitated because he had missed you at the station, where he +had been to give you a send-off. And what do you think he said? He said, +why did I sit in this dreary hole without a lamp, and why didn't I draw +the curtains, and shut out the fog and drizzle. Fog and drizzle? It +really seemed too funny. Why, the whole sky is shining. And as for the +dreary hole—gracious heavens, is it possible that just being old made +him not able to feel how the air of the room was still quivering with +all you said to me, with all the sweet, wonderful, precious things you +said to me? The place was full of you. And there was your darling +coffee-cup still where you had put it down, and the very rug we stood on +still all ruffled up.</p> + +<p>'I think it's a glorious hole,' I couldn't help saying.</p> + +<p>'<i>De gustibus</i>' said he indulgently; and he stretched himself in the +easy-chair—the one you used to sit in—and said he should miss young +Anstruther.</p> + +<p>'Shall you?' said I.</p> + +<p>'Fräulein Rose-Marie,' said he solemnly, 'he was a most intelligent +young man. Quite the most intelligent young man I have ever had here.'</p> + +<p>'Really?' said I, smiling all over my silly face.</p> + +<p>And so of course you were, or how would you ever have found out that +I—well, that I'm not wholly unlovable?</p> + +<p>Yours quite, quite truly,</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 7th.</p> + +<p>Dear Roger,—You left on Tuesday night—that's yesterday—and you'll get +to London on Thursday morning—that's to-morrow—and first you'll want +to wash yourself, and have breakfast—please notice my extreme +reasonableness—and it will be about eleven before you are able to begin +to write to me. I shan't get the letter till Saturday, and today is only +Wednesday, so how can I stop myself from writing to you again, I should +like to know? I simply can't. Besides, I want to tell you all the heaps +of important things I would have told you yesterday, if there had been +time when you asked me in that amazing sudden way if I'd marry you.</p> + +<p>Do you know I'm poor? Of course you do. You couldn't have lived with us +a year and not seen by the very sort of puddings we have that we are +poor. Do you think that anybody who can help it would have <i>dicker Reis</i> +three times a week? And then if we were not, my step-mother would never +bother to take in English young men who want to study German; she would +do quite different sorts of things, and we should have different sorts +of puddings,—proud ones, with <i>Schlagsahne</i> on their tops—and two +servants instead of one, and I would never have met you. Well, you know +then that we are poor; but I don't believe you know <i>how</i> poor. When +girls here marry, their parents give them, as a matter-of-course, +house-linen enough to last them all their lives, furniture enough to +furnish all their house, clothes enough for several generations, and so +much a year besides. Then, greatly impoverished, they spend the evenings +of their days doing without things and congratulating themselves on +having married off their daughter. The man need give only himself.</p> + +<p>You've heard that my own mother, who died ten years ago, was English? +Yes, I remember I told you that, when you were so much surprised at what +you called, in politest German, my colossally good English. From her I +know that people in England do not buy their son-in-law's carpets and +saucepans, but confine their helpfulness to suggesting Maple. It is the +husband, they think, who should, like the storks of the Fatherland, +prepare and beautify the nest for the wife. If the girl has money, so +much the better; but if she has not, said my mother, it doesn't put an +absolute stop to her marrying.</p> + +<p>Here, it does; and I belong here. My mother had some money, or my father +would never have let himself fall in love with her—I believe you can +nip these things in the bud if you see the bud in time—and you know my +father is not a mercenary man; he only, like the rest of us, could not +get away altogether from his bringing-up and the points of view he had +been made to stare from ever since he stared at all. It was a hundred a +year (pounds, thank heaven, not marks), and it is all we have except +what he gets for his books, when he does get anything, which is never, +and what my step-mother has, which is an annuity of a hundred and fifty +pounds. So the hundred a year will be the whole sum of my riches, for I +have no aunts. What I want you to consider is the awfulness of marrying +a woman absolutely without saucepans. Not a single towel will she be +able to add to your linen-room, not a single pot to your kitchen. All +Jena when it hears of it will say, 'Poor, infatuated young man,' and if +I had sisters all England would refuse in future to send its sons to my +step-mother. Why, if you were making a decently suitable marriage do you +suppose your <i>Braut</i> would have to leave off writing to you at this +point, in the very middle of luminous prophecy, and hurry into the +kitchen and immerse herself in the preparation of potato soup? Yet that +is exactly what your <i>Braut,</i> who has caught sight of the clock, is +about to do. So good-by.</p> + +<p>Your poor, but infinitely honest,</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<p>See how wise and practical I am today. I believe my letter last night +was rather aflame. Now comes morning with its pails of cold water, and +drenches me back into discretion. Thank God, say I, for mornings.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 8th.</p> + +<p>Dear Roger,—I can't leave you alone, you see. I must write. But though +I must write you need not read. Last night I was seized with misgivings +—awful things for a hitherto placid Fräulein to be seized with—and I +wrestled with them all night, and they won. So now, in the calm +frostiness of the early morning atmosphere, I wish to inquire very +seriously, very soberly, whether you have not made a mistake. In one +sense, of course, you have. It is absurd, from a wordly point of view, +for you to marry me. But I mean more than that: I mean, have you not +mistaken your own feelings, been hurled into the engagement by +impulsiveness, by, if you choose, some spell I may unconsciously have +put upon you? If you have even quite a faint misgiving about what you +really feel for me, tell me—oh tell me straight and plainly, and we +will both rub out that one weak hour with a sponge well soaked in common +sense. It would not hurt so much, I think, now as it might later on. Up +to last night, since you left, I've been walking on air. It is a most +pleasant form of exercise, as perhaps you know. You not only walk on +air, but you walk in what seems to be an arrested sunset, a bath of +liquid gold, breathing it, touching it, wrapped in it. It really is most +pleasant. Well, I did that till last night; then came my step-mother, +and catching at my flying feet pulled them down till they got to the +painted deal floors of Rauchgasse 5, Jena, and once having got there, +stuck there. Observe, I speak in images. My step-mother, so respectable, +so solidly Christian, would not dream of catching hold of anybody's feet +and spoiling their little bit of happiness. Quite unconsciously she blew +on that glow of sunset in which I was flying, and it went out with the +promptness and completeness of a tallow candle, and down came Rose-Marie +with a thud. Yes, I did come down with a thud. You will never be able to +pretend, however much you try, that I'm one of your fairy little women +that can be lifted about, and dandled, and sugared with dainty +diminutives, will you? Facts are things that are best faced. I stand +five feet ten without my heels, and when I fall I do it with a thud. +Said my step-mother, then, after supper, when Johanna had cleared the +last plate away, and we were sitting alone—my father is not back yet +from Weimar—she on one side of the table, I on the other, the lamp in +the middle, your chair gaping empty, she, poor herself, knitting wool +into warmth for the yet poorer at Christmas, I mending the towels you +helped to wear out, while my spirit soared and made a joyful noise +somewhere far away, up among angels and arch-angels and other happy +beings,—said my step-mother, 'Why do you look so pleased?'</p> + +<p>Slightly startled, I explained that I looked pleased because I was +pleased.</p> + +<p>'But nothing has happened,' said my step-mother, examining me over her +spectacles. 'You have been nowhere today, and not seen any one, and the +dinner was not at all good.'</p> + +<p>'For all that I'm pleased. I don't need to go somewhere or see some one +to be pleased. I can be it quite by myself.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, you are blessed with a contented nature, that is true,' said my +step-mother with a sigh, knitting faster. You remember her sighs, don't +you? They are always to me very unaccountable. They come in such odd +places. Why should she sigh because I have a contented nature? Ought she +not rather to rejoice? But the extremely religious people I have known +have all sighed an immense deal. Well, I won't probe into that now, +though I rather long to.</p> + +<p>'I suppose it's because it has been a fine day,' I said, foolishly going +on explaining to a person already satisfied.</p> + +<p>My step-mother looked up sharply. 'But it has not been fine at all, +Rose-Marie,' she said. 'The sun has not appeared once all day.'</p> + +<p>'What?' said I, for a moment genuinely surprised. I couldn't help being +happy, and I don't believe really happy people are ever in the least +aware that the sun is not shining. 'Oh well,' I hurried on, 'perhaps not +an Italian blue sky, but still mild, and very sweet, and November always +smells of violets, and that's another thing to be pleased about.'</p> + +<p>'Violets?' echoed my step-mother, who dislikes all talk about things one +can neither eat nor warm oneself with nor read about in the Bible. 'Do +you not miss Mr. Anstruther,' she asked, getting off such flabbinesses +as quickly as she could, 'with whom you were so constantly talking?'</p> + +<p>Of course I jumped. But I said 'yes,' quite naturally, I think.</p> + +<p>It was then that she pulled me down by the feet to earth.</p> + +<p>'He has a great future before him,' she said. 'A young man so clever, so +good-looking, and so well-connected may rise to anything. Martens tells +me he has the most brilliant prospects. He will be a great ornament to +the English diplomatic service. Martens says his father's hopes are all +centred on this only son. And as he has very little money and much will +be required, Roger,'—she said it indeed—'is to marry as soon as +possible, some one who will help him in every way, some one as wealthy +as she is well-born.'</p> + +<p>I murmured something suitable; I think a commendation of the plan as +prudent.</p> + +<p>'No one could help liking Roger,' she went on—Roger, do you like being +Rogered?—' and my only fear is, and Martens fears it too, that he will +entangle himself with some undesirable girl. Then he is ruined. There +would be no hope for him.'</p> + +<p>'But why-' I began; then suffocated a moment behind a towel. 'But why,' +I said again, gasping, 'should he?'</p> + +<p>'Well, let us hope he will not. I fear, though, he is soft. Still, he +has steered safely through a year often dangerous to young men. It is +true his father could not have sent him to a safer place than my house. +You so sensible-' oh Roger!</p> + +<p>'Besides being arrived at an age when serious and practical thoughts +replace the foolish sentimentalness of earlier years,'—oh Roger, I'm +twenty-five, and not a single one of my foolish sentimentalnesses has +been replaced by anything at all. Do you think there is hope for me? Do +you think it is very bad to feel exactly the same, just exactly as +calf-like now as I did at fifteen?—'so that under my roof,' went on my +step-mother, 'he has been perfectly safe. It would have been truly +deplorable if his year in Germany had saddled him with a German wife +from a circle beneath his own, a girl who had caught his passing fancy +by youth and prettiness, and who would have spent the rest of her life +dragging him down, an ever-present punishment with a faded face.'</p> + +<p>She is eloquent, isn't she? Eloquent with the directness that +instinctively finds out one's weak spots and aims straight at them. +'Luckily,' she concluded, 'there are no pretty faces in Jena just now.'</p> + +<p>Then I held a towel up before my own, before my ignominious face, +excluded by a most excellent critic from the category pretty, and felt +as though I would hide it for ever in stacks of mending, in tubs of +soup, in everything domestic and drudging and appropriate. But some of +the words you rained down on me on Tuesday night between all those +kisses came throbbing through my head, throbbing with great throbs +through my whole body—Roger, did I hear wrong, or were they not +'Lovely—lovely—lovely'? And always kisses between, and always again +that 'Lovely—lovely—lovely'? Where am I getting to? Perhaps I had +better stop.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 12th.</p> + +<p>Dearest of Living Creatures, the joy your dear, dear letters gave me! +You should have seen me seize the postman. His very fingers seemed +rosy-tipped as he gave me the precious things. Two of them—two +love-letters all at once. I could hardly bear to open them, and put an +end to the wonderful moment. The first one, from Frankfurt, was so +sweet—oh, so unutterably sweet—that I did sit gloating over the +unbroken envelope of the other for at least five minutes, luxuriating, +purring. I found out exactly where your hand must have been, by the +simple process of getting a pen and pretending to write the address +where you had written it, and then spent another five minutes most +profitably kissing the place. Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, but +there shall be no so-called maidenly simperings between you and me, no +pretences, no affectations. If it was silly to kiss that blessed +envelope, and silly to tell you that I did, why then I was silly, and +there's an end of it.</p> + +<p>Do you know that my mother's maiden name was Watson? Well, it was. I +feel bound to tell you this, for it seems to add to my ineligibleness, +and my duty plainly is to take you all round that and expatiate on it +from every point of view. What has the grandson of Lord Grasmere—you +never told me of Lord G. before, by the way—to do with the +granddaughter of Watson? I don't even rightly know what Watson was. He +was always for me an obscure and rather awful figure, shrouded in +mystery. Of course Papa could tell me about him, but as he never has, +and my mother rarely mentioned him, I fancy he was not anything I should +be proud of. Do not, then, require of me that I shall tear the veil from +Watson.</p> + +<p>And of course your mother was handsome. How dare you doubt it? Look in +the glass and be grateful to her. You know, though you may only have +come within the spell of what you so sweetly call my darling brown eyes +during the last few weeks, I fell a victim to your darling blue ones in +the first five minutes. And how great was my joy when I discovered that +your soul so exactly matched your outside. Your mother had blue eyes, +too, and was very tall, and had an extraordinarily thoughtful face. +Look, I tell you, in the glass, and you'll see she had; for I refuse to +believe that your father, a man who talks port wine and tomatoes the +whole of the first meal he has with his only son after a year's +separation, is the parent you are like. Heavens, how I shake when I +think of what will happen when you tell him about me. 'Sir,' he'll say, +in a voice of thunder—or don't angry English parents call their sons +'sir' any more? Anyhow, they still do in books—'Sir, you are far too +young to marry. Young men of twenty-five do not do such things. The +lady, I conclude, will provide the income?</p> + +<p>Roger, rushing to the point: She hasn't a pfenning.</p> + +<p>Incensed Parent: Pfenning, sir? What, am I to understand she's a German?</p> + +<p>Roger, dreadfully frightened: Please.</p> + +<p>I.P., forcing himself to be calm: Who is this young person?</p> + +<p>Roger: Fräulein Schmidt, of Jena.</p> + +<p>I.P., now of a horrible calmness: And who, pray, is Fräulein Schmidt, of +Jena?</p> + +<p>Roger, pale but brave: The daughter of old Schmidt, in whose house I +boarded. Her mother was English. She was a Watson.</p> + +<p>I.P.: Sir, oblige me by going to the—</p> + +<p>Roger goes.</p> + +<p>Seriously, I think something of the sort will happen. I don't see how it +can help giving your father a dreadful shock; and suppose he gets ill, +and his blood is on my head? I can't see how it is to be avoided. There +is nothing to recommend me to him. He'll know I'm poor. He'll doubt if +I'm respectable. He won't even think me pretty. You might tell him that +I can cook, darn, manage as well as the thriftiest of <i>Hausfraus</i>, and I +believe it would leave him cold. You might dwell on my riper age as an +advantage, say I have lived down the first fevers of youth—I never had +them—say, if he objects to it, that Eve was as old as Adam when they +started life in their happy garden, and yet they got on very well, say +that I'm beautiful as an angel, or so plain that I am of necessity +sensible, and he'll only answer 'Fool.' Do you see anything to be done? +I don't; but I'm too happy to bother.</p> + + +<p>Later.</p> + +<p>I had to go and help get supper ready. Johanna had let the fire out, and +it took rather ages. Why do you say you feel like screaming when you +think of me wrestling with Johanna? I tell you I'm so happy that nothing +any Johanna can do or leave undone in the least affects me. I go about +the house on tiptoe; I am superstitious, and have an idea that all sorts +of little envious Furies are lying about in dusty corners asleep, put to +sleep by you, and that if I don't move very delicately I shall wake +them—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">O Freude, habe Acht,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sprich leise, dass nicht der Schmerz erwacht....</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>That's not Goethe. By the way, <i>poor</i> Goethe. What an unforeseen result +of a year in the City of the Muses, half an hour's journey from the Ilm +Athens itself, that you should pronounce his poetry coarse, obvious, and +commonplace. What would Papa say if he knew? Probably that young +Anstruther is not the intelligent young man he took him for. But then +Papa is soaked in Goethe, and the longer he soaks the more he adores +him. In this faith, in this Goethe-worship, I have been brought up, and +cannot, I'm afraid, get rid of it all at once. It is even possible that +I never shall, in spite of London and you. Will you love me less if I +don't? Always I have thought Goethe uninspired. The Muse never seized +and shook him till divinenesses dropped off his pen without his knowing +how or whence, divinenesses like those you find sometimes in the pages +of lesser men, lesser all-round men, stamped with the unmistakable stamp +of heavenly birth. Goethe knew very well, very exactly, where each of +his sentences had come from. But I don't see that his poetry is either +of the three things you say. I'm <i>afraid</i> it is not the last two, for +the world would grow very interesting if thinking and writing as he did +were so obvious that we all did it. As to its being coarse, I'm +incurably incapable of seeing coarseness in things. To me</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">All is clean for ever and ever.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Everything is natural and everything is clean, except for the person who +is afraid it isn't. Perhaps, dear Roger, you won't, as Papa says, quite +apprehend my meaning; if you cannot, please console yourself with the +reflection that probably I haven't got one.</p> + +<p>What you say about the money you'll have dazzles me. Why, it's a +fortune. We shall be richer than our <i>Bürgermeister</i>. You never told me +you were so rich. Five hundred pounds a year is ten thousand marks; +nearly double what we have always lived on, and we've really been quite +comfortable, now haven't we? But think of our glory when my hundred +pounds is added, and we have an income of twelve thousand marks. The +<i>Bürgermeister</i> will be utterly eclipsed. And I'm such a good manager. +You'll see how we'll live. You'll grow quite fat. I shall give you +lovely food; and Papa says that lovely food is the one thing that ever +really makes a man give himself the trouble to rise up and call his wife +blessed.</p> + +<p>It is so late. Good-night.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<p>Don't take my Goethe-love from me. I know simply masses of him, and +can't let him go. My mind is decked out with him as a garden is decked +with flowers. Now isn't that pretty? Or is it only silly? Anyhow it's +dreadfully late. Good-night.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 13th.</p> + +<p>No letter from you today. I am afraid you are being worried, and because +of me. Here am I, quiet and cheerful, nobody bothering me, and your dear +image in my heart to warm every minute of life; there are you, being +forced to think things out, to make plans for the future, decide on +courses of action, besides having to pass exams, and circumvent a parent +whom I gather you regard as refractory. How lucky I am in my dear +father. If I could have chosen, I would have chosen him. Never has he +been any trouble. Never does he bore me. Never am I forced to +criticisms. He knows that I have no brains, and has forgiven me. I know +he hasn't much common-sense, and have forgiven him. We spend our time +spoiling and petting and loving each other—do you remember how you +sometimes laughed?</p> + +<p>But I wish you were not worried. It is all because I'm so ineligible. If +I could come to you with a pot of money in each hand, turned by an +appreciative ruler into Baroness von Schmidt, with a Papa in my train +weighed down by Orders, and the road behind me black with carts +containing clothes, your father would be merciful unto us and bless us. +As things are, you are already being punished, you have already begun to +pay the penalty for that one little hour's happiness; and it won't be +quite paid ever, not so long as we both shall live. Do you, who think so +much, ever think of the almost indecent haste with which punishments +hurry in the wake of joys? They really seem to tumble over one another +in their eagerness each to get there first. You took me to your heart, +told me you loved me, asked me to be your wife. Was it so wrong? So +wrong to let oneself go to happiness for those few moments that one +should immediately be punished? My father will not let me believe +anything. He says—when my step-mother is not listening; when she is he +doesn't—that belief is not faith, and you can't believe if you do not +know. But he cannot stop my silently believing that the Power in whose +clutches we are is an amazing disciplinarian, a relentless grudger of +joys. And what pitiful small joys they are, after all. Pitiful little +attempts of souls doomed to eternal solitude to put out feelers in the +dark, to get close to each other, to touch each other, to try to make +each other warm. Now I am growing lugubrious; I who thought never to be +lugubrious again. And at ten o'clock on a fine November morning, of all +times in the world.</p> + +<p>Papa comes back from Weimar today. There has been a prolonged meeting +there of local lights about the damage done by some Goth to the +Shakespeare statue in the park; and though Papa is not a light, still he +did burn with indignation over that, and has been making impassioned +speeches, and suggesting punishments for the Goth when they shall have +caught him. I think I shall go over by the two o'clock train and meet +him and bring him home, and look in at Goethe's sponge on the way. You +know how the little black thing lies in his bedroom there, next to a +basin not much bigger than a breakfast-cup. With this he washed and was +satisfied. And whenever I feel depressed, out of countenance with myself +and life, I go and look at it and come home cheered and strengthened. I +wonder if you'll be able to make out why? Bless you my dearest.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 14th.</p> + +<p>That sponge had no effect yesterday. I stared and stared at it, and it +only remained a sponge, far too small for the really cleanly, instead of +what it has up to now been, the starting-point for a train of thrilling, +enthusiastic thoughts. I'm an unbalanced creature. Do you divide your +time too, I wonder, between knocking your head against the stars and, in +some freezing depth of blackness, listening to your heart, how it will +hardly beat for fear? Of course you don't. You are much too clever. And +then you have been educated, trained, taught to keep your thoughts +within bounds, and not let them start off every minute on fresh and +aimless wanderings. Yet the star-knocking is so wonderful that I believe +I would rather freeze the whole year round for one hour of it than go +back again to the changeless calm, the winter-afternoon sunshine, in +which I used to sit before I knew you. All this only means that you have +not written. See how variously one can state a fact.</p> + +<p>I have run away from the sitting-room and the round table and the lamp, +because Papa and my step-mother had begun to discuss you again, your +prospects, your probable hideous fate if you were not prudent, your +glorious career if you were. I felt guilty, wounded, triumphant, vain, +all at once. Papa, of course, was chiefly the listener. He agreed; or at +most he temporized. I tell you, Roger, I am amazed at the power a woman +has over her husband if she is in <i>every</i> way inferior to him. It is not +only that, as we say, <i>der Klügere giebt nach</i>, it is the daily complete +victory of the coarser over the finer, the rough over the gentle, the +ignorant over the wise. My step-mother is an uneducated person, shrewd +about all the things that do not matter, unaware of the very existence +of the things that do, ready to be charitable, helpful, where the +calamity is big enough, wholly unsympathetic, even antagonistic, toward +all those many small calamities that make up one's years; the sort of +woman parsons praise, and who get tombstones put over them at last +peppered with frigid adjectives like virtuous and just. Did you ever +chance to live with a just person? They are very chilling, and not so +rare as one might suppose. And Papa, laxest, most tolerant of men, so +lax that nothing seems to him altogether bad, so tolerant that nobody, +however hard he tries, can pass, he thinks, beyond the reach of +forgiveness and love, so humorous that he has to fight continually to +suppress it, for humor lands one in odd morasses of dislike and +misconception here, married her a year after my mother died, and did it +wholly for my sake. Imagine it. She was to make me happy. Imagine that +too. I was not any longer to be a solitary <i>Backfisch</i>, with holes in +her stockings and riotous hair. There came a painful time when Papa +began to suspect that the roughness of my hair might conceivably be a +symbol of the dishevelment of my soul. Neighboring matrons pointed out +the possibility to him. He took to peering anxiously at unimportant +parts of me such as my nails, and was startled to see them often black. +He caught me once or twice red-eyed in corners, when it had happened +that the dear ways and pretty looks of my darling mother had come back +for a moment with extra vividness. He decided that I was both dirty and +wretched, and argued, I am sure during sleepless nights, that I would +probably go on being dirty and wretched for ever. And so he put on his +best clothes one day, and set out doggedly in search of a wife.</p> + +<p>He found her quite easily, in a house in the next street. She was making +doughnuts, for it was the afternoon of New Year's Eve. She had just +taken them out of the oven, and they were obviously successful. Papa +loves doughnuts. His dinner had been uneatable. The weather was cold. +She took off her apron, and piled them on a dish, and carried them, +scattering fragrance as they went, into the sitting-room; and the smell +of them was grateful; and they were very hot.</p> + +<p>Papa came home engaged. 'I am not as a rule in favor of second +marriages, Rose-Marie,' he began, breaking the news to me with elaborate +art.</p> + +<p>'Oh, horrid things,' I remarked, my arm round his neck, my face against +his, for even then I was as tall as he. You know how he begins abruptly +about anything that happens to cross his mind, so I was not surprised.</p> + +<p>He rubbed his nose violently. 'I never knew anybody with such hair as +yours for tickling a person,' he said, trying to push it back behind my +ears. Of course it would not go. 'Would it do that,' he added +suspiciously, 'if it were properly brushed?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know. Well, <i>Papachen</i>?'</p> + +<p>'Well what?'</p> + +<p>'About second marriages.'</p> + +<p>He had forgotten, and he started. In an instant I knew. I took my arm +away quickly, but put it back again just as quickly and pressed my face +still closer: it was better we should not see each other's eyes while he +told me.</p> + +<p>'I am not, as a rule, in favor of them,' he repeated, when he had +coughed and tried a second time to induce my hair to go behind my ears, +'but there are cases where they are—imperative.'</p> + +<p>'Which ones?'</p> + +<p>'Why, if a man is left with little children, for instance.'</p> + +<p>'Then he engages a good nurse.'</p> + +<p>'Or his children run wild.'</p> + +<p>'Then he gets a severe aunt to live with him.'</p> + +<p>'Or they grow up.'</p> + +<p>'Then they take care of themselves.'</p> + +<p>'Or he is an old man left with, say, one daughter.'</p> + +<p>'Then she would take care of him.'</p> + +<p>'And who would take care of her, Rose-Marie?'</p> + +<p>'He would.'</p> + +<p>'And if he is an incapable? An old person totally unable to notice +lapses from convention, from social customs? If no one is there to tell +her how to dress and how to behave? And she is growing up, and yet +remains a barbarian, and the day is not far distant when she must go +out, and he knows that when she does go out Jena will be astounded.'</p> + +<p>'Does the barbarian live in Jena?'</p> + +<p>'My dear, she is universal. Wherever there is a widower with an only +female child, there she is.'</p> + +<p>'But if she had been happy?'</p> + +<p>'But she had not been happy. She used to cry.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, of course she used to cry sometimes, when she thought more than +usual of her sweet—of her sweet—But for all that she had been happy, +and so had he. Why, you know he had. Didn't she look after him, and keep +house for him? Didn't she cook for him? Not very beautifully, perhaps, +but still she did cook, and there was dinner every day. Didn't she go to +market three times a week, and taste all the butter? Didn't she help to +do the rooms? And in the evenings weren't they happy together, with +nobody to worry them? And then, when he missed his darling wife, didn't +the barbarian always know he was doing it, and come and sit on his knee, +and kiss him, and make up for it? Didn't she? Now didn't she?'</p> + +<p>Papa unwound himself, and walked up and down with a desperate face.</p> + +<p>'Girls of sixteen must learn how to dress and to behave. A father cannot +show them that,' he said.</p> + +<p>'But they do dress and behave.'</p> + +<p>'Rose-Marie, unmended stockings are not dressing. And to talk to a +learned stranger well advanced in years with the freedom of his equal in +age and knowledge, as I saw one doing lately, is not behaving.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, Papa, she wouldn't do that again, I'm certain.'</p> + +<p>'She wouldn't have done it that once if she had had a mother.'</p> + +<p>'But the poor wretch hadn't got a mother.'</p> + +<p>'Exactly. A mother, therefore, must be provided.'</p> + +<p>Here, I remember, there was a long pause. Papa walked, and I watched him +in despair. Despair, too, was in his own face. He had had time to forget +the doughnuts, and how cold he had been, and how hungry. So shaken was I +that I actually suggested the engagement of a finishing governess to +finish that which had never been begun, pointing out that she, at least, +having finished would go; and he said he could not afford one; and he +added the amazing statement that a wife was cheaper.</p> + +<p>Well, I suppose she has been cheap: that is she has made one of Papa's +marks go as far as two of other people's; but oh how expensive she has +been in other ways! She has ruined us in such things as freedom, and +sweetness, and light. You know the sort of talk here at meals. I wish +you could have heard it before her time. She has such a strong +personality that somehow we have always followed her lead; and Papa, who +used to bubble out streams of gayety when he and I sat untidily on +either side of a tureen of horrible bad soup, who talked of all things +under heaven, and with undaunted audacity of many things in it, and who +somehow put a snap and a sparkle into whatever he said, sits like a +schoolboy invited to a meal at his master's, eager to agree, anxious to +give satisfaction. The wax cloth on the table is clean and shiny; the +spoons are bright; a cruet with clear oil and nice-looking vinegar +stands in the midst; the food, though simple, is hot and decent; we are +quite comfortable; and any of the other Jena <i>Hausfraus</i> coming in +during a meal would certainly cry out <i>Wie gemüthlich</i>. But of what use +is it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers and +tidy shutters, when inside one's soul wanders through empty rooms, +mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings it +food, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired and +there's not a chair to sit on?</p> + +<p>Why I write all this I can't think; except that I feel as if I were +talking to you. You must tell me if I bore you. When I begin a letter to +you the great difficulty is to leave off again. Oh how warm it makes one +feel to know that there is one person in the world to whom one is +everything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvellous +possession. No wonder people like having them. And I used to think that +so silly. Heavens, what an absurd person I have been. Why, love is the +one thing worth having. Everything else, talents, work, arts, religion, +learning, the whole <i>tremblement,</i> are so many drugs with which the +starved, the loverless, try to dull their pangs, to put themselves to +sleep. Good-night, and God bless you a thousand times. R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 15th, 11 p.m.</p> + +<p>Dearest,—Your letter came this afternoon. How glad I was to get it. And +I do think it a good idea to go down into the country to those Americans +before your exam. Who knows but they may, by giving you peace at the +right moment, be the means of making you pass extra brilliantly? That +you should not pass at all is absolutely out of the question. Why have +the gods showered gifts on you if not for the proper passing of exams? +For I suppose in this as in everything else there are different ways, +ways of excellence and mediocrity. I know which way yours will be. If +only the presence of my spirit by your side on Saturday could be of use. +But that's the worst of spirits: they never seem to be the least good +unless they take their bodies with them. Yet mine burns so hotly when I +am thinking of you—and when am I not thinking of you?—that I feel as +if you actually must feel the glow of it as it follows you about. How +strange and dreadful love is. Till you know it, you are so sure the +world is very good and pleasant up in those serene, frost-bitten regions +where you stand alone, breathing the thin air of family affection, shone +upon gently by the mild and misty sun of general esteem. Then comes +love, and pulls you down. For isn't it a descent? Isn't it? Somehow, +though it is so great a glory, it's a coming-down as well—down from the +pride of absolute independence of body and soul, down from the +high-mightiness of indifference, to something fierce, and hot, and +consuming. Oh, I daren't tell you how little of serenity I have left. At +first, just at first, I didn't feel like this. I think I was stunned. My +soul seemed to stand still. Surely it was extraordinary, that +tempestuous crossing from the calm of careless friendship to the place +where love dashes madly against the rocks? Don't laugh at my images. I'm +in deadly earnest to-night. I do feel that love hurts. I do feel as if +I'd been thrown on to rocks, left by myself on them to come slowly to my +senses and find I am lying alone in a new and burning sun. It's an +exquisite sort of pain, but it's very nearly unbearable. You see, you +are so far away. And I, I'm learning for the first time in my life what +it means, that saying about eating out one's heart.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 16th, 9 a.m.</p> + +<p>Really, my dear Roger, nicest of all <i>Bräutigams,</i> pleasantest, best, +and certainly most charming, I don't think I'll write to you again in +the evenings. One of those hard clear hours that lie round +breakfast-time will be the most seemly for consecration to you. Moods +are such queer things, each one so distinct and real, so seemingly +eternal, and I am influenced by them to an extraordinary degree. The +weather, the time of day, the light in the room—yes, actually the light +in the room, sunlight, cloudlight, lamplight—the scent of certain +flowers, the sound of certain voices—the instant my senses become aware +of either of these things I find myself flung into the middle of a fresh +mood. And the worst part of it is the blind enthusiasm with which I am +sure that as I think and feel at that moment so will I think and feel +for ever. Nothing cures me. No taking of myself aside, no weight of +private admonishment, no bringing of my spirit within the white glare of +pure reason. Oh, women are fools; and of all fools the most complete is +myself. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to say that I +had to go to a <i>Kaffee-Klatsch</i> yesterday at four, which is why I put +off answering your letter of the 13th till the evening. My dear Roger, +you must take no notice of that letter. Pray think of me as a young +person of sobriety; collected, discreet, cold to frostiness. Think of me +like that, my dear, and in return I'll undertake to write to you only in +my after-breakfast mood, quite the most respectable I possess. It is +nine now. Papa, in the slippers you can't have forgotten, is in his +corner by the stove, loudly disagreeing with the morning paper; he keeps +on shouting <i>Schafskopf.</i> Johanna is carrying coals about and dropping +them with a great noise. My step-mother is busy telling her how wrong it +is to drop dirty coals in clean places. I am writing on a bit of the +breakfast-table, surrounded by crumbs and coffee-cups. I will not clear +them away till I've finished my letter, because then I am sure you'll +get nothing either morbid or lovesick. Who, I'd like to know, could +flame into love-talk or sink into the mud of morbidness from a +starting-point of anything so sprightly as crumbs and coffee-cups?</p> + +<p>It was too sweet of you to compare me to Nausicaa in your letter +yesterday. Nobody ever did that before. Various aunts, among whom a few +years ago there was a great mortality, so that they are all now aunts in +heaven, told me in divers tones that I was much too long for my width, +that I was like the handle of a broom, like the steeple of the +<i>Stadtkirche</i>, like a tree walking; but none of them ever said anything +about Nausicaa. I doubt if they had ever heard of her. I'm afraid if +they had they wouldn't have seen that I am like her. You know the +blindness of aunts. Jena is full of them (not mine, <i>Gott sei Dank</i>, but +other people's) and they are all stone-blind. I don't mean, of course, +that the Jena streets are thick with aunts being led by dogs on strings, +but that they have that tragic blindness of the spirit that misses +seeing things that are hopeful and generous and lovely; things alight +with young enthusiasms, or beautiful with a patience that has had time +to grow gray. They also have that odd, unfurnished sort of mind that can +never forget and never forgive. Yesterday at the <i>Kaffee-Klatsch</i> I met +them all again, the Jena aunts I know so well and who are yet for ever +strange, for ever of a ghastly freshness. It was the first this season, +and now I suppose I shall waste many a good afternoon <i>klatsch</i>ing. How +I wish I had not to go. My step-mother says that if I do not show myself +I shall be put down as eccentric. 'You are not very popular,' says she, +'as it is. Do not, therefore, make matters worse.' Then she appeals, +should a more than usual stubbornness cloud my open countenance, to +Papa. 'Ferdinand,' she says, 'shall she not, then, do as others of her +age?' And of course Papa says, bless him, that girls must see life +occasionally, and is quite unhappy if I won't. Life? God bless him for a +dear, innocent Papa. And how they talked yesterday. Papa would have +writhed. He never will talk or listen to talk about women unless they've +been dead some time, so uninteresting, so unworthy of discussion does he +consider all live females except Johanna to be. And if I hadn't had my +love-letter (I took it with me tucked inside my dress, where my heart +could beat against it), I don't think I would have survived that +<i>Klatsch.</i> You've no idea how proudly I set out. Hadn't I just been +reading the sweetest things about myself in your letter? Of course I was +proud. And I felt so important, and so impressive, and simply gloriously +good-tempered. The pavement of Jena, I decided as I walked over it, was +quite unworthy to be touched by my feet; and if the passers-by only knew +it, an extremely valuable person was in their midst. In fact, my dear +Roger, I fancied myself yesterday. Didn't Odysseus think Nausicaa was +Artemis when first he met her among the washing, so god-like did she +appear? Well, I felt god-like yesterday, made god-like by your love. I +actually fancied people would <i>see</i> something wonderful had happened to +me, that I was transfigured, <i>verklärt.</i> Positively, I had a momentary +feeling that my coming in, the coming in of anything so happy, must +blind the <i>Kaffee-Klatsch</i>, that anything so burning with love must +scorch it. Well, it didn't. Never did torch plunged into wetness go out +with a drearier fizzle than did my little shining. Nobody noticed +anything different. Nobody seemed even to look at me. A few careless +hands were stretched out, and the hostess told me to ask the servant to +bring more milk.</p> + +<p>They were talking about sin. We don't sin much in Jena, so generally +they talk about sick people, or their neighbor's income and what he does +with it. But yesterday they talked sin. You know because we are poor and +Papa has no official position and I have come to be twenty-five without +having found a husband, I am a <i>quantité négligeable</i> in our set, a +being in whose presence everything can be said, and who is expected to +sit in a draught if there is one. Too old to join the young girls in the +corner set apart for them, where they whisper and giggle and eat amazing +quantities of whipped cream, I hover uneasily on the outskirts of the +group of the married, and try to ingratiate myself by keeping on handing +them cakes. It generally ends in my being sent out every few minutes by +the hostess to the kitchen to fetch more food and things. 'Rose-Marie is +so useful,' she will explain to the others when I have been extra quick +and cheerful; but I don't suppose Nausicaa's female acquaintances said +more. The man Ulysses might take her for a goddess, but the most the +women would do would be to commend the way she did the washing. +Sometimes I have great trouble not to laugh when I see their heads, +often quite venerable, gathered together in an eager bunch, and hear +them expressing horror, sympathy, pity, in every sort of appropriate +tone, while their eyes, their tell-tale eyes, betrayers of the soul, +look pleased. Why they should be pleased when somebody has had an +operation or doesn't pay his debts I can't make out. But they do. And +after a course of <i>Klatsches</i> throughout the winter, you are left toward +April with one firm conviction in a world where everything else is +shaky, that there's not a single person who isn't either extraordinarily +ill, or, if he's not, who does not misuse his health and strength by not +paying his servants' wages.</p> + +<p>Yesterday the <i>Klatsch</i> was in a fearful flutter. It had got hold of a +tale of sin, real or suspected. It was a tale of two people who, after +leading exemplary lives for years, had suddenly been clutched by the +throat by Nature; and Nature, we know, cares nothing at all for the +claims of husbands and wives or any other lawfulnesses, and is a most +unmoral and one-idea'd person. They have, says Jena, begun to love each +other in defiance of the law. Nature has been too many for them, I +suppose. All Jena is a-twitter. Nothing can be proved, but everything is +being feared, said the hostess; from her eyes I'm afraid she wanted to +say hoped. Isn't it ugly?—<i>pfui</i>, as we say. And so stale, if it's +true. Why can't people defy Nature and be good? The only thing that is +always fresh and beautiful is goodness. It is also the only thing that +can make you go on being happy indefinitely.</p> + +<p>I know her well. My heart failed me when I heard her being talked about +so hideously. She is the nicest woman in Jena. She has been kind to me +often. She is very clever. Perhaps if she had been more dull she would +have found no temptation to do anything but jog along +respectably—sometimes I think that to be without imagination is to be +so very safe. He has only come to these parts lately. He used to be in +Berlin, and has been appointed to a very good position in Weimar. I have +not met him, but Papa says he is brilliant. He has a wife, and she has a +husband, and they each have a lot of children; so you see if it's true +it really is very <i>pfui</i>.</p> + +<p>Just as the <i>Kaffee-Klatsch</i> was on the wane, and crumbs were being +brushed off laps, and bonnet-strings tied, in she walked. There was a +moment's dead silence. Then you should have heard the effusion of +welcoming speeches. The hostess ran up and hugged her. The others were +covered with pleasant smiles. Perhaps they were grateful to her for +having provided such thrilling talk. When I had to go and kiss her hand +I never in my life felt baser. You should have seen her looking round +cheerfully at all the Judases, and saying she was sorry to be late, and +asking if they hadn't missed her; and you should have heard the eager +chorus of assurances.</p> + +<p>Oh, <i>pfui, pfui</i>.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<p>How much I love goodness, straightness, singleness of heart—<i>you.</i></p> + + +<p>Later.</p> + +<p>I walked part of the way home with the calumniated one. How charming she +is. Dear little lady, it would be difficult not to love her. She talked +delightfully about German and English poetry. Do you think one can talk +delightfully about German and English poetry and yet be a sinner? Tell +me, do you think a woman who is very intellectual, but very <i>very</i> +intellectual, could yet be a sinner? Would not her wits save her? Would +not her bright wits save her from anything so dull as sin?</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>IX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 18th.</p> + +<p>Dearest,—I don't think I like that girl at all. Your letter from +Clinches has just come, and I don't think I like her at all. What is +more, I don't think I ever shall like her. And what is still more, I +don't think I even want to. So your idea of her being a good friend to +me later on in London must retire to that draughty corner of space where +abortive ideas are left to eternal shivering. I'm sorry if I am +offensively independent. But then I know so well that I won't be lonely +if I'm with you, and I think rooting up, which you speak of as a +difficult and probably painful process, must be very nice if you are the +one to do it, and I am sure I could never by any possibility reach such +depths of strangeness and doubt about what to do next as would induce me +to stretch out appealing hands to a young woman with eyes that, as you +put it, tilt at the corners. I wish you hadn't told her about us, about +me. It has profaned things so, dragged them out into the streets, +cheapened them. I don't in the least want to tell my father, or any one +else. Does this sound as though I were angry? Well, I don't think I am. +On the contrary, I rather want to laugh. You dear silly! So clever and +so simple, so wise and crammed with learning, and such a dear, ineffable +goose. How old am I, I wonder? Only as old as you? Really only as old? +Nonsense: I'm fifteen, twenty years your senior, my dear sir. I've lived +in Jena, you in London I frequent <i>Kaffee-Klatsches</i>, and you the great +world. I talk much with Johanna in the kitchen, and you with heaven +knows what in the way of geniuses. Yet no male Nancy Cheriton, were his +eyelids never so tilted, would wring a word out of me about a thing so +near, so precious, so much soul of my soul as my lover.</p> + +<p>How would you explain this? I've tried and can't.</p> + +<p>Your rebellious</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE.</p> + +<p>Darling, darling, don't ask me to like Nancy. The thing's unthinkable.</p> + + +<p>Later.</p> + +<p>Now I know why I am wiser than you: life in kitchens and <i>Klatsches</i> +turns the soul gray very early. Didn't one of your poets sing of +somebody who had a sad lucidity of soul? I'm afraid that is what's the +matter with me.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>X</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 19th.</p> + +<p>Oh, what nonsense everything seems,—everything of the nature of +differences, of arguments, on a clear morning up among the hills. I am +ashamed of what I wrote about Nancy; ashamed of my eagerness and heat +about a thing that does not matter. On the hills this morning, as I was +walking in the sunshine, it seemed to me that I met God. And He took me +by the hand, and let me walk with Him. And He showed me how beautiful +the world is, how beautiful the background He has given us, the +spacious, splendid background on which to paint our large charities and +loves. And I looked across the hilltops, golden, utterly peaceful, and +amazement filled me in the presence of that great calm at the way I +flutter through my days and at the noise I make. Why should I cry out +before I am hurt? flare up into heat and clamor? The pure light up there +made it easy to see clearly, and I saw that I have been silly and +ungrateful. Forgive me. You know best about Nancy, you who have seen +her; and I, just come down from that holy hour on the hills, am very +willing to love her. I will not turn my back upon a ready friend. She +can have no motive but a good one. Roger, I am a blunderer, a clumsy +creature with not one of my elemental passions bound down yet into the +decent listlessness of chains. But I shall grow better, grow more worthy +of you. Not a day shall pass without my having been a little wiser than +the day before, a little kinder, a little more patient. I wish you had +been with me this morning. It was so still and the sky so clear that I +sat on the old last year's grass as warmly as in summer. I felt +irradiated with life and love; light shining on to every tiresome +incident of life and turning it into beauty, love for the whole +wonderful world, and all the people in it, and all the beasts and +flowers, and all the happy living things. Indeed blessings have been +given me in full measure, pressed down and running over. In the whole of +that little town at my feet, so quiet, so bathed in lovely light, there +was not, there could not be, another being so happy as myself. Surely I +am far too happy to grudge accepting a kindness? I tell you I marvel at +the energy of my protest yesterday. Perhaps it was—oh Roger, after +those hours on the hills I will be honest, I will pull off the veil from +feelings that the female mind generally refuses to uncover—perhaps the +real reason, the real, pitiful, mean reason was that I felt sure somehow +from your description of her that Nancy's <i>blouses</i> must be very perfect +things, things beyond words <i>very</i> perfect. And I was jealous of her +blouses. There now. Good-by.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 20th.</p> + +<p>I am glad you did not laugh at that silly letter of mine about scorching +in the sun on rocks. Indeed I gather, my dear Roger, that you liked it. +Make the most of it then, for there will be no more of the sort. A +decent woman never gets on to rocks, and if she scorches she doesn't say +so. And I believe that it is held to be generally desirable that she +should not, even under really trying circumstances, part with her +dignity. I rather think the principle was originally laid down by the +husband of an attractive wife, but it is a good one, and so long as I am +busy clinging to my dignity obviously I shall have no leisure for +clinging to you, and then you will not be suffocated with the +superabundance of my follies.</p> + +<p>About those two sinners who are appalling us: how can I agree with you? +To do so would cut away the ground from under my own feet. The woman +plays such a losing game. She gives so much, and gets so little. So long +as the man loves her I do see that he is worth the good opinion of +neighbors and relations, which is one of the chilliest things in the +world; but he never seems able to go on loving her once she has begun to +wither. That is very odd. She does not mind his withering. And has she +not a soul? And does not that grow always lovelier? But what, then, +becomes of her? For wither she certainly will, and years rush past at +such a terrific pace that almost before she has begun to be happy it is +over. He goes back to his wife, a person who has been either patient or +bitter according to the quantity of her vitality and the quality of her +personal interests, and concludes, while he watches her sewing on his +buttons in the corner she has probably been sitting in through all his +vagrant years, that marriage has its uses, and that it is good to know +there will be some one bound to take care of you up to the last, and who +will shed decent tears when you are buried. She goes back—but where, +and to what? They have gone long ago, her husband, her children, her +friends. And she is old, and alone. You too, like everybody else, seem +unable to remember how transient things are. Time goes, emotions wear +out. You say these people are in the hands of Fate, and can no more get +out of them and do differently than a fly in a web can walk away when it +sees the hungry spider coming nearer. I don't believe in webs and +spiders; at least, I don't today. Today I believe only in my +unconquerable soul—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I am the master of my fate,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I am the captain of my soul.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And you say that a person in the grip of a great feeling should not care +a straw for circumstance, should defy it, trample it under foot. Heaven +knows that I too am for love and laughter, for the snatching of flying +opportunities, for all that makes the light and the glory of life; but +what afterwards? The Afterwards haunts me like a weeping ghost. It is +true there is still the wide world, the warm sun, seed-time and harvest, +Shakespeare, the Book of Job, singing birds, flowers; but the soul that +has transgressed the laws of man seems for ever afterwards unable to use +the gifts of God. If supreme joy could be rounded off by death, death at +the exact right moment, how easy things would be. Only death has a +strange way of shunning those persons who want him most. To long to die +seems to make you as nearly immortal as it is possible to become. Now +just think what would have happened if Tristan had not been killed, had +lived on quite healthily. King Mark, than whom I know no man in +literature more polite, would have handed Isolde over to him as he +declared himself ready to have done had he been aware of the +unfortunately complicated state of things, and he would have done it +with every expression of decent regret at the inconvenience he had +caused. Isolde would have married Tristan. There would have been no +philosophy, no divine hours in the garden, no acute, exquisite anguish +of love and sorrow. But there would presently have been the Middle Ages +equivalent for a perambulator, a contented Tristan coming to meet it, a +faded Isolde who did not care for poetry, admonishing, perhaps with +sharpness, a mediæval nursemaid, and quite quickly afterwards a Tristan +grown too comfortable to move, and an Isolde with wrinkles. Would we not +have lost a great deal if they had lived? It is certain that they +themselves would have lost a great deal; for I don't see that +contentment beaten out thin enough to cover a long life—and beat as +thin as you will it never does cover quite across the years—is to be +compared with one supreme contentment heaped in one heap on the highest, +keenest point of living we reach. Now I am apparently arguing on your +side, but I'm not really, because you, you know, think of love as a +perpetual <i>crescendo,</i> and I, though I do hear the <i>crescendo</i> and +follow it with a joyful clapping of hands up to the very top of its +splendor, can never forget the drop on the other side, the inevitable +<i>diminuendo</i> to the dead level—and then? Why, the rest is not even +silence, but a querulous murmur, a querulous, confused whining, confused +complaining, not very loud, not very definite, but always there till the +last chord is reached a long time afterwards—that satisfactory common +chord of death. My point is, that if you want to let yourself go to +great emotions you ought to have the luck to die at an interesting +moment. The alternative makes such a dreary picture; and it is the +picture I always see when I hear of love at defiance with the law. The +law wins; always, inevitably. Husbands are best; always, inevitably. +Really, the most unsatisfactory husband is a person who should be clung +to steadily from beginning to end, for did not one marry him of one's +own free will? How ugly then, because one had been hasty, foolish, +unacquainted with one's usually quite worthless mind, to punish him. The +brilliant professor, the fascinating little lady, what are they but +grossly selfish people, cruelly punishing the husband and wife who had +the misfortune to marry them? Oh, it's a mercy most of us are homely, +slow of wit, heavy of foot; for so at least we stay at home and find our +peace in fearful innocence and household laws. (Please note my +familiarity with the British poets.) But isn't that a picture of frugal +happiness, of the happiness that comes from a daily simple obedience to +the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God, beside which stormy, tremendous, +brief things come off very badly? I don't believe you do in your heart +side with the two sinners. Bother them. They have made me feel like a +Lutheran pastor on a Sunday afternoon. But you know I love you.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 22d.</p> + +<p>When do you go back to Jermyn Street? Surely today, for is not the +examination to-morrow? Your description of the Cheriton <i>ménage</i> at +Clinches is like fairyland. No wonder you feel so happy there. My mother +used to tell me about life in England, but apparently the Watson family +did not dwell in houses like Clinches. Anyhow I had an impression of +little houses with little staircases, and oil-cloth, and a servant in a +cap with streamers, and round white balls of suet with currants in them +very often for dinner. But Clinches, beautiful and dignified in the +mists and subtleties of a November afternoon, its massed grayness +melting into that other grayness, its setting of mysterious blurred wood +and pale light of water, its spaciousness, its pleasant people, its +daughter with the dusky hair and odd gray eyes—is a vision of +fairyland. I cannot conceive what life is like in such places; nor I am +sure could any other inhabitant of Jena. What, for instance, can it be +like to live in a thing so big that you do not hear the sounds nor smell +the smells of the kitchen? Ought not people who live in such places to +have unusually beautiful ways of looking at life? of thinking? of +speaking? One imagines it all very noble, very gracious, altogether +worthy. That complete separation from the kitchen is what wrings the +biggest sigh of envy out of me. Is it my English blood that makes me +rebel against kitchens? Or is it only my unfortunate sensitiveness to +smell? I wish I had no nose. It has always been a nuisance. It is as +extravagantly delighted by exquisite scents as it is extravagantly +horrified by nasty ones. Why, a beautiful smell, if it is delicate, +subtle, intermittent, can ruin a morning for me. It fills me with a +quite unworthy rapture. Things that ought to be hard in me melt. Things +that ought to be fixed are scattered heaven knows where. I go soft, +ecstatic, basely idle. I forget that my business is to get dinner, and +not to stand still and just sniff. In March I dare not pass the house +Schiller used to live in on my way to market, because the people who +live there now have planted violets along the railings. It is the +shortest way, and it takes ten more minutes out of a busy morning to go +round by the Post Office; but really for a grown woman to stand lost in +what is mere voluptuous pleasure, leaning against somebody else's +railing while the family dinner lies still unbought in the market-place, +is conduct that I cannot justify. As for a beanfield—my dear Roger, did +you ever come across a beanfield in flower? It is the divinest +experience the nose can give us. Two years ago an Englishman came and +spent a spring and summer in the little house in the apple orchard up on +the road over the Galgenberg—the little house with the blue +shutters—and he was a great gardener. And he dug a big patch, and +planted a beanfield, and it was the first beanfield Jena had ever seen; +for those beans called broad that you eat in England and are properly +thankful for are only grown in Germany for the use of pigs, and there +are no pigs in Jena. Sow-beans they are called here, mindful of their +destiny. The Englishman, who possessed no visible sow, was a source of +astonishment to us. The things came up, and were undoubtedly sow-beans. +A great square patch of them grew up just over the fence on which Jena +leaned and pondered. The man himself was seen in his shirt-sleeves +weeding them on rainy afternoons. Jena could only suspect a pig +concealed in the parlor, and was indulgent; and it was indulgent because +no one, in its opinion, can be both English and sane. 'God made us all,' +was its invariable helpless conclusion as it went, shaking its head, +home down the hill. When in June the beanfield flowered I blessed that +Englishman. No one hung over his fence more persistently than I. It was +the first time I had smelt the like. It became an obsession. I wanted to +be there at every sort of time and under every sort of weather-condition. +At noon, when the sun shone straight down on it drawing up its perfume +in hot breaths, I was there; in the morning, so early that it was still +in the blue shadow of the Galgenberg and every gray leaf and white petal +was drenched with dew, I was there; on wet afternoons, when the scent +was crushed out of it by the beating of heavy rain, and the road for +half a mile, the slippery clay road with its puddles and amazing mud, +was turned into a bath of fragrance fit for the tenderest, most +fastidious goddess to bare her darling little limbs in, I was there; and +once after lying awake in my hot room so near the roof for hours +thinking of it, out there on the hillside in the freshness under the +stars, I got up and dressed, and crept with infinite caution past my +step-mother's door, and stole the latchkey, and slunk, my heart in my +mouth, through the stale streets, along all the railings and dusty front +gardens, out into the open country, up on to the hill, to where it stood +in straight and motionless rows sending out waves of fragrance into that +wonderful clean air you find in all the places where men leave off and +God begins. Did you ever know a woman before who risked her reputation +for a beanfield? Well, it is what I did. And I'll tell you, I am so +incurably honest that I can never for long pretend, why I write all this +about it. It is that I am sick with anxiety—oh, sick, cold, shivering +with it—about your exam. I didn't want you to know. I've tried to write +of beanfields instead. I didn't want you to be bothered. The clamorings +for news of the person not on the spot are always a worry, and I did not +want to worry. But the letter I got from you this morning never mentions +the exam, the thing on which, as you told me, everything depends for us. +You talk about Clinches, about the people there, about the shooting, the +long days in woods, the keen-wittedness of Nancy who goes with you, who +understands before you have spoken, who sympathizes so kindly about me, +who fits, you say, so strangely into the misty winter landscape in her +paleness, her thinness, her spiritualness. There was one whole page—oh, +I grudged it—about her loosely done dark hair, how softly dusky it is, +how it makes you think of twilight, and her eyes beneath it of the first +faint shining of stars. I wonder if these things really fill your +thoughts, or whether you are only using them to drive away useless worry +about Saturday. I know you are a poet, and a poet's pleasure in eyes and +hair is not a very personal thing, so I do not mind that. But to-morrow +is Saturday. Shall you send me a telegram, I wonder? A week ago I would +not have wondered; I should have been so sure you would let me have one +little word at once about how you felt it had gone off—one little word +for the person so far away, so helpless, so dependent on your kindness +for the very power to go on living. Oh, what stuff this is. Worse even +than the beanfield. But I must be sentimental sometimes, now mustn't I? +or I would not be a woman. But really, my darling, I am very anxious.</p> + +<p>R.-M.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 23 d.</p> + +<p>I have waited all day, and there has been no telegram. Well, on Monday I +shall get a letter about it, and how much more satisfactory that is. +Today after all is nearly over, and there is only Sunday to be got +through first, and I shall be helped to endure that by the looking +forward. Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It +makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and +nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the +first catch of the breath, the first gulp of misery, we turn our eyes +with all their old eagerness to a point a little further along the road. +I suppose in time the regular repetition of shocks does wear out hope, +and then I imagine one's youth collapses like a house of cards. Real old +age begins then, inward as well as outward; and one's soul, that kept so +bravely young for years after one's face got its first wrinkles, +suddenly shrivels up. Its light goes out. It is suddenly and +irrecoverably old, blank, dark, indifferent.</p> + + +<p>Sunday Night.</p> + +<p>I didn't finish my letter last night because, observing the strain I had +got into, I thought it better for your comfort that I should go to bed. +So I did. And while I went there I asked myself why I should burden you +with the dull weight of my elementary reflections. You who are so clever +and who think so much and so clearly, must laugh at their +elementariness. They are green and immature, the acid juice of an +imperfect fruit that has always hung in the shadow. And yet I don't +think you must laugh, Roger. It would, after all, be as cruel as the +laughter of a child watching a blind man ridiculously stumbling among +the difficulties of the way.</p> + +<p>The one Sunday post brought nothing from you. The day has been very +long. I cannot tell you how glad I am night has come, and only sleep +separates me now from Monday morning's letter. These Sundays now that +you are gone are intolerable. Before you came they rather amused +me,—the furious raging of Saturday, with its extra cleaning and +feverish preparations till far into the night; Johanna more than usually +slipshod all day, red of elbow, wispy of hair, shuffling about in her +felt slippers, her skirt girded up very high, a moist mop and an +overflowing pail dribbling soapy tracks behind her in her progress; my +step-mother baking and not lightly to be approached; Papa fled from +early morning till supper-time; and then the dead calm of Sunday, day of +food and sleep. Cake for breakfast—such a bad beginning. Church in the +University chapel, with my step-mother in her best hat with the black +feathers and the pink rose—it sounds frivolous, but you must have +noticed the awe-inspiring effect of it coming so unexpectedly on the top +of her long respectable face and oiled-down hair. A fluffy person in +that hat would have all the students offering to take her for a walk or +share their umbrella with her. My step-mother stalks along panoplied in +her excellences, and the feather waves and nods gayly at the passing +student as he slinks away down by-streets. Once last spring a silly bee +thought the rose must be something alive and honeyful, and went and +smelt it. I think it must have been a very young bee; anyhow nobody else +up to now has misjudged my step-mother like that. She sits near the door +in church, and has never yet heard the last half of the sermon because +she has to go out in time to put the goose or other Sunday succulence +safely into the oven. I wish she would let me do that, for I don't care +for sermons. When you were here and condescended to come with us at +least we could criticize them comfortably on our way home; but alone +with my step-mother I may do nothing but praise. It is the most tiring, +tiresome of all attitudes, the one of undiscriminating admiration. To +hear you pull the person who had preached to pieces, and laugh at the +things he had said that would not bear examination, used to be like +having a window thrown open in a stuffy room on a clear winter's +morning. Shall you ever forget the elaborateness of the Sunday dinner? +For that, chiefly, is Saturday sacrificed, a whole day that might be +filled with lovely leisure. I do hope you never thought that I too +looked upon it as a nice way of celebrating Sunday. How amazing it is, +the way women waste life. Men waste enough of it, heaven knows, but +never anything like so much as women. Papa and I both hate that Sunday +dinner, both dread the upheavals of Saturday made necessary by it, and +you, I know, disliked them just as much, and so has every other young +man we have had here; yet my step-mother inflicts these things on us +with an iron determination that nothing will ever alter. And why? Only +because she was brought up in the belief that it was proper, and +because, if she omitted to do the proper, female Jena would be aghast. +Well, I think it's a bad thing to be what is known as brought up, don't +you? Why should we poor helpless little children, all soft and +resistless, be squeezed and jammed into the rusty iron bands of parental +points of view? Why should we have to have points of view at all? Why +not, for those few divine years when we are still so near God, leave us +just to guess and wonder? We are not given a chance. On our pulpy little +minds our parents carve their opinions, and the mass slowly hardens, and +all those deep, narrow, up and down strokes harden with it, and the +first thing the best of us have to do on growing up is to waste precious +time rubbing and beating at the things to try to get them out. Surely +the child of the most admirable, wise parent is richer with his own +faulty but original point of view than he would be fitted out with the +choicest selection of maxims and conclusions that he did not have to +think out for himself? I could never be a schoolmistress. I should be +afraid to teach the children. They know more than I do. They know how to +be happy, how to live from day to day in god-like indifference to what +may come next. And is not how to be happy the secret we spend our lives +trying to guess? Why then should I, by forcing them to look through my +stale eyes, show them as through a dreadful magnifying glass the +terrific possibilities, the cruel explosiveness of what they had been +lightly tossing to each other across the daisies and thinking were only +toys?</p> + +<p>Today at dinner, when Papa had got to the stage immediately following +the first course at which, his hunger satisfied, he begins to fidget and +grow more and more unhappy, and my step-mother was conversing blandly +but firmly with the tried and ancient friend she invites to bear witness +that we too have a goose on Sundays, and I had begun to droop, I hope +poetically, like a thirsty flower let us say, or a broken lily, over my +plate, I thought—oh, how longingly I thought—of the happy past meals, +made happy because you were here sitting opposite me and I could watch +you. How short they seemed in those days. You didn't know I was watching +you, did you? But I was. And I learned to do it so artfully, so +cautiously. When you turned your head and talked to Papa I could do it +openly; when you talked to me I could look straight in your dear eyes +while I answered; but when I wasn't answering I still looked at you, by +devious routes carefully concealed, routes that grew so familiar by +practice that at last I never missed a single expression, while you, I +suppose, imagined you had nothing before you but a young woman with a +vacant face. What talks and laughs we will have about that odd, foolish +year we spent here together in our blindness when next we meet! We've +had no time to say anything at all yet. There are thousands of things I +want to ask you about, thousands of little things we said and did that +seem so strange now in the light of our acknowledged love. My heart +stands still at the thought of when next we meet. These letters have +been so intimate, and we were not intimate. I shall be deadly shy when +in your presence I remember what I have written and what you have +written. We are still such strangers, bodily, personally; strangers with +the overwhelming memory of that last hour together to make us turn hot +and tremble.</p> + +<p>Now I am going to bed,—to dream of you, I suppose, considering that all +day long I am thinking of you; and perhaps I shall have a little luck, +and dream that I hear you speaking. You know, Roger, I love you for all +sorts of queer and apparently inadequate reasons—I won't tell you what +they are, for they are quite absurd; things that have to do with +eyebrows, and the shape of hands, so you see quite foolish things—but +most of all I love you for your voice. A beautiful speaking voice is one +of the best of the gifts of the gods. It is so rare; and it is so +irresistible. Papa says heaps of nice poetic things, but then the +darling pipes. The most eloquent lecturer we have here does all his +eloquence, which is really very great read afterward in print, in a +voice of beer, loose, throaty, reminiscent of barrels. Not one of the +preachers who come to the University chapel has a voice that does not +spoil the merit there may be in what he says. Sometimes I think that if +a man with the right voice were to get up in that pulpit and just say, +'Children, Christ died for you,'—oh, then I think that all I have and +am, body, mind, soul, would be struck into one great passion of +gratefulness and love, and that I would fall conquered on my face before +the Cross on the altar, and cry and cry....</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 25th. Monday Night.</p> + +<p>The last post has been. No letter. If you had posted it in London on +Saturday after the examination I ought to have had it by now. I am +tortured by the fear that something has happened to you. Such dreadful +things do happen. Those great, blundering, blind fists of Fate, laying +about in mechanical cruelty, crushing the most precious lives as +indifferently as we crush an ant in an afternoon walk, how they terrify +me. All day I have been seeing foolish, horrible pictures—your train to +London smashing up, your cab coming to grief—the thousand things that +might so easily happen really doing it at last. I sent my two letters to +Jermyn Street, supposing you would have left Clinches, but now somehow I +don't think you did leave it, but went up from there for the exam. Do +you know it is three days since I heard from you? That wouldn't matter +so much—for I am determined never to bother you to write, I am +determined I will never be an exacting woman—if it were not for the +all-important examination. You said that if you passed it well and got a +good place in the Foreign Office you would feel justified in telling +your father about us. That means that we would be openly engaged. Not +that I care for that, or want it except as the next step to our meeting +again. It is clear that we cannot meet again till our engagement is +known. Even if you could get away and come over for a few days I would +not see you. I will not be kissed behind doors. These things are too +wonderful to be handled after the manner of kitchen-maids. I am willing +to be as silent as the grave for as long as you choose, but so long as I +am silent we shall not meet. I tell you I am incurably honest. I cannot +bear to lie. And even these letters, this perpetual writing when no one +is likely to look, this perpetual watching for the postman so that no +one will be likely to see, does not make me love myself any better. It +is true I need not have watched quite so carefully lately, need I? Oh +Roger, why don't you write? What has happened? Think of my wretched +plight if you are ill. Just left to wonder at the silence, to gnaw away +at my miserable heart. Or, if some one took pity on me and sent me +word,—your servant, or the doctor, or the kind Nancy—what could I do +even then but still sit here and wait? How could I, a person of whom +nobody has heard, go to you? It seems to me that the whole world has a +right to be with you, to know about you, except myself. I cannot wait +for the next post. The waiting for these posts makes me feel physically +sick. If the man is a little late, what torments I suffer lest he should +not be coming at all. Then I hear him trudging up the stairs. I fly to +the door, absolutely vainly trying to choke down hope. 'There will be no +letter, no letter, no letter,' I keep on crying to my thumping heart so +that the disappointment shall not be quite so bitter; and it takes no +notice, but thumps back wildly, 'Oh, there will, there will.' And what +the man gives me is a circular for Papa.</p> + +<p>It is quite absurd, madly absurd, the anguish I feel when that happens. +My one wish, my only wish, as I creep back again down the passage to my +work, is that I could go to sleep, and sleep and sleep and forget that I +have ever hoped for anything; sleep for years, and wake up quiet and +old, with all these passionate, tearing feelings gone from me for ever.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 28th.</p> + +<p>Last night I got your letter written on Sunday at Clinches, a place from +which letters do not seem to depart easily. My knowledge of England's +geography is limited, so how could I guess that it was so easy to go up +to London from there for the exam, and back again the same day? As you +had no time, you say, to go to Jermyn Street, I suppose the two letters +I sent there will be forwarded to you. If they are not it does not +matter. They were only a string of little trivial things that would look +really quite too little and trivial to be worth reading in the +magnificence of Clinches. I am glad you are well; glad you are happy; +glad you feel you did not do badly on Saturday. It is a good thing to be +well and happy and satisfied, and a pleasant thing to have found a +friend who takes so much interest in you, and to whom you can tell your +most sacred thoughts: doubly pleasant, of course, when the friend +chances to be a woman, and she is pretty, and young, and rich, and +everything else that is suitable and desirable. The world is an amusing +place. My step-mother talked of you this morning at breakfast. She was, +it seems, in a prophetic mood. She shook her head after the manner of +the more gloomy of the prophets, and hoped you would steer clear of +entanglements.</p> + +<p>'And why should he not, <i>meine Liebste</i>?' inquired Papa.</p> + +<p>'Not for nothing has he got that mouth, Ferdinand,' answered she.</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 29th.</p> + +<p>My darling, forgive me. If I could only get it back! I who hate +unreasonableness, who hate bitterness, who hate exacting women, petty +women, jealous women, to write a thing so angry. How horrible this +letter-writing is. If I had said all that to you in a sudden flare of +wrath I would have been sorry so immediately, and at once have made +everything fair and sweet again with a kiss. And I never would have got +beyond the first words, never have reached my step-mother's silly and +rude remarks, never have dreamed of repeating the unkind, unjust things. +Now, Roger, listen to me: my faith in you is perfect, my love for you is +perfect, but I am so undisciplined, so new to love, that you must be +patient, you must be ready to forgive easily for a little while, till I +have had time to grow wise. Just think, when you feel irritated, of the +circumstances of my life. Everything has come so easily, so naturally to +you. But I have been always poor, always second-rate—oh, it's +true—shut out from the best things and people, lonely because the +society I could have was too little worth having, and the society I +would have liked didn't want me. How could it? It never came our way, +never even knew we were there. I have had a shabby, restricted, +incomplete life; I mean the last ten years of it, since my father +married again. Before that, if the shabbiness was there I did not see +it; there seemed to be sunshine every day, and room to breathe, and +laughter enough; but then I was a child, and saw sunshine everywhere. Is +there not much excuse for some one who has found a treasure, some one +till then very needy, if his anxiety lest he should be robbed makes +him—irritable? You see, I put it mildly. I know very well that +irritable isn't the right word. I know very well what are the right +words, and how horrid they are, and how much ashamed I am of their +bitter truth. Pity me. A person so unbalanced, so stripped of all +self-control that she writes things she knows must hurt to the being she +loves so utterly, does deserve pity from better, serener natures. I do +not understand you yet. I do not understand the ways yet of people who +live as you do. I am socially inferior, and therefore sensitive and +suspicious. I am groping about, and am so blind that only sometimes can +I dimly feel how dark it really is. I have built up a set of ideals +about love and lovers, absurd crude things, clumsy fabrics suited to the +conditions of Rauchgasse, and the first time you do not exactly fit them +I am desperately certain that the world is coming to an end. But how +hopeless it is, this trying to explain, this trying to undo. How shall I +live till you write that you do still love me?</p> + +<p>Your wretched</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XVII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Nov. 30th.</p> + +<p>I counted up my money this morning to see if there would be enough to +take me to England, supposing some day I should wake up and find myself +no longer able to bear the silence. I know I should be mad if I went, +but sometimes one is mad. There was not nearly enough. The cheapest +route would cost more than comes in my way during a year. I have a ring +of my mother's with a diamond in it, my only treasure, that I might +sell. I never wear it; my red hands are not pretty enough for rings, so +it is only sentiment that makes it precious. And if it would take me to +you and give me just one half-hour's talk with you and sweep away the +icy fog that seems to be settling down on my soul and shutting out +everything that is wholesome and sweet, I am sure my darling mother, +whose one thought was always to make me happy, would say, 'Child, go and +sell it, and buy peace.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XVIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Dec. 1st.</p> + +<p>Last night I dreamed I did go to England, and I found you in a room with +a crowd of people, and you nodded not unkindly, and went on talking to +the others, and I waited in my corner till they should have gone, waited +for the moment when we would run into each other's arms; and with the +last group you too went out talking and laughing, and did not come back +again. It was not that you wanted to avoid me; you had simply forgotten +that I was there. And I crept out into the street, and it was raining, +and through the rain I made my way back across Europe to my home, to the +one place where they would not shut me out, and when I opened the door +all the empty future years were waiting for me there, gray, vacant, +listless.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XIX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Dec. 2d.</p> + +<p>These scraps of letters are not worth the postman's trouble, are not +worth the stamps; but if I did not talk to you a little every day I do +not think I could live. Yesterday you got my angry letter. If you were +not at Clinches I could have had an answer to-morrow; as it is, I must +wait till Wednesday. Roger, I am really a cheerful person. You mustn't +suppose that it is my habit to be so dreary. I don't know what has come +over me. Every day I send you another shred of gloom, and deepen the +wrong impression you must be getting of me. I know very well that nobody +likes to listen to sighs, and that no man can possibly go on for long +loving a dreary woman. Yet I cannot stop. A dreary man is bad enough, +but he would be endured because we endure every variety of man with so +amazing a patience; but a dreary woman is unforgivable, hideous. Now am +I not luminously reasonable? But only in theory. My practice lies right +down on the ground, wet through by that icy fog that is freezing me into +something I do not recognize. You do remember I was cheerful once? +During the whole of your year with us I defy you to recollect a single +day, a single hour of gloom. Well, that is really how I always am, and I +can only suppose that I am going to be ill. There is no other way of +accounting for the cold terror of life that sits crouching on my heart.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Dec. 3d.</p> + +<p>Dearest,—You will be pleased to hear that I feel gayer to-night, so +that I cannot, after all, be sickening for anything horrid. It is an +ungrateful practice, letting oneself go to vague fears of the future +when there is nothing wrong with the present. All these days during +which I have been steeped in gloom and have been taking pains to put +some of it into envelopes and send it to you were good days in +themselves. Life went on here quite placidly. The weather was sweet with +that touching, forlorn sweetness of beautiful worn-out things, of late +autumn when winter is waiting round the corner, of leaves dropping +slowly down through clear light, of the smell of oozy earth sending up +faint whiffs of corruption. From my window I saw the hills every day at +sunset, how wonderfully they dressed themselves in pink; and in the +afternoons, in the free hour when dinner was done and coffee not yet +thought of, I went down into the Paradies valley and sat on the coarse +gray grass by the river, and watched the water slipping by beneath the +osiers, the one hurried thing in an infinite tranquillity. I ought to +have had a volume of Goethe under my arm and been happy. I ought to have +read nice bits out of <i>Faust</i>, or about those extraordinary people in +the Elective Affinities, and rejoiced in Goethe, and in the fine days, +and in my good fortune in being alive, and in having you to love. Well, +it is over now, I hope,—I mean the gloom. These things must take their +course, I suppose, and while they are doing it one must grope about as +best one can by the flickering lantern-light of one's own affrighted +spirit. My step-mother looked at me at least once on each of these +miserable days, and said: 'Rose-Marie, you look very odd. I hope you are +not going to have anything expensive. Measles are in Jena, and also the +whooping-cough.'</p> + +<p>'Which of them is the cheapest?' I inquired.</p> + +<p>'Both are beyond our means,' said my step-mother severely.</p> + +<p>And today at dinner she was quite relieved because I ate some <i>dicker +Reis</i> after having turned from it with abhorrence for at least a week. +Good-by, dearest.</p> + +<p>Your almost cured</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, Dec. 4th.</p> + +<p>Your letter has come. You must do what you know is best. I agree to +everything. You must do what your father has set his heart on, since +quite clearly your heart is set on the same thing. All the careful words +in the world cannot hide that from me. And they shall not. Do you think +I dare not look death in the face? I am just a girl you kissed once +behind a door, giving way before a passing gust of temptation. You +cannot, shall not marry me as the price of that slight episode. You say +you will if I insist. Insist? My dear Roger, with both hands I give you +back any part of your freedom I may have had in my keeping. Reason, +expediency, all the prudences are on your side. You depend entirely on +your father; you cannot marry against his wishes; he has told you to +marry Miss Cheriton; she is the daughter of his oldest friend; she is +extremely rich; every good gift is hers; and I cannot compete. Compete? +Do you suppose I would put out a finger to compete? I give it up. I bow +myself out.</p> + +<p>But let us be honest. Apart from anything to do with your father's +commands, you have fallen into her toils as completely as you did into +mine. My step-mother was right about your softness. Any woman who chose +and had enough opportunity could make you think you loved her, make you +kiss her. Luckily this one is absolutely suitable. You say, in the +course of the longest letter you have written me—it must have been a +tiresome letter to have to write—that father or no father you will not +be hurried, you will not marry for a long time, that the wound is too +fresh, &c., &c. What is this talk of wounds? Nobody knows about me. I +shall not be in your way. You need observe no period of mourning for a +corpse people don't know is there. True, Miss Cheriton herself knows. +Well, she will not tell; and if she does not mind, why should you? I am +so sorry I have written you so many letters full of so many follies. +Will you burn them? I would rather not have them back. But I enclose +yours, as you may prefer to burn them yourself. I am so very sorry about +everything. At least it has been short, and not dragged on growing +thinner and thinner till it died of starvation. Once I wrote and begged +you to tell me if you thought you had made a mistake about me, because I +felt I could bear to know better then than later. And you wrote back and +swore all sorts of things by heaven and earth, all sorts of convictions +and unshakable things. Well, now you have another set of convictions, +that's all. I am not going to beat the big drum of sentiment and make a +wailful noise. Nothing is so dead as a dead infatuation. The more a +person was infatuated the more he resents an attempt to galvanize the +dull dead thing into life. I am wise, you see, to the end. And +reasonable too, I hope. And brave. And brave, I tell you. Do you think I +will be a coward, and cry out? I make you a present of everything; of +the love and happy thoughts, of the pleasant dreams and plans, of the +little prayers sent up, and the blessings called down—there were a +great many every day—of the kisses, and all the dear sweetness. Take it +all. I want nothing from you in return. Remember it as a pleasant +interlude, or fling it into a corner of your mind where used-up things +grow dim with cobwebs. But do you suppose that having given you all this +I am going to give you my soul as well? To moan my life away, my +beautiful life? You are not worth it. You are not worth anything, +hardly. You are quite invertebrate. My life shall be splendid in spite +of you. You shall not cheat me of one single chance of heaven. Now +good-by. Please burn this last one, too. I suppose no one who heard it +would quite believe this story, would quite believe it possible for a +man to go such lengths of—shall we call it unkindness? to a girl in a +single month; but you and I know it is true.</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, March 5th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It was extremely kind of you to remember my +birthday and to find time in the middle of all your work to send me your +good wishes. I hope you are getting on well, and that you like what you +are doing. Professor Martens seems to tell you all the Jena news. Yes, I +was ill; but we had such a long winter that it was rather lucky to be +out of it, tucked away comfortably in bed. There is still snow in the +ditches and on the shady side of things. I escaped the bad weather as +thoroughly as those persons do who go with infinite trouble during these +months to Egypt.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>My father and step-mother beg to be remembered to you.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, March 18th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It is very kind indeed of you to want to know how +I am and what was the matter with me. It wasn't anything very pleasant, +but quite inoffensive æsthetically. I don't care to think about it much. +I caught cold, and it got on to my lungs and stayed on them. Now it is +over, and I may walk up and down the sunny side of the street for half +an hour on fine days.</p> + +<p>We all hope you are well, and that you like your work.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, March 25th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You ask me to tell you more about my illness, but +I am afraid I must refuse. I see no use in thinking of painful past +things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if +they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling +to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as +cheerful as possible—like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop +of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply +to be alive with nothing in my body hurting. To be alive with a great +many things in one's body hurting is a poor sort of amusement. It is not +at all a game worth playing. People talk of sick persons clinging to +life however sick they are, say they invariably do it, that they prefer +it on any terms to dying; well, I was a sick person who did not cling at +all. I did not want it. I was most willing to be done with it. But +Death, though he used often to come up and look at me, and once at least +sat beside me for quite a long while, went away again, and after a time +left off bothering about me altogether; and here I am walking out in the +sun every day, and listening with immense pleasure to the chaffinches.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXV.</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, March 31st.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Yes, of course I will be friends. And if I can be +of any use in the way of admonishment, which seems to be my strong +point, pray, as people say in books, command me. Naturally we are all +much interested in you, and shall watch your career, I hope, with +pleasure. I am sorry the Foreign Office bores you so much. Do you really +have to spend your days gumming up envelopes? Not for that did you win +all those scholarships and things at Eton and Oxford, and study Goethe +and the minor German prophets so diligently here. You say it will go on +for a year. Well, if that is your fate and you cannot escape it, gum +away gayly, since gum you must. Later on when you are an ambassador and +everybody is talking to you at once, you will look back on the envelope +time as a blessed period when at least you were left alone. But I hope +you have a nice wet sponge to do it with, and are not so lost to what is +expedient as to be like a little girl I sat next to yesterday at a +coffee party, who had smudged most of the cream that ought to have gone +inside her outside her, and when I suggested a handkerchief said she +didn't hold with handkerchiefs and never had one. 'But what does one do, +then,' I asked, looking at her disgraceful little mouth, 'in a case like +this? You can't borrow somebody else's—it wouldn't be being select.' +'Oh,' she said airily, 'don't you know? You take your tongue.' And in a +twinkling the thing was done. But please do not you do that with the +envelopes. My father and step-mother send you many kind messages. Yours +sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, April 9th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—No, I do not in the least mind your writing to me. +Do, whenever you feel you want to talk to a friend. It is pleasant to be +told that my letters remind you of so many nice things. I expect your +year in Jena seems much more agreeable, now that you have had time to +forget the uncomfortable parts of it, than it really was. But I don't +think you would have been able to endure it if you had not been working +so hard. I am sorry you do not like your father. You say so straight +out, so I see no reason for round-aboutness. I expect he will be calmer +when you are married. Why do you not gratify him, and have a short +engagement? Yes, I do understand what you feel about the mercifulness of +being often left alone, though I have never been worried in quite the +same way as you seem to be; when I am driven it is to places like the +kitchen, and your complaint is that you are driven to what most people +would call enjoying yourself. Really I think my sort of driving is best. +There is so much satisfaction about work, about any work. But just to +amuse oneself, and to be, besides, in a perpetual hurry over it because +there is so much of it and the day can't be made to stretch, must be a +sorry business. I wonder why you do it. You say your father insists on +your going everywhere with the Cheritons, and the Cheritons will not +miss a thing; but, after all isn't it rather weak to let yourself be led +round by the nose if your nose doesn't like it? It is as though instead +of a dog wagging its tail the tail should wag the dog. And all Nature +surely would stand aghast before such an improper spectacle.</p> + +<p>The wind is icy, and the snow patches are actually still here, but in +the nearest garden I can get to I saw violets yesterday in flower, and +crocuses and scillas, and one yellow pansy staring up at the sun +astonished and reproachful because it had bits of frozen snow stuck to +its little cheeks. Dear me, it is a wonderful feeling, this resurrection +every year. Does one ever grow too old, I wonder, to thrill over it? I +know the blackbirds are whistling in the orchards if I could only get to +them, and my father says the larks have been out in the bare places for +these last four weeks. On days like this, when one's immortality is +racing along one's blood, how impossible it is to think of death as the +end of everything. And as for being grudging and disagreeable, the +thing's not to be done. Peevishness and an April morning? Why, even my +step-mother opened her window today and stood for a long time in the sun +watching how</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The first part of the month with us is generally bustling and busy, a +great clatter and hustling while the shrieking winter is got away out of +sight over the hills, a sweeping of the world clear for the +marsh-marigolds and daffodils, a diligent making of room for the divine +calms of May. I always loved this first wild frolic of cold winds and +catkins and hurriedly crimsoning pollards, of bleakness and promise, of +roughness and sweetness—a blow on one cheek and a kiss on the +other—before the spring has learned good manners, before it has left +off being anything but a boisterous, naughty, charming <i>Backfisch</i>; but +this year after having been ill so long it is more than love, it is +passion. Only people who have been buried in beds for weeks getting used +to listening for Death's step on the stairs, know what it is to go out +into the stinging freshness of the young year and meet the first scilla, +and hear a chaffinch calling out, and feel the sun burn red patches of +life on their silly, sick white faces.</p> + +<p>My parents send you kind remembrances. They were extremely interested to +hear, through Professor Martens, of your engagement to Miss Cheriton. +They both think it a most excellent thing.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXVII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, April 20th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You tell me I do not answer your letters, but +really I think I do quite often enough. I want to make the most of these +weeks of idle getting strong again, and it is a sad waste of time +writing. My step-mother has had such a dose of me sick and incapable, of +doctor's bills and physic and beef-tea and night-lights, that she is +prolonging the convalescent period quite beyond its just limits and will +have me do nothing lest I should do too much. So I spend strange, +glorious days, days strange and glorious to me, with nothing to do for +anybody but myself and a clear conscience to do it with. The single +sanction of my step-mother's approval has been enough to clear my +conscience, from which you will see how illogically consciences can be +cleared; for have I not always been sure she has no idea whatever of +what is really good? Yet just her approval, a thing I know to be faulty +and for ever in the wrong place, is sufficient to prop up my conscience +and make it feel secure. How then, while I am busy reading Jane Austen +and Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth—books foreordained from all time +for the delight of persons getting well—shall I find time to write to +you? And you must forgive me for a certain surprise that you should have +time to write so much to me. What have I done to deserve these long +letters? How many Foreign Office envelopes do you leave ungummed to +write them? <i>Es ist zu viel Ehre</i>. It is very good of you. No, I will +not make phrases like that, for I know you do not do it for any reason +whatever but because you happen to want to.</p> + +<p>You are going through one of those tiresome soul-sicknesses that +periodically overtake the too comfortable, and you must, apparently, +tell somebody about it. Well, it is a form of <i>Weltschmerz,</i> and only +afflicts the well-fed. Pray do not suppose that I am insinuating that +food is of undue interest to you; but it is true that if you did not +have several meals a day and all of them too nice, if there were doubts +about their regular recurrence, if, briefly, you were a washerwoman or a +plough-boy, you would not have things the matter with your soul. +Washerwomen and ploughboys do not have sick souls. Probably you will say +they have no souls to be sick; but they have, you know. I imagine their +souls thin and threadbare, stunted by cold and hunger, poor and pitiful, +but certainly there. And I don't know that it is not a nicer sort of +soul to have inside one's plodding body than an unwieldy, overgrown +thing, chiefly water and air and lightly changeable stuff, so +unsubstantial that it flops—forgive the word, but it does flop—on to +other souls in search of sympathy and support and comfort and all the +rest of the things washer-women waste no time looking for, because they +know they wouldn't find them.</p> + +<p>You are a poet, and I do not take a youthful poet seriously; but if you +were not I would laugh derisively at your comparing the entrance of my +letters into your room at the Foreign Office to the bringing in of a +bunch of cottage flowers still fresh with dew. I don't know that my +pride does not rather demand a comparison to a bunch of hot-house +flowers—a bouquet it would become then, wouldn't it?—or my romantic +sense to a bunch of field flowers, wild, graceful, easily wearied +things, that would not care at all for Foreign Offices. But I expect +cottage is really the word. My letters conjure up homely visions, and I +am sure the bunch you see is a tight posy of</p> + +<p> +Sweet-Williams, with their homely cottage smell.<br /> +</p> + +<p>It was charming of Matthew Arnold to let Sweet-Williams have such a nice +line, but I don't think they quite deserve it. They have a dear little +name and a dear little smell, but the things themselves might have been +manufactured in a Berlin furniture shop where upholstery in plush +prevails, instead of made in that sweetest corner of heaven from whence +all good flowers come.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXVIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, April 26th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You seem to be incurably doleful. You talk about +how nice it must be to have a sister, a mother, some woman very closely +related to whom you could talk. You astonish me; for have you not Miss +Cheriton? Still, on reflection I think I do see that what you feel you +want is more a solid bread-and-butter sort of relationship; no +sentiment, genial good advice, a helping hand if not a guiding +one—really a good thick slice of bread-and-butter as a set-off to a +diet of constant cake. I can read between your lines with sufficient +clearness; and as I always had a certain talent for stodginess I will +waste no words but offer myself as the bread-and-butter. Somehow I think +it might work out my soul's release from self-reproach and doubts if I +can help you, as far as one creature can help another, over some of the +more tiresome places of life. Exhortation, admonishment, encouragement, +you shall have them all, if you like, by letter. In these my days of +dignified leisure I have had room to think, and so have learned to look +at things differently from the way I used to. Life is so short that +there is hardly time for anything except to be, as St. Paul says—wasn't +it St. Paul?—kind to one another. You are, I think, a most weak person. +Anything more easily delighted in the first place or more quickly tired +in the second I never in my life saw. Does nothing satisfy you for more +than a day or two? And the enthusiasm of you at the beginnings of +things. And the depression, the despair of you once you have got used to +them. I know you are clever, full of brains, intellectually all that can +be desired, but what's the good of that when the rest of you is so weak? +You are of a diseased fastidiousness. There's not a person you have +praised to me whom you have not later on disliked. When you were here I +used to wonder as I listened, but I did believe you. Now I know that the +world cannot possibly contain so many offensive people, and that it is +always so with you—violent heat, freezing cold. I cannot see you drown +without holding out a hand. For you are young; you are, in the parts +outside your strange, ill-disciplined emotions, most full of promise; +and circumstances have knitted me into an unalterable friend. Perhaps I +can help you to a greater stead-fastness, a greater compactness of soul. +But do not tell me too much. Do not put me in an inextricably difficult +position. It would not of course be really inextricable, for I would +extricate myself by the simple process of relapsing into silence. I say +this because your letters have a growing tendency to pour out everything +you happen to be feeling. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you +must rightly choose your listener. Not every one should be allowed to +listen. Certain things cannot be shouted out from the housetops. You +forget that we hardly know each other, and that the well-mannered do not +thrust their deeper feelings on a person who shrinks from them. I hope +you understand that I am willing to hear you talk about most things, and +that you will need no further warning to keep off the few swampy places. +And just think of all the things you can write to me about, all the +masses of breathlessly interesting things in this breathlessly +interesting world, without talking about people at all. Look round you +this fine spring weather and tell me, for instance, what April is doing +up your way, and whether as you go to your work through the park you too +have not seen heavy Saturn laughing and leaping—how that sonnet has got +into my head—and do not every day thank God for having bothered to make +you at all.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXIX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, April 30th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You know the little strip of balcony outside our +sitting-room window, with its view over the trees of the Paradies valley +to the beautiful hills across the river? Well, this morning is so fine, +the sun is shining so warmly, that I had my coffee and roll there, and, +now, wrapped up in rugs, am still there writing to you. I can't tell you +how wonderful it is. The birds are drunk with joy. There are blackbirds, +and thrushes, and chaffinches, and yellow-hammers, all shouting at once; +and every now and then when the clamor has a gap in it I hear the +whistle of the great tit, the dear small bird who is the very first to +sing, bringing its pipe of hope to those early days in February when the +world is at its blackest. Have you noticed how different one's morning +coffee tastes out of doors from what it does in a room? And the roll and +butter—oh, the roll and butter! So must rolls and butter have tasted in +the youth of the world, when gods and mortals were gloriously mixed up +together, and you went for walks on exquisite things like parsley and +violets. If Thoreau—I know you don't like him, but that's only because +you have read and believed Stevenson about him—could have seen the +eager interest with which I ate my roll just now, he would, I am afraid, +have been disgusted; for he severely says that it is not what you eat +but the spirit in which you eat it,—you are not, that is, to like it +too much—that turns you into a glutton. It is, he says, neither the +quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors that makes +your eating horrid. A puritan, he says, may go to his brown bread crust +with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Thus did I +go, as grossly as the grossest alderman, this morning to my crust, and +rejoiced in the sensual savor of it and was very glad. How nice it is, +how pleasant, not to be with people you admire. Admiration, veneration, +the best form of love—they are all more comfortably indulged in from a +distance. There is too much whalebone about them at close quarters with +their object, too much whalebone and not nearly enough slippers. I am +glad Thoreau is dead. I love him far too much ever to want to see him; +and how thankful I am he cannot see me.</p> + +<p>It is my step-mother's birthday, and trusted friends have been streaming +up our three flights of stairs since quite early to bring her hyacinths +in pots and unhappy roses spiked on wires and make her congratulatory +speeches. I hear them talking through the open window, and what they +say, wafted out to me here in the sun, sounds like the pleasant droning +of bees when one is only half awake. First there is the distant electric +bell and the tempestuous whirl of Johanna down the passage. Then my +step-mother emerges from the kitchen and meets the arriving friend with +vociferous welcoming. Then the friend is led into the room here, talking +in gasps as we all do on getting to the top of this house, and flinging +cascades of good wishes for her <i>liebe Emilie</i> on to the <i>liebe +Emilie's</i> head. Then the hyacinths or the roses are presented:—'I have +brought thee a small thing,' says the friend, presenting; and my +step-mother, who has been aware of their presence the whole time, but, +with careful decency, has avoided looking at them, starts, protests, and +launches forth on to heaving billows of enthusiasm. She does not care +for flowers, either in pots or on wires or in any other condition, so +her gratitude is really most creditably done. Then they settle down in +the corners of the sofa and talk about the things they really want to +talk about—neighbors, food, servants, pastors, illnesses, Providence; +beginning, since I was ill, with a perfunctory inquiry from the visitor +as to the health of <i>die gute</i> Rose-Marie.</p> + +<p>'<i>Danke, danke</i>,' says my step-mother. You know in Germany whenever +anybody asks after anybody you have to begin your answer with <i>danke.</i> +Sometimes the results are odd; for instance: 'How is your poor husband +today?' 'Oh, <i>danke</i>, he is dead.'</p> + +<p>So my step-mother, too, says <i>danke</i>, and then I hear a murmur of +further information, and catch the word <i>zart</i>. Then they talk, still in +murmurs not supposed to be able to get through the open window and into +my ears, about the quantity of beef-tea I have consumed, the length of +the chemist's bill, the unfortunate circumstance that I am so +overgrown—'Weedy,' says my step-mother.</p> + +<p>'Would you call her weedy?' says the friend, with a show of polite +hesitation.</p> + +<p>'Weedy,' repeats my step-mother emphatically; and the friend remarks +quite seriously that when a person is so very long there is always some +part of her bound to be in a draught and catching cold. 'It is such a +pity,' concludes the friend, 'that she did not marry.' (Notice the +tense. Half a dozen birthdays back it used to be 'does not.')</p> + +<p>'Gentlemen,' says my step-mother, 'do not care for her.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Armes Mädchen</i>' murmurs the friend.</p> + +<p>'<i>Herr Gott, ja</i>,' says my step-mother, 'but what is to be done? I have +invited gentlemen in past days. I have invited them to coffees, to beer +evenings, to music on Sunday afternoons, to the reading aloud of +Schiller's dramas, each with his part and Rose-Marie with the heroine's; +and though they came they also went away again. Nothing was changed, +except the size of my beer bill. No, no, gentlemen do not care for her. +In society she does not please.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Armes Mädchen</i>' says the friend again; and the <i>armes Mädchen</i> out in +the sun laughs profanely into her furs.</p> + +<p>The fact is it is quite extraordinary the effect my illness has had on +me. I thought it was bad, and I see it was good. Beyond words ghastly at +the time, terrible, hopeless, the aches of my body as nothing compared +with the amazing anguish of my soul, the world turned into one vast pit +of pain, impossible to think of the future, impossible to think of the +past, impossible to bear the present—after all that behold me awake +again, and so wide awake, with eyes grown so quick to see the wonder and +importance of the little things of life, the beauty of them, the joy of +them, that I can laugh aloud with glee at the delicious notion of +calling me an <i>armes Mädchen</i>. Three months ago with what miserable +groanings, what infinite self-pityings, I would have agreed. Now, clear +of vision, I see how many precious gifts I have—life, and freedom from +pain, and time to be used and enjoyed—gifts no one can take from me +except God. Do you know any George Herbert? He was one of the many +English poets my mother's love of poetry made me read. Do you remember</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I once more smell the dew, the rain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And relish versing.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O, my only Light!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">It cannot be</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That I am he</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">On whom thy tempests fell all night?</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Well, that is how I feel: full of wonder, and an unspeakable relief. It +is so strange how bad things—things we call bad—bring forth good +things, from the manure that brings forth roses lovely in proportion to +its manuriness to the worst experiences that can overtake the soul. And +as far as I have been able to see (which is not very far, for I know I +am not a clever woman) it is also true that good things bring forth bad +ones. I cannot tell you how much life surprises me. I never get used to +it. I never tire of pondering, and watching, and wondering. The way in +which eternal truths lurk along one's path, lie among the potatoes in +cellars (did you ever observe the conduct of potatoes in cellars? their +desperate determination to reach up to the light? their absolute +concentration on that one distant glimmer?), peep out at one from every +apparently dull corner, sit among the stones, hang upon the bushes, come +into one's room in the morning with the hot water, come out at night in +heaven with the stars, never leave us, touch us, press upon us, if we +choose to open our eyes and look, and our ears and listen—how +extraordinary it is. Can one be bored in a world so wonderful? And then +the keen interest there is to be got out of people, the keen joy to be +got out of common affections, the delight of having a fresh day every +morning before you, a fresh, long day, bare and empty, to be filled as +you pass along it with nothing but clean and noble hours. You must +forgive this exuberance. The sun has got into my veins and has turned +everything golden. Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, May 6th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—How can I help it if things look golden to me? You +almost reproach me for it. You seem to think it selfish, and talk of the +beauty of sympathy with persons less fortunately constituted. That's a +gray sort of beauty; the beauty of mists, and rains, and tears. I wish +you could have been in the meadows across the river this morning and +seen the dandelions. There was not much grayness about them. From the +bridge to the tennis-courts—you know that is a long way, at least +twenty minutes' walk—they are one sheet of gold. If you had been there +before breakfast, with your feet on that divine carpet, and your head in +the nickering slight shadows of the first willow leaves, and your eyes +on the shining masses of slow white clouds, and your ears filled with +the fresh sound of the river, and your nose filled with the smell of +young wet things, you wouldn't have wanted to think much about such gray +negations as sympathizing with the gloomy. Bother the gloomy. They are +an ungrateful set. If they can they will turn the whole world sour, and +sap up all the happiness of the children of light without giving out any +shining in return. I am all for sun and heat and color and scent—for +all things radiant and positive. If, crushing down my own nature, I set +out deliberately to console those you call the less fortunately +constituted, do you know what would happen? They would wring me quite +dry of cheerfulness, and not be one whit more cheerful for all the +wringing themselves. They can't. They were not made that way. People are +born in one of three classes: children of light, children of twilight, +children of night. And how can they help into which class they are born? +But I do think the twilight children can by diligence, by, if you like, +prayer and fasting, come out of the dusk into a greater brightness. Only +they must come out by themselves. There must be no pulling. I don't at +all agree with your notion of the efficacy of being pulled. Don't you +then know—of course you do, but you have not yet realized—that you are +to seek <i>first</i> the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these +things shall be added unto you? And don't you know—oh, have you +forgotten?—that the Kingdom of God is within you? So what is the use of +looking to anything outside of you and separated from you for help? +There is no help, except what you dig out of your own self; and if I +could make you see that I would have shown you all the secrets of life.</p> + +<p>How wisely I talk. It is the wisdom of the ever-recurring grass, the +good green grass, the grass starred with living beauty, that has got +into me; the wisdom of a May morning filled with present joy, of the joy +of the moment, without any weakening waste of looking beyond. So don't +mock. I can't help it.</p> + +<p>Do you, then, want to be pitied? I will pity you if you like, in so many +carefully chosen words; but they will not be words from the heart but +only, as the charming little child in the flat below us, the child with +the flaunting yellow hair and audacious eyes, said of some speech that +didn't ring true to her quick ears, 'from the tip of the nose.' I cannot +really pity you, you know. You are too healthy, too young, too fortunate +for that. You ought to be quite jubilant with cheerfullest gratitude; +and, since you are not, you very perfectly illustrate the truth of <i>le +trop</i> being <i>l'ennemi du bien</i>, or, if you prefer your clumsier mother +tongue, of the half being better than the whole. How is it that I, +bereft of everything you think worth having, am so offensively cheerful? +Your friends would call it a sordid existence, if they considered it +with anything more lengthy than just a sniff. No excitements, no +clothes, acquaintances so shabby that they seem almost moth-eaten, the +days filled with the same dull round, a home in a little town where we +all get into one groove and having got into it stay in it, to which only +faint echoes come of what is going on in the world outside, a place +where one is amused and entertained by second-rate things, second-rate +concerts, second-rate plays, and feels oneself grow cultured by +attendance at second-rate debating-society meetings. Would you not think +I must starve in such a place? But I don't. My soul doesn't dream of +starving; in fact I am quite anxious about it, it has lately grown so +fat. There is so little outside it—for the concerts, plays, debates, +social gatherings, are dust and ashes near which I do not go—that it +eagerly turns to what is inside it, and finds itself full of magic +forces of heat and light, forces hot and burning enough to set every +common bush afire with God. That is Elizabeth Barrett Browning; I mean +about the common bushes. A slightly mutilated Elizabeth Barrett +Browning, but still a quotation; and if you do not happen to know it I +won't have you go about thinking it pure Schmidt. Ought I if I quote to +warn you of the fact by the pointing fingers of inverted commas? I don't +care to, somehow. They make such a show of importance. I prefer to +suppose you cultured. Oh, I can see you shiver at that impertinence, for +I know down in your heart, though you always take pains to explain how +ignorant you are, you consider yourself an extremely cultured young man. +And so you are; cultured, I should say, out of all reason; so much +cultured that there's hardly anything left that you are able to like. +Indeed, it is surprising that you should care to write to a rough, +unscraped sort of person like myself. Do not my crudities set your teeth +on edge as acutely as the juice of a very green apple? You who love half +tones, subtleties, suggestions, who, lifting the merest fringe of +things, approach them nearer only by infinite implications, what have +you to do with the downrightness of an east wind or a green apple? Why, +I wonder that just the recollection of my red hands, knobbly and spread +with work, does not make you wince into aloofness. And my clothes? What +about my clothes? Do you not like exquisite women? Perfectly got-up +women? Fresh and dainty, constantly renewed women? It is two years since +I had a new hat; and as for the dress that sees me through my days I +really cannot count the time since it started in my company a Sunday and +a fête-day garment. If you were once, only once, to see me in the middle +of your friends over there, you would be cured for ever of wanting to +write to me. I belong to your Jena days; days of hard living, and +working, and thinking; days when, by dint of being forced to do without +certain bodily comforts, the accommodating spirit made up for it by its +own increased comfort and warmth. Probably your spirit will never again +attain to quite so bright a shining as it did that year. How can it, +unless it is amazingly strong—and I know it well not to be that—shine +through the suffocating masses of upholstery your present life piles +about it? Poor spirit. At least see to it that its flicker doesn't quite +go out. To urge you to strip your life of all this embroidery and let it +get the draught of air it needs would be, I know, mere waste of ink.</p> + +<p>My people send you every good wish.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, May 14th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Of course I am full of contradictions. Did you +expect me to be full of anything else? And I have no doubt whatever that +in every letter I say exactly the opposite from what I said in the last +one. But you must not mind this and make it an occasion for reproof. I +do not pretend to think quite the same even two days running; if I did I +would be stagnant, and the very essence of life is to be fluid, to pass +perpetually on. So please do not hold me responsible for convictions +that I have changed by the time they get to you, and above all things +don't bring them up against me and ask me to prove them. I don't want to +prove them. I don't want to prove anything. My attitude toward life is +one of open-mouthed wonder and delight, and the open-mouthed cannot +talk. You write, too, plaintively, that some of the things I say hurt +you. I am sorry. Sorry, I mean, that you should be so soft. Can you not, +then, bear anything? But I will smooth my tongue if you prefer it +smooth, and send you envelopes filled with only sugar; talk to you about +the parks, the London season, the Foreign Office—all things of which I +know nothing—and, patting you at short intervals on the back, tell you +you are admirable. You say there is a bitter flavor about some of my +remarks. I have not felt bitter. Perhaps a little shrewish; a little +like, not a mild exhorting elder sister, but an irritated aunt. You see +I am interested enough in you to be fidgety when I hear you groan. What, +I ask myself uneasily, can be the matter with this apparently healthy, +well-cared-for young man? And then, forced to the conclusion by +unmistakable symptoms that there is nothing the matter except a surfeit +of good things, I have perhaps pounced upon you with something of the +zeal of an aunt moved to anger, and given you a spiritual slapping. You +sighed for a sister—you are always sighing for something—and asked me +to be one; well, I have apparently gone beyond the sister in decision +and authority, and developed something of the acerbity of an aunt.</p> + +<p>So you are down at Clinches. How beautiful it must be there this month. +I think of it as a harmony in gray and amethyst, remembering your +description of it the first time you went there; a harmony in a minor +key, that captured you wholly by its tender subtleties. When I think of +you inheriting such a place later on through your wife I do from my +heart feel that your engagement is an excellent thing. She must indeed +be happy in the knowledge that she can give you so much that is +absolutely worth having. It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the +very most beautiful things in life. I quarrel with my poverty only +because I can give so little, so seldom, and then never more than +ridiculous small trumperies. To make up for them I try to give as much +of myself as possible, gifts of sympathy, helpfulness, kindness. Don't +laugh, but I am practicing on my step-mother. It is easy to pour out +love on Papa; so easy, so effortless, that I do not feel as if it could +be worth much; but I have made up my mind, not without something of a +grim determination that seems to have little enough to do with love, to +give my step-mother as much of me, my affections, my services, as she +can do with. Perhaps she won't be able to do with much. Anyhow all she +wants she shall have. You know I have often wished I had been a man, +able to pull on my boots and go out into the wide world without let or +hindrance; but for one thing I am glad to be a woman, and that one thing +is that the woman gives. It is so far less wonderful to take. The man is +always taking, the woman always giving; and giving so wonderfully, in +the face sometimes of dreadful disaster, of shipwreck, of death—which +explains perhaps her longer persistence in clinging to the skirts of a +worn-out passion; for is not the tenderer feeling on the side of the one +who gave and blessed? Always, always on that side? Mixing into what was +sensual some of the dear divineness of the mother-love? I think I could +never grow wholly indifferent to a person to whom I had given much. He +or she would not, could not, be the same to me as other people. Time +would pass, and the growing number of the days blunt the first sharp +edge of feeling; but the memory of what I had given would bind us +together in a friendship for ever unlike any other.</p> + +<p>I have not thanked you for the book you sent me. It was very kind indeed +of you to wish me to share the pleasure you have had in reading it. But +see how unfortunately contrary I am: I don't care about it. And just the +passages you marked are the ones I care about least. I do not hold with +markings in books. Whenever I have come across mine after a lapse of +years I have marvelled at the distance travelled since I marked, and +shut up the book and murmured, 'Little fool.' I can't imagine why you +thought I should like this book. It has given me rather a surprised +shock that you should know me so little, and that I should know you so +little as to think you knew me better. Really all the explanations and +pointings in the world will not show a person the exact position of his +neighbor's soul. It is astonishing enough that the book was printed, but +how infinitely more astonishing that people like you should admire it. +What is the matter with me that I cannot admire it? Why am I missing +things that ought to give me pleasure? You do not, then, see that it is +dull? I do. I see it and feel it in every bone, and it makes them ache. +It is dull and bad because it is so dreary, so hopelessly dreary. Life +is not like that. Life is only like that to cowards who are temporarily +indisposed. I do not care to look at it through a sick creature's +jaundiced eyes and shudder with him at what he sees. If he cannot see +better why not keep quiet, and let us braver folk march along with our +heads in the air, held so high that we cannot bother to look at every +slimy creepiness that crawls across our path? And did you not notice how +he keeps on telling his friends in his letters not to mind when he is +dead? Unnecessary advice, one would suppose; I can more easily imagine +the friends gasping with an infinite relief. Persons who are +everlastingly claiming pity, sympathy, condolences, are very wearing. +Surely all talk about one's death is selfish and bad? That is why, +though there is so much that is lovely in them, the faint breath of +corruption hanging about Christina Rossetti's poetry makes me turn my +head the other way. What a constant cry it is that she wants to die, +that she hopes to die, that she's going to die, shall die, can die, must +die, and that nobody is to weep for her but that there are to be +elaborate and moving arrangements of lilies and roses and +winding-sheets. And at least in one place she gives directions as to the +proper use of green grass and wet dewdrops upon her grave—implying that +dewdrops are sometimes dry. I think the only decent attitude toward +one's death is to be silent. Talk about it puts other people in such an +awkward position. What is one to say to persons who sigh and tell us +that they will no doubt soon be in heaven? One's instinct is politely to +murmur, 'Oh no,' and then they are angry. 'Surely not,' also has its +pitfalls. Cheery words, of the order in speech that a slap on the +shoulder is in the sphere of physical expression, only seem to deepen +the determined gloom. And if it is some one you love who thinks he will +soon be dead and tells you so, the cruelty is very great. When death +really comes, is not what the ordinary decent dier wants quiet, that he +may leave himself utterly in the hands of God? There should be no +massing of temporarily broken-hearted onlookers about his bed, no +leave-takings and eager gatherings-up of last words, no revellings of +relatives in the voluptuousness of woe, no futile exhortations, using up +the last poor breaths, not to weep to persons who would consider it +highly improper to leave off doing it, and no administration of tardy +blessings. Any blessings the dier has to invoke should have been invoked +and done with long ago. In this last hour, at least, can one not be left +alone? Do you remember Pater's strange feeling about death? Perhaps you +do not, for you told me once you did not care about him. Well, it runs +through his books, through all their serenity and sunlight, through +exquisite descriptions of summer, of beautiful places, of heat and life +and youth and all things lovely, like a musty black riband, very poor, +very mean, very rotten, that yet must bind these gracious flowers of +light at last together, bruising them into one piteous mass of +corruption. It is all very morbid: the fair outward surface of daily +life, the gay, flower-starred crust of earth, and just underneath +horrible tainted things, things forlorn and pitiful, things which we who +still walk on the wholesome grass must soon join, changing our life in +the roomy sunshine into something infinitely dependent and helpless, +something that can only dimly live if those strong friends of ours in +the bright world will spare us a thought, a remembrance, a few minutes +from their plenty for sitting beside us, room in their hearts for yet a +little love and sorrow. 'Dead cheek by dead cheek, and the rain soaking +down upon one from above....' Does not that sound hopeless? After +reading these things, sweet with the tainted sweetness of decay, of, +ruin, of the past, the gone, it is like having fresh spring water dashed +over one on a languid afternoon to remember Walt Whitman's brave +attitude toward 'delicate death,' 'the sacred knowledge of death,' +'lovely, soothing death,' 'cool, enfolding death,' 'strong deliveress,' +'vast and well-veiled death,' 'the body gratefully nestling close to +death,' 'sane and sacred death.' That is the spirit that makes one brave +and fearless, that makes one live beautifully and well, that sends one +marching straight ahead with limbs that do not tremble and head held +high. Is it not natural to love such writers best? Writers who fill one +with glad courage and make one proud of the path one has chosen to walk +in?</p> + +<p>And yet you do not like Walt Whitman. I remember quite well my chill of +disappointment when you told me so. At first, hearing it, I thought I +must be wrong to like him, but thank heaven I soon got my balance again, +and presently was solaced by the reflection that it was at least as +likely you were wrong not to. You told me it was not poetry. That upset +me for a few days, and then I found I didn't care. I couldn't argue with +you on the spot and prove anything, because the only <i>esprit</i> I have is +that tiresome <i>esprit d'escalier</i>, so brilliant when it is too late, so +constant in its habit of leaving its possessor in the dreadful +condition—or is it a place?—called the lurch; but, poetry or not, I +knew I must always love him. You, I suppose, have cultivated your taste +in regard to things of secondary importance to such a pitch of +sensitiveness that unless the outer shell is flawless you cannot, for +sheer intellectual discomfort, look at the wonders that often lie +within. I, who have not been educated, am so filled with elementary joy +when some one shows me the light in this world of many shadows that I do +not stop to consider what were the words he used while my eyes followed +his pointing finger. You see, I try to console myself for having an +unpruned intelligence. I know I am unpruned, and that at the most you +pruned people, all trim and trained from the first, do but bear with me +indulgently. But I must think with the apparatus I possess, and I think +at this moment that perhaps what you really most want is a prolonged +dose of Walt Whitman, a close study of him for several hours every day, +shut up with no other book, quite alone with him in an empty country +place. Listen to this—you shall listen:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">O we can wait no longer,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">We too take ship, O soul;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Amid the wafting winds (thou pressing me to thee, I thee</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">to me, O soul).</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Carolling free, singing our song of God,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">O my brave soul!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">O farther, farther sail!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">O farther, farther sail I</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Well, how do you feel now? Can any one, can you, can even you read that +without such a tingling in all your limbs, such a fresh rush of life and +energy through your whole body that you simply must jump up and, shaking +off the dreary nonsense that has been fooling you, turn your back on +diseased self-questionings and run straight out to work at your +salvation in the sun?</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, May 20th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I am sorry you think me unsympathetic. Hard, I +think, was the word; but unsympathetic sounds prettier. Is it +unsympathetic not to like fruitless, profitless, barren things? Not to +like fogs and blights and other deadening, decaying things? From my +heart I pity all the people who are so made that they cannot get on with +their living for fear of their dying; but I do not admire them. Is that +being unsympathetic? Apparently you think so. How odd. There is a little +man here who hardly ever can talk to anybody without beginning about his +death. He is perfectly healthy, and I suppose forty or fifty, so that +there is every reasonable hope of his going on being a little man for +years and years more; but he will have it that as he has never married +or, as he puts it, done anything else useful, he might just as well be +dead, and then at the word Dead his eyes get just the look of absolute +scaredness in them that a hare's eyes do when a dog is after it. 'If +only one knew what came next,' he said last time he was here, looking at +me with those foolish frightened hare's eyes.</p> + +<p>'Nice things I should think,' said I, trying to be encouraging.</p> + +<p>'But to those who have deserved punishment?'</p> + +<p>'If they have deserved it they will probably get it,' said I cheerfully.</p> + +<p>He shuddered.</p> + +<p>'You don't look very wicked,' I went on amiably. He leads a life of +sheerest bread-and-milk, so simple, so innocent, so full of little +hearth-rug virtues.</p> + +<p>'But I am,' he declared angrily.</p> + +<p>'I shouldn't think half so bad as a great many people,' said I, bent, +being the hostess, on a perfect urbanity.</p> + +<p>'Worse,' said he, more angrily.</p> + +<p>'Oh, come now,' said I, very politely as I thought.</p> + +<p>Then he really got into a rage, and asked me what I could possibly know +about it, and I said I didn't know anything; and still he stormed and +grew more and more like a terrified hare, frightening himself by his own +words; and at last, dropping his voice, he confessed that he had one +particularly deadly fear, a fear that haunted him and gave him no rest, +that the wicked would not burn eternally but would freeze.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' said I shrinking; for it was a bitter day, and the northeast wind +was thundering among the hills.</p> + +<p>'Great cold,' he said, fixing me with his hare's eyes, 'seems to me +incomparably more terrible than great heat.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, incomparably,' I agreed, edging nearer to the stove. 'Only listen +to that wind.'</p> + +<p>'So will it howl about us through eternity,' said he.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' I shivered.</p> + +<p>'Piercing one's unprotected—everything about us will be unprotected +then—one's unprotected marrow, and turning it to ice within us.'</p> + +<p>'But we won't have any marrows,' said I.</p> + +<p>'No marrows? Fräulein Rose-Marie, we shall have everything that will +hurt.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Oh weh</i>' cried I, stopping up my ears.</p> + +<p>'The thought frightens you?' said he.</p> + +<p>'Terrifies me,' said I.</p> + +<p>'How much more fearful, then, will be the reality.'</p> + +<p>'Well, I'd like to—I'd like to give you some good advice,' said I, +hesitating.</p> + +<p>'Certainly; if one of your sex may with any efficacy advise one of +ours.'</p> + +<p>'Oh—efficacy,' murmured I with proper deprecation. 'But I'd like to +suggest—I daren't advise, I'll just suggest—'</p> + +<p>'Fear nothing. I am all ears and willingness to be guided,' said he, +smiling with an indescribable graciousness.</p> + +<p>'Well—don't go there.'</p> + +<p>'Not go there?'</p> + +<p>'And while you are here—still here, and alive, and in nice warm woolly +clothes, do you know what you want?'</p> + +<p>'What I want?'</p> + +<p>'Very badly do you want a wife. Why not go and get one?'</p> + +<p>His eyes at that grew more hare-like than at the thought of eternal ice. +He seized his hat and scrambled to the door. He went through it hissing +scorching things about <i>moderne Mädchen</i>, and from the safety of the +passage I heard him call me <i>unverschämt</i>.</p> + +<p>He hasn't been here since. I would like to go and shake him; shake him +till his brains settle into their proper place, and say while I shake, +'Oh, little man, little man, come out of the fog! Why do you choose to +die a thousand deaths rather than only one?'</p> + +<p>Is that being unsympathetic? I think it is being quite kind.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>What I really meant to write to you about today was to tell you that I +read your learned and technical and I am sure admirable denouncements of +Walt Whitman with a respectful attention due to so much earnestness; and +when I had done, and wondered awhile pleasantly at the amount of time +for letter-writing the Foreign Office allows its young men, I stretched +myself, and got my hat, and went down to the river; and I sat at the +water's edge in the middle of a great many buttercups; and there was a +little wind; and the little wind knocked the heads of the buttercups +together; and it seemed to amuse them, or else something else did, for I +do assure you I thought I heard them laugh.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, May 27th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You asked me about your successor in our house, +and inquire why I have never mentioned him. Why should I mention him? +Must I mention everything? I suppose I forgot him. His name is Collins, +and some days he wears a pink shirt, and other days a blue shirt, and in +his right cuff there is a pink silk handkerchief on the pink days, and a +blue silk handkerchief on the blue days; and he has stuck up the +pictures he likes to have about him on the walls of his room, and where +your Luini used to be there is a young lady in a voluminous hat and +short skirts, and where your Bellini Madonna sat and looked at you with +austere, beautiful eyes there is the winner, complete with jockey, of +last year's Derby.</p> + +<p>'I made a pot of money over that,' said Mr. Collins to me the day he +pinned it up and came to ask me for the pin.</p> + +<p>'Did you?' said I.</p> + +<p>But I think I am tired just now of Luinis and Bellinis and of the sort +of spirit in a young man that clothes the walls of his room with them, +each in some elaborately simple frame, and am not at all sure that the +frank fleshliness of a Collins does not please me best. You see, one +longs so much sometimes to get down to the soil, down to plain +instincts, to rude nature, to, if you like, elemental savagery.</p> + +<p>But I'll go on with Mr. Collins; you shall have a dose of him while I am +about it. He has bought a canoe, and has won the cup for swimming, +wresting it from the reluctant hands of the discomfited Jena young men. +He paddles up to the weir, gets out, picks up his canoe, carries it +round to the other side, gets in, and vanishes in the windings of the +water and the folds of the hills, leaving the girls in the +tennis-courts—you remember the courts are opposite the weir—uncertain +whether to titter or to blush, for he wears I suppose the fewest clothes +that it is possible to wear and still be called dressed, and no +stockings at all.</p> + +<p>'<i>Nein, dieser Engländer</i>!' gasp the girls, turning down decent eyes.</p> + +<p>'<i>Höllish practisch</i>,' declare the young men, got up in as near an +imitation of the flannels you used to wear that they can reach, even +their hats bound about with a ribbon startlingly like your Oxford half +blue; and before the summer is over I dare say they will all be playing +tennis in the Collins canoe costume, stockingless, sleeveless, supposing +it to be the latest <i>cri</i> in get-ups for each and every form of sport.</p> + +<p>Professor Martens didn't care about teaching Mr. Collins, and insisted +on handing him over to Papa. Papa doesn't care about teaching him, +either, and says he is a <i>dummer Bengel</i> who pronounces Goethe as though +it rhymed with dirty, and who the first time our great poet was +mentioned vacantly asked, with every indication of a wandering mind, if +he wasn't the joker who wrote the play for Irving with all the devils in +it. Papa was so angry that be began a letter to Collins <i>père</i> telling +him to remove his son to a city where there are fewer muses; but Collins +<i>père</i> is a person who makes nails in Manchester with immense skill and +application and is terrifyingly rich, and my step-mother's attitude +toward the terrifyingly rich is one of large forgiveness; so she tore up +Papa's letter just where it had got to the words <i>erbärmlicher Esel</i>, +said he was a very decent boy, that he should stay as long as he wanted +to, but that, since he seemed to be troublesome about learning, Papa +must write and demand a higher scale of payment. Papa wouldn't; my +step-mother did; and behold Joey—his Christian name is Joey—more +lucrative to us by, I believe, just double than any one we have had yet.</p> + +<p>'I say,' said Joey to me this morning, 'come over to England some day, +and I'll romp you down to Epsom.'</p> + +<p>'Divine,' said I, turning up my eyes.</p> + +<p>'We'd have a rippin' time.'</p> + +<p>'Rather.'</p> + +<p>'I'd romp you down in the old man's motor.'</p> + +<p>'Not really?'</p> + +<p>'We'd be there before you could flutter an eyelash.'</p> + +<p>'Are you serious?'</p> + +<p>'Ain't I, though. It's a thirty-horse—'</p> + +<p>'Can't you get them in London?'</p> + +<p>'Get 'em in London? Get what in London?'</p> + +<p>'Must one go every time all the way to Epsom?'</p> + +<p>Joey ceased from speech and began to stare.</p> + +<p>'Are we not talking about salts?' I inquired hastily, feeling that one +of us was off the track.</p> + +<p>'Salts?' echoed Joey, his mouth hanging open.</p> + +<p>'You mentioned Epsom, surely?'</p> + +<p>'Salts?'</p> + +<p>'You did say Epsom, didn't you?'</p> + +<p>'Salts?'</p> + +<p>'Salts,' said I, becoming very distinct in the presence of what looked +like deliberate wilfulness.</p> + +<p>'What's it got to do with salts?' asked Joey, his underlip of a +measureless vacancy.</p> + +<p>'Hasn't it got everything?'</p> + +<p>'Look here, what are you drivin' at? Is it goin' to be a game?'</p> + +<p>'Certainly not. It's Sunday. Did you ever hear of Epsom salts?'</p> + +<p>'Oh—ah—I see—Eno, and all that. Castor oil. Rhubarb and magnesia. +Well, I'll forgive you as you're only German. Pretty weird, what bits of +information you get hold of. Never the right bits, somehow. I'll tell +you what, Miss Schmidt—'</p> + +<p>'Oh, do.'</p> + +<p>'Do what?'</p> + +<p>'Tell me what.'</p> + +<p>'Well, ain't I goin' to? You all seem to know everything in this house +that's not worth knowin', and not a blessed thing that is.'</p> + +<p>'Do you include Goethe?'</p> + +<p>'Confound Gerty,' said Joey.</p> + +<p>Such are my conversations with Joey. Is there anything more you want to +know?</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, July 3d.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I am sorry not to have been able to answer your +letters for so many weeks, and sorry that you should have been, as you +say, uneasy, but my telegram in reply to yours will have explained what +has been happening to us. My step-mother died a fortnight ago. Almost +immediately after I wrote last to you she began to be very ill. My +feelings toward her have undergone a complete upheaval. I cannot speak +of her. She is revenging herself, as only the dead in their utter +unresentfulness can revenge themselves, for every hard and scoffing +thought I had of her in life. I think I told you once about her annuity. +Now it is gone Papa and I must see to it that we live on my mother's +money alone. It is a hundred pounds a year, so the living will have to +be prudent; not so prudent, I hope, but that we shall have everything to +enjoy that is worth enjoying, but quite prudent enough to force us to +take thought. So we are leaving the flat, grown far too expensive for +us, as soon as we can find some other home. We have almost decided on +one already. Mr. Collins went to England when the illness grew evidently +hopeless, and we shall not take him back again, for my father does not +care, at least at present, to have strangers with us, and I myself do +not feel as though I could cook for and look after a young man in the +way my step-mother did. Not having one will make us poor, but I think we +shall be able to manage quite well, for we do not want much.</p> + +<p>Thank you for your kind letters since the telegram. The ones before +that, coming into this serious house filled with the nearness of Death, +and of Death in his sternest mood, his hands cruel with scourges, seemed +to me so inexpressibly—well, I will not say it; it is not fair to blame +you, who could not know in whose shadow we were sitting, for being +preoccupied with the trivialities of living. But letters sent to friends +a long way off do sometimes fall into their midst with a rather ghastly +clang of discord. It is what yours did. I read them sometimes in the +night, watching by my step-mother in the half-dark room during the +moments when she had a little peace and was allowed to slip away from +torture into sleep. By the side of that racked figure and all it meant +and the tremendous sermons it was preaching me, wordless, voiceless +sermons, more eloquent than any I shall hear again, how strange, how +far-away your echoes from life and the world seemed! Distant tinklings +of artificialness; not quite genuine writhings beneath not quite genuine +burdens; idle questionings and self-criticisms; plaints, doubts, and +complicated half-veiled reproaches of myself that I should be able to be +pleased with a world so worm-eaten that I should still be able to chant +my song of life in a major key in a world so manifestly minor and +chromatic. These things fell oddly across the gravity of that room. +Shadows in a place where everything was clear, cobwebs of unreality +where everything was real. They made me sigh, and they made me smile, +they were so very black and yet so very little. I used to wonder what +that usually excellent housemaid Experience is about, that she has not +yet been after you with her broom. You know her specialty is the pulling +up of blinds and the letting in of the morning sun. But it is unfair to +judge you. Your letters since you knew have been kindness itself. Thank +you for them.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>It seemed so strange for any one to die in June; so strange to be +lifeless in the midst of the wanton profusion of life, to grow cold in +that quivering radiance of heat. The people below us have got boxes of +calla-lilies on their balcony this year. Their hot, heavy scent used to +come in at the open window in the afternoons when the sun was on them, +the honey-sweet smell of life, intense, penetrating, filling every +corner of the room with splendid, pagan summer. And on the bed tossed my +step-mother, muttering ceaselessly to herself of Christ.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jena, July 15th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Our new address is Galgenberg, Jena,—rather grim, +but what's in a name? The thing itself is perfect. It is a tiny house, +white, with green shutters, on the south slope of the hill among +apple-trees. The garden is so steep that you can't sit down in it except +on the north side of the house, where you can because the house is there +to stop you from sliding farther. It is a strip of rough grass out of +which I shall make haycocks, with three apple-trees in it. There is also +a red currant bush, out of which I shall make jelly. At the bottom, +below the fence—rotten in places, but I'm going to mend that—begins a +real apple orchard, and through its leaves we can look down on the roof +of another house, white like ours, but a little bigger, and with blue +shutters instead of green. People take it for the summer, and once an +Englishman came and made a beanfield there—but I think I told you about +the beanfield. Behind us, right away up the slope, are pine trees that +brush restlessly backward and forward all day long across the clouds, +trying to sweep bits of clear blue in the sky, and at night spread +themselves out stiff and motionless against the stars. I saw them last +night from my window. We moved in yesterday. The moving in was not very +easy, because of what Papa calls the precipitous nature of the district. +He sat with his back propped against the wall of the house on the only +side on which, as I have explained, you can sit, and worked with a +pencil at his book about Goethe in Jena with perfect placidity while +Johanna and I and the man who urged the furniture cart up the hill kept +on stepping over his legs as we went in and out furnishing the house. +There was not much to furnish, which was lucky, there not being much to +furnish with. We have got rid of all superfluities, including the +canary, which I presented, its cage beautifully tied up with the blue +ribbons I wore at my first party, to the little girl with the +flame-colored hair on the second floor. As much of the other things as +any one could be induced to buy we sold, and we burnt what nobody would +buy or endure having given them. And so, pared down, we fit in here +quite nicely, and after a day or two conceded to the suavities of life, +such as the tacking up in appropriate places of muslin curtains and the +tying of them with bows, I intend to buy a spade and a watering-pot and +see what I can do with the garden.</p> + +<p>I wish it were not quite so steep. If I'm not on the upper side of one +of the apple-trees with my back firmly pressed against its trunk I don't +yet see how I am to garden. It must be disturbing, and a great waste of +time, to have to hold on to something with one hand while you garden +with the other. And suppose the thing gives way, and you roll down on to +the broken fence? And if that, too, gave way, there would be nothing but +a few probably inadequate apple trunks between me and the roof of the +house with the blue shutters. I should think it extremely likely that +until I've got the mountain-side equivalent for what are known as one's +sea-legs I shall very often be on that roof. I hope it is strong and +new. Perhaps there are kind people inside who will not mind. Soon +they'll get so much used to it that when they hear the preliminary rush +among their apple-trees and the cracking of the branches followed by the +thud over their heads, they won't even look up from their books, but +just murmur to each other, 'There's Fräulein Schmidt on the roof again,' +and go on with their studies.</p> + +<p>Now I'm talking nonsense, and the sort of nonsense you like least; but +I'm in a silly mood today, and you must take me as you find me. At any +time when I have grown too unendurable you can stop my writing to you +simply by not writing to me. Then I shall know you have at last had +enough of me, of my moods, of my odious fits of bombastic eloquence, of +my still more odious facetiousness, of my scoldings of you and of my +complacency about myself. It is true you actually seem to like my +scoldings. That is very abject of you. What you apparently resent are +the letters with sturdy sentiments in them and a robust relish of life. +It almost seems as though you didn't want me to be happy. That is very +odd of you. And I sometimes wonder if it is possible for two persons to +continue friends who have a different taste in what, for want of a nicer +word, I must call jokes. My taste in them is so elementary that an +apple-pie bed makes me laugh tears, and when I go to the play I love to +see chairs pulled away just as people are going to sit down. You, of +course, shudder at these things. They fill you with so great a +dreariness that it amounts to pain. I am at least sensible enough to +understand the attitude. But pleasantries quite high up, as I consider, +in the scale of humor have not been able to make you smile. I have seen +you sit unalterably grave while Papa was piping out the nicest little +things, and I know you never liked even your adored Professor Martens +when he began to bubble. Well, either I laugh too easily or you don't +laugh enough. I can only repeat that if I set your teeth on edge the +remedy is in your own hands.</p> + +<p>We are going to be vegetarians this summer. Papa, who hasn't tried it +yet, is perfectly willing, and if we live chiefly on nuts and lettuces +we shall hardly want any money at all. I read Shelley's <i>Vindication of +Natural Diet</i> aloud to him before we left the flat to prepare his mind, +and he not only heartily agreed with every word, but went at once to the +Free Library and dug out all the books he could find about muscles and +brains and their surprising dependence on the kind of stuff you have +eaten, and brought them home for me to study. I do love Papa. He falls +in so sweetly with one's little plans, and lets me do what I want +without the least waste of time in questionings or the giving of advice. +I have read the books with profound interest. Only a person who cooks, +who has to handle meat when it is raw, pick out the internals of geese, +peel off the skins of rabbits, scrape away the scales of a fish that is +still alive—my step-mother insisted on this, the flavor, she said, +being so infinitely superior that way—can know with what a relief, what +a feeling of personal purification and turning of the back on evil, one +flings a cabbage into a pot of fair water or lets one's fingers linger +lovingly among lentils. I brought a bag of lentils up the hill with us, +and the cabbage, remnant of my last marketing, came up too in a net, and +we had our dinner today of them: lentil soup, and cabbage with +bread-and-butter—what could be purer? And for Johanna, who has not read +Shelley, there was the last of the Rauchgasse sausage for the soothing +of her more immature soul.</p> + +<p>That was an hour ago, and Papa has just been in to say he is hungry.</p> + +<p>'Why, you've only just had dinner, Papachen,' said I, surprised.</p> + +<p>'I know—I know,' he said, looking vaguely troubled.</p> + +<p>'You can't really be hungry. Perhaps it's indigestion.'</p> + +<p>'Perhaps,' agreed Papa; and drifted out again, still looking troubled.</p> + +<p>Before we took this house it had stood empty for several years, and the +man it belongs to was so glad to find somebody who would live in it and +keep it warm that he lets us have it for hardly any rent at all. I +expect what the impoverished want—and only the impoverished would live +in a thing so small—is a garden flat enough to grow potatoes in, and to +have fowls walking about it, and a pig in a nice level sty. You can't +have them here. At least, you couldn't have a sty on such a slope. The +poor pig would spend his days either anxiously hanging on with all his +claws—or is it paws? I forget what pigs have; anyhow, with all his +might—to the hillside, or huddled dismally down against the end +planks, and never be of that sublime detachment of spirit necessary to +him if he would end satisfactorily in really fat bacon. And the fowls, I +suppose, would have to lay their eggs flying—they certainly couldn't do +it sitting down—and how disturbing that would be to a person engaged, +as I often am, in staring up at the sky, for how can you stare up at the +sky under an umbrella? I asked the landlord about the potatoes, and he +said I must grow them as the last tenant did, a widow who lived and died +here, in a strip against the north side of the house where there is a +level space about two yards running from one end of the house to the +other, representing a path and keeping the hill from tumbling in at our +windows. It really is the only place, for I don't see how Johanna and I, +gifted and resourceful as we undoubtedly are, can make terraces with no +tools but a spade and a watering-pot; but it will do away with our only +path, and it does seem necessary to have a path up to one's front door. +Can one be respectable without a path up to one's front door? Perhaps +one can, and that too may be a superfluity to those who face life +squarely. I am convinced that there must be potatoes, but I am not +convinced, on reflection, that there need be a path. Have you ever felt +the joy of getting rid of things? It is so great that it is almost +ferocious. After each divestment, each casting off and away, there is +such a gasp of relief, such a bounding upward, the satisfied soul, proud +for once of its body, saying to it smilingly, 'This, too, then, you have +discovered you can do without and yet be happy.' And I, just while +writing these words to you, have discovered that I can and will do +without paths.</p> + +<p>Papa has been in again. 'Is it not coffee-time?' he asked.</p> + +<p>I looked at him amazed. 'Darling, coffee-time is never at half-past +two,' I said reproachfully.</p> + +<p>'Half-past two is it only? <i>Der Teufel</i>' said Papa.</p> + +<p>'Isn't your book getting on well?' I inquired.</p> + +<p>'Yes, yes,—the book progresses. That is, it would progress if my +attention did not continually wander.'</p> + +<p>'Wander? Whereto?'</p> + +<p>'Rose-Marie, there is a constant gnawing going on within me that will +not permit me to believe that I have dined.'</p> + +<p>'Well, but, Papachen, you have. I saw you doing it.'</p> + +<p>'What you saw me doing was not dining,' said Papa.</p> + +<p>'Not dining?'</p> + +<p>Papa waved his arms round oddly and suddenly. 'Grass—grass,' he cried +with a singular impatience.</p> + +<p>'Grass?' I echoed, still more amazed.</p> + +<p>'Books of an enduring nature, works of any monumentalness, cannot, never +were, and shall not be raised on a foundation of grass,' said Papa, his +face quite red.</p> + +<p>'I can't think what you mean,' said I. 'Where is there any grass?'</p> + +<p>'Here,' said Papa, quickly clasping his hands over that portion of him +that we boldly talk about and call <i>Magen</i>, and you allude to sideways, +by a variety of devious expressions. 'I have been fed today,' he said, +looking at me quite severely, 'on a diet appropriate only to the +mountain goat, and probably only appropriate to him because he can +procure nothing better.'</p> + +<p>'Why, you had a lentil soup—proved scientifically to contain all that +is needed—'</p> + +<p>'I congratulate the lentil soup. I envy it. I wish I too contained all +that is needed. But here'—he clasped his hands again—'there is +nothing.'</p> + +<p>'Yes there is. There is cabbage.'</p> + +<p>'Pooh,' said Papa. 'Green stuff. Herbage.'</p> + +<p>'Herbage?'</p> + +<p>'And scanty herbage, too—appropriate, I suppose, to the mountainous +region in which we now find ourselves.'</p> + +<p>'Papa, don't you want to be a vegetarian?'</p> + +<p>'I want my coffee,' said Papa.</p> + +<p>'What, now?'</p> + +<p>'And why not now, Rose-Marie? Is there anything more rational than to +eat when one is hungry? Let there, pray, be much—very +much—bread-and-butter with it.'</p> + +<p>'But, Papa, we weren't going to have coffee any more. Didn't you agree +that we would give up stimulants?'</p> + +<p>Papa looked at me defiantly. 'I did,' he said.</p> + +<p>'Well, coffee is one.'</p> + +<p>'It is our only one.'</p> + +<p>'You said you would give it up.'</p> + +<p>'I said gradually. To do so today would not be doing so gradually. +Nothing is good that is not done gradually.'</p> + +<p>'But one must begin.'</p> + +<p>'One must begin gradually.'</p> + +<p>'You were delighted with Shelley.'</p> + +<p>'It was after dinner.'</p> + +<p>'You were quite convinced.'</p> + +<p>'I was not hungry.'</p> + +<p>'You know he is all for pure water.'</p> + +<p>'He is all for many things that seem admirable to those who have lately +dined.'</p> + +<p>'You know he says that if the populace of Paris at the time of the +Revolution had drunk at the pure source of the Seine—'</p> + +<p>'There is no pure source of the Seine within reach of the populace of +Paris. There would only be cats. Dead cats. And cats interspersed, no +doubt, with a variety of objects of the nature of portions of crockery +and empty tins.'</p> + +<p>'But he says pure source.'</p> + +<p>'Then he says pure nonsense.'</p> + +<p>'He says if they had done that and satisfied their hunger at the +ever-furnished table of vegetable nature—'</p> + +<p>'Ever-furnished table? Holy Heaven—the good, the excellent young man.'</p> + +<p>'—they would never have lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription +list of Robespierre.'</p> + +<p>'Rose-Marie, today I care not what this young man says.'</p> + +<p>'He says—look, I've got the book in my pocket—'</p> + +<p>'I will not look.'</p> + +<p>'He says, could a set of men whose passions were not perverted by +unnatural stimuli—that's coffee, of course—gaze with coolness on an +<i>auto-da-fè</i>?'</p> + +<p>'I engage to gaze with heat on any <i>auto-da-fè</i> I may encounter if only +you will quickly—'</p> + +<p>'He says—'</p> + +<p>'Put down the book, Rose-Marie, and see to the getting of coffee.'</p> + +<p>'But he says—'</p> + +<p>'Let him say it, and see to the coffee.'</p> + +<p>'He says, is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings rising +from his meal of roots—'</p> + +<p>'<i>Gott, Gott</i>,—meal of roots!'</p> + +<p>'—would take delight in sports of blood?'</p> + +<p>'Enough. I am not in the temper for Shelley.'</p> + +<p>'But you quite loved him a day or two ago.'</p> + +<p>'Except food, nobody loves anything—anything at all—while his stomach +is empty.'</p> + +<p>'I don't think that's very pretty, Papachen.'</p> + +<p>'But it is a great truth. Remember it if you should marry. Shape your +conduct by its light. Three times every day, Rose-Marie,—that is, +before breakfast, before dinner, and before supper,—no husband loves +any wife. She may be as beautiful as the stars, as wise as +Pallas-Athene, as cultured as Goethe, as entertaining as a circus, as +affectionate as you please—he cares nothing for her. She exists not. +Go, my child, and prepare the coffee, and let the bread-and-butter be +cut thick.'</p> + +<p>Well, since then I have been cutting bread-and-butter and pouring out +cups of coffee. I thought Papa would never leave off. If that is the +effect of a vegetarian dinner I don't think it can really be less +expensive than meat. Papa ate half a pound of butter, which is sixty +pfennings, and for sixty pfennings I could have bought him a +<i>Kalbsschnitzel</i> so big that it would have lasted, under treatment, two +days. I must go for a walk and think it out.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, July 21st.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I assure you that we have all we want, so do not, +please, go on feeling distressed about us. Why should you feel +distressed? I am not certain that I do not resent it. Put baldly (you +will say brutally), you have no right to be distressed, uneasy, anxious, +and all the other things you say you are, about the private concerns of +persons who are nothing to you. Even a lamb might conceivably feel +nettled by persistent pity when it knows it has everything in the world +it wants. Come now, if it is a question of pity, we will have it in the +right place, and I will pity you. There is always, you know, a secret +satisfaction in the soul of him who pities. He does hug himself, and +whether he does it consciously or unconsciously depends on his aptitude +for clear self-criticism. Compared with yours I deliberately consider my +life glorious. And when will you see that there are kinds of +gloriousness that cannot be measured in money or position? It is plain +to me—and it would be so to you if you thought it over—that the less +one has the more one enjoys. We want space, time, concentration, for +getting at the true sweet root of life. And I think—and you probably do +not—that the true sweet root of life is in any one thing, no matter +what thing, on which your whole undisturbed attention is fixed. Once I +read a little French story, years ago, with my mother, when I was a +child, and I don't know now who wrote it or what it was called. It was +the story of a prisoner who found a plant growing between the flags of +the court he might walk in, and I think it was a wallflower; and it, +unfolding itself slowly and putting out one tender bit of green after +the other in that gray and stony place, stretched out little hands of +life and hope and interest to the man who had come there a lost soul. It +was the one thing he had. It ended by being his passion. With nothing +else to distract him, he could study all its wonders. From that single +plant he learned more than the hurried passer-on, free of the treasures +of the universe, learns in a life. It saved him from despair. It brought +him back to the eager interest in the marvellous world that soul feels +which is unencumbered by too heavy a weight of trappings. Why, I still +have too much; and here are you pitying me because I have not more when +I am distracted by all the claims on my attention. I can look at whole +beds of wallflowers every spring, and pass on with nothing but a vague +admiration for their massed beauty of scent and color. I get nothing out +of them but just that transient glimpse and whiff. There are too many. +There is no time for them all. But shut me up for weeks alone with one +of them in a pot, and I too would get out of it the measure of the +height and the depth and the wonder of life.</p> + +<p>And then you exhort me not to live on vegetables. Is it because you live +on meat? I don't think I mind your eating meat, so why should you mind +my eating vegetables? I have done it for a week now quite steadily, and +mean to give it at least a fair trial. If what the books we have got +about it say is true, health and sanity lie that way. And how delightful +to have a pure kitchen into which ghastly dead things never come. I will +not be a partaker of the nature of beasts. I will not become three parts +pig, or goose, or foolish sheep. I turn with aversion from the reddened +horror called gravy. I consider it a monstrous ugly thing to have +particles of pig rioting up and down my veins, turning into brains, +coloring my thoughts, becoming a very part of my body. Surely a body is +a wonderful thing? So wonderful that it cannot be treated with too much +care and respect? So wonderful that it cannot be too carefully guarded +from corruption? And have you ever studied the appearance and habits of +pigs?</p> + +<p>But I do admit that being a vegetarian is bewildering. None of the books +say a word about the odd feeling one has of not having had anything to +eat. What Papa felt that first day I have felt every day since. I am +perpetually hungry; and it is the unpleasant hunger that expresses +itself in a dislike for food, in listlessness, inability to work, +flabbiness, even faintness. At eight in the morning I begin with bread +and plums. My entire being cries out while I am eating them for coffee +with milk in it and butter on my bread. But coffee is a stimulant, and +the books say that butter contains no nourishment whatever, and since +what I most yearn for is to be nourished I will waste no time eating +stuff that doesn't do it. Instead, I eat heaps of bread and stacks of +plums, not because I want to but because I'm afraid the gnawing feeling +will follow sooner than ever if I don't. Papa sits opposite me, +breakfasting pleasantly on eggs, for he explains he is doing things +gradually and is using the eggs to build wise bridges across the gulf +between the end of meat and the beginning of what he persists in +describing as herbage. At nine I feel as if I had had no breakfast. All +the pains I took to get through the bread were of no real use. I +struggle against this for as long as possible, because the books say you +mustn't have things between meals, and then I go and eat more plums. I +am amazed when I remember that once I liked plums. No words can express +my abhorrence of them now. But what is to be done? They are the only +fruit we can get. Cherries are over. Apples have not begun. We buy the +plums from the neighbor down the hill. To add to my horror of them I +have discovered that hardly one is without a wriggly live thing inside +it. I wonder how many of them I have eaten. Can they be brought into the +category vegetarian? Papa says yes, because they have lived and moved +and had their being in an atmosphere of pure plum. They <i>are</i> plum, says +Papa, consoling me,—bits of plum that have acquired the power to walk +about. But according to that beef must be vegetarian too,—so much grass +grown able to walk about. It is very bewildering. One day the +neighbor—he is a nice neighbor, interested in our experiment—sent us +some raspberries, a basket of them, all glowing, and downy, and +delicious with dew, and covered with a beautiful silvery cabbage leaf; +but they were afflicted in just the same way, only more so. Papa says, +why do I look? I must look now that I have seen the things once; and so +the end of the raspberries was that most of them went out into the +kitchen, and Johanna, who has no prejudices, stewed them into compote +and ate them, including the inhabitants, for her supper.</p> + +<p>For dinner, by which time I am curiously shaky, quite indifferent to +food, and possessed of an immense longing to lie down on a sofa and do +nothing, we have salad and potatoes and fruit—of course plums—and +lentils because they are so good for us (it is a pity they are also so +nasty), and cheese because one book says (it is an extraordinarily +convincing book) that if a man shall eat beef steadily for a whole +morning from six to twelve without stopping, he will not at the end have +taken in half the nourishing matter that he would have absorbed after +two minutes laid out judiciously on cheese. Unfortunately I don't like +cheese. After dinner I shut myself up with the works of Mr. Eustace +Miles, which tell me in invigorating language of all the money, time, +and energy I have saved, of my increase of bodily health, of how active +I am getting, how skilful and of what a tough endurance, how my brains +have grown clear and nimble, my morals risen high above the average, and +how keen my enjoyment of everything has become, including, strange to +say, my food. I read lying down, too spiritless to sit up; and Johanna +in the kitchen, who has dined on pig and beer, washes up with the +clatter of exuberant energy, singing while she does so in a voice that +shakes the house that once she <i>liebte ein Student.</i></p> + +<p>It is very bewildering. The advice one gets points in such opposite +directions. For instance, the neighbor made friends the very first +evening with Papa, who walked with injudicious inattention in our garden +and slipped down through a gap in the fence into his orchard and his +arms, he being engaged in picking up the fallen plums for his wife to +make jam of; and he told me when he came in one day at dinner and found +me struggling through what he considered dark ways and I thought were +cabbages, that my salvation lay in almonds. I went down to Jena that +afternoon and bought three pounds of them. They were dear, and +dreadfully heavy to carry up the hill, and when I was panting past the +neighbor's gate his wife, a friendly lady who reads right through the +advertisements in the paper every morning and spends her evenings with a +pencil working out the acrostics, was standing at it cool and +comfortable; and she asked me, with the simple inquisitiveness natural +to our nation, what I had got in my parcel; and I, glad to stop a moment +and get my breath, told her; and she immediately scoffed both at her +husband and at the almonds, and said if I ate them I would lay up for +myself an old age steeped in a dreadful thing called xanthin poison. I +went home and consulted the books. The neighbor's wife was right. +Johanna made macaroons of the almonds, and Papa, who loves macaroons, +chose to disbelieve the neighbor's wife and ate them.</p> + +<p>But the books are not always so unanimous as they were about this. One +exhorted us to eat many peas and beans, which we were cheerfully +doing,—for are they not in summer pleasant things?—when I read in +another that we might as well eat poison, so full were they, too, of +qualities ending in xanthin poison. Lentils, recommended warmly by most +books, are discountenanced by two because they make you fat. Rice has +shared the same condemnation. Lettuces we may eat, but without the oil +that soothes and the vinegar that interests, and if you add salt to them +you will be thirsty, and you must never drink. An undressed lettuce—a +quite naked lettuce—is a very dull thing. Really, I would as soon eat +grass. We do refuse at present to follow this cruel advice, and have +salad every day in defiance of it, but my conscience forces me to put +less and less dressing in it each time, hoping that so shall we wean +ourselves from the craving for it—'gradually,' as Papa says. Carrots, +too, the books warn us against. I forget what it is they do to you that +is serious, but the neighbor told me they make your skin shine, and +since he told me that no carrot has crossed our threshold. Apples we may +eat, but we are not to suppose that they will nourish us; they are +useful only for preventing, by their bulk, the walls of our insides from +coming together. The walls of the vegetarian inside are very apt to come +together if the owner strikes out all the things he is warned against +from his menu, and then it is, when they are about to do that, that +fibrous bulk, most convenient in this form, should be applied; and, like +the roasted Sunday goose of our fleshlier days in Rauchgasse, the +vegetarian goes about stuffed with apples. Meanwhile there are no +apples, and I know not whither I must turn in search of bulk. Do you +think that in another week I shall be strong enough to write to you?</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXVII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, July 28th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—This is a most sweet evening, dripping, quiet, +after a rainy day, with a strip of clear yellow sky behind the pine +trees on the crest of the hill. I gathered up my skirts and went down +through the soaked grass to where against the fence there is a divine +straggly bush of pink China roses. I wanted to see how they were getting +on after their drenching; and as I stood looking at them in the calm +light, the fence at the back of them sodden into dark greens and blacks +that showed up every leaf and lovely loose wet flower, a robin came and +sat on the fence near me and began to sing. You will say: Well, what +next? And there isn't any next; at least, not a next that I am likely to +make understandable. It was only that I felt extraordinarily happy. You +will say: But why? And if I were to explain, at the end you would still +be saying Why? Well, you cannot see my face while I am writing to you, +so that I have been able often to keep what I was really thinking safely +covered up, but you mustn't suppose that my letters have always exactly +represented my state of mind, and that my soul has made no pilgrimages +during this half year. I think it has wandered thousands of miles. And +often while I wrote scolding you, or was being wise and complacent, or +sprightly and offensive, often just then the tired feet of it were +bleeding most as they stumbled among the bitter stones. And this evening +I felt that the stones were at an end, that my soul has come home to me +again, securely into my keeping, glad to be back, and that there will be +no more effort needed when I look life serenely in the face. Till now +there was always effort. That I talk to you about it is the surest sign +that it is over. The robin's singing, the clear light behind the pines, +the dripping trees and bushes, the fragrance of the wet roses, the +little white house, so modest and hidden, where Papa and I are going to +be happy, the perfect quiet after a stormy day, the perfect peace after +discordant months,—oh, I wanted to say thank you for each of these +beautiful things. Do you remember you gave me a book of Ernest Dowson's +poems on the birthday I had while you were with us? And do you remember +his</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Now I will take me to a place of peace,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Forget my heart's desire—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In solitude and prayer work out my soul's release?</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is what I feel I have done.</p> + +<p>But I will not bore you with these sentiments. See, I am always anxious +to get back quickly to the surface of things, anxious to skim lightly +over the places where tears, happy or miserable, lie, and not to touch +with so much as the brush of a wing the secret tendernesses of the soul. +Let us, sir, get back to vegetables. They are so safe as subjects for +polite letter-writing. And I have had three letters from you this week +condemning their use with all the fervor the English language places at +your disposal—really it is generous to you in this respect—as a +substitute for the mixed diet of the ordinary Philistine. Yes, sir, I +regard you as an ordinary Philistine; and if you want to know what that +in my opinion is, it is one who walks along in the ruts he found ready +instead of, after sitting on a milestone and taking due thought, making +his own ruts for himself. You are one of a flock; and you disapprove of +sheep like myself that choose to wander off and browse alone. You +condemn all my practices. Nothing that I think or do seems good in your +eyes. You tell me roundly that I am selfish, and accuse me, not roundly +because you are afraid it might be indecorous, but obliquely, in a mask +of words that does not for an instant hide your meaning, of wearing +Jaeger garments beneath my outer apparel. Soon, I gather you expect, I +shall become a spiritualist and a social democrat; and quite soon after +that I suppose you are sure I shall cut off my hair and go about in +sandals. Well, I'll tell you something that may keep you quiet: I'm +tired of vegetarianism. It isn't that I crave for fleshpots, for I shall +continue as before to turn my back on them, on 'the boiled and roast, +The heated nose in face of ghost,' but I grudge the time it takes and +the thought it takes. For the fortnight I have followed its precepts I +have lived more entirely for my body than in any one fortnight of my +life. It was all body. I could think of nothing else. I was tending it +the whole day. Instead of growing, as I had fondly hoped, so free in +spirit that I would be able to draw quite close to the <i>liebe Gott</i>, I +was sunk in a pit of indifference to everything needing effort or +enthusiasm. And it is not simple after all. Shelley's meal of roots +sounds easy and elementary, but think of the exertion of going out, +strengthened only by other roots, to find more for your next meal. Nuts +and fruits, things that require no cooking, really were elaborate +nuisances, the nuts having to be cracked and the fruit freed from what +Papa called its pedestrian portions. And they were so useless even then +to a person who wanted to go out and dig in the garden. All they could +do for me was to make me appreciate sofas. I am tired of it, tired of +wasting precious time thinking about and planning my wretched diet. +Yesterday I had an egg for breakfast—it gave me one of Pater's +'exquisite moments'—and a heavenly bowl of coffee with milk in it, and +the effect was to send me out singing into the garden and to start me +mending the fence. The neighbor came up to see what the vigorous +hammer-strokes and snatches of <i>Siegfried</i> could mean, and when he saw +it was I immediately called out, 'You have been eating meat!'</p> + +<p>'I have not,' I said, swinging my hammer to show what eggs and milk can +do.</p> + +<p>'In some form or other you have this day joined yourself to the animal +kingdom,' he persisted; and when I told him about my breakfast he wiped +his hands (he had been picking fruit) and shook mine and congratulated +me. 'I have watched with concern,' he said, 'your eyes becoming daily +bigger. It is not good when eyes do that. Now they will shrink to their +normal size, and you will at last set your disgraceful garden in order. +Are you aware that the grass ought to have been made into hay a month +ago?'</p> + +<p>He is a haggard man, thin of cheek, round of shoulder, short of sight, +who teaches little boys Latin and Greek in Weimar. For thirty years has +he taught them, eking out his income in the way we all do in these parts +by taking in foreigners wanting to learn German. In July he shakes Eis +foreigners off and comes up here for six weeks' vacant pottering in his +orchard. He bought the house as a speculation, and lets the upper part +to any one who will take it, living himself, with his wife and son, on +the ground floor. He is extremely kind to me, and has given me to +understand that he considers me intelligent, so of course I like him. +Only those persons who love intelligence in others and have doubts about +their own know the deliciousness of being told a thing like that. I +adore being praised. I am athirst for it. Dreadfully vain down in my +heart, I go about pretending a fine aloofness from such weakness, so +that when nobody sees anything in me—and nobody ever does—I may at +least make a show of not having expected them to. Thus does a girl in a +ball-room with whom no one will dance pretend she does not want to. Thus +did the familiar fox conduct himself toward the grapes of tradition. +Very well do I know there is nothing to praise; but because I am just +clever enough to know that I am not clever, to be told that I am +clever—do you follow me?—sets me tingling.</p> + +<p>Now that's enough about me. Let us talk about you. You must not come to +Jena. What could have put such an idea into your head? It is a blazing, +deserted place just now, looking from the top of the hills like a basin +of hot <i>bouillon</i> down there in the hollow, wrapped in its steam. The +University is shut up. The professors scattered. Martens is in +Switzerland, and won't be back till September. Even the Schmidts, those +interesting people, have flapped up with screams of satisfaction into a +nest on the side of a precipice. I urge you with all my elder-sisterly +authority to stay where you are. Plainly, if you were to come I would +not see you. Oh, I will leave off pretending I cannot imagine what you +want here: I know you want to see me. Well, you shall not. Why you +should want to is altogether beyond my comprehension. I believe you have +come to regard me as a sort of medicine, medicine of the tonic order, +and wish to bring your sick soul to the very place where it is +dispensed. But I, you see, will have nothing to do with sick souls, and +I wholly repudiate the idea of being somebody's physic. I will not be +your physic. What medicinal properties you can extract from my letters +you are welcome to, but pray are you mad that you should think of coming +here? When you do come you are to come with your wife, and when you have +a wife you are not to come at all. How simple.</p> + +<p>Really, I feel inclined to laugh when I try to picture you, after the +life you have been leading in London, after the days you are living now +at Clinches, attempting to arrange yourself on this perch of ours up +here. I cannot picture you. We have reduced our existence to the crudest +elements, to the raw material; and you, I know, have grown a very +exquisite young man. The fact is you have had time to forget what we are +really like, my father and I and Johanna, and since my step-mother's +time we have advanced far in the casual scrappiness of housekeeping that +we love. You would be like some strange and splendid bird in the midst +of three extremely shabby sparrows. That is the physical point of view: +a thing to be laughed at. From the moral it is for ever impossible.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXVIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Aug. 7th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It is pleasant of you to take the trouble to +emulate our neighbor and tell me that you too think me intelligent. You +put it, it is true, more elaborately than he does, with a greater +embroidery of fine words, but I will try to believe you equally sincere. +I make you a profound <i>Knix</i>,—it's a more expressive word than +curtsey—of polite gratitude. But it is less excellent of you to add on +the top of these praises that I am adorable. With words like that, +inappropriate, and to me eternally unconvincing, this correspondence +will come to an abrupt end. I shall not write again if that is how you +are going to play the game. I would not write now if I were less +indifferent. As it is, I can look on with perfect calm, most serenely +unmoved by anything in that direction you may say to me; but if you care +to have letters do not say them again. I shall never choose to allow you +to suppose me vile.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XXXIX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Aug. 13th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You need not have sent me so many pages of +protestations. Nothing you can say will persuade me that I am adorable, +and I did exactly mean the world vile. Do not quarrel with Miss +Cheriton; but if you must, do not tell me about it. Why should you +always want to tell one of us about the other? Have you no sense of what +is fit? I am nothing to you, and I will not hear these things.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XL</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Aug. 18th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You must really write a book. Write a very long +one, with plenty of room for all your words. What is your bill for +postage now? Johanna, I am sure, thinks you are sending me instalments +of manuscript, and marvels at the extravagance that shuts it up in +envelopes instead of leaving its ends open and tying it up with string. +Once more I must beg you not to write about Miss Cheriton. It is useless +to remind me that I have posed as your sister, and that to your sister +you may confide anything, because I am not your sister. Sometimes I have +written of an elder-sisterly attitude toward you, but that, of course, +was only talk. I am not irascible enough for the position. I do think, +though, you ought to be surrounded by women who are cross. Six cross and +determined elder sisters would do wonders for you. And so would a mother +with an iron will. And perhaps an aunt living in the house might be a +good thing; one of those aunts—I believe sufficiently abundant—who +pierce your soul with their eyes and then describe it minutely at +meal-times in the presence of the family, expatiating particularly on +what those corners of it look like, those corners you thought so secret, +in which are huddled your dearest faults.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Aug. 25th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Very well; I won't quarrel; I will be +friends,—friends, that is, so long as you allow me to be so in the only +right and possible way. Don't murder too many grouse. Think of my +disapproving scowl when you are beginning to do it, and then perhaps +your day of slaughter will resolve itself into an innocent picnic on the +moors, alone with sky and heather and a bored, astonished dog. Are you +not glad now that you went to Scotland instead of coming to Jena to find +the Schmidts not at home? Surely long days in the heather by yourself +will do much toward making you friends with life. I think those moors +must be so beautiful. Really very nearly as good as my Galgenberg. My +Galgenberg, by the bye, has left off being quite so admirably solitary +as it was at first. The neighbor is, as I told you, extremely friendly, +so is his wife, though I do not set such store by her friendliness as I +do by his, for, frankly, I find men are best; and they have a son who is +an <i>Assessor</i> in Berlin. You know what an <i>Assessor</i> is, don't you?—it +is a person who will presently be a <i>Landrath</i>. And you know what a +<i>Landrath</i> is? It's what you are before you turn into a +<i>Regierungsrath</i>. And a <i>Regierungsrath</i> is what you are before you are +a <i>Geheimrath</i>. And a <i>Geheimrath</i>, if he lives long enough and doesn't +irritate anybody in authority, becomes ultimately that impressive and +glorious being a <i>Wirklicher Geheimrath</i>—implying that before he was +only in fun—<i>mit dem Prädikat Excellenz</i>. And don't say I don't explain +nicely, because I do. Well, where was I? Oh, yes; at the son. Well, he +appeared a fortnight ago, brown and hot and with a knapsack, having +walked all the way from Berlin, and is spending his holiday with his +people. For a day or two I thought him quite ordinary. He made rather +silly jokes, and wore a red tie. Then one evening I heard lovely sounds, +lovely, floating, mellow sounds coming up in floods through the orchard +into my garden where I was propped against a tree-trunk watching a huge +yellow moon disentangling itself slowly from the mists of Jena,—oh, +but exquisite sounds, sounds that throbbed into your soul and told it +all it wanted to hear, showed it the way to all it was looking for, +talked to it wonderfully of the possibilities of life. First they drew +me on to my feet, then they drew me down the garden, then through the +orchard, nearer and nearer, till at last I stood beneath the open window +they were coming from, listening with all my ears. Against the wall I +leaned, holding my breath, spell-bound, forced to ponder great themes, +themes of life and death, the music falling like drops of liquid light +in dark and thirsty places. I don't know how long it lasted or how long +I stood there after it was finished, but some one came to the window and +put his head out into the freshness, and what do you think he said? He +said, '<i>Donnerwetter, wie man im Zimmer schwitzt.</i>' And it was the son, +brown and hot, and with a red tie.</p> + +<p>'Ach, Fräulein Schmidt,' said he, suddenly perceiving me. 'Good evening. +A fine evening. I did not know I had an audience.'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said I, unable at once to adjust myself to politenesses.</p> + +<p>'Do you like music?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said I, still vibrating.</p> + +<p>'It is a good violin. I picked it up—' and he told me a great many +things that I did not hear, for how can you hear when your spirit +refuses to come back from its journeyings among the stars?</p> + +<p>'Will you not enter?' he said at last. 'My mother is fetching up some +beer and will be here in a moment. It makes one warm playing.'</p> + +<p>But I would not enter. I walked back slowly through the long orchard +grass between the apple-trees trees. The moon gleamed along the +branches. The branches were weighed down with apples. The place was full +of the smell of fruit, of the smell of fruit fallen into the grass, that +had lain there bruised all day in the sun. I think the beauty of the +world is crushing. Often it seems almost unbearable, calling out such an +acuteness of sensation, such a vivid, leaping sensitiveness of feeling, +that indeed it is like pain.</p> + +<p>But what I want to talk about is the strange way good things come out of +evil. It really almost makes you respect and esteem the bad things, +doing it with an intelligent eye fixed on the future. Here is our young +friend down the hill, a young man most ordinary in every way but one, so +ordinary that I think we must put him under the heading bad, taking bad +in the sense of negation, of want of good, here he is, robust of speech, +fond of beer, red of tie, chosen as her temple by that delicate lady the +Muse of melody. Apparently she is not very particular about her temples. +It is true while he is playing at her dictation she transforms him +wholly, and I suppose she does not care what he is like in between. But +I do. I care because in between he thinks it pleasant to entertain me +with facetiousness, his mother hanging fondly on every word in the +amazing way mothers, often otherwise quite intelligent persons, do. +Since that first evening he has played every evening, and his taste in +music is as perfect as it is bad in everything else. It is severe, +exquisite, exclusive. It is the taste that plays Mozart and Bach and +Beethoven, and wastes no moments with the Mendelssohn sugar or the +lesser inspiration of Brahms. I tried to strike illumination out of him +on these points, wanted to hear his reasons for a greater exclusiveness +than I have yet met, went through a string of impressive names beginning +with Schumann and ending with Wagner and Tchaikowsky, but he showed no +interest, and no intelligence either, unless a shrug of the shoulder is +intelligent. It is true he remarked one day that he found life too short +for anything but the best—'That is why,' he added, unable to forbear +from wit, 'I only drink Pilsner.'</p> + +<p>'What?' I cried, ignoring the Pilsner, 'and do not these great +men'—again I ran through a string of them—'do not they also belong to +the very best?'</p> + +<p>'No,' he said; and would say no more. So you see he is obstinate as well +as narrow-minded.</p> + +<p>Of course such exclusiveness in art <i>is</i> narrow-minded, isn't it? +Besides, it is very possible he is wrong. You, I know, used to perch +Brahms on one of the highest peaks of Parnassus (I never thought there +was quite room enough for him on it), and did you not go three times all +the way to Munich while you were with us to hear Mottl conduct the +<i>Ring</i>? Surely it is probable a person of your all-round good taste is a +better judge than a person of his very nearly all-round bad taste? +Whatever your faults may be, you never made a fault in ties, never +clamored almost ceaselessly for drink, never talked about <i>schwitzen</i>, +nor entertained young women from next door with the tricks and +facetiousness of a mountebank. I wonder if his system were carried into +literature, and life were wholly concentrated on the half dozen +absolutely best writers, so that we who spread our attention out thin +over areas I am certain are much too wide knew them as we never can know +them, became part of them, lived with them and in them, saw through +their eyes and thought with their thoughts, whether there would be gain +or loss? I don't know. Tell me what you think. If I might only have the +six mightiest books to go with me through life I would certainly have to +learn Greek because of Homer. But when it comes to the very mightiest, I +cannot even get my six; I can only get four. Of course when I loosely +say six books I mean the works of six writers. But beyond my four I +cannot get; there must be a slight drop for the other two,—very slight, +hardly a drop, rather a slight downward quiver into a radiance the +faintest degree less blazing, but still a degree less. These two would +be Milton and Virgil. The other four—but you know the other four +without my telling you. I am not sure that the <i>Assessor</i> is not right, +and that one cannot, in matters of the spirit, be too exclusive. +Exclusiveness means concentration, deeper study, minuter knowledge; for +we only have a handful of years to do anything in, and they are quite +surely not enough to go round when going round means taking in the whole +world.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, wouldn't my speech become archaic? I'm afraid I would +have a tendency that would grow to address Papa in blank verse. My +language, even when praying him at breakfast to give me butter, would be +incorrigibly noble. I don't think Papa would like it. And what would he +say to a daughter who was forced by stress of concentration on six works +to go through life without Goethe? Goethe, you observe, was not one of +the two less glorious and he certainly was not one of the four +completely glorious. I begin to fear I should miss a great deal by my +exclusions. It would be sad to die without ever having been thrilled by +<i>Werther</i>, exalted by <i>Faust</i>, amazed by the <i>Wahlverwandtschaften</i>, +sent to sleep by <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>. To die innocent of any knowledge of +Schiller's <i>Glocke</i>, with no memory of strenuous hours spent getting it +by heart at school, might be quite pleasant. But I think it would end by +being tiring to be screwed up perpetually to the pitch of the greatest +men's greatest moments. Such heights are not for insects like myself. I +would hang very dismally, with drooping head and wings, on those exalted +hooks. And has not the soul too its longings at times for a +dressing-gown and slippers? And do you see how you could do without +Boswell?</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Aug. 31st.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Yes, of course he does. He plays every evening. +And every evening I go and listen, either in the orchard beneath the +open window or, more ceremoniously, inside the room with or without +Papa. I find it a pleasant thing. I am living in a bath of music. And I +hope you don't expect me to agree with your criticism of music as a +stirrer-up of, on the whole, second-rate emotions. What are second-rate +emotions? Are they the ones that you have? And was it to have them +stirred that you used to journey so often to Munich and Mottl? Stirred +up I certainly am. Not in the way, I admit, in which a poem of Milton's +does it, not affected in the least as I am affected by, for instance, +the piled-up majesty of the poem on <i>Time</i>, but if less nobly still very +effectually. There; I have apparently begun to agree with you. Well, I +do see, the moment I begin to consider, that what is stirred is less +noble. I do see that what I feel when I listen to music is chiefly +<i>Wehmuth</i>, and I don't think much of <i>Wehmuth</i>. You have no word for it. +Perhaps in England you do not have just that form of sentiment. It is a +forlorn thing, made up mostly of vague ingredients,—vague yearnings, +vague regrets, vague dissatisfactions. When it comes over you, you +remember all the people who are absent, and you are sad; and the people +who are dead, and you sigh; and the times you have been naughty, and you +groan. I do see that a sentiment that makes you do that is not the +highest. It is profitless, sterile. It doesn't send you on joyfully to +the next thing, but keeps you lingering in the dust of churchyards, +barren places of the past which should never be revisited by the +wholesome-minded. Now this looks as though I were agreeing with you +quite, but I still don't. You put it so extremely. It is so horrid to +think that even my emotions may be second-rate. I long ago became aware +that my manners were so, but I did like to believe there was nothing +second-rate about my soul. Well, what is one to do? Never be soft? Never +be sad? Or sorry? Or repentant? Always stay up at the level of Milton's +<i>Time</i> poem, or of his <i>At a Solemn Musick</i>, strung high up to an +unchanging pitch of frigid splendor and nobleness? It is what I try to +aim at. It is what I would best like. Then comes our friend of the red +tie, and in the cool of the day when the world is dim and scented shakes +a little fugue of Bach's out of his fiddle, a sparkling, sly little +fugue, frolicsome for all its minor key, a handful of bright threads +woven together, twisted in and out, playing, it would seem, at some game +of hide-and-seek, of pretending to want to catch each other into a +tangle, but always gayly coming out of the knots, each distinct and +holding on its shining way till the meeting at the end, the final +embrace when the game is over and they tie themselves contentedly +together into one comfortable major chord,—our friend plays this, this +manifestly happy thing, and my soul listens, and smiles, and sighs, and +longs, and ends by being steeped in <i>Wehmuth</i>. I choose the little fugue +of Bach as an instance, for of all music it is aimed most distinctly at +the intellect, it is the furthest removed from <i>Wehmuth</i>; and if it has +this effect on me I will not make you uncomfortable by a description of +what the baser musics do, the musics of passion, of furious exultations +and furious despairs. But my vague wish for I do not know what, gentle, +and rather sweetly resigned when the accompaniment is Bach, swells +suddenly while I listen to them into a terrifying longing that rends and +shatters my soul.</p> + +<p>What private things I tell you. I wouldn't if I were talking. I would be +affected by your actual presence. But writing is so different, and so +strange; at once so much more and so much less intimate. The body is +safe—far away, unassailable; and the spirit lets itself go out to meet +a fellow spirit with the frankness it can never show when the body goes +too, that grievous hinderer of the communion of saints, that officious +blunderer who can spoil the serenest intercourse by a single blush.</p> + +<p>Johanna came in just there. She was decked in smiles, and wanted to say +good-by till to-morrow morning. It is her night out, and she really +looked rather wonderful to one used to her kitchen condition. Her skin, +cleansed from week-day soilure, was surprisingly fair; her hair, waved +more beautifully than mine will ever be, was piled up in bright imposing +masses; her starched white dress had pink ribbons about it; she wore +cotton gloves; and held the handkerchief I lend her on these occasions +genteelly by its middle in her hand. Every second Sunday she descends +the mountain at sunset, the door-key in her pocket, and dances all night +in some convivial <i>Gasthof</i> in the town, coming up again at sunrise or +later according to the amount of fun she was having. On the Monday I do +nearly everything alone, for she sleeps half the day, and the other half +she doesn't like being talked to. She is a good servant, and she would +certainly go if we tried to get her in again under the twelve hours. On +the alternate Sundays we allow her to have her young man up for the +afternoon and evening. He is a trumpeter in the regiment stationed in +Jena, and he brings his trumpet to fill up awkward silences. Engaged +couples of that kind don't seem able to talk much, so that the trumpet +is a great comfort to them. Whenever conversation flags he whips it out +and blows a rousing blast, giving her time to think of something to say +next. I had to ask him to do it in the garden, for the first time it +nearly blew our roof, which isn't very tightly on, off. Now he and she +sit together on a bench outside the door, and the genius down the hill +with the exclusive ears suffers, I am afraid, rather acutely. Papa and I +wander as far away as we can get among the mountains.</p> + +<p>It is rather dreadful when they quarrel. Then, of course, Johanna sulks +as girls will, and sulks are silent things, so that the trumpet has to +fill up a yawning gulf and never leaves off at all. Last Sunday it blew +the whole time we were out, and I expected when I got home to find the +engagement broken off. We stayed away as long as we could, climbing +higher and higher, wandering further and further, supping at last +reluctantly on cucumber salad and cold herrings in the little restaurant +up on the Schweizerhohe because the trumpet wouldn't stop and we didn't +dare go home till it did. Its blasts pursued us even into the recesses +of the dingy wooden hall we took our ears into, vainly trying to carry +them somewhere out of range. It seemed to be a serious quarrel. We had a +depressing meal. We both esteem Johanna with the craven esteem you feel +for a person, at any moment capable of giving notice, who does all the +unpleasant things you would otherwise have to do yourself. The state of +her temper seriously affects our peace. You see, the house is small, and +if her trumpeter has been unsatisfactory and she throws the saucepans +about or knocks the broom in sweeping against all the wooden things like +doors and skirting-boards, it makes an unendurable clatter and puts an +end at once to Papa's work and to my equally earnest play. If, her +nerves being already on edge, I were to suggest to her even smilingly to +be quiet, she would at once give notice—I know she would—and the +dreary search begin again for that impossible treasure you in England +call a paragon and we in Jena call a pearl. Where am I to find a clean, +honest, strong pearl, able to cook and willing to come and live in what +is something like an unopened oyster-shell, so shut-up, so cut-off so +solitary would her existence here be, for eight pounds a year? It is +easy for you august persons who never see your servants, who have so +many that by sheer force of numbers they become unnoticeable, to deride +us who have only one for being so greatly at her mercy. I know you will +deride. I see your letter already: 'Dear Fräulein Schmidt, Is not your +attitude toward the maid Johanna unworthy?' It isn't unworthy, because +it is natural. Defiantly I confess that it is also cringing. Well, it is +natural to cringe under the circumstances. So would you. I dare say if +your personal servant is a good one, and you depend much on him for +comfort, you do do it as it is. And there are very few girls in Jena who +would come out of it and take a situation on the side of a precipice for +eight pounds a year. Really the wages are small, balanced against the +disadvantages. And wages are going up. Down in Jena a good servant can +get ten pounds a year now without much difficulty. So that it behooves +us who cannot pay such prices to humor Johanna.</p> + +<p>About nine the trumpet became suddenly dumb. Papa and I, after waiting a +few minutes, set out for home, conjecturing as we went in what state we +should find Johanna. Did the silence mean a rupture or a making-up? I +inclined toward the rupture, for how can a girl, I asked Papa, murmur +mild words of making-up to a lover engaged in blowing a trumpet? Papa +said he didn't know; and engrossed by fears we walked home without +speaking.</p> + +<p>No one was to be seen. The house was dark and empty. Everything was +quiet except the crickets. The trumpeter had gone, but so, apparently, +had Johanna. She had forgotten to lock the door, so that all we—or +anybody else passing that way—had to do was to walk in. Nobody, +however,—and by nobody I mean the criminally intentioned, briefly +burglars—walks into houses perched as ours is. They would be very +breathless burglars by the time they got to our garden gate. We should +hear their stertorous breathing as they labored up well in time to lock +the door; and Papa, ever pitiful and polite, would as likely as not +unlock it again to hasten out and offer them chairs and lemonade. It was +not, then, with any misgivings of that sort that we went into our +deserted house and felt about for matches; but I was surprised that +Johanna, when she could sit comfortably level on the seat by the door, +should rather choose to go and stroll in the garden. You cannot stroll +in my garden. You can do very few of the things in it that most people +can do in most gardens, and certainly strolling is not one of them. It +is no place for lovers, or philosophers, or leisurely persons of the +sort. It is an unrestful place, in which you are forced to be energetic, +to watch where you put your feet, to balance yourself to a nicety, to be +continually on the alert. I lit a lantern, and went out in search of +Johanna strolling. I stood on the back door steps and looked right and +looked left. No Johanna. No sounds of Johanna. Only the crickets, and +the soft darting by of a bat. I went down the steps—they are six +irregular stones embedded one beneath the other in the clay and leading +to the pump from which, in buckets, we supply our need for water—and +standing still again, again heard only crickets. I went to the +mignonette beds I have made—mignonette and nasturtiums; mignonette for +scent and nasturtiums for beauty, and I hope you like nasturtiums—and +standing still again, again heard only crickets. The night was dark and +soft, and seemed of a limitless vastness. The near shrill of the +crickets made the silence beyond more intense. A cat prowled past, +velvet-footed, silent as the night, a vanishing gray streak, intent and +terrible, concentrated wholly on prey. I went on through the grass, my +shoes wet with dew, the lantern light fitfully calling out my +possessions from the blackness,—the three apple-trees, the +currant-bush, the pale group of starworts, children of some accidental +wind-dropped seed of long ago; and beside the starworts I stopped again +and listened. Still only the crickets; and presently very far away the +whistle of the night express from Berlin to Munich as it hurried past +the little station in the Paradies valley. It was extraordinarily quiet. +Once I thought my own heart-beats were the footsteps of a late wanderer +on the road. I went further, down to the very end, to the place where my +beautiful, untiring monthly-rose bush unfolds pink flower after pink +flower against the fence that separates us from our neighbor's kingdom, +and stopped again and listened. At first still only crickets, and the +anxious twitter of a bird toward whose nest that stealthy, murderous +streak of gray was drawing. It began to rain; soft, warm drops, from the +motionless clouds spread low across the sky. I forgot Johanna, and +became wholly possessed by the brooding spirit of the night, by the +feeling of oneness, of identity with the darkness, the silence, the +scent. My feet were wet with dew; my hair with the warm and gentle rain. +I lifted up my face and let the drops fall on it through the leaves of +the apple-trees, warm and gentle as a caress. Then the sudden blare of a +trumpet made me start and quiver. I quivered so much that the lantern +fell down and went out. The blare was the loudest noise I thought I had +ever heard, ripping up the silence like a jagged knife. The startled +hills couldn't get over it, but went on echoing and re-echoing it, +tossing it backward and forward to each other in an endless surprise, +and had hardly settled down again with a kind of shudder when they were +roused to frenzy by another. After that there was blare upon blare. The +man only stopped to take breath. They were louder, more rollicking than +any I had heard him produce. And they came from the neighbor's house, +from the very dwelling of him of the easily tortured ears, of him for +whom Wagner is not good enough. Well, do you know what he had done? I +ran down to question, and to extract Johanna and explain the trumpeter, +and I met the poor genius, very pale and damp-looking, his necktie +struggled up behind to the top of his collar, its bow twisted round +somehow under his left ear. He was hurrying out into the night as I +arrived, panting, on the doorstep. 'Why in the world—' I began; but a +blast drowned further speech.</p> + +<p>He flung up his hands, and the darkness engulfed him.</p> + +<p>'It's raining,' I tried to cry after his hatless figure.</p> + +<p>I thought I heard him call back something about Pilsner—'It's the +Pilsner,' I thought I heard him say; but the noise coming from the +kitchen was too violent for me to be sure.</p> + +<p>His father was in the passage, walking up and down it, his hands in his +pockets, his shoulders up to his ears as though he were shrinking from +blows. He told me what his unhappy son had done. Not able to endure the +trumpet when it was being blown up at our house earlier in the evening, +not able to endure it even softened, chastened, subdued by distance and +the intervening walls, he had directed his mother to go up and invite +the player down to her kitchen, where he was to be cajoled into eating +and drinking, because, as the son explained, full of glee at his +sagacity, no man who is eating and drinking can at the same time be +blowing a trumpet. 'Thus,' said his father, in jerks coincident with the +breath-takings of the trumpeter, 'did he hope to obtain peace.'</p> + +<p>'But he didn't,' said I.</p> + +<p>'No. For a period there was extreme, delicious quiet. Mother'—so he +invariably describes his wife—' sacrificed her best sausage, for how +shall we permit our son to be tortured? The bread was spread with butter +three centimeters deep. The trumpeter and his <i>Schatz</i> sat quietly in +the kitchen eating it. We sat quietly on the veranda discussing great +themes. Then that good beer my son so often praises, that excellent, +barrel-kept, cellar-lodged Pilsner beer, bright as amber, clear as ice, +cool as—cool as—'</p> + +<p>'A cucumber,' I assisted.</p> + +<p>'Good. Very good. As a cucumber—as a salad of cucumbers.'</p> + +<p>'No, no—there's pepper in a salad. You'd better just keep to plain +cucumber,' I interrupted, always rather nice in the matter of images.</p> + +<p>'Cool, then, as plain cucumber—this usually admirable stuff instead of, +as we had expected, sending him gradually and pleasantly to sleep—I +mean, of course, making him gradually and pleasantly so sleepy that +thoughts of his bed, growing in affection with every glass, would cause +him to arise and depart to his barracks,—woke him up. And, my dear +Fräulein, you yourself heard—you are hearing now—how completely it did +it.'</p> + +<p>'Is he—is he—?' I inquired nervously.</p> + +<p>The neighbor nodded. 'He is,' he said; 'he has consumed fourteen +glasses.'</p> + +<p>And indeed he was; and I should say from the tumult, from the +formlessness of it, the tunelessness, the rollicksomeness, that never +was anybody more so.</p> + +<p>'I fear my son will leave us for some quieter spot before his holiday is +over,' said the neighbor, looking distressed.</p> + +<p>And perhaps it will convince you more than anything else I have said of +the extreme value of our Johannas, when I tell you that, goaded by the +noise and by his disappointed face to rash promises, I declared I would +dismiss the girl unless she broke off such an engagement, and he stared +at me for a moment in astonishment and then resignedly shook his head +and said with the weary conviction of a householder of thirty years' +standing, '<i>Das geht doch nicht.</i>'</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Sept. 9th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—But it is true. Our servants do not get more than +from 100 to 250 marks a year, and indeed I think it is a great deal and +cannot see why, because you spend as much (you say you do, so I must +believe it) in a month on gloves and ties, it should make you hate +yourself. Do not hate yourself. Your doing so doesn't make us pay our +servants more. Why, how do you suppose we could get all we need out of +our hundred pounds a year—I translate our marks into your pounds for +your greater convenience—if we had to give a servant more than eight of +them and for our house more than fifteen? Papa and I do not like to be +kept hungry in the matter of books, and we shall probably spend every +penny of our income; but I know a number of families with children who +live decently and have occasional coffee-parties and put by for their +daughters' <i>trousseaux</i> on the same sum. As for the servants themselves, +have I not described Johanna's splendid appearance on her Sundays, her +white dress and gloves, and the pink ribbons round her waist? She finds +her wages will buy these things and still leave enough for the +savings-bank. She is quite content. Only I don't know if she would +remain so if you were to come and lament over her and tell her what a +little way you make the same money go. You see, she would probably not +grasp the true significance of the admission, which is, I take it, not +that she has too little but that you spend too much. Yet how can I from +my Galgenberg judge what is necessary in gloves and ties for a splendid +young man like yourself? The sum seems to me terrific. There must be +stacks of gloves and ties constantly growing higher about your path. +You, then, spend on these two things alone almost exactly what we three +spend in a year on everything. But my astonishment is only the measure +of my ignorance. Do not hate yourself. Either spend the money without +compunction, or, if you have compunction, don't spend it. A sinner +should always, I think, sin gayly or not at all. I don't mean that you +in this are a sinner; I only mean that as a general principle +half-hearted sinners are contemptible. It is a poor creature who while +he sins is sorry. If he must sin, let him at least do it with all his +heart, and having done it waste no time in whimpers but try to turn his +back on it and his face toward the good. Please do not hate yourself. I +am sure you have to have the things. Your letter is more than usually +depressed. Please do not hate yourself. It does no good and lowers your +vitality. It is as bad as sorrow, which surely is very bad. I think +nothing great was done by any one who wasted time peering about among +his faults; but if ever you meet the pastor who prepared me for +confirmation don't tell him I said so. I don't know how it is with yours +in England, but here the pastors seem altogether unable to bear +listening to descriptions of plain facts. When they come to doctor my +soul, why may I not tell them its symptoms as badly as I tell my body's +symptoms to the physician who would heal it? He is not shocked or angry +when I show him my sore places; he recommends a plaster or a dose, +encourages, and goes away. But your spiritual doctor takes your +spiritual sore places as a kind of personal affront; at least, his +manner often shows indignation in proportion as you are frank. Instead +of being patient, he hardly lets you speak; instead of prescribing, he +denounces; instead of helping, he passionately scolds; and so you do not +go to him again, but fight through your later miseries alone. Just at +the time of my preparation for confirmation my mother died. My heart, +blank with sorrow, was very fit for religious impressions and +consolations. The preparation lasts two years, and three times every +week during that time I went to classes. For two years I was not allowed +to dance or to go to even the mildest parties. For two years, from +sixteen to eighteen, I was earnest, prayerful, humbly seeking after +righteousness. Then one day, when questionings had come upon me that my +conscience could not approve, I went to the pastor who had prepared me +as confidently as I would go with a toothache to a dentist, and bared my +sensitive conscience to him and begged to have my thoughts arranged and +my doubts and questionings settled. To my amazement and extreme fright I +beheld him shocked, angry, hardly able to endure hearing me tell all I +had been wondering. It seemed very strange. I sat at last with downcast +eyes, silent, ashamed, my heart shrunk back into reserve and frost. I +was not being helped; I was being scolded, and bitterly scolded. At last +at the door some special word of blame stung me to heat, and I cried, +'Herr Pastor, when my tongue is bad and I show it to a doctor, he gives +me a pill. Are you not the doctor of my spirit? Why, then, when I come +to you to be healed, do you, instead of giving me medicine, so cruelly +rate me?'</p> + +<p>And he, staring at me a moment aghast, struck his hands together above +his head. 'Thy father!' he cried, 'Thy father! It is he who speaks—it +is he speaking in thee. Such words come not unaided from the mouth of +eighteen, from the mouth of one confirmed by these very hands. <i>Ach</i>, +miserable maiden, it is not with such as thee that Paradise is peopled. +The taint of thy parentage is heavy upon thee. Thou art not, thou canst +not be, thou hast never been, a child of God.'</p> + +<p>And that was all I got for my pains.</p> + +<p>Tell me, what mood were you in when you wrote? Was it not, apart from +its dejection, one rather inclined to peevishness? You ask, for +instance, why I write so much about a tipsy trumpeter when I know you +are anxious to hear about the other things I never tell you. I can't +imagine what they are. You must let me write how and what I like—bear +with me while I discourse of roses and nasturtium-beds, of rain and +sunshine, clouds and wind, cats, birds, servants, even trumpeters. My +life holds nothing greater than these. If you want to hear from me you +must hear also of them. And why have you taken so bitter a dislike to +our gifted young neighbor down the hill, calling him contemptuously a +fiddler? He is certainly a fiddler, if to fiddle in one's hours of ease +produces one, and perhaps you would be twice as happy as you are if you +could fiddle half so wonderfully as he does. He is gone. His holiday +either came to an end or was put to an end by Johanna's <i>fiancé.</i> Now, +in these early September days, this season of mists and mellow +fruitfulness, of cloudy mornings and calm evenings and golden +afternoons, he has turned his back on the hills and forests, on the +reddening creepers and sweetening grapes, on the splash of water among +ferns and rocks, on all those fresh, quiet things that make life worth +having, and is sitting at a desk somewhere in Berlin doggedly bent on +becoming, by means of a great outlay of days and years, a <i>Landrath</i>, a +<i>Regierungsrath,</i> a <i>Geheimrath</i>, and a <i>Wirklicher Geheimrath mit dem +Prädikat Excellenz</i>. When he has done that he will take down his hat and +go forth at last to enjoy life, and will find to his surprise that it +isn't there, that it is all behind him, a heap of dusty days piled in +the corners of offices, and that his knees shake as he goes about +looking for it, and that he can no longer even tune his fiddle by +himself but has to have it done for him by the footman.</p> + +<p>Isn't that what happens to all you wise men, so prudently determined to +make your way in the world? You must be very sure of another life, or +how could you bear to squander this? The things you are missing—oh, the +things you are missing!—while you so carefully add little gain to +little gain, or what I would rather call little loss to little loss. I +see no point in slaving day after day through one's best years. Suppose +you do not, in the end, have a footman to open your door—the footman +is merely a symbol, conveniently expressing the multitude of +superfluities that gather about the declining years of the person who +has got on, things bought with the sacrifice of his life, and none of +them giving him back the lost power, gone with youth, to enjoy +them—suppose, then, you do not end gloriously with a footman, what of +that? I must be blind, for I never can see the desirability of these +trappings. Yet they surely are of an immense desirability, since +everybody, really everybody, is willing to give so much in payment for +them. Our elder neighbor down the hill has actually given his eyes and +his back; he peers at life through spectacles, and walks about like +Wordsworth's leech-gatherer, bent double through poking about for years +in the muddy pools of little boys' badly written exercises; and here he +is at fifty still not satisfied with what he has earned, still going on +drudging the whole year round, except for his six short weeks in summer. +His wife is thrifty; they have only the one son; they live frugally; +long ago they must have put by enough to keep them warm and fed and +clothed without his doing another stroke of work.</p> + +<p>I was interrupted there by a message from him asking if I would come +down and help him gather up the windfalls in his orchard, his wife being +busy pickling beans. I went, my head full of what I had just been +writing to you, and I gathered up together with the apples a little +lesson in the foolishness of officious and hasty criticism. It was this +way:</p> + +<p>Our baskets being full, and our backs rested, he groaned and said that +in another week he must leave for Weimar.</p> + +<p>'But you like your work,' said I.</p> + +<p>'I detest my work,' he said peevishly. 'I detest teaching. I detest +little boys.'</p> + +<p>'Then why—' I began, but stopped.</p> + +<p>'Why? Why? Because I detest it is no reason why I should not do it.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, it is.'</p> + +<p>'What, and at my age begin another?'</p> + +<p>'No, no.'</p> + +<p>'You would not have me idle?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, I would.'</p> + +<p>He stared at me gravely through his spectacles. 'This is unprincipled,' +he said.</p> + +<p>I laughed. It is years since I have observed that the principled groan a +good deal and make discontented criticisms of life, and I don't think I +care to be one of them.</p> + +<p>'It is,' he persisted, seeing that I only laughed.</p> + +<p>'Is it?' said I.</p> + +<p>'It is man's lot to work,' said he.</p> + +<p>'Is it?' said I.</p> + +<p>'Certainly,' said he.</p> + +<p>'All day?'</p> + +<p>'If he cannot get it done in less time, certainly.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Every</i> day?'</p> + +<p>'Certainly.'</p> + +<p>'All through the years of his life?'</p> + +<p>'All through the years of his strength, certainly.'</p> + +<p>'What for?'</p> + +<p>'My dear young lady, have you been living again on vegetables lately?'</p> + +<p>'Why?'</p> + +<p>'Your words sound as though your thoughts were watery.'</p> + +<p>A nettled silence fell upon me, and while I was arranging how best to +convince him of their substance he was shaking his head and saying that +it was strange how the most intelligent women are unable really to +think. 'Water,' he continued, 'is indispensable in its proper place and +good in many others where, strictly, it might be done without. I have +nothing to say against watery emotions, watery sentiments, even watery +affections, especially in ladies, who would be less charming in +proportion as they were more rigid. Ebb and flow, uncertainty, +instability, unaccountableness, are becoming to your sex. But in the +region of thought, of the intellect, of pure reason, everything should +be very dry. The one place, my dear young lady, in which I will endure +no water is on the brain.'</p> + +<p>I had no answer ready. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to go +home. I did go a few steps up the orchard, reflecting on the way men +have of telling you you cannot think, or are not logical, at the very +moment when you appear to yourself to be most unanswerable—a +regrettable habit that at once puts a stop to interesting +conversation,—and presently, as I was nearing our fence, he called +after me. 'Fräulein Rose-Marie,' he called pleasantly.</p> + +<p>'Well?' said I, looking down at him over a displeased shoulder.</p> + +<p>'Come back.'</p> + +<p>'No.'</p> + +<p>'Come back and dine with us.'</p> + +<p>'No.'</p> + +<p>'There is mutton for dinner, and before that a soup full of the +concentrated strength of beasts. Up there I know you will eat carrots +and stewed apples, and I shall never be able to make you see what I +see.'</p> + +<p>'Heaven forbid that I ever should.'</p> + +<p>'What, you do not desire to be reasonable?'</p> + +<p>'I don't choose to argue with you.'</p> + +<p>'Have I done anything?'</p> + +<p>'You are not logical enough for me,' said I, anxious to be beforehand +with the inevitable remark.</p> + +<p>'Come, come,' said he, his face crinkling into smiles.</p> + +<p>'It's true,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Come back and prove it.'</p> + +<p>'Useless.'</p> + +<p>'You cannot.'</p> + +<p>'I will not.'</p> + +<p>'It is the same thing.'</p> + +<p>I went on up the hill.</p> + +<p>'Fräulein Rose-Marie!'</p> + +<p>'Well?'</p> + +<p>'Come back.'</p> + +<p>'No.'</p> + +<p>'Come back, and tell me why you think I ought to give up my work and sit +for the rest of my days with hanging hands.'</p> + +<p>I turned and looked down at him. 'Because,' I said, 'are you not fifty? +And is not that high time to begin and get something out of life?'</p> + +<p>He adjusted his spectacles, and stared up at me attentively. 'Continue,' +he said.</p> + +<p>'I look at your life, at all those fifty years of it, and I see it +insufferably monotonous.'</p> + +<p>'Continue.'</p> + +<p>'Dull.'</p> + +<p>'Continue.'</p> + +<p>'Dusty.'</p> + +<p>'Continue.'</p> + +<p>'Dreary.'</p> + +<p>'Continue.' He nodded his head gently at each adjective and counted them +off on his fingers.</p> + +<p>'I see it full of ink-spots, dog-eared grammars, and little boys.'</p> + +<p>'Continue.'</p> + +<p>'It is a constant going over the same ground—in itself a maddening +process. No sooner do the boys reach a certain age and proficiency and +become slightly more interesting than they go on to somebody else, and +you begin again at the beginning with another batch. You teach in a +bare-walled room with enormous glaring windows, and the ring of the +electric tram-bell in the street below makes the commas in your +sentences. You have been doing this every day for thirty years. The boys +you taught at first are fathers of families now. The trees in the +playground have grown from striplings into big shady things. Everything +has gone on, and so have you—but you have only gone on getting drier +and more bored.'</p> + +<p>'Continue,' said he, smiling.</p> + +<p>'Your intelligence,' said I, coming down a little nearer, 'restless at +first, and for ever trying to push green shoots through the thick rind +of routine—'</p> + +<p>'Good. Quite good. Continue.'</p> + +<p>'—through to a wider space, a more generous light—'</p> + +<p>'Poetic. Quite poetic. My compliments.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you. Your intelligence, then, for ever—for ever—you've +interrupted me, and I don't know where I'd got to.'</p> + +<p>'You have got to my intelligence having green shoots.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes. Well, they're not green now. That's the point I've been +stumbling toward. They ought to be, if you had taken bigger handfuls of +leisure and had not wholly wasted your time drudging. But now they ought +to be more than shoots—great trees, in whose shade we all would sit +gratefully, and you enjoying free days, with the pleasant memory of free +years behind you and the cheerful hope of roomy years to come. And +during all that time of your imprisonment in a class-room the world +outside went on its splendid way, the seasons filled it with beauty +which you were not there to see, the sun shone and warmed other people, +the winds blew and made other people's flesh tingle and their blood +dance—you, of course, were cramped up with cold feet and a +headache—the birds sang to other people tunes of heaven, while in your +ears buzzed only the false quantities of reluctant little boys, the +delicious rain—'</p> + +<p>'Stop, stop. You forget I had to earn a living.'</p> + +<p>'Of course you had. But you know you earned your <i>living</i> long ago. What +you are earning now is much more like your dying—the dying, the atrophy +of your soul. What does it matter if your wife has one bonnet less a +year, and no silk dress—'</p> + +<p>'Do not let her hear you,' he said, glancing round.</p> + +<p>'—or if you keep no servant, and have less to eat on Sundays than your +neighbors, give no parties, and don't cumber yourselves up with +acquaintances who care nothing for you? If you gave up these things you +could also give up drudging. You are too old to drudge. You have been +too old these twenty years. A man of your brains—' he pretended to look +grateful—'who cannot earn enough between twenty and thirty to keep him +from the necessity of slaving for the rest of his days is not—is not—'</p> + +<p>'Worthy of the name of man?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know that that's a great thing,' said I doubtfully.</p> + +<p>'Let it pass. It is an accepted ending to a sentence beginning as yours +did. And now, my dear young lady, you have preached me a sermon—'</p> + +<p>'Not a sermon.'</p> + +<p>'Permitted me, then, to be present at a lecture—'</p> + +<p>'Not a lecture.'</p> + +<p>'Anyhow held forth on the unworthily puny outer conditions of my +existence. Tell me, now, one thing. I concede the ink-spots, the little +boys, the monotony, the tram-bells, the regrettable number of years; +they are all there, and you with your vivid imagination see them all. +But tell me one thing: has it never occurred to you that they are the +merest shell, the merest husk and envelopment, and that it is possible +that in spite of them—' his voice grew serious—'my life may be very +rich within?'</p> + +<p>And you, my friend, tell me another thing. Am I not desperately, +hopelessly horrid? Short-sighted? Impertinent? The readiest jumper at +conclusions? The most arrogant critic of other people? Rich within. Of +course. Hidden with God. That is what I have never seen when I have +looked on superciliously from the height of my own idleness at these +drudging lives. And see how amazing has been my foolishness, for would +not my own life judged from outside, this life here alone with Papa, +this restricted, poor, solitary life, my first youth gone, my future +without prospects, no distractions, few friends, Papa's affection +growing vaguer as he grows older, would it not, looked at as I have been +looking at my neighbor's, seem entirely blank and desolate? Yet how +sincerely can I echo what he said—My life is very rich within. Yours +sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Sept. 16th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It is kind of you to want to contradict what I +said in my last letter about the outward appearance of my life, but +really you know I <i>am</i> past my first youth. At twenty-six I cannot +pretend to be what is known as a young girl, and I don't want to. Not +for anything would I be seventeen or eighteen again. I like to be a +woman grown, to have entered into the full possession of whatever +faculties I am to have, to know what I want, to look at things in their +true proportions. I don't know that eighteen has anything that +compensates for that. It is such a rudderless sort of age. It may be +more charming to the beholder, but it is not half so nice to the person +herself. What is the good of loving chocolate to distraction when it +only ends by making you sick? And the joy of a new frock or hat is +dashed at once when you meet the superior gorgeousness of some other +girl's frock or hat. And parties are often disappointing things. And +students, though they are deeply interesting, easily lead to tiresome +complications if they admire you, and if they don't that isn't very nice +either. Why, even the young man in the cake-shop who used so gallantly +to serve us with lemonade and had such wonderful curly eyelashes was not +much good really, for he couldn't be invited to tea, and whenever we +wanted to look at his eyelashes we had to buy a cake, and cakes are +dreadfully expensive for persons who have no money. Yes, it is a silly, +tittering, calf-like age, and I am glad it can't come back again. Please +do not think that I need comforting because it is gone, or because of +any of the other items in the list I gave you. The future looks quite +pleasant to me,—quite bright and sunny. It is only empty of what people +call prospects, by which I take them to mean husbands, but I shall fill +it with pigs instead. I have great plans. I see what can be done with +even one pig from my neighbor's example, who has dug out a sort of +terrace and put a sty on it: simply wonders. And how much more could be +done with two. I mean to be a very happy old maid. I shall fix my +attention in the mornings on remunerative objects like pigs, and spend +beautiful afternoons, quite idle physically but with my soul busy up +among the poets. Later on in distant years, when Papa doesn't want me +any more, I shall try to find a little house somewhere where it is flat, +so that I can have other creatures about me besides bees, which are the +only live stock I can keep here. And you mustn't think I shall not be +happy, because I shall. <i>So happy</i>. I am happy now, and I mean to be +happy then; and when I am very old and have to die I shall be happy +about that too. I shall 'lay me down with a will,' as the bravest of +your countrymen sang.</p> + +<p>Do my plans seem to you selfish? I expect they do. People so easily call +those selfish who stand a little aside and look on at life. We have a +poet of whom we are proud, but whose fame has not, I think, reached +across to England, a rugged, robust poet, not very far below Goethe, a +painter on large canvasses, best at mighty scenes, perhaps least good in +small things, in lyrics, in the things in which Heine was so exquisite; +and he for my encouragement has said,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bei sich selber fangt man an,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Da man nicht Allen helfen kann.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Isn't it a nice jingle? The man's name is Hebbel, and he lived round +about the forties, and perhaps you know more of him than I do, and I +have been arrogant again; but it is a jingle that has often cheered me +when I was afraid I ought to be teaching somebody something, or making +clothes for somebody, or paying somebody domiciliary visits and talking +fluently of the <i>lieber Gott</i>. I shrink from these things; and a +shrinking visitor, shy and uncertain, cannot be so nice as no visitor at +all. Is it very wrong of me? When my conscience says it is—it does not +say so often—I try to make up by going into the kitchen and asking +Johanna kind questions about her mother. I must say she is rather odd +when I do. She not only doesn't meet me half-way, she doesn't come even +part of the way. She clatters her saucepans with an energy very like +fury, and grows wholly monosyllabic. Yet it is not her step-mother; it +is her very own mother, and it ought to be the best way of touching +responsive chords in her heart and making her feel I am not merely a +mistress but a friend. Once, struck by the way the lids of the saucepans +were falling about, I tried her with her father, but the din instantly +became so terrific that I was kept silent quite a long time, and when it +left off felt instinctively that I had better say something about the +weather. I don't think I told you that after that trumpeting Sunday, +moved to real compassion by the sufferings of him you call the fiddler +man, I took my courage in both hands and told Johanna with the +pleasantest of smiles—I daresay it was really a rather ghastly +one—that her trumpeter must not again bring his instrument with him +when he called. 'It can so very well stay at home,' I explained suavely.</p> + +<p>She immediately said she would leave on the first of October.</p> + +<p>'But, Johanna!' I cried.</p> + +<p>She repeated the formula.</p> + +<p>'But, Johanna! How can a clever girl like you be so unreasonable? He is +to visit you as often as before. All we beg is that it shall be done +without music.'</p> + +<p>She repeated the formula.</p> + +<p>'But, Johanna!' I expostulated again,—eloquent exclamation, expressing +the most varied sentiments.</p> + +<p>She once again repeated the formula; and next day I was forced to +descend into Jena, shaking an extremely rueful fist at the neighbor's +house on the way, and set about searching in the obscurity of a registry +office for the pearl we are trying all our lives to find.</p> + +<p>This office consists of two rooms, the first filled with servants +looking for mistresses, and the second with mistresses looking for +servants. A Fräulein of vague age but determined bearing sits at a desk +in the second room, and notes in a ledger the requirements of both +parties. They are always the same: the would-be mistress, full of a +hopefulness that crops up again and again to the end of her days, +causing attributes like <i>fleissig, treu, ehrlich, anständig, +arbeitslieb, kinderlieb</i>, to be written down together with her demands +in cooking, starching, and ironing, and often adding the information +that though the wages may appear small they are not really so, owing to +the unusually superior quality of the treatment; and the would-be maid, +briefer because without illusions, dictates her firm resolve to go +nowhere where there is cooking, washing, or a baby.</p> + +<p>'<i>Gott, diese Mädchen</i>,' exclaimed a waiting lady to me as I arrived, +hot and ruffled after my long tramp in the sun. I dropped into a chair +beside her; and hot and ruffled as I was, she, who had been sitting +there hours, was still more so. In her agitation she had cried out to +the first human being at hand, the Fräulein at the desk having something +too distinctly inhuman about her—strange as a result of her long and +intimate intercourse with human beings—to be lightly applied to for +sympathy. Then looking at me again she cried, 'Why, it is the good +Rose-Marie!' And I saw she was an old friend of my step-mother's, Frau +Meyer, the wife of one of the doctors at the Lunatic Asylum, who used to +come in often while you were with us, and whenever she came in you went +out.</p> + +<p>'Not married yet?' she asked as we shook hands, smiling as though the +joke were good.</p> + +<p>I smiled with an equal conviction of its goodness, and said I was not.</p> + +<p>'Not even engaged?'</p> + +<p>'Not even engaged,' said I, smiling more broadly, as if infinitely +tickled.</p> + +<p>'You must be quick,' said she.</p> + +<p>I admitted the necessity by a nod.</p> + +<p>'You are twenty-six—I know your age because poor Emilie'—Emilie was my +step-mother—'was married ten years, and when she married you were +sixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I had +already had four children. What do you think of that?'</p> + +<p>I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to the +waiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean, +honest—'</p> + +<p>'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyer +with a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the first +coffee-party of the season—'</p> + +<p>'What, in summer?'</p> + +<p>'It is not summer in September. If the weather chooses to pretend it is +I cannot help it. It is autumn, and I will no longer endure the want of +social gatherings. Invariably I find the time between the last Coffee of +spring and the first of autumn almost unendurable. What do you do, +Rose-Marie, up there on that horrible mountain of yours, to pass the +time?'</p> + +<p>Pass the time? I who am so much afraid of Time's passing me that I try +to catch at him as he goes, pull him back, make him creep slowly while I +squeeze the full preciousness out of every minute? I gazed at her +abstractedly, haunted by the recollection of flying days, days gone so +quickly, vanished before I well knew how happy I was being. 'I really +couldn't tell you,' I said.</p> + +<p>'Hard-working, clean, honest,—' read out the Fräulein, reminding me +that I was busy.</p> + +<p>'Moral,' I dictated, 'able to wash—'</p> + +<p>'You will never find one,' interrupted Frau Meyer again. 'At least, +never one who is both moral and able to wash. Two good things don't go +together with these girls, I find. The trouble I am in for want of one! +They are as scarce and as expensive as roses in December. Since April I +have had three, and all had to leave by the merest accident—nothing at +all to do with the place or me; but the ones in there seem to know there +have been three in the time, and make the most extravagant demands. I +have been here the whole morning, and am in despair.'</p> + +<p>She stopped to fan herself with her handkerchief.</p> + +<p>'Able to wash,' I resumed, 'iron, cook, mend—have you any one suitable, +Fräulein?'</p> + +<p>'Many,' was the laconic answer.</p> + +<p>'I'm afraid we cannot give more than a hundred and sixty marks,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Pooh,' said Frau Meyer; and there was a pause in the scratching of the +pen.</p> + +<p>'But there are no children,' I continued.</p> + +<p>The pen went on more glibly. Frau Meyer fanned herself harder.</p> + +<p>'And only two <i>Herrschaften</i>.'</p> + +<p>The pen skimmed over the paper.</p> + +<p>'We live up—we live up on the Galgenberg.'</p> + +<p>The pen stopped dead.</p> + +<p>'You will never find one who will go up there,' cried Frau Meyer +triumphantly. 'I need not fear your taking a good one away from me. They +will not leave the town.'</p> + +<p>The Fräulein rang a bell and called out a name. 'It is another one for +you, Frau Doctor,' she said; and a large young lady came in from the +other room. 'The general servant Fräulein Ottilie Krummacher—Frau +Doctor Meyer,' introduced the Fräulein. 'I think you may suit each +other.'</p> + +<p>'It is time you showed me some one who will,' groaned Frau Meyer. 'Six +have I already interviewed, and the demands of all are enough to make my +mother, who was Frau Gutsbesitzer Grosskopf of the Grosskopfs of +Grosskopfsecke, born Knoblauch, and a lady of the most exact knowledge +in household matters, turn in her grave.'</p> + +<p>'Town?' asked the large girl quickly, hardly allowing Frau Meyer to get +to a full stop, and obviously callous as to the Grosskopfs of +Grosskopfsecke.</p> + +<p>'Yes, yes—here, overlooking the market-place and the interesting statue +of the electoral founder of the University. No way to go, therefore, to +market. Enlivening scenes constantly visible from the windows—'</p> + +<p>'Which floor?'</p> + +<p>'Second. Shallow steps, and a nice balustrade. Really hardly higher than +the first floor, or even than an ordinary ground floor, the rooms being +very low.'</p> + +<p>'Washing?'</p> + +<p>'Done out of the house. Except the smallest, fewest trifles such +as—such as—ahem. The ironing, dear Fräulein, I will do mostly myself. +There are the shirts, you know—husbands are particular—'</p> + +<p>'How many?'</p> + +<p>'How many?' echoed Frau Meyer. 'How many what?'</p> + +<p>'Husbands.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Aber</i>, Fräulein,' expostulated the secretary.</p> + +<p>'She said husbands,' said the large girl. 'Shirts, then—how many? It's +all the same.'</p> + +<p>'All the same?' cried Frau Meyer, who adored her husband.</p> + +<p>'In the work it makes.'</p> + +<p>'But, dear Fräulein, the shirts are not washed at home.'</p> + +<p>'But ironed.'</p> + +<p>'I iron them.'</p> + +<p>'And I heat the irons and keep up the fire to heat them with.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, yes,' cried Frau Meyer, affecting the extreme pleasure of one who +has just received an eager assurance, 'so you do.'</p> + +<p>The large girl stared. 'Cooking?' she inquired, after a slightly stony +pause.</p> + +<p>'Most of that I will do myself, also. The Herr is very particular. I +shall only need a little—quite a little assistance. And think of all +the new and excellent dishes you will learn to make.'</p> + +<p>The girl waved this last inducement aside as unworthy of consideration. +'Number of persons in the household?'</p> + +<p>Frau Meyer coughed before she could answer. 'Oh,' said she, 'oh, +well—there is my husband, and naturally myself, and then there +are—there are—are you fond of children?' she ended hastily.</p> + +<p>The girl fixed her with a suspicious eye. 'It depends how many there +are,' she said cautiously.</p> + +<p>Frau Meyer got up and leaned over the Fräulein at the desk, and +whispered into her impassive ear.</p> + +<p>The Fräulein shook her head. 'I am afraid it is no use,' she said.</p> + +<p>Frau Meyer whispered again. The Fräulein looked up, and fastening her +eyes on a point somewhere below the large girl's chin said, 'The wages +are good.'</p> + +<p>'What are they?' asked the girl.</p> + +<p>'Considering the treatment you will receive—' the girl's eyes again +became suspicious—'they are excellent.'</p> + +<p>'What are they?'</p> + +<p>'Everything found, and a hundred and eighty marks a year.'</p> + +<p>The girl turned and walked toward the door.</p> + +<p>'Stop! Stop!' cried Frau Meyer desperately. 'I cannot see you throw away +a good place with so little preliminary reflection. Have you considered +that there would be no trudging to market, and consequently you will +only require half the boots and stockings and skirts those poor girls +have to buy who live up in the villas that look so grand and pretend to +give such high wages?'</p> + +<p>The girl paused.</p> + +<p>'And no steep stairs to climb, laden with heavy baskets? And hardly any +washing—hardly any washing, I tell you!' she almost shrieked in her +anxiety. 'And no cooking to speak of? And every Sunday—mind, <i>every</i> +Sunday evening free? And I never scold, and my husband never scolds, and +with a hundred and eighty marks a year there is nothing a clever girl +cannot buy. Why, it is an ideal, a delightful place—one at which I +would jump if I were a girl, and this lady'—indicating me—'would jump, +too, would you not, Rose-Marie?'</p> + +<p>The girl wavered. 'How many children are there?' she asked.</p> + +<p>'Children? Children? Angels, you mean. They are perfect angels, so good +and well-behaved—are they not, Rose-Marie? Fit to go at once to +heaven—<i>unberufen</i>—without a day's more training, so little would they +differ in manner when they got there from angels who have been used to +it for years. You are fond of children, Fräulein, I am sure. Naturally +you are. I see it in your nice face. No nice Fräulein is not. And these, +I tell you, are such unusual—'</p> + +<p>'How many are there?'</p> + +<p>'<i>Ach Gott</i>, there are only six, and so small still that they can hardly +be counted as six—six of the dearest—'</p> + +<p>The girl turned on her heel. 'I cannot be fond of six,' she said; and +went out with the heavy tread of finality.</p> + +<p>Frau Meyer looked at me. 'There now,' she said, in tones of real +despair.</p> + +<p>'It is very tiresome,' said I, sympathizing the more acutely that I knew +my turn was coming next.</p> + +<p>'Tiresome? It is terrible. In two days I have my Coffee, and no—and +no—and no—' She burst into tears, hiding her face from the +dispassionate stare of the Fräulein at the desk in her handkerchief, and +trying to conceal her sobs by a ceaseless blowing of her nose.</p> + +<p>'I am so sorry,' I murmured, touched by this utter melting.</p> + +<p>An impulse seized me on which I instantly acted. 'Take Johanna,' I +cried. 'Take her for that day. She will at least get you over that. She +is excellent at a party, and knows all about Coffees. I'll send her down +early, and you keep her as late as you like. She would enjoy the outing, +and we can manage quite well for one day without her.'</p> + +<p>'Is that—is that the Johanna you had in the Rauchgasse?'</p> + +<p>'Yes—trained by my step-mother—really good in an emergency.'</p> + +<p>Frau Meyer flung her arms round my neck. '<i>Ach danke, danke, Du liebes, +gutes Kind</i>!' she cried, embracing me with a warmth that showed me what +heaps of people she must have asked to her party.</p> + +<p>And I, after the first flush of doing a good deed was over and cool +reflection had resumed its sway, which it did by the time I was toiling +up the hill on the way home after having been unanimously rejected as +mistress by the assembled maidens, I repented; for was not Johanna now +my only hope? 'Frau Meyer,' whispered Reflection in my despondent ear, +'will engage her to go to her permanently on the 1st, and she will go +because of the twenty marks more salary. You have been silly. Of course +she would have stayed with you with a little persuasion rather than have +to look for another place and spend her money at a registry-office. It +is not likely, however, that she will refuse a situation costing her +nothing.'</p> + +<p>But see how true it sometimes is that virtue is rewarded. Johanna went +down as I had promised, and worked all day for Frau Meyer. She was given +a thaler as a present, as much cake and coffee as she could consume, and +received the offer of a permanent engagement when she should leave us. +This she told me standing by my bedside late that night, the candle in +her hand lighting up her heated, shining face, and hair dishevelled by +exertion. 'But,' said she, 'Fräulein Rose-Marie, not for the world would +I take the place. Such a restless lady, such a nervous gentleman, such +numbers of spoilt and sprawling children. If I had not been there today +and beheld it from the inside I would have engaged myself to go. But +after this—' she waved the candle—'never.'</p> + +<p>'What are you going to do, then, Johanna?' I asked, thinking wistfully +of the four years we had passed together.</p> + +<p>'Stay here,' she announced defiantly.</p> + +<p>I put my arms round her neck and kissed her.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Sept. 23d.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Today I went down to Jena with the girl from next +door who wanted to do such mild shopping as Jena is prepared for, mild +shopping suited to mild purses, and there I drifted into the bookshop in +the market-place where I so often used to drift, and there I found a +book dealing with English poetry from Chaucer onward, with pictures of +the poets who had written it. But before I go on about that—and you'll +be surprised at the amount I have to say—I must explain the girl next +door. I don't think I ever told you that there is one. The neighbor let +his house just before he left, and let it unexpectedly well, the people +taking the upper part of it for a whole year, and this is their +daughter. The neighbor went off jubilant to his little inky boys. 'See,' +said he at parting, 'my life actually threatens to become rich without +as well as within.'</p> + +<p>'Don't,' I murmured, turning as hot as people do when they are reminded +of past foolishness.</p> + +<p>The new neighbors have been here ten days, and I made friends at once +with the girl over the fence. She saw me gathering together into one +miserable haycock the September grass Johanna and I had been hacking at +in turns with a sickle for the last week, and stood watching me with so +evident an interest that at last I couldn't help smiling at her. 'This +is our crop for the winter,' I said, pointing to the haycock; I protest +I have seen many a molehill bigger.</p> + +<p>'It isn't much,' said the girl.</p> + +<p>'No,' I agreed, raking busily.</p> + +<p>'Have you a cow?' she asked.</p> + +<p>'No.'</p> + +<p>'A pig?'</p> + +<p>'No.'</p> + +<p>'No animals?'</p> + +<p>'Bees.'</p> + +<p>The girl was silent; then she said bees were not animals.</p> + +<p>'But they're live-stock,' I said. 'They're the one link that connects us +with farming.'</p> + +<p>'What do you make hay for, then?'</p> + +<p>'Only to keep the grass short, and then we try to imagine it's a lawn.'</p> + +<p>Raking, I came a little nearer; and so I saw she had been, quite +recently, crying.</p> + +<p>I looked at her more attentively. She was pretty, with the prettiness of +twenty; round and soft, fair and smooth. She had on an elaborately +masculine shirt and high stiff collar and tie and pin and belt; and from +under the edge of the hard straw hat tilted up at the back by masses of +burnished coils of hair I saw a pulpy red mouth, the tip of an +indeterminate nose, and two unhappy eyes, tired with crying.</p> + +<p>'How early to begin,' I said.</p> + +<p>'Begin what?'</p> + +<p>'It's not nine yet. Do you always get your crying done by breakfast +time?'</p> + +<p>She flushed all over her face.</p> + +<p>'Forgive me,' I said, industriously raking. 'I'm a rude person.'</p> + +<p>The girl was silent for a few moments; considering, I suppose, whether +she should turn her back on the impertinent stranger once and for all, +or forgive the indiscretion and make friends.</p> + +<p>Well, she made friends. She and I, alone up on the hill, the only +creatures of anything like the same age, sure to see each other +continually in the forests, on the road, over the fence, certainly we +were bound either to a tiresome system of pretending to be unaware of +each other's existence or to be friends. We are friends. It is the +wisest thing to be at all times. In ten days we have become fast +friends, and after the first six she left off crying.</p> + +<p>Now I'll tell you why we have done it so quickly. It is not, as perhaps +you know, my practice to fall easily on the stranger's neck. I am too +lumbering, too slow, too acutely conscious of my shortcomings for that; +really too dull and too awkward for anything but a life almost entirely +solitary. But this girl has lately been in love. It is the common fate. +It happens to us all. That in itself would not stir me to friendship. +The man, however, in defiance of German custom, so strong on this point +that the breaking of it makes a terrific noise, after being publicly +engaged to her, after letting things go so far that the new flat was +furnished, and the wedding-guests bidden, said he was afraid he didn't +love her enough and gave her up.</p> + +<p>When she told me that my heart went out to her with a rush. I shall not +stop to explain why, but it did rush, and from that moment I felt that I +must put my arms round her, I, the elder and quieter, take her by the +hand, help her to dry her poor silly eyes, pet her and make her happy +again. And really after six days there was no more crying, and for the +last three she has been looking at life with something of the critical +indifference that lifts one over so many tiresome bits of the road. +Unfortunately her mother doesn't like me. Don't you think it's dreadful +of her not to? She fears I am emancipated, and knows that I am Schmidt. +If I were a Wedel, or an Alvensleben, or a Schulenburg, or of any other +ancient noble family, even an obscure member of its remotest branch, she +would consider my way of living and talking merely as a thing to be +smiled at with kind indulgence. But she knows that I am Schmidt. Nothing +I can say or do, however sweet and sane, can hide that horrid fact. And +she knows that my father is a careless child of nature, lamentably +unimpressible by birth and office; that my mother was an Englishwoman +with a name inspiring little confidence; and that we let ourselves go to +an indecent indifference to appearances, not even trying to conceal that +we are poor. How useless it is to be pleasant and pretty—I really have +been very pleasant to her, and the daughter kindly tells me I am +pretty—if you are both Schmidt and poor. Though I speak with the +tongues of angels and have no family it avails me nothing. If I had +family and no charity I would get on much better in the world, in +defiance of St. Paul. Frau von Lindeberg would take me to her heart, +think me distinguished where now she thinks me odd, think me witty where +now she thinks me bold, listen to my speeches, laugh at my sallies, be +interested in my gardening and in my efforts to live without meat; but +here I am, burning, I hope, with charity, with love for my neighbors, +with ready sympathy, eager friendliness, desire to be of use, and it all +avails me nothing because my name is Schmidt.</p> + +<p>It is the first time I have been brought into daily contact with our +nobility. In Jena there were very few: rare bright spots here and there +on the sober background of academic middle-class; little stars whose +shining even from a distance made us blink. Now I see them every day, +and find them very chilly and not in the least dazzling. I no longer +blink. Perhaps Frau von Lindeberg feels that I do not, and cannot +forgive an unblinking Schmidt. But really, now, these pretensions are +very absurd. The free blood of the Watsons surges within me at the sight +of them. I think of things like Albion's daughters, and Britannia ruling +waves, and I feel somehow that it is a proud thing to be partly Watson +and to have had progenitors who lived in a house called The Acacias in a +street called Plantagenet Road, which is what the Watsons did. What +claims have these Lindebergs to the breathless, nay, sprawling respect +they apparently demand? Here is a retired Colonel who was an officer all +his life, and, not clever enough to go on to the higher military +positions, was obliged to retire at fifty. He belongs to a good family, +and married some one of slightly better birth than his own. She was a +Freiin—Free Lady—von Dammerlitz, a family, says Papa, large, +unpleasant, and mortgaged. It has given Germany no great warriors or +statesmen. Its sons have all been officers who did not turn that corner +round which the higher honors lie, and its daughters either did not +marry at all, being portionless, or married impossible persons, said +Papa, such as—</p> + +<p>'Such as?' I inquired, expecting to hear they married postmen.</p> + +<p>'Pastors, my dear,' said Papa smiling.</p> + +<p>'Pastors?' I said, surprised, pastors having seemed to me, who view them +from their own level, eminently respectable and desirable as husbands.</p> + +<p>'But not from the Dammerlitz point of view, my dear,' said Papa.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' said I, trying to imagine how pastors would look seen from that.</p> + +<p>Well, here are these people freezing us into what they consider our +proper place whenever we come across them, taking no pains to hide what +undesirable beings we are in their sight, staring at Papa's hat in +eloquent silence when it is more than usually tilted over one ear, +running eyes that chill my blood over my fustian clothes—I'm not sure +what fustian is, but I'm quite sure my clothes are made of it—oddly +deaf when we say anything, oddly blind when we meet anywhere unless we +actually run into them, here they are, doing all these things every day +with a repeated gusto, and with no reason whatever that I can see to +support their pretensions. Is it so wonderful to be a <i>von</i>? For that is +all, look as I will, that I can see they have to go on. They are poor, +as the retired officer invariably is, and they spend much time +pretending they are not. They know nothing; he has spent his best years +preoccupied with the routine of his calling, which leaves no room for +anything approaching study or interest in other things, she in bringing +up her son, also an officer, and in taking her daughter to those parties +in Berlin that so closely resemble, I gather from the girl Vicki's talk, +the parties in Jena—a little wider, a little more varied, with more +cups and glasses, and with, of course, the chance we do not have in Jena +of seeing some one quite new, but on the whole the same. He is a solemn +elderly person in a black-rimmed <i>pince-nez</i>, dressed in clothes that +give one the impression of always being black. He vegetates as +completely as any one I have ever seen or dreamed of. Prolonged coffee +in the morning, prolonged newspaper-reading, and a tortoise-like turn in +the garden kill his mornings. Dinner, says Vicki, kills another hour and +a half; then there is what we call the Dinner Sleep on the sofa in his +darkened room, and that brings him to coffee time. They sit over the +cups till Vicki wants to scream, at least she wants to since she has +known me, she says; up to then, after her miserable affair, she sat as +sluggishly as the others, but huddled while they were straight, and +red-eyed, which they were not. After coffee the parents walk up the road +to a certain point, and walk back again. Then comes the evening paper, +which he reads till supper-time, and after supper he smokes till he goes +to bed.</p> + +<p>'Why, he's hardly alive at all,' I said to Vicki, when she described +this existence.</p> + +<p>She shrugged her shoulders. 'It's what they all do,' she said, 'all the +retired. I've seen it a hundred times in Berlin. They're old, and they +never can start anything fresh.'</p> + +<p>'We won't be like that when we're old, will we?' I said, gazing at her +wide-eyed, struck as by a vision.</p> + +<p>She gazed back into my eyes, misgiving creeping, into hers. 'Sleep, and +eat, and read the paper?' she murmured.</p> + +<p>'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper?' I echoed.</p> + +<p>And we stared at each other in silence, and the far-away dim years +seemed to catch up what we had said, and mournfully droned back, 'Sleep, +and eat, and read the paper....'</p> + +<p>But what is to be done with girls of good family who do not marry, and +have no money? They can't go governessing, and indeed it is a dreary +trade. Vicki has learned nothing except a little cooking and other +domestic drudgery, only of use if you have a house to drudge in and a +husband to drudge for; of those pursuits that bring in money and make +you independent and cause you to flourish and keep green and lusty she +knows nothing. If I had a daughter I would bring her up with an eye +fixed entirely on a husbandless future. She should be taught some trade +as carefully as any boy. Her head should be filled with as much learning +as it would conveniently hold side by side with a proper interest in +ribbons. I would spend my days impressing her with the gloriousness of +independence, of having her time entirely at her own disposal, her life +free and clear, the world open before her, as open as it was to Adam and +Eve when they turned their backs once and for all on the cloying +sweetness of Paradise, and far more interesting that it was to them, for +it would be full of inhabitants eager to give her the hearty welcome +always awaiting those rare persons, the cheery and the brave.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' sighed Vicki, when with great eloquence and considerable +elaboration I unfolded these views, 'how beautiful!'</p> + +<p>Papa was nearer the open window under which we were sitting than I had +thought, for he suddenly popped out his head. 'It is a merciful thing, +Rose-Marie,' he said, 'that you have no daughter.'</p> + +<p>We both jumped.</p> + +<p>'She would be a most dreary young female,' he went on, smiling down as +from a pulpit on our heads, and wiping his spectacles. 'Offspring +continually goaded and galvanized by a parent, hammered upon, chiselled, +beaten out flat—'</p> + +<p>'Dear me, Papachen,' I murmured.</p> + +<p>'Beaten out flat,' said Papa, waving my interruption aside with his +spectacles, 'by the dead weight of opinions already stale, the victims +of a system, the subjects of an experiment, the prisoners of prejudice, +are bound either to flare into rank rebellion on the first opportunity +or to grow continually drearier and more conspicuously stupid.'</p> + +<p>Vicki stared first up at Papa then at me, her soft, crumpled sort of +mouth twisted into troubled surprise.</p> + +<p>Papa leaned further out and hit the window sill with his hand for all +the world like a parson hitting his pulpit's cushion. 'One word,' he +said, 'one word of praise or blame, one single word from an outsider +will have more effect upon your offspring than years of trouble taken by +yourself, mountains of doctrine preached by you, rivers of good advice, +oceans of exhortations, cautions as numerous as Abraham's posterity, +well known to have been as numerous as the sea sand, private prayers, +and public admonition.'</p> + +<p>And he disappeared with a jerk.</p> + +<p>'<i>Ach</i>,' said Vicki, much impressed.</p> + +<p>Papa popped out his head again. 'You may believe me, Rose-Marie,' he +said.</p> + +<p>'I do, Papachen,' said I.</p> + +<p>'You have to thank me for much.'</p> + +<p>'And I do,' said I heartily, smiling up at him.</p> + +<p>'But for nothing more than for leaving you free to put forth such shoots +as your nature demanded in whatever direction your instincts propelled +you.' And he disappeared and shut the window.</p> + +<p>Vicki looked at me doubtfully. 'You said beautiful things,' she said, +'and he said just the opposite. Which is true?'</p> + +<p>'Both,' said I promptly, determined not to be outdone as a prophet by +Papa.</p> + +<p>Poor Vicki. It is so hard to have life turned into a smudge when one is +only twenty. She adored this man, was so proud of him, so proud of +herself for being chosen by him. She grew, in the year during which they +were engaged, into a woman, and can never now retrace her steps back to +that fairy place of sunshine and carelessness in which we so happily +wander if we are left alone for years and years after we are supposed to +be grown up. Do you realize what a blow in the face she has received, as +well as in her unfortunate little heart? All her vanities, without which +a girl is but a poor thing, shrivelled up, her self-respect gone, her +conceit, if there was any, and I suppose there was because there always +is, gone headlong after it. A betrothal here is almost as binding and +quite as solemn as a marriage. It is announced in the papers. It is +abundantly celebrated. And the parents on both sides fall on each +other's necks and think highly of one another till the moment comes for +making settlements. The Lindebergs spent all they had laid by and +borrowed more to buy the trousseau and furnish the house. Vicki cried +bitterly when she talked of her table-napkins. She says there were +twelve dozen in twelve different patterns, and each twelve was tied up +with a pink ribbon fastened by a buckle and a bow. They had to be sold +again at a grievous loss, and the family fled from Berlin and the faces +of their acquaintances, faces crooked with the effort to sympathize when +what they really wanted to do, says Vicki, was to smile, and came to +this cheap place where they can sit in obscurity darning up the holes in +their damaged fortunes. Frau von Lindeberg, who has none of the torment +of rejected love to occupy her feelings and all the bitterness of the +social and financial blow, cannot help saying hard things to Vicki, +things pointed and poisoned with reproaches that sometimes almost verge +on taunts. The man was a good <i>parti</i> for Vicki; little money, but much +promise for the future, a good deal older than herself and already +brilliant as an officer; and during the engagement the satisfied mother +overflowed, as mothers will, with love for the creditable daughter. 'It +was so nice,' said Vicki-, dolefully sniffing. 'She seemed to love me +almost as much as she loves my brother. I was so happy. I had so much. +Then everything went at once. Mamma can't bear to think that no one will +ever want to marry me now, because I have been engaged.'</p> + +<p>Well, love is a cruel, horrible thing. Hardly ever do both the persons +love with equal enthusiasm, and if they do what is the use? It is all +bound to end in smoke and nothingness, put out by the steady drizzle of +marriage. And for the others, for the masses of people who do not love +equally, of whom one half is at a miserable disadvantage, at the mercy +absolutely of the other half, what is there but pain in the end? And +yet—and yet it is a pretty thing in its beginnings, a sweet, darling +thing. But, like a kitten, all charm and delicious ways at first, +innocent, soft, enchanting, it turns into a cat with appalling rapidity +and cruelly claws you. I'd like to know if there's a single being on +earth so happy and so indifferent that he has not got hidden away +beneath a brave show of clothes and trimmings the mark of Love's claws. +And I think most of the clawings are so ferocious that they are for a +long time ghastly tears that open and bleed again; and when with years +they slowly dry up there is always the scar, red and terrible, that +makes you wince if by any chance it is touched. That is what I think. +What do you think?</p> + +<p>Good-by.</p> + +<p>No, don't tell me what you think. I don't want to know.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Sept. 24th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Yesterday I was so much absorbed by Vicki's woes +that I never got to what I really wanted to write about. It's that book +I found in the Jena bookshop. It was second-hand and cheap, and I bought +it, and it has unkindly revenged itself by playing havoc with my +illusions. It is a collection of descriptions of what is known of the +lives of the English poets, beginning with Chaucer, who is luckily too +far away to provide much tattle, and coming down the centuries growing +bigger with gossip as it comes, till it ends with Rossetti, and +FitzGerald, and Stevenson. Each poet has his portrait. It was for that I +bought it. I cannot tell you how eagerly I looked at them. At last I was +going to see what Wordsworth looked like, and Coleridge, and Keats, and +Shelley. One of my dreams has been to go to that National Portrait +Gallery of yours in London, described in an old Baedeker I once saw, and +gaze at the faces of those whose spirits I know so well. Now I don't +want to. Can you imagine what it is like, what an extremely blessed +state it is, only to have read the works of a poet, the filtered-out +best of him, and to have lived so far from his country and from +biographies or collections of his letters that all gossip about his +private life and criticisms of his morals are unknown to you? Milton, +Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Burns, have been to me great teachers, great +examples, before whose shining image, built up out of the radiant +materials their works provided, I have spent glorious hours in worship. +Not a cloud, not a misgiving has dimmed my worship. We need +altars—anyhow we women do—and they were mine—I have not been able to +be religious in the ordinary sense, and they have taken the place of +religion. Our own best poets, Goethe, Schiller, Heine and the rest, do +not appeal to me in the same way. Goethe is wonderful, but he leaves you +sitting somehow in a cold place from which you call out at intervals +with conviction that he is immense the while you wish he would keep the +feet of your soul a little warmer. Schiller beats his patriotic drum, +his fine eyes rolling continually toward the gallery, too +unintermittently for perfect delight. Heine the exquisite, the cunning +worker in gems, the stringer of pearls on frailest golden threads, is +too mischievous, too malicious, to be set up in a temple; and then you +can't help laughing at his extraordinary gift for maddening the +respectable, at the extraordinary skill and neatness with which he +deposits poison in their tenderest places, and how can he worship who is +being made to laugh? If I knew little about our poets' lives—inevitably +I know more than I want to—I still would feel the same. There is, I +think, in their poetry nothing heavenly. It is true I bless God for +them, thank Him for having let them live and sing, for having given us +such a noble heritage, but I can't go all the way Papa goes, and melt in +a bath of rapture whenever Goethe's name is mentioned. I remember what +you said about Goethe. It has not influenced me. I do think you were +wrong. But I do, too, think that everything really heavenly in our +nation, everything purely inspired, manifestly immortal, has gone, not +into our poetry but into our music. That has absorbed our whole share of +divine fire, and left our poets nothing but the cool and conscious +exercise of their intellects.</p> + +<p>Well, I am preaching. I would make a very arrogant parson, wouldn't I, +laying down the law more often than the prophets from that safe citadel, +a pulpit; but please have patience, for I want you to comfort me. The +book really has made me unhappy. It is the kind of book you must go on +reading,—angry, rebelling at every page, but never leaving it till +you've reached the last word. Then you throw it as hard as you can into +the furthest corner of the room, and shake yourself as a dog does, come +up out of muddy water, and think to shake it off as easily as he does +his mud; but you can't, because it has burned itself into your soul. I +don't suppose you will understand what I feel. When a person possesses +very few things those few things are terribly precious. See the mother +of the only child, and compare her conduct when it coughs with the +conduct of the mother of six, all coughing. See how one agonizes; and +see with what serenity the other brings out her bottle of mixture and +pours it calmly down her children's throats. Well, I'm like the first +mother, and you are like the second. I expect you knew long ago, and +have never minded knowing, the littlenesses of my gods; but I, I felt as +unsettled while I read about them, as uneasy, as fidgety, as frightened, +as a horse being driven by somebody cruel, which knows that every minute +the lash will come down in some fresh place. Think: I knew nothing about +Harriet Westbrook and her tragic life and death; I had never heard of +Emilia Viviani; of Mary; of her whose name was Eliza, but who soared +aloft in the sunshine of Shelley's admiration re-christened Portia, only +presently to descend once more into the font and come out luridly as the +Brown Demon. I never knew that Keats loved somebody called Brawne, and +that she was unwilling, that she saw little in him, in Endymion the +godlike, the divinely gifted, and that he was so persistent, so +unworthily persistent, that the only word I can find that at all +describes it is the German <i>zappelnd.</i> I had never heard of Jean Armour, +of the headlong descent from being 'him who walked in glory and in joy, +Following his plough along the mountain-side' to hopeless black years +spent in public-houses at the beck and call—think of it, think of the +divine spirit forced to it by its body—of any one who would pay for a +drink. I never knew about Coleridge's opium, or that to Carlyle he +appeared as a helpless Psyche overspun with Church of England cobwebs, +as a weak, diffusive, weltering, ineffectual man. I never knew that +Wordsworth's greeting was a languid handful of numb, unresponsive +fingers, that his speech was prolix, thin, endlessly diluted. I never +knew that Milton had three wives, that the first one ran away from him a +month after their marriage, that he was hard to his daughters, so hard +that they wished him dead. All these things I never knew; and for years +I have been walking with glorious spirits, and have been fed on +honey-dew, and drunk the milk of Paradise. When first I saw Wordsworth's +portrait I turned cold. Don't laugh; I did actually turn cold. He had +been so much in my life. I had pictured him so wonderful. Calm; +beautiful, with the loftiest kind of beauty; faintly frosty at times, +and detached, yet gently cheery and always dignified. It is the picture +from a portrait by some one called Hancock. Very bitterly do I dislike +Hancock. It is a profile. It would, if I had seen it in the flesh, +completely have hidden from my silly short sight the inner splendors. +I'm afraid—oh, I'm afraid, and I shiver with shame to think it—that I +would have regarded him only as an elderly gentleman of irreproachable +character out of whose way it was as well to get because he showed every +sign of being a bore. Will you think me irretrievably silly when I tell +you that I cried over that picture? For one dreadful moment I stared at +it in startled horror; then I banged the book to and fled up into the +forest to cry. There was a smugness—but no, I won't think of it. I'll +upset all my theories about the face being the mirror of the soul. It +can't be. If it is, Peter Bell and The Thorn are accounted for; but who +shall account for the bleak nobility, the communings with nature on +lofty heights in the light of setting suns? Or, when he comes down +nearer, for that bright world he unlocks of things dear to memory, of +home, of childhood, of quiet places, of calm affections? And for the +tenderness with which it is done? And for its beautiful, simple +goodness?</p> + +<p>Coleridge's picture was another disillusionment, but not so great a +shock, because I have loved him less. He was so rarely inspired. I don't +think you need more than the fingers of one hand for the doing of sums +with Coleridge's inspirations. Still, it saddened me to be told he was a +helpless Psyche. I didn't like to hear about his cobwebs. I hated being +forced to know of his weakness, of his wasted life growing steadily +dingier the farther he travelled from that East that had seen him set +out so bright with morning radiance. Really, the world would be a +peaceful place if we could only keep quiet about each other's weak +points. Why are we so restless till we have pulled down, belittled, +besmudged? You'll say that without a little malice talk would grow very +dull; you'll tell me it is the salt, the froth, the sparkle, the ginger +in the ginger-beer, the mustard in the sandwich. But you must admit that +it becomes only terrible when it can't leave the few truly great spirits +alone, when it must somehow drag them down to our lower level, pointing +out—in writing, so that posterity too shall have no illusions—the +spots on the sun, the weak places in the armor, and pushing us, who want +to be left alone praying in the fore-court of the temple, down the area +steps into the kitchen. Two nights and two days have I spent feverishly +with that book. I dare not hope that I shall forget it. I have never yet +forgotten undesirable, bad things. Now, when I take my poets up with me +into the forest, and sit on one of those dusky pine-grown slopes where +the light is subdued to a mysterious gray-green and the world is quieted +into a listening silence, and far away below the roofs of Jena glisten +in the sun, and the white butterflies, like white flowers come to life, +flutter after each other across the blue curtain of heat that hangs +beyond the trees, now when I open them and begin to read the noble, +familiar words, will not those other words, those anecdotes, those +personal descriptions, those suggestions, those button-holings, leer at +me between the lines? Shall I, straining my ears after the music, not be +shown now for ever only the instrument, and how pitifully the ivory has +come off the keys? Shall I, hungering after my spiritual food, not have +pushed upon my notice, so that I am forced to look, the saucepan, +tarnished and not quite clean, in which it was cooked? Please don't tell +me you can't understand. Try to imagine yourself in my place. Come out +of that gay world of yours where you are talking or being talked to all +day long, and suppose yourself Rose-Marie Schmidt, alone in Jena, on a +hill, with books. Suppose yourself for hours and hours every day of your +life with nothing particular that you must do, that you have no +shooting, no hunting, no newspapers, no novels. Suppose you are +passionately fond of reading, and that of all reading you most love +poetry. Suppose you have inherited from a mother who loved them as much +as you do a precious shelf-full of the poets, cheap editions, entirely +free from the blight of commentaries, foot-notes, and introductory +biographies. And suppose these books in the course of years have become +your religion, your guide, the source of your best thoughts and happiest +moments—would you look on placidly while some one scrawled malicious +truths between their lines? Oh, you would not. You would feel as I do. +Think what the writers are to me, how I have built up their +personalities entirely out of the materials they gave me in their work. +They never told me horrid things about themselves. Their spirits, which +alone they talked about, were serene and white. I knew Milton was blind, +because he chose beautifully to tell me so. I knew he must have been an +appreciative and regretful husband, because no husband who did not +appreciate and regret would go so far as to talk of his deceased wife as +his late espoused saint. I knew he was a tender friend, a friend capable +of deepest love and sorrow, for in spite of Johnson's 'It is not to be +considered as the effusion of real passion,' I was convinced by the love +and sorrow of 'Lycidas.' I knew he was a man whose spirit was dissolved +continually into the highest ecstasies, who lived with all heaven before +his eyes,—briefly, I said Amen to Wordsworth's 'His soul was like a +star, and dwelt apart.' And now a series of sordid little pictures rises +up before me and chokes my Amen. I cannot bear to think of him having +two or three olives for supper and a little cold water, and then being +cross to his daughters. Of course he must be cross on such a supper. I +can't conceive it kind to drill the daughters so strictly in languages +they did not understand that they could read them aloud to him with +extraordinary correctness. I shrink from the thought of the grumbling +there was in that house of heavenly visions, grumbling and squabbling +stamped out, it is true, by the heavy parental foot wherever noticed, +but smouldering on from one occasion to the other. I cannot believe—I +wish I could—that a child will dislike a parent without cause; the +cause may be small things, a series of trifles each of little moment, +snubs too often repeated, chills too often applied, stern looks, short +words, sarcasms,—and these, as you and I both know, are quite ordinary +dulnesses, often daily ingredients of family life; but they sit with a +strange and upsetting grace on the poet of Paradise, and I would give +anything never to have heard of them.</p> + +<p>And then you know I loved FitzGerald. He had one of my best altars. You +remember you read <i>Omar Khayyam</i> twice aloud to me—once in the spring +(it was the third of April, a sudden hot day, blue and joyous, slipped +in to show God had not forgotten us between weeks of hopeless skies and +icy winds) and once last September, that afternoon we drifted down the +river past the town, away from houses and people and work and lessons, +out to where the partridges scuttled across the stubble and all the +world was golden. (That was the eleventh of September; I am rather good, +you see, at dates.) Well, now I call him Fitz, and laugh at the +description of him going about Suffolk lanes in a battered tall hat tied +on in windy weather by a handkerchief, and trailing behind him, instead +of clouds of glory, a shawl of green and black plaid. It isn't, of +course, in any way a bad thing to trail shawls after you on country +walks; there is nothing about it or him that shocks or grieves; he is +very lovable. But I don't want to laugh. I don't want to call him Fitz. +He is one of the gods in my temple, a place from which I rigorously +exclude the sense of humor. I don't like gods who are amusing. I cannot +worship and laugh simultaneously. I know that laughter is good, and I +know that even derision in small quantities is as wholesome as salt; but +I like to laugh and deride outside holy places, and not be forced to do +it while I am on my knees.</p> + +<p>Now don't say What on earth does the woman want? because it seems to me +so plain. What the woman wants is that present and future poets should +wrap themselves sternly in an impenetrable veil of anonymity. They +won't, but she can go on praying that they will. They won't, because of +the power of the passing moment, because of the pleasantness of praise, +of recognition, of personal influence, and, I suppose, but I'm not sure, +of money. Do you remember that merry rhymer Prior, how he sang</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">'Tis long ago</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Since gods came down incognito?</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Well, I wish with all my heart they had gone on doing it a little +longer. He wasn't, I think, deploring what I deplore, the absence of a +sense for the anonymous in gods, of a sense of the dignity of +separation, of retirement, of mystery, wherever there is even one spark +of the Divine; I think he thought they had all been, and that neither +incognito nor in any other form would they appear again. He implied, and +so joined himself across the centuries to the Walrus and the Carpenter, +that there were no gods to come. Well, he has been dead over a hundred +and eighty years, and they have simply flocked since then. I'd like to +write the great names on this page, the names of the poets, first and +greatest of the gods, to raise it to dignity and confound the ghost of +Prior, but I won't out of consideration for you.</p> + +<p>Does not my enthusiasm, my mountain energy, make you groan with the +deadly fatigue of him who has to listen and cannot share? I'll leave +off. My letter is growing unbecomingly fat. The air up here is so +bracing that my very unhappinesses seem after all full of zest, very +vocal, healthy griefs, really almost enjoying themselves. I'll go back +to my pots. I'm busy today, though you mightn't think it, making apple +jelly out of our very own apples. I'll go back to my pots and +forget—no, I won't make a feeble joke I was just going to make, because +of what I know your face would look like when you read it. After all, I +believe I'm more than a little bit frightened of you.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLVII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Sept. 30th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—How nice of you to be so kind, to write so +consolingly, to be so patient in explaining where I am thinking wrong. I +burned the book in the kitchen fire, and felt great satisfaction in +clearing the house of its presence. You are right; I have no concern +with the body of a poet—all my concern is with his soul, and the two +shall be severely separated. I am glad you agree with me that poets +should be anonymous, but you seem to have even less hope that they ever +will be than I have. At least I pray that they may; you apparently take +no steps whatever to bring it about. You say that experience teaches +that we must not expect too much of gods; that the possible pangs of +posterity often leave them cold; that they are blind to the merits of +bushels, and discern neither honor nor profit in the use of those +vessels of extinguishment; you fear that they will not change, and you +exhort me to see to it that their weakness shall not be an occasion for +my stumbling. That is very sensible advice. But before your kind letter +came a few fresh autumn mornings had cleared a good deal of my first +dejection away. If the gods won't hide themselves I can after all shut +my eyes. If I may not rejoice in the divine in them with undistracted +attention I will try at least to get all the warmth I can from its +burning. And I can imitate my own dainty and diligent bees, and take +care to be absorbed only in their honey. You make me ashamed of my folly +in thinking I could never read Burns again now that I know about his +sins. I did secretly think so. I was sure of it. I felt quite sick to +see him tumbled from his altar into the mud. Your letter shows me that +once again I have been foolish. Why, it has verged on idiocy. I myself +have laughed at people in Jena, strictly pious people, who will not read +Goethe, who have a personally vindictive feeling against him because of +his different love-affairs, and I have listened astonished to the fury +with which the proposal of a few universal-minded persons to give Heine +a statue was opposed, and to the tone almost of hatred with which one +man whenever his name is mentioned calls out <i>Schmutzfink</i>. About our +poets I have been from the beginning quite sane. But yours were somehow +more sacred to me; sacred, I suppose, because they were more mysterious, +more distant,—glorious angel-trumpets through which God sent His +messages. I was so glad, I whose tendency is, I am afraid, to laugh and +criticise, to possess one thing at which I could not laugh, to have a +whole tract of beauty in which I could walk seriously, with downcast +eyes; and I thought I was never going to be able to be serious there +again. It was a passing fit, a violent revulsion. If I like carefully to +separate my own soul and body, why should I not do the same with those +of other sinners? It has always seemed to me so quaint the way we admit, +the good nature with which we reiterate, that we are all wretched +sinners. We do it with such an immense complacency. We agree so +heartily, with such comfortable, regretful sighs, when anybody tells us +so; but with only one wretched sinner are we of a real patience. With +him, indeed, our patience is boundless. I know this, I have always known +it, and I will not now, at an age when it is my hope to grow every year +a little better, forget it and be as insolently intolerant as the man +who shudders at the name of Heine, will not read a line of him and calls +him <i>Schmutzfink</i>. That writer's books you tell me about, the books the +virtuous in England will not read because his private life was +disgraceful, beautiful books, you say, into which went his best, in +which his spirit showed how bright it was, how he had kept it apart and +clean, I shall get them all and read them all. No sinner, cursed with a +body at variance with his soul and able in spite of it to hear the music +of heaven and give it exquisite expression, shall ever again be +identified by me with what at such great pains he has kept white. I know +at least three German writers to whom the same thing happened, men who +live badly and write nobly. My heart goes out to them. I think of them +lame and handicapped, leading their Muse by the hand with anxious care +so that her shining feet, set among the grass and daisies along the +roadside, shall not be dimmed by the foulness through which they +themselves are splashing. They are caked with impurities, but with the +tenderest watchfulness they keep her clean. She is their gift to the +world, the gift of their best, of their angel, of their share of +divinity. And the respectable, afraid for their respectability, turn +their backs in horror and go and read without blinking ugly things +written by other respectables. Why, no priest at the altar, however +unworthy, can hinder the worshipper from taking away with him as great a +load of blessings as he will carry. And a rose is not less lovely +because its roots are in corruption. And God Himself was found once in a +manger. Thank you, and good-by.</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLVIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Oct. 8th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—We are very happy here just now because Papa's new +book, at which he has been working two years, is finished. I am copying +it out, and until that is done we shall indulge in the pleasantest +day-dreams. It is our time, this interval between the finishing of a +book of his and its offer to a publisher, for being riotously happy. We +build the most outrageous castles in the air. Nothing is certain, and +everything is possible. The pains of composition are over, and the pains +of rejection are not begun. Each time we suppose they never will, and +that at last ears will be found respectfully ready to absorb his views. +Few and far between have the ears been till now. His books have fallen +as flat as books can fall. Nobody wanted to hear all, or even half, that +he could tell them about Goethe. Jena shrugged its shoulders, the larger +world was blank. The books have brought us no fame, no money, some +tragic hours, but much interest and amusement. Always tragic hours have +come when Papa clutched at his hair and raved rude things about the +German public; and when the money didn't appear there have been +uncomfortable moments. But these pass; Papa leaves his hair alone; and +the balance remains on the side of nice things. We don't really want any +more money, and Papa is kept busy and happy, and just to see him so +eager, so full of his work, seems to warm the house with pleasant +sunshine. Once, for one book, a check did come; and when we all rushed +to look we found it was for two marks and thirty pfennings—' being the +amount due,' said the accompanying stony letter, 'on royalties for the +first year of publication.' Papa thought this much worse than no check +at all, and took it round to the publisher in the molten frame of mind +of one who has been insulted. The publisher put his thumbs in the +armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, gazed with +refreshing coolness at Papa who was very hot, and said that as trade +went it was quite a good check and that he had sent one that very +morning to another author—a Jena celebrity who employs his leisure +writing books about the Universe—for ninety pfennings.</p> + +<p>Papa came home beaming with the delicious feeling that money was flowing +in and that he was having a boom. The universe man was a contemptuous +acquaintance who had been heard to speak lightly of Papa's books. Papa +felt all the sweetness of success, of triumph over a disagreeable rival; +and since then we have looked upon that special book as his <i>opus +magnum</i>.</p> + +<p>While I copy he comes in and out to ask me where I have got to and if I +like it. I assure him that I think it delightful, and so honestly I do +in a way, but I don't think it will be the public's way. It begins by +telling the reader, presumably a person in search of information about +Goethe, that Jena is a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom +nineteen thousand are apparently professors. The town certainly does +give you that impression as you walk about its little streets and at +every corner meet the same battered-looking persons in black you met at +the corner before, but what has that to do with Goethe? And the pages +that follow have nothing to do with him either that I can see, being a +disquisition on the origin and evolution of the felt hats the professors +wear—dingy, slouchy things—winding up with an explanation of their +symbolism and inevitableness, based on a carefully drawn parallel +between them and the kind of brains they have to cover. From this point, +the point of the head-wear of the learned in our present year, he has to +work back all the way to Goethe in Jena a century ago. It takes him +several chapters to get back, for he doesn't go straight, being +constitutionally unable to resist turning aside down the green lanes of +moralizing that branch so seductively off the main road and lead him at +last very far afield; and when he does arrive he is rather breathless, +and flutters for some time round the impassive giant waiting to be +described, jerking out little anecdotes, very pleasant little anecdotes, +but quite unconnected with his patient subject, before he has got his +wind and can begin.</p> + +<p>He is rosy with hope about this book. 'All Jena will read it,' he says, +'because they will like to hear about themselves'—I wonder if they +will—'and all Germany will read it because it will like to hear about +Goethe.'</p> + +<p>'It has heard a good deal about him already, you know Papachen,' I say, +trying gently to suggest certain possibilities.</p> + +<p>'England might like to have it. There has been nothing since that man +Lewes, and never anything really thorough. A good translation, +Rose-Marie—what do you think of that as an agreeable task for you +during the approaching winter evenings? It is a matter worthy of +consideration. You will like a share in the work, a finger in the +literary pie, will you not?'</p> + +<p>'Of course I would. But let me copy now, darling. I'm not half through.'</p> + +<p>He says that if those blind and prejudiced persons, publishers, won't +risk bringing it out he'll bring it out at his own expense sooner than +prevent the world's rightly knowing what Goethe said and did in Jena; so +there's a serious eventuality ahead of us! We really will have to live +on lettuces, and in grimmest earnest this time. I hope he won't want to +keep race-horses next. Well, one thing has happened that will go a +little way toward meeting new expenses,—I go down every day now and +read English with Vicki, at the desire of her mother, for two hours, her +mother having come to the conclusion that it is better to legalize, as +it were, my relations with Vicki who flatly refused to keep away from +us. So I am a bread-winner, and can do something to help Papa. It is +true I can't help much, for what I earn is fifty pfennings each time, +and as the reading of English on Sundays is not considered nice I can +only altogether make three marks a week. But it is something, and it is +easily earned, and last Sunday, which was the end of my first week, I +bought the whole of the Sunday food with it, dinner and supper for us, +and beer for Johanna's lover, who says he cannot love her unless the +beer is a particular sort and has been kept for a fortnight properly +cold in the coal-hole.</p> + +<p>Since I have read with Vicki Frau von Lindeberg is quite different. She +is courteous with the careful courtesy decent people show their +dependents; kindly, even gracious at times. She is present at the +reading, darning socks and ancient sheets with her carefully kept +fingers, and she treats me absolutely as though I were attached to her +household as governess. She is no longer afraid we will want to be +equals. She asks me quite often after the health of him she calls my +good father. And when a cousin of hers came last week to stay a night, a +female Dammerlitz on her way to a place where you drink waters and get +rid of yourself, she presented me to her with pleasant condescension as +the <i>kleine Engländerin</i> engaged as her daughter's companion. '<i>Eine +recht Hebe Hausgenossin,'</i> she was pleased to add, gently nodding her +head at each word; and the cousin went away convinced I was a resident +official and that the tales she had heard about the Lindeberg's poverty +couldn't be true.</p> + +<p>'It's not scriptural,' I complained to Vicki, stirred to honest +indignation.</p> + +<p>'You mean, to say things not quite—not quite?' said Vicki.</p> + +<p>'Such big ones,' I fumed. 'I'm not little. I'm not English. I'm not a +<i>Hausgenossin</i>. Why such unnecessary ones?'</p> + +<p>'Now, Rose-Marie, you do know why Mamma said "little."'</p> + +<p>'It's a term of condescension?'</p> + +<p>'And <i>Engländerins</i> are rather grand things to have in the house, you +know—expensive, I mean. Always dearer than natives. Mamma only wants +Cousin Mienchen to suppose we are well off.'</p> + +<p>'Oh,' said I.</p> + +<p>'You don't mind?' said Vicki, rather timidly taking my hand.</p> + +<p>'It doesn't hurt me,' said I, putting a little stress on the me, a +stress implying infinite possible hurt to Frau von Lindeberg's soul.</p> + +<p>'It is horrid,' murmured Vicki, her head drooping over her book. 'I wish +we didn't always pretend we're not poor. We are. Poor as mice. And it +makes us so sensitive about it, so afraid of anything's being noticed. +We spend our lives on tenterhooks—not nice things at all to spend one's +life on.'</p> + +<p>'Wriggly, uncomfortable things,' I agreed.</p> + +<p>'I believe Cousin Mienchen isn't in the least taken in, for all our +pains.'</p> + +<p>'I don't believe people ever are,' said I; and we drifted into a +consideration of the probable height of our temperatures and color of +our ears if we could know how much the world we pose to really knows +about us, if we could hear with what thoroughness those of our doings +and even of our thoughts that we believed so secret are discussed.</p> + +<p>Frau von Lindeberg wasn't there, being too busy arranging comforts for +her cousin's journey to preside, and so it was that we drifted +unhindered from Milton into the foggier regions of private wisdom. We +are neither of us wise, but it is surprising how talking to a friend, +even to a friend as unwise as yourself, clears up your brains and lets +in new light. That is one of the reasons why I like writing to you and +getting your letters; only you mustn't be offended at my bracketing you, +you splendid young man, with poor Vicki and poor myself in the class +Unwise. Heaven knows I mean nothing to do with book-learning, in which, +I am aware, you most beautifully excel.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>XLIX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Oct. 9th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I am very sorry indeed to hear that your +engagement is broken off. I feared something of the sort was going to +happen because of all the things you nearly said and didn't in your +letters lately. Are you very much troubled and worried? Please let me +turn into the elder sister for a little again and give you the small +relief of having an attentive listener. It seems to have been rather an +unsatisfactory time for you all along. I don't really quite know what to +say. I am anyhow most sincerely sorry, but I find it extraordinarily +difficult to talk about Miss Cheriton. It is of course lamentable that +our writing to each other should have been, as you say it was, so often +the cause of quarrels. You never told me so, or I would at once have +stopped. You fill several pages with surprise that a girl of twenty-two +can be so different from what she appears, that so soft and tender an +outside can have beneath it such unfathomable depths of hardness. I +think you have probably gone to the other extreme now, and because you +admired so much are all the more violently critical. It is probable that +Miss Cheriton is all that you first thought her, unusually charming and +sympathetic and lovable, and your characters simply didn't suit each +other. Don't think too unkindly in your first anger. I am so very sorry; +sorry for you, who must feel as if your life had been convulsed by an +earthquake, and all its familiar features disarranged; sorry for your +father's disappointment; sorry for Miss Cheriton, who must have been +wretched. But how infinitely wiser to draw back in time and not, for +want of courage, drift on into that supreme catastrophe, marriage. You +mustn't suppose me cynical in calling it a catastrophe—perhaps I mean +it only in its harmless sense of <i>dénouement</i>; and if I don't I can't +see that it is cynical to recognize a spade when you see it as certainly +a spade. But do not let yourself go to bitterness, and so turn into a +cynic yourself. You say Miss Cheriton apparently prefers a duke, and are +very angry. But why if, as you declare, you have not really loved her +for months past, are you angry? Why should she not prefer a duke? +Perhaps he is quite a nice one, and you may be certain she felt at once, +the very instant, when you left off caring for her. About such things it +is as difficult for a woman to be mistaken as it is for a barometer to +be hoodwinked in matters meteorologic. It was that, and never the duke, +that first influenced her. I am as sure of it as if I could see into her +heart. Of course she loved you. But no girl with a spark of decency +would cling on to a reluctant lover. What an exceedingly poor thing in +girls she would be who did. I can't tell you how much ashamed I am of +that sort of girl, the girl who clings, who follows, who laments,—as if +the world, the splendid, amazing world, were empty of everything but one +single man, and there were no sun shining, no birds singing, no winds +blowing, no hills to climb, no trees to sit under, no books to read, no +friends to be with, no work to do, no heaven to go to. I feel now for +the first time that I would like to know Miss Cheriton. But it is really +almost impossibly difficult to write this letter; each thing I say seems +something I had better not have said. Write to me about your troubles as +often as you feel it helps you, and believe that I do most heartily +sympathize with you both, but don't mind, and forgive me, if my answers +are not satisfactory. I am unpracticed and ill at ease, clumsy, limited, +in this matter of frank writing about feelings, a matter in which you so +far surpass me. But I am always most sincerely your friend,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>L</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Oct. 15th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It's not much use for the absent to send bland +advice, to exhort to peace and putting aside of anger, when they have +only general principles to go on. You know more about Miss Cheriton than +I do, and I am obliged to believe you when you tell me you have every +reason to be bitter. But I can make few comments. My mouth is +practically shut. Only, as you told me you long ago left off caring for +her, the smart you are feeling now must be, it seems to me, simply the +smart of wounded vanity, and for that I'm afraid I have no soothing +lotion ready. Also I am bound to say that I think she was quite right to +give you up once she was sure you no longer loved her. I am all for +giving up, for getting rid of things grown rotten before it is too late, +and the one less bright spot I see on her otherwise correct conduct is +that she did not do it sooner. Don't think me hard, dear friend. If I +were your mother I would blindly yearn over my boy. As it is, you must +forgive my unfortunate trick of seeing plainly. I wish things would look +more adorned to me, less palpably obvious and ungarnished. These +tiresome eyes of mine have often made me angry. I would so much like to +sympathize wholly with you now, to be able to be indignant with Miss +Cheriton, call her a minx, say she is heartless, be ready with all sorts +of healing balms and syrups for you, poor boy in the clutches of a cruel +annoyance. But I can't. If you could love her again and make it up, that +indeed would be a happy thing. As it is—and your letter sets all hopes +of the sort aside once and for ever—you have had an escape; for if she +had not given you up I don't suppose you would have given her up—I +don't suppose that is a thing one often does. You would have married +her, and then heaven knows what would have become of your unfortunate +soul.</p> + +<p>After all, you need not have told me you had left off loving her. I knew +it. I knew it at the time, I knew it within a week of when it happened. +And I have always hoped—I cannot tell you how sincerely—that it was +only a mood, and that you would go back to her again and be happy.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Oct. 22d.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—This is a world, it seems to me, where everybody +spends their time falling out of love and making their relations +uncomfortable. I have only two friends, the rest of my friends being +acquaintances, and both have done it or had it done to them. Is it then +to be wondered at that I should argue that if it happens to both my +friends in a set where there are only two, the entire world must be +divided into those who give up and those who are given up, with a Greek +chorus of lamenting and explanatory relatives as a finish? Really one +might think that love, and its caprices, and its tantrums—you see I'm +in my shrewish mood—makes up the whole of life. Here's Vicki groaning +in the throes of a relapse because some one has written that she met her +late lover at a party and that he ate only soup,—here she is overcome +by this picture which she translates as a hankering in spite of +everything after her, and wanting to write to him, and ready to console +him and crying her eyes all red again, and no longer taking the remotest +interest in <i>Comus</i> or in those frequent addresses of mine to her on +Homely Subjects to which up to yesterday she listened with such +flattering respect; and here are you writing me the most melancholy +letters, longer and drearier than any letters ever were before, filled +with yearnings after something that certainly is not Miss Cheriton—but +beyond that certainty I can make out nothing. It is a strange and +wonderful world. I stand bewildered, with you on one side and Vicki on +the other, and fling exhortations at you in turn. I try scolding, to +brace you, but neither of you will be braced. I try sympathy, to soothe +you, but neither of you will be soothed. What am I to do? May I laugh? +Will that give too deep offence? I'm afraid I did laugh over your +father's cable from America when the news of your broken engagement +reached him. You ask me what I think of a father who just cables 'Fool' +to his son at a moment when his son is being horribly worried. Well, you +must consider that cabling is expensive, and he didn't care to put more +than one word, and if there had been two it might have made you still +angrier. But seriously, I do see that it must have annoyed you, and I +soon left off being so unkind as to laugh. It is odd how much older I +feel than either of you lamenters; quite old, and quite settled, and so +objective somehow. I hope being objective doesn't make one +unsympathetic, but I expect it really rather tends that way; and yet if +it were so, and I were as hard and husky as I sometimes dimly fear I may +be growing, would you and Vicki want to tell me your sorrows? And other +people do too. Think of it, Papa Lindeberg, hitherto a long narrow +person buttoned up silently in black, mysterious simply because he held +his tongue, a reader of rabid Conservative papers through black-rimmed +glasses, and as numb in the fingers as Wordsworth when he shakes my +respectful hand, has begun to unbend, to unfold, to expand like those +Japanese dried flowers you fling into water; and having started with +good mornings and weather comments and politics, and from them proceeded +to the satisfactorily confused state of the British army, has gone on +imperceptibly but surely to confidential criticisms of the mistakes made +here at headquarters in invariably shelving the best officers at the +very moment when they have arrived at what he describes as their prime, +and has now reached the stage when he comes up through the orchard every +morning at the hour I am due for my lesson to help me over the fence. He +comes up with much stateliness and deliberation, but he does come up; +and we walk down together, and every day the volume of his confidences +increases and he more and more minutely describes his grievances. I +listen and nod my head, which is easy and apparently all he wants. His +wife stops him at once, if he begins to her, by telling him with as much +roundness as is consistent with being born a Dammerlitz that the +calamities that have overtaken them are entirely his fault. Why was he +not as clever as those subordinates who were put over his head? she asks +with dangerous tranquillity; and nobody can answer a question like that.</p> + +<p>'It makes me twenty years younger,' he said yesterday as he handed me +over the fence with the same politeness I have seen in the manner of old +men handing large dowagers to their places in a set of quadrilles, 'to +see your cheerful morning face.'</p> + +<p>'If you had said shining morning face you'd have been quoting +Shakespeare,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Ah yes. I fear my Shakespeare days are done. I am now at the time of +life when serious and practical considerations take up the entire +attention of a man. Shakespeare is more suitable now for my daughter +than for me.'</p> + +<p>'But clever men do read him.'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes.'</p> + +<p>'Quite grown-up ones do.'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes.'</p> + +<p>'With beards.'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes.'</p> + +<p>'Real men.'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes, yes. Professors. Theatre people. People of no family. People +who have no serious responsibilities on their shoulders. People of the +pen, not men of the sword. But officers—and who in our country of the +well-born is not, was not, or will not be an officer?—have no time for +general literature. Of course,' he added with a slight bow, for he +regards me as personally responsible for everybody and everything +English—'we have all heard of him.'</p> + +<p>'Indeed?' said I.</p> + +<p>'When I was a boy,' he said this morning, 'I read at school of a young +woman—a mythological person—called Hebe.'</p> + +<p>'She was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce,' said I.</p> + +<p>'It may be,' he said. 'The parentages of the mythological period are +curiously intricate. But why is it, dear Fräulein Schmidt, that though I +can recollect nothing of her but her name, whenever I see you you remind +me of her?'</p> + +<p>Now was not that very pleasant? Hebe, the restorer of youth to gods and +men; Hebe, the vigorous and wholesome. Thoreau says she was probably the +only thoroughly sound-conditioned and robust young lady that ever walked +the globe, and that whenever she came it was spring. No wonder I was +pleased.</p> + +<p>'Perhaps it's because I'm healthy,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Is that it?' he said, obviously fumbling about in his brain for the +reason. And when he got to the house he displayed the results of his +fumbling by saying, 'But many people are healthy.'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said I; and left him to think it out alone.</p> + +<p>So now there are two nice young women I've been compared to—you once +said I was like Nausicaa, and here a year later, a year in which various +rather salt and stinging waves have gone over my head, is somebody +comparing me to Hebe. Evidently the waves did me no harm. It is true on +the other hand that Papa Lindeberg is short-sighted. It is also true +that last night I found a beautiful shining silvery hair insolently +flaunting in the very front of my head. 'Yes, yes, my dear,' said +Papa—my Papa—when I showed it him, 'we are growing old.'</p> + +<p>'And settled. And objective,' said I, carefully pulling it out before +the glass. 'And yet, Papachen, inside me I feel quite young.'</p> + +<p>Papa chuckled. 'Insides are no safe criterion, my dear,' he said. 'It is +the outside that tells.'</p> + +<p>'Tells what?'</p> + +<p>'A woman's age.'</p> + +<p>Evidently I have not yet reminded my own Papa of Hebe.</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Oct. 28th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Well, yes, I do think you must get over it without +much help from me. You have a great deal of my sympathy, I assure you; +far more than you think. I don't put it into my letters because there's +so much of it that it would make them overweight. Also it would want a +great deal of explaining. You see it's a different sort from what you +expect, and given for other reasons than those you have in your mind; +and it is quite impossible to account for in any way you are likely to +understand. But do consider what, as regards the broken-off engagement, +you must look like from my point of view. Candidly, are you a fit object +for my compassion? I see you wandering now through Italy in its golden +autumn looking at all your dear Luinis and Bellinis and Botticellis and +other delights of your first growing up, and from my bleak hill-top I +watch you hungrily as you go. November is nearly upon us, and we shiver +under leaden clouds and driving rain. The windows are loose, and all of +them rattle. The wind screams through their chinks as though somebody +had caught it by the toes and was pinching it. We can't see out for the +raindrops on the panes. When I go to the door to get a breath of +something fresher than house air I see only mists, and wreaths of +clouds, and mists again, where a fortnight ago lay a little golden town +in a cup of golden hills. Do you think that a person with this cheerless +prospect can pity you down there in the sun? I trace your bright line of +march on the map and merely feel envy. I am haunted by visions of the +many beautiful places and climates there are in the world that I shall +never see. The thought that there are people at this moment sitting +under palm-trees or in the shadow of pyramids fanning themselves with +their handkerchiefs while I am in my clammy room—the house gets clammy, +I find, in persistent wet weather—not liking to light a lamp because it +is only three o'clock, and yet hardly able to see because of the +streaming panes and driving mist, the thought of these happy people +makes me restive. I too want to be up and off, to run through the wet +pall hanging over this terrible gray North down into places where +sunshine would dry the fog out of my hair, and brown my face, and loosen +my joints, and warm my poor frozen spirit. I would change places with +you this minute if I could. Gladly would I take the burden of your +worries on to my shoulders, and, carrying them like a knapsack, lay them +at the feet of the first Bellini Madonna I met and leave them there for +good. It would give me no trouble to lay them down, those worries +produced by other people. One little shake, and they'd tumble off. +Always things and places have been more to me than people. Perhaps it is +often so with persons who live lonely lives. Anyhow don't at once cry +out that I'm unnatural and inhuman, for things are after all only +filtered out people,—their ideas crystallized into tangibleness, their +spirit taking visible form; either they are that, or they are, I +suppose, God's ideas—after all the same thing put into shapes we can +see and touch. So that it's not so dreadful of me to like them best, to +prefer their company, their silent teaching, although you will I know +lecture me and perhaps tell me I am petrifying into a mere thing myself. +Well, it is only fair that you should lecture me, who so often lecture +you.</p> + +<p>Yours quite meekly,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Nov. 1st.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I won't talk about it any more. Let us have done +with it. Let us think of something else. I shall get tired of the duke +if you are not careful, so please save me from an attitude so +unbecoming. This is All Saints' Day: the feast of white chrysanthemums +and dear memories. My mother used to keep it as a day apart, and made me +feel something of its mysticalness. She had a table in her bedroom, the +nearest approach that was possible to an altar, with one of those +pictures hung above it of Christ on the Cross that always make me think +of Swinburne's</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">God of this grievous people, wrought</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">After the likeness of their race—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>do you remember?—and candles, and jars of flowers, and many little +books; and she used on her knees to read in the little books, kneeling +before the picture. She explained to me that the Lutheran whitewash +starved her soul, and that she wanted, however clumsily, to keep some +reminder with her of the manner of prayer in England. Did I ever tell +you how pretty she was? She was so very pretty, and so adorably nimble +of tongue. Quick, glancing, vivid, she twinkled in the heavy Jena +firmament like some strange little star. She led Papa and me by the +nose, and we loved it. I can see her now expounding her rebellious +theories, sitting limply—for she was long and thin—in a low chair, but +with nothing limp about her flower-like face and eyes shining with +interest in what she was talking about. She was great on the necessity, +a necessity she thought quite good for everybody but absolutely +essential for a woman, of being stirred up thoroughly once a week at the +very least to an enthusiasm for religion and the life of the world to +come. She said there was nothing so good for one as being stirred up, +that only the well stirred ever achieve great things, that stagnation +never yet produced a soul that had shot up out of reach of fogs on to +the clear heights from which alone you can call out directions for the +guidance of those below. The cold, empty Lutheran churches were +abhorrent to her. 'They are populated on Sundays,' she said, 'solely by +stagnant women,—women so stagnant that you can almost see the duckweed +growing on them.'</p> + +<p>She could not endure, and I, taught to see through her eyes, cannot +endure either, the chilly blend of whitewash and painted deal pews in +the midst of which you are required here once a week to magnify the +Lord. Our churches—all those I have seen—are either like vaults or +barns, the vault variety being slightly better and also more scarce. +Their aggressive ugliness, and cold, repellent service keeping the +congealed sinner at arm's length, nearly drove my mother into the Roman +Church, a place no previous Watson had ever wanted to go to. The +churches in Jena made her think with the tenderest regard of the old +picturesque pre-Lutheran days, of the light and color and emotions of +the Catholic services, and each time she was forced into one she said +she made a bigger stride toward Rome. 'Luther was a most mischievous +person,' she would say, glancing half defiantly through long eyelashes +at Papa. But he only chuckled. He doesn't mind about Luther. Yet in case +he did, in case some national susceptibility should have been hurt, she +would get up lazily—her movements were as lazy as her tongue was +quick—and take him by the ears and kiss him.</p> + +<p>She died when she was thirty-five: sweet and wonderful to the last. Nor +did her beauty suffer in the least in the sudden illness that killed +her. 'A lily in a linen-clout She looked when they had laid her out,' as +your Meredith says; and on this day every year, this day of saints so +dear to us, my spirit is all the time in those long ago happy years with +her. I have no private altar in my room, no picture of a 'piteous +Christ'—Papa took that—and no white flowers in this drenched autumnal +place to show that I remember; nor do I read in the little books, except +with gentle wonderment that she should have found nourishment in them, +she who fed so constantly on the great poets. But I have gone each All +Saints' Day for ten years past to church in Jena in memory of her, and +tried by shutting my eyes to imagine I was in a beautiful place without +whitewash, or hideous, almost brutal, stained glass.</p> + +<p>This morning, knowing that if I went down into the town I would arrive +spattered with mud up to my ears and so bedraggled that the pew-opener +might conceivably refuse me admission on the ground that I would spoil +her pews, I set out for the nearest village across the hills, hoping +that a country congregation would be more used to mud. I found the +church shut, and nobody with the least desire to have it opened. The +rain beat dismally down on my umbrella as I stood before the blank +locked door. A neglected fence divided the graves from the parson's +front yard, protecting them, I suppose, as much as in it lay, from the +depredations of wandering cows. On the other side of it was the parson's +manure heap, on which stood wet fowls mournfully investigating its +contents. His windows, shut and impenetrable, looked out on to the +manure heap, the fowls, the churchyard, and myself. It is a very ancient +church, picturesque, and with beautiful lancet windows with delicate +traceries carefully bricked up. Not choosing to have walked five miles +for nothing, and not wishing to break a habit ten years old of praying +in a church for my darling mother's soul on this day of souls and +darling saints, I gathered up my skirts and splashed across the parson's +pools and knocked modestly at his door for the key. The instant I did it +two dogs from nowhere, two infamous little dogs of that unpleasant breed +from which I suppose Pomerania takes its name, rushed at me furiously +barking. The noise was enough to wake the dead; and since nobody stirred +in the house or showed other signs of being wakened it became plain to +my deductive intelligence that its inmates couldn't be dead. So I +knocked again. The dogs yelled again. I stood looking at them in deep +disgust, quite ashamed of the way in which the dripping stillness was +being rent because of me. A soothing umbrella shaken at them only +increased their fury. They seemed, like myself, to grow more and more +indignant the longer the door was kept shut. At last a servant opened it +a few inches, eyed me with astonishment, and when she heard my innocent +request eyed me with suspicion. She hesitated, half shut the door, +hesitated again, and then saying she would go and see what the Herr +Pastor had to say, shut the door quite. I do not remember ever having +felt less respectable. The girl clearly thought I was not; the dogs +clearly were sure I was not. Properly incensed by the shutting of the +door and the expression on the girl's face I decided that the only +dignified course was to go away; but I couldn't because of the dogs.</p> + +<p>The girl came back with the key. She looked as though she had a personal +prejudice against me. She opened the door just wide enough for a lean +person to squeeze through, and bade me, with manifest reluctance, come +in. The hall had a brick floor and an umbrella stand. In the umbrella +stand stood an umbrella, and as the girl, who walked in front of me, +passed it, she snatched out the umbrella and carried it with her, firmly +pressed to her bosom. I did not at once grasp the significance of this +action. She put me into an icy shut-up room and left me to myself. It +was the <i>gute Stube</i>—good room—room used only on occasions of frigid +splendor. Its floor was shiny with yellow paint, and to meet the +difficulty of the paint being spoiled if people walked on it and that +other difficulty of a floor being the only place you can walk on, strips +of cocoanut matting were laid across it from one important point to +another. There was a strip from the door to the window; a strip from the +door to another door; a strip from the door to the sofa; and a strip +from the sofa on which the caller sits to the chair on which sits the +callee. A baby of apparently brand newness was crying in an adjoining +room. I waited, listening to it for what seemed an interminable time, +not daring to sit down because it is not expected in Germany that you +shall sit in any house but your own until specially requested to do so. +I stood staring at the puddles my clothes and umbrella were forming on +the strip of matting, vainly trying to rub them out with my feet. The +wail of the unfortunate in the next room was of an uninterrupted and +haunting melancholy. The rain beat on the windows forlornly. As minute +after minute passed and no one came I grew very restless. My fingers +began to twitch, and my feet to tap. And I was cooling down after my +quick walk with a rapidity that meant a cough and a sore throat. There +was no bell, or I would have rung it and begged to be allowed to go +away. I did turn round to open the door and try to attract the servant's +notice and tell her I could wait no longer, but I found to my +astonishment that the door was locked. After that the whole of my +reflections were resolved into one chaotic Dear me, from which I did not +emerge till the parson appeared through the other door, bringing with +him a gust of wailing from the unhappy baby within and of the +characteristic smell of infant garments drying at a stove.</p> + +<p>He was cold, suspicious, inquisitive. Evidently unused to being asked +for permission to go into his church, and equally evidently unused to +persons passing through a village which was, for most persons, on the +way to nowhere, he endeavored with some skill to discover what I was +doing there. With equal skill I evaded answering his questions. They +included inquiries as to my name, my age, my address, my father's +profession, the existence or not of a husband, the number of my brothers +and sisters, and distinct probings into the size of our income. It +struck me that he had a great deal of time and very few visitors, except +thieves. Delicately I conveyed this impression to him, leaving out only +the thieves, by means of implications of a vaguely flattering nature. He +shrugged his shoulders, and said it was too wet for funerals, which were +the only things doing at this time of the year.</p> + +<p>'What, don't they die when it is wet?' I asked, surprised.</p> + +<p>'Certainly, if it is necessary,' said he.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' said I, pondering. 'But if some one does he has to be buried?'</p> + +<p>'We put it off,' said he.</p> + +<p>'Put it off?'</p> + +<p>'We put it off,' he repeated firmly.</p> + +<p>'But—' I began, in a tone of protest.</p> + +<p>'There's always a fine day if one waits long enough,' said he.</p> + +<p>'That's true,' said I, struck by a truth I had not till then consciously +observed.</p> + +<p>He did not ask me to sit down, a careful eye, I suppose, having gauged +the probable effect of my wet clothes on his dry chairs, so we stood +facing each other on the strip of matting throwing questions and answers +backward and forward like a ball. And I think I played quite skilfully, +for at the end of the game he knew little more than when we began.</p> + +<p>And so at last he gave me the key, and having with a great rattling of +its handle concealed that he was unlocking the door, and further cloaked +this process by a pleasant comment on the way doors stick in wet +weather, which I met with the cold information that ours didn't, he +whistled off the dogs, and I left him still with an inquiry in his eye.</p> + +<p>The church is very ancient and dates from the thirteenth century. You +would like its outside—I wonder if in your walks you ever came +here—but its inside has been spoilt by the zealous Lutherans and turned +into the usual barn. In its first state of beauty in those far-off +Catholic days what a haven it must have been for all the women and most +of the men of that lonely turnip-growing village; the one beauty spot, +the one place of mystery and enthusiasm. No one, I thought, staring +about me, could possibly have their depths stirred in the middle of so +much whitewash. The inhabitants of these bald agricultural parishes are +not sufficiently spiritual for the Lutheran faith. Black gowns and +bareness may be enough for those whose piety is so exalted that +ceremonies are only a hindrance to the purity of their devotions; but +the ignorant and the dull, if they are to be stirred, and especially the +women who have entered upon that long series of gray years that begins, +for those worked gaunt and shapeless in the fields, somewhere about +twenty-five and never leaves off again, if they are to be helped to be +less forlorn need many ceremonies, many symbols, much show, and mystery, +and awfulness. You will say that it is improbable that the female +inhabitants of such a poor parish should know what it is to feel +forlorn; but I know better. You will, turning some of my own words +against me, tell me that one does not feel forlorn if one is worked hard +enough; but I know better about that too,—and I said it only in +reference to young men like yourself. It is true the tragedy of the +faded face combined with the uncomfortably young heart, which is the +tragedy that every woman who has had an easy life has to endure for +quite a number of years, finds no place in the existence of a drudge; it +is true too that I never yet saw, and I am sure you didn't, a woman of +the laboring classes make efforts to appear younger than she is; and it +is also true that I have seldom seen, and I am sure you haven't, women +of the class that has little to do leave off making them. Ceaseless hard +work and the care of many children do away very quickly with the youth +both of face and heart of the poor man's wife, and with the youth of +heart go the yearnings that rend her whose heart, whatever her face may +be doing, is still without a wrinkle. But drudgery and a lost youth do +not make your life less, but more dreary. These poor women have not, +like their husbands, the solace of the public-house <i>Schnapps</i>. They go +through the bitterness of the years wholly without anæsthetics. Really I +don't think I can let you go on persisting that they feel nothing. Why, +we shall soon have you believing that only you in this groaning and +travailing creation suffer. Please divest yourself of these illusions. +Read, my young friend, read the British poet Crabbe. Read him much; +ponder him more. He knew all about peasants. He was a plain man, with a +knack for rhyme and rhythm that sets your brain a-jingling for weeks, +who saw peasants as they are. They must have been the very ones we have +here. In his pages no honeysuckle clambers picturesquely about their +path, no simple virtues shine in their faces. Their hearth is not snowy, +their wife not neat and nimble. They do not gather round bright fires +and tell artless tales on winter evenings. Their cheer is certainly +homely, but that doesn't make them like it, and they never call down +blessings upon it with moist uplifted eyes. Grandsires with venerable +hair are rather at a discount; the young men's way of trudging cannot be +described as elastic; and their talk, when there is any, does not +consist of praise of the local landowner. Do you think they do not know +that they are cold and underfed? And do not know they have grown old +before their time through working in every sort of weather? And do not +know where their rheumatism and fevers come from?</p> + +<p>I walked back through the soaking, sighing woods thinking of these +things and of how unfairly the goods of life are distributed and of the +odd tendency misfortunes have to collect themselves together in one +place in a heap. Old thoughts, you'll say,—old thoughts as stale as +life, thoughts that have drifted through countless heads, and after a +while drifted out of them again, leaving no profit behind them. But one +can't help thinking them and greatly marvelling. Make the most, you +fortunate young man, of freedom, and Italy, and sunshine, and your six +and twenty years. If I could only persuade you to let yourself go quite +simply to being happy! Our friendship, in spite of its sincerity, has up +to now been of so little use to you; and a friendship which is not +helpful might just as well not exist. I wish I knew what words of mine +would help you most. How gladly would I write them. How gladly would I +see you in untroubled waters, forging straight ahead toward a full and +fruitful life. But I am a foolish, ineffectual woman, and write you +waspish letters when I might, if I had more insight, have found out what +those words are that would set you tingling with the joy of life.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>I've been reading some of the very beautiful prayers in my mother's +English Prayer Book to make up for not having prayed in church today. +Its margins are thickly covered with pencilled comments. In parts like +the Psalms and Canticles they overflow into the spaces between the +verses. They are chiefly notes on the beauties of thought and language, +and comparisons with similar passages in the Bible. Here and there +between the pages are gummed little pictures of Madonnas and 'piteous +Christs.' But when the Athanasian Creed is reached the tone of the +comment changes. Over the top of it is written 'Some one has said there +is a vein of dry humor running through this Creed that is very +remarkable.' And at the end of each of those involved clauses that try +quite vainly, yet with an air of defying criticism, to describe the +undescribable, my mother has written with admirable caution 'Perhaps.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Nov. 7th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—So you are coming to Berlin next month. I thought +you told me in one of your letters that Washington was probably going to +be your first diplomatic post. Evidently you are glad it is not; but if +I were going to be an <i>attaché</i> I'd much rather be it at Washington than +Berlin, the reason being that I've not been to Washington and I have +been to Berlin. Why are you so pleased—forgive me, I meant so much +pleased, but it is strange how little instinct has to do with +grammar—about Berlin? You didn't like it when you were here and went +for two days to look at it. You said it was a hard white place, full of +broad streets with nobody in them. You said it was barren, soulless, +arid, pretentious, police-ridden; that everybody was an official, and +that all the officials were rude. You were furious with a policeman who +stared at you without answering when you asked him the way. You were +scandalized by the behavior of the men in the local trains who sat and +smoked in the faces of the standing women, and by those men who walked +with their female relations in the streets and caused their parcels to +be carried by them. You came home to us saying that Jena was best, and +you were thankful to be with us again. I went to Berlin once, a little +while before you came to Germany, and didn't like it either. But I +didn't like it because it was so full, because those streets that seemed +to you so empty were bewildering to me in their tumultuous traffic,—so +you see how a place is what your own eye makes it, your Jena or your +London eye; and I didn't like it besides because we spent a sulphuric +night and morning with relations. The noise of the streets all day and +the sulphur of the relations at night spoilt it for me. We went there +for a jaunt, to look at the museums and things, and stay the night with +Papa's brother who lives there. He is Papa's younger brother, and spends +his days in a bank, handing out and raking in money through a hole in a +kind of cage. He has a pen behind his ear—I know, because we were taken +to gaze upon him between two museums—and wears a black coat on weekdays +as well as on Sundays, which greatly dazzled my step-mother, who was +with us. I believe he is eminently respectable, and the bank values him +as an old and reliable servant, and has made him rich. His salary is +eight thousand marks a year—four hundred pounds, sir; four times as +much as what we have—and my step-mother used often and fervently to +wish that Papa had been more like him. I thought him a terrifying old +uncle, a parched, machine-like person, whose soul seemed withdrawn into +unexplorable vague distances, reduced to a mere far-off flicker by the +mechanical nature of his work. He is ten years younger than Papa, but +infinitely more faded. He never laughs. He never even smiles. He is rude +to his wife. He is withering to his daughters. He made me think of owls +as he sat at supper that night in his prim clothes, with round gloomy +eyes fixed on Papa, whom he was lecturing. Papa didn't mind. He had had +a happy day, ending with two very glorious hours in the Royal Library, +and Tante Else's herring salad was much to his taste. 'Hast thou no +respect, Heinrich,' he cried at last when my uncle, warmed by beer, let +his lecture slide over the line that had till then divided it from a +rating, 'hast thou then no respect for the elder brother, and his white +and reverend hairs?'</p> + +<p>But Onkel Heinrich, aware that he is the success and example of the +family, and as intolerant as successes and examples are of laxer and +poorer relations, waved Papa's banter aside with contempt, and proposed +that instead of wasting any more of an already appallingly wasted life +in idle dabblings in so-called literature he too should endeavor to get +a post, however humble, in a bank in Berlin, and mend his ways, and earn +an income of his own, and cease from living on an income acquired by +marriages.</p> + +<p>My step-mother punctuated his words with nods of approval.</p> + +<p>'What, as a doorkeeper, eh, thou cistern filled with wisdom?' cried +Papa, lifting his glass and drinking gayly to Tante Else, who glanced +uneasily at her husband, he not yet having been, to her recollection, +called a cistern.</p> + +<p>'It is better,' said my step-mother, to whom a man so punctual, so +methodical, and so well-salaried as Onkel Heinrich seemed wholly ideal, +'it is better to be a doorkeeper in—in-'</p> + +<p>She was seized with doubt as to the applicability of the text, and +hesitated.</p> + +<p>'A bank?' suggested Papa pleasantly.</p> + +<p>'Yes, Ferdinand, even in a bank rather than dwell in the tents of +wickedness.'</p> + +<p>'That,' explained Papa to Tante Else, leaning back in his chair and +crossing his hands comfortably over what, you being English, I will call +his chest, 'is my dear wife's poetic way—'</p> + +<p>'Scriptural way, Ferdinand,' interrupted my step-mother. 'I know no +poetic ways.'</p> + +<p>'It is the same thing, <i>meine Liebste</i>. The Scriptures are drenched in +poetry. Poetic way, I say, of referring to Jena.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Ach so</i>,' said Tante Else, vague because she doesn't know her Bible +any better than the rest of us Germans; it is only you English who have +it at your fingers' ends; and, of course, my step-mother had it at hers.</p> + +<p>'Tents,' continued Tante Else, feeling that as <i>Hausfrau</i> it was her +duty to make herself conversationally conspicuous, and anxious to hide +that she was privately at sea, 'tents are unwholesome as permanent +dwellings. I should say a situation somewhere as doorkeeper in a healthy +building was much to be preferred to living in nasty draughty things +like tents.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Quatsch</i>,' said Onkel Heinrich, with sudden and explosive bitterness; +you remember of course that <i>quatsch</i> is German for silly, or nonsense, +and that it is far more expressive, and also more rude, than either.</p> + +<p>My step-mother opened her mouth to speak, but Tante Else, urged by her +sense of duty, flowed on. 'You cannot,' she said, addressing Papa, 'be a +doorkeeper unless there is a door to keep.'</p> + +<p>'Let no one,' cried Papa, beating approving hands together, 'say again +that ladies are not logicians.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Quatsch</i>,' said Onkel Heinrich.</p> + +<p>'And a door is commonly a—a-' She cast about for the word.</p> + +<p>'A necessity?' suggested Papa, all bright and pleased attention.</p> + +<p>'A convenience?' suggested my cousin Lieschen, the rather pretty +unmarried daughter, a girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump +red hands.</p> + +<p>'An ornament?' suggested my cousin Elschen, the rather pretty married +daughter, another girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump red +hands.</p> + +<p>'A thing you go in at?' I suggested.</p> + +<p>'No, no,' said Tante Else impatiently, determined to run down her word.</p> + +<p>'A thing you go out at, then?' said I, proud of the resourcefulness of +my intelligence.</p> + +<p>'No, no,' said Tante Else, still more impatiently. '<i>Ach Gott</i>, where do +all the words get to?'</p> + +<p>'Is it something very particular for which you are searching?' asked my +step-mother, with the sympathetic interest you show in the searchings of +the related rich.</p> + +<p>'Something not worth the search, we may be sure,' remarked Onkel +Heinrich.</p> + +<p>'<i>Ach Gott</i>,' said Tante Else, not heeding him, 'where do they—' She +clasped and unclasped her fingers; she gazed round the room and up at +the ceiling. We all sat silent, feeling that here there was no help, and +watched while she chased the elusive word round and round her brain. +Only Onkel Heinrich continued to eat herring salad with insulting +emphasis.</p> + +<p>'I have it,' she cried at last triumphantly.</p> + +<p>We at once revived into a brisk attention.</p> + +<p>'A door is a characteristic—'</p> + +<p>'A most excellent word,' said Papa encouragingly. 'Continue, my dear.'</p> + +<p>'It is a characteristic of buildings that are massive and that have +windows and chimneys like other buildings.'</p> + +<p>'Excellent, excellent,' said Papa. 'Definitions are never easy.'</p> + +<p>'And—and tents don't have them,' finished Tante Else, looking round at +us with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so much +about something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping.</p> + +<p>'<i>Quatsch</i>,' said Onkel Heinrich.</p> + +<p>'My dear,' protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice these +comments.</p> + +<p>'I say it is <i>quatsch</i>,' said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemence +startling in one so trim.</p> + +<p>'Really, my dear,' said Tante Else.</p> + +<p>'I repeat it,' said Onkel Heinrich.</p> + +<p>'Do not think, my dear—'</p> + +<p>'I do not think, I know. Am I to sit silent, to have no opinion, in my +own house? At my own table?'</p> + +<p>'My dear—'</p> + +<p>'If you do not like to hear the truth, refrain from talking nonsense.'</p> + +<p>'My dear Heinrich—will you not try—in the presence of—of relations, +and of—of our children—' Her voice shook a little, and she stopped, +and began with great haste and exactness to fold up her table-napkin.</p> + +<p>'<i>Ach—quatsch</i>' said Onkel Heinrich again, irritably pushing back his +chair.</p> + +<p>He waddled to a cupboard—of course he doesn't get much exercise in his +cage, so he can only waddle—and took out a box of cigars. 'Come, +Ferdinand,' he said, 'let us go and smoke together in my room and leave +the dear women to the undisturbed enjoyment of their wits.'</p> + +<p>'I do not smoke,' said Papa briefly.</p> + +<p>'Come then while I smoke,' said Onkel Heinrich.</p> + +<p>'Nay, I fear thee, Heinrich,' said Papa. 'I fear thy tongue applied to +my weak places. I fear thine eye, measuring their deficiencies. I fear +thy intelligence, known to be great—'</p> + +<p>'Worth exactly,' said Onkel Heinrich suddenly facing us, the cigarbox +under his arm, his cross owl's eyes rounder than ever, 'worth exactly, +on the Berlin brain market, eight thousand marks a year.'</p> + +<p>'I know, I know,' cried Papa, 'and I admire—I admire. But there is awe +mingled with my admiration, Heinrich,—awe, respect, terror. Go, thou +man of brains and marketableness, thou man of worth and recognition, go +and leave me here with these lesser intellects. I fear thee, and I will +not watch thee smoke.'</p> + +<p>And he got up and raised Tante Else's hand to his lips with great +gallantry and wished her, after our pleasant fashion at the end of +meals, a good digestion.</p> + +<p>But Tante Else, though she tried to smile and return his wishes, could +not get back again into her <i>rôle</i> of serene and conversational +<i>Hausfrau.</i> My uncle waddled away, shooting a sniff of scorn over his +shoulder as he went, and my aunt endeavored to conceal the fact that she +was wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both at +once. My step-mother cleared her throat, and remarked that successful +public men often had to pay for their successes by being the victims at +home of nerves, and that their wives, whose duty it is always to be +loving, might be compared to the warm and soothing iron passed over a +shirt newly washed, and deftly, by its smooth insistence, flattening +away each crease.</p> + +<p>Papa gazed at my step-mother with admiring astonishment while she +elaborated this image. He had hold of Tante Else's hand and was stroking +it. His bright eyes were fixed on his wife, and I could see by their +expression that he was trying to recall the occasions on which his own +creases had been ironed out.</p> + +<p>With the correctness with which one guesses most of a person's thoughts +after you have lived with him ten years, my step-mother guessed what he +was thinking. 'I said public men,' she remarked, 'and I said successes.'</p> + +<p>'I heard, I heard, <i>meine Liebste</i>,' Papa assured her, 'and I also +completely understand.'</p> + +<p>He made her a little bow across the table. 'Do not heed him, Else, my +dear,' he added, turning to my aunt. 'Do not heed thy Heinrich—he is +but a barbarian.'</p> + +<p>'Ferdinand!' exclaimed my step-mother.</p> + +<p>'Oh no,' sighed Tante Else, 'it is I who am impatient and foolish.'</p> + +<p>'I tell thee he is a barbarian. He always was. In the nursery he was, +when, yet unable to walk, he crawled to that spot on the carpet where +stood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy with +the playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into them +made holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she saw +them, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalking +the flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistened +finger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure of +his prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent over +his desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue's sleeve +or trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while the +victim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasing +uneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolonged +absence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comrades +who served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not here +repeat. And as a husband—yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has not +lost it—he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, no, no,' sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearful +interest.</p> + +<p>'Ferdinand,' said my step-mother angrily, 'your tongue is doing what it +invariably does, it is running away with you.'</p> + +<p>'Why are married people always angry with each other?' asked Lieschen, +the unmarried daughter, in a whisper.</p> + +<p>'How can I tell, since I am not married?' I answered in another whisper.</p> + +<p>'They are not,' whispered Elschen with all the authority of the lately +married. 'It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. We +kiss.'</p> + +<p>'That is true,' said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not without +a touch of envy. 'I have repeatedly seen you doing it.'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said Elschen placidly.</p> + +<p>'Is there no alternative?' I inquired.</p> + +<p>'No what?'</p> + +<p>'Alternative.'</p> + +<p>'I do not know what you mean by alternative, Rose-Marie,' said Elschen, +trying to twist her wedding-ring round on her finger, but it couldn't +twist because it was too deeply embedded. 'Where do you get your long +words from?'</p> + +<p>'Must one either quarrel or kiss?' I asked. 'Is there no serene valley +between the thunderous heights on the one hand and the swampy +enervations on the other?'</p> + +<p>To this Elschen merely replied, while she stared at me, '<i>Grosser +Gott</i>.'</p> + +<p>'You are a queer cousin,' said Lieschen, giggling again, the giggle this +time containing a touch of contempt, her giggles never being wholly +unadulterated. 'I suppose it is because Onkel Ferdinand is so poor.'</p> + +<p>'I expect it is,' said I.</p> + +<p>'He has hardly any money, has he?'</p> + +<p>'I believe he has positively none.'</p> + +<p>'But how do you live at all?'</p> + +<p>'I can't think. It must be a habit.'</p> + +<p>'You don't look very fat.'</p> + +<p>'How can I, when I'm not?'</p> + +<p>'You must come and see my baby,' said Elschen, apparently irrelevantly, +but I don't think it really was; she thought a glimpse of that, I am +sure, refreshing baby would cure most heartsicknesses.</p> + +<p>'Yes, yes, it is a splendid baby,' said Lieschen, brightening, 'and its +wardrobe is trimmed throughout with the best Swiss embroidery threaded +with beautiful blue ribbons. It cost many hundred marks, I assure you. +There is nothing that is not both durable and excellent. Elschen's +mother-in-law is a very rich lady. She gave it all. She keeps two +servants, and they wear washing dresses and big white aprons, just like +English servants. Elschen's mother-in-law says it is a great expense +because of the laundry bills, but that she doesn't mind. If you were +going to stay longer, and had got the necessary costumes, we might have +taken you to see her, and she might perhaps have asked you to stay to +coffee.'</p> + +<p>'Really?' said I, in a voice of concern.</p> + +<p>'Yes. It is a pity for you. You would then see how elegant Berlin people +are. I expect this—' she waved her hand—'is quite different from Jena, +and seems strange to you, but it is nothing, I assure you nothing at +all, compared to Elschen's mother-in-law's furniture and food.'</p> + +<p>'Really?' said I, again with concern.</p> + +<p>I did a dreadful thing next morning at breakfast: I broke a jug. Never +shall I forget the dismay and shame of that moment. Really I am rather a +deft person, used to jugs, and not, as a rule, of hasty or unconsidered +movements. It was, I think, the electric current streaming out of Onkel +Heinrich that had at last reached me too and galvanized me into a +nervous and twitching behavior. He came in last, and the moment he +appeared words froze, smiles vanished, eyes fell, and Papa's piping +alone continued to be heard in the cheerless air. I don't know what had +passed between him and Tante Else since last we had seen him, but his +opaque black eyes were crosser and blacker than ever. Perhaps it was +only that he had smoked more than was good for him, and the whole family +was punished for that over-indulgence. I could not help reflecting how +lucky it was that we were his relations and not hers; what must happen +to hers if they ever come to see her I dare not think. It was while I +was reflecting on their probable scorched and shrivelled condition, and +at the same time was eagerly passing him some butter that I don't think +he wanted but that I was frantically afraid he might want, that my +zealous arm swept the milk-jug off the table, and it fell on the +varnished floor, and with a hideous clatter of what seemed like +malicious satisfaction smashed itself to atoms.</p> + +<p>'There now,' cried my step-mother casting up her hands, 'Rose-Marie all +over.'</p> + +<p>'I am very sorry,' I stammered, pushing back my chair and gathering up +the pieces and mopping up the milk with my handkerchief.</p> + +<p>'Dear niece, it is of no consequence,' faltered Tante Else, her eyes +anxiously on her husband.</p> + +<p>'No consequence?' cried he—and his words sounded the more terrific from +their being the first, beyond a curt good morning, that he had uttered. +'No consequence?'</p> + +<p>And when my shameful head reappeared above the table and I got on to my +feet and carried the ruins to a sideboard, murmuring hysterical +apologies as I went, he pointed with a lean finger to what had once been +a jug and said with an owlish solemnity and weightiness of utterance I +have never heard equalled, 'It was very expensive.' I can't tell you how +glad, how thankful I was to get home.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Nov. 15th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I shall send this to Jermyn Street, as it can no +longer catch you in Italy. Jena is not on the way from London to Berlin, +and I don't know what map persuaded you that it was. It is very faithful +and devoted of you to want so much to see Professor Martens again, but +you know he is a busy man, and for five minutes with him as he rushes +from a lecture to a private lesson it hardly seems worth while to make +such a tremendous <i>détour</i>. Why, you would be hours pottering about on +branch lines and at junctions, and would never, I am certain, see your +luggage again. Still, it is not for me to refuse your visit to Professor +Martens on his behalf who as yet knows nothing about it. I merely +advise; and you know I do not easily miss an opportunity of doing that.</p> + +<p>What another odd idea of yours to want to call on our Berlin relations. +Has Italy put these various warm genialities into your head? I did not +think I had made the Heinrich Schmidts attractive. I was shivering while +I wrote with renewed horror, as the remembrance of that evening with +them and of that morning rose up again before me. That the result should +be a thirst on your part for their address fills me with astonishment. +Do you want to go and do them good? Soften Onkel Heinrich, and teach him +to cherish kind Tante Else with the meek blue eyes and claret-colored +silk dress? You cannot seriously intend to set up regular social +intercourse with them. It is certain you will never meet them at any +party you go to,—no, not even Elschen's mother-in-law. The classes are +with us divided so rigorously that the needle's eye was child's play to +the camel compared to this other entering. You will, very properly, +remembering my cloistered life, inquire what I know about it; but it +seems to me, only please don't laugh, that I have seen and known quite a +good deal. When Experience leaves gaps, quick Imagination fills them up. +The straws I have noticed have been enough to show me which way the wind +was blowing; and women, pray remember, are artists at putting two and +two together. Therefore I prophesy that if you are at the English +Embassy in Berlin fifty years and meet fresh people every day of them, +among those people will never be Onkel Heinrich and Tante Else. What, +then, is the use of giving you their address? I will, if you really +seriously wish it, but I must warn you that they would be intensely +surprised by a call from you, and it would in no way add to their +comfort. The connecting thread is altogether too slender. Papa is not a +relation whose introductions they value, and to come from him is a +handicap rather than a recommendation. Do you know the only possible +conclusion they would come to?—and come to it they certainly +would—that somehow, somewhere, in a train, or a shop, or walking, you +had seen Lieschen, and had fallen in love with her. And before you knew +where you were you would be married to Lieschen.</p> + +<p>How sad to have to come away from the flaming Spanish chestnuts of +Italy, and turn your face toward London fogs. You don't seem to mind. +You never do seem to mind the things that would fill my heart with +leaden despair, and over other things that should not matter you cry +out. Indeed, far from minding you seem eager to be off. Yet London can't +be nice in November, and Berlin, where you so soon will be, is simply +horrid. It was in November that we were there, and we splashed about in +a raw, wet cold,—rain on the verge of sleet and snow, a bitter wind at +the corners, the omnibuses all full (we could not afford the dearer and +more respectable tram), and everybody we met had an unkind strange face +that stared at us, in spite of hurry and umbrellas, with a thoroughness +and comprehensiveness that must be peculiar to Berlin. Papa's galoshes +didn't fit and kept coming off, and they always did it at the most +difficult moment, generally when we were crossing a street, and there +they would lie, scattered beneath hoofs and wheels, till I had rescued +them again. Also his umbrella, being old and never having been very +strong, turned inside out at extra gusty corners, and we, who had come +to look and wonder, found that the Berlin people thought we had come to +be looked and wondered at. But do not let me damp your ardor with these +gloomy tales. It is such an excellent thing that you should be ardent at +all after this long while of dissatisfaction with life that I ought to +cheer you on and not talk dreary. Besides, your umbrella won't mind +corners, and you do not wear galoshes. I wish you joy, then, of your new +post, and hope you will be very happy in it. Papa was most interested to +hear you were coming so near us, and sends you many messages whose +upshot is that you are to be a good boy and do him credit. He doesn't +know about the unfortunate ending to your engagement, and I shall not +tell him, for he would be sorry; and more and more as the days and +months melt away into a dream I am anxious that he should not be made +sorry. Do you not think that old people should never be made sorry?</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>I hope you will waste no precious time coming to Jena to see Professor +Martens. I heard a rumor that he was ill, or away or something, so that +you would have your long and <i>extremely</i> tiresome journey positively for +nothing.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Nov. 23d.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Was it so short? I don't remember. This one shall +be longer, then. Tell me, do you think there is any use in trying to +cure a person of being in love? I have come to the conclusion that it's +hopeless. Such cures must be made from the inside outward, and not from +the outside inward. I thought I was going to stir Vicki to a noble +independence, and you should have heard the speeches I made her. +Sometimes I had to laugh at them myself, they were such extraordinarily +heroic and glowing things for one dripping Fräulein with none too brave +a heart to hurl at another dripping Fräulein with no brave heart at all, +as they trotted along with shortened skirts and umbrellas through +wind-racked, howling forests. Vicki has gone all to pieces again, and +her eyes are redder than ever. I don't know whether it is these November +mists that have done it, but certainly after all my hauling of her up +the rocks of proud self-sufficiency she has flopped back again deeper +than before into the morass in which I found her. It's a perfect bog of +sentiment she's sunk in now. I make her go for ten-mile walks, and aim +at doing them in two hours, thus hoping to bring out her love-sickness +in the form of healthy perspiration, but it's no good. 'Oh,' gasps +Vicki, when we start off up the sombre aisles of pines, and see them +stretching away before us into a gray infinity, and mark their reeking +trunks, black with damp, hoar with lichen, and hear their sighings and +their creakings through the patter of rain on our umbrellas, and feel +their wet breath on our cheeks, 'oh what an empty, frightening world it +is.'</p> + +<p>Then I tell her, with what enthusiasm I may, that it's not, that it's +beautiful, that we are young and strong, that our life can be made just +exactly as glorious as we are energetic enough to make it. And she +doesn't believe a word; she simply shakes her head, and moans that she +isn't energetic.</p> + +<p>'But you are,' I say with a fine show of confidence. 'Come, let us walk +faster. Who would dare say you were not who saw you now?'</p> + +<p>'Oh,' wails Vicki; and trots along blowing her nose.</p> + +<p>Poor little soul. I've tried kissing her, and it did no good either. I +petted her for a whole day; sat with my arms round her; had her head on +my shoulder; whispered every consolation I could think of; but +unfortunately the only person who has ever petted her was the faithless +one, and it made her think of him with renewed agony, and opened +positive sluices of despair. I've tried scolding her—the 'My dear +Vicki, really for a woman grown' tone, but she gets so much of that from +her mother, and besides she isn't a woman grown, but only a poor, +unhappy, cheated little child. But how dull, how dry, how profitless are +the comfortings of one woman for another. I feel it in every nerve the +whole time I am applying them. One kiss from the wretched man himself +and the world blazes into radiance. A thousand of the most beautiful and +eminent verities enunciated by myself only collect into a kind of frozen +pall that hangs about her miserable little head and does nothing more +useful than suffocate her. She has been inclined to feel bad ever since +the fatal letter about the soup, but there were intervals in which with +infinite haulings I did get her up on to the rocks again, those rocks +she finds so barren, but from whose tops she can at least see clearly +and be kept dry. Now that this terrible weather has come upon us, and +every day is wetter and sadder than the last, she has collapsed +entirely. If I could write as well as Papa I would like to write an +essay on the connection between a wet November and the renewed buddings +of love. Frau von Lindeberg is dreadfully angry, and came up, and +actually came in, a thing she has not done yet, and sat on the sofa, +carefully enthroned in its middle and well spread out in case I should +so far forget myself as to want to sit upon it too, and asked me what +nonsense I had been putting into the child's head.</p> + +<p>'Nonsense?' I exclaimed, remembering my noble talk.</p> + +<p>'She was getting over it. You must have said something.'</p> + +<p>'Said something? Yes, indeed I said something. Never has one person said +so many things before.'</p> + +<p>She stared in amazement. 'What,' she cried, 'you actually—you +dared—you have the effrontery—'</p> + +<p>'Shall I tell you what I said?'</p> + +<p>And for an hour I gave the astonished lady, hemmed in on the sofa by the +table and by my chair, the outlines of my views on ideals and conduct. I +made the most of the hour. The outlines were very thick. No fidgeting or +attempts to stop me were considered. She had come to scold; she should +stay to learn.</p> + +<p>'Well, well,' she said, when I, tired of talking, got up and removed the +impeding table with something of the brisk politeness of a dentist +unhooking the patient's bib and screwing down his chair after he has +done his worst, 'you seem to be a good sort of girl. You have, I see, +meant no harm.'</p> + +<p>'Meant no harm? I neither meant it nor did I do it. Allow me to make the +point clearer—' And I prepared to push back the table upon her and +began again.</p> + +<p>'No, no—it is quite clear, thank you. Kindly go on endeavoring, then, +to influence my unhappy child for good. I trust your excellent father is +well. Good morning.'</p> + +<p>But influence as I may Vicki has given up wearing those starched shirts +with the high linen collars and neat ties in which she first dazzled me, +and has gone into nondescript woollen clothes something like mine. She +says it is because, of the washing bills, but I know it to be but a +further symbol of her despair. The one remnant of her first trimness is +her beautifully brushed hair. Stooping over her to see that her English +exercises are correct I like to lay my cheek a moment on it, so lightly +that she does not notice, for it is wonderful stuff,—soft, wavy, +shining, and ought alone without the little ear and curve of the young +cheek, without the silly pretty mouth and kind straightforward eyes, to +have immeshed that stupid man beyond all possibility of disentangling +himself. She was not made for Milton and the Muses. Nature, carving her +out, moulding her body and her mind, putting in a dimple here and giving +an eyelash an extra curl there, had a pleasant eye on a firelit future +for Vicki, a cosy, sheltered future with a fender for her feet, a baby +for each arm, and an adored husband coming in at the end of the day to +be fed and kissed. But this man has outwitted nature. He weighed, with +true German caution, Vicki and her dimples against the tiny portion +which was all he could extract from her parents, and found them not +heavy enough to make up for the alarming emptiness of that other scale. +Now Vicki's fender and babies and busy happy life have vanished into the +land of Never Will Be's. She will not find some one else to take his +place. She has a story attached to her: a fatal thing here for a girl. +Unlike your Miss Cheriton, who gently waves you aside and engages +herself without the least difficulty to a duke, Vicki is a marked +person, and will be avoided by our careful and calculating young men. +She is doomed never to spoil and tease those babies, never to spoil and +worship that husband. Instead she will, for a year, continue to range +the hills here with me, trying to listen politely to my admonishments +while inwardly she shudders at the loneliness and vastness of the +forests and of life, and then her parents' lease will be up, and they +and she will drift down into some little town in the Harz where retired +officers finish lives grown vegetable, and the years will pounce upon +her and strip her one by one of her little stock of graces. Don't +suppose I blame the man, because I don't; I only resent that he should +have so much the best of it. There is no law obliging a man to marry +because some lovesick girl wants him to—if I were a man I would never +marry—but I do deplore the exceeding number of the girls who want him +to. If each girl would say her prayers and go her own way, go about her +business, her parents having seen to it that she should have a business +to go about, what a cheerful, tearless place the world would be. And you +must forgive my vociferousness, but really I have had a woeful morning +with Vicki, who cried so bitterly into the pages of my Milton that the +best part of <i>Samson Agonistes</i> is stuck together, and all the red has +come off the edges.</p> + +<p>Papa Lindeberg came in at the end of the lesson to offer me his umbrella +to go home with. 'It is a wet day, Fräulein Hebe,' said he, looking +round.</p> + +<p>'It is,' said I, gazing ruefully at my poor Milton.</p> + +<p>'Even the daughters of the gods,' said he—thus mildly do we continue to +joke together—'must sometimes use umbrellas.'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said I, smiling at this pleasant old man, this old man I thought +at first so disagreeable; and he went with me to the door, and asked me +in an anxious whisper what I thought of Vicki. 'It lasts long—it lasts +long,' said he, helplessly.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said I, standing under the umbrella in the rain, while he in the +porch rubbed one hand mechanically over the other and stared at me.</p> + +<p>'You are a very fortunate young lady,' he said wistfully.</p> + +<p>'I?'</p> + +<p>'Our poor Vicki—if she were more like you—'</p> + +<p>'Like me?'</p> + +<p>'It is so clear that you have never known this terrible malady of love. +You have the face of a joyful <i>Backfisch</i>.'</p> + +<p>'Oh,'—I began to laugh; and laughed, and laughed till the umbrella +shook showers of raindrops off each of its points.</p> + +<p>He stood watching me thoughtfully. 'It is true,' he said.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' was all I could ejaculate; for indeed the idea made me very merry.</p> + +<p>'No member of our sex,' said he, 'has ever even for a moment caught what +is still a bright and untouched maiden fancy.'</p> + +<p>'There was a young man once,' I began, 'in the Jena cake-shop—'</p> + +<p>'<i>Ach</i>' he interrupted, waving the young man and his cakes away with an +impatient movement of the hand.</p> + +<p>'I didn't know,' said I, 'that you could read people's past.'</p> + +<p>'Yours is easy enough to read. It is shining so clearly in your eyes, it +is reflected so limpidly in your face—'</p> + +<p>'How nice,' said I, interrupting in my turn, for my feet were getting +grievously wet; and you note, I hope, with what industriousness I +preserve and record anything of a flattering nature that any one ever +says to me.</p> + +<p>But you shall hear the other side too; for I turned away, and he turned +away, and before I had gone a yard my shoelace came undone and I had to +go back to the shelter of the porch to tie it up, and while I had my +foot on the scraper and was bending down tying a bow and a knot that +should last me till I got home I heard Frau von Lindeberg from the +parlor off the passage make him the following speech:</p> + +<p>'I am constantly surprised, Ludwig, at the amount of time and +conversation I see you bestow on Fräulein Schmidt. I can hardly call it +impertinence, but there is something indescribable about her +manners,—an unbecoming freedom, an almost immodest frankness, an almost +naked naturalness, that is perilously near impertinence. People of that +class do not understand people of ours; and she will, if you are kinder +than is absolutely necessary, certainly take advantage of it. Let me beg +you to be careful.'</p> + +<p>And Ludwig, beginning then and there, never answered a word.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>What do you think? Papa's book has been refused by the Jena publisher, +by three Berlin publishers, by two in Stuttgart, and one in Leipzig. It +is now journeying round Leipzig to the remaining publishers. The first +time it came back we felt the blow and drooped; the second time we felt +it but did not droop; the third time we felt nothing; the fourth time we +laughed. 'Foolish men,' chuckled Papa, tickled by such blindness to +their own interests, 'if none will have it we will translate it and send +it to England, what?'</p> + +<p>'Who is we, darling?' I asked anxiously.</p> + +<p>'We is you, Rose-Marie,' said Papa, pulling my ear.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' said I.</p> + +<p>Scene closes.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LVII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 1st.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It is strange to address this letter to Berlin, +and to know that by the time it gets there you will be there too. Well, +let it welcome you very heartily back to the Fatherland. I think I know +the street you are in; it is facing the Thiergarten, isn't it, and looks +north? Quite close to the Brandenburg Thor? I remember it because we +trudged, among other places, also about the Thiergarten on our memorable +visit, and Papa's eye caught the name of your street and he stood for +ten minutes in the rain giving us a spirited sketch of the man's life +and claims to have a street called after him. My step-mother waited with +a grim patience, her skirts firmly clutched in each hand. She had come +to sight-see and to have things explained to her, so that it would be +waste of a railway fare not to look and listen. Papa was in great +splendor that day, so obviously superior, in the universatility of his +knowledge, to either of us damp womenfolk. You won't get much sun there +unless your rooms are at the back, but on the other hand it is +undoubtedly a street for the exclusive and well-to-do, as even I could +see to whom marble steps and wrought-iron gates convey the usual lesson. +I, however, would sooner live in a kennel facing south than in a palace +where the sun never came; but then, as you know, my tendencies are +incurably kennelwards.</p> + +<p>Today I am humble and hanging my head, for I have discovered to my pain +and horror that Papa and I are living well beyond our income. I expect +we have bought too many books, and spent too much in stamps to be used +by publishers; but it is certain that we've already consumed over +seventy pounds of our yearly hundred, and that we only took five months +to do it in. What do you think of that? We have been squandering money +right and left somehow. There were no clothes to buy, for what we have +will last us at least two years, and where it has all gone to I can't +imagine. Indeed I am a useless person if I cannot even manage a tiny +house like this and make such sufficient means do. Papa has written to +Professor Martens to tell him he is willing to take in a young man +again. Willing? He is eager, hungry for a young man, for he sees that +without one things will go badly with us. And I, remembering the wealth +we enjoyed while Mr. Collins was with us, have written to him to ask if +he cares to come back and finish learning German. I don't know if he +still wants to, or rather if his father still wants him to, for German +to Joey was as the fly in the apothecary's ointment, in its extreme +offensiveness, nor have I told Papa that I wrote, because of the +peculiar horror with which he regards Joey; but I couldn't resist when I +know that six months of Joey would deliver us for two whole years from +all young men whatever, and I hope when the time comes, if it ever does, +and Joey with it, to persuade Papa by judicious argument of the eminent +desirability of this particular young man.</p> + +<p>There are, however, certain difficulties in the way. Our house has two +bedrooms, two sitting-rooms, an attic, a kitchen, and a coal-hole. +Johanna inhabits the attic. One sitting-room is sacred to Papa and his +work. The other is a scrap room in which we have our meals and receive +Frau von Lindeberg when she calls, and I write letters and read books +and darn stockings. Where, then, will Joey sleep? The answer is as clear +as daylight and very startling: Joey must sleep with Papa. Now that this +truth has dawned upon me I spend hours lost in thoughts of things like +screens and dividing curtains, besides preparing elaborate speeches for +the bringing of Papa to reason. He himself was the first to declare we +must positively take in a young man again, and he surely will see, when +it is pointed out to him, that any one we have must sleep at the +intervals appointed by nature. I'm afraid he'll see it in the case of +every one except the fruitful Joey. It is most unfortunate that Joey +should be so foolish about Goethe, for we really do want somebody who +doesn't mind about money, and I remember several poor boys in the past +who were so very poor that on the days when my step-mother demanded +payment I used to have to go out early and wander among the hills till +evening, unable to endure the sound of the thalers being wrung out of +them. Oh, money is the most horrid of all necessities. I am ashamed to +think of the many bright hours of life soiled by anxieties about it, by +meannesses about it. Wherever even a question of it arises Love and the +Graces fly affrighted, followed closely, by the entire troop of equally +terrified Muses, out of the nearest window. I detest it. I do not want +it. But with all my defiance of it I am crushed beneath the yoke of the +penny as completely as everybody else. Well do I know that penny, and +how much it is when there's one over, and what worlds away when there's +one too few.</p> + +<p>Here comes Johanna to lay the dinner. We are rankly vegetarian again, +Papa leading the way with immense determination, for he has set his +heart at this unfortunate juncture on a new biography of Goethe that +must needs come out just now, a big thing in two volumes costing a +terrible number of marks, very well done, full of the result of original +digging among archives; but he dare not buy it, he says, in the present +state of our affairs. 'Dost thou not think, Rose-Marie,' he said, his +face in grievous puckers at the prospect, 'that a renewed and careful +course of herbage may quickly-set the matter right?'</p> + +<p>'Not quickly,' said I, shaking my head, and pondering privately what, +exactly, he meant by the word renewed.</p> + +<p>He looked crestfallen.</p> + +<p>'But ultimately,' I said, wishing to cheer him.</p> + +<p>'Ultimately—ultimately,' he echoed peevishly. 'The word has a +knell-like sound about it that I do not like. When we have reached thy +Ultimately I shall no longer be in a state to desire or appreciate +Bielschowsky's <i>Goethe</i>. My brain, by then, will be clothed with grass, +and my veins be streams of running water.'</p> + +<p>'Well, darling,' said I, putting my arm through his, 'you'll be at least +very nice and refreshing, and extraordinarily like a verse of the +Psalms.'</p> + +<p>And for two days he has held out undaunted, and here comes our lentil +soup and roast apples, so good-by.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LVIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 4th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—This morning I woke up and wondered at the strange +hush that had fallen on our house, set so near to a sighing, restless +forest; and I looked out of the window and it was the first snow. All +night it must have snowed, for there was the most beautiful smooth bank +of it without a knob anywhere to show where lately I had been digging, +from beneath my window up into the forest. Each pine tree was a fairy +tree, its laden branches one white sparkle. The clouds were gone, and by +the time I had done breakfast there was a brilliant blue sky, and the +hills round Jena stood out so sharply against it that they looked as if +somebody had been at them with a hatchet. Never was there such a serene +and silent world as the one I stepped out into, shovel in hand. I had +come to clear a pathway from the kitchen to the pump; instead I stood as +silent as everything else, the shovel beneath my arm, gazing about me +and drinking in the purity in a speechless ecstasy. Oh the air, Mr. +Anstruther, the air! Unhappy young man, who did not breathe it. It was +like nothing you've got in Berlin, of that you may be very certain. It +was absolutely calm; not a breath stirring. It was icy, yet crisp and +<i>frappé du soleil</i>. And then how wonderful the world looked after the +sodden picture of yesterday still in my mind. Each twig of the orchard +trees had its white rim on the one side, exact and smooth, drawn along +it by the finger of the north wind. The steps down from the back door +had vanished beneath the loveliest, sleekest white covering. The pump, +till the day before and ever since I have known it, a bleakly impressive +object silhouetted in all its lankness and gauntness against a +background of sky and mountain, was grown grotesque, bulky, almost +playful, its top and long iron handle heaped with an incredible pile of +snow, its spout hung about with a beard of icicles. Frau von Lindeberg's +kitchen smoke went up straight and pearly into the golden light. The +roofs of Jena were in blue shadow. Our neighbor's roof flashed with a +million diamonds in the sun. Two rooks cawed to each other from the pine +tree nearest our door; and Rose-Marie Schmidt said her morning prayers +then and there, still clinging to her shovel. Then she pulled off her +coat, hung her hat on the door-handle, and began in a sort of high +rapture to make a pathway to the pump. What are the joys of summer to +these? There is nothing like it, nothing, nothing in the world. I know +no mood of Nature's that I do not love—or think I do when it is +over—but for keenness of feeling, for stinging pleasure, for +overflowing life, give me a winter's day with the first snow, a clear +sky, and the thermometer ten degrees Réaumur below zero.</p> + +<p>Vicki called out from her doorway—you could hear the least call this +morning at an extraordinary distance—to ask if I were snowed up too +much to come down as usual.</p> + +<p>'I'm coming down, and I'm making the path to do it with,' I called back, +shovelling with an energy that set my hair dancing about my ears.</p> + +<p>She shouted back—her very shout was cheerful, and I did not need to see +her face to know that today there would be no tears—that she too would +make a path up to meet mine; and presently I heard the sounds of another +joyful shovel.</p> + +<p>Underneath, the ground was hard with frost; it had frozen violently for +several hours before the snow came up on the huge purple wings of the +north wind. The muddy roads, the soaked forest, the plaintive patter of +the rain, were wiped out of existence between a sleeping and a waking. +This was no world in which to lament. This was no place in which sighs +were possible. The thought that a man's marrying one or not could make +so much as the faintest smudge across the bright hopefulness of life +made me laugh aloud with healthiest derision. Oh, how my shovel rang +against the frozen stones! The feathery snow was scattered broadcast at +each stroke. My body glowed and tingled. My hair grew damp about my +forehead. The sun smiled broadly down upon my back. Papa flung up his +window to cheer me on, but shut it again with a slam before he had well +got out his words. Johanna came for an instant to the door, peeped out, +gasped that it was cold—<i>unheimlich kalt</i> was her strange expression: +<i>unheimlich=dismal</i>, uncanny; think of it!—and shut the door as +hurriedly as Papa had shut the window. An hour later two hot and smiling +young women met together on the path they had shovelled, and +straightened themselves up, and looked proudly at the results of their +work, and laughed at each other's scarlet faces and at the way their +noses and chins were covered with tiny beads. 'As if it were August and +we'd been reaping,' said Vicki; and the big girl laughed at this, and +the small girl laughed at this, with an excessiveness that would have +convinced a passer-by that somebody was being very droll.</p> + +<p>But there was no passer-by. You don't pass by if snow lies on the roads +three feet deep. We are cut off entirely from Jena and shops. This +letter won't start for I haven't an idea how long. Milk cannot come to +us, and we cannot go to where there is a cow. I have flour enough to +bake bread with for about ten days unless the Lindebergs should have +none, in which case it will last less than five. The coal-hole is stored +with cabbages and carrots, buried, with cunning circumvention of decay, +in sand. Potatoes abound in earth-covered heaps out of doors. Apples +abound in Johanna's attic. We vegetarians come off well on occasions +like this, for the absence of milk and butter does not afflict the +already sorely afflicted, and of course the absence of meat leaves us +completely cold.</p> + +<p>Vicki and I have been mending a boy's sled we found in the lumber room +of their house, I suppose the sled used in his happier days by the +<i>Assessor</i> now chained to a desk in Berlin, and with this we are going +out after coffee this afternoon when the sky turns pale green and stars +come out and blink at us, to the top of the road where it joins the +forest, dragging the sled up as best we can over the frozen snow, and +then, tightly clutching each other, and I expect not altogether in +silence, we intend to career down again as far as the thing will career, +flashing, we hope, past her mother's gate at a speed that will prevent +all interference. Perhaps we shall not be able to stop, and will be +landed at last in the middle of the market-place in Jena. I'll take this +letter with me in case that happens, because then I can post it. +Good-by. It's going to be glorious. Don't you wish you had a sled and a +mountain too?</p> + +<p>Yours in a great hurry,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LIX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 9th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—We are still in sunshine and frost up here, and +are all very happy, we three Schmidts—Johanna is the third—because +Joey arrives to-morrow and we shall once more roll in money. I hasten to +tell you this, for there were signs in your last two letters that you +were taking our position to heart. It is wonderfully kind, I think, the +way you are interested in our different little pains and pleasures. I am +often more touched than I care to tell you by the sincerity of your +sympathy with all we do, and feel very grateful for so true a friend. I +was so glad you gave up coming to Jena on your way to Berlin, for it +showed that you try to be reasonable, and then you know Professor +Martens goes to Berlin himself every now and then to take sweet counsel +with men like Harnack, so you will be sure to see him sooner or later, +and see him comfortably, without a rush to catch a train. You say you +did not come because I urged you not to, and that in all things you want +to please me. Well, I would prefer to suppose you a follower of that +plain-faced but excellent guide Common Sense. Still, being human, the +less lofty and conscientious side of me does like to know there is some +one who wishes to please me. I feel deliciously flattered—when I let +myself think of it; nearly always I take care to think of something +else—that a young man of your undoubted temporal and spiritual +advantages should be desirous of pleasing an obscure person like me. +What would Frau von Lindeberg say? Do you remember Shelley's wife's +sister, the Miss Westbrook who brushed her hair so much, with her +constant 'Gracious Heavens, what would Miss Warne say?' I feel inclined +to exclaim the same thing about Frau von Lindeberg, but with an opposite +meaning. And it is really very surprising that you should be so kind, +for I have been a shrew to you often, and have been absorbed in my own +affairs, and have not erred on the side of over-sympathy about yours. +Some day, when we are both very old, perhaps you will get a few hours' +leave from the dowager duchess you'll marry when you are forty, and will +come and look at my pigs and my garden and sit with me before the fire +and talk over our long friendship and all the long days of our life. And +I, when I hear you are coming, shall be in a flutter, and will get out +my best dress, and will fuss over things like asparagus and a salad, and +tell the heated and awe-stricken maid that His Britannic Majesty's +Ambassador at the Best Place to be an Ambassador in in the World is +coming to supper; and we shall feel how sweet it is to be old dear +friends.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile we are both very busy with the days we have got to now. Today, +for instance, has been so violently active that every bone I possess is +aching. I'll tell you what happened, since you so earnestly assure me +that all we do interests you. The snow is frozen so hard that far from +being cut off as I had feared from shops and food there is the most +glorious sledding road down to Jena; and at once on hearing of Joey's +imminence Vicki and I coasted down on the sled and I bought the book +Papa has been wanting and a gigantic piece of beef. Then we persuaded a +small but strong boy, a boy of open countenance and superior manners +whom we met in the market-place, to drag the sled with the beef and the +book up the hill again for us; and so we set out homeward, walking gayly +one on each side of him, encouraging him with loud admiration of his +prowess. 'See,' said I, when I knew a specially steep bit was coming, +'see what a great thing it is to be able to draw so much so easily.'</p> + +<p>A smirk and renewed efforts were the result of this speech at first; but +the smirk grew smaller as the hill grew steeper, and the efforts +dwindled to vanishing point with the higher windings of the road. At +last there was no smirk at all, and at my sixth repetition of the +encouragement he stopped dead. 'If it is such a great thing,' he said, +wiping his youthful forehead with a patched sleeve, and looking at me +with a precociousness I had not till then observed in his eyes, 'why do +you not do it yourself?'</p> + +<p>Vicki and I stared at each other in silent wonder.</p> + +<p>'Because,' I said, turning a reproachful gaze on him, 'because, my dear +little boy, I desire you to have the chance of earning the fifty +pfennings we have promised to give you when we get to the top.'</p> + +<p>He began to pull again, but no longer with any pride in his performance. +Vicki and I walked in silence behind, and at the next steep bit, instead +of repeating a form of words I felt had grown vain, I skilfully unhooked +the parcel of meat hanging on the right-hand runner and carried it, and +Vicki, always quick to follow my example, unhooked the biography of +Goethe from the left-hand runner and carried that. The sled leaped +forward, and for a space the boy climbed with greater vigor. Then came +another long steep bit, and he flagged again.</p> + +<p>'Come, come,' said I, 'it is quite easy.'</p> + +<p>He at once stopped and wiped his forehead. 'If it is easy,' he asked, +'why do you not do it yourself?'</p> + +<p>'Because, my dear little boy,' said I, trying to be patient, but meat is +heavy, and I knew it to be raw, and I feared every moment to feel a +dreadful dampness oozing through the paper, and I was out of breath, and +no longer completely calm, 'you engaged to pull it up for us, and having +engaged to do it it is your duty to do it. I will not come between a boy +and his duty.'</p> + +<p>The boy looked at Vicki. 'How she talks,' he said.</p> + +<p>Vicki and I again stared at each other in silent wonder, and while we +were staring he pulled the sled sideways across the road and sat down.</p> + +<p>'Come, come,' said I, striving after a brisk severity.</p> + +<p>'I am tired,' he said, leaning his chin on his hand and studying first +my face and then Vicki's with a detached, impartial scrutiny.</p> + +<p>'We too are tired,' said I, 'and see, yet we carry the heavy parcels for +you. The sled, empty, is quite light.'</p> + +<p>'Then why do you not pull it yourself?' he asked again.</p> + +<p>'Anyhow,' said Vicki, 'while he sits there we needn't hold these great +things.' And she put the volumes on the sled, and I let the meat drop on +it, which it did with a horrible, soft, heavy thud.</p> + +<p>The boy sat motionless.</p> + +<p>'Let him get his wind,' said Vicki, turning away to look over the edge +of the road at the view.</p> + +<p>'I'm afraid he's a bad little boy,' said I, following her and gazing too +at the sparkling hills across the valley. 'A bad little boy, encased in +an outer semblance of innocence.'</p> + +<p>'He only wants his wind,' said Vicki.</p> + +<p>'He shows no symptoms of not having got it,' said I; for the boy was +very calm, and his mouth was shut sweetly in a placid curve.</p> + +<p>We waited, looking at the view, humanely patient as became two highly +civilized persons. The boy got up after a few minutes and shook himself. +'I am rested,' he announced with a sudden return to the politeness that +had charmed us in Jena.</p> + +<p>'It certainly was rather a long pull up,' said I kindly, softened by his +manner.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said he, 'but I will not keep the ladies waiting longer.'</p> + +<p>And he did not, for he whisked the sled round, sat himself upon it, and +before we had in the least understood what was happening he and it and +the books for Papa and the beef for Joey were darting down the hill, +skimming along the track with the delicious swiftness none knew and +appreciated better than we did. At the bend of the road he gave a joyful +whoop and waved his cap. Then he disappeared.</p> + +<p>Vicki and I stared at each other once more in silent wonder. 'What an +abandoned little boy,' she gasped at last—he must have been almost in +Jena by the time we were able to speak.</p> + +<p>'The poor beef,' said I very ruefully, for it was a big piece and had +cost vast sums.</p> + +<p>'Yes, and the books,' said Vicki.</p> + +<p>'Yes, and the <i>Assessor's</i> sled,' said I.</p> + +<p>There was nothing for it but to hurry down after him and seek out the +authorities and set them in pursuit; and so we hurried as much as can be +hurried over such a road, tired, silent, and hungry, and both secretly +nettled to the point of madness at having been so easily circumvented by +one small boy.</p> + +<p>'Little boys are more pestilential than almost anything I know,' said +Vicki, after a period of speechless crunching over the snow.</p> + +<p>'Far more than anything I know,' said I.</p> + +<p>'I'm thankful I did not marry,' said she.</p> + +<p>'So am I,' said I.</p> + +<p>'The world's much too full of them as it is,' said she.</p> + +<p>'Much,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' she cried suddenly, stamping her foot, 'if I could only get hold +of him—wicked, wicked little wretch!'</p> + +<p>'What would you do?' I asked, curious to see if her plans were at all +like mine.</p> + +<p>'Gr—r—r—r—r,' said Vicki, clenching all those parts of her, such as +teeth and fists, that would clench.</p> + +<p>'Oh so would I!' I cried.</p> + +<p>We were almost at the bottom; the road was making its final bend; and, +as we turned the corner, behold the boy, his cap off, his head bent, his +shoulders straining at the rope, pulling the sled laboriously up again. +And there was the beef hung on one runner, and there were the books hung +on the other. We both stopped dead, arrested by this spectacle. He was +almost upon us before he saw us, so intent was he on his business, his +eyes on the ground, the sun shining on his yellow hair, the drops of +labor rolling down his crimson cheeks.</p> + +<p>'What?' he panted, pausing when he saw our four boots in a row in his +path, and had looked up and recognized the rest of us, 'what, am I there +already?'</p> + +<p>'No,' I cried in the voice of justified anger, 'you are not there—you +are here, at the very beginning of the mountain. Now what have you to +say for yourself?'</p> + +<p>'Nothing,' said he, grinning and wiping his face with his sleeve. 'But +it was a good ride.'</p> + +<p>'You have only just escaped the police and prison,' I said, still +louder. 'We were on our way to hand you over to them.'</p> + +<p>'If I had been there to hand,' said he, winking at Vicki, to whom he had +apparently taken a fancy that was in no way encouraged.</p> + +<p>'You had stolen our sled and our parcels,' I continued, glaring down on +him.</p> + +<p>'Here they are. They are all here. What more do you want?' said he. 'How +she talks,' he added, turning to Vicki and thrusting out his underlip +with an expression that could only mean disgust.</p> + +<p>'You are a very naughty little boy,' said Vicki. 'Give me the rope and +be off.'</p> + +<p>'Give me my fifty pfennings.'</p> + +<p>'Your fifty pfennings?' we exclaimed with one voice.</p> + +<p>'You promised me fifty pfennings.'</p> + +<p>'To pull the sled up to the top.'</p> + +<p>'I am ready to do it.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you. We have had enough. Let the rope go—'</p> + +<p>'And get home to your mother—'</p> + +<p>'And ask her to give you a thorough—'</p> + +<p>'A bargain is a bargain,' said the boy, planting himself squarely in +front of me, while I adjusted the rope over my shoulders and prepared to +pull.</p> + +<p>'Now run away, you very naughty little boy,' said I, pulling sideways to +pass him by.</p> + +<p>He stepped aside too, and faced me again. 'You promised me fifty +pfennings,' he said.</p> + +<p>'To pull the sled up.'</p> + +<p>'I am willing to do it.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, and coast down again as soon as you have got to the top. Be off +with you. We are not playing games.'</p> + +<p>'A promise is a promise,' said the boy.</p> + +<p>'Vicki, remove him from my path,' said I.</p> + +<p>Vicki took him by the arm and gingerly drew him on one side, and I +started up the hill, surprised to find what hard work it was.</p> + +<p>'I am coming too,' said the boy.</p> + +<p>'Are you?' said Vicki.</p> + +<p>'Yes. To fetch my fifty pfennings.'</p> + +<p>We said no more. I couldn't, because I was so breathlessly pulling, and +Vicki marched by my side in indignant silence, with a jealous eye +divided between the parcels and the boy. He, unencumbered, thrust his +hands into his pockets and beguiled the way by shrilly whistling.</p> + +<p>At each winding of the road when Vicki and I changed places he renewed +his offer to fulfil his first bargain; but we, more and more angry as we +grew hotter and hotter, refused with an ever increasing wrath.</p> + +<p>'Come, come,' said he, when a very steep bit had forced me to pause and +struggle for breath.</p> + +<p>'Come, come—' and he imitated my earlier manner—'it is quite easy.'</p> + +<p>I looked at him with what of majesty I could, and answered not a word.</p> + +<p>At Vicki's gate he was still with us. 'I will see you safely home,' +Vicki said to me when we got there.</p> + +<p>'This where you live?' inquired the boy, peeping through the bars of the +gate with cheerful interest. 'Nice little house.'</p> + +<p>We were silent.</p> + +<p>'I will see her home,' he said to Vicki, 'if you don't want to. But she +can surely take care of herself, a great girl like that?'</p> + +<p>We were silent.</p> + +<p>At my gate he was still with us. 'This where she lives?' he asked Vicki, +again peeping through the bars with cheerful interest. 'Funny little +house.'</p> + +<p>We were silent. In silence we opened the gate and dragged the sled in. +He came too.</p> + +<p>'You cannot come in here,' said Vicki. 'This is private property.'</p> + +<p>'I only wish to fetch my fifty pfennings,' said he. 'It will save you +trouble if I come to the door.'</p> + +<p>We went in in silence, and together carried the sled inside, a thing we +had not yet done, and took it with immense exertions into the parlor, +and put it under the table, and tied it by each of its four corners to +each of the table's four legs.</p> + +<p>'There,' said Vicki, scrambling to her feet again and looking at her +knots with satisfaction, 'that's safe if anything is.'</p> + +<p>I went with her to the door. The boy was still there, cap in hand, very +polite, very patient. 'And my fifty pfennings?' he asked pleasantly.</p> + +<p>I cannot explain what we did next. I pulled out my purse and paid him, +which was surprising enough, but Vicki, to whom fifty pfennings are also +precious, pulled out hers too and gave him fifty on her own account. I +am quite unable to explain either her action or mine. The boy made us +each the politest bow, his cap sweeping the snow. 'She,' he said to +Vicki, jerking his head my way, 'may think she is the prettiest, but you +are certainly the best.'</p> + +<p>And he left us to settle it between us, and walked away shrilly +whistling.</p> + +<p>And I am so tired that my very pen has begun to ache, so good-by.</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>Oh, I must tell you that Papa refused to have Joey sleep in his room +with a flatness that put a stop to my arguments before they were even +begun. 'Nay,' he cried, 'I will not.' And when I opened my mouth to +produce the arguments—' 'Nay,' he cried again, 'I will not.' He drowned +my speech. He would not listen. He would not reason. Parrot-like through +the house resounded his cry—'Nay, I will not.' I was in despair. But +everything has arranged itself. Joey is to have the <i>Assessor's</i> room on +the ground floor of our neighbor's house, and will come up here for +lessons and meals. He is only to sleep down there, and will be all day +here. We telegraphed to Weimar to ask about it, and the ever kind owner +immediately agreed. Frau von Lindeberg is displeased, for she says no +Dammerlitz has ever yet been known to live in a house where there was a +lodger,—a common lodger she said first, but corrected herself, and +covered up the common with a cough.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 12th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I must write to-night, though it is late, to tell +you of my speechless surprise when I came in an hour ago and found you +had been here. I knew you had the moment I came in. At once I recognized +the smell of the cigarettes you smoke. I went upstairs and called +Johanna, for I was not sure that you were not still here, in the parlor, +and frankly I was not going down if you were, for I do not choose to +have my fastnesses stormed. She told me of your visit; how you had come +up on foot soon after Vicki and Joey and I had started off for an +afternoon's tobogganing on the hills, how you had stayed talking to +Papa, and talking and talking, till you had to hurry down to catch the +last train. 'And he bade me greet you for him,' finished Johanna. +'Indeed?' said I.</p> + +<p>Do you like winter excursions into the country? Is Berlin boring you +already? I shook my head in grave disapproval as Johanna proceeded with +her tale. I am all for a young man's attending to his business and not +making sudden wild journeys that take him away for a whole day and most +of a night. Papa was delighted, I must say, to have had at last, as he +told me with disconcerting warmth, at last after all these months an +intelligent conversation, but with his delight the success of your visit +ends, for when I heard of it I was not delighted at all. Why did you go +into the kitchen? Johanna says you would go, and then that you went out +hatless at the back door and down to the bottom of the garden and that +you stood there leaning against the fence as though it were summer. +'Still without a hat,' said Johanna, in her turn shaking her head, '<i>bei +dieser Kälte</i>.'</p> + +<p><i>Bei dieser Kälte</i>, indeed. Yes; what made you do it? I am glad I was +out, for I do not care to look on while the usually reasonable behave +unaccountably. I don't think I can be friends with you for a little +after this. I think I really must quarrel, for it isn't very decent to +drop unexpectedly upon a person who from time to time has told you with +the frankness that is her most marked feature that she doesn't want to +be dropped upon. No doubt you wished to see Papa as well, and, on your +way through Jena, Professor Martens; but I will not pretend to suppose +your call was not chiefly intended for me, for it is to me and not to +either of those wiser ones that you have written every day for months +past. You are a strange young man. Heaven knows what you have accustomed +yourself to imagining me to be. I almost wish now that you had seen me +when I came in from our violent exercise, a touzled, short-skirted, +heated person. It might have cured you. I forgot to look in the glass, +but of course my hair and eyelashes were as white with hoar-frost as +Vicki's and Joey's, and from beneath them and from above my turned-up +collar must have emerged just such another glowing nose. Even Papa was +struck by my appearance—after having gazed, I suppose, for hours on +your composed correctness—and remarked that living in the country did +not necessarily mean a complete return to savage nature.</p> + +<p>The house feels very odd to-night. So do I. It feels haunted. So do I. I +want to scold you, and yet I cannot. I have the strangest desire to cry. +It is the thought that you came this long way, toiled up this long hill, +waited those long hours, all to see some one who is glad to have missed +you, that makes me want to. The night is so black outside my window, and +somewhere through that blackness you are travelling at this moment, +disappointed, across the endless frozen fields and forests that you must +go through inch by inch before you reach Berlin. Why did you do a thing +so comfortless? And here have I actually begun to cry,—I think because +it is so dark, and you are not yet home.</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 16th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I don't quite understand. Purely motherly, I +should say. Perhaps our notions of the exact meaning of the word friend +are different. I include in it a motherly and sisterly interest in +bodily well-being, in dry socks, warm feet, regular meals. I do not like +my friend to be out on a bitter night, to take a tiring journey, to be +disappointed. My friend's mother would have, I imagine, precisely the +same feeling. My friend should not, then, mistake mere motherliness for +other and less comfortable sentiments. But I am busy today, and have no +time to puzzle out your letter. It must have been the outcome of a +rather strange mood.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>Tell me more about your daily life in Berlin, the people you see, the +houses you go to, the attitude, kind or otherwise, of your chief. Tell +me these things, instead of swamping me with subtleties of sentiment. I +don't understand subtleties, and I fear and despise sentiment as a +certain spoiler of plain bread-and-butter happiness. There should be no +sentiment between friends. The moment there is they leave off being just +friends; and is not that what we both most want to be?</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 19th.</p> + +<p>Oh, I can do nothing with you. You are bent, I'm afraid, on losing your +friend. Don't write me such letters—don't, don't, don't! My heart sinks +when I see you deliberately setting about strangling our friendship. Am +I to lose it then, that too? Your last letters are like bad dreams, so +strange and unreasonable, so without the least order or self-control. I +read them with my fingers in my ears,—an instinctive foolish movement +of protection against words I do not want to hear. Dear friend, do not +take your friendship from me. Give yourself a shake; come out from those +vain imaginings your soul has gone to dwell among. What shall I talk to +you about this bright winter's morning? Yes, I will write you longer +letters; you needn't beg so hard, as though the stars couldn't get along +in their courses if I didn't. See, I am willing to do anything to keep +my friend. You are my only one, the only person in the world to whom I +tell the silly thoughts that come into my head and so get rid of them. +You listen, and you are the only person in the world who does. You help +me, and I in my turn want to be allowed to go on helping you. Do not put +an end to what is precious,—believe me it will grow more and more +precious with years. Do not, in the heat and impatience of youth, kill +the poor goose who, if left alone, will lay the most beautiful golden +eggs. What shall I talk to you about to turn your attention somewhere +else, somewhere far removed from that unhappy bird? Shall I tell you +about Papa's book, finally refused by every single publisher, come back +battered and draggled to be galvanized by me into fresh life in an +English translation? Shall I tell you how I sit for three hours daily +doing it, pen in hand, ink on fingers, hair pushed back from an anxious +brow, Papa hovering behind with a dictionary in which, full of distrust, +he searches as I write to see if it contains the words I have used? +Shall I tell you about Joey, whose first disgust at finding himself once +more with us has given place by degrees that grow visibly wider to a +rollicking enjoyment. Less and less does he come up here. More and more +does he stay down there. He hurries through his lessons with a speed +that leaves Papa speechless, and is off and hauling the sled up past our +gate with Vicki walking demurely beside him and is whizzing down again +past our gate with Vicki sitting demurely in front of him before Papa is +well through the list of adjectives he applies to him once at least +every day. I never see the sled now nearer than in the distance. Vicki +wears her stiff shirts again, and her neat ties again, and the sporting +belt that makes her waist look so very trim and tiny. If anything she is +more aggressively starched and boyish than before. Her collars seem to +grow higher and cleaner each time I see her. Her hat is tilted further +forward. Her short skirts show the neatest little boots. She is +extraordinarily demure. She never cries. Joey reads <i>Samson Agonistes</i> +with us, and points out the jokes to Vicki. Vicki says why did I never +tell her it was so funny? I stare first at one and then at the other, +and feel a hundred years old.</p> + +<p>'I say,' said Joey, coming into the kitchen just now.</p> + +<p>'Well, what?' said I.</p> + +<p>'I'm going to Berlin for a day.'</p> + +<p>'Are you indeed?'</p> + +<p>'Tell the old man, will you?'</p> + +<p>'Tell the who?'</p> + +<p>'The old man. I shan't be here for the lesson to-morrow, thank the Lord. +I'm off by the first train.'</p> + +<p>'Indeed,' said I.</p> + +<p>There was a silence, during which Joey fidgeted about among the culinary +objects scattered around him. I went on peeling apples. When he had +fidgeted as much as he wanted to be lit a cigarette.</p> + +<p>'No,' said I. 'Not in kitchens. A highly improper thing to do.'</p> + +<p>He threw it into the dustbin. 'I say,' he said again.</p> + +<p>'Well, what?' said I again.</p> + +<p>'What do you think—what do you think—' He paused. I waited. As he +didn't go on I thought he had done. 'What do I think?' I said. 'You'd be +staggered if I told you, it's such a lot, and it's so terrific.'</p> + +<p>'What do you think,' repeated Joey, taking no heed of me, but, with his +hands in his pockets, kicking a fallen apple aimlessly about on the +floor, 'what do you think the little girl'd like for Christmas and that, +don't you know?'</p> + +<p>I stopped peeling and gazed at him, knife and apple suspended in +mid-air. 'The little girl?' I inquired. 'Do you mean Johanna?'</p> + +<p>Joey stared. Then he grinned at me monstrously. 'You bet,' was his +cryptic reply.</p> + +<p>'What am I to bet?' I asked patiently.</p> + +<p>Joey gave the fallen apple a kick. Looking down I observed that it was +the biggest and the best, and stooped to rescue it. 'It's not pretty,' +said I, rebuking him, 'to kick even an apple when it's down.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I say,' said Joey impatiently, 'do be sensible. There never was any +gettin' much sense out of you I remember. And you're only pretendin'. +You know I mean Vicki.'</p> + +<p>'Vicki?'</p> + +<p>He had the grace to blush. 'Well, Fräulein What's her name. You can't +expect any one decent to get the hang of these names of yours. They +ain't got any hang, so how's one to get it? What'd she like for +Christmas? Don't you all kick up a mighty fuss here over Christmas? +Trees, and presents, and that? Plummier plum-puddings than we have, and +mincier mince-pies, what?'</p> + +<p>'If you think you will get even one plum-pudding or mince-pie,' said I, +thoughtfully peeling, 'you are gravely mistaken. The national dish is +carp boiled in beer.'</p> + +<p>Joey looked really revolted. 'What?' he cried, not liking to credit his +senses.</p> + +<p>'Carp boiled in beer,' I repeated distinctly. 'It is what I'm going to +give you on Christmas Day.'</p> + +<p>'No you're not,' he said hastily.</p> + +<p>'Yes I am,' I insisted. 'And before it and after it you will be +required, in accordance with German custom, to sing chorales.'</p> + +<p>'I'd like to see myself doin' it. You'll have to sing 'em alone. I'm +invited to feed down there.'</p> + +<p>And he jerked his head toward that portion of the kitchen wall beyond +which, if you passed through it and the intervening coal-hole and garden +and orchard, you would come to the dwelling of the Lindebergs.</p> + +<p>'Oh,' said I; and looked at him thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said he, trying to meet my look with an equal calm, but +conspicuously failing. 'That bein' so,' he went on hurriedly, 'and my +droppin', so to speak, into the middle of somebody's Christmas tree and +that, it seems to me only decent to give the little girl somethin'. What +shall I get her? Somethin' to put on, I suppose. A brooch, or a pin, +what?'</p> + +<p>'Or a ring,' said I, thoughtfully peeling.</p> + +<p>'A ring? What, can one—oh I say, don't let's waste time rottin'—'</p> + +<p>And glancing up through cautious eyelashes I saw he was very red.</p> + +<p>'It'd be easy enough if it was you,' he said revengefully.</p> + +<p>'What would?'</p> + +<p>'Hittin' on what you'd like.'</p> + +<p>'Would it?'</p> + +<p>'All you'd want to do the trick would be a dictionary.'</p> + +<p>'Now Mr. Collins that's unkind,' said I, laying down my knife.</p> + +<p>He began to grin again. 'It's true,' he insisted.</p> + +<p>'It suggests such an immeasurable stuffiness,' I complained.</p> + +<p>'It isn't my fault,' said he grinning.</p> + +<p>'But perhaps I deserve it because I mentioned a ring. Let me tell you, +as man to man, that you must buy no brooches for Vicki.'</p> + +<p>'A pin, then?'</p> + +<p>'No pins.'</p> + +<p>'A necklace, then?'</p> + +<p>'Nothing of the sort. What would her parents say? Give her chocolates, a +bunch of roses, perhaps a book—but nothing more. If you do you'll get +into a nice scrape.'</p> + +<p>Joey looked at me. 'What sort of scrape?' he asked curiously.</p> + +<p>'Gracious heavens, don't you see? Are you such a supreme goose? My poor +young man, the parents would immediately ask you your intentions.'</p> + +<p>'Oh would they,' said Joey, in his turn becoming thoughtful; and after a +moment he said again, 'Oh would they.'</p> + +<p>'It's as certain as anything I know,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Oh is it,' said Joey, still thoughtful.</p> + +<p>'It's a catastrophe young men very properly dread,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Oh do they,' said Joey, sunk in thought.</p> + +<p>'Well, if you're not listening—' And I shrugged my shoulders, and went +on with my peeling.</p> + +<p>He pulled his cap out of the pocket into which it had been stuffed, and +began to put it on, tugging it first over one ear and then over the +other in a deep abstraction.</p> + +<p>'You're in my kitchen,' I observed.</p> + +<p>'Sorry,' he said, snatching it off. 'I forgot. You always make me feel +as if I were out of doors.'</p> + +<p>'How very odd,' said I, interested and slightly flattered.</p> + +<p>'Ain't it. East wind, you know—decidedly breezy, not to say nippin'. +Well, I must be goin'.'</p> + +<p>'I think so too,' said I coldly.</p> + +<p>'Don't be dull while I'm away,' said Joey; and departed with a nod.</p> + +<p>But he put in his head again the next moment. 'I say, Miss Schmidt—'</p> + +<p>'Well, what?'</p> + +<p>'You think I ought to stick to chocolates, then?' 'If you don't there'll +be extraordinary complications,' said I.</p> + +<p>'You're sure of that?'</p> + +<p>'Positive.'</p> + +<p>'You'd swear it?'</p> + +<p>I threw down my knife and apple. 'Now what's the matter with the boy!' I +exclaimed impatiently. 'Do I ever swear?'</p> + +<p>'But if you did you would?'</p> + +<p>'Swear what?'</p> + +<p>'That a bit of jewelry would bring the complications about?'</p> + +<p>'Oh—dense, dense, dense! Of course it would. You'd be surprised at the +number and size of them. You can't be too careful. Give her a hymn-book.</p> + +<p>Joey gave a loud whoop.</p> + +<p>'Well, it's safe,' said I severely, 'and it appeals to parents.'</p> + +<p>'You bet,' said Joey, screwing his face into a limitlessly audacious +wink.</p> + +<p>'I wish,' said I, very plaintively, 'that I knew exactly what it is I am +to bet. You constantly tell me to do so, but never add the necessary +directions.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I'm goin',' was Joey's irrelevant reply; and his head popped out as +suddenly as it had popped in.</p> + +<p>Or shall I tell you—I am anxious to make this letter long enough to +please you—about Frau von Lindeberg, who spent two days elaborately +cutting Joey, the two first days of his appearance in their house as +lodger, persuaded, I suppose, that no one even remotely and by business +connected with the Schmidts could be anything but undesirable, and how, +meeting him in the passage, or on his way through the garden to us, the +iciest stare was all she felt justified in giving him in return for his +friendly grin, and how on the third day she suddenly melted, and stopped +and spoke pleasantly to the poor solitary, commiserating with his +situation as a stranger in a foreign country, and suggesting the +alleviation to his loneliness of frequent visits to them? No one knows +the first cause of this melting. I think she must have heard through her +servant of the number and texture of those pink and blue silk +handkerchiefs, of his amazing piles of new and costly shirts, of the +obvious solidity of the silver on everything of his that has a back or a +stopper or a handle or a knob. Anyhow on that third morning she came up +and called on us, asking particularly for Papa. 'I particularly wished,' +she said to me, spreading herself out as she did the last time on the +sofa, 'to see your good father on a matter of some importance.'</p> + +<p>'I'll go and call him,' said I, concealing my conviction that though I +might call he would not come.</p> + +<p>And he would not. 'What, interrupt my work?' he cried. 'Is the woman +mad?'</p> + +<p>I went back and made excuses. They were very lame ones, and Frau von +Lindeberg instantly brushed them aside. 'I will go to him,' she said, +getting up. 'Your excellent father will not refuse me, I am sure.'</p> + +<p>Papa was sitting in his slippers before the stove, doing nothing, so far +as I could see, except very comfortably read the new book about Goethe.</p> + +<p>'I am sorry to disturb so busy a man,' said Frau von Lindeberg, bearing +down with smiles on this picture of peace.</p> + +<p>Papa sprang up, and seeing there was no escape pretended to be quite +pleased to see her. He offered her his chair, he prayed for indulgence +toward his slippers, and sitting down facing her inquired in what way he +could be of service.</p> + +<p>'I want to know something about the young Englishman who occupies a room +in our house,' said Frau von Lindeberg, without losing time. 'You +understand that it is not only natural but incumbent on a parent to wish +for information in regard to a person dwelling under the same roof.'</p> + +<p>'I can give every information,' said Papa readily. 'His name in English +is Collins. In German it is <i>Esel</i>.'</p> + +<p>'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg, taken aback.</p> + +<p>'It is, madam,' said Papa, looking very pleasant, as became a man in his +own house confronted by a female visitor. 'We have re-christened him. +And no array of words with which I am acquainted will express the +exactness of his resemblance to that useful but unintelligent beast.'</p> + +<p>'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg, not yet recovered.</p> + +<p>'The ass, madam, is conspicuous for the narrowness of its understanding. +So is Mr. Collins. The ass is exasperating to persons of normal brains. +So is Mr. Collins. The ass is lazy in regard to work, and obstinate. So +is Mr. Collins. The ass is totally indifferent to study. So is Mr. +Collins. The ass has never heard of Goethe. Neither has Mr. Collins. The +ass is useful to the poor. So is Mr. Collins. The ass, indeed, is the +poor man's most precious possession. So, emphatically, is Mr. Collins.'</p> + +<p>'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg again.</p> + +<p>'Is there anything more you wish to know?' Papa inquired politely, for +she seemed unable immediately to go on.</p> + +<p>She cleared her throat. 'In what way—in what way is he useful?' she +asked.</p> + +<p>'Madam, he pays.'</p> + +<p>'Yes—of course, of course. You cannot—' she smiled—'be expected to +teach him German for nothing.'</p> + +<p>'Far from doing that I teach him German for a great deal.'</p> + +<p>'Is he—do you know anything about his relations? You understand,' she +added, 'that it is not altogether pleasant for a private family like +ours to have a strange young man living under the same roof.'</p> + +<p>'Understand?' cried Papa. 'I understand it so thoroughly that I most +positively refused to have him under this one.'</p> + +<p>'Ah—yes,' said Frau von Lindeberg, a Dammerlitz expression coming into +her face. 'The cases are not—are not quite—pray tell me, who and what +is his father?'</p> + +<p>'A respectable man, madam, I should judge.'</p> + +<p>'Respectable? And besides respectable?'</p> + +<p>'Eminently worthy, I should say from his letters.'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes. And—and anything else?'</p> + +<p>'Honorable too, I fancy. Indeed, I have not a doubt.'</p> + +<p>'Is he of any family?'</p> + +<p>'He is of his own family, madam.'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes. And did you—did you say he was well off?'</p> + +<p>'He is apparently revoltingly rich.'</p> + +<p>An electric shock seemed to make Frau von Lindeberg catch her breath. +'Oh really,' she then said evenly. 'Did he inherit his wealth?'</p> + +<p>'Made it, madam. He is an ironmonger.'</p> + +<p>Another electric shock made Frau von Lindeberg catch her breath again. +Then she again said, 'Oh really.'</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>'England,' she said after a moment, 'is different from Germany.'</p> + +<p>'I believe it is,' admitted Papa.</p> + +<p>'And ironmongers there may be different from ironmongers here.'</p> + +<p>'It is at least conceivable.'</p> + +<p>'Tell me, what status has an ironmonger in England?'</p> + +<p>'What status?'</p> + +<p>'In society.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, that I know not. I went over there seven and twenty years ago for +the purpose of marrying, and I met no ironmongers. Not consciously, that +is.'</p> + +<p>'Would they—would they be above the set in which you then found +yourself, or would they—' she tried to conceal a shiver—'be below it.'</p> + +<p>'I know not. I know nothing of society either there or here. But I do +know that money, there as here, is very mighty. It is, I should say, +merely a question of having enough.'</p> + +<p>'And has he enough?'</p> + +<p>'The man, madam, is I believe perilously near becoming that miserable +and isolated creature a millionaire. God help the unfortunate Joey.'</p> + +<p>'But why? Why should God help him? Why is he unfortunate? Does not he +get any share?'</p> + +<p>'Any share? He gets it all. He is the only child. Now I put it to you, +what chance is there for an unhappy youth with no brains-'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I must really go. I have taken up an unwarrantable amount of your +time. Thank you so very much, dear Herr Schmidt—no, no, do not disturb +yourself I beg—your daughter will show me the way—'</p> + +<p>'But,' cried Papa, vainly trying to detain this determinedly retreating +figure, 'about his character, his morals—we have not yet touched—'</p> + +<p>'Ah yes—so kind—I will not keep you now. Another time perhaps—'</p> + +<p>And Frau von Lindeberg got herself out of the room and out of the house. +Scarcely did she say good-by to me, in so great and sudden a fever was +she to be gone; but she did turn on the doorstep and give me a curiously +intense look. It began at my eyes, travelled upward to my hair, down +across my face, and from there over my whole body to my toes. It was a +very odd look. It was the most burningly critical look that has ever +shrivelled my flesh.</p> + +<p>Now what do you think of this enormous long letter? It has made me quite +cheerful just writing it, and I was not very cheerful when I began. I +hope the reading of it will do you as much good. Good-by. Write and tell +me you are happy.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>Do, do try to be happy!</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 22d.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—The house is quite good enough for me, I assure +you—the 'setting' I think you call it, suggesting with pleasant +flattery that there is something precious to be set. It only has the +bruised sort of color you noticed when its background is white with +snow. In summer against the green it looks as white as you please; but a +thing must be white indeed to look so in the midst of our present +spotlessness. And it is not damp if there are fires enough. And the +rooms are not too small for me—poky was the adjective you applied to +the dear little things. And I am never lonely. And Joey is very nice, +even though he doesn't quite talk in blank verse. I feel a sort of shame +when you make so much of me, when you persist in telling me that the +outer conditions of my life are unworthy. It makes me feel so base, such +a poor thing. Sometimes I half believe you must be poking fun. Anyhow I +don't know what you would be at; do you wish me to turn up my nose at my +surroundings? And do you see any good that it would do? And the details +you go into! That coffee-pot you saw and are so plaintive about came to +grief only the day before your visit, and will, in due season, be +replaced by another. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt coffee to be poured out +of a broken spout, and it doesn't hurt us to drink it after it has +passed through this humiliation. On the contrary, we receive it +thankfully into cups, and remain perfectly unruffled. You say, and +really you say it in a kind of agony, that the broken spout, you are +sure, is symbolic of much that is invisible in my life. You say—in +effect, though your words are choicer—that if you had your way my life +would be set about with no spouts that were not whole. If you had your +way? Mr. Anstruther, it is a mercy that in this one matter you have not +got it. What an extremely discontented creature I would become if I +spent my days embedded in the luxury you, by a curious perverseness, +think should be piled around me. I would gasp ill-natured epigrams from +morning till night. I would wring my hands, and rend the air with cries +of <i>cui bono</i>. The broken spout is a brisk reminder of the +transitoriness of coffee-pots and of life. It sets me hurrying about my +business, which is first to replace it, and then by every possible +ingenuity to make the most of the passing moment. The passing moment is +what you should keep your eye on, my young friend. It is a slippery, +flighty thing; but, properly pounced upon, lends itself fruitfully to +squeezing. The upshot of your last letter is, I gather, that for some +strange reason, some extremity of perverseness, you would have me walk +in silk attire, and do it in halls made of marble. It suffocates me only +to think of it. I love my freedom and forest trampings, my short skirts +and swinging arms. I want the wind to blow on me, and the sun to burn +me, and the mud to spatter me. Away with caskets, and settings, and +frames! I am not a picture, or a jewel, whatever your poetic eye, misled +by a sly and tricky Muse, persists in seeing. It would be quite a good +plan, and of distinctly tonic properties, for you to write to Frau von +Lindeberg and beg her to describe me. She, it is certain, would do it +very accurately, untroubled by the deceptions of any Muse.</p> + +<p>How kind of you to ask me what I would like for Christmas, and how funny +of you to ask if you might not give me a trinket. I laughed over that, +for did I not write to you three days ago and give you an account of my +conversation with Joey on the subject of trinkets at Christmas? Is it +possible you do not read my letters? Is it possible that, having read +them, you forget them so immediately? Is it possible that proverbs lie, +and the sauce appropriate to the goose is not also appropriate to the +gander? Give me a book. There is no present I care about but that. And +if it happened to be a volume in the dark blue binding edition of +Stevenson to add to my row of him I would be both pleased and grateful. +Joey asked me what I wanted, so he is getting me the <i>Travels with a +Donkey</i>. Will you give me <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>?</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>If you'd rather, you may give me a new coffee-pot instead.</p> + +<p>Later.</p> + +<p>But only an earthenware one, like the one that so much upset you.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 26th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—We had a most cheerful Christmas, and I hope you +did too. I sent you my blessing lurking in the pages of Frenssen's new +and very wonderful book which ought to have reached you in time to put +under your tree. I hope you did have a tree, and were properly festive? +The Stevenson arrived, and I found it among my other presents, tied up +by Johanna with a bit of scarlet tape. Everything here at Christmas is +tied up with scarlet, or blue, or pink tape, and your Stevenson lent +itself admirably to the treatment. Thank you very much for it, and also +for the little coffee set. I don't know whether I ought to keep that, it +is so very pretty and dainty and beyond my deserts, but—it would break +if I packed it and sent it back again, wouldn't it? so I will keep it, +and drink your health out of the little cup with its garlands of tiny +flower-like shepherdesses.</p> + +<p>The audacious Joey did give Vicki jewelry, and a necklace if you please, +the prettiest and obviously the costliest thing you can imagine. What +happened then was in exact fulfilment of my prophecy; Vicki gasped with +joy and admiration, he tells me, and before she had well done her gasp +Frau von Lindeberg, with, as I gather, a sort of stately regret, took +the case out of her hands, shut it with a snap, and returned it to Joey. +'No,' said Frau von Lindeberg.</p> + +<p>'What's wrong with it?' Joey says he asked.</p> + +<p>'Too grand for my little girl,' said Frau von Lindeberg. 'We are but +humble folk.' And she tossed her head, said Joey.</p> + +<p>'Ah—Dammerlitz,' I muttered, nodding with a complete comprehension.</p> + +<p>'What?' exclaimed Joey, starting and looking greatly astonished.</p> + +<p>'Go on,' said I.</p> + +<p>'But I say,' said Joey, in tones of shocked protest.</p> + +<p>'What do you say?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Why, how you must hate her,' said Joey, quite awestruck, and staring at +me as though he saw me for the first time.</p> + +<p>'Hate her?' I asked, surprised, 'Why do you think I hate her?'</p> + +<p>He whistled, still staring at me.</p> + +<p>'Why do you think I hate her?' I asked again, patient as I always try to +be with him.</p> + +<p>He murmured something about as soon expecting it of a bishop.</p> + +<p>In my turn I stared. 'Suppose you go on with the story,' I said, +remembering the hopelessness of ever following the train of Joey's +thoughts.</p> + +<p>Well, there appears to have been a gloom after that over the +festivities. You are to understand that it all took place round the +Christmas tree in the best parlor, Frau von Lindeberg in her black silk +and lace high-festival dress, Herr von Lindeberg also in black with his +orders, Vicki in white with blue ribbons, the son, come down for the +occasion, in the glories of his dragoon uniform with clinking spurs and +sword, and the servant starched and soaped in a big embroidered apron. +In the middle of these decently arrayed rejoicers, the candles on the +tree lighting up every inch of him, stood Joey in a Norfolk jacket, +gaiters, and green check tie. 'I was goin' to dress afterward for +dinner,' he explained plaintively, 'but how could a man guess they'd all +have got into their best togs at four in the afternoon? I felt an awful +fool, I can tell you.'</p> + +<p>'I expect you looked one too,' said I with cheerful conviction.</p> + +<p>There appears, then, to have descended a gloom after the necklace +incident on the party, and a gloom of a slightly frosty nature. Vicki, +it is true, was rather melting than frosty, her eyes full of tears, her +handkerchief often at her nose, but Papa Lindeberg was steeped in gloom, +and Frau von Lindeberg was sad with the impressive Christian sadness +that does not yet exclude an occasional wan smile. As for the son, he +twirled his already much twirled mustache and stared very hard at Joey.</p> + +<p>When the presents had been given, and Joey found himself staggering +beneath a waistcoat Vicki had knitted him, and a pair of pink bed-socks +Frau von Lindeberg had knitted him, and an empty photograph frame from +Papa Lindeberg, and an empty purse from the son, and a plate piled +miscellaneously with apples and nuts and brown cakes with pictures +gummed on to them, he observed Frau von Lindeberg take her husband aside +into the remotest corner of the room and there whisper with him +earnestly and long. While she was doing this the son, who knew no +English, talked with an air of one who proposed to stand no nonsense to +Joey, who knew no German, and Vicki, visibly depressed, slunk round the +Christmas tree blowing her nose.</p> + +<p>Papa Lindeberg, says Joey, came out of the corner far more gloomy than +he went in; he seemed like a man urged on unwillingly from behind, a man +reluctant to advance, and yet afraid or unable to go back. 'I beg to +speak with you,' he said to Joey, with much military stiffness about his +back and heels.</p> + +<p>'Now wasn't I right?' I interrupted triumphantly.</p> + +<p>'Poor old beggar,' said Joey, 'he looked frightfully sick.'</p> + +<p>'And didn't you?'</p> + +<p>'No,' said Joey grinning.</p> + +<p>'Most young men would have.'</p> + +<p>'But not this one. This one went off with him trippin' on the points of +his toes, he felt so fit.'</p> + +<p>'Well, what happened then?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I don't know. He said a lot of things. I couldn't understand 'em, +and I don't think he could either, but he was very game and stuck to it +once he'd begun, and went on makin' my head spin and I daresay his own +too. Long and short of it was that in this precious Fatherland of yours +the Vickis don't accept valuables except from those about to become +their husbands.'</p> + +<p>'I should say that the Vickis in your own or any other respectable +Fatherland didn't either,' said I.</p> + +<p>'Well, I'm not arguin', am I?'</p> + +<p>'Well, go on.'</p> + +<p>'Well, it seemed pretty queer to think I was about to become a husband, +but there was nothin' for it—the little girl, you see, couldn't be done +out of her necklace just because of that.'</p> + +<p>'I see,' said I, trying to.</p> + +<p>'On Christmas Day too—day of rejoicin' and that, eh?'</p> + +<p>'Quite so,' said I.</p> + +<p>'So I said I was his man.'</p> + +<p>'And did he understand?'</p> + +<p>'No. He kept on sayin' 'What?' and evidently cursin' the English +language in German. Then I suggested that Vicki should be called in to +interpret. He understood that, for I waved my arms about till he did, +but he said her mother interpreted better, and he would call her +instead. I understood that, and said 'Get out.' He didn't understand +that, and while he was tryin' to I went and told his wife that he'd sent +for Vicki. Vicki came, and we got on first rate. First thing I did was +to pull out the necklace and put it round her neck. 'Pretty as paint, +ain't she?' I said to the old man. He didn't understand that either, but +Vicki did and laughed. 'You give her to me and I give the necklace to +her, see?' I said, shoutin', for I felt if I shouted loud enough he +wouldn't be able to help understandin', however naturally German he was. +'Tell him how simple it is,' I said to Vicki. Vicki was very red but +awfully cheerful, and laughed all the time. She explained, I suppose, +for he went out to call his wife. Vicki and I stayed behind, and—'</p> + +<p>'Well?'</p> + +<p>'Oh well, we waited.'</p> + +<p>'And what did Frau von Lindeberg say?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, she was all right. Asked me a lot about the governor. Said Vicki's +ancestors had fought with the snake in the Garden of Eden, or somebody +far back like that—ancient lineage, you know—son-in-law must be +impressed. I told her I didn't think my old man would make any serious +objection to that. 'To what?' she called out, looking quite scared—they +seem frightfully anxious to please the governor. 'He don't like +ancestors,' said I. 'Ain't got any himself and don't hold with 'em.' She +pretended she was smilin', and said she supposed my father was an +original. 'Well,' said I, goin' strong for once in the wit line, 'anyhow +he's not an aboriginal like Vicki's lot seem to have been.' Pretty good +that, eh? Seemed to stun 'em. Then the son came in and shook both my +hands for about half an hour and talked a terrific lot of German and was +more pleased about it than any one else, as far as I could see. And +then—well, that's about all. So I pulled off my little game rather +neatly, what?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, if it was your little game,' said I, with a faint stress on the +your.</p> + +<p>'Whose else should it be?' he asked, looking at me open-mouthed.</p> + +<p>'Vicki is a little darling,' was my prudent reply, 'and I congratulate +you with all my heart. Really I am more delighted about this than I can +remember ever being about anything—more purely delighted, without the +least shadow on my honest pleasure.'</p> + +<p>And all Joey vouchsafed as a reward for my ebullition of real feeling +was the information that he considered me quite a decent sort.</p> + +<p>So you see we are very happy up on the Galgenberg just now; the lovers +like a pair of beaming babies, Frau von Lindeberg, sobered by the shock +of her good fortune into the gentle kindliness that so often follows in +the wake of a sudden great happiness, Papa Lindeberg warmed out of his +tortoise-in-the-sun condition into much busy letter-writing, and Vicki's +brother so uproariously pleased that I can only conclude him to be the +possessor of many debts which he proposes to cause Joey to pay. Life is +very thrilling when Love beats his wings so near. There has been a great +writing to Joey's father, and Papa too has written, at my dictation, a +letter rosy with the glow of Vicki's praises. Joey thinks his father +will shortly appear to inspect the Lindebergs. He seems to have no fears +of parental objections. 'He's all right, my old man is,' he says +confidently when I probe him on the point; adding just now to this +invariable reply, 'And look here, Miss Schmidt, Vicki's all right too, +you see, so what's the funk about?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' said I; and I didn't even after I had secretly looked in +the dictionary, for it was empty of any explanation of the word funk. +Yours, deeply interested in life and lovers,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Dec. 31st.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—My heartiest good wishes for the New Year. May it +be fruitful to you in every pleasant way; bring you interesting work, +agreeable companions, bright days; and may it, above all things confirm +and strengthen our friendship. There now; was ever young man more +thoroughly fitted out with invoked blessings? And each one wished from +the inmost sincerity of my heart.</p> + +<p>But we can't come to Berlin as you suggest we should, and allow +ourselves to be shown round by you. Must I say thank you? No, I don't +think I will. I will not pretend conventionality with you, and I do not +thank you, for I don't like to have to believe that you really thought I +would come. And then your threat, though it amused me, vexed me too. You +say if I don't come you will be forced to suppose that I'm afraid of +meeting you. Kindly suppose anything you like. After that of course I +will not come. What a boy you are. And what an odd, spoilt boy. Why +should I be afraid of meeting you? Is it, you think, because once—see, +I am at least not afraid of speaking of it—you passed across my life +convulsively? I don't know that any man could stir me up now to even the +semblance of an earthquake. My quaking days are done; and after that one +thunderous upheaval I am fascinated by the charm of quiet weather, and +of a placid basking in a sunshine I have made with my very own hands. It +is useless for you to tell me, as I know you will, that it is only an +imitation of the real thing and has no heat in it. I don't want to be +any hotter. In this tempestuous world where everybody is so eager, here +is at least one woman who likes to be cool and slow. How strange it is +the way you try to alter me, to make me quite different. There seems to +be a perpetual battering going on at the bulwarks of my character. You +want to pull them down and erect new fabrics in their place, fabrics so +frothy and unreal that they are hardly more than fancies and would have +to be built up afresh every day. Yet I know you like me, and want to be +my friend. You make me think of those quite numerous husbands who fall +in love with their wives because they are just what they are, and after +marriage expend their energies training them into something absolutely +different. There was one in Jena while we were there who fell +desperately in love with a little girl of eighteen, when he was about +your age, and he adored her utterly because she was so divinely silly, +ignorant, soft and babyish. She knew nothing undesirable, and he adored +her for that. She knew nothing desirable either, and he adored her for +that too. He adored her to such an extent that all Jena, not given +overmuch to merriment, was distorted with mirth at the spectacle. He was +a clever man, a very promising professor, yet he found nothing more +profitable than to spend every moment he could spare adoring. And his +manner of adoring was to sit earnestly discovering, by means of repeated +experiment, which of his fingers fitted best into her dimples when she +laughed, and twisting the tendrils of her hair round his thumbs in an +endless enjoyment of the way, when he suddenly let them go, they +beautifully curled. He did this quite openly, before us all, seeing I +suppose no reason why he should dissemble his interest in his future +wife's dimples and curls. But alas for the dimples and curls once she +was married! <i>Oh weh,</i> how quickly he grew blind to them. And as for the +divine silliness, ignorance, softness and babyishness that had so deeply +fascinated him, just those were what got most on to his nerves. He tried +to do away with them, to replace them by wit and learning combined with +brilliant achievements among saucepans and shirts, and the result was +disastrous. His little wife was scared. Her dimples disappeared from +want of practice. Her pretty colors seemed suddenly wiped out, as though +some one had passed over them roughly with a damp cloth. Her very hair +left off curling, and was as limp and depressed as the rest of her. Let +this, Mr. Anstruther, be an awful warning to you, not only when you +marry but now at once in regard to your friends. Do not attempt to alter +those long-suffering persons. It is true you would have some difficulty +in altering a person like myself, long ago petrified into her present +horrid condition, but even the petrified can and do get tired of hearing +the unceasing knocking of the reforming mallet on their skulls. Leave me +alone, dear young man. Like me for anything you find that can be liked, +express proper indignation at the rest of me, and go your way praising +God Who made us all. Really it would be a refreshment if you left off +for a space imploring me to change into something else. There is a ring +about your imploring as if you thought it was mere wilfulness holding me +back from being and doing all you wish. Believe me I am not wilful; I am +only petrified. I can't change. I have settled down, very comfortably I +must say, to the preliminary petrifaction of middle age, and middle age, +I begin to perceive, is a blessed period in which we walk along +mellowly, down pleasant slopes, with nothing gusty and fierce able to +pierce our incrustation, no inward volcanoes able to upset the +surrounding rockiness, nothing to distract our attention from the mild +serenity of the landscape, the little flowers by the way, the beauty of +the reddening leaves, the calm and sunlit sky. You will say it is absurd +at twenty-six to talk of middle age, but I feel it in my bones, Mr. +Anstruther, I feel it in my bones. It is after all simply a question of +bones. Yours are twenty years younger than mine; and did I not always +tell you I was old?</p> + +<p>I am so busy that you must be extra pleased, please, to get a letter +today. The translation of Papa's book has ended by interesting me to +such an extent that I can't leave off working at it. I do it officially +in his presence for an hour daily, he as full of mistrust of my English +as ever, trying to check it with a dictionary, and using picturesque +language to convey his disgust to me that he should be so imperfectly +acquainted with a tongue so useful. He has forgotten the little he +learned from my mother in the long years since her death, and he has the +natural conviction of authors in the presence of their translators that +the translator is a grossly uncultured person who will leave out all the +<i>nuances</i>. For an hour I plod along obediently, then I pretend I must go +and cook. What I really do is to run up to my bedroom, lock myself in, +and work away feverishly for the rest of the morning at my version of +the book. It is, I suppose, what would be called a free translation, but +I protest I never met anything quite so free. Papa's book is charming, +and the charm can only be reproduced by going repeatedly wholly off the +lines. Accordingly I go, and find the process exhilarating and amusing. +The thing amuses and interests me; I wonder if it would amuse and +interest other people? I fear it would not, for when I try to imagine it +being read by my various acquaintances my heart sinks with the weight of +the certainty that it couldn't possibly. I imagine it in the hands of +Joey, of Frau von Lindeberg, of different people in Jena, and the +expression my inner eye sees on their faces makes me unable for a long +while to go on with it. Then I get over that and begin working again at +my salad. It really is a salad, with Papa as the groundwork of lettuce, +very crisp and fresh, and myself as the dressing and bits of garnishing +beetroot and hard-boiled egg. I work at it half the night sometimes, so +eager am I to get it done and sent off. Yes, my young friend, I have +inherited Papa's boldness in the matter of sending off, and the most +impressive of London publishers is shortly to hold it in his sacred +hands. And if his sacred hands forget themselves so far as to hurl it +rudely back at me they yet can never take away the fun I have had +writing it.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>Joey's father is expected to-morrow, and the whole Galgenberg is foggy +with the fumes of cooking. Once his consent is given the engagement will +be put in the papers and life will grow busy and brilliant for Frau von +Lindeberg. She talks of removing immediately to Berlin, there to give a +series of crushingly well-done parties to those of her friends who are +supposed to have laughed when Vicki was thrown over by her first lover. +I don't believe they did laugh; I refuse to believe in such barbarians; +but Frau von Lindeberg, grown frank about that disastrous story now that +it has been so handsomely wiped off Vicki's little slate, assures me +that they did. She doesn't seem angry any longer about it, being much +too happy to have room in her heart for wrath, but she is bent on this +one form of revenge. Well, it is a form that will gratify everybody, +revenger and revengee equally I should think.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Jan. 7th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I couldn't write before, I've been too busy. The +manuscript went this morning after real hard work day and night, and now +I feel like a squeezed lemon that yet is cheerful, if you can conceive +such a thing. Joey's father has been and gone. He arrived late one +night, inspected the Lindebergs, gave his consent, and was off +twenty-four hours later. The Lindebergs were much disconcerted by these +quick methods, they who like to move slowly, think slowly, and sit hours +over each meal; and they had not said half they wanted to say and he had +not eaten half he was intended to eat before he was gone. Also he +disconcerted them,—indeed it was more than that, he upset them utterly, +by not looking like what they had made up their minds he would look +like. The Galgenbergs expected to see some one who should be blatantly +rich, and blatant riches, it dimly felt, would be expressed by much +flesh and a thick watch chain. Instead the man had a head like Julius +Cæsar, lean, thoughtful, shrewd, and a spare body that made Papa +Lindeberg's seem strangely pulpy and as if it were held together only by +the buttons of his clothes. We were staggered. Frau von Lindeberg +couldn't understand why a man so rich should also be so thin,—' He is +in a position to have the costliest cooking,' she said several times, +looking at me with amazed eyebrows; nor could she understand why a man +without ancestors should yet make her husband, whose past bristles with +them, be the one to look as if he hadn't got any. She mused much, and +aloud. While Vicki was being run breathlessly over the mountains by her +nimble future father-in-law, with Joey, devoured by pride in them both, +in attendance, I went down to ask if I could help in the cooking, and +found her going about her kitchen like one in a dream. She let me tuck +up my sleeves and help her, and while I did it she gave vent to many +musings about England and its curious children. 'Strange, strange +people,' she kept on saying helplessly.</p> + +<p>But she is the happiest woman in Germany at this moment, happier far +than Vicki, for she sees with her older eyes the immense advantages that +are to be Vicki's who sees at present nothing at all but Joey. And then +the deliciousness of being able to write to all those relations grown of +late so supercilious, to Cousin Mienchen who came and played the rich, +and tell them the glorious news. Vicki basks in the sunshine of a +mother's love again, and never hears a cross word. Good things are +showered down on her, presents, pettings, admiration, all those charming +things that every girl should enjoy once before her pretty girlhood has +gone. It is the most delightful experience to see a family in the very +act of receiving a stroke of luck. Strokes of luck, especially of these +dimensions, are so very rare. It is like being present at a pantomime +that doesn't leave off, and watching the good fairy touching one gray +dull unhappy thing after another into radiance and smiles. But I lose my +friends, for they go to Berlin almost immediately, and from there to +Manchester on a visit to Mr. Collins, a visit during which the business +part of the marriage is to be settled. Also, and naturally, we lose +Joey. This is rather a blow, just as we had begun so pleasantly to roll +in his money, but where Vicki goes he goes too, and so Papa and I will +soon be left again alone on our mountain, face to face with vegetarian +economies.</p> + +<p>Well, it has been a pleasant interlude, and I who first saw Vicki +steeped in despair, red-eyed, piteous, slighted, talked about, shall see +her at last departing down the hill arrayed in glory as with a garment. +Then I shall turn back, when the last whisk of her shining skirts has +gleamed round the bend of the road, to my own business, to the sober +trudging along the row of days allotted me, to the making of economies, +the reading of good books, the practice of abstract excellences, the +pruning of my soul. My soul, I must say, has had some vigorous prunings. +It ought by now to be of an admirable sturdiness. You yourself once +lopped off a most luxuriant growth that was, I agree, best away, and now +these buds of friendship, of easier circumstances, are going to be +nipped off too, and when they are gone what will be left, I wonder, but +the uncompromising and the rugged? Is it possible I am so base as to be +envious? In spite of my real pleasure I can't shut out a certain +wistfulness, a certain little pang, and exactly what kind of wistfulness +it is and exactly what kind of pang I don't well know unless it is envy. +Vicki's lot is the last one I would choose, yet it makes me wistful. It +includes Joey, yet I feel a little pang. This is very odd; for Joey as a +husband, a person from whom you cannot get away, would be rather more +than I could suffer with any show of gladness. How then can I be +envious? Of course if Joey knew what I am writing he would thrust an +incredulous tongue in his cheek, wink a sceptical eye, and mutter some +eternal truth about grapes; but I, on the other hand, would watch him +doing it with the perfect calm of him who sticks unshakably to his +point. What would his cheek, his tongue, and his winking eye be to me? +They would leave me wholly unmoved, not a hair's breadth moved from my +original point, which is that Joey is not a person you can marry. But +certainly it is a good and delightful thing that Vicki thinks he is and +thinks it with such conviction. I tell you the top of our mountain is in +a perpetual rosy glow nowadays, as though the sun never left it; and the +entire phenomenon is due solely to these two joyful young persons.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXVII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Jan. 12th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I did a silly thing today: I went and mourned in +an empty house. I don't think I'm generally morbid, but today I indulged +in a perfect orgy of morbidness. Write and scold me. It is your turn to +scold, and by doing it thoroughly you will bring me back to my ordinary +cheerful state. The Lindebergs are gone, and I am feeling it absurdly. I +didn't realize how much I loved that little dear Vicki, nor in the least +the interest Frau von Lindeberg's presence and doings gave life. The +last three weeks have been so thrilling, there was so much warmth and +brightness going about that it reached even onlookers like myself and +warmed and lighted them; and now in the twinkling of an eye it is +gone,—gone, wiped out, snuffed out, and Papa and I are alone again, and +there is a northeast wind. These are the times when philosophy is so +useful; but do explain why it is that one is only a philosopher so long +as one is happy. When I am contented, and everything is just as I like +it, I can philosophize beautifully, and do it with a hearty sincerity +that convinces both myself and the person listening to me; but when the +bad days come, the empty days, the disappointing, chilly days, behold +Philosophy, that serene and dignified companion so long as the weather +was fine, clutching her academic skirts hastily together and indulging +in the form of rapid retreat known to the vulgar and the graphic as +skedaddling. 'Do not all charms fly,' your Keats inquires, 'at the mere +touch of cold Philosophy?' But I have found that nothing flies quite so +fast as cold Philosophy herself; she would win in any race when the race +is who shall run away quickest; she is of no use whatever—it is my +deliberate conclusion—except to sit with in the sun on the south side +of a sheltering wall on those calm afternoons of life when you've only +got to open your mouth and ripe peaches drop into it. I used to think if +I could love her enough she would, in her gratitude, chloroform me +safely over all the less pleasant portions of life, see to it that I was +unconscious during the passage, never let me be aware of anything but +the beautiful and the good; but either she has no gratitude or I have +little love, and the years have brought me the one conviction that she +is an artist at leaving you in the lurch. The world is strewn with +persons she has left in it, and out of the three inhabitants of a +mountain to leave one there is surely an enormous percentage. Now what +is your opinion of a woman with a healthy body, a warm room, and a +sufficient dinner, who feels as though the soul within her were an +echoing cavern, empty, cold, and dark? It is what I feel at this moment, +and it is shameful. Isn't it shameful that the sight of leaden +clouds—but they really are dreadful clouds, inky, ragged, +harassed—scudding across the sky, and of furious brown beech-leaves on +the little trees in front of the Lindebergs' deserted house being lashed +and maddened by the wind, should make me suddenly catch my breath for +pain? It is pain, quite sharp, unmistakable pain, and it is because I am +alone, and my friends gone, and the dusk is falling. This afternoon I +leaned against their gate and really suffered. Regret for the past, fear +for the future,—vague, rather terrifying fears, not wholly unconnected +with you—hurt so much that they positively succeeded in wringing a tear +out of me. It was a very reluctant tear, and only came out after a world +of wringing, and I had stood there a most morbid long time before it +appeared; but it did appear, and the vicious wind screamed round the +Lindebergs' blank house, rattled its staring naked windows, banged in +wild gusts about the road where the puddles of half melted snow +reflected the blackness of the sky, tore at my hair and dress, stung my +cheeks, shook the gate I held on to, thundered over the hills. Dear +young man, I don't want to afflict you with these tales of woe and +weakness, but I must tell you what I did next. I went up and got the key +from Johanna, in whose keeping Frau von Lindeberg had left it, and came +down again, and unlocked the door of the house lately so full of light +and life, and crept fearfully about the echoing rooms and up the dismal +stairs, and let myself go, as I tell you, to a very orgy of morbidness. +It was like a nightmare. Memories took the form of ghosts, and clutched +at me through the balusters and from behind doors with thin cold +fingers; and the happiest memories were those that clutched the coldest. +I fled at last in a sudden panic, flying out of reach of them, slamming +the door to, running for my life up the road and in at our gate. Johanna +did not let me in at once, and I banged with my fists in a frenzy to get +away from the black sky and the threatening thunder of the +storm-stricken pines. '<i>Herr Gott</i>' said Johanna when she saw me; so +that I must have looked rather wild.</p> + +<p>Well, I am weak, you see, just as weak and silly as the very weakest and +silliest in spite of my big words and brave face. I am writing now as +near the stove as possible in Papa's room, glad to be with him, glad to +be warm, grateful to sit with somebody alive after that hour with the +ghosts; and the result of deep considering has been to force me to face +the fact that there is much meanness in my nature. There is. Don't +bother to contradict; there is. All my forlornness since yesterday is +simply the outcome of a mixture of envy and self-pity. I do miss dear +Vicki whom I greatly loved, I do miss the cheery Joey, I miss Papa +Lindeberg who likened me to Hebe, I miss his wife who kept me in my +proper place—it is quite true that I miss these people, but that would +never of itself be a feeling strong enough to sweep me off my feet into +black pools of misery as I was swept this afternoon, and never, never +would make me, who have so fine a contempt for easy tears, cry. No, Mr. +Anstruther, bitter truths once seen have to be stared at squarely, and I +am simply comparing my lot with Vicki's and being sorry for myself. It +is amazing that it should be so, for have I not everything a reasonable +being needs, and am I not, then, a reasonable being? And the meanness of +it; for it does imply a grudging, an uneasiness in the presence of +somebody else's happiness. Well, I'm thoroughly ashamed, and that at +least is a good thing; and now that you know how badly I too need +lecturing and how I am torn by particularly ungenerous emotions perhaps +you'll see what a worthless person I am and will take me down from the +absurd high pinnacle on which you persist in keeping me and on which I +have felt so desperately uncomfortable for months past. It is infinitely +humiliating, I do assure you, to be—shall we say venerated? for +excellences one would like to possess but is most keenly aware one does +not. Persons with any tendency to be honest about themselves and with +even the smallest grain of a sense of humor should never be chosen as +idols and set up aloft in giddy places. They make shockingly bad idols. +They are divided by a desire to laugh and an immense pity for the +venerator.</p> + +<p>I add these observations, dear friend, to the description of my real +nature that has gone before because your letters are turning more and +more into the sort of letters that ends a placid friendship. I want to +be placid. I love being placid. I insist on being placid. And the +thought of your letters with so little placidness about them, was with +me this afternoon in that terrible house, and it added to the fear of +the future that seized me by the throat and would not let me go. Is it, +then, so impossible to be friends, just friends with a man, in the same +dear frank way one is with another woman, or a man is with a man? I +hoped you and I were going to prove the possibility triumphantly. I +even, so keenly do I desire it, prayed that we were. But perhaps there +is little use in such praying.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>You may scold me as much as you like, but you are not to comfort me. Do +not make the mistake, I earnestly beg you, of supposing that I want to +be comforted.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXVIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Jan. 13th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Just a line to tell you that I have recovered, and +you are not to take my letter yesterday too seriously. I woke up this +morning perfectly normal, and able to look out on the day before me with +the usual interest. Then something very nice happened: my translation of +Papa's book didn't come back, but instead arrived an urbane letter +expressing a kind of reluctant willingness, if you can imagine the +mixture, to publish it. What do you think of that? The letter, it is +true, goes on to suggest, still with urbanity, that no doubt no one will +ever buy it, but promises if ever any one does to send us a certain just +portion of what was paid for it. 'Observe, Rose-Marie,' said Papa when +his first delight had calmed, 'the unerring instinct with which the +English, very properly called a nation of shopkeepers, instantly +recognize the value of a good thing when they see it. Consider the long +years during which I have vainly beaten at the doors of the German +public, and compare its deafness with the quick response of our alert +and admirable cousins across the Channel. Well do I know which was the +part that specially appealed to this man's business instinct—'</p> + +<p>And he mentioned, while my guilty ears burned crimson, a chapter of +statistics, the whole of which I had left out.</p> + +<p>Yours sincerely,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXIX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Galgenberg, Jan. 14th.</p> + +<p>Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I see no use whatever in a friend if one cannot +tell him about one's times of gloom without his immediately proposing to +do the very thing one doesn't want him to do, which is to pay one a +call. Your telegram has upset me, you see, into a reckless use of the +word one, a word I spend hours sometimes endeavoring to circumvent, and +which I do circumvent if I am in good bodily and spiritual health, but +the moment my vitality is lowered, as it is now by your telegram, I +cease to be either strong enough or artful enough to dodge it. There are +four of it in that sentence: I fling them to you in a handful, only +remarking that they are your fault, not mine.</p> + +<p>Now listen to me—I will drop this playfulness, which I don't in the +least feel, and be serious:—why do you want to come and, as you +telegraph, talk things over? I don't want to talk things over; it is a +fatal thing to do. May I not tell you frankly of my moods, of my downs +as well as of my ups, without at once setting you off in the direction +of too much kindness? After I had written that letter I was afraid; and +I opened it again to tell you it was not your comfortings and pityings +that I wanted, but the sterner remedy of a good scolding; yet your +answer is a telegram to ask if you may come. Of course I telegraphed +back that I should not be here. It is quite true: I should not if you +came. I will not see you. Nothing can be gained by it, and everything +might be lost,—oh everything, everything might be lost. I would see to +it that you did not find me. The forests are big, and I can walk if +needs be for hours. You will think me quite savagely unkind, but I can't +help that. Perhaps if your letters lately had been different I would not +so obstinately refuse to see you, but I have a wretched feeling that my +poor soul is going to be pruned again, pruned of its last, most pleasant +growth, and you are on the road to saying and doing things we shall both +be for ever sorry for. I have tried my best to stop you, to pull you up, +and I hope with all my heart that I may not be going to get a letter +that will spoil things irreparably. Have not my hints been big enough? +Let me beg you not to write foolishnesses that cannot, once sent, be got +back again and burned. But at least when you sit down to write you can +consider your words, and those that have come out too impulsively can go +into the fire; while if you came here what would you do with your +tongue, I wonder? There is no means of stopping that once it is well +started, and the smallest things sets it off in terrible directions. Am +I not your friend? Will you not spare me? Must I be forced to speak with +a plainness that will, by comparison, make all my previous plainness +seem the very essence of polite artificialness? Of all the wise counsel +any one could offer you at this moment there is none half so wise, none +that, taken, would be half so precious to us both, as the counsel to +leave well alone. I offer it you earnestly; oh, more than +earnestly—with a passionate anxiety lest you should refuse it.</p> + +<p>Your sincere friend,</p> + +<p>ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.</p> + +<p>I suppose it is true what I have often suspected, that I am a person +doomed to lose, one by one, the things that have been most dear to me.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXX</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 16th.</p> + +<p>Well, there is no help, then. You will do it. You will put an end to it. +You have written me a love-letter, the thing I have been trying so hard +for so long to stop your doing, and there is nothing to be done but to +drop into silence.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 17th.</p> + +<p>But what is there possible except silence? I will not marry you. I +cannot after this keep you my friend.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 19th.</p> + +<p>Oh, I have tried, I have hoped to keep you. It has been so sweet to me. +It has made everything so different. For the second time you have wiped +the brightness out of my life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXIII</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 21 st.</p> + +<p>Leave me alone. Don't torment me with wild letters. I do not love you. I +will not marry you. I cared for you sincerely as a friend, but what a +gulf there is between that and the abandonment of worship last year in +Jena. Only just that, just that breathless passion, would make me marry, +and I would never feel it for a man I am forced to pity. Is not worship +a looking up? a rapture of faith? I cannot look up to you. I have no +faith in you. Leave me alone.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXIV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 22d.</p> + +<p>Let us consider the thing calmly. Let us try to say good-by without too +great a clamor. What is the use, after all, of being so vocal? We have +each given the other many hours of pleasure, and shall we not be +grateful rather than tragic? Here we are, got at last to the point where +we face the inevitable, and we may as well do it decently. See, here is +a woman who does not love you: would you have her marry you when she had +rather not? And you mustn't be angry with me because I don't love you, +for how can I help it? So far am I from the least approach to it that it +makes me tired just to think of a thing so strenuous, of the bother of +it, of the perpetual screwed-up condition of mind and body to a pitch +above the normal. The normal is what I want. My heart is set upon it. I +don't want ecstasies. I don't want excitement. I don't want alternations +of bliss and terror. I want to be that peaceful individual a maiden +lady,—a maiden lady looking after her aged father, tending her flowers, +fondling her bees—no, I don't think she could fondle bees,—fondling a +cat, then, which I haven't yet got. Oh, I know I have moods of a more +tempestuous nature, such as the one I was foolish enough to write to you +about the other day, stirring you up to a still more violent +tempestuousness yourself, but they roll away again when they have +growled themselves out, and the mood that succeeds them is like clear +shining after rain. I intend this clear shining as I grow older to be +more and more my surrounding atmosphere. I make the bravest resolutions; +will you not make some too? Dear late friend and sometime lover, do not +want me to give you what I have not got. We are both suffering just now; +but what about Time, that kindest soother, softener, healer, that final +tidier up of ragged edges, and sweeper away of the broken fragments of +the past?</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXV</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 23d.</p> + +<p>I tell you you have taken away what I held precious for the second time, +and there shall be no third. You showed me once that you could not be a +faithful lover, you have shown me now you cannot be a faithful friend. I +am not an easy woman, who can be made much of and dropped in an unending +see-saw. Even if I loved you we would be most wretched married, you with +the feeling that I did not fit into your set, I with the knowledge that +you felt so, besides the deadly fear of you, of your changes and fits of +hot and cold. But I do not love you. This is what you seem unable to +realize. Yet it is true, and it settles everything for ever.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXVI</h3> + +<p style="text-align: right;">Jan. 25th.</p> + +<p>Must there be so much explaining? It was because I thought I was making +amends that way for having, though unconsciously, led you to fancy you +cared for me last year. I wanted to be of some use to you, and I saw how +much you liked to get them. By gradual degrees, as we both grew wiser, I +meant my letters to be a help to you who have no sister, no mother, and +a father you don't speak to. I was going to be the person to whom you +could tell everything, on whose devotion and sincerity you could always +count. It was to have been a thing so honest, so frank, so clear, so +affectionate. And I've not even had time really to begin, for at first +there was my own struggling to get out of the deep waters where I was +drowning, and afterward it seemed to be nothing but a staving off, a +writing about other things, a determined telling of little anecdotes, of +talk about our neighbors, about people you don't know, about anything +rather than your soul and my soul. Each time I talked of those, in +moments of greater stress when the longing for a real friend to whom I +could write openly was stronger than I could resist, there came a letter +back that made my heart stand still. I had lost my lover, and it seemed +as if I must lose my friend. At first I believed that you would settle +down. I thought it could only be a question of patience. But you could +not wait, you could not believe you were not going to be given what you +wanted in exactly the way you wanted it, and you have killed the poor +goose after all, the goose I have watched so anxiously, who was going to +lay us such beautiful golden eggs. I am very sorry for you. I know the +horrors of loving somebody who doesn't love you. And it is terrible for +us both that you should not understand me to the point, as you say, of +not being able to believe me. I have not always understood myself, but +here everything seems so plain. Love is not a thing you can pick up and +throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a +person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of +thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying +my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love +me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did +get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in that sordid place. +Oh, call me hard, wickedly revengeful, unbelievably cruel if it makes +you feel less miserable—but will you listen to a last prophecy? You +will get over this as surely as you have got over your other similar +vexations, and you will live to say, 'Thank God that German girl—what +was her name? wasn't it Schmidt? good heavens, yes—thank God she was so +foolish as not to take advantage of an unaccountable but strictly +temporary madness.'</p> + +<p>And if I am bitter, forgive me.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXVII</h3> + +<p style="margin-left: 40em;">Jan. 27th.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em;">It would be useless.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXVIII</h3> + +<p style="margin-left: 40em;">Jan. 29th.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em;">I would not see you.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXIX</h3> + +<p style="margin-left: 40em;">Jan. 31st.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em;">I do not love you.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXX</h3> + +<p style="margin-left: 40em;">Feb. 2d.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em;">I will never marry you.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<h3>LXXXI</h3> + +<p style="margin-left: 40em;">Feb. 4th.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em;">I shall not write again.</p> + + +<p>[THE END]</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther, by +Elizabeth von Arnim + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRÄULEIN SCHMIDT *** + +***** This file should be named 35282-h.htm or 35282-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/2/8/35282/ + +Produced by Laura McDonald (http://www.girlebooks.com> & +Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org> at + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Fraeulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther + +Author: Elizabeth von Arnim + +Release Date: February 15, 2011 [EBook #35282] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRAeULEIN SCHMIDT *** + + + + +Produced by Laura McDonald (http://www.girlebooks.com> & +Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org> at + + + + + +FRAeULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER + +BY THE AUTHOR OF + +"ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN," AND + +"THE PRINCESS PRISCILLA'S FORTNIGHT" + +NEW YORK + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +1907 + + + + +FRAeULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER + + + + +I + +Jena, Nov. 6th. + +Dear Roger,--This is only to tell you that I love you, supposing you +should have forgotten it by the time you get to London. The letter will +follow you by the train after the one you left by, and you will have it +with your breakfast the day after to-morrow. Then you will be eating the +marmalade Jena could not produce, and you'll say, 'What a very +indiscreet young woman to write first.' But look at the Dear Roger, and +you'll see I'm not so indiscreet after all. What could be more sober? +And you've no idea of all the nice things I could have put instead of +that, only I wouldn't. It is a most extraordinary thing that this time +yesterday we were on the polite-conversation footing, you, in your +beautiful new German, carefully calling me _gnaediges Fraeulein_ at every +second breath, and I making appropriate answers to the Mr. Anstruther +who in one bewildering hour turned for me into Dear Roger. Did you +always like me so much?--I mean, love me so much? My spirit is rather +unbendable as yet to the softnesses of these strange words, stiff for +want of use, so forgive a tendency to go round them. Don't you think it +is very wonderful that you should have been here a whole year, living +with us, seeing me every day, practising your German on me--oh, wasn't I +patient?--and never have shown the least sign, that I could see, of +thinking of me or of caring for me at all except as a dim sort of young +lady who assisted her step-mother in the work of properly mending and +feeding you? And then an hour ago, just one hour by that absurd +cuckoo-clock here in this room where we said good-by, you suddenly +turned into something marvellous, splendid, soul-thrilling--well, into +Dear Roger. It is so funny that I've been laughing, and so sweet that +I've been crying. I'm so happy that I can't help writing, though I do +think it rather gushing--loathsome word--to write first. But then you +strictly charged me not to tell a soul yet, and how can I keep +altogether quiet? You, then, my poor Roger, must be the one to listen. +Do you know what Jena looks like to-night? It is the most dazzling place +in the world, radiant with promise, shining and dancing with all sorts +of little lovely lights that I know are only the lamps being lit in +people's rooms down the street, but that look to me extraordinarily like +stars of hope come out, in defiance of nature and fog, to give me a +glorious welcome. You see, I'm new, and they know it. I'm not the +Rose-Marie they've twinkled down on from the day I was born till +to-night. She was a dull person: a mere ordinary, dull person, climbing +doggedly up the rows of hours each day set before her, doggedly doing +certain things she was told were her daily duties, equally doggedly +circumventing certain others, and actually supposing she was happy. +Happy? She was not. She was most wretched. She was blind and deaf. She +was asleep. She was only half a woman. What is the good or the beauty of +anything, alive or dead, in the world, that has not fulfilled its +destiny? And I never saw that before. I never saw a great many things +before. I am amazed at the suddenness of my awaking. Love passed through +this house today, this house that other people think is just the same +dull place it was yesterday, and behold--well, I won't grow magnificent, +and it is what you do if you begin a sentence with Behold. But really +there's a splendor--oh well. And as for this room where you--where +I--where we--well, I won't grow sentimental either, though now I know, I +who always scoffed at it, how fatally easy a thing it is to be. That is, +supposing one has had great provocation; and haven't I? Oh, haven't I? + +I had got as far as that when your beloved Professor Martens came in, +very much agitated because he had missed you at the station, where he +had been to give you a send-off. And what do you think he said? He said, +why did I sit in this dreary hole without a lamp, and why didn't I draw +the curtains, and shut out the fog and drizzle. Fog and drizzle? It +really seemed too funny. Why, the whole sky is shining. And as for the +dreary hole--gracious heavens, is it possible that just being old made +him not able to feel how the air of the room was still quivering with +all you said to me, with all the sweet, wonderful, precious things you +said to me? The place was full of you. And there was your darling +coffee-cup still where you had put it down, and the very rug we stood on +still all ruffled up. + +'I think it's a glorious hole,' I couldn't help saying. + +'_De gustibus_' said he indulgently; and he stretched himself in the +easy-chair--the one you used to sit in--and said he should miss young +Anstruther. + +'Shall you?' said I. + +'Fraeulein Rose-Marie,' said he solemnly, 'he was a most intelligent +young man. Quite the most intelligent young man I have ever had here.' + +'Really?' said I, smiling all over my silly face. + +And so of course you were, or how would you ever have found out that +I--well, that I'm not wholly unlovable? + +Yours quite, quite truly, + +R.-M. + + + +II + +Jena, Nov. 7th. + +Dear Roger,--You left on Tuesday night--that's yesterday--and you'll get +to London on Thursday morning--that's to-morrow--and first you'll want +to wash yourself, and have breakfast--please notice my extreme +reasonableness--and it will be about eleven before you are able to begin +to write to me. I shan't get the letter till Saturday, and today is only +Wednesday, so how can I stop myself from writing to you again, I should +like to know? I simply can't. Besides, I want to tell you all the heaps +of important things I would have told you yesterday, if there had been +time when you asked me in that amazing sudden way if I'd marry you. + +Do you know I'm poor? Of course you do. You couldn't have lived with us +a year and not seen by the very sort of puddings we have that we are +poor. Do you think that anybody who can help it would have _dicker Reis_ +three times a week? And then if we were not, my step-mother would never +bother to take in English young men who want to study German; she would +do quite different sorts of things, and we should have different sorts +of puddings,--proud ones, with _Schlagsahne_ on their tops--and two +servants instead of one, and I would never have met you. Well, you know +then that we are poor; but I don't believe you know _how_ poor. When +girls here marry, their parents give them, as a matter-of-course, +house-linen enough to last them all their lives, furniture enough to +furnish all their house, clothes enough for several generations, and so +much a year besides. Then, greatly impoverished, they spend the evenings +of their days doing without things and congratulating themselves on +having married off their daughter. The man need give only himself. + +You've heard that my own mother, who died ten years ago, was English? +Yes, I remember I told you that, when you were so much surprised at what +you called, in politest German, my colossally good English. From her I +know that people in England do not buy their son-in-law's carpets and +saucepans, but confine their helpfulness to suggesting Maple. It is the +husband, they think, who should, like the storks of the Fatherland, +prepare and beautify the nest for the wife. If the girl has money, so +much the better; but if she has not, said my mother, it doesn't put an +absolute stop to her marrying. + +Here, it does; and I belong here. My mother had some money, or my father +would never have let himself fall in love with her--I believe you can +nip these things in the bud if you see the bud in time--and you know my +father is not a mercenary man; he only, like the rest of us, could not +get away altogether from his bringing-up and the points of view he had +been made to stare from ever since he stared at all. It was a hundred a +year (pounds, thank heaven, not marks), and it is all we have except +what he gets for his books, when he does get anything, which is never, +and what my step-mother has, which is an annuity of a hundred and fifty +pounds. So the hundred a year will be the whole sum of my riches, for I +have no aunts. What I want you to consider is the awfulness of marrying +a woman absolutely without saucepans. Not a single towel will she be +able to add to your linen-room, not a single pot to your kitchen. All +Jena when it hears of it will say, 'Poor, infatuated young man,' and if +I had sisters all England would refuse in future to send its sons to my +step-mother. Why, if you were making a decently suitable marriage do you +suppose your _Braut_ would have to leave off writing to you at this +point, in the very middle of luminous prophecy, and hurry into the +kitchen and immerse herself in the preparation of potato soup? Yet that +is exactly what your _Braut,_ who has caught sight of the clock, is +about to do. So good-by. + +Your poor, but infinitely honest, + +R.-M. + +See how wise and practical I am today. I believe my letter last night +was rather aflame. Now comes morning with its pails of cold water, and +drenches me back into discretion. Thank God, say I, for mornings. + + + +III + +Jena, Nov. 8th. + +Dear Roger,--I can't leave you alone, you see. I must write. But though +I must write you need not read. Last night I was seized with misgivings +--awful things for a hitherto placid Fraeulein to be seized with--and I +wrestled with them all night, and they won. So now, in the calm +frostiness of the early morning atmosphere, I wish to inquire very +seriously, very soberly, whether you have not made a mistake. In one +sense, of course, you have. It is absurd, from a wordly point of view, +for you to marry me. But I mean more than that: I mean, have you not +mistaken your own feelings, been hurled into the engagement by +impulsiveness, by, if you choose, some spell I may unconsciously have +put upon you? If you have even quite a faint misgiving about what you +really feel for me, tell me--oh tell me straight and plainly, and we +will both rub out that one weak hour with a sponge well soaked in common +sense. It would not hurt so much, I think, now as it might later on. Up +to last night, since you left, I've been walking on air. It is a most +pleasant form of exercise, as perhaps you know. You not only walk on +air, but you walk in what seems to be an arrested sunset, a bath of +liquid gold, breathing it, touching it, wrapped in it. It really is most +pleasant. Well, I did that till last night; then came my step-mother, +and catching at my flying feet pulled them down till they got to the +painted deal floors of Rauchgasse 5, Jena, and once having got there, +stuck there. Observe, I speak in images. My step-mother, so respectable, +so solidly Christian, would not dream of catching hold of anybody's feet +and spoiling their little bit of happiness. Quite unconsciously she blew +on that glow of sunset in which I was flying, and it went out with the +promptness and completeness of a tallow candle, and down came Rose-Marie +with a thud. Yes, I did come down with a thud. You will never be able to +pretend, however much you try, that I'm one of your fairy little women +that can be lifted about, and dandled, and sugared with dainty +diminutives, will you? Facts are things that are best faced. I stand +five feet ten without my heels, and when I fall I do it with a thud. +Said my step-mother, then, after supper, when Johanna had cleared the +last plate away, and we were sitting alone--my father is not back yet +from Weimar--she on one side of the table, I on the other, the lamp in +the middle, your chair gaping empty, she, poor herself, knitting wool +into warmth for the yet poorer at Christmas, I mending the towels you +helped to wear out, while my spirit soared and made a joyful noise +somewhere far away, up among angels and arch-angels and other happy +beings,--said my step-mother, 'Why do you look so pleased?' + +Slightly startled, I explained that I looked pleased because I was +pleased. + +'But nothing has happened,' said my step-mother, examining me over her +spectacles. 'You have been nowhere today, and not seen any one, and the +dinner was not at all good.' + +'For all that I'm pleased. I don't need to go somewhere or see some one +to be pleased. I can be it quite by myself.' + +'Yes, you are blessed with a contented nature, that is true,' said my +step-mother with a sigh, knitting faster. You remember her sighs, don't +you? They are always to me very unaccountable. They come in such odd +places. Why should she sigh because I have a contented nature? Ought she +not rather to rejoice? But the extremely religious people I have known +have all sighed an immense deal. Well, I won't probe into that now, +though I rather long to. + +'I suppose it's because it has been a fine day,' I said, foolishly going +on explaining to a person already satisfied. + +My step-mother looked up sharply. 'But it has not been fine at all, +Rose-Marie,' she said. 'The sun has not appeared once all day.' + +'What?' said I, for a moment genuinely surprised. I couldn't help being +happy, and I don't believe really happy people are ever in the least +aware that the sun is not shining. 'Oh well,' I hurried on, 'perhaps not +an Italian blue sky, but still mild, and very sweet, and November always +smells of violets, and that's another thing to be pleased about.' + +'Violets?' echoed my step-mother, who dislikes all talk about things one +can neither eat nor warm oneself with nor read about in the Bible. 'Do +you not miss Mr. Anstruther,' she asked, getting off such flabbinesses +as quickly as she could, 'with whom you were so constantly talking?' + +Of course I jumped. But I said 'yes,' quite naturally, I think. + +It was then that she pulled me down by the feet to earth. + +'He has a great future before him,' she said. 'A young man so clever, so +good-looking, and so well-connected may rise to anything. Martens tells +me he has the most brilliant prospects. He will be a great ornament to +the English diplomatic service. Martens says his father's hopes are all +centred on this only son. And as he has very little money and much will +be required, Roger,'--she said it indeed--'is to marry as soon as +possible, some one who will help him in every way, some one as wealthy +as she is well-born.' + +I murmured something suitable; I think a commendation of the plan as +prudent. + +'No one could help liking Roger,' she went on--Roger, do you like being +Rogered?--' and my only fear is, and Martens fears it too, that he will +entangle himself with some undesirable girl. Then he is ruined. There +would be no hope for him.' + +'But why-' I began; then suffocated a moment behind a towel. 'But why,' +I said again, gasping, 'should he?' + +'Well, let us hope he will not. I fear, though, he is soft. Still, he +has steered safely through a year often dangerous to young men. It is +true his father could not have sent him to a safer place than my house. +You so sensible-' oh Roger! + +'Besides being arrived at an age when serious and practical thoughts +replace the foolish sentimentalness of earlier years,'--oh Roger, I'm +twenty-five, and not a single one of my foolish sentimentalnesses has +been replaced by anything at all. Do you think there is hope for me? Do +you think it is very bad to feel exactly the same, just exactly as +calf-like now as I did at fifteen?--'so that under my roof,' went on my +step-mother, 'he has been perfectly safe. It would have been truly +deplorable if his year in Germany had saddled him with a German wife +from a circle beneath his own, a girl who had caught his passing fancy +by youth and prettiness, and who would have spent the rest of her life +dragging him down, an ever-present punishment with a faded face.' + +She is eloquent, isn't she? Eloquent with the directness that +instinctively finds out one's weak spots and aims straight at them. +'Luckily,' she concluded, 'there are no pretty faces in Jena just now.' + +Then I held a towel up before my own, before my ignominious face, +excluded by a most excellent critic from the category pretty, and felt +as though I would hide it for ever in stacks of mending, in tubs of +soup, in everything domestic and drudging and appropriate. But some of +the words you rained down on me on Tuesday night between all those +kisses came throbbing through my head, throbbing with great throbs +through my whole body--Roger, did I hear wrong, or were they not +'Lovely--lovely--lovely'? And always kisses between, and always again +that 'Lovely--lovely--lovely'? Where am I getting to? Perhaps I had +better stop. + +R.-M. + + + +IV + +Jena, Nov. 12th. + +Dearest of Living Creatures, the joy your dear, dear letters gave me! +You should have seen me seize the postman. His very fingers seemed +rosy-tipped as he gave me the precious things. Two of them--two +love-letters all at once. I could hardly bear to open them, and put an +end to the wonderful moment. The first one, from Frankfurt, was so +sweet--oh, so unutterably sweet--that I did sit gloating over the +unbroken envelope of the other for at least five minutes, luxuriating, +purring. I found out exactly where your hand must have been, by the +simple process of getting a pen and pretending to write the address +where you had written it, and then spent another five minutes most +profitably kissing the place. Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, but +there shall be no so-called maidenly simperings between you and me, no +pretences, no affectations. If it was silly to kiss that blessed +envelope, and silly to tell you that I did, why then I was silly, and +there's an end of it. + +Do you know that my mother's maiden name was Watson? Well, it was. I +feel bound to tell you this, for it seems to add to my ineligibleness, +and my duty plainly is to take you all round that and expatiate on it +from every point of view. What has the grandson of Lord Grasmere--you +never told me of Lord G. before, by the way--to do with the +granddaughter of Watson? I don't even rightly know what Watson was. He +was always for me an obscure and rather awful figure, shrouded in +mystery. Of course Papa could tell me about him, but as he never has, +and my mother rarely mentioned him, I fancy he was not anything I should +be proud of. Do not, then, require of me that I shall tear the veil from +Watson. + +And of course your mother was handsome. How dare you doubt it? Look in +the glass and be grateful to her. You know, though you may only have +come within the spell of what you so sweetly call my darling brown eyes +during the last few weeks, I fell a victim to your darling blue ones in +the first five minutes. And how great was my joy when I discovered that +your soul so exactly matched your outside. Your mother had blue eyes, +too, and was very tall, and had an extraordinarily thoughtful face. +Look, I tell you, in the glass, and you'll see she had; for I refuse to +believe that your father, a man who talks port wine and tomatoes the +whole of the first meal he has with his only son after a year's +separation, is the parent you are like. Heavens, how I shake when I +think of what will happen when you tell him about me. 'Sir,' he'll say, +in a voice of thunder--or don't angry English parents call their sons +'sir' any more? Anyhow, they still do in books--'Sir, you are far too +young to marry. Young men of twenty-five do not do such things. The +lady, I conclude, will provide the income? + +Roger, rushing to the point: She hasn't a pfenning. + +Incensed Parent: Pfenning, sir? What, am I to understand she's a German? + +Roger, dreadfully frightened: Please. + +I.P., forcing himself to be calm: Who is this young person? + +Roger: Fraeulein Schmidt, of Jena. + +I.P., now of a horrible calmness: And who, pray, is Fraeulein Schmidt, of +Jena? + +Roger, pale but brave: The daughter of old Schmidt, in whose house I +boarded. Her mother was English. She was a Watson. + +I.P.: Sir, oblige me by going to the-- + +Roger goes. + +Seriously, I think something of the sort will happen. I don't see how it +can help giving your father a dreadful shock; and suppose he gets ill, +and his blood is on my head? I can't see how it is to be avoided. There +is nothing to recommend me to him. He'll know I'm poor. He'll doubt if +I'm respectable. He won't even think me pretty. You might tell him that +I can cook, darn, manage as well as the thriftiest of _Hausfraus_, and I +believe it would leave him cold. You might dwell on my riper age as an +advantage, say I have lived down the first fevers of youth--I never had +them--say, if he objects to it, that Eve was as old as Adam when they +started life in their happy garden, and yet they got on very well, say +that I'm beautiful as an angel, or so plain that I am of necessity +sensible, and he'll only answer 'Fool.' Do you see anything to be done? +I don't; but I'm too happy to bother. + + +Later. + +I had to go and help get supper ready. Johanna had let the fire out, and +it took rather ages. Why do you say you feel like screaming when you +think of me wrestling with Johanna? I tell you I'm so happy that nothing +any Johanna can do or leave undone in the least affects me. I go about +the house on tiptoe; I am superstitious, and have an idea that all sorts +of little envious Furies are lying about in dusty corners asleep, put to +sleep by you, and that if I don't move very delicately I shall wake +them-- + + O Freude, habe Acht, + Sprich leise, dass nicht der Schmerz erwacht.... + +That's not Goethe. By the way, _poor_ Goethe. What an unforeseen result +of a year in the City of the Muses, half an hour's journey from the Ilm +Athens itself, that you should pronounce his poetry coarse, obvious, and +commonplace. What would Papa say if he knew? Probably that young +Anstruther is not the intelligent young man he took him for. But then +Papa is soaked in Goethe, and the longer he soaks the more he adores +him. In this faith, in this Goethe-worship, I have been brought up, and +cannot, I'm afraid, get rid of it all at once. It is even possible that +I never shall, in spite of London and you. Will you love me less if I +don't? Always I have thought Goethe uninspired. The Muse never seized +and shook him till divinenesses dropped off his pen without his knowing +how or whence, divinenesses like those you find sometimes in the pages +of lesser men, lesser all-round men, stamped with the unmistakable stamp +of heavenly birth. Goethe knew very well, very exactly, where each of +his sentences had come from. But I don't see that his poetry is either +of the three things you say. I'm _afraid_ it is not the last two, for +the world would grow very interesting if thinking and writing as he did +were so obvious that we all did it. As to its being coarse, I'm +incurably incapable of seeing coarseness in things. To me + + All is clean for ever and ever. + +Everything is natural and everything is clean, except for the person who +is afraid it isn't. Perhaps, dear Roger, you won't, as Papa says, quite +apprehend my meaning; if you cannot, please console yourself with the +reflection that probably I haven't got one. + +What you say about the money you'll have dazzles me. Why, it's a +fortune. We shall be richer than our _Buergermeister_. You never told me +you were so rich. Five hundred pounds a year is ten thousand marks; +nearly double what we have always lived on, and we've really been quite +comfortable, now haven't we? But think of our glory when my hundred +pounds is added, and we have an income of twelve thousand marks. The +_Buergermeister_ will be utterly eclipsed. And I'm such a good manager. +You'll see how we'll live. You'll grow quite fat. I shall give you +lovely food; and Papa says that lovely food is the one thing that ever +really makes a man give himself the trouble to rise up and call his wife +blessed. + +It is so late. Good-night. + +R.-M. + +Don't take my Goethe-love from me. I know simply masses of him, and +can't let him go. My mind is decked out with him as a garden is decked +with flowers. Now isn't that pretty? Or is it only silly? Anyhow it's +dreadfully late. Good-night. + + + +V + +Jena, Nov. 13th. + +No letter from you today. I am afraid you are being worried, and because +of me. Here am I, quiet and cheerful, nobody bothering me, and your dear +image in my heart to warm every minute of life; there are you, being +forced to think things out, to make plans for the future, decide on +courses of action, besides having to pass exams, and circumvent a parent +whom I gather you regard as refractory. How lucky I am in my dear +father. If I could have chosen, I would have chosen him. Never has he +been any trouble. Never does he bore me. Never am I forced to +criticisms. He knows that I have no brains, and has forgiven me. I know +he hasn't much common-sense, and have forgiven him. We spend our time +spoiling and petting and loving each other--do you remember how you +sometimes laughed? + +But I wish you were not worried. It is all because I'm so ineligible. If +I could come to you with a pot of money in each hand, turned by an +appreciative ruler into Baroness von Schmidt, with a Papa in my train +weighed down by Orders, and the road behind me black with carts +containing clothes, your father would be merciful unto us and bless us. +As things are, you are already being punished, you have already begun to +pay the penalty for that one little hour's happiness; and it won't be +quite paid ever, not so long as we both shall live. Do you, who think so +much, ever think of the almost indecent haste with which punishments +hurry in the wake of joys? They really seem to tumble over one another +in their eagerness each to get there first. You took me to your heart, +told me you loved me, asked me to be your wife. Was it so wrong? So +wrong to let oneself go to happiness for those few moments that one +should immediately be punished? My father will not let me believe +anything. He says--when my step-mother is not listening; when she is he +doesn't--that belief is not faith, and you can't believe if you do not +know. But he cannot stop my silently believing that the Power in whose +clutches we are is an amazing disciplinarian, a relentless grudger of +joys. And what pitiful small joys they are, after all. Pitiful little +attempts of souls doomed to eternal solitude to put out feelers in the +dark, to get close to each other, to touch each other, to try to make +each other warm. Now I am growing lugubrious; I who thought never to be +lugubrious again. And at ten o'clock on a fine November morning, of all +times in the world. + +Papa comes back from Weimar today. There has been a prolonged meeting +there of local lights about the damage done by some Goth to the +Shakespeare statue in the park; and though Papa is not a light, still he +did burn with indignation over that, and has been making impassioned +speeches, and suggesting punishments for the Goth when they shall have +caught him. I think I shall go over by the two o'clock train and meet +him and bring him home, and look in at Goethe's sponge on the way. You +know how the little black thing lies in his bedroom there, next to a +basin not much bigger than a breakfast-cup. With this he washed and was +satisfied. And whenever I feel depressed, out of countenance with myself +and life, I go and look at it and come home cheered and strengthened. I +wonder if you'll be able to make out why? Bless you my dearest. + +R.-M. + + + +VI + +Jena, Nov. 14th. + +That sponge had no effect yesterday. I stared and stared at it, and it +only remained a sponge, far too small for the really cleanly, instead of +what it has up to now been, the starting-point for a train of thrilling, +enthusiastic thoughts. I'm an unbalanced creature. Do you divide your +time too, I wonder, between knocking your head against the stars and, in +some freezing depth of blackness, listening to your heart, how it will +hardly beat for fear? Of course you don't. You are much too clever. And +then you have been educated, trained, taught to keep your thoughts +within bounds, and not let them start off every minute on fresh and +aimless wanderings. Yet the star-knocking is so wonderful that I believe +I would rather freeze the whole year round for one hour of it than go +back again to the changeless calm, the winter-afternoon sunshine, in +which I used to sit before I knew you. All this only means that you have +not written. See how variously one can state a fact. + +I have run away from the sitting-room and the round table and the lamp, +because Papa and my step-mother had begun to discuss you again, your +prospects, your probable hideous fate if you were not prudent, your +glorious career if you were. I felt guilty, wounded, triumphant, vain, +all at once. Papa, of course, was chiefly the listener. He agreed; or at +most he temporized. I tell you, Roger, I am amazed at the power a woman +has over her husband if she is in _every_ way inferior to him. It is not +only that, as we say, _der Kluegere giebt nach_, it is the daily complete +victory of the coarser over the finer, the rough over the gentle, the +ignorant over the wise. My step-mother is an uneducated person, shrewd +about all the things that do not matter, unaware of the very existence +of the things that do, ready to be charitable, helpful, where the +calamity is big enough, wholly unsympathetic, even antagonistic, toward +all those many small calamities that make up one's years; the sort of +woman parsons praise, and who get tombstones put over them at last +peppered with frigid adjectives like virtuous and just. Did you ever +chance to live with a just person? They are very chilling, and not so +rare as one might suppose. And Papa, laxest, most tolerant of men, so +lax that nothing seems to him altogether bad, so tolerant that nobody, +however hard he tries, can pass, he thinks, beyond the reach of +forgiveness and love, so humorous that he has to fight continually to +suppress it, for humor lands one in odd morasses of dislike and +misconception here, married her a year after my mother died, and did it +wholly for my sake. Imagine it. She was to make me happy. Imagine that +too. I was not any longer to be a solitary _Backfisch_, with holes in +her stockings and riotous hair. There came a painful time when Papa +began to suspect that the roughness of my hair might conceivably be a +symbol of the dishevelment of my soul. Neighboring matrons pointed out +the possibility to him. He took to peering anxiously at unimportant +parts of me such as my nails, and was startled to see them often black. +He caught me once or twice red-eyed in corners, when it had happened +that the dear ways and pretty looks of my darling mother had come back +for a moment with extra vividness. He decided that I was both dirty and +wretched, and argued, I am sure during sleepless nights, that I would +probably go on being dirty and wretched for ever. And so he put on his +best clothes one day, and set out doggedly in search of a wife. + +He found her quite easily, in a house in the next street. She was making +doughnuts, for it was the afternoon of New Year's Eve. She had just +taken them out of the oven, and they were obviously successful. Papa +loves doughnuts. His dinner had been uneatable. The weather was cold. +She took off her apron, and piled them on a dish, and carried them, +scattering fragrance as they went, into the sitting-room; and the smell +of them was grateful; and they were very hot. + +Papa came home engaged. 'I am not as a rule in favor of second +marriages, Rose-Marie,' he began, breaking the news to me with elaborate +art. + +'Oh, horrid things,' I remarked, my arm round his neck, my face against +his, for even then I was as tall as he. You know how he begins abruptly +about anything that happens to cross his mind, so I was not surprised. + +He rubbed his nose violently. 'I never knew anybody with such hair as +yours for tickling a person,' he said, trying to push it back behind my +ears. Of course it would not go. 'Would it do that,' he added +suspiciously, 'if it were properly brushed?' + +'I don't know. Well, _Papachen_?' + +'Well what?' + +'About second marriages.' + +He had forgotten, and he started. In an instant I knew. I took my arm +away quickly, but put it back again just as quickly and pressed my face +still closer: it was better we should not see each other's eyes while he +told me. + +'I am not, as a rule, in favor of them,' he repeated, when he had +coughed and tried a second time to induce my hair to go behind my ears, +'but there are cases where they are--imperative.' + +'Which ones?' + +'Why, if a man is left with little children, for instance.' + +'Then he engages a good nurse.' + +'Or his children run wild.' + +'Then he gets a severe aunt to live with him.' + +'Or they grow up.' + +'Then they take care of themselves.' + +'Or he is an old man left with, say, one daughter.' + +'Then she would take care of him.' + +'And who would take care of her, Rose-Marie?' + +'He would.' + +'And if he is an incapable? An old person totally unable to notice +lapses from convention, from social customs? If no one is there to tell +her how to dress and how to behave? And she is growing up, and yet +remains a barbarian, and the day is not far distant when she must go +out, and he knows that when she does go out Jena will be astounded.' + +'Does the barbarian live in Jena?' + +'My dear, she is universal. Wherever there is a widower with an only +female child, there she is.' + +'But if she had been happy?' + +'But she had not been happy. She used to cry.' + +'Oh, of course she used to cry sometimes, when she thought more than +usual of her sweet--of her sweet--But for all that she had been happy, +and so had he. Why, you know he had. Didn't she look after him, and keep +house for him? Didn't she cook for him? Not very beautifully, perhaps, +but still she did cook, and there was dinner every day. Didn't she go to +market three times a week, and taste all the butter? Didn't she help to +do the rooms? And in the evenings weren't they happy together, with +nobody to worry them? And then, when he missed his darling wife, didn't +the barbarian always know he was doing it, and come and sit on his knee, +and kiss him, and make up for it? Didn't she? Now didn't she?' + +Papa unwound himself, and walked up and down with a desperate face. + +'Girls of sixteen must learn how to dress and to behave. A father cannot +show them that,' he said. + +'But they do dress and behave.' + +'Rose-Marie, unmended stockings are not dressing. And to talk to a +learned stranger well advanced in years with the freedom of his equal in +age and knowledge, as I saw one doing lately, is not behaving.' + +'Oh, Papa, she wouldn't do that again, I'm certain.' + +'She wouldn't have done it that once if she had had a mother.' + +'But the poor wretch hadn't got a mother.' + +'Exactly. A mother, therefore, must be provided.' + +Here, I remember, there was a long pause. Papa walked, and I watched him +in despair. Despair, too, was in his own face. He had had time to forget +the doughnuts, and how cold he had been, and how hungry. So shaken was I +that I actually suggested the engagement of a finishing governess to +finish that which had never been begun, pointing out that she, at least, +having finished would go; and he said he could not afford one; and he +added the amazing statement that a wife was cheaper. + +Well, I suppose she has been cheap: that is she has made one of Papa's +marks go as far as two of other people's; but oh how expensive she has +been in other ways! She has ruined us in such things as freedom, and +sweetness, and light. You know the sort of talk here at meals. I wish +you could have heard it before her time. She has such a strong +personality that somehow we have always followed her lead; and Papa, who +used to bubble out streams of gayety when he and I sat untidily on +either side of a tureen of horrible bad soup, who talked of all things +under heaven, and with undaunted audacity of many things in it, and who +somehow put a snap and a sparkle into whatever he said, sits like a +schoolboy invited to a meal at his master's, eager to agree, anxious to +give satisfaction. The wax cloth on the table is clean and shiny; the +spoons are bright; a cruet with clear oil and nice-looking vinegar +stands in the midst; the food, though simple, is hot and decent; we are +quite comfortable; and any of the other Jena _Hausfraus_ coming in +during a meal would certainly cry out _Wie gemuethlich_. But of what use +is it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers and +tidy shutters, when inside one's soul wanders through empty rooms, +mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings it +food, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired and +there's not a chair to sit on? + +Why I write all this I can't think; except that I feel as if I were +talking to you. You must tell me if I bore you. When I begin a letter to +you the great difficulty is to leave off again. Oh how warm it makes one +feel to know that there is one person in the world to whom one is +everything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvellous +possession. No wonder people like having them. And I used to think that +so silly. Heavens, what an absurd person I have been. Why, love is the +one thing worth having. Everything else, talents, work, arts, religion, +learning, the whole _tremblement,_ are so many drugs with which the +starved, the loverless, try to dull their pangs, to put themselves to +sleep. Good-night, and God bless you a thousand times. R.-M. + + + +VII + +Jena, Nov. 15th, 11 p.m. + +Dearest,--Your letter came this afternoon. How glad I was to get it. And +I do think it a good idea to go down into the country to those Americans +before your exam. Who knows but they may, by giving you peace at the +right moment, be the means of making you pass extra brilliantly? That +you should not pass at all is absolutely out of the question. Why have +the gods showered gifts on you if not for the proper passing of exams? +For I suppose in this as in everything else there are different ways, +ways of excellence and mediocrity. I know which way yours will be. If +only the presence of my spirit by your side on Saturday could be of use. +But that's the worst of spirits: they never seem to be the least good +unless they take their bodies with them. Yet mine burns so hotly when I +am thinking of you--and when am I not thinking of you?--that I feel as +if you actually must feel the glow of it as it follows you about. How +strange and dreadful love is. Till you know it, you are so sure the +world is very good and pleasant up in those serene, frost-bitten regions +where you stand alone, breathing the thin air of family affection, shone +upon gently by the mild and misty sun of general esteem. Then comes +love, and pulls you down. For isn't it a descent? Isn't it? Somehow, +though it is so great a glory, it's a coming-down as well--down from the +pride of absolute independence of body and soul, down from the +high-mightiness of indifference, to something fierce, and hot, and +consuming. Oh, I daren't tell you how little of serenity I have left. At +first, just at first, I didn't feel like this. I think I was stunned. My +soul seemed to stand still. Surely it was extraordinary, that +tempestuous crossing from the calm of careless friendship to the place +where love dashes madly against the rocks? Don't laugh at my images. I'm +in deadly earnest to-night. I do feel that love hurts. I do feel as if +I'd been thrown on to rocks, left by myself on them to come slowly to my +senses and find I am lying alone in a new and burning sun. It's an +exquisite sort of pain, but it's very nearly unbearable. You see, you +are so far away. And I, I'm learning for the first time in my life what +it means, that saying about eating out one's heart. + +R.-M. + + + +VIII + +Jena, Nov. 16th, 9 a.m. + +Really, my dear Roger, nicest of all _Braeutigams,_ pleasantest, best, +and certainly most charming, I don't think I'll write to you again in +the evenings. One of those hard clear hours that lie round +breakfast-time will be the most seemly for consecration to you. Moods +are such queer things, each one so distinct and real, so seemingly +eternal, and I am influenced by them to an extraordinary degree. The +weather, the time of day, the light in the room--yes, actually the light +in the room, sunlight, cloudlight, lamplight--the scent of certain +flowers, the sound of certain voices--the instant my senses become aware +of either of these things I find myself flung into the middle of a fresh +mood. And the worst part of it is the blind enthusiasm with which I am +sure that as I think and feel at that moment so will I think and feel +for ever. Nothing cures me. No taking of myself aside, no weight of +private admonishment, no bringing of my spirit within the white glare of +pure reason. Oh, women are fools; and of all fools the most complete is +myself. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to say that I +had to go to a _Kaffee-Klatsch_ yesterday at four, which is why I put +off answering your letter of the 13th till the evening. My dear Roger, +you must take no notice of that letter. Pray think of me as a young +person of sobriety; collected, discreet, cold to frostiness. Think of me +like that, my dear, and in return I'll undertake to write to you only in +my after-breakfast mood, quite the most respectable I possess. It is +nine now. Papa, in the slippers you can't have forgotten, is in his +corner by the stove, loudly disagreeing with the morning paper; he keeps +on shouting _Schafskopf._ Johanna is carrying coals about and dropping +them with a great noise. My step-mother is busy telling her how wrong it +is to drop dirty coals in clean places. I am writing on a bit of the +breakfast-table, surrounded by crumbs and coffee-cups. I will not clear +them away till I've finished my letter, because then I am sure you'll +get nothing either morbid or lovesick. Who, I'd like to know, could +flame into love-talk or sink into the mud of morbidness from a +starting-point of anything so sprightly as crumbs and coffee-cups? + +It was too sweet of you to compare me to Nausicaa in your letter +yesterday. Nobody ever did that before. Various aunts, among whom a few +years ago there was a great mortality, so that they are all now aunts in +heaven, told me in divers tones that I was much too long for my width, +that I was like the handle of a broom, like the steeple of the +_Stadtkirche_, like a tree walking; but none of them ever said anything +about Nausicaa. I doubt if they had ever heard of her. I'm afraid if +they had they wouldn't have seen that I am like her. You know the +blindness of aunts. Jena is full of them (not mine, _Gott sei Dank_, but +other people's) and they are all stone-blind. I don't mean, of course, +that the Jena streets are thick with aunts being led by dogs on strings, +but that they have that tragic blindness of the spirit that misses +seeing things that are hopeful and generous and lovely; things alight +with young enthusiasms, or beautiful with a patience that has had time +to grow gray. They also have that odd, unfurnished sort of mind that can +never forget and never forgive. Yesterday at the _Kaffee-Klatsch_ I met +them all again, the Jena aunts I know so well and who are yet for ever +strange, for ever of a ghastly freshness. It was the first this season, +and now I suppose I shall waste many a good afternoon _klatsch_ing. How +I wish I had not to go. My step-mother says that if I do not show myself +I shall be put down as eccentric. 'You are not very popular,' says she, +'as it is. Do not, therefore, make matters worse.' Then she appeals, +should a more than usual stubbornness cloud my open countenance, to +Papa. 'Ferdinand,' she says, 'shall she not, then, do as others of her +age?' And of course Papa says, bless him, that girls must see life +occasionally, and is quite unhappy if I won't. Life? God bless him for a +dear, innocent Papa. And how they talked yesterday. Papa would have +writhed. He never will talk or listen to talk about women unless they've +been dead some time, so uninteresting, so unworthy of discussion does he +consider all live females except Johanna to be. And if I hadn't had my +love-letter (I took it with me tucked inside my dress, where my heart +could beat against it), I don't think I would have survived that +_Klatsch._ You've no idea how proudly I set out. Hadn't I just been +reading the sweetest things about myself in your letter? Of course I was +proud. And I felt so important, and so impressive, and simply gloriously +good-tempered. The pavement of Jena, I decided as I walked over it, was +quite unworthy to be touched by my feet; and if the passers-by only knew +it, an extremely valuable person was in their midst. In fact, my dear +Roger, I fancied myself yesterday. Didn't Odysseus think Nausicaa was +Artemis when first he met her among the washing, so god-like did she +appear? Well, I felt god-like yesterday, made god-like by your love. I +actually fancied people would _see_ something wonderful had happened to +me, that I was transfigured, _verklaert._ Positively, I had a momentary +feeling that my coming in, the coming in of anything so happy, must +blind the _Kaffee-Klatsch_, that anything so burning with love must +scorch it. Well, it didn't. Never did torch plunged into wetness go out +with a drearier fizzle than did my little shining. Nobody noticed +anything different. Nobody seemed even to look at me. A few careless +hands were stretched out, and the hostess told me to ask the servant to +bring more milk. + +They were talking about sin. We don't sin much in Jena, so generally +they talk about sick people, or their neighbor's income and what he does +with it. But yesterday they talked sin. You know because we are poor and +Papa has no official position and I have come to be twenty-five without +having found a husband, I am a _quantite negligeable_ in our set, a +being in whose presence everything can be said, and who is expected to +sit in a draught if there is one. Too old to join the young girls in the +corner set apart for them, where they whisper and giggle and eat amazing +quantities of whipped cream, I hover uneasily on the outskirts of the +group of the married, and try to ingratiate myself by keeping on handing +them cakes. It generally ends in my being sent out every few minutes by +the hostess to the kitchen to fetch more food and things. 'Rose-Marie is +so useful,' she will explain to the others when I have been extra quick +and cheerful; but I don't suppose Nausicaa's female acquaintances said +more. The man Ulysses might take her for a goddess, but the most the +women would do would be to commend the way she did the washing. +Sometimes I have great trouble not to laugh when I see their heads, +often quite venerable, gathered together in an eager bunch, and hear +them expressing horror, sympathy, pity, in every sort of appropriate +tone, while their eyes, their tell-tale eyes, betrayers of the soul, +look pleased. Why they should be pleased when somebody has had an +operation or doesn't pay his debts I can't make out. But they do. And +after a course of _Klatsches_ throughout the winter, you are left toward +April with one firm conviction in a world where everything else is +shaky, that there's not a single person who isn't either extraordinarily +ill, or, if he's not, who does not misuse his health and strength by not +paying his servants' wages. + +Yesterday the _Klatsch_ was in a fearful flutter. It had got hold of a +tale of sin, real or suspected. It was a tale of two people who, after +leading exemplary lives for years, had suddenly been clutched by the +throat by Nature; and Nature, we know, cares nothing at all for the +claims of husbands and wives or any other lawfulnesses, and is a most +unmoral and one-idea'd person. They have, says Jena, begun to love each +other in defiance of the law. Nature has been too many for them, I +suppose. All Jena is a-twitter. Nothing can be proved, but everything is +being feared, said the hostess; from her eyes I'm afraid she wanted to +say hoped. Isn't it ugly?--_pfui_, as we say. And so stale, if it's +true. Why can't people defy Nature and be good? The only thing that is +always fresh and beautiful is goodness. It is also the only thing that +can make you go on being happy indefinitely. + +I know her well. My heart failed me when I heard her being talked about +so hideously. She is the nicest woman in Jena. She has been kind to me +often. She is very clever. Perhaps if she had been more dull she would +have found no temptation to do anything but jog along respectably--sometimes +I think that to be without imagination is to be so very safe. He has +only come to these parts lately. He used to be in Berlin, and has been +appointed to a very good position in Weimar. I have not met him, but +Papa says he is brilliant. He has a wife, and she has a husband, and +they each have a lot of children; so you see if it's true it really is +very _pfui_. + +Just as the _Kaffee-Klatsch_ was on the wane, and crumbs were being +brushed off laps, and bonnet-strings tied, in she walked. There was a +moment's dead silence. Then you should have heard the effusion of +welcoming speeches. The hostess ran up and hugged her. The others were +covered with pleasant smiles. Perhaps they were grateful to her for +having provided such thrilling talk. When I had to go and kiss her hand +I never in my life felt baser. You should have seen her looking round +cheerfully at all the Judases, and saying she was sorry to be late, and +asking if they hadn't missed her; and you should have heard the eager +chorus of assurances. + +Oh, _pfui, pfui_. + +R.-M. + +How much I love goodness, straightness, singleness of heart--_you._ + + +Later. + +I walked part of the way home with the calumniated one. How charming she +is. Dear little lady, it would be difficult not to love her. She talked +delightfully about German and English poetry. Do you think one can talk +delightfully about German and English poetry and yet be a sinner? Tell +me, do you think a woman who is very intellectual, but very _very_ +intellectual, could yet be a sinner? Would not her wits save her? Would +not her bright wits save her from anything so dull as sin? + + + +IX + +Jena, Nov. 18th. + +Dearest,--I don't think I like that girl at all. Your letter from +Clinches has just come, and I don't think I like her at all. What is +more, I don't think I ever shall like her. And what is still more, I +don't think I even want to. So your idea of her being a good friend to +me later on in London must retire to that draughty corner of space where +abortive ideas are left to eternal shivering. I'm sorry if I am +offensively independent. But then I know so well that I won't be lonely +if I'm with you, and I think rooting up, which you speak of as a +difficult and probably painful process, must be very nice if you are the +one to do it, and I am sure I could never by any possibility reach such +depths of strangeness and doubt about what to do next as would induce me +to stretch out appealing hands to a young woman with eyes that, as you +put it, tilt at the corners. I wish you hadn't told her about us, about +me. It has profaned things so, dragged them out into the streets, +cheapened them. I don't in the least want to tell my father, or any one +else. Does this sound as though I were angry? Well, I don't think I am. +On the contrary, I rather want to laugh. You dear silly! So clever and +so simple, so wise and crammed with learning, and such a dear, ineffable +goose. How old am I, I wonder? Only as old as you? Really only as old? +Nonsense: I'm fifteen, twenty years your senior, my dear sir. I've lived +in Jena, you in London I frequent _Kaffee-Klatsches_, and you the great +world. I talk much with Johanna in the kitchen, and you with heaven +knows what in the way of geniuses. Yet no male Nancy Cheriton, were his +eyelids never so tilted, would wring a word out of me about a thing so +near, so precious, so much soul of my soul as my lover. + +How would you explain this? I've tried and can't. + +Your rebellious + +ROSE-MARIE. + +Darling, darling, don't ask me to like Nancy. The thing's unthinkable. + + +Later. + +Now I know why I am wiser than you: life in kitchens and _Klatsches_ +turns the soul gray very early. Didn't one of your poets sing of +somebody who had a sad lucidity of soul? I'm afraid that is what's the +matter with me. + + + +X + +Jena, Nov. 19th. + +Oh, what nonsense everything seems,--everything of the nature of +differences, of arguments, on a clear morning up among the hills. I am +ashamed of what I wrote about Nancy; ashamed of my eagerness and heat +about a thing that does not matter. On the hills this morning, as I was +walking in the sunshine, it seemed to me that I met God. And He took me +by the hand, and let me walk with Him. And He showed me how beautiful +the world is, how beautiful the background He has given us, the +spacious, splendid background on which to paint our large charities and +loves. And I looked across the hilltops, golden, utterly peaceful, and +amazement filled me in the presence of that great calm at the way I +flutter through my days and at the noise I make. Why should I cry out +before I am hurt? flare up into heat and clamor? The pure light up there +made it easy to see clearly, and I saw that I have been silly and +ungrateful. Forgive me. You know best about Nancy, you who have seen +her; and I, just come down from that holy hour on the hills, am very +willing to love her. I will not turn my back upon a ready friend. She +can have no motive but a good one. Roger, I am a blunderer, a clumsy +creature with not one of my elemental passions bound down yet into the +decent listlessness of chains. But I shall grow better, grow more worthy +of you. Not a day shall pass without my having been a little wiser than +the day before, a little kinder, a little more patient. I wish you had +been with me this morning. It was so still and the sky so clear that I +sat on the old last year's grass as warmly as in summer. I felt +irradiated with life and love; light shining on to every tiresome +incident of life and turning it into beauty, love for the whole +wonderful world, and all the people in it, and all the beasts and +flowers, and all the happy living things. Indeed blessings have been +given me in full measure, pressed down and running over. In the whole of +that little town at my feet, so quiet, so bathed in lovely light, there +was not, there could not be, another being so happy as myself. Surely I +am far too happy to grudge accepting a kindness? I tell you I marvel at +the energy of my protest yesterday. Perhaps it was--oh Roger, after +those hours on the hills I will be honest, I will pull off the veil from +feelings that the female mind generally refuses to uncover--perhaps the +real reason, the real, pitiful, mean reason was that I felt sure somehow +from your description of her that Nancy's _blouses_ must be very perfect +things, things beyond words _very_ perfect. And I was jealous of her +blouses. There now. Good-by. + + + +XI + +Jena, Nov. 20th. + +I am glad you did not laugh at that silly letter of mine about scorching +in the sun on rocks. Indeed I gather, my dear Roger, that you liked it. +Make the most of it then, for there will be no more of the sort. A +decent woman never gets on to rocks, and if she scorches she doesn't say +so. And I believe that it is held to be generally desirable that she +should not, even under really trying circumstances, part with her +dignity. I rather think the principle was originally laid down by the +husband of an attractive wife, but it is a good one, and so long as I am +busy clinging to my dignity obviously I shall have no leisure for +clinging to you, and then you will not be suffocated with the +superabundance of my follies. + +About those two sinners who are appalling us: how can I agree with you? +To do so would cut away the ground from under my own feet. The woman +plays such a losing game. She gives so much, and gets so little. So long +as the man loves her I do see that he is worth the good opinion of +neighbors and relations, which is one of the chilliest things in the +world; but he never seems able to go on loving her once she has begun to +wither. That is very odd. She does not mind his withering. And has she +not a soul? And does not that grow always lovelier? But what, then, +becomes of her? For wither she certainly will, and years rush past at +such a terrific pace that almost before she has begun to be happy it is +over. He goes back to his wife, a person who has been either patient or +bitter according to the quantity of her vitality and the quality of her +personal interests, and concludes, while he watches her sewing on his +buttons in the corner she has probably been sitting in through all his +vagrant years, that marriage has its uses, and that it is good to know +there will be some one bound to take care of you up to the last, and who +will shed decent tears when you are buried. She goes back--but where, +and to what? They have gone long ago, her husband, her children, her +friends. And she is old, and alone. You too, like everybody else, seem +unable to remember how transient things are. Time goes, emotions wear +out. You say these people are in the hands of Fate, and can no more get +out of them and do differently than a fly in a web can walk away when it +sees the hungry spider coming nearer. I don't believe in webs and +spiders; at least, I don't today. Today I believe only in my +unconquerable soul-- + + I am the master of my fate, + I am the captain of my soul. + +And you say that a person in the grip of a great feeling should not care +a straw for circumstance, should defy it, trample it under foot. Heaven +knows that I too am for love and laughter, for the snatching of flying +opportunities, for all that makes the light and the glory of life; but +what afterwards? The Afterwards haunts me like a weeping ghost. It is +true there is still the wide world, the warm sun, seed-time and harvest, +Shakespeare, the Book of Job, singing birds, flowers; but the soul that +has transgressed the laws of man seems for ever afterwards unable to use +the gifts of God. If supreme joy could be rounded off by death, death at +the exact right moment, how easy things would be. Only death has a +strange way of shunning those persons who want him most. To long to die +seems to make you as nearly immortal as it is possible to become. Now +just think what would have happened if Tristan had not been killed, had +lived on quite healthily. King Mark, than whom I know no man in +literature more polite, would have handed Isolde over to him as he +declared himself ready to have done had he been aware of the +unfortunately complicated state of things, and he would have done it +with every expression of decent regret at the inconvenience he had +caused. Isolde would have married Tristan. There would have been no +philosophy, no divine hours in the garden, no acute, exquisite anguish +of love and sorrow. But there would presently have been the Middle Ages +equivalent for a perambulator, a contented Tristan coming to meet it, a +faded Isolde who did not care for poetry, admonishing, perhaps with +sharpness, a mediaeval nursemaid, and quite quickly afterwards a Tristan +grown too comfortable to move, and an Isolde with wrinkles. Would we not +have lost a great deal if they had lived? It is certain that they +themselves would have lost a great deal; for I don't see that +contentment beaten out thin enough to cover a long life--and beat as +thin as you will it never does cover quite across the years--is to be +compared with one supreme contentment heaped in one heap on the highest, +keenest point of living we reach. Now I am apparently arguing on your +side, but I'm not really, because you, you know, think of love as a +perpetual _crescendo,_ and I, though I do hear the _crescendo_ and +follow it with a joyful clapping of hands up to the very top of its +splendor, can never forget the drop on the other side, the inevitable +_diminuendo_ to the dead level--and then? Why, the rest is not even +silence, but a querulous murmur, a querulous, confused whining, confused +complaining, not very loud, not very definite, but always there till the +last chord is reached a long time afterwards--that satisfactory common +chord of death. My point is, that if you want to let yourself go to +great emotions you ought to have the luck to die at an interesting +moment. The alternative makes such a dreary picture; and it is the +picture I always see when I hear of love at defiance with the law. The +law wins; always, inevitably. Husbands are best; always, inevitably. +Really, the most unsatisfactory husband is a person who should be clung +to steadily from beginning to end, for did not one marry him of one's +own free will? How ugly then, because one had been hasty, foolish, +unacquainted with one's usually quite worthless mind, to punish him. The +brilliant professor, the fascinating little lady, what are they but +grossly selfish people, cruelly punishing the husband and wife who had +the misfortune to marry them? Oh, it's a mercy most of us are homely, +slow of wit, heavy of foot; for so at least we stay at home and find our +peace in fearful innocence and household laws. (Please note my +familiarity with the British poets.) But isn't that a picture of frugal +happiness, of the happiness that comes from a daily simple obedience to +the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God, beside which stormy, tremendous, +brief things come off very badly? I don't believe you do in your heart +side with the two sinners. Bother them. They have made me feel like a +Lutheran pastor on a Sunday afternoon. But you know I love you. + +R.-M. + + + +XII + +Jena, Nov. 22d. + +When do you go back to Jermyn Street? Surely today, for is not the +examination to-morrow? Your description of the Cheriton _menage_ at +Clinches is like fairyland. No wonder you feel so happy there. My mother +used to tell me about life in England, but apparently the Watson family +did not dwell in houses like Clinches. Anyhow I had an impression of +little houses with little staircases, and oil-cloth, and a servant in a +cap with streamers, and round white balls of suet with currants in them +very often for dinner. But Clinches, beautiful and dignified in the +mists and subtleties of a November afternoon, its massed grayness +melting into that other grayness, its setting of mysterious blurred wood +and pale light of water, its spaciousness, its pleasant people, its +daughter with the dusky hair and odd gray eyes--is a vision of +fairyland. I cannot conceive what life is like in such places; nor I am +sure could any other inhabitant of Jena. What, for instance, can it be +like to live in a thing so big that you do not hear the sounds nor smell +the smells of the kitchen? Ought not people who live in such places to +have unusually beautiful ways of looking at life? of thinking? of +speaking? One imagines it all very noble, very gracious, altogether +worthy. That complete separation from the kitchen is what wrings the +biggest sigh of envy out of me. Is it my English blood that makes me +rebel against kitchens? Or is it only my unfortunate sensitiveness to +smell? I wish I had no nose. It has always been a nuisance. It is as +extravagantly delighted by exquisite scents as it is extravagantly +horrified by nasty ones. Why, a beautiful smell, if it is delicate, +subtle, intermittent, can ruin a morning for me. It fills me with a +quite unworthy rapture. Things that ought to be hard in me melt. Things +that ought to be fixed are scattered heaven knows where. I go soft, +ecstatic, basely idle. I forget that my business is to get dinner, and +not to stand still and just sniff. In March I dare not pass the house +Schiller used to live in on my way to market, because the people who +live there now have planted violets along the railings. It is the +shortest way, and it takes ten more minutes out of a busy morning to go +round by the Post Office; but really for a grown woman to stand lost in +what is mere voluptuous pleasure, leaning against somebody else's +railing while the family dinner lies still unbought in the market-place, +is conduct that I cannot justify. As for a beanfield--my dear Roger, did +you ever come across a beanfield in flower? It is the divinest +experience the nose can give us. Two years ago an Englishman came and +spent a spring and summer in the little house in the apple orchard up on +the road over the Galgenberg--the little house with the blue +shutters--and he was a great gardener. And he dug a big patch, and +planted a beanfield, and it was the first beanfield Jena had ever seen; +for those beans called broad that you eat in England and are properly +thankful for are only grown in Germany for the use of pigs, and there +are no pigs in Jena. Sow-beans they are called here, mindful of their +destiny. The Englishman, who possessed no visible sow, was a source of +astonishment to us. The things came up, and were undoubtedly sow-beans. +A great square patch of them grew up just over the fence on which Jena +leaned and pondered. The man himself was seen in his shirt-sleeves +weeding them on rainy afternoons. Jena could only suspect a pig +concealed in the parlor, and was indulgent; and it was indulgent because +no one, in its opinion, can be both English and sane. 'God made us all,' +was its invariable helpless conclusion as it went, shaking its head, +home down the hill. When in June the beanfield flowered I blessed that +Englishman. No one hung over his fence more persistently than I. It was +the first time I had smelt the like. It became an obsession. I wanted to +be there at every sort of time and under every sort of weather-condition. +At noon, when the sun shone straight down on it drawing up its perfume +in hot breaths, I was there; in the morning, so early that it was still +in the blue shadow of the Galgenberg and every gray leaf and white petal +was drenched with dew, I was there; on wet afternoons, when the scent +was crushed out of it by the beating of heavy rain, and the road for +half a mile, the slippery clay road with its puddles and amazing mud, +was turned into a bath of fragrance fit for the tenderest, most +fastidious goddess to bare her darling little limbs in, I was there; and +once after lying awake in my hot room so near the roof for hours +thinking of it, out there on the hillside in the freshness under the +stars, I got up and dressed, and crept with infinite caution past my +step-mother's door, and stole the latchkey, and slunk, my heart in my +mouth, through the stale streets, along all the railings and dusty front +gardens, out into the open country, up on to the hill, to where it stood +in straight and motionless rows sending out waves of fragrance into that +wonderful clean air you find in all the places where men leave off and +God begins. Did you ever know a woman before who risked her reputation +for a beanfield? Well, it is what I did. And I'll tell you, I am so +incurably honest that I can never for long pretend, why I write all this +about it. It is that I am sick with anxiety--oh, sick, cold, shivering +with it--about your exam. I didn't want you to know. I've tried to write +of beanfields instead. I didn't want you to be bothered. The clamorings +for news of the person not on the spot are always a worry, and I did not +want to worry. But the letter I got from you this morning never mentions +the exam, the thing on which, as you told me, everything depends for us. +You talk about Clinches, about the people there, about the shooting, the +long days in woods, the keen-wittedness of Nancy who goes with you, who +understands before you have spoken, who sympathizes so kindly about me, +who fits, you say, so strangely into the misty winter landscape in her +paleness, her thinness, her spiritualness. There was one whole page--oh, +I grudged it--about her loosely done dark hair, how softly dusky it is, +how it makes you think of twilight, and her eyes beneath it of the first +faint shining of stars. I wonder if these things really fill your +thoughts, or whether you are only using them to drive away useless worry +about Saturday. I know you are a poet, and a poet's pleasure in eyes and +hair is not a very personal thing, so I do not mind that. But to-morrow +is Saturday. Shall you send me a telegram, I wonder? A week ago I would +not have wondered; I should have been so sure you would let me have one +little word at once about how you felt it had gone off--one little word +for the person so far away, so helpless, so dependent on your kindness +for the very power to go on living. Oh, what stuff this is. Worse even +than the beanfield. But I must be sentimental sometimes, now mustn't I? +or I would not be a woman. But really, my darling, I am very anxious. + +R.-M. + + + +XIII + +Jena, Nov. 23 d. + +I have waited all day, and there has been no telegram. Well, on Monday I +shall get a letter about it, and how much more satisfactory that is. +Today after all is nearly over, and there is only Sunday to be got +through first, and I shall be helped to endure that by the looking +forward. Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It +makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and +nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the +first catch of the breath, the first gulp of misery, we turn our eyes +with all their old eagerness to a point a little further along the road. +I suppose in time the regular repetition of shocks does wear out hope, +and then I imagine one's youth collapses like a house of cards. Real old +age begins then, inward as well as outward; and one's soul, that kept so +bravely young for years after one's face got its first wrinkles, +suddenly shrivels up. Its light goes out. It is suddenly and +irrecoverably old, blank, dark, indifferent. + + +Sunday Night. + +I didn't finish my letter last night because, observing the strain I had +got into, I thought it better for your comfort that I should go to bed. +So I did. And while I went there I asked myself why I should burden you +with the dull weight of my elementary reflections. You who are so clever +and who think so much and so clearly, must laugh at their +elementariness. They are green and immature, the acid juice of an +imperfect fruit that has always hung in the shadow. And yet I don't +think you must laugh, Roger. It would, after all, be as cruel as the +laughter of a child watching a blind man ridiculously stumbling among +the difficulties of the way. + +The one Sunday post brought nothing from you. The day has been very +long. I cannot tell you how glad I am night has come, and only sleep +separates me now from Monday morning's letter. These Sundays now that +you are gone are intolerable. Before you came they rather amused +me,--the furious raging of Saturday, with its extra cleaning and +feverish preparations till far into the night; Johanna more than usually +slipshod all day, red of elbow, wispy of hair, shuffling about in her +felt slippers, her skirt girded up very high, a moist mop and an +overflowing pail dribbling soapy tracks behind her in her progress; my +step-mother baking and not lightly to be approached; Papa fled from +early morning till supper-time; and then the dead calm of Sunday, day of +food and sleep. Cake for breakfast--such a bad beginning. Church in the +University chapel, with my step-mother in her best hat with the black +feathers and the pink rose--it sounds frivolous, but you must have +noticed the awe-inspiring effect of it coming so unexpectedly on the top +of her long respectable face and oiled-down hair. A fluffy person in +that hat would have all the students offering to take her for a walk or +share their umbrella with her. My step-mother stalks along panoplied in +her excellences, and the feather waves and nods gayly at the passing +student as he slinks away down by-streets. Once last spring a silly bee +thought the rose must be something alive and honeyful, and went and +smelt it. I think it must have been a very young bee; anyhow nobody else +up to now has misjudged my step-mother like that. She sits near the door +in church, and has never yet heard the last half of the sermon because +she has to go out in time to put the goose or other Sunday succulence +safely into the oven. I wish she would let me do that, for I don't care +for sermons. When you were here and condescended to come with us at +least we could criticize them comfortably on our way home; but alone +with my step-mother I may do nothing but praise. It is the most tiring, +tiresome of all attitudes, the one of undiscriminating admiration. To +hear you pull the person who had preached to pieces, and laugh at the +things he had said that would not bear examination, used to be like +having a window thrown open in a stuffy room on a clear winter's +morning. Shall you ever forget the elaborateness of the Sunday dinner? +For that, chiefly, is Saturday sacrificed, a whole day that might be +filled with lovely leisure. I do hope you never thought that I too +looked upon it as a nice way of celebrating Sunday. How amazing it is, +the way women waste life. Men waste enough of it, heaven knows, but +never anything like so much as women. Papa and I both hate that Sunday +dinner, both dread the upheavals of Saturday made necessary by it, and +you, I know, disliked them just as much, and so has every other young +man we have had here; yet my step-mother inflicts these things on us +with an iron determination that nothing will ever alter. And why? Only +because she was brought up in the belief that it was proper, and +because, if she omitted to do the proper, female Jena would be aghast. +Well, I think it's a bad thing to be what is known as brought up, don't +you? Why should we poor helpless little children, all soft and +resistless, be squeezed and jammed into the rusty iron bands of parental +points of view? Why should we have to have points of view at all? Why +not, for those few divine years when we are still so near God, leave us +just to guess and wonder? We are not given a chance. On our pulpy little +minds our parents carve their opinions, and the mass slowly hardens, and +all those deep, narrow, up and down strokes harden with it, and the +first thing the best of us have to do on growing up is to waste precious +time rubbing and beating at the things to try to get them out. Surely +the child of the most admirable, wise parent is richer with his own +faulty but original point of view than he would be fitted out with the +choicest selection of maxims and conclusions that he did not have to +think out for himself? I could never be a schoolmistress. I should be +afraid to teach the children. They know more than I do. They know how to +be happy, how to live from day to day in god-like indifference to what +may come next. And is not how to be happy the secret we spend our lives +trying to guess? Why then should I, by forcing them to look through my +stale eyes, show them as through a dreadful magnifying glass the +terrific possibilities, the cruel explosiveness of what they had been +lightly tossing to each other across the daisies and thinking were only +toys? + +Today at dinner, when Papa had got to the stage immediately following +the first course at which, his hunger satisfied, he begins to fidget and +grow more and more unhappy, and my step-mother was conversing blandly +but firmly with the tried and ancient friend she invites to bear witness +that we too have a goose on Sundays, and I had begun to droop, I hope +poetically, like a thirsty flower let us say, or a broken lily, over my +plate, I thought--oh, how longingly I thought--of the happy past meals, +made happy because you were here sitting opposite me and I could watch +you. How short they seemed in those days. You didn't know I was watching +you, did you? But I was. And I learned to do it so artfully, so +cautiously. When you turned your head and talked to Papa I could do it +openly; when you talked to me I could look straight in your dear eyes +while I answered; but when I wasn't answering I still looked at you, by +devious routes carefully concealed, routes that grew so familiar by +practice that at last I never missed a single expression, while you, I +suppose, imagined you had nothing before you but a young woman with a +vacant face. What talks and laughs we will have about that odd, foolish +year we spent here together in our blindness when next we meet! We've +had no time to say anything at all yet. There are thousands of things I +want to ask you about, thousands of little things we said and did that +seem so strange now in the light of our acknowledged love. My heart +stands still at the thought of when next we meet. These letters have +been so intimate, and we were not intimate. I shall be deadly shy when +in your presence I remember what I have written and what you have +written. We are still such strangers, bodily, personally; strangers with +the overwhelming memory of that last hour together to make us turn hot +and tremble. + +Now I am going to bed,--to dream of you, I suppose, considering that all +day long I am thinking of you; and perhaps I shall have a little luck, +and dream that I hear you speaking. You know, Roger, I love you for all +sorts of queer and apparently inadequate reasons--I won't tell you what +they are, for they are quite absurd; things that have to do with +eyebrows, and the shape of hands, so you see quite foolish things--but +most of all I love you for your voice. A beautiful speaking voice is one +of the best of the gifts of the gods. It is so rare; and it is so +irresistible. Papa says heaps of nice poetic things, but then the +darling pipes. The most eloquent lecturer we have here does all his +eloquence, which is really very great read afterward in print, in a +voice of beer, loose, throaty, reminiscent of barrels. Not one of the +preachers who come to the University chapel has a voice that does not +spoil the merit there may be in what he says. Sometimes I think that if +a man with the right voice were to get up in that pulpit and just say, +'Children, Christ died for you,'--oh, then I think that all I have and +am, body, mind, soul, would be struck into one great passion of +gratefulness and love, and that I would fall conquered on my face before +the Cross on the altar, and cry and cry.... + + + +XIV + +Jena, Nov. 25th. Monday Night. + +The last post has been. No letter. If you had posted it in London on +Saturday after the examination I ought to have had it by now. I am +tortured by the fear that something has happened to you. Such dreadful +things do happen. Those great, blundering, blind fists of Fate, laying +about in mechanical cruelty, crushing the most precious lives as +indifferently as we crush an ant in an afternoon walk, how they terrify +me. All day I have been seeing foolish, horrible pictures--your train to +London smashing up, your cab coming to grief--the thousand things that +might so easily happen really doing it at last. I sent my two letters to +Jermyn Street, supposing you would have left Clinches, but now somehow I +don't think you did leave it, but went up from there for the exam. Do +you know it is three days since I heard from you? That wouldn't matter +so much--for I am determined never to bother you to write, I am +determined I will never be an exacting woman--if it were not for the +all-important examination. You said that if you passed it well and got a +good place in the Foreign Office you would feel justified in telling +your father about us. That means that we would be openly engaged. Not +that I care for that, or want it except as the next step to our meeting +again. It is clear that we cannot meet again till our engagement is +known. Even if you could get away and come over for a few days I would +not see you. I will not be kissed behind doors. These things are too +wonderful to be handled after the manner of kitchen-maids. I am willing +to be as silent as the grave for as long as you choose, but so long as I +am silent we shall not meet. I tell you I am incurably honest. I cannot +bear to lie. And even these letters, this perpetual writing when no one +is likely to look, this perpetual watching for the postman so that no +one will be likely to see, does not make me love myself any better. It +is true I need not have watched quite so carefully lately, need I? Oh +Roger, why don't you write? What has happened? Think of my wretched +plight if you are ill. Just left to wonder at the silence, to gnaw away +at my miserable heart. Or, if some one took pity on me and sent me +word,--your servant, or the doctor, or the kind Nancy--what could I do +even then but still sit here and wait? How could I, a person of whom +nobody has heard, go to you? It seems to me that the whole world has a +right to be with you, to know about you, except myself. I cannot wait +for the next post. The waiting for these posts makes me feel physically +sick. If the man is a little late, what torments I suffer lest he should +not be coming at all. Then I hear him trudging up the stairs. I fly to +the door, absolutely vainly trying to choke down hope. 'There will be no +letter, no letter, no letter,' I keep on crying to my thumping heart so +that the disappointment shall not be quite so bitter; and it takes no +notice, but thumps back wildly, 'Oh, there will, there will.' And what +the man gives me is a circular for Papa. + +It is quite absurd, madly absurd, the anguish I feel when that happens. +My one wish, my only wish, as I creep back again down the passage to my +work, is that I could go to sleep, and sleep and sleep and forget that I +have ever hoped for anything; sleep for years, and wake up quiet and +old, with all these passionate, tearing feelings gone from me for ever. + + + +XV + +Jena, Nov. 28th. + +Last night I got your letter written on Sunday at Clinches, a place from +which letters do not seem to depart easily. My knowledge of England's +geography is limited, so how could I guess that it was so easy to go up +to London from there for the exam, and back again the same day? As you +had no time, you say, to go to Jermyn Street, I suppose the two letters +I sent there will be forwarded to you. If they are not it does not +matter. They were only a string of little trivial things that would look +really quite too little and trivial to be worth reading in the +magnificence of Clinches. I am glad you are well; glad you are happy; +glad you feel you did not do badly on Saturday. It is a good thing to be +well and happy and satisfied, and a pleasant thing to have found a +friend who takes so much interest in you, and to whom you can tell your +most sacred thoughts: doubly pleasant, of course, when the friend +chances to be a woman, and she is pretty, and young, and rich, and +everything else that is suitable and desirable. The world is an amusing +place. My step-mother talked of you this morning at breakfast. She was, +it seems, in a prophetic mood. She shook her head after the manner of +the more gloomy of the prophets, and hoped you would steer clear of +entanglements. + +'And why should he not, _meine Liebste_?' inquired Papa. + +'Not for nothing has he got that mouth, Ferdinand,' answered she. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XVI + +Jena, Nov. 29th. + +My darling, forgive me. If I could only get it back! I who hate +unreasonableness, who hate bitterness, who hate exacting women, petty +women, jealous women, to write a thing so angry. How horrible this +letter-writing is. If I had said all that to you in a sudden flare of +wrath I would have been sorry so immediately, and at once have made +everything fair and sweet again with a kiss. And I never would have got +beyond the first words, never have reached my step-mother's silly and +rude remarks, never have dreamed of repeating the unkind, unjust things. +Now, Roger, listen to me: my faith in you is perfect, my love for you is +perfect, but I am so undisciplined, so new to love, that you must be +patient, you must be ready to forgive easily for a little while, till I +have had time to grow wise. Just think, when you feel irritated, of the +circumstances of my life. Everything has come so easily, so naturally to +you. But I have been always poor, always second-rate--oh, it's +true--shut out from the best things and people, lonely because the +society I could have was too little worth having, and the society I +would have liked didn't want me. How could it? It never came our way, +never even knew we were there. I have had a shabby, restricted, +incomplete life; I mean the last ten years of it, since my father +married again. Before that, if the shabbiness was there I did not see +it; there seemed to be sunshine every day, and room to breathe, and +laughter enough; but then I was a child, and saw sunshine everywhere. Is +there not much excuse for some one who has found a treasure, some one +till then very needy, if his anxiety lest he should be robbed makes +him--irritable? You see, I put it mildly. I know very well that +irritable isn't the right word. I know very well what are the right +words, and how horrid they are, and how much ashamed I am of their +bitter truth. Pity me. A person so unbalanced, so stripped of all +self-control that she writes things she knows must hurt to the being she +loves so utterly, does deserve pity from better, serener natures. I do +not understand you yet. I do not understand the ways yet of people who +live as you do. I am socially inferior, and therefore sensitive and +suspicious. I am groping about, and am so blind that only sometimes can +I dimly feel how dark it really is. I have built up a set of ideals +about love and lovers, absurd crude things, clumsy fabrics suited to the +conditions of Rauchgasse, and the first time you do not exactly fit them +I am desperately certain that the world is coming to an end. But how +hopeless it is, this trying to explain, this trying to undo. How shall I +live till you write that you do still love me? + +Your wretched + +ROSE-MARIE. + + + +XVII + +Jena, Nov. 30th. + +I counted up my money this morning to see if there would be enough to +take me to England, supposing some day I should wake up and find myself +no longer able to bear the silence. I know I should be mad if I went, +but sometimes one is mad. There was not nearly enough. The cheapest +route would cost more than comes in my way during a year. I have a ring +of my mother's with a diamond in it, my only treasure, that I might +sell. I never wear it; my red hands are not pretty enough for rings, so +it is only sentiment that makes it precious. And if it would take me to +you and give me just one half-hour's talk with you and sweep away the +icy fog that seems to be settling down on my soul and shutting out +everything that is wholesome and sweet, I am sure my darling mother, +whose one thought was always to make me happy, would say, 'Child, go and +sell it, and buy peace.' + + + +XVIII + +Jena, Dec. 1st. + +Last night I dreamed I did go to England, and I found you in a room with +a crowd of people, and you nodded not unkindly, and went on talking to +the others, and I waited in my corner till they should have gone, waited +for the moment when we would run into each other's arms; and with the +last group you too went out talking and laughing, and did not come back +again. It was not that you wanted to avoid me; you had simply forgotten +that I was there. And I crept out into the street, and it was raining, +and through the rain I made my way back across Europe to my home, to the +one place where they would not shut me out, and when I opened the door +all the empty future years were waiting for me there, gray, vacant, +listless. + + + +XIX + +Jena, Dec. 2d. + +These scraps of letters are not worth the postman's trouble, are not +worth the stamps; but if I did not talk to you a little every day I do +not think I could live. Yesterday you got my angry letter. If you were +not at Clinches I could have had an answer to-morrow; as it is, I must +wait till Wednesday. Roger, I am really a cheerful person. You mustn't +suppose that it is my habit to be so dreary. I don't know what has come +over me. Every day I send you another shred of gloom, and deepen the +wrong impression you must be getting of me. I know very well that nobody +likes to listen to sighs, and that no man can possibly go on for long +loving a dreary woman. Yet I cannot stop. A dreary man is bad enough, +but he would be endured because we endure every variety of man with so +amazing a patience; but a dreary woman is unforgivable, hideous. Now am +I not luminously reasonable? But only in theory. My practice lies right +down on the ground, wet through by that icy fog that is freezing me into +something I do not recognize. You do remember I was cheerful once? +During the whole of your year with us I defy you to recollect a single +day, a single hour of gloom. Well, that is really how I always am, and I +can only suppose that I am going to be ill. There is no other way of +accounting for the cold terror of life that sits crouching on my heart. + + + +XX + +Dec. 3d. + +Dearest,--You will be pleased to hear that I feel gayer to-night, so +that I cannot, after all, be sickening for anything horrid. It is an +ungrateful practice, letting oneself go to vague fears of the future +when there is nothing wrong with the present. All these days during +which I have been steeped in gloom and have been taking pains to put +some of it into envelopes and send it to you were good days in +themselves. Life went on here quite placidly. The weather was sweet with +that touching, forlorn sweetness of beautiful worn-out things, of late +autumn when winter is waiting round the corner, of leaves dropping +slowly down through clear light, of the smell of oozy earth sending up +faint whiffs of corruption. From my window I saw the hills every day at +sunset, how wonderfully they dressed themselves in pink; and in the +afternoons, in the free hour when dinner was done and coffee not yet +thought of, I went down into the Paradies valley and sat on the coarse +gray grass by the river, and watched the water slipping by beneath the +osiers, the one hurried thing in an infinite tranquillity. I ought to +have had a volume of Goethe under my arm and been happy. I ought to have +read nice bits out of _Faust_, or about those extraordinary people in +the Elective Affinities, and rejoiced in Goethe, and in the fine days, +and in my good fortune in being alive, and in having you to love. Well, +it is over now, I hope,--I mean the gloom. These things must take their +course, I suppose, and while they are doing it one must grope about as +best one can by the flickering lantern-light of one's own affrighted +spirit. My step-mother looked at me at least once on each of these +miserable days, and said: 'Rose-Marie, you look very odd. I hope you are +not going to have anything expensive. Measles are in Jena, and also the +whooping-cough.' + +'Which of them is the cheapest?' I inquired. + +'Both are beyond our means,' said my step-mother severely. + +And today at dinner she was quite relieved because I ate some _dicker +Reis_ after having turned from it with abhorrence for at least a week. +Good-by, dearest. + +Your almost cured + +ROSE-MARIE. + + + +XXI + +Jena, Dec. 4th. + +Your letter has come. You must do what you know is best. I agree to +everything. You must do what your father has set his heart on, since +quite clearly your heart is set on the same thing. All the careful words +in the world cannot hide that from me. And they shall not. Do you think +I dare not look death in the face? I am just a girl you kissed once +behind a door, giving way before a passing gust of temptation. You +cannot, shall not marry me as the price of that slight episode. You say +you will if I insist. Insist? My dear Roger, with both hands I give you +back any part of your freedom I may have had in my keeping. Reason, +expediency, all the prudences are on your side. You depend entirely on +your father; you cannot marry against his wishes; he has told you to +marry Miss Cheriton; she is the daughter of his oldest friend; she is +extremely rich; every good gift is hers; and I cannot compete. Compete? +Do you suppose I would put out a finger to compete? I give it up. I bow +myself out. + +But let us be honest. Apart from anything to do with your father's +commands, you have fallen into her toils as completely as you did into +mine. My step-mother was right about your softness. Any woman who chose +and had enough opportunity could make you think you loved her, make you +kiss her. Luckily this one is absolutely suitable. You say, in the +course of the longest letter you have written me--it must have been a +tiresome letter to have to write--that father or no father you will not +be hurried, you will not marry for a long time, that the wound is too +fresh, &c, &c. What is this talk of wounds? Nobody knows about me. I +shall not be in your way. You need observe no period of mourning for a +corpse people don't know is there. True, Miss Cheriton herself knows. +Well, she will not tell; and if she does not mind, why should you? I am +so sorry I have written you so many letters full of so many follies. +Will you burn them? I would rather not have them back. But I enclose +yours, as you may prefer to burn them yourself. I am so very sorry about +everything. At least it has been short, and not dragged on growing +thinner and thinner till it died of starvation. Once I wrote and begged +you to tell me if you thought you had made a mistake about me, because I +felt I could bear to know better then than later. And you wrote back and +swore all sorts of things by heaven and earth, all sorts of convictions +and unshakable things. Well, now you have another set of convictions, +that's all. I am not going to beat the big drum of sentiment and make a +wailful noise. Nothing is so dead as a dead infatuation. The more a +person was infatuated the more he resents an attempt to galvanize the +dull dead thing into life. I am wise, you see, to the end. And +reasonable too, I hope. And brave. And brave, I tell you. Do you think I +will be a coward, and cry out? I make you a present of everything; of +the love and happy thoughts, of the pleasant dreams and plans, of the +little prayers sent up, and the blessings called down--there were a +great many every day--of the kisses, and all the dear sweetness. Take it +all. I want nothing from you in return. Remember it as a pleasant +interlude, or fling it into a corner of your mind where used-up things +grow dim with cobwebs. But do you suppose that having given you all this +I am going to give you my soul as well? To moan my life away, my +beautiful life? You are not worth it. You are not worth anything, +hardly. You are quite invertebrate. My life shall be splendid in spite +of you. You shall not cheat me of one single chance of heaven. Now +good-by. Please burn this last one, too. I suppose no one who heard it +would quite believe this story, would quite believe it possible for a +man to go such lengths of--shall we call it unkindness? to a girl in a +single month; but you and I know it is true. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXII + +Jena, March 5th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It was extremely kind of you to remember my +birthday and to find time in the middle of all your work to send me your +good wishes. I hope you are getting on well, and that you like what you +are doing. Professor Martens seems to tell you all the Jena news. Yes, I +was ill; but we had such a long winter that it was rather lucky to be +out of it, tucked away comfortably in bed. There is still snow in the +ditches and on the shady side of things. I escaped the bad weather as +thoroughly as those persons do who go with infinite trouble during these +months to Egypt. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +My father and step-mother beg to be remembered to you. + + + +XXIII + +Jena, March 18th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is very kind indeed of you to want to know how +I am and what was the matter with me. It wasn't anything very pleasant, +but quite inoffensive aesthetically. I don't care to think about it much. +I caught cold, and it got on to my lungs and stayed on them. Now it is +over, and I may walk up and down the sunny side of the street for half +an hour on fine days. + +We all hope you are well, and that you like your work. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXIV + +Jena, March 25th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You ask me to tell you more about my illness, but +I am afraid I must refuse. I see no use in thinking of painful past +things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if +they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling +to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as +cheerful as possible--like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop +of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply +to be alive with nothing in my body hurting. To be alive with a great +many things in one's body hurting is a poor sort of amusement. It is not +at all a game worth playing. People talk of sick persons clinging to +life however sick they are, say they invariably do it, that they prefer +it on any terms to dying; well, I was a sick person who did not cling at +all. I did not want it. I was most willing to be done with it. But +Death, though he used often to come up and look at me, and once at least +sat beside me for quite a long while, went away again, and after a time +left off bothering about me altogether; and here I am walking out in the +sun every day, and listening with immense pleasure to the chaffinches. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXV. + +Jena, March 31st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yes, of course I will be friends. And if I can be +of any use in the way of admonishment, which seems to be my strong +point, pray, as people say in books, command me. Naturally we are all +much interested in you, and shall watch your career, I hope, with +pleasure. I am sorry the Foreign Office bores you so much. Do you really +have to spend your days gumming up envelopes? Not for that did you win +all those scholarships and things at Eton and Oxford, and study Goethe +and the minor German prophets so diligently here. You say it will go on +for a year. Well, if that is your fate and you cannot escape it, gum +away gayly, since gum you must. Later on when you are an ambassador and +everybody is talking to you at once, you will look back on the envelope +time as a blessed period when at least you were left alone. But I hope +you have a nice wet sponge to do it with, and are not so lost to what is +expedient as to be like a little girl I sat next to yesterday at a +coffee party, who had smudged most of the cream that ought to have gone +inside her outside her, and when I suggested a handkerchief said she +didn't hold with handkerchiefs and never had one. 'But what does one do, +then,' I asked, looking at her disgraceful little mouth, 'in a case like +this? You can't borrow somebody else's--it wouldn't be being select.' +'Oh,' she said airily, 'don't you know? You take your tongue.' And in a +twinkling the thing was done. But please do not you do that with the +envelopes. My father and step-mother send you many kind messages. Yours +sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXVI + +Jena, April 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--No, I do not in the least mind your writing to me. +Do, whenever you feel you want to talk to a friend. It is pleasant to be +told that my letters remind you of so many nice things. I expect your +year in Jena seems much more agreeable, now that you have had time to +forget the uncomfortable parts of it, than it really was. But I don't +think you would have been able to endure it if you had not been working +so hard. I am sorry you do not like your father. You say so straight +out, so I see no reason for round-aboutness. I expect he will be calmer +when you are married. Why do you not gratify him, and have a short +engagement? Yes, I do understand what you feel about the mercifulness of +being often left alone, though I have never been worried in quite the +same way as you seem to be; when I am driven it is to places like the +kitchen, and your complaint is that you are driven to what most people +would call enjoying yourself. Really I think my sort of driving is best. +There is so much satisfaction about work, about any work. But just to +amuse oneself, and to be, besides, in a perpetual hurry over it because +there is so much of it and the day can't be made to stretch, must be a +sorry business. I wonder why you do it. You say your father insists on +your going everywhere with the Cheritons, and the Cheritons will not +miss a thing; but, after all isn't it rather weak to let yourself be led +round by the nose if your nose doesn't like it? It is as though instead +of a dog wagging its tail the tail should wag the dog. And all Nature +surely would stand aghast before such an improper spectacle. + +The wind is icy, and the snow patches are actually still here, but in +the nearest garden I can get to I saw violets yesterday in flower, and +crocuses and scillas, and one yellow pansy staring up at the sun +astonished and reproachful because it had bits of frozen snow stuck to +its little cheeks. Dear me, it is a wonderful feeling, this resurrection +every year. Does one ever grow too old, I wonder, to thrill over it? I +know the blackbirds are whistling in the orchards if I could only get to +them, and my father says the larks have been out in the bare places for +these last four weeks. On days like this, when one's immortality is +racing along one's blood, how impossible it is to think of death as the +end of everything. And as for being grudging and disagreeable, the +thing's not to be done. Peevishness and an April morning? Why, even my +step-mother opened her window today and stood for a long time in the sun +watching how + + proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, + Hath put a spirit of youth in everything. + +The first part of the month with us is generally bustling and busy, a +great clatter and hustling while the shrieking winter is got away out of +sight over the hills, a sweeping of the world clear for the +marsh-marigolds and daffodils, a diligent making of room for the divine +calms of May. I always loved this first wild frolic of cold winds and +catkins and hurriedly crimsoning pollards, of bleakness and promise, of +roughness and sweetness--a blow on one cheek and a kiss on the +other--before the spring has learned good manners, before it has left +off being anything but a boisterous, naughty, charming _Backfisch_; but +this year after having been ill so long it is more than love, it is +passion. Only people who have been buried in beds for weeks getting used +to listening for Death's step on the stairs, know what it is to go out +into the stinging freshness of the young year and meet the first scilla, +and hear a chaffinch calling out, and feel the sun burn red patches of +life on their silly, sick white faces. + +My parents send you kind remembrances. They were extremely interested to +hear, through Professor Martens, of your engagement to Miss Cheriton. +They both think it a most excellent thing. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXVII + +Jena, April 20th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You tell me I do not answer your letters, but +really I think I do quite often enough. I want to make the most of these +weeks of idle getting strong again, and it is a sad waste of time +writing. My step-mother has had such a dose of me sick and incapable, of +doctor's bills and physic and beef-tea and night-lights, that she is +prolonging the convalescent period quite beyond its just limits and will +have me do nothing lest I should do too much. So I spend strange, +glorious days, days strange and glorious to me, with nothing to do for +anybody but myself and a clear conscience to do it with. The single +sanction of my step-mother's approval has been enough to clear my +conscience, from which you will see how illogically consciences can be +cleared; for have I not always been sure she has no idea whatever of +what is really good? Yet just her approval, a thing I know to be faulty +and for ever in the wrong place, is sufficient to prop up my conscience +and make it feel secure. How then, while I am busy reading Jane Austen +and Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth--books foreordained from all time +for the delight of persons getting well--shall I find time to write to +you? And you must forgive me for a certain surprise that you should have +time to write so much to me. What have I done to deserve these long +letters? How many Foreign Office envelopes do you leave ungummed to +write them? _Es ist zu viel Ehre_. It is very good of you. No, I will +not make phrases like that, for I know you do not do it for any reason +whatever but because you happen to want to. + +You are going through one of those tiresome soul-sicknesses that +periodically overtake the too comfortable, and you must, apparently, +tell somebody about it. Well, it is a form of _Weltschmerz,_ and only +afflicts the well-fed. Pray do not suppose that I am insinuating that +food is of undue interest to you; but it is true that if you did not +have several meals a day and all of them too nice, if there were doubts +about their regular recurrence, if, briefly, you were a washerwoman or a +plough-boy, you would not have things the matter with your soul. +Washerwomen and ploughboys do not have sick souls. Probably you will say +they have no souls to be sick; but they have, you know. I imagine their +souls thin and threadbare, stunted by cold and hunger, poor and pitiful, +but certainly there. And I don't know that it is not a nicer sort of +soul to have inside one's plodding body than an unwieldy, overgrown +thing, chiefly water and air and lightly changeable stuff, so +unsubstantial that it flops--forgive the word, but it does flop--on to +other souls in search of sympathy and support and comfort and all the +rest of the things washer-women waste no time looking for, because they +know they wouldn't find them. + +You are a poet, and I do not take a youthful poet seriously; but if you +were not I would laugh derisively at your comparing the entrance of my +letters into your room at the Foreign Office to the bringing in of a +bunch of cottage flowers still fresh with dew. I don't know that my +pride does not rather demand a comparison to a bunch of hot-house +flowers--a bouquet it would become then, wouldn't it?--or my romantic +sense to a bunch of field flowers, wild, graceful, easily wearied +things, that would not care at all for Foreign Offices. But I expect +cottage is really the word. My letters conjure up homely visions, and I +am sure the bunch you see is a tight posy of + +Sweet-Williams, with their homely cottage smell. + +It was charming of Matthew Arnold to let Sweet-Williams have such a nice +line, but I don't think they quite deserve it. They have a dear little +name and a dear little smell, but the things themselves might have been +manufactured in a Berlin furniture shop where upholstery in plush +prevails, instead of made in that sweetest corner of heaven from whence +all good flowers come. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXVIII + +Jena, April 26th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You seem to be incurably doleful. You talk about +how nice it must be to have a sister, a mother, some woman very closely +related to whom you could talk. You astonish me; for have you not Miss +Cheriton? Still, on reflection I think I do see that what you feel you +want is more a solid bread-and-butter sort of relationship; no +sentiment, genial good advice, a helping hand if not a guiding +one--really a good thick slice of bread-and-butter as a set-off to a +diet of constant cake. I can read between your lines with sufficient +clearness; and as I always had a certain talent for stodginess I will +waste no words but offer myself as the bread-and-butter. Somehow I think +it might work out my soul's release from self-reproach and doubts if I +can help you, as far as one creature can help another, over some of the +more tiresome places of life. Exhortation, admonishment, encouragement, +you shall have them all, if you like, by letter. In these my days of +dignified leisure I have had room to think, and so have learned to look +at things differently from the way I used to. Life is so short that +there is hardly time for anything except to be, as St. Paul says--wasn't +it St. Paul?--kind to one another. You are, I think, a most weak person. +Anything more easily delighted in the first place or more quickly tired +in the second I never in my life saw. Does nothing satisfy you for more +than a day or two? And the enthusiasm of you at the beginnings of +things. And the depression, the despair of you once you have got used to +them. I know you are clever, full of brains, intellectually all that can +be desired, but what's the good of that when the rest of you is so weak? +You are of a diseased fastidiousness. There's not a person you have +praised to me whom you have not later on disliked. When you were here I +used to wonder as I listened, but I did believe you. Now I know that the +world cannot possibly contain so many offensive people, and that it is +always so with you--violent heat, freezing cold. I cannot see you drown +without holding out a hand. For you are young; you are, in the parts +outside your strange, ill-disciplined emotions, most full of promise; +and circumstances have knitted me into an unalterable friend. Perhaps I +can help you to a greater stead-fastness, a greater compactness of soul. +But do not tell me too much. Do not put me in an inextricably difficult +position. It would not of course be really inextricable, for I would +extricate myself by the simple process of relapsing into silence. I say +this because your letters have a growing tendency to pour out everything +you happen to be feeling. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you +must rightly choose your listener. Not every one should be allowed to +listen. Certain things cannot be shouted out from the housetops. You +forget that we hardly know each other, and that the well-mannered do not +thrust their deeper feelings on a person who shrinks from them. I hope +you understand that I am willing to hear you talk about most things, and +that you will need no further warning to keep off the few swampy places. +And just think of all the things you can write to me about, all the +masses of breathlessly interesting things in this breathlessly +interesting world, without talking about people at all. Look round you +this fine spring weather and tell me, for instance, what April is doing +up your way, and whether as you go to your work through the park you too +have not seen heavy Saturn laughing and leaping--how that sonnet has got +into my head--and do not every day thank God for having bothered to make +you at all. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXIX + +Jena, April 30th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You know the little strip of balcony outside our +sitting-room window, with its view over the trees of the Paradies valley +to the beautiful hills across the river? Well, this morning is so fine, +the sun is shining so warmly, that I had my coffee and roll there, and, +now, wrapped up in rugs, am still there writing to you. I can't tell you +how wonderful it is. The birds are drunk with joy. There are blackbirds, +and thrushes, and chaffinches, and yellow-hammers, all shouting at once; +and every now and then when the clamor has a gap in it I hear the +whistle of the great tit, the dear small bird who is the very first to +sing, bringing its pipe of hope to those early days in February when the +world is at its blackest. Have you noticed how different one's morning +coffee tastes out of doors from what it does in a room? And the roll and +butter--oh, the roll and butter! So must rolls and butter have tasted in +the youth of the world, when gods and mortals were gloriously mixed up +together, and you went for walks on exquisite things like parsley and +violets. If Thoreau--I know you don't like him, but that's only because +you have read and believed Stevenson about him--could have seen the +eager interest with which I ate my roll just now, he would, I am afraid, +have been disgusted; for he severely says that it is not what you eat +but the spirit in which you eat it,--you are not, that is, to like it +too much--that turns you into a glutton. It is, he says, neither the +quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors that makes +your eating horrid. A puritan, he says, may go to his brown bread crust +with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Thus did I +go, as grossly as the grossest alderman, this morning to my crust, and +rejoiced in the sensual savor of it and was very glad. How nice it is, +how pleasant, not to be with people you admire. Admiration, veneration, +the best form of love--they are all more comfortably indulged in from a +distance. There is too much whalebone about them at close quarters with +their object, too much whalebone and not nearly enough slippers. I am +glad Thoreau is dead. I love him far too much ever to want to see him; +and how thankful I am he cannot see me. + +It is my step-mother's birthday, and trusted friends have been streaming +up our three flights of stairs since quite early to bring her hyacinths +in pots and unhappy roses spiked on wires and make her congratulatory +speeches. I hear them talking through the open window, and what they +say, wafted out to me here in the sun, sounds like the pleasant droning +of bees when one is only half awake. First there is the distant electric +bell and the tempestuous whirl of Johanna down the passage. Then my +step-mother emerges from the kitchen and meets the arriving friend with +vociferous welcoming. Then the friend is led into the room here, talking +in gasps as we all do on getting to the top of this house, and flinging +cascades of good wishes for her _liebe Emilie_ on to the _liebe +Emilie's_ head. Then the hyacinths or the roses are presented:--'I have +brought thee a small thing,' says the friend, presenting; and my +step-mother, who has been aware of their presence the whole time, but, +with careful decency, has avoided looking at them, starts, protests, and +launches forth on to heaving billows of enthusiasm. She does not care +for flowers, either in pots or on wires or in any other condition, so +her gratitude is really most creditably done. Then they settle down in +the corners of the sofa and talk about the things they really want to +talk about--neighbors, food, servants, pastors, illnesses, Providence; +beginning, since I was ill, with a perfunctory inquiry from the visitor +as to the health of _die gute_ Rose-Marie. + +'_Danke, danke_,' says my step-mother. You know in Germany whenever +anybody asks after anybody you have to begin your answer with _danke._ +Sometimes the results are odd; for instance: 'How is your poor husband +today?' 'Oh, _danke_, he is dead.' + +So my step-mother, too, says _danke_, and then I hear a murmur of +further information, and catch the word _zart_. Then they talk, still in +murmurs not supposed to be able to get through the open window and into +my ears, about the quantity of beef-tea I have consumed, the length of +the chemist's bill, the unfortunate circumstance that I am so +overgrown--'Weedy,' says my step-mother. + +'Would you call her weedy?' says the friend, with a show of polite +hesitation. + +'Weedy,' repeats my step-mother emphatically; and the friend remarks +quite seriously that when a person is so very long there is always some +part of her bound to be in a draught and catching cold. 'It is such a +pity,' concludes the friend, 'that she did not marry.' (Notice the +tense. Half a dozen birthdays back it used to be 'does not.') + +'Gentlemen,' says my step-mother, 'do not care for her.' + +'_Armes Maedchen_' murmurs the friend. + +'_Herr Gott, ja_,' says my step-mother, 'but what is to be done? I have +invited gentlemen in past days. I have invited them to coffees, to beer +evenings, to music on Sunday afternoons, to the reading aloud of +Schiller's dramas, each with his part and Rose-Marie with the heroine's; +and though they came they also went away again. Nothing was changed, +except the size of my beer bill. No, no, gentlemen do not care for her. +In society she does not please.' + +'_Armes Maedchen_' says the friend again; and the _armes Maedchen_ out in +the sun laughs profanely into her furs. + +The fact is it is quite extraordinary the effect my illness has had on +me. I thought it was bad, and I see it was good. Beyond words ghastly at +the time, terrible, hopeless, the aches of my body as nothing compared +with the amazing anguish of my soul, the world turned into one vast pit +of pain, impossible to think of the future, impossible to think of the +past, impossible to bear the present--after all that behold me awake +again, and so wide awake, with eyes grown so quick to see the wonder and +importance of the little things of life, the beauty of them, the joy of +them, that I can laugh aloud with glee at the delicious notion of +calling me an _armes Maedchen_. Three months ago with what miserable +groanings, what infinite self-pityings, I would have agreed. Now, clear +of vision, I see how many precious gifts I have--life, and freedom from +pain, and time to be used and enjoyed--gifts no one can take from me +except God. Do you know any George Herbert? He was one of the many +English poets my mother's love of poetry made me read. Do you remember + + I once more smell the dew, the rain, + And relish versing. + O, my only Light! + It cannot be + That I am he + On whom thy tempests fell all night? + +Well, that is how I feel: full of wonder, and an unspeakable relief. It +is so strange how bad things--things we call bad--bring forth good +things, from the manure that brings forth roses lovely in proportion to +6188 +its manuriness to the worst experiences that can overtake the soul. And +as far as I have been able to see (which is not very far, for I know I +am not a clever woman) it is also true that good things bring forth bad +ones. I cannot tell you how much life surprises me. I never get used to +it. I never tire of pondering, and watching, and wondering. The way in +which eternal truths lurk along one's path, lie among the potatoes in +cellars (did you ever observe the conduct of potatoes in cellars? their +desperate determination to reach up to the light? their absolute +concentration on that one distant glimmer?), peep out at one from every +apparently dull corner, sit among the stones, hang upon the bushes, come +into one's room in the morning with the hot water, come out at night in +heaven with the stars, never leave us, touch us, press upon us, if we +choose to open our eyes and look, and our ears and listen--how +extraordinary it is. Can one be bored in a world so wonderful? And then +the keen interest there is to be got out of people, the keen joy to be +got out of common affections, the delight of having a fresh day every +morning before you, a fresh, long day, bare and empty, to be filled as +you pass along it with nothing but clean and noble hours. You must +forgive this exuberance. The sun has got into my veins and has turned +everything golden. Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXX + +Jena, May 6th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--How can I help it if things look golden to me? You +almost reproach me for it. You seem to think it selfish, and talk of the +beauty of sympathy with persons less fortunately constituted. That's a +gray sort of beauty; the beauty of mists, and rains, and tears. I wish +you could have been in the meadows across the river this morning and +seen the dandelions. There was not much grayness about them. From the +bridge to the tennis-courts--you know that is a long way, at least +twenty minutes' walk--they are one sheet of gold. If you had been there +before breakfast, with your feet on that divine carpet, and your head in +the nickering slight shadows of the first willow leaves, and your eyes +on the shining masses of slow white clouds, and your ears filled with +the fresh sound of the river, and your nose filled with the smell of +young wet things, you wouldn't have wanted to think much about such gray +negations as sympathizing with the gloomy. Bother the gloomy. They are +an ungrateful set. If they can they will turn the whole world sour, and +sap up all the happiness of the children of light without giving out any +shining in return. I am all for sun and heat and color and scent--for +all things radiant and positive. If, crushing down my own nature, I set +out deliberately to console those you call the less fortunately +constituted, do you know what would happen? They would wring me quite +dry of cheerfulness, and not be one whit more cheerful for all the +wringing themselves. They can't. They were not made that way. People are +born in one of three classes: children of light, children of twilight, +children of night. And how can they help into which class they are born? +But I do think the twilight children can by diligence, by, if you like, +prayer and fasting, come out of the dusk into a greater brightness. Only +they must come out by themselves. There must be no pulling. I don't at +all agree with your notion of the efficacy of being pulled. Don't you +then know--of course you do, but you have not yet realized--that you are +to seek _first_ the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these +things shall be added unto you? And don't you know--oh, have you +forgotten?--that the Kingdom of God is within you? So what is the use of +looking to anything outside of you and separated from you for help? +There is no help, except what you dig out of your own self; and if I +could make you see that I would have shown you all the secrets of life. + +How wisely I talk. It is the wisdom of the ever-recurring grass, the +good green grass, the grass starred with living beauty, that has got +into me; the wisdom of a May morning filled with present joy, of the joy +of the moment, without any weakening waste of looking beyond. So don't +mock. I can't help it. + +Do you, then, want to be pitied? I will pity you if you like, in so many +carefully chosen words; but they will not be words from the heart but +only, as the charming little child in the flat below us, the child with +the flaunting yellow hair and audacious eyes, said of some speech that +didn't ring true to her quick ears, 'from the tip of the nose.' I cannot +really pity you, you know. You are too healthy, too young, too fortunate +for that. You ought to be quite jubilant with cheerfullest gratitude; +and, since you are not, you very perfectly illustrate the truth of _le +trop_ being _l'ennemi du bien_, or, if you prefer your clumsier mother +tongue, of the half being better than the whole. How is it that I, +bereft of everything you think worth having, am so offensively cheerful? +Your friends would call it a sordid existence, if they considered it +with anything more lengthy than just a sniff. No excitements, no +clothes, acquaintances so shabby that they seem almost moth-eaten, the +days filled with the same dull round, a home in a little town where we +all get into one groove and having got into it stay in it, to which only +faint echoes come of what is going on in the world outside, a place +where one is amused and entertained by second-rate things, second-rate +concerts, second-rate plays, and feels oneself grow cultured by +attendance at second-rate debating-society meetings. Would you not think +I must starve in such a place? But I don't. My soul doesn't dream of +starving; in fact I am quite anxious about it, it has lately grown so +fat. There is so little outside it--for the concerts, plays, debates, +social gatherings, are dust and ashes near which I do not go--that it +eagerly turns to what is inside it, and finds itself full of magic +forces of heat and light, forces hot and burning enough to set every +common bush afire with God. That is Elizabeth Barrett Browning; I mean +about the common bushes. A slightly mutilated Elizabeth Barrett +Browning, but still a quotation; and if you do not happen to know it I +won't have you go about thinking it pure Schmidt. Ought I if I quote to +warn you of the fact by the pointing fingers of inverted commas? I don't +care to, somehow. They make such a show of importance. I prefer to +suppose you cultured. Oh, I can see you shiver at that impertinence, for +I know down in your heart, though you always take pains to explain how +ignorant you are, you consider yourself an extremely cultured young man. +And so you are; cultured, I should say, out of all reason; so much +cultured that there's hardly anything left that you are able to like. +Indeed, it is surprising that you should care to write to a rough, +unscraped sort of person like myself. Do not my crudities set your teeth +on edge as acutely as the juice of a very green apple? You who love half +tones, subtleties, suggestions, who, lifting the merest fringe of +things, approach them nearer only by infinite implications, what have +you to do with the downrightness of an east wind or a green apple? Why, +I wonder that just the recollection of my red hands, knobbly and spread +with work, does not make you wince into aloofness. And my clothes? What +about my clothes? Do you not like exquisite women? Perfectly got-up +women? Fresh and dainty, constantly renewed women? It is two years since +I had a new hat; and as for the dress that sees me through my days I +really cannot count the time since it started in my company a Sunday and +a fete-day garment. If you were once, only once, to see me in the middle +of your friends over there, you would be cured for ever of wanting to +write to me. I belong to your Jena days; days of hard living, and +working, and thinking; days when, by dint of being forced to do without +certain bodily comforts, the accommodating spirit made up for it by its +own increased comfort and warmth. Probably your spirit will never again +attain to quite so bright a shining as it did that year. How can it, +unless it is amazingly strong--and I know it well not to be that--shine +through the suffocating masses of upholstery your present life piles +about it? Poor spirit. At least see to it that its flicker doesn't quite +go out. To urge you to strip your life of all this embroidery and let it +get the draught of air it needs would be, I know, mere waste of ink. + +My people send you every good wish. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXI + +Jena, May 14th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Of course I am full of contradictions. Did you +expect me to be full of anything else? And I have no doubt whatever that +in every letter I say exactly the opposite from what I said in the last +one. But you must not mind this and make it an occasion for reproof. I +do not pretend to think quite the same even two days running; if I did I +would be stagnant, and the very essence of life is to be fluid, to pass +perpetually on. So please do not hold me responsible for convictions +that I have changed by the time they get to you, and above all things +don't bring them up against me and ask me to prove them. I don't want to +prove them. I don't want to prove anything. My attitude toward life is +one of open-mouthed wonder and delight, and the open-mouthed cannot +talk. You write, too, plaintively, that some of the things I say hurt +you. I am sorry. Sorry, I mean, that you should be so soft. Can you not, +then, bear anything? But I will smooth my tongue if you prefer it +smooth, and send you envelopes filled with only sugar; talk to you about +the parks, the London season, the Foreign Office--all things of which I +know nothing--and, patting you at short intervals on the back, tell you +you are admirable. You say there is a bitter flavor about some of my +remarks. I have not felt bitter. Perhaps a little shrewish; a little +like, not a mild exhorting elder sister, but an irritated aunt. You see +I am interested enough in you to be fidgety when I hear you groan. What, +I ask myself uneasily, can be the matter with this apparently healthy, +well-cared-for young man? And then, forced to the conclusion by +unmistakable symptoms that there is nothing the matter except a surfeit +of good things, I have perhaps pounced upon you with something of the +zeal of an aunt moved to anger, and given you a spiritual slapping. You +sighed for a sister--you are always sighing for something--and asked me +to be one; well, I have apparently gone beyond the sister in decision +and authority, and developed something of the acerbity of an aunt. + +So you are down at Clinches. How beautiful it must be there this month. +I think of it as a harmony in gray and amethyst, remembering your +description of it the first time you went there; a harmony in a minor +key, that captured you wholly by its tender subtleties. When I think of +you inheriting such a place later on through your wife I do from my +heart feel that your engagement is an excellent thing. She must indeed +be happy in the knowledge that she can give you so much that is +absolutely worth having. It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the +very most beautiful things in life. I quarrel with my poverty only +because I can give so little, so seldom, and then never more than +ridiculous small trumperies. To make up for them I try to give as much +of myself as possible, gifts of sympathy, helpfulness, kindness. Don't +laugh, but I am practicing on my step-mother. It is easy to pour out +love on Papa; so easy, so effortless, that I do not feel as if it could +be worth much; but I have made up my mind, not without something of a +grim determination that seems to have little enough to do with love, to +give my step-mother as much of me, my affections, my services, as she +can do with. Perhaps she won't be able to do with much. Anyhow all she +wants she shall have. You know I have often wished I had been a man, +able to pull on my boots and go out into the wide world without let or +hindrance; but for one thing I am glad to be a woman, and that one thing +is that the woman gives. It is so far less wonderful to take. The man is +always taking, the woman always giving; and giving so wonderfully, in +the face sometimes of dreadful disaster, of shipwreck, of death--which +explains perhaps her longer persistence in clinging to the skirts of a +worn-out passion; for is not the tenderer feeling on the side of the one +who gave and blessed? Always, always on that side? Mixing into what was +sensual some of the dear divineness of the mother-love? I think I could +never grow wholly indifferent to a person to whom I had given much. He +or she would not, could not, be the same to me as other people. Time +would pass, and the growing number of the days blunt the first sharp +edge of feeling; but the memory of what I had given would bind us +together in a friendship for ever unlike any other. + +I have not thanked you for the book you sent me. It was very kind indeed +of you to wish me to share the pleasure you have had in reading it. But +see how unfortunately contrary I am: I don't care about it. And just the +passages you marked are the ones I care about least. I do not hold with +markings in books. Whenever I have come across mine after a lapse of +years I have marvelled at the distance travelled since I marked, and +shut up the book and murmured, 'Little fool.' I can't imagine why you +thought I should like this book. It has given me rather a surprised +shock that you should know me so little, and that I should know you so +little as to think you knew me better. Really all the explanations and +pointings in the world will not show a person the exact position of his +neighbor's soul. It is astonishing enough that the book was printed, but +how infinitely more astonishing that people like you should admire it. +What is the matter with me that I cannot admire it? Why am I missing +things that ought to give me pleasure? You do not, then, see that it is +dull? I do. I see it and feel it in every bone, and it makes them ache. +It is dull and bad because it is so dreary, so hopelessly dreary. Life +is not like that. Life is only like that to cowards who are temporarily +indisposed. I do not care to look at it through a sick creature's +jaundiced eyes and shudder with him at what he sees. If he cannot see +better why not keep quiet, and let us braver folk march along with our +heads in the air, held so high that we cannot bother to look at every +slimy creepiness that crawls across our path? And did you not notice how +he keeps on telling his friends in his letters not to mind when he is +dead? Unnecessary advice, one would suppose; I can more easily imagine +the friends gasping with an infinite relief. Persons who are +everlastingly claiming pity, sympathy, condolences, are very wearing. +Surely all talk about one's death is selfish and bad? That is why, +though there is so much that is lovely in them, the faint breath of +corruption hanging about Christina Rossetti's poetry makes me turn my +head the other way. What a constant cry it is that she wants to die, +that she hopes to die, that she's going to die, shall die, can die, must +die, and that nobody is to weep for her but that there are to be +elaborate and moving arrangements of lilies and roses and +winding-sheets. And at least in one place she gives directions as to the +proper use of green grass and wet dewdrops upon her grave--implying that +dewdrops are sometimes dry. I think the only decent attitude toward +one's death is to be silent. Talk about it puts other people in such an +awkward position. What is one to say to persons who sigh and tell us +that they will no doubt soon be in heaven? One's instinct is politely to +murmur, 'Oh no,' and then they are angry. 'Surely not,' also has its +pitfalls. Cheery words, of the order in speech that a slap on the +shoulder is in the sphere of physical expression, only seem to deepen +the determined gloom. And if it is some one you love who thinks he will +soon be dead and tells you so, the cruelty is very great. When death +really comes, is not what the ordinary decent dier wants quiet, that he +may leave himself utterly in the hands of God? There should be no +massing of temporarily broken-hearted onlookers about his bed, no +leave-takings and eager gatherings-up of last words, no revellings of +relatives in the voluptuousness of woe, no futile exhortations, using up +the last poor breaths, not to weep to persons who would consider it +highly improper to leave off doing it, and no administration of tardy +blessings. Any blessings the dier has to invoke should have been invoked +and done with long ago. In this last hour, at least, can one not be left +alone? Do you remember Pater's strange feeling about death? Perhaps you +do not, for you told me once you did not care about him. Well, it runs +through his books, through all their serenity and sunlight, through +exquisite descriptions of summer, of beautiful places, of heat and life +and youth and all things lovely, like a musty black riband, very poor, +very mean, very rotten, that yet must bind these gracious flowers of +light at last together, bruising them into one piteous mass of +corruption. It is all very morbid: the fair outward surface of daily +life, the gay, flower-starred crust of earth, and just underneath +horrible tainted things, things forlorn and pitiful, things which we who +still walk on the wholesome grass must soon join, changing our life in +the roomy sunshine into something infinitely dependent and helpless, +something that can only dimly live if those strong friends of ours in +the bright world will spare us a thought, a remembrance, a few minutes +from their plenty for sitting beside us, room in their hearts for yet a +little love and sorrow. 'Dead cheek by dead cheek, and the rain soaking +down upon one from above....' Does not that sound hopeless? After +reading these things, sweet with the tainted sweetness of decay, of, +ruin, of the past, the gone, it is like having fresh spring water dashed +over one on a languid afternoon to remember Walt Whitman's brave +attitude toward 'delicate death,' 'the sacred knowledge of death,' +'lovely, soothing death,' 'cool, enfolding death,' 'strong deliveress,' +'vast and well-veiled death,' 'the body gratefully nestling close to +death,' 'sane and sacred death.' That is the spirit that makes one brave +and fearless, that makes one live beautifully and well, that sends one +marching straight ahead with limbs that do not tremble and head held +high. Is it not natural to love such writers best? Writers who fill one +with glad courage and make one proud of the path one has chosen to walk +in? + +And yet you do not like Walt Whitman. I remember quite well my chill of +disappointment when you told me so. At first, hearing it, I thought I +must be wrong to like him, but thank heaven I soon got my balance again, +and presently was solaced by the reflection that it was at least as +likely you were wrong not to. You told me it was not poetry. That upset +me for a few days, and then I found I didn't care. I couldn't argue with +you on the spot and prove anything, because the only _esprit_ I have is +that tiresome _esprit d'escalier_, so brilliant when it is too late, so +constant in its habit of leaving its possessor in the dreadful +condition--or is it a place?--called the lurch; but, poetry or not, I +knew I must always love him. You, I suppose, have cultivated your taste +in regard to things of secondary importance to such a pitch of +sensitiveness that unless the outer shell is flawless you cannot, for +sheer intellectual discomfort, look at the wonders that often lie +within. I, who have not been educated, am so filled with elementary joy +when some one shows me the light in this world of many shadows that I do +not stop to consider what were the words he used while my eyes followed +his pointing finger. You see, I try to console myself for having an +unpruned intelligence. I know I am unpruned, and that at the most you +pruned people, all trim and trained from the first, do but bear with me +indulgently. But I must think with the apparatus I possess, and I think +at this moment that perhaps what you really most want is a prolonged +dose of Walt Whitman, a close study of him for several hours every day, +shut up with no other book, quite alone with him in an empty country +place. Listen to this--you shall listen: + + O we can wait no longer, + We too take ship, O soul; + Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, + Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail, + Amid the wafting winds (thou pressing me to thee, I thee + to me, O soul). + Carolling free, singing our song of God, + Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration, + O my brave soul! + O farther, farther sail! + O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? + O farther, farther sail I + +Well, how do you feel now? Can any one, can you, can even you read that +without such a tingling in all your limbs, such a fresh rush of life and +energy through your whole body that you simply must jump up and, shaking +off the dreary nonsense that has been fooling you, turn your back on +diseased self-questionings and run straight out to work at your +salvation in the sun? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXII + +Jena, May 20th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I am sorry you think me unsympathetic. Hard, I +think, was the word; but unsympathetic sounds prettier. Is it +unsympathetic not to like fruitless, profitless, barren things? Not to +like fogs and blights and other deadening, decaying things? From my +heart I pity all the people who are so made that they cannot get on with +their living for fear of their dying; but I do not admire them. Is that +being unsympathetic? Apparently you think so. How odd. There is a little +man here who hardly ever can talk to anybody without beginning about his +death. He is perfectly healthy, and I suppose forty or fifty, so that +there is every reasonable hope of his going on being a little man for +years and years more; but he will have it that as he has never married +or, as he puts it, done anything else useful, he might just as well be +dead, and then at the word Dead his eyes get just the look of absolute +scaredness in them that a hare's eyes do when a dog is after it. 'If +only one knew what came next,' he said last time he was here, looking at +me with those foolish frightened hare's eyes. + +'Nice things I should think,' said I, trying to be encouraging. + +'But to those who have deserved punishment?' + +'If they have deserved it they will probably get it,' said I cheerfully. + +He shuddered. + +'You don't look very wicked,' I went on amiably. He leads a life of +sheerest bread-and-milk, so simple, so innocent, so full of little +hearth-rug virtues. + +'But I am,' he declared angrily. + +'I shouldn't think half so bad as a great many people,' said I, bent, +being the hostess, on a perfect urbanity. + +'Worse,' said he, more angrily. + +'Oh, come now,' said I, very politely as I thought. + +Then he really got into a rage, and asked me what I could possibly know +about it, and I said I didn't know anything; and still he stormed and +grew more and more like a terrified hare, frightening himself by his own +words; and at last, dropping his voice, he confessed that he had one +particularly deadly fear, a fear that haunted him and gave him no rest, +that the wicked would not burn eternally but would freeze. + +'Oh,' said I shrinking; for it was a bitter day, and the northeast wind +was thundering among the hills. + +'Great cold,' he said, fixing me with his hare's eyes, 'seems to me +incomparably more terrible than great heat.' + +'Oh, incomparably,' I agreed, edging nearer to the stove. 'Only listen +to that wind.' + +'So will it howl about us through eternity,' said he. + +'Oh,' I shivered. + +'Piercing one's unprotected--everything about us will be unprotected +then--one's unprotected marrow, and turning it to ice within us.' + +'But we won't have any marrows,' said I. + +'No marrows? Fraeulein Rose-Marie, we shall have everything that will +hurt.' + +'_Oh weh_' cried I, stopping up my ears. + +'The thought frightens you?' said he. + +'Terrifies me,' said I. + +'How much more fearful, then, will be the reality.' + +'Well, I'd like to--I'd like to give you some good advice,' said I, +hesitating. + +'Certainly; if one of your sex may with any efficacy advise one of +ours.' + +'Oh--efficacy,' murmured I with proper deprecation. 'But I'd like to +suggest--I daren't advise, I'll just suggest--' + +'Fear nothing. I am all ears and willingness to be guided,' said he, +smiling with an indescribable graciousness. + +'Well--don't go there.' + +'Not go there?' + +'And while you are here--still here, and alive, and in nice warm woolly +clothes, do you know what you want?' + +'What I want?' + +'Very badly do you want a wife. Why not go and get one?' + +His eyes at that grew more hare-like than at the thought of eternal ice. +He seized his hat and scrambled to the door. He went through it hissing +scorching things about _moderne Maedchen_, and from the safety of the +passage I heard him call me _unverschaemt_. + +He hasn't been here since. I would like to go and shake him; shake him +till his brains settle into their proper place, and say while I shake, +'Oh, little man, little man, come out of the fog! Why do you choose to +die a thousand deaths rather than only one?' + +Is that being unsympathetic? I think it is being quite kind. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +What I really meant to write to you about today was to tell you that I +read your learned and technical and I am sure admirable denouncements of +Walt Whitman with a respectful attention due to so much earnestness; and +when I had done, and wondered awhile pleasantly at the amount of time +for letter-writing the Foreign Office allows its young men, I stretched +myself, and got my hat, and went down to the river; and I sat at the +water's edge in the middle of a great many buttercups; and there was a +little wind; and the little wind knocked the heads of the buttercups +together; and it seemed to amuse them, or else something else did, for I +do assure you I thought I heard them laugh. + + + +XXXIII + +Jena, May 27th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You asked me about your successor in our house, +and inquire why I have never mentioned him. Why should I mention him? +Must I mention everything? I suppose I forgot him. His name is Collins, +and some days he wears a pink shirt, and other days a blue shirt, and in +his right cuff there is a pink silk handkerchief on the pink days, and a +blue silk handkerchief on the blue days; and he has stuck up the +pictures he likes to have about him on the walls of his room, and where +your Luini used to be there is a young lady in a voluminous hat and +short skirts, and where your Bellini Madonna sat and looked at you with +austere, beautiful eyes there is the winner, complete with jockey, of +last year's Derby. + +'I made a pot of money over that,' said Mr. Collins to me the day he +pinned it up and came to ask me for the pin. + +'Did you?' said I. + +But I think I am tired just now of Luinis and Bellinis and of the sort +of spirit in a young man that clothes the walls of his room with them, +each in some elaborately simple frame, and am not at all sure that the +frank fleshliness of a Collins does not please me best. You see, one +longs so much sometimes to get down to the soil, down to plain +instincts, to rude nature, to, if you like, elemental savagery. + +But I'll go on with Mr. Collins; you shall have a dose of him while I am +about it. He has bought a canoe, and has won the cup for swimming, +wresting it from the reluctant hands of the discomfited Jena young men. +He paddles up to the weir, gets out, picks up his canoe, carries it +round to the other side, gets in, and vanishes in the windings of the +water and the folds of the hills, leaving the girls in the +tennis-courts--you remember the courts are opposite the weir--uncertain +whether to titter or to blush, for he wears I suppose the fewest clothes +that it is possible to wear and still be called dressed, and no +stockings at all. + +'_Nein, dieser Englaender_!' gasp the girls, turning down decent eyes. + +'_Hoellish practisch_,' declare the young men, got up in as near an +imitation of the flannels you used to wear that they can reach, even +their hats bound about with a ribbon startlingly like your Oxford half +blue; and before the summer is over I dare say they will all be playing +tennis in the Collins canoe costume, stockingless, sleeveless, supposing +it to be the latest _cri_ in get-ups for each and every form of sport. + +Professor Martens didn't care about teaching Mr. Collins, and insisted +on handing him over to Papa. Papa doesn't care about teaching him, +either, and says he is a _dummer Bengel_ who pronounces Goethe as though +it rhymed with dirty, and who the first time our great poet was +mentioned vacantly asked, with every indication of a wandering mind, if +he wasn't the joker who wrote the play for Irving with all the devils in +it. Papa was so angry that he began a letter to Collins _pere_ telling +him to remove his son to a city where there are fewer muses; but Collins +_pere_ is a person who makes nails in Manchester with immense skill and +application and is terrifyingly rich, and my step-mother's attitude +toward the terrifyingly rich is one of large forgiveness; so she tore up +Papa's letter just where it had got to the words _erbaermlicher Esel_, +said he was a very decent boy, that he should stay as long as he wanted +to, but that, since he seemed to be troublesome about learning, Papa +must write and demand a higher scale of payment. Papa wouldn't; my +step-mother did; and behold Joey--his Christian name is Joey--more +lucrative to us by, I believe, just double than any one we have had yet. + +'I say,' said Joey to me this morning, 'come over to England some day, +and I'll romp you down to Epsom.' + +'Divine,' said I, turning up my eyes. + +'We'd have a rippin' time.' + +'Rather.' + +'I'd romp you down in the old man's motor.' + +'Not really?' + +'We'd be there before you could flutter an eyelash.' + +'Are you serious?' + +'Ain't I, though. It's a thirty-horse--' + +'Can't you get them in London?' + +'Get 'em in London? Get what in London?' + +'Must one go every time all the way to Epsom?' + +Joey ceased from speech and began to stare. + +'Are we not talking about salts?' I inquired hastily, feeling that one +of us was off the track. + +'Salts?' echoed Joey, his mouth hanging open. + +'You mentioned Epsom, surely?' + +'Salts?' + +'You did say Epsom, didn't you?' + +'Salts?' + +'Salts,' said I, becoming very distinct in the presence of what looked +like deliberate wilfulness. + +'What's it got to do with salts?' asked Joey, his underlip of a +measureless vacancy. + +'Hasn't it got everything?' + +'Look here, what are you drivin' at? Is it goin' to be a game?' + +'Certainly not. It's Sunday. Did you ever hear of Epsom salts?' + +'Oh--ah--I see--Eno, and all that. Castor oil. Rhubarb and magnesia. +Well, I'll forgive you as you're only German. Pretty weird, what bits of +information you get hold of. Never the right bits, somehow. I'll tell +you what, Miss Schmidt--' + +'Oh, do.' + +'Do what?' + +'Tell me what.' + +'Well, ain't I goin' to? You all seem to know everything in this house +that's not worth knowin', and not a blessed thing that is.' + +'Do you include Goethe?' + +'Confound Gerty,' said Joey. + +Such are my conversations with Joey. Is there anything more you want to +know? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXIV + +Jena, July 3d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I am sorry not to have been able to answer your +letters for so many weeks, and sorry that you should have been, as you +say, uneasy, but my telegram in reply to yours will have explained what +has been happening to us. My step-mother died a fortnight ago. Almost +immediately after I wrote last to you she began to be very ill. My +feelings toward her have undergone a complete upheaval. I cannot speak +of her. She is revenging herself, as only the dead in their utter +unresentfulness can revenge themselves, for every hard and scoffing +thought I had of her in life. I think I told you once about her annuity. +Now it is gone Papa and I must see to it that we live on my mother's +money alone. It is a hundred pounds a year, so the living will have to +be prudent; not so prudent, I hope, but that we shall have everything to +enjoy that is worth enjoying, but quite prudent enough to force us to +take thought. So we are leaving the flat, grown far too expensive for +us, as soon as we can find some other home. We have almost decided on +one already. Mr. Collins went to England when the illness grew evidently +hopeless, and we shall not take him back again, for my father does not +care, at least at present, to have strangers with us, and I myself do +not feel as though I could cook for and look after a young man in the +way my step-mother did. Not having one will make us poor, but I think we +shall be able to manage quite well, for we do not want much. + +Thank you for your kind letters since the telegram. The ones before +that, coming into this serious house filled with the nearness of Death, +and of Death in his sternest mood, his hands cruel with scourges, seemed +to me so inexpressibly--well, I will not say it; it is not fair to blame +you, who could not know in whose shadow we were sitting, for being +preoccupied with the trivialities of living. But letters sent to friends +a long way off do sometimes fall into their midst with a rather ghastly +clang of discord. It is what yours did. I read them sometimes in the +night, watching by my step-mother in the half-dark room during the +moments when she had a little peace and was allowed to slip away from +torture into sleep. By the side of that racked figure and all it meant +and the tremendous sermons it was preaching me, wordless, voiceless +sermons, more eloquent than any I shall hear again, how strange, how +far-away your echoes from life and the world seemed! Distant tinklings +of artificialness; not quite genuine writhings beneath not quite genuine +burdens; idle questionings and self-criticisms; plaints, doubts, and +complicated half-veiled reproaches of myself that I should be able to be +pleased with a world so worm-eaten that I should still be able to chant +my song of life in a major key in a world so manifestly minor and +chromatic. These things fell oddly across the gravity of that room. +Shadows in a place where everything was clear, cobwebs of unreality +where everything was real. They made me sigh, and they made me smile, +they were so very black and yet so very little. I used to wonder what +that usually excellent housemaid Experience is about, that she has not +yet been after you with her broom. You know her specialty is the pulling +up of blinds and the letting in of the morning sun. But it is unfair to +judge you. Your letters since you knew have been kindness itself. Thank +you for them. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +It seemed so strange for any one to die in June; so strange to be +lifeless in the midst of the wanton profusion of life, to grow cold in +that quivering radiance of heat. The people below us have got boxes of +calla-lilies on their balcony this year. Their hot, heavy scent used to +come in at the open window in the afternoons when the sun was on them, +the honey-sweet smell of life, intense, penetrating, filling every +corner of the room with splendid, pagan summer. And on the bed tossed my +step-mother, muttering ceaselessly to herself of Christ. + + + +XXXV + +Jena, July 15th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Our new address is Galgenberg, Jena,--rather grim, +but what's in a name? The thing itself is perfect. It is a tiny house, +white, with green shutters, on the south slope of the hill among +apple-trees. The garden is so steep that you can't sit down in it except +on the north side of the house, where you can because the house is there +to stop you from sliding farther. It is a strip of rough grass out of +which I shall make haycocks, with three apple-trees in it. There is also +a red currant bush, out of which I shall make jelly. At the bottom, +below the fence--rotten in places, but I'm going to mend that--begins a +real apple orchard, and through its leaves we can look down on the roof +of another house, white like ours, but a little bigger, and with blue +shutters instead of green. People take it for the summer, and once an +Englishman came and made a beanfield there--but I think I told you about +the beanfield. Behind us, right away up the slope, are pine trees that +brush restlessly backward and forward all day long across the clouds, +trying to sweep bits of clear blue in the sky, and at night spread +themselves out stiff and motionless against the stars. I saw them last +night from my window. We moved in yesterday. The moving in was not very +easy, because of what Papa calls the precipitous nature of the district. +He sat with his back propped against the wall of the house on the only +side on which, as I have explained, you can sit, and worked with a +pencil at his book about Goethe in Jena with perfect placidity while +Johanna and I and the man who urged the furniture cart up the hill kept +on stepping over his legs as we went in and out furnishing the house. +There was not much to furnish, which was lucky, there not being much to +furnish with. We have got rid of all superfluities, including the +canary, which I presented, its cage beautifully tied up with the blue +ribbons I wore at my first party, to the little girl with the +flame-colored hair on the second floor. As much of the other things as +any one could be induced to buy we sold, and we burnt what nobody would +buy or endure having given them. And so, pared down, we fit in here +quite nicely, and after a day or two conceded to the suavities of life, +such as the tacking up in appropriate places of muslin curtains and the +tying of them with bows, I intend to buy a spade and a watering-pot and +see what I can do with the garden. + +I wish it were not quite so steep. If I'm not on the upper side of one +of the apple-trees with my back firmly pressed against its trunk I don't +yet see how I am to garden. It must be disturbing, and a great waste of +time, to have to hold on to something with one hand while you garden +with the other. And suppose the thing gives way, and you roll down on to +the broken fence? And if that, too, gave way, there would be nothing but +a few probably inadequate apple trunks between me and the roof of the +house with the blue shutters. I should think it extremely likely that +until I've got the mountain-side equivalent for what are known as one's +sea-legs I shall very often be on that roof. I hope it is strong and +new. Perhaps there are kind people inside who will not mind. Soon +they'll get so much used to it that when they hear the preliminary rush +among their apple-trees and the cracking of the branches followed by the +thud over their heads, they won't even look up from their books, but +just murmur to each other, 'There's Fraeulein Schmidt on the roof again,' +and go on with their studies. + +Now I'm talking nonsense, and the sort of nonsense you like least; but +I'm in a silly mood today, and you must take me as you find me. At any +time when I have grown too unendurable you can stop my writing to you +simply by not writing to me. Then I shall know you have at last had +enough of me, of my moods, of my odious fits of bombastic eloquence, of +my still more odious facetiousness, of my scoldings of you and of my +complacency about myself. It is true you actually seem to like my +scoldings. That is very abject of you. What you apparently resent are +the letters with sturdy sentiments in them and a robust relish of life. +It almost seems as though you didn't want me to be happy. That is very +odd of you. And I sometimes wonder if it is possible for two persons to +continue friends who have a different taste in what, for want of a nicer +word, I must call jokes. My taste in them is so elementary that an +apple-pie bed makes me laugh tears, and when I go to the play I love to +see chairs pulled away just as people are going to sit down. You, of +course, shudder at these things. They fill you with so great a +dreariness that it amounts to pain. I am at least sensible enough to +understand the attitude. But pleasantries quite high up, as I consider, +in the scale of humor have not been able to make you smile. I have seen +you sit unalterably grave while Papa was piping out the nicest little +things, and I know you never liked even your adored Professor Martens +when he began to bubble. Well, either I laugh too easily or you don't +laugh enough. I can only repeat that if I set your teeth on edge the +remedy is in your own hands. + +We are going to be vegetarians this summer. Papa, who hasn't tried it +yet, is perfectly willing, and if we live chiefly on nuts and lettuces +we shall hardly want any money at all. I read Shelley's _Vindication of +Natural Diet_ aloud to him before we left the flat to prepare his mind, +and he not only heartily agreed with every word, but went at once to the +Free Library and dug out all the books he could find about muscles and +brains and their surprising dependence on the kind of stuff you have +eaten, and brought them home for me to study. I do love Papa. He falls +in so sweetly with one's little plans, and lets me do what I want +without the least waste of time in questionings or the giving of advice. +I have read the books with profound interest. Only a person who cooks, +who has to handle meat when it is raw, pick out the internals of geese, +peel off the skins of rabbits, scrape away the scales of a fish that is +still alive--my step-mother insisted on this, the flavor, she said, +being so infinitely superior that way--can know with what a relief, what +a feeling of personal purification and turning of the back on evil, one +flings a cabbage into a pot of fair water or lets one's fingers linger +lovingly among lentils. I brought a bag of lentils up the hill with us, +and the cabbage, remnant of my last marketing, came up too in a net, and +we had our dinner today of them: lentil soup, and cabbage with +bread-and-butter--what could be purer? And for Johanna, who has not read +Shelley, there was the last of the Rauchgasse sausage for the soothing +of her more immature soul. + +That was an hour ago, and Papa has just been in to say he is hungry. + +'Why, you've only just had dinner, Papachen,' said I, surprised. + +'I know--I know,' he said, looking vaguely troubled. + +'You can't really be hungry. Perhaps it's indigestion.' + +'Perhaps,' agreed Papa; and drifted out again, still looking troubled. + +Before we took this house it had stood empty for several years, and the +man it belongs to was so glad to find somebody who would live in it and +keep it warm that he lets us have it for hardly any rent at all. I +expect what the impoverished want--and only the impoverished would live +in a thing so small--is a garden flat enough to grow potatoes in, and to +have fowls walking about it, and a pig in a nice level sty. You can't +have them here. At least, you couldn't have a sty on such a slope. The +poor pig would spend his days either anxiously hanging on with all his +claws--or is it paws? I forget what pigs have; anyhow, with all his +might--to the hillside, or huddled dismally down against the end +planks, and never be of that sublime detachment of spirit necessary to +him if he would end satisfactorily in really fat bacon. And the fowls, I +suppose, would have to lay their eggs flying--they certainly couldn't do +it sitting down--and how disturbing that would be to a person engaged, +as I often am, in staring up at the sky, for how can you stare up at the +sky under an umbrella? I asked the landlord about the potatoes, and he +said I must grow them as the last tenant did, a widow who lived and died +here, in a strip against the north side of the house where there is a +level space about two yards running from one end of the house to the +other, representing a path and keeping the hill from tumbling in at our +windows. It really is the only place, for I don't see how Johanna and I, +gifted and resourceful as we undoubtedly are, can make terraces with no +tools but a spade and a watering-pot; but it will do away with our only +path, and it does seem necessary to have a path up to one's front door. +Can one be respectable without a path up to one's front door? Perhaps +one can, and that too may be a superfluity to those who face life +squarely. I am convinced that there must be potatoes, but I am not +convinced, on reflection, that there need be a path. Have you ever felt +the joy of getting rid of things? It is so great that it is almost +ferocious. After each divestment, each casting off and away, there is +such a gasp of relief, such a bounding upward, the satisfied soul, proud +for once of its body, saying to it smilingly, 'This, too, then, you have +discovered you can do without and yet be happy.' And I, just while +writing these words to you, have discovered that I can and will do +without paths. + +Papa has been in again. 'Is it not coffee-time?' he asked. + +I looked at him amazed. 'Darling, coffee-time is never at half-past +two,' I said reproachfully. + +'Half-past two is it only? _Der Teufel_' said Papa. + +'Isn't your book getting on well?' I inquired. + +'Yes, yes,--the book progresses. That is, it would progress if my +attention did not continually wander.' + +'Wander? Whereto?' + +'Rose-Marie, there is a constant gnawing going on within me that will +not permit me to believe that I have dined.' + +'Well, but, Papachen, you have. I saw you doing it.' + +'What you saw me doing was not dining,' said Papa. + +'Not dining?' + +Papa waved his arms round oddly and suddenly. 'Grass--grass,' he cried +with a singular impatience. + +'Grass?' I echoed, still more amazed. + +'Books of an enduring nature, works of any monumentalness, cannot, never +were, and shall not be raised on a foundation of grass,' said Papa, his +face quite red. + +'I can't think what you mean,' said I. 'Where is there any grass?' + +'Here,' said Papa, quickly clasping his hands over that portion of him +that we boldly talk about and call _Magen_, and you allude to sideways, +by a variety of devious expressions. 'I have been fed today,' he said, +looking at me quite severely, 'on a diet appropriate only to the +mountain goat, and probably only appropriate to him because he can +procure nothing better.' + +'Why, you had a lentil soup--proved scientifically to contain all that +is needed--' + +'I congratulate the lentil soup. I envy it. I wish I too contained all +that is needed. But here'--he clasped his hands again--'there is +nothing.' + +'Yes there is. There is cabbage.' + +'Pooh,' said Papa. 'Green stuff. Herbage.' + +'Herbage?' + +'And scanty herbage, too--appropriate, I suppose, to the mountainous +region in which we now find ourselves.' + +'Papa, don't you want to be a vegetarian?' + +'I want my coffee,' said Papa. + +'What, now?' + +'And why not now, Rose-Marie? Is there anything more rational than to +eat when one is hungry? Let there, pray, be much--very much--bread-and- +butter with it.' + +'But, Papa, we weren't going to have coffee any more. Didn't you agree +that we would give up stimulants?' + +Papa looked at me defiantly. 'I did,' he said. + +'Well, coffee is one.' + +'It is our only one.' + +'You said you would give it up.' + +'I said gradually. To do so today would not be doing so gradually. +Nothing is good that is not done gradually.' + +'But one must begin.' + +'One must begin gradually.' + +'You were delighted with Shelley.' + +'It was after dinner.' + +'You were quite convinced.' + +'I was not hungry.' + +'You know he is all for pure water.' + +'He is all for many things that seem admirable to those who have lately +dined.' + +'You know he says that if the populace of Paris at the time of the +Revolution had drunk at the pure source of the Seine--' + +'There is no pure source of the Seine within reach of the populace of +Paris. There would only be cats. Dead cats. And cats interspersed, no +doubt, with a variety of objects of the nature of portions of crockery +and empty tins.' + +'But he says pure source.' + +'Then he says pure nonsense.' + +'He says if they had done that and satisfied their hunger at the +ever-furnished table of vegetable nature--' + +'Ever-furnished table? Holy Heaven--the good, the excellent young man.' + +'--they would never have lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription +list of Robespierre.' + +'Rose-Marie, today I care not what this young man says.' + +'He says--look, I've got the book in my pocket--' + +'I will not look.' + +'He says, could a set of men whose passions were not perverted by +unnatural stimuli--that's coffee, of course--gaze with coolness on an +_auto-da-fe_?' + +'I engage to gaze with heat on any _auto-da-fe_ I may encounter if only +you will quickly--' + +'He says--' + +'Put down the book, Rose-Marie, and see to the getting of coffee.' + +'But he says--' + +'Let him say it, and see to the coffee.' + +'He says, is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings rising +from his meal of roots--' + +'_Gott, Gott_,--meal of roots!' + +'--would take delight in sports of blood?' + +'Enough. I am not in the temper for Shelley.' + +'But you quite loved him a day or two ago.' + +'Except food, nobody loves anything--anything at all--while his stomach +is empty.' + +'I don't think that's very pretty, Papachen.' + +'But it is a great truth. Remember it if you should marry. Shape your +conduct by its light. Three times every day, Rose-Marie,--that is, +before breakfast, before dinner, and before supper,--no husband loves +any wife. She may be as beautiful as the stars, as wise as +Pallas-Athene, as cultured as Goethe, as entertaining as a circus, as +affectionate as you please--he cares nothing for her. She exists not. +Go, my child, and prepare the coffee, and let the bread-and-butter be +cut thick.' + +Well, since then I have been cutting bread-and-butter and pouring out +cups of coffee. I thought Papa would never leave off. If that is the +effect of a vegetarian dinner I don't think it can really be less +expensive than meat. Papa ate half a pound of butter, which is sixty +pfennings, and for sixty pfennings I could have bought him a +_Kalbsschnitzel_ so big that it would have lasted, under treatment, two +days. I must go for a walk and think it out. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXVI + +Galgenberg, July 21st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I assure you that we have all we want, so do not, +please, go on feeling distressed about us. Why should you feel +distressed? I am not certain that I do not resent it. Put baldly (you +will say brutally), you have no right to be distressed, uneasy, anxious, +and all the other things you say you are, about the private concerns of +persons who are nothing to you. Even a lamb might conceivably feel +nettled by persistent pity when it knows it has everything in the world +it wants. Come now, if it is a question of pity, we will have it in the +right place, and I will pity you. There is always, you know, a secret +satisfaction in the soul of him who pities. He does hug himself, and +whether he does it consciously or unconsciously depends on his aptitude +for clear self-criticism. Compared with yours I deliberately consider my +life glorious. And when will you see that there are kinds of +gloriousness that cannot be measured in money or position? It is plain +to me--and it would be so to you if you thought it over--that the less +one has the more one enjoys. We want space, time, concentration, for +getting at the true sweet root of life. And I think--and you probably do +not--that the true sweet root of life is in any one thing, no matter +what thing, on which your whole undisturbed attention is fixed. Once I +read a little French story, years ago, with my mother, when I was a +child, and I don't know now who wrote it or what it was called. It was +the story of a prisoner who found a plant growing between the flags of +the court he might walk in, and I think it was a wallflower; and it, +unfolding itself slowly and putting out one tender bit of green after +the other in that gray and stony place, stretched out little hands of +life and hope and interest to the man who had come there a lost soul. It +was the one thing he had. It ended by being his passion. With nothing +else to distract him, he could study all its wonders. From that single +plant he learned more than the hurried passer-on, free of the treasures +of the universe, learns in a life. It saved him from despair. It brought +him back to the eager interest in the marvellous world that soul feels +which is unencumbered by too heavy a weight of trappings. Why, I still +have too much; and here are you pitying me because I have not more when +I am distracted by all the claims on my attention. I can look at whole +beds of wallflowers every spring, and pass on with nothing but a vague +admiration for their massed beauty of scent and color. I get nothing out +of them but just that transient glimpse and whiff. There are too many. +There is no time for them all. But shut me up for weeks alone with one +of them in a pot, and I too would get out of it the measure of the +height and the depth and the wonder of life. + +And then you exhort me not to live on vegetables. Is it because you live +on meat? I don't think I mind your eating meat, so why should you mind +my eating vegetables? I have done it for a week now quite steadily, and +mean to give it at least a fair trial. If what the books we have got +about it say is true, health and sanity lie that way. And how delightful +to have a pure kitchen into which ghastly dead things never come. I will +not be a partaker of the nature of beasts. I will not become three parts +pig, or goose, or foolish sheep. I turn with aversion from the reddened +horror called gravy. I consider it a monstrous ugly thing to have +particles of pig rioting up and down my veins, turning into brains, +coloring my thoughts, becoming a very part of my body. Surely a body is +a wonderful thing? So wonderful that it cannot be treated with too much +care and respect? So wonderful that it cannot be too carefully guarded +from corruption? And have you ever studied the appearance and habits of +pigs? + +But I do admit that being a vegetarian is bewildering. None of the books +say a word about the odd feeling one has of not having had anything to +eat. What Papa felt that first day I have felt every day since. I am +perpetually hungry; and it is the unpleasant hunger that expresses +itself in a dislike for food, in listlessness, inability to work, +flabbiness, even faintness. At eight in the morning I begin with bread +and plums. My entire being cries out while I am eating them for coffee +with milk in it and butter on my bread. But coffee is a stimulant, and +the books say that butter contains no nourishment whatever, and since +what I most yearn for is to be nourished I will waste no time eating +stuff that doesn't do it. Instead, I eat heaps of bread and stacks of +plums, not because I want to but because I'm afraid the gnawing feeling +will follow sooner than ever if I don't. Papa sits opposite me, +breakfasting pleasantly on eggs, for he explains he is doing things +gradually and is using the eggs to build wise bridges across the gulf +between the end of meat and the beginning of what he persists in +describing as herbage. At nine I feel as if I had had no breakfast. All +the pains I took to get through the bread were of no real use. I +struggle against this for as long as possible, because the books say you +mustn't have things between meals, and then I go and eat more plums. I +am amazed when I remember that once I liked plums. No words can express +my abhorrence of them now. But what is to be done? They are the only +fruit we can get. Cherries are over. Apples have not begun. We buy the +plums from the neighbor down the hill. To add to my horror of them I +have discovered that hardly one is without a wriggly live thing inside +it. I wonder how many of them I have eaten. Can they be brought into the +category vegetarian? Papa says yes, because they have lived and moved +and had their being in an atmosphere of pure plum. They _are_ plum, says +Papa, consoling me,--bits of plum that have acquired the power to walk +about. But according to that beef must be vegetarian too,--so much grass +grown able to walk about. It is very bewildering. One day the +neighbor--he is a nice neighbor, interested in our experiment--sent us +some raspberries, a basket of them, all glowing, and downy, and +delicious with dew, and covered with a beautiful silvery cabbage leaf; +but they were afflicted in just the same way, only more so. Papa says, +why do I look? I must look now that I have seen the things once; and so +the end of the raspberries was that most of them went out into the +kitchen, and Johanna, who has no prejudices, stewed them into compote +and ate them, including the inhabitants, for her supper. + +For dinner, by which time I am curiously shaky, quite indifferent to +food, and possessed of an immense longing to lie down on a sofa and do +nothing, we have salad and potatoes and fruit--of course plums--and +lentils because they are so good for us (it is a pity they are also so +nasty), and cheese because one book says (it is an extraordinarily +convincing book) that if a man shall eat beef steadily for a whole +morning from six to twelve without stopping, he will not at the end have +taken in half the nourishing matter that he would have absorbed after +two minutes laid out judiciously on cheese. Unfortunately I don't like +cheese. After dinner I shut myself up with the works of Mr. Eustace +Miles, which tell me in invigorating language of all the money, time, +and energy I have saved, of my increase of bodily health, of how active +I am getting, how skilful and of what a tough endurance, how my brains +have grown clear and nimble, my morals risen high above the average, and +how keen my enjoyment of everything has become, including, strange to +say, my food. I read lying down, too spiritless to sit up; and Johanna +in the kitchen, who has dined on pig and beer, washes up with the +clatter of exuberant energy, singing while she does so in a voice that +shakes the house that once she _liebte ein Student._ + +It is very bewildering. The advice one gets points in such opposite +directions. For instance, the neighbor made friends the very first +evening with Papa, who walked with injudicious inattention in our garden +and slipped down through a gap in the fence into his orchard and his +arms, he being engaged in picking up the fallen plums for his wife to +make jam of; and he told me when he came in one day at dinner and found +me struggling through what he considered dark ways and I thought were +cabbages, that my salvation lay in almonds. I went down to Jena that +afternoon and bought three pounds of them. They were dear, and +dreadfully heavy to carry up the hill, and when I was panting past the +neighbor's gate his wife, a friendly lady who reads right through the +advertisements in the paper every morning and spends her evenings with a +pencil working out the acrostics, was standing at it cool and +comfortable; and she asked me, with the simple inquisitiveness natural +to our nation, what I had got in my parcel; and I, glad to stop a moment +and get my breath, told her; and she immediately scoffed both at her +husband and at the almonds, and said if I ate them I would lay up for +myself an old age steeped in a dreadful thing called xanthin poison. I +went home and consulted the books. The neighbor's wife was right. +Johanna made macaroons of the almonds, and Papa, who loves macaroons, +chose to disbelieve the neighbor's wife and ate them. + +But the books are not always so unanimous as they were about this. One +exhorted us to eat many peas and beans, which we were cheerfully +doing,--for are they not in summer pleasant things?--when I read in +another that we might as well eat poison, so full were they, too, of +qualities ending in xanthin poison. Lentils, recommended warmly by most +books, are discountenanced by two because they make you fat. Rice has +shared the same condemnation. Lettuces we may eat, but without the oil +that soothes and the vinegar that interests, and if you add salt to them +you will be thirsty, and you must never drink. An undressed lettuce--a +quite naked lettuce--is a very dull thing. Really, I would as soon eat +grass. We do refuse at present to follow this cruel advice, and have +salad every day in defiance of it, but my conscience forces me to put +less and less dressing in it each time, hoping that so shall we wean +ourselves from the craving for it--'gradually,' as Papa says. Carrots, +too, the books warn us against. I forget what it is they do to you that +is serious, but the neighbor told me they make your skin shine, and +since he told me that no carrot has crossed our threshold. Apples we may +eat, but we are not to suppose that they will nourish us; they are +useful only for preventing, by their bulk, the walls of our insides from +coming together. The walls of the vegetarian inside are very apt to come +together if the owner strikes out all the things he is warned against +from his menu, and then it is, when they are about to do that, that +fibrous bulk, most convenient in this form, should be applied; and, like +the roasted Sunday goose of our fleshlier days in Rauchgasse, the +vegetarian goes about stuffed with apples. Meanwhile there are no +apples, and I know not whither I must turn in search of bulk. Do you +think that in another week I shall be strong enough to write to you? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXVII + +Galgenberg, July 28th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--This is a most sweet evening, dripping, quiet, +after a rainy day, with a strip of clear yellow sky behind the pine +trees on the crest of the hill. I gathered up my skirts and went down +through the soaked grass to where against the fence there is a divine +straggly bush of pink China roses. I wanted to see how they were getting +on after their drenching; and as I stood looking at them in the calm +light, the fence at the back of them sodden into dark greens and blacks +that showed up every leaf and lovely loose wet flower, a robin came and +sat on the fence near me and began to sing. You will say: Well, what +next? And there isn't any next; at least, not a next that I am likely to +make understandable. It was only that I felt extraordinarily happy. You +will say: But why? And if I were to explain, at the end you would still +be saying Why? Well, you cannot see my face while I am writing to you, +so that I have been able often to keep what I was really thinking safely +covered up, but you mustn't suppose that my letters have always exactly +represented my state of mind, and that my soul has made no pilgrimages +during this half year. I think it has wandered thousands of miles. And +often while I wrote scolding you, or was being wise and complacent, or +sprightly and offensive, often just then the tired feet of it were +bleeding most as they stumbled among the bitter stones. And this evening +I felt that the stones were at an end, that my soul has come home to me +again, securely into my keeping, glad to be back, and that there will be +no more effort needed when I look life serenely in the face. Till now +there was always effort. That I talk to you about it is the surest sign +that it is over. The robin's singing, the clear light behind the pines, +the dripping trees and bushes, the fragrance of the wet roses, the +little white house, so modest and hidden, where Papa and I are going to +be happy, the perfect quiet after a stormy day, the perfect peace after +discordant months,--oh, I wanted to say thank you for each of these +beautiful things. Do you remember you gave me a book of Ernest Dowson's +poems on the birthday I had while you were with us? And do you remember +his + + Now I will take me to a place of peace, + Forget my heart's desire-- + In solitude and prayer work out my soul's release? + +It is what I feel I have done. + +But I will not bore you with these sentiments. See, I am always anxious +to get back quickly to the surface of things, anxious to skim lightly +over the places where tears, happy or miserable, lie, and not to touch +with so much as the brush of a wing the secret tendernesses of the soul. +Let us, sir, get back to vegetables. They are so safe as subjects for +polite letter-writing. And I have had three letters from you this week +condemning their use with all the fervor the English language places at +your disposal--really it is generous to you in this respect--as a +substitute for the mixed diet of the ordinary Philistine. Yes, sir, I +regard you as an ordinary Philistine; and if you want to know what that +in my opinion is, it is one who walks along in the ruts he found ready +instead of, after sitting on a milestone and taking due thought, making +his own ruts for himself. You are one of a flock; and you disapprove of +sheep like myself that choose to wander off and browse alone. You +condemn all my practices. Nothing that I think or do seems good in your +eyes. You tell me roundly that I am selfish, and accuse me, not roundly +because you are afraid it might be indecorous, but obliquely, in a mask +of words that does not for an instant hide your meaning, of wearing +Jaeger garments beneath my outer apparel. Soon, I gather you expect, I +shall become a spiritualist and a social democrat; and quite soon after +that I suppose you are sure I shall cut off my hair and go about in +sandals. Well, I'll tell you something that may keep you quiet: I'm +tired of vegetarianism. It isn't that I crave for fleshpots, for I shall +continue as before to turn my back on them, on 'the boiled and roast, +The heated nose in face of ghost,' but I grudge the time it takes and +the thought it takes. For the fortnight I have followed its precepts I +have lived more entirely for my body than in any one fortnight of my +life. It was all body. I could think of nothing else. I was tending it +the whole day. Instead of growing, as I had fondly hoped, so free in +spirit that I would be able to draw quite close to the _liebe Gott_, I +was sunk in a pit of indifference to everything needing effort or +enthusiasm. And it is not simple after all. Shelley's meal of roots +sounds easy and elementary, but think of the exertion of going out, +strengthened only by other roots, to find more for your next meal. Nuts +and fruits, things that require no cooking, really were elaborate +nuisances, the nuts having to be cracked and the fruit freed from what +Papa called its pedestrian portions. And they were so useless even then +to a person who wanted to go out and dig in the garden. All they could +do for me was to make me appreciate sofas. I am tired of it, tired of +wasting precious time thinking about and planning my wretched diet. +Yesterday I had an egg for breakfast--it gave me one of Pater's +'exquisite moments'--and a heavenly bowl of coffee with milk in it, and +the effect was to send me out singing into the garden and to start me +mending the fence. The neighbor came up to see what the vigorous +hammer-strokes and snatches of _Siegfried_ could mean, and when he saw +it was I immediately called out, 'You have been eating meat!' + +'I have not,' I said, swinging my hammer to show what eggs and milk can +do. + +'In some form or other you have this day joined yourself to the animal +kingdom,' he persisted; and when I told him about my breakfast he wiped +his hands (he had been picking fruit) and shook mine and congratulated +me. 'I have watched with concern,' he said, 'your eyes becoming daily +bigger. It is not good when eyes do that. Now they will shrink to their +normal size, and you will at last set your disgraceful garden in order. +Are you aware that the grass ought to have been made into hay a month +ago?' + +He is a haggard man, thin of cheek, round of shoulder, short of sight, +who teaches little boys Latin and Greek in Weimar. For thirty years has +he taught them, eking out his income in the way we all do in these parts +by taking in foreigners wanting to learn German. In July he shakes Eis +foreigners off and comes up here for six weeks' vacant pottering in his +orchard. He bought the house as a speculation, and lets the upper part +to any one who will take it, living himself, with his wife and son, on +the ground floor. He is extremely kind to me, and has given me to +understand that he considers me intelligent, so of course I like him. +Only those persons who love intelligence in others and have doubts about +their own know the deliciousness of being told a thing like that. I +adore being praised. I am athirst for it. Dreadfully vain down in my +heart, I go about pretending a fine aloofness from such weakness, so +that when nobody sees anything in me--and nobody ever does--I may at +least make a show of not having expected them to. Thus does a girl in a +ball-room with whom no one will dance pretend she does not want to. Thus +did the familiar fox conduct himself toward the grapes of tradition. +Very well do I know there is nothing to praise; but because I am just +clever enough to know that I am not clever, to be told that I am +clever--do you follow me?--sets me tingling. + +Now that's enough about me. Let us talk about you. You must not come to +Jena. What could have put such an idea into your head? It is a blazing, +deserted place just now, looking from the top of the hills like a basin +of hot _bouillon_ down there in the hollow, wrapped in its steam. The +University is shut up. The professors scattered. Martens is in +Switzerland, and won't be back till September. Even the Schmidts, those +interesting people, have flapped up with screams of satisfaction into a +nest on the side of a precipice. I urge you with all my elder-sisterly +authority to stay where you are. Plainly, if you were to come I would +not see you. Oh, I will leave off pretending I cannot imagine what you +want here: I know you want to see me. Well, you shall not. Why you +should want to is altogether beyond my comprehension. I believe you have +come to regard me as a sort of medicine, medicine of the tonic order, +and wish to bring your sick soul to the very place where it is +dispensed. But I, you see, will have nothing to do with sick souls, and +I wholly repudiate the idea of being somebody's physic. I will not be +your physic. What medicinal properties you can extract from my letters +you are welcome to, but pray are you mad that you should think of coming +here? When you do come you are to come with your wife, and when you have +a wife you are not to come at all. How simple. + +Really, I feel inclined to laugh when I try to picture you, after the +life you have been leading in London, after the days you are living now +at Clinches, attempting to arrange yourself on this perch of ours up +here. I cannot picture you. We have reduced our existence to the crudest +elements, to the raw material; and you, I know, have grown a very +exquisite young man. The fact is you have had time to forget what we are +really like, my father and I and Johanna, and since my step-mother's +time we have advanced far in the casual scrappiness of housekeeping that +we love. You would be like some strange and splendid bird in the midst +of three extremely shabby sparrows. That is the physical point of view: +a thing to be laughed at. From the moral it is for ever impossible. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XXXVIII + +Galgenberg, Aug. 7th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is pleasant of you to take the trouble to +emulate our neighbor and tell me that you too think me intelligent. You +put it, it is true, more elaborately than he does, with a greater +embroidery of fine words, but I will try to believe you equally sincere. +I make you a profound _Knix_,--it's a more expressive word than +curtsey--of polite gratitude. But it is less excellent of you to add on +the top of these praises that I am adorable. With words like that, +inappropriate, and to me eternally unconvincing, this correspondence +will come to an abrupt end. I shall not write again if that is how you +are going to play the game. I would not write now if I were less +indifferent. As it is, I can look on with perfect calm, most serenely +unmoved by anything in that direction you may say to me; but if you care +to have letters do not say them again. I shall never choose to allow you +to suppose me vile. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + +XXXIX + +Galgenberg, Aug. 13th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You need not have sent me so many pages of +protestations. Nothing you can say will persuade me that I am adorable, +and I did exactly mean the world vile. Do not quarrel with Miss +Cheriton; but if you must, do not tell me about it. Why should you +always want to tell one of us about the other? Have you no sense of what +is fit? I am nothing to you, and I will not hear these things. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XL + +Galgenberg, Aug. 18th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You must really write a book. Write a very long +one, with plenty of room for all your words. What is your bill for +postage now? Johanna, I am sure, thinks you are sending me instalments +of manuscript, and marvels at the extravagance that shuts it up in +envelopes instead of leaving its ends open and tying it up with string. +Once more I must beg you not to write about Miss Cheriton. It is useless +to remind me that I have posed as your sister, and that to your sister +you may confide anything, because I am not your sister. Sometimes I have +written of an elder-sisterly attitude toward you, but that, of course, +was only talk. I am not irascible enough for the position. I do think, +though, you ought to be surrounded by women who are cross. Six cross and +determined elder sisters would do wonders for you. And so would a mother +with an iron will. And perhaps an aunt living in the house might be a +good thing; one of those aunts--I believe sufficiently abundant--who +pierce your soul with their eyes and then describe it minutely at +meal-times in the presence of the family, expatiating particularly on +what those corners of it look like, those corners you thought so secret, +in which are huddled your dearest faults. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLI + +Galgenberg, Aug. 25th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Very well; I won't quarrel; I will be +friends,--friends, that is, so long as you allow me to be so in the only +right and possible way. Don't murder too many grouse. Think of my +disapproving scowl when you are beginning to do it, and then perhaps +your day of slaughter will resolve itself into an innocent picnic on the +moors, alone with sky and heather and a bored, astonished dog. Are you +not glad now that you went to Scotland instead of coming to Jena to find +the Schmidts not at home? Surely long days in the heather by yourself +will do much toward making you friends with life. I think those moors +must be so beautiful. Really very nearly as good as my Galgenberg. My +Galgenberg, by the bye, has left off being quite so admirably solitary +as it was at first. The neighbor is, as I told you, extremely friendly, +so is his wife, though I do not set such store by her friendliness as I +do by his, for, frankly, I find men are best; and they have a son who is +an _Assessor_ in Berlin. You know what an _Assessor_ is, don't you?--it +is a person who will presently be a _Landrath_. And you know what a +_Landrath_ is? It's what you are before you turn into a +_Regierungsrath_. And a _Regierungsrath_ is what you are before you are +a _Geheimrath_. And a _Geheimrath_, if he lives long enough and doesn't +irritate anybody in authority, becomes ultimately that impressive and +glorious being a _Wirklicher Geheimrath_--implying that before he was +only in fun--_mit dem Praedikat Excellenz_. And don't say I don't explain +nicely, because I do. Well, where was I? Oh, yes; at the son. Well, he +appeared a fortnight ago, brown and hot and with a knapsack, having +walked all the way from Berlin, and is spending his holiday with his +people. For a day or two I thought him quite ordinary. He made rather +silly jokes, and wore a red tie. Then one evening I heard lovely sounds, +lovely, floating, mellow sounds coming up in floods through the orchard +into my garden where I was propped against a tree-trunk watching a huge +yellow moon disentangling itself slowly from the mists of Jena,--oh, +but exquisite sounds, sounds that throbbed into your soul and told it +all it wanted to hear, showed it the way to all it was looking for, +talked to it wonderfully of the possibilities of life. First they drew +me on to my feet, then they drew me down the garden, then through the +orchard, nearer and nearer, till at last I stood beneath the open window +they were coming from, listening with all my ears. Against the wall I +leaned, holding my breath, spell-bound, forced to ponder great themes, +themes of life and death, the music falling like drops of liquid light +in dark and thirsty places. I don't know how long it lasted or how long +I stood there after it was finished, but some one came to the window and +put his head out into the freshness, and what do you think he said? He +said, '_Donnerwetter, wie man im Zimmer schwitzt._' And it was the son, +brown and hot, and with a red tie. + +'Ach, Fraeulein Schmidt,' said he, suddenly perceiving me. 'Good evening. +A fine evening. I did not know I had an audience.' + +'Yes,' said I, unable at once to adjust myself to politenesses. + +'Do you like music?' + +'Yes,' said I, still vibrating. + +'It is a good violin. I picked it up--' and he told me a great many +things that I did not hear, for how can you hear when your spirit +refuses to come back from its journeyings among the stars? + +'Will you not enter?' he said at last. 'My mother is fetching up some +beer and will be here in a moment. It makes one warm playing.' + +But I would not enter. I walked back slowly through the long orchard +grass between the apple-trees trees. The moon gleamed along the +branches. The branches were weighed down with apples. The place was full +of the smell of fruit, of the smell of fruit fallen into the grass, that +had lain there bruised all day in the sun. I think the beauty of the +world is crushing. Often it seems almost unbearable, calling out such an +acuteness of sensation, such a vivid, leaping sensitiveness of feeling, +that indeed it is like pain. + +But what I want to talk about is the strange way good things come out of +evil. It really almost makes you respect and esteem the bad things, +doing it with an intelligent eye fixed on the future. Here is our young +friend down the hill, a young man most ordinary in every way but one, so +ordinary that I think we must put him under the heading bad, taking bad +in the sense of negation, of want of good, here he is, robust of speech, +fond of beer, red of tie, chosen as her temple by that delicate lady the +Muse of melody. Apparently she is not very particular about her temples. +It is true while he is playing at her dictation she transforms him +wholly, and I suppose she does not care what he is like in between. But +I do. I care because in between he thinks it pleasant to entertain me +with facetiousness, his mother hanging fondly on every word in the +amazing way mothers, often otherwise quite intelligent persons, do. +Since that first evening he has played every evening, and his taste in +music is as perfect as it is bad in everything else. It is severe, +exquisite, exclusive. It is the taste that plays Mozart and Bach and +Beethoven, and wastes no moments with the Mendelssohn sugar or the +lesser inspiration of Brahms. I tried to strike illumination out of him +on these points, wanted to hear his reasons for a greater exclusiveness +than I have yet met, went through a string of impressive names beginning +with Schumann and ending with Wagner and Tchaikowsky, but he showed no +interest, and no intelligence either, unless a shrug of the shoulder is +intelligent. It is true he remarked one day that he found life too short +for anything but the best--'That is why,' he added, unable to forbear +from wit, 'I only drink Pilsner.' + +'What?' I cried, ignoring the Pilsner, 'and do not these great +men'--again I ran through a string of them--'do not they also belong to +the very best?' + +'No,' he said; and would say no more. So you see he is obstinate as well +as narrow-minded. + +Of course such exclusiveness in art _is_ narrow-minded, isn't it? +Besides, it is very possible he is wrong. You, I know, used to perch +Brahms on one of the highest peaks of Parnassus (I never thought there +was quite room enough for him on it), and did you not go three times all +the way to Munich while you were with us to hear Mottl conduct the +_Ring_? Surely it is probable a person of your all-round good taste is a +better judge than a person of his very nearly all-round bad taste? +Whatever your faults may be, you never made a fault in ties, never +clamored almost ceaselessly for drink, never talked about _schwitzen_, +nor entertained young women from next door with the tricks and +facetiousness of a mountebank. I wonder if his system were carried into +literature, and life were wholly concentrated on the half dozen +absolutely best writers, so that we who spread our attention out thin +over areas I am certain are much too wide knew them as we never can know +them, became part of them, lived with them and in them, saw through +their eyes and thought with their thoughts, whether there would be gain +or loss? I don't know. Tell me what you think. If I might only have the +six mightiest books to go with me through life I would certainly have to +learn Greek because of Homer. But when it comes to the very mightiest, I +cannot even get my six; I can only get four. Of course when I loosely +say six books I mean the works of six writers. But beyond my four I +cannot get; there must be a slight drop for the other two,--very slight, +hardly a drop, rather a slight downward quiver into a radiance the +faintest degree less blazing, but still a degree less. These two would +be Milton and Virgil. The other four--but you know the other four +without my telling you. I am not sure that the _Assessor_ is not right, +and that one cannot, in matters of the spirit, be too exclusive. +Exclusiveness means concentration, deeper study, minuter knowledge; for +we only have a handful of years to do anything in, and they are quite +surely not enough to go round when going round means taking in the whole +world. + +On the other hand, wouldn't my speech become archaic? I'm afraid I would +have a tendency that would grow to address Papa in blank verse. My +language, even when praying him at breakfast to give me butter, would be +incorrigibly noble. I don't think Papa would like it. And what would he +say to a daughter who was forced by stress of concentration on six works +to go through life without Goethe? Goethe, you observe, was not one of +the two less glorious and he certainly was not one of the four +completely glorious. I begin to fear I should miss a great deal by my +exclusions. It would be sad to die without ever having been thrilled by +_Werther_, exalted by _Faust_, amazed by the _Wahlverwandtschaften_, +sent to sleep by _Wilhelm Meister_. To die innocent of any knowledge of +Schiller's _Glocke_, with no memory of strenuous hours spent getting it +by heart at school, might be quite pleasant. But I think it would end by +being tiring to be screwed up perpetually to the pitch of the greatest +men's greatest moments. Such heights are not for insects like myself. I +would hang very dismally, with drooping head and wings, on those exalted +hooks. And has not the soul too its longings at times for a +dressing-gown and slippers? And do you see how you could do without +Boswell? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + +XLII + +Galgenberg, Aug. 31st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yes, of course he does. He plays every evening. +And every evening I go and listen, either in the orchard beneath the +open window or, more ceremoniously, inside the room with or without +Papa. I find it a pleasant thing. I am living in a bath of music. And I +hope you don't expect me to agree with your criticism of music as a +stirrer-up of, on the whole, second-rate emotions. What are second-rate +emotions? Are they the ones that you have? And was it to have them +stirred that you used to journey so often to Munich and Mottl? Stirred +up I certainly am. Not in the way, I admit, in which a poem of Milton's +does it, not affected in the least as I am affected by, for instance, +the piled-up majesty of the poem on _Time_, but if less nobly still very +effectually. There; I have apparently begun to agree with you. Well, I +do see, the moment I begin to consider, that what is stirred is less +noble. I do see that what I feel when I listen to music is chiefly +_Wehmuth_, and I don't think much of _Wehmuth_. You have no word for it. +Perhaps in England you do not have just that form of sentiment. It is a +forlorn thing, made up mostly of vague ingredients,--vague yearnings, +vague regrets, vague dissatisfactions. When it comes over you, you +remember all the people who are absent, and you are sad; and the people +who are dead, and you sigh; and the times you have been naughty, and you +groan. I do see that a sentiment that makes you do that is not the +highest. It is profitless, sterile. It doesn't send you on joyfully to +the next thing, but keeps you lingering in the dust of churchyards, +barren places of the past which should never be revisited by the +wholesome-minded. Now this looks as though I were agreeing with you +quite, but I still don't. You put it so extremely. It is so horrid to +think that even my emotions may be second-rate. I long ago became aware +that my manners were so, but I did like to believe there was nothing +second-rate about my soul. Well, what is one to do? Never be soft? Never +be sad? Or sorry? Or repentant? Always stay up at the level of Milton's +_Time_ poem, or of his _At a Solemn Musick_, strung high up to an +unchanging pitch of frigid splendor and nobleness? It is what I try to +aim at. It is what I would best like. Then comes our friend of the red +tie, and in the cool of the day when the world is dim and scented shakes +a little fugue of Bach's out of his fiddle, a sparkling, sly little +fugue, frolicsome for all its minor key, a handful of bright threads +woven together, twisted in and out, playing, it would seem, at some game +of hide-and-seek, of pretending to want to catch each other into a +tangle, but always gayly coming out of the knots, each distinct and +holding on its shining way till the meeting at the end, the final +embrace when the game is over and they tie themselves contentedly +together into one comfortable major chord,--our friend plays this, this +manifestly happy thing, and my soul listens, and smiles, and sighs, and +longs, and ends by being steeped in _Wehmuth_. I choose the little fugue +of Bach as an instance, for of all music it is aimed most distinctly at +the intellect, it is the furthest removed from _Wehmuth_; and if it has +this effect on me I will not make you uncomfortable by a description of +what the baser musics do, the musics of passion, of furious exultations +and furious despairs. But my vague wish for I do not know what, gentle, +and rather sweetly resigned when the accompaniment is Bach, swells +suddenly while I listen to them into a terrifying longing that rends and +shatters my soul. + +What private things I tell you. I wouldn't if I were talking. I would be +affected by your actual presence. But writing is so different, and so +strange; at once so much more and so much less intimate. The body is +safe--far away, unassailable; and the spirit lets itself go out to meet +a fellow spirit with the frankness it can never show when the body goes +too, that grievous hinderer of the communion of saints, that officious +blunderer who can spoil the serenest intercourse by a single blush. + +Johanna came in just there. She was decked in smiles, and wanted to say +good-by till to-morrow morning. It is her night out, and she really +looked rather wonderful to one used to her kitchen condition. Her skin, +cleansed from week-day soilure, was surprisingly fair; her hair, waved +more beautifully than mine will ever be, was piled up in bright imposing +masses; her starched white dress had pink ribbons about it; she wore +cotton gloves; and held the handkerchief I lend her on these occasions +genteelly by its middle in her hand. Every second Sunday she descends +the mountain at sunset, the door-key in her pocket, and dances all night +in some convivial _Gasthof_ in the town, coming up again at sunrise or +later according to the amount of fun she was having. On the Monday I do +nearly everything alone, for she sleeps half the day, and the other half +she doesn't like being talked to. She is a good servant, and she would +certainly go if we tried to get her in again under the twelve hours. On +the alternate Sundays we allow her to have her young man up for the +afternoon and evening. He is a trumpeter in the regiment stationed in +Jena, and he brings his trumpet to fill up awkward silences. Engaged +couples of that kind don't seem able to talk much, so that the trumpet +is a great comfort to them. Whenever conversation flags he whips it out +and blows a rousing blast, giving her time to think of something to say +next. I had to ask him to do it in the garden, for the first time it +nearly blew our roof, which isn't very tightly on, off. Now he and she +sit together on a bench outside the door, and the genius down the hill +with the exclusive ears suffers, I am afraid, rather acutely. Papa and I +wander as far away as we can get among the mountains. + +It is rather dreadful when they quarrel. Then, of course, Johanna sulks +as girls will, and sulks are silent things, so that the trumpet has to +fill up a yawning gulf and never leaves off at all. Last Sunday it blew +the whole time we were out, and I expected when I got home to find the +engagement broken off. We stayed away as long as we could, climbing +higher and higher, wandering further and further, supping at last +reluctantly on cucumber salad and cold herrings in the little restaurant +up on the Schweizerhohe because the trumpet wouldn't stop and we didn't +dare go home till it did. Its blasts pursued us even into the recesses +of the dingy wooden hall we took our ears into, vainly trying to carry +them somewhere out of range. It seemed to be a serious quarrel. We had a +depressing meal. We both esteem Johanna with the craven esteem you feel +for a person, at any moment capable of giving notice, who does all the +unpleasant things you would otherwise have to do yourself. The state of +her temper seriously affects our peace. You see, the house is small, and +if her trumpeter has been unsatisfactory and she throws the saucepans +about or knocks the broom in sweeping against all the wooden things like +doors and skirting-boards, it makes an unendurable clatter and puts an +end at once to Papa's work and to my equally earnest play. If, her +nerves being already on edge, I were to suggest to her even smilingly to +be quiet, she would at once give notice--I know she would--and the +dreary search begin again for that impossible treasure you in England +call a paragon and we in Jena call a pearl. Where am I to find a clean, +honest, strong pearl, able to cook and willing to come and live in what +is something like an unopened oyster-shell, so shut-up, so cut-off so +solitary would her existence here be, for eight pounds a year? It is +easy for you august persons who never see your servants, who have so +many that by sheer force of numbers they become unnoticeable, to deride +us who have only one for being so greatly at her mercy. I know you will +deride. I see your letter already: 'Dear Fraeulein Schmidt, Is not your +attitude toward the maid Johanna unworthy?' It isn't unworthy, because +it is natural. Defiantly I confess that it is also cringing. Well, it is +natural to cringe under the circumstances. So would you. I dare say if +your personal servant is a good one, and you depend much on him for +comfort, you do do it as it is. And there are very few girls in Jena who +would come out of it and take a situation on the side of a precipice for +eight pounds a year. Really the wages are small, balanced against the +disadvantages. And wages are going up. Down in Jena a good servant can +get ten pounds a year now without much difficulty. So that it behooves +us who cannot pay such prices to humor Johanna. + +About nine the trumpet became suddenly dumb. Papa and I, after waiting a +few minutes, set out for home, conjecturing as we went in what state we +should find Johanna. Did the silence mean a rupture or a making-up? I +inclined toward the rupture, for how can a girl, I asked Papa, murmur +mild words of making-up to a lover engaged in blowing a trumpet? Papa +said he didn't know; and engrossed by fears we walked home without +speaking. + +No one was to be seen. The house was dark and empty. Everything was +quiet except the crickets. The trumpeter had gone, but so, apparently, +had Johanna. She had forgotten to lock the door, so that all we--or +anybody else passing that way--had to do was to walk in. Nobody, +however,--and by nobody I mean the criminally intentioned, briefly +burglars--walks into houses perched as ours is. They would be very +breathless burglars by the time they got to our garden gate. We should +hear their stertorous breathing as they labored up well in time to lock +the door; and Papa, ever pitiful and polite, would as likely as not +unlock it again to hasten out and offer them chairs and lemonade. It was +not, then, with any misgivings of that sort that we went into our +deserted house and felt about for matches; but I was surprised that +Johanna, when she could sit comfortably level on the seat by the door, +should rather choose to go and stroll in the garden. You cannot stroll +in my garden. You can do very few of the things in it that most people +can do in most gardens, and certainly strolling is not one of them. It +is no place for lovers, or philosophers, or leisurely persons of the +sort. It is an unrestful place, in which you are forced to be energetic, +to watch where you put your feet, to balance yourself to a nicety, to be +continually on the alert. I lit a lantern, and went out in search of +Johanna strolling. I stood on the back door steps and looked right and +looked left. No Johanna. No sounds of Johanna. Only the crickets, and +the soft darting by of a bat. I went down the steps--they are six +irregular stones embedded one beneath the other in the clay and leading +to the pump from which, in buckets, we supply our need for water--and +standing still again, again heard only crickets. I went to the +mignonette beds I have made--mignonette and nasturtiums; mignonette for +scent and nasturtiums for beauty, and I hope you like nasturtiums--and +standing still again, again heard only crickets. The night was dark and +soft, and seemed of a limitless vastness. The near shrill of the +crickets made the silence beyond more intense. A cat prowled past, +velvet-footed, silent as the night, a vanishing gray streak, intent and +terrible, concentrated wholly on prey. I went on through the grass, my +shoes wet with dew, the lantern light fitfully calling out my +possessions from the blackness,--the three apple-trees, the +currant-bush, the pale group of starworts, children of some accidental +wind-dropped seed of long ago; and beside the starworts I stopped again +and listened. Still only the crickets; and presently very far away the +whistle of the night express from Berlin to Munich as it hurried past +the little station in the Paradies valley. It was extraordinarily quiet. +Once I thought my own heart-beats were the footsteps of a late wanderer +on the road. I went further, down to the very end, to the place where my +beautiful, untiring monthly-rose bush unfolds pink flower after pink +flower against the fence that separates us from our neighbor's kingdom, +and stopped again and listened. At first still only crickets, and the +anxious twitter of a bird toward whose nest that stealthy, murderous +streak of gray was drawing. It began to rain; soft, warm drops, from the +motionless clouds spread low across the sky. I forgot Johanna, and +became wholly possessed by the brooding spirit of the night, by the +feeling of oneness, of identity with the darkness, the silence, the +scent. My feet were wet with dew; my hair with the warm and gentle rain. +I lifted up my face and let the drops fall on it through the leaves of +the apple-trees, warm and gentle as a caress. Then the sudden blare of a +trumpet made me start and quiver. I quivered so much that the lantern +fell down and went out. The blare was the loudest noise I thought I had +ever heard, ripping up the silence like a jagged knife. The startled +hills couldn't get over it, but went on echoing and re-echoing it, +tossing it backward and forward to each other in an endless surprise, +and had hardly settled down again with a kind of shudder when they were +roused to frenzy by another. After that there was blare upon blare. The +man only stopped to take breath. They were louder, more rollicking than +any I had heard him produce. And they came from the neighbor's house, +from the very dwelling of him of the easily tortured ears, of him for +whom Wagner is not good enough. Well, do you know what he had done? I +ran down to question, and to extract Johanna and explain the trumpeter, +and I met the poor genius, very pale and damp-looking, his necktie +struggled up behind to the top of his collar, its bow twisted round +somehow under his left ear. He was hurrying out into the night as I +arrived, panting, on the doorstep. 'Why in the world--' I began; but a +blast drowned further speech. + +He flung up his hands, and the darkness engulfed him. + +'It's raining,' I tried to cry after his hatless figure. + +I thought I heard him call back something about Pilsner--'It's the +Pilsner,' I thought I heard him say; but the noise coming from the +kitchen was too violent for me to be sure. + +His father was in the passage, walking up and down it, his hands in his +pockets, his shoulders up to his ears as though he were shrinking from +blows. He told me what his unhappy son had done. Not able to endure the +trumpet when it was being blown up at our house earlier in the evening, +not able to endure it even softened, chastened, subdued by distance and +the intervening walls, he had directed his mother to go up and invite +the player down to her kitchen, where he was to be cajoled into eating +and drinking, because, as the son explained, full of glee at his +sagacity, no man who is eating and drinking can at the same time be +blowing a trumpet. 'Thus,' said his father, in jerks coincident with the +breath-takings of the trumpeter, 'did he hope to obtain peace.' + +'But he didn't,' said I. + +'No. For a period there was extreme, delicious quiet. Mother'--so he +invariably describes his wife--' sacrificed her best sausage, for how +shall we permit our son to be tortured? The bread was spread with butter +three centimeters deep. The trumpeter and his _Schatz_ sat quietly in +the kitchen eating it. We sat quietly on the veranda discussing great +themes. Then that good beer my son so often praises, that excellent, +barrel-kept, cellar-lodged Pilsner beer, bright as amber, clear as ice, +cool as--cool as--' + +'A cucumber,' I assisted. + +'Good. Very good. As a cucumber--as a salad of cucumbers.' + +'No, no--there's pepper in a salad. You'd better just keep to plain +cucumber,' I interrupted, always rather nice in the matter of images. + +'Cool, then, as plain cucumber--this usually admirable stuff instead of, +as we had expected, sending him gradually and pleasantly to sleep--I +mean, of course, making him gradually and pleasantly so sleepy that +thoughts of his bed, growing in affection with every glass, would cause +him to arise and depart to his barracks,--woke him up. And, my dear +Fraeulein, you yourself heard--you are hearing now--how completely it did +it.' + +'Is he--is he--?' I inquired nervously. + +The neighbor nodded. 'He is,' he said; 'he has consumed fourteen +glasses.' + +And indeed he was; and I should say from the tumult, from the +formlessness of it, the tunelessness, the rollicksomeness, that never +was anybody more so. + +'I fear my son will leave us for some quieter spot before his holiday is +over,' said the neighbor, looking distressed. + +And perhaps it will convince you more than anything else I have said of +the extreme value of our Johannas, when I tell you that, goaded by the +noise and by his disappointed face to rash promises, I declared I would +dismiss the girl unless she broke off such an engagement, and he stared +at me for a moment in astonishment and then resignedly shook his head +and said with the weary conviction of a householder of thirty years' +standing, '_Das geht doch nicht._' + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLIII + +Galgenberg, Sept. 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--But it is true. Our servants do not get more than +from 100 to 250 marks a year, and indeed I think it is a great deal and +cannot see why, because you spend as much (you say you do, so I must +believe it) in a month on gloves and ties, it should make you hate +yourself. Do not hate yourself. Your doing so doesn't make us pay our +servants more. Why, how do you suppose we could get all we need out of +our hundred pounds a year--I translate our marks into your pounds for +your greater convenience--if we had to give a servant more than eight of +them and for our house more than fifteen? Papa and I do not like to be +kept hungry in the matter of books, and we shall probably spend every +penny of our income; but I know a number of families with children who +live decently and have occasional coffee-parties and put by for their +daughters' _trousseaux_ on the same sum. As for the servants themselves, +have I not described Johanna's splendid appearance on her Sundays, her +white dress and gloves, and the pink ribbons round her waist? She finds +her wages will buy these things and still leave enough for the +savings-bank. She is quite content. Only I don't know if she would +remain so if you were to come and lament over her and tell her what a +little way you make the same money go. You see, she would probably not +grasp the true significance of the admission, which is, I take it, not +that she has too little but that you spend too much. Yet how can I from +my Galgenberg judge what is necessary in gloves and ties for a splendid +young man like yourself? The sum seems to me terrific. There must be +stacks of gloves and ties constantly growing higher about your path. +You, then, spend on these two things alone almost exactly what we three +spend in a year on everything. But my astonishment is only the measure +of my ignorance. Do not hate yourself. Either spend the money without +compunction, or, if you have compunction, don't spend it. A sinner +should always, I think, sin gayly or not at all. I don't mean that you +in this are a sinner; I only mean that as a general principle +half-hearted sinners are contemptible. It is a poor creature who while +he sins is sorry. If he must sin, let him at least do it with all his +heart, and having done it waste no time in whimpers but try to turn his +back on it and his face toward the good. Please do not hate yourself. I +am sure you have to have the things. Your letter is more than usually +depressed. Please do not hate yourself. It does no good and lowers your +vitality. It is as bad as sorrow, which surely is very bad. I think +nothing great was done by any one who wasted time peering about among +his faults; but if ever you meet the pastor who prepared me for +confirmation don't tell him I said so. I don't know how it is with yours +in England, but here the pastors seem altogether unable to bear +listening to descriptions of plain facts. When they come to doctor my +soul, why may I not tell them its symptoms as badly as I tell my body's +symptoms to the physician who would heal it? He is not shocked or angry +when I show him my sore places; he recommends a plaster or a dose, +encourages, and goes away. But your spiritual doctor takes your +spiritual sore places as a kind of personal affront; at least, his +manner often shows indignation in proportion as you are frank. Instead +of being patient, he hardly lets you speak; instead of prescribing, he +denounces; instead of helping, he passionately scolds; and so you do not +go to him again, but fight through your later miseries alone. Just at +the time of my preparation for confirmation my mother died. My heart, +blank with sorrow, was very fit for religious impressions and +consolations. The preparation lasts two years, and three times every +week during that time I went to classes. For two years I was not allowed +to dance or to go to even the mildest parties. For two years, from +sixteen to eighteen, I was earnest, prayerful, humbly seeking after +righteousness. Then one day, when questionings had come upon me that my +conscience could not approve, I went to the pastor who had prepared me +as confidently as I would go with a toothache to a dentist, and bared my +sensitive conscience to him and begged to have my thoughts arranged and +my doubts and questionings settled. To my amazement and extreme fright I +beheld him shocked, angry, hardly able to endure hearing me tell all I +had been wondering. It seemed very strange. I sat at last with downcast +eyes, silent, ashamed, my heart shrunk back into reserve and frost. I +was not being helped; I was being scolded, and bitterly scolded. At last +at the door some special word of blame stung me to heat, and I cried, +'Herr Pastor, when my tongue is bad and I show it to a doctor, he gives +me a pill. Are you not the doctor of my spirit? Why, then, when I come +to you to be healed, do you, instead of giving me medicine, so cruelly +rate me?' + +And he, staring at me a moment aghast, struck his hands together above +his head. 'Thy father!' he cried, 'Thy father! It is he who speaks--it +is he speaking in thee. Such words come not unaided from the mouth of +eighteen, from the mouth of one confirmed by these very hands. _Ach_, +miserable maiden, it is not with such as thee that Paradise is peopled. +The taint of thy parentage is heavy upon thee. Thou art not, thou canst +not be, thou hast never been, a child of God.' + +And that was all I got for my pains. + +Tell me, what mood were you in when you wrote? Was it not, apart from +its dejection, one rather inclined to peevishness? You ask, for +instance, why I write so much about a tipsy trumpeter when I know you +are anxious to hear about the other things I never tell you. I can't +imagine what they are. You must let me write how and what I like--bear +with me while I discourse of roses and nasturtium-beds, of rain and +sunshine, clouds and wind, cats, birds, servants, even trumpeters. My +life holds nothing greater than these. If you want to hear from me you +must hear also of them. And why have you taken so bitter a dislike to +our gifted young neighbor down the hill, calling him contemptuously a +fiddler? He is certainly a fiddler, if to fiddle in one's hours of ease +produces one, and perhaps you would be twice as happy as you are if you +could fiddle half so wonderfully as he does. He is gone. His holiday +either came to an end or was put to an end by Johanna's _fiance._ Now, +in these early September days, this season of mists and mellow +fruitfulness, of cloudy mornings and calm evenings and golden +afternoons, he has turned his back on the hills and forests, on the +reddening creepers and sweetening grapes, on the splash of water among +ferns and rocks, on all those fresh, quiet things that make life worth +having, and is sitting at a desk somewhere in Berlin doggedly bent on +becoming, by means of a great outlay of days and years, a _Landrath_, a +_Regierungsrath,_ a _Geheimrath_, and a _Wirklicher Geheimrath mit dem +Praedikat Excellenz_. When he has done that he will take down his hat and +go forth at last to enjoy life, and will find to his surprise that it +isn't there, that it is all behind him, a heap of dusty days piled in +the corners of offices, and that his knees shake as he goes about +looking for it, and that he can no longer even tune his fiddle by +himself but has to have it done for him by the footman. + +Isn't that what happens to all you wise men, so prudently determined to +make your way in the world? You must be very sure of another life, or +how could you bear to squander this? The things you are missing--oh, the +things you are missing!--while you so carefully add little gain to +little gain, or what I would rather call little loss to little loss. I +see no point in slaving day after day through one's best years. Suppose +you do not, in the end, have a footman to open your door--the footman +is merely a symbol, conveniently expressing the multitude of +superfluities that gather about the declining years of the person who +has got on, things bought with the sacrifice of his life, and none of +them giving him back the lost power, gone with youth, to enjoy +them--suppose, then, you do not end gloriously with a footman, what of +that? I must be blind, for I never can see the desirability of these +trappings. Yet they surely are of an immense desirability, since +everybody, really everybody, is willing to give so much in payment for +them. Our elder neighbor down the hill has actually given his eyes and +his back; he peers at life through spectacles, and walks about like +Wordsworth's leech-gatherer, bent double through poking about for years +in the muddy pools of little boys' badly written exercises; and here he +is at fifty still not satisfied with what he has earned, still going on +drudging the whole year round, except for his six short weeks in summer. +His wife is thrifty; they have only the one son; they live frugally; +long ago they must have put by enough to keep them warm and fed and +clothed without his doing another stroke of work. + +I was interrupted there by a message from him asking if I would come +down and help him gather up the windfalls in his orchard, his wife being +busy pickling beans. I went, my head full of what I had just been +writing to you, and I gathered up together with the apples a little +lesson in the foolishness of officious and hasty criticism. It was this +way: + +Our baskets being full, and our backs rested, he groaned and said that +in another week he must leave for Weimar. + +'But you like your work,' said I. + +'I detest my work,' he said peevishly. 'I detest teaching. I detest +little boys.' + +'Then why--' I began, but stopped. + +'Why? Why? Because I detest it is no reason why I should not do it.' + +'Yes, it is.' + +'What, and at my age begin another?' + +'No, no.' + +'You would not have me idle?' + +'Yes, I would.' + +He stared at me gravely through his spectacles. 'This is unprincipled,' +he said. + +I laughed. It is years since I have observed that the principled groan a +good deal and make discontented criticisms of life, and I don't think I +care to be one of them. + +'It is,' he persisted, seeing that I only laughed. + +'Is it?' said I. + +'It is man's lot to work,' said he. + +'Is it?' said I. + +'Certainly,' said he. + +'All day?' + +'If he cannot get it done in less time, certainly.' + +'_Every_ day?' + +'Certainly.' + +'All through the years of his life?' + +'All through the years of his strength, certainly.' + +'What for?' + +'My dear young lady, have you been living again on vegetables lately?' + +'Why?' + +'Your words sound as though your thoughts were watery.' + +A nettled silence fell upon me, and while I was arranging how best to +convince him of their substance he was shaking his head and saying that +it was strange how the most intelligent women are unable really to +think. 'Water,' he continued, 'is indispensable in its proper place and +good in many others where, strictly, it might be done without. I have +nothing to say against watery emotions, watery sentiments, even watery +affections, especially in ladies, who would be less charming in +proportion as they were more rigid. Ebb and flow, uncertainty, +instability, unaccountableness, are becoming to your sex. But in the +region of thought, of the intellect, of pure reason, everything should +be very dry. The one place, my dear young lady, in which I will endure +no water is on the brain.' + +I had no answer ready. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to go +home. I did go a few steps up the orchard, reflecting on the way men +have of telling you you cannot think, or are not logical, at the very +moment when you appear to yourself to be most unanswerable--a +regrettable habit that at once puts a stop to interesting +conversation,--and presently, as I was nearing our fence, he called +after me. 'Fraeulein Rose-Marie,' he called pleasantly. + +'Well?' said I, looking down at him over a displeased shoulder. + +'Come back.' + +'No.' + +'Come back and dine with us.' + +'No.' + +'There is mutton for dinner, and before that a soup full of the +concentrated strength of beasts. Up there I know you will eat carrots +and stewed apples, and I shall never be able to make you see what I +see.' + +'Heaven forbid that I ever should.' + +'What, you do not desire to be reasonable?' + +'I don't choose to argue with you.' + +'Have I done anything?' + +'You are not logical enough for me,' said I, anxious to be beforehand +with the inevitable remark. + +'Come, come,' said he, his face crinkling into smiles. + +'It's true,' said I. + +'Come back and prove it.' + +'Useless.' + +'You cannot.' + +'I will not.' + +'It is the same thing.' + +I went on up the hill. + +'Fraeulein Rose-Marie!' + +'Well?' + +'Come back.' + +'No.' + +'Come back, and tell me why you think I ought to give up my work and sit +for the rest of my days with hanging hands.' + +I turned and looked down at him. 'Because,' I said, 'are you not fifty? +And is not that high time to begin and get something out of life?' + +He adjusted his spectacles, and stared up at me attentively. 'Continue,' +he said. + +'I look at your life, at all those fifty years of it, and I see it +insufferably monotonous.' + +'Continue.' + +'Dull.' + +'Continue.' + +'Dusty.' + +'Continue.' + +'Dreary.' + +'Continue.' He nodded his head gently at each adjective and counted them +off on his fingers. + +'I see it full of ink-spots, dog-eared grammars, and little boys.' + +'Continue.' + +'It is a constant going over the same ground--in itself a maddening +process. No sooner do the boys reach a certain age and proficiency and +become slightly more interesting than they go on to somebody else, and +you begin again at the beginning with another batch. You teach in a +bare-walled room with enormous glaring windows, and the ring of the +electric tram-bell in the street below makes the commas in your +sentences. You have been doing this every day for thirty years. The boys +you taught at first are fathers of families now. The trees in the +playground have grown from striplings into big shady things. Everything +has gone on, and so have you--but you have only gone on getting drier +and more bored.' + +'Continue,' said he, smiling. + +'Your intelligence,' said I, coming down a little nearer, 'restless at +first, and for ever trying to push green shoots through the thick rind +of routine--' + +'Good. Quite good. Continue.' + +'--through to a wider space, a more generous light--' + +'Poetic. Quite poetic. My compliments.' + +'Thank you. Your intelligence, then, for ever--for ever--you've +interrupted me, and I don't know where I'd got to.' + +'You have got to my intelligence having green shoots.' + +'Oh, yes. Well, they're not green now. That's the point I've been +stumbling toward. They ought to be, if you had taken bigger handfuls of +leisure and had not wholly wasted your time drudging. But now they ought +to be more than shoots--great trees, in whose shade we all would sit +gratefully, and you enjoying free days, with the pleasant memory of free +years behind you and the cheerful hope of roomy years to come. And +during all that time of your imprisonment in a class-room the world +outside went on its splendid way, the seasons filled it with beauty +which you were not there to see, the sun shone and warmed other people, +the winds blew and made other people's flesh tingle and their blood +dance--you, of course, were cramped up with cold feet and a +headache--the birds sang to other people tunes of heaven, while in your +ears buzzed only the false quantities of reluctant little boys, the +delicious rain--' + +'Stop, stop. You forget I had to earn a living.' + +'Of course you had. But you know you earned your _living_ long ago. What +you are earning now is much more like your dying--the dying, the atrophy +of your soul. What does it matter if your wife has one bonnet less a +year, and no silk dress--' + +'Do not let her hear you,' he said, glancing round. + +'--or if you keep no servant, and have less to eat on Sundays than your +neighbors, give no parties, and don't cumber yourselves up with +acquaintances who care nothing for you? If you gave up these things you +could also give up drudging. You are too old to drudge. You have been +too old these twenty years. A man of your brains--' he pretended to look +grateful--'who cannot earn enough between twenty and thirty to keep him +from the necessity of slaving for the rest of his days is not--is not--' + +'Worthy of the name of man?' + +'I don't know that that's a great thing,' said I doubtfully. + +'Let it pass. It is an accepted ending to a sentence beginning as yours +did. And now, my dear young lady, you have preached me a sermon--' + +'Not a sermon.' + +'Permitted me, then, to be present at a lecture--' + +'Not a lecture.' + +'Anyhow held forth on the unworthily puny outer conditions of my +existence. Tell me, now, one thing. I concede the ink-spots, the little +boys, the monotony, the tram-bells, the regrettable number of years; +they are all there, and you with your vivid imagination see them all. +But tell me one thing: has it never occurred to you that they are the +merest shell, the merest husk and envelopment, and that it is possible +that in spite of them--' his voice grew serious--'my life may be very +rich within?' + +And you, my friend, tell me another thing. Am I not desperately, +hopelessly horrid? Short-sighted? Impertinent? The readiest jumper at +conclusions? The most arrogant critic of other people? Rich within. Of +course. Hidden with God. That is what I have never seen when I have +looked on superciliously from the height of my own idleness at these +drudging lives. And see how amazing has been my foolishness, for would +not my own life judged from outside, this life here alone with Papa, +this restricted, poor, solitary life, my first youth gone, my future +without prospects, no distractions, few friends, Papa's affection +growing vaguer as he grows older, would it not, looked at as I have been +looking at my neighbor's, seem entirely blank and desolate? Yet how +sincerely can I echo what he said--My life is very rich within. Yours +sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLIV + +Galgenberg, Sept. 16th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is kind of you to want to contradict what I +said in my last letter about the outward appearance of my life, but +really you know I _am_ past my first youth. At twenty-six I cannot +pretend to be what is known as a young girl, and I don't want to. Not +for anything would I be seventeen or eighteen again. I like to be a +woman grown, to have entered into the full possession of whatever +faculties I am to have, to know what I want, to look at things in their +true proportions. I don't know that eighteen has anything that +compensates for that. It is such a rudderless sort of age. It may be +more charming to the beholder, but it is not half so nice to the person +herself. What is the good of loving chocolate to distraction when it +only ends by making you sick? And the joy of a new frock or hat is +dashed at once when you meet the superior gorgeousness of some other +girl's frock or hat. And parties are often disappointing things. And +students, though they are deeply interesting, easily lead to tiresome +complications if they admire you, and if they don't that isn't very nice +either. Why, even the young man in the cake-shop who used so gallantly +to serve us with lemonade and had such wonderful curly eyelashes was not +much good really, for he couldn't be invited to tea, and whenever we +wanted to look at his eyelashes we had to buy a cake, and cakes are +dreadfully expensive for persons who have no money. Yes, it is a silly, +tittering, calf-like age, and I am glad it can't come back again. Please +do not think that I need comforting because it is gone, or because of +any of the other items in the list I gave you. The future looks quite +pleasant to me,--quite bright and sunny. It is only empty of what people +call prospects, by which I take them to mean husbands, but I shall fill +it with pigs instead. I have great plans. I see what can be done with +even one pig from my neighbor's example, who has dug out a sort of +terrace and put a sty on it: simply wonders. And how much more could be +done with two. I mean to be a very happy old maid. I shall fix my +attention in the mornings on remunerative objects like pigs, and spend +beautiful afternoons, quite idle physically but with my soul busy up +among the poets. Later on in distant years, when Papa doesn't want me +any more, I shall try to find a little house somewhere where it is flat, +so that I can have other creatures about me besides bees, which are the +only live stock I can keep here. And you mustn't think I shall not be +happy, because I shall. _So happy_. I am happy now, and I mean to be +happy then; and when I am very old and have to die I shall be happy +about that too. I shall 'lay me down with a will,' as the bravest of +your countrymen sang. + +Do my plans seem to you selfish? I expect they do. People so easily call +those selfish who stand a little aside and look on at life. We have a +poet of whom we are proud, but whose fame has not, I think, reached +across to England, a rugged, robust poet, not very far below Goethe, a +painter on large canvasses, best at mighty scenes, perhaps least good in +small things, in lyrics, in the things in which Heine was so exquisite; +and he for my encouragement has said, + + Bei sich selber fangt man an, + Da man nicht Allen helfen kann. + +Isn't it a nice jingle? The man's name is Hebbel, and he lived round +about the forties, and perhaps you know more of him than I do, and I +have been arrogant again; but it is a jingle that has often cheered me +when I was afraid I ought to be teaching somebody something, or making +clothes for somebody, or paying somebody domiciliary visits and talking +fluently of the _lieber Gott_. I shrink from these things; and a +shrinking visitor, shy and uncertain, cannot be so nice as no visitor at +all. Is it very wrong of me? When my conscience says it is--it does not +say so often--I try to make up by going into the kitchen and asking +Johanna kind questions about her mother. I must say she is rather odd +when I do. She not only doesn't meet me half-way, she doesn't come even +part of the way. She clatters her saucepans with an energy very like +fury, and grows wholly monosyllabic. Yet it is not her step-mother; it +is her very own mother, and it ought to be the best way of touching +responsive chords in her heart and making her feel I am not merely a +mistress but a friend. Once, struck by the way the lids of the saucepans +were falling about, I tried her with her father, but the din instantly +became so terrific that I was kept silent quite a long time, and when it +left off felt instinctively that I had better say something about the +weather. I don't think I told you that after that trumpeting Sunday, +moved to real compassion by the sufferings of him you call the fiddler +man, I took my courage in both hands and told Johanna with the +pleasantest of smiles--I daresay it was really a rather ghastly +one--that her trumpeter must not again bring his instrument with him +when he called. 'It can so very well stay at home,' I explained suavely. + +She immediately said she would leave on the first of October. + +'But, Johanna!' I cried. + +She repeated the formula. + +'But, Johanna! How can a clever girl like you be so unreasonable? He is +to visit you as often as before. All we beg is that it shall be done +without music.' + +She repeated the formula. + +'But, Johanna!' I expostulated again,--eloquent exclamation, expressing +the most varied sentiments. + +She once again repeated the formula; and next day I was forced to +descend into Jena, shaking an extremely rueful fist at the neighbor's +house on the way, and set about searching in the obscurity of a registry +office for the pearl we are trying all our lives to find. + +This office consists of two rooms, the first filled with servants +looking for mistresses, and the second with mistresses looking for +servants. A Fraeulein of vague age but determined bearing sits at a desk +in the second room, and notes in a ledger the requirements of both +parties. They are always the same: the would-be mistress, full of a +hopefulness that crops up again and again to the end of her days, +causing attributes like _fleissig, treu, ehrlich, anstaendig, +arbeitslieb, kinderlieb_, to be written down together with her demands +in cooking, starching, and ironing, and often adding the information +that though the wages may appear small they are not really so, owing to +the unusually superior quality of the treatment; and the would-be maid, +briefer because without illusions, dictates her firm resolve to go +nowhere where there is cooking, washing, or a baby. + +'_Gott, diese Maedchen_,' exclaimed a waiting lady to me as I arrived, +hot and ruffled after my long tramp in the sun. I dropped into a chair +beside her; and hot and ruffled as I was, she, who had been sitting +there hours, was still more so. In her agitation she had cried out to +the first human being at hand, the Fraeulein at the desk having something +too distinctly inhuman about her--strange as a result of her long and +intimate intercourse with human beings--to be lightly applied to for +sympathy. Then looking at me again she cried, 'Why, it is the good +Rose-Marie!' And I saw she was an old friend of my step-mother's, Frau +Meyer, the wife of one of the doctors at the Lunatic Asylum, who used to +come in often while you were with us, and whenever she came in you went +out. + +'Not married yet?' she asked as we shook hands, smiling as though the +joke were good. + +I smiled with an equal conviction of its goodness, and said I was not. + +'Not even engaged?' + +'Not even engaged,' said I, smiling more broadly, as if infinitely +tickled. + +'You must be quick,' said she. + +I admitted the necessity by a nod. + +'You are twenty-six--I know your age because poor Emilie'--Emilie was my +step-mother--'was married ten years, and when she married you were +sixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I had +already had four children. What do you think of that?' + +I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to the +waiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean, +honest--' + +'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyer +with a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the first +coffee-party of the season--' + +'What, in summer?' + +'It is not summer in September. If the weather chooses to pretend it is +I cannot help it. It is autumn, and I will no longer endure the want of +social gatherings. Invariably I find the time between the last Coffee of +spring and the first of autumn almost unendurable. What do you do, +Rose-Marie, up there on that horrible mountain of yours, to pass the +time?' + +Pass the time? I who am so much afraid of Time's passing me that I try +to catch at him as he goes, pull him back, make him creep slowly while I +squeeze the full preciousness out of every minute? I gazed at her +abstractedly, haunted by the recollection of flying days, days gone so +quickly, vanished before I well knew how happy I was being. 'I really +couldn't tell you,' I said. + +'Hard-working, clean, honest,--' read out the Fraeulein, reminding me +that I was busy. + +'Moral,' I dictated, 'able to wash--' + +'You will never find one,' interrupted Frau Meyer again. 'At least, +never one who is both moral and able to wash. Two good things don't go +together with these girls, I find. The trouble I am in for want of one! +They are as scarce and as expensive as roses in December. Since April I +have had three, and all had to leave by the merest accident--nothing at +all to do with the place or me; but the ones in there seem to know there +have been three in the time, and make the most extravagant demands. I +have been here the whole morning, and am in despair.' + +She stopped to fan herself with her handkerchief. + +'Able to wash,' I resumed, 'iron, cook, mend--have you any one suitable, +Fraeulein?' + +'Many,' was the laconic answer. + +'I'm afraid we cannot give more than a hundred and sixty marks,' said I. + +'Pooh,' said Frau Meyer; and there was a pause in the scratching of the +pen. + +'But there are no children,' I continued. + +The pen went on more glibly. Frau Meyer fanned herself harder. + +'And only two _Herrschaften_.' + +The pen skimmed over the paper. + +'We live up--we live up on the Galgenberg.' + +The pen stopped dead. + +'You will never find one who will go up there,' cried Frau Meyer +triumphantly. 'I need not fear your taking a good one away from me. They +will not leave the town.' + +The Fraeulein rang a bell and called out a name. 'It is another one for +you, Frau Doctor,' she said; and a large young lady came in from the +other room. 'The general servant Fraeulein Ottilie Krummacher--Frau +Doctor Meyer,' introduced the Fraeulein. 'I think you may suit each +other.' + +'It is time you showed me some one who will,' groaned Frau Meyer. 'Six +have I already interviewed, and the demands of all are enough to make my +mother, who was Frau Gutsbesitzer Grosskopf of the Grosskopfs of +Grosskopfsecke, born Knoblauch, and a lady of the most exact knowledge +in household matters, turn in her grave.' + +'Town?' asked the large girl quickly, hardly allowing Frau Meyer to get +to a full stop, and obviously callous as to the Grosskopfs of +Grosskopfsecke. + +'Yes, yes--here, overlooking the market-place and the interesting statue +of the electoral founder of the University. No way to go, therefore, to +market. Enlivening scenes constantly visible from the windows--' + +'Which floor?' + +'Second. Shallow steps, and a nice balustrade. Really hardly higher than +the first floor, or even than an ordinary ground floor, the rooms being +very low.' + +'Washing?' + +'Done out of the house. Except the smallest, fewest trifles such +as--such as--ahem. The ironing, dear Fraeulein, I will do mostly myself. +There are the shirts, you know--husbands are particular--' + +'How many?' + +'How many?' echoed Frau Meyer. 'How many what?' + +'Husbands.' + +'_Aber_, Fraeulein,' expostulated the secretary. + +'She said husbands,' said the large girl. 'Shirts, then--how many? It's +all the same.' + +'All the same?' cried Frau Meyer, who adored her husband. + +'In the work it makes.' + +'But, dear Fraeulein, the shirts are not washed at home.' + +'But ironed.' + +'I iron them.' + +'And I heat the irons and keep up the fire to heat them with.' + +'Yes, yes,' cried Frau Meyer, affecting the extreme pleasure of one who +has just received an eager assurance, 'so you do.' + +The large girl stared. 'Cooking?' she inquired, after a slightly stony +pause. + +'Most of that I will do myself, also. The Herr is very particular. I +shall only need a little--quite a little assistance. And think of all +the new and excellent dishes you will learn to make.' + +The girl waved this last inducement aside as unworthy of consideration. +'Number of persons in the household?' + +Frau Meyer coughed before she could answer. 'Oh,' said she, 'oh, +well--there is my husband, and naturally myself, and then there +are--there are--are you fond of children?' she ended hastily. + +The girl fixed her with a suspicious eye. 'It depends how many there +are,' she said cautiously. + +Frau Meyer got up and leaned over the Fraeulein at the desk, and +whispered into her impassive ear. + +The Fraeulein shook her head. 'I am afraid it is no use,' she said. + +Frau Meyer whispered again. The Fraeulein looked up, and fastening her +eyes on a point somewhere below the large girl's chin said, 'The wages +are good.' + +'What are they?' asked the girl. + +'Considering the treatment you will receive--' the girl's eyes again +became suspicious--'they are excellent.' + +'What are they?' + +'Everything found, and a hundred and eighty marks a year.' + +The girl turned and walked toward the door. + +'Stop! Stop!' cried Frau Meyer desperately. 'I cannot see you throw away +a good place with so little preliminary reflection. Have you considered +that there would be no trudging to market, and consequently you will +only require half the boots and stockings and skirts those poor girls +have to buy who live up in the villas that look so grand and pretend to +give such high wages?' + +The girl paused. + +'And no steep stairs to climb, laden with heavy baskets? And hardly any +washing--hardly any washing, I tell you!' she almost shrieked in her +anxiety. 'And no cooking to speak of? And every Sunday--mind, _every_ +Sunday evening free? And I never scold, and my husband never scolds, and +with a hundred and eighty marks a year there is nothing a clever girl +cannot buy. Why, it is an ideal, a delightful place--one at which I +would jump if I were a girl, and this lady'--indicating me--'would jump, +too, would you not, Rose-Marie?' + +The girl wavered. 'How many children are there?' she asked. + +'Children? Children? Angels, you mean. They are perfect angels, so good +and well-behaved--are they not, Rose-Marie? Fit to go at once to +heaven--_unberufen_--without a day's more training, so little would they +differ in manner when they got there from angels who have been used to +it for years. You are fond of children, Fraeulein, I am sure. Naturally +you are. I see it in your nice face. No nice Fraeulein is not. And these, +I tell you, are such unusual--' + +'How many are there?' + +'_Ach Gott_, there are only six, and so small still that they can hardly +be counted as six--six of the dearest--' + +The girl turned on her heel. 'I cannot be fond of six,' she said; and +went out with the heavy tread of finality. + +Frau Meyer looked at me. 'There now,' she said, in tones of real +despair. + +'It is very tiresome,' said I, sympathizing the more acutely that I knew +my turn was coming next. + +'Tiresome? It is terrible. In two days I have my Coffee, and no--and +no--and no--' She burst into tears, hiding her face from the +dispassionate stare of the Fraeulein at the desk in her handkerchief, and +trying to conceal her sobs by a ceaseless blowing of her nose. + +'I am so sorry,' I murmured, touched by this utter melting. + +An impulse seized me on which I instantly acted. 'Take Johanna,' I +cried. 'Take her for that day. She will at least get you over that. She +is excellent at a party, and knows all about Coffees. I'll send her down +early, and you keep her as late as you like. She would enjoy the outing, +and we can manage quite well for one day without her.' + +'Is that--is that the Johanna you had in the Rauchgasse?' + +'Yes--trained by my step-mother--really good in an emergency.' + +Frau Meyer flung her arms round my neck. '_Ach danke, danke, Du liebes, +gutes Kind_!' she cried, embracing me with a warmth that showed me what +heaps of people she must have asked to her party. + +And I, after the first flush of doing a good deed was over and cool +reflection had resumed its sway, which it did by the time I was toiling +up the hill on the way home after having been unanimously rejected as +mistress by the assembled maidens, I repented; for was not Johanna now +my only hope? 'Frau Meyer,' whispered Reflection in my despondent ear, +'will engage her to go to her permanently on the 1st, and she will go +because of the twenty marks more salary. You have been silly. Of course +she would have stayed with you with a little persuasion rather than have +to look for another place and spend her money at a registry-office. It +is not likely, however, that she will refuse a situation costing her +nothing.' + +But see how true it sometimes is that virtue is rewarded. Johanna went +down as I had promised, and worked all day for Frau Meyer. She was given +a thaler as a present, as much cake and coffee as she could consume, and +received the offer of a permanent engagement when she should leave us. +This she told me standing by my bedside late that night, the candle in +her hand lighting up her heated, shining face, and hair dishevelled by +exertion. 'But,' said she, 'Fraeulein Rose-Marie, not for the world would +I take the place. Such a restless lady, such a nervous gentleman, such +numbers of spoilt and sprawling children. If I had not been there today +and beheld it from the inside I would have engaged myself to go. But +after this--' she waved the candle--'never.' + +'What are you going to do, then, Johanna?' I asked, thinking wistfully +of the four years we had passed together. + +'Stay here,' she announced defiantly. + +I put my arms round her neck and kissed her. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + +XLV + +Galgenberg, Sept. 23d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Today I went down to Jena with the girl from next +door who wanted to do such mild shopping as Jena is prepared for, mild +shopping suited to mild purses, and there I drifted into the bookshop in +the market-place where I so often used to drift, and there I found a +book dealing with English poetry from Chaucer onward, with pictures of +the poets who had written it. But before I go on about that--and you'll +be surprised at the amount I have to say--I must explain the girl next +door. I don't think I ever told you that there is one. The neighbor let +his house just before he left, and let it unexpectedly well, the people +taking the upper part of it for a whole year, and this is their +daughter. The neighbor went off jubilant to his little inky boys. 'See,' +said he at parting, 'my life actually threatens to become rich without +as well as within.' + +'Don't,' I murmured, turning as hot as people do when they are reminded +of past foolishness. + +The new neighbors have been here ten days, and I made friends at once +with the girl over the fence. She saw me gathering together into one +miserable haycock the September grass Johanna and I had been hacking at +in turns with a sickle for the last week, and stood watching me with so +evident an interest that at last I couldn't help smiling at her. 'This +is our crop for the winter,' I said, pointing to the haycock; I protest +I have seen many a molehill bigger. + +'It isn't much,' said the girl. + +'No,' I agreed, raking busily. + +'Have you a cow?' she asked. + +'No.' + +'A pig?' + +'No.' + +'No animals?' + +'Bees.' + +The girl was silent; then she said bees were not animals. + +'But they're live-stock,' I said. 'They're the one link that connects us +with farming.' + +'What do you make hay for, then?' + +'Only to keep the grass short, and then we try to imagine it's a lawn.' + +Raking, I came a little nearer; and so I saw she had been, quite +recently, crying. + +I looked at her more attentively. She was pretty, with the prettiness of +twenty; round and soft, fair and smooth. She had on an elaborately +masculine shirt and high stiff collar and tie and pin and belt; and from +under the edge of the hard straw hat tilted up at the back by masses of +burnished coils of hair I saw a pulpy red mouth, the tip of an +indeterminate nose, and two unhappy eyes, tired with crying. + +'How early to begin,' I said. + +'Begin what?' + +'It's not nine yet. Do you always get your crying done by breakfast +time?' + +She flushed all over her face. + +'Forgive me,' I said, industriously raking. 'I'm a rude person.' + +The girl was silent for a few moments; considering, I suppose, whether +she should turn her back on the impertinent stranger once and for all, +or forgive the indiscretion and make friends. + +Well, she made friends. She and I, alone up on the hill, the only +creatures of anything like the same age, sure to see each other +continually in the forests, on the road, over the fence, certainly we +were bound either to a tiresome system of pretending to be unaware of +each other's existence or to be friends. We are friends. It is the +wisest thing to be at all times. In ten days we have become fast +friends, and after the first six she left off crying. + +Now I'll tell you why we have done it so quickly. It is not, as perhaps +you know, my practice to fall easily on the stranger's neck. I am too +lumbering, too slow, too acutely conscious of my shortcomings for that; +really too dull and too awkward for anything but a life almost entirely +solitary. But this girl has lately been in love. It is the common fate. +It happens to us all. That in itself would not stir me to friendship. +The man, however, in defiance of German custom, so strong on this point +that the breaking of it makes a terrific noise, after being publicly +engaged to her, after letting things go so far that the new flat was +furnished, and the wedding-guests bidden, said he was afraid he didn't +love her enough and gave her up. + +When she told me that my heart went out to her with a rush. I shall not +stop to explain why, but it did rush, and from that moment I felt that I +must put my arms round her, I, the elder and quieter, take her by the +hand, help her to dry her poor silly eyes, pet her and make her happy +again. And really after six days there was no more crying, and for the +last three she has been looking at life with something of the critical +indifference that lifts one over so many tiresome bits of the road. +Unfortunately her mother doesn't like me. Don't you think it's dreadful +of her not to? She fears I am emancipated, and knows that I am Schmidt. +If I were a Wedel, or an Alvensleben, or a Schulenburg, or of any other +ancient noble family, even an obscure member of its remotest branch, she +would consider my way of living and talking merely as a thing to be +smiled at with kind indulgence. But she knows that I am Schmidt. Nothing +I can say or do, however sweet and sane, can hide that horrid fact. And +she knows that my father is a careless child of nature, lamentably +unimpressible by birth and office; that my mother was an Englishwoman +with a name inspiring little confidence; and that we let ourselves go to +an indecent indifference to appearances, not even trying to conceal that +we are poor. How useless it is to be pleasant and pretty--I really have +been very pleasant to her, and the daughter kindly tells me I am +pretty--if you are both Schmidt and poor. Though I speak with the +tongues of angels and have no family it avails me nothing. If I had +family and no charity I would get on much better in the world, in +defiance of St. Paul. Frau von Lindeberg would take me to her heart, +think me distinguished where now she thinks me odd, think me witty where +now she thinks me bold, listen to my speeches, laugh at my sallies, be +interested in my gardening and in my efforts to live without meat; but +here I am, burning, I hope, with charity, with love for my neighbors, +with ready sympathy, eager friendliness, desire to be of use, and it all +avails me nothing because my name is Schmidt. + +It is the first time I have been brought into daily contact with our +nobility. In Jena there were very few: rare bright spots here and there +on the sober background of academic middle-class; little stars whose +shining even from a distance made us blink. Now I see them every day, +and find them very chilly and not in the least dazzling. I no longer +blink. Perhaps Frau von Lindeberg feels that I do not, and cannot +forgive an unblinking Schmidt. But really, now, these pretensions are +very absurd. The free blood of the Watsons surges within me at the sight +of them. I think of things like Albion's daughters, and Britannia ruling +waves, and I feel somehow that it is a proud thing to be partly Watson +and to have had progenitors who lived in a house called The Acacias in a +street called Plantagenet Road, which is what the Watsons did. What +claims have these Lindebergs to the breathless, nay, sprawling respect +they apparently demand? Here is a retired Colonel who was an officer all +his life, and, not clever enough to go on to the higher military +positions, was obliged to retire at fifty. He belongs to a good family, +and married some one of slightly better birth than his own. She was a +Freiin--Free Lady--von Dammerlitz, a family, says Papa, large, +unpleasant, and mortgaged. It has given Germany no great warriors or +statesmen. Its sons have all been officers who did not turn that corner +round which the higher honors lie, and its daughters either did not +marry at all, being portionless, or married impossible persons, said +Papa, such as-- + +'Such as?' I inquired, expecting to hear they married postmen. + +'Pastors, my dear,' said Papa smiling. + +'Pastors?' I said, surprised, pastors having seemed to me, who view them +from their own level, eminently respectable and desirable as husbands. + +'But not from the Dammerlitz point of view, my dear,' said Papa. + +'Oh,' said I, trying to imagine how pastors would look seen from that. + +Well, here are these people freezing us into what they consider our +proper place whenever we come across them, taking no pains to hide what +undesirable beings we are in their sight, staring at Papa's hat in +eloquent silence when it is more than usually tilted over one ear, +running eyes that chill my blood over my fustian clothes--I'm not sure +what fustian is, but I'm quite sure my clothes are made of it--oddly +deaf when we say anything, oddly blind when we meet anywhere unless we +actually run into them, here they are, doing all these things every day +with a repeated gusto, and with no reason whatever that I can see to +support their pretensions. Is it so wonderful to be a _von_? For that is +all, look as I will, that I can see they have to go on. They are poor, +as the retired officer invariably is, and they spend much time +pretending they are not. They know nothing; he has spent his best years +preoccupied with the routine of his calling, which leaves no room for +anything approaching study or interest in other things, she in bringing +up her son, also an officer, and in taking her daughter to those parties +in Berlin that so closely resemble, I gather from the girl Vicki's talk, +the parties in Jena--a little wider, a little more varied, with more +cups and glasses, and with, of course, the chance we do not have in Jena +of seeing some one quite new, but on the whole the same. He is a solemn +elderly person in a black-rimmed _pince-nez_, dressed in clothes that +give one the impression of always being black. He vegetates as +completely as any one I have ever seen or dreamed of. Prolonged coffee +in the morning, prolonged newspaper-reading, and a tortoise-like turn in +the garden kill his mornings. Dinner, says Vicki, kills another hour and +a half; then there is what we call the Dinner Sleep on the sofa in his +darkened room, and that brings him to coffee time. They sit over the +cups till Vicki wants to scream, at least she wants to since she has +known me, she says; up to then, after her miserable affair, she sat as +sluggishly as the others, but huddled while they were straight, and +red-eyed, which they were not. After coffee the parents walk up the road +to a certain point, and walk back again. Then comes the evening paper, +which he reads till supper-time, and after supper he smokes till he goes +to bed. + +'Why, he's hardly alive at all,' I said to Vicki, when she described +this existence. + +She shrugged her shoulders. 'It's what they all do,' she said, 'all the +retired. I've seen it a hundred times in Berlin. They're old, and they +never can start anything fresh.' + +'We won't be like that when we're old, will we?' I said, gazing at her +wide-eyed, struck as by a vision. + +She gazed back into my eyes, misgiving creeping, into hers. 'Sleep, and +eat, and read the paper?' she murmured. + +'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper?' I echoed. + +And we stared at each other in silence, and the far-away dim years +seemed to catch up what we had said, and mournfully droned back, 'Sleep, +and eat, and read the paper....' + +But what is to be done with girls of good family who do not marry, and +have no money? They can't go governessing, and indeed it is a dreary +trade. Vicki has learned nothing except a little cooking and other +domestic drudgery, only of use if you have a house to drudge in and a +husband to drudge for; of those pursuits that bring in money and make +you independent and cause you to flourish and keep green and lusty she +knows nothing. If I had a daughter I would bring her up with an eye +fixed entirely on a husbandless future. She should be taught some trade +as carefully as any boy. Her head should be filled with as much learning +as it would conveniently hold side by side with a proper interest in +ribbons. I would spend my days impressing her with the gloriousness of +independence, of having her time entirely at her own disposal, her life +free and clear, the world open before her, as open as it was to Adam and +Eve when they turned their backs once and for all on the cloying +sweetness of Paradise, and far more interesting that it was to them, for +it would be full of inhabitants eager to give her the hearty welcome +always awaiting those rare persons, the cheery and the brave. + +'Oh,' sighed Vicki, when with great eloquence and considerable +elaboration I unfolded these views, 'how beautiful!' + +Papa was nearer the open window under which we were sitting than I had +thought, for he suddenly popped out his head. 'It is a merciful thing, +Rose-Marie,' he said, 'that you have no daughter.' + +We both jumped. + +'She would be a most dreary young female,' he went on, smiling down as +from a pulpit on our heads, and wiping his spectacles. 'Offspring +continually goaded and galvanized by a parent, hammered upon, chiselled, +beaten out flat--' + +'Dear me, Papachen,' I murmured. + +'Beaten out flat,' said Papa, waving my interruption aside with his +spectacles, 'by the dead weight of opinions already stale, the victims +of a system, the subjects of an experiment, the prisoners of prejudice, +are bound either to flare into rank rebellion on the first opportunity +or to grow continually drearier and more conspicuously stupid.' + +Vicki stared first up at Papa then at me, her soft, crumpled sort of +mouth twisted into troubled surprise. + +Papa leaned further out and hit the window sill with his hand for all +the world like a parson hitting his pulpit's cushion. 'One word,' he +said, 'one word of praise or blame, one single word from an outsider +will have more effect upon your offspring than years of trouble taken by +yourself, mountains of doctrine preached by you, rivers of good advice, +oceans of exhortations, cautions as numerous as Abraham's posterity, +well known to have been as numerous as the sea sand, private prayers, +and public admonition.' + +And he disappeared with a jerk. + +'_Ach_,' said Vicki, much impressed. + +Papa popped out his head again. 'You may believe me, Rose-Marie,' he +said. + +'I do, Papachen,' said I. + +'You have to thank me for much.' + +'And I do,' said I heartily, smiling up at him. + +'But for nothing more than for leaving you free to put forth such shoots +as your nature demanded in whatever direction your instincts propelled +you.' And he disappeared and shut the window. + +Vicki looked at me doubtfully. 'You said beautiful things,' she said, +'and he said just the opposite. Which is true?' + +'Both,' said I promptly, determined not to be outdone as a prophet by +Papa. + +Poor Vicki. It is so hard to have life turned into a smudge when one is +only twenty. She adored this man, was so proud of him, so proud of +herself for being chosen by him. She grew, in the year during which they +were engaged, into a woman, and can never now retrace her steps back to +that fairy place of sunshine and carelessness in which we so happily +wander if we are left alone for years and years after we are supposed to +be grown up. Do you realize what a blow in the face she has received, as +well as in her unfortunate little heart? All her vanities, without which +a girl is but a poor thing, shrivelled up, her self-respect gone, her +conceit, if there was any, and I suppose there was because there always +is, gone headlong after it. A betrothal here is almost as binding and +quite as solemn as a marriage. It is announced in the papers. It is +abundantly celebrated. And the parents on both sides fall on each +other's necks and think highly of one another till the moment comes for +making settlements. The Lindebergs spent all they had laid by and +borrowed more to buy the trousseau and furnish the house. Vicki cried +bitterly when she talked of her table-napkins. She says there were +twelve dozen in twelve different patterns, and each twelve was tied up +with a pink ribbon fastened by a buckle and a bow. They had to be sold +again at a grievous loss, and the family fled from Berlin and the faces +of their acquaintances, faces crooked with the effort to sympathize when +what they really wanted to do, says Vicki, was to smile, and came to +this cheap place where they can sit in obscurity darning up the holes in +their damaged fortunes. Frau von Lindeberg, who has none of the torment +of rejected love to occupy her feelings and all the bitterness of the +social and financial blow, cannot help saying hard things to Vicki, +things pointed and poisoned with reproaches that sometimes almost verge +on taunts. The man was a good _parti_ for Vicki; little money, but much +promise for the future, a good deal older than herself and already +brilliant as an officer; and during the engagement the satisfied mother +overflowed, as mothers will, with love for the creditable daughter. 'It +was so nice,' said Vicki-, dolefully sniffing. 'She seemed to love me +almost as much as she loves my brother. I was so happy. I had so much. +Then everything went at once. Mamma can't bear to think that no one will +ever want to marry me now, because I have been engaged.' + +Well, love is a cruel, horrible thing. Hardly ever do both the persons +love with equal enthusiasm, and if they do what is the use? It is all +bound to end in smoke and nothingness, put out by the steady drizzle of +marriage. And for the others, for the masses of people who do not love +equally, of whom one half is at a miserable disadvantage, at the mercy +absolutely of the other half, what is there but pain in the end? And +yet--and yet it is a pretty thing in its beginnings, a sweet, darling +thing. But, like a kitten, all charm and delicious ways at first, +innocent, soft, enchanting, it turns into a cat with appalling rapidity +and cruelly claws you. I'd like to know if there's a single being on +earth so happy and so indifferent that he has not got hidden away +beneath a brave show of clothes and trimmings the mark of Love's claws. +And I think most of the clawings are so ferocious that they are for a +long time ghastly tears that open and bleed again; and when with years +they slowly dry up there is always the scar, red and terrible, that +makes you wince if by any chance it is touched. That is what I think. +What do you think? + +Good-by. + +No, don't tell me what you think. I don't want to know. + + + +XLVI + +Galgenberg, Sept. 24th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yesterday I was so much absorbed by Vicki's woes +that I never got to what I really wanted to write about. It's that book +I found in the Jena bookshop. It was second-hand and cheap, and I bought +it, and it has unkindly revenged itself by playing havoc with my +illusions. It is a collection of descriptions of what is known of the +lives of the English poets, beginning with Chaucer, who is luckily too +far away to provide much tattle, and coming down the centuries growing +bigger with gossip as it comes, till it ends with Rossetti, and +FitzGerald, and Stevenson. Each poet has his portrait. It was for that I +bought it. I cannot tell you how eagerly I looked at them. At last I was +going to see what Wordsworth looked like, and Coleridge, and Keats, and +Shelley. One of my dreams has been to go to that National Portrait +Gallery of yours in London, described in an old Baedeker I once saw, and +gaze at the faces of those whose spirits I know so well. Now I don't +want to. Can you imagine what it is like, what an extremely blessed +state it is, only to have read the works of a poet, the filtered-out +best of him, and to have lived so far from his country and from +biographies or collections of his letters that all gossip about his +private life and criticisms of his morals are unknown to you? Milton, +Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Burns, have been to me great teachers, great +examples, before whose shining image, built up out of the radiant +materials their works provided, I have spent glorious hours in worship. +Not a cloud, not a misgiving has dimmed my worship. We need +altars--anyhow we women do--and they were mine--I have not been able to +be religious in the ordinary sense, and they have taken the place of +religion. Our own best poets, Goethe, Schiller, Heine and the rest, do +not appeal to me in the same way. Goethe is wonderful, but he leaves you +sitting somehow in a cold place from which you call out at intervals +with conviction that he is immense the while you wish he would keep the +feet of your soul a little warmer. Schiller beats his patriotic drum, +his fine eyes rolling continually toward the gallery, too +unintermittently for perfect delight. Heine the exquisite, the cunning +worker in gems, the stringer of pearls on frailest golden threads, is +too mischievous, too malicious, to be set up in a temple; and then you +can't help laughing at his extraordinary gift for maddening the +respectable, at the extraordinary skill and neatness with which he +deposits poison in their tenderest places, and how can he worship who is +being made to laugh? If I knew little about our poets' lives--inevitably +I know more than I want to--I still would feel the same. There is, I +think, in their poetry nothing heavenly. It is true I bless God for +them, thank Him for having let them live and sing, for having given us +such a noble heritage, but I can't go all the way Papa goes, and melt in +a bath of rapture whenever Goethe's name is mentioned. I remember what +you said about Goethe. It has not influenced me. I do think you were +wrong. But I do, too, think that everything really heavenly in our +nation, everything purely inspired, manifestly immortal, has gone, not +into our poetry but into our music. That has absorbed our whole share of +divine fire, and left our poets nothing but the cool and conscious +exercise of their intellects. + +Well, I am preaching. I would make a very arrogant parson, wouldn't I, +laying down the law more often than the prophets from that safe citadel, +a pulpit; but please have patience, for I want you to comfort me. The +book really has made me unhappy. It is the kind of book you must go on +reading,--angry, rebelling at every page, but never leaving it till +you've reached the last word. Then you throw it as hard as you can into +the furthest corner of the room, and shake yourself as a dog does, come +up out of muddy water, and think to shake it off as easily as he does +his mud; but you can't, because it has burned itself into your soul. I +don't suppose you will understand what I feel. When a person possesses +very few things those few things are terribly precious. See the mother +of the only child, and compare her conduct when it coughs with the +conduct of the mother of six, all coughing. See how one agonizes; and +see with what serenity the other brings out her bottle of mixture and +pours it calmly down her children's throats. Well, I'm like the first +mother, and you are like the second. I expect you knew long ago, and +have never minded knowing, the littlenesses of my gods; but I, I felt as +unsettled while I read about them, as uneasy, as fidgety, as frightened, +as a horse being driven by somebody cruel, which knows that every minute +the lash will come down in some fresh place. Think: I knew nothing about +Harriet Westbrook and her tragic life and death; I had never heard of +Emilia Viviani; of Mary; of her whose name was Eliza, but who soared +aloft in the sunshine of Shelley's admiration re-christened Portia, only +presently to descend once more into the font and come out luridly as the +Brown Demon. I never knew that Keats loved somebody called Brawne, and +that she was unwilling, that she saw little in him, in Endymion the +godlike, the divinely gifted, and that he was so persistent, so +unworthily persistent, that the only word I can find that at all +describes it is the German _zappelnd._ I had never heard of Jean Armour, +of the headlong descent from being 'him who walked in glory and in joy, +Following his plough along the mountain-side' to hopeless black years +spent in public-houses at the beck and call--think of it, think of the +divine spirit forced to it by its body--of any one who would pay for a +drink. I never knew about Coleridge's opium, or that to Carlyle he +appeared as a helpless Psyche overspun with Church of England cobwebs, +as a weak, diffusive, weltering, ineffectual man. I never knew that +Wordsworth's greeting was a languid handful of numb, unresponsive +fingers, that his speech was prolix, thin, endlessly diluted. I never +knew that Milton had three wives, that the first one ran away from him a +month after their marriage, that he was hard to his daughters, so hard +that they wished him dead. All these things I never knew; and for years +I have been walking with glorious spirits, and have been fed on +honey-dew, and drunk the milk of Paradise. When first I saw Wordsworth's +portrait I turned cold. Don't laugh; I did actually turn cold. He had +been so much in my life. I had pictured him so wonderful. Calm; +beautiful, with the loftiest kind of beauty; faintly frosty at times, +and detached, yet gently cheery and always dignified. It is the picture +from a portrait by some one called Hancock. Very bitterly do I dislike +Hancock. It is a profile. It would, if I had seen it in the flesh, +completely have hidden from my silly short sight the inner splendors. +I'm afraid--oh, I'm afraid, and I shiver with shame to think it--that I +would have regarded him only as an elderly gentleman of irreproachable +character out of whose way it was as well to get because he showed every +sign of being a bore. Will you think me irretrievably silly when I tell +you that I cried over that picture? For one dreadful moment I stared at +it in startled horror; then I banged the book to and fled up into the +forest to cry. There was a smugness--but no, I won't think of it. I'll +upset all my theories about the face being the mirror of the soul. It +can't be. If it is, Peter Bell and The Thorn are accounted for; but who +shall account for the bleak nobility, the communings with nature on +lofty heights in the light of setting suns? Or, when he comes down +nearer, for that bright world he unlocks of things dear to memory, of +home, of childhood, of quiet places, of calm affections? And for the +tenderness with which it is done? And for its beautiful, simple +goodness? + +Coleridge's picture was another disillusionment, but not so great a +shock, because I have loved him less. He was so rarely inspired. I don't +think you need more than the fingers of one hand for the doing of sums +with Coleridge's inspirations. Still, it saddened me to be told he was a +helpless Psyche. I didn't like to hear about his cobwebs. I hated being +forced to know of his weakness, of his wasted life growing steadily +dingier the farther he travelled from that East that had seen him set +out so bright with morning radiance. Really, the world would be a +peaceful place if we could only keep quiet about each other's weak +points. Why are we so restless till we have pulled down, belittled, +besmudged? You'll say that without a little malice talk would grow very +dull; you'll tell me it is the salt, the froth, the sparkle, the ginger +in the ginger-beer, the mustard in the sandwich. But you must admit that +it becomes only terrible when it can't leave the few truly great spirits +alone, when it must somehow drag them down to our lower level, pointing +out--in writing, so that posterity too shall have no illusions--the +spots on the sun, the weak places in the armor, and pushing us, who want +to be left alone praying in the fore-court of the temple, down the area +steps into the kitchen. Two nights and two days have I spent feverishly +with that book. I dare not hope that I shall forget it. I have never yet +forgotten undesirable, bad things. Now, when I take my poets up with me +into the forest, and sit on one of those dusky pine-grown slopes where +the light is subdued to a mysterious gray-green and the world is quieted +into a listening silence, and far away below the roofs of Jena glisten +in the sun, and the white butterflies, like white flowers come to life, +flutter after each other across the blue curtain of heat that hangs +beyond the trees, now when I open them and begin to read the noble, +familiar words, will not those other words, those anecdotes, those +personal descriptions, those suggestions, those button-holings, leer at +me between the lines? Shall I, straining my ears after the music, not be +shown now for ever only the instrument, and how pitifully the ivory has +come off the keys? Shall I, hungering after my spiritual food, not have +pushed upon my notice, so that I am forced to look, the saucepan, +tarnished and not quite clean, in which it was cooked? Please don't tell +me you can't understand. Try to imagine yourself in my place. Come out +of that gay world of yours where you are talking or being talked to all +day long, and suppose yourself Rose-Marie Schmidt, alone in Jena, on a +hill, with books. Suppose yourself for hours and hours every day of your +life with nothing particular that you must do, that you have no +shooting, no hunting, no newspapers, no novels. Suppose you are +passionately fond of reading, and that of all reading you most love +poetry. Suppose you have inherited from a mother who loved them as much +as you do a precious shelf-full of the poets, cheap editions, entirely +free from the blight of commentaries, foot-notes, and introductory +biographies. And suppose these books in the course of years have become +your religion, your guide, the source of your best thoughts and happiest +moments--would you look on placidly while some one scrawled malicious +truths between their lines? Oh, you would not. You would feel as I do. +Think what the writers are to me, how I have built up their +personalities entirely out of the materials they gave me in their work. +They never told me horrid things about themselves. Their spirits, which +alone they talked about, were serene and white. I knew Milton was blind, +because he chose beautifully to tell me so. I knew he must have been an +appreciative and regretful husband, because no husband who did not +appreciate and regret would go so far as to talk of his deceased wife as +his late espoused saint. I knew he was a tender friend, a friend capable +of deepest love and sorrow, for in spite of Johnson's 'It is not to be +considered as the effusion of real passion,' I was convinced by the love +and sorrow of 'Lycidas.' I knew he was a man whose spirit was dissolved +continually into the highest ecstasies, who lived with all heaven before +his eyes,--briefly, I said Amen to Wordsworth's 'His soul was like a +star, and dwelt apart.' And now a series of sordid little pictures rises +up before me and chokes my Amen. I cannot bear to think of him having +two or three olives for supper and a little cold water, and then being +cross to his daughters. Of course he must be cross on such a supper. I +can't conceive it kind to drill the daughters so strictly in languages +they did not understand that they could read them aloud to him with +extraordinary correctness. I shrink from the thought of the grumbling +there was in that house of heavenly visions, grumbling and squabbling +stamped out, it is true, by the heavy parental foot wherever noticed, +but smouldering on from one occasion to the other. I cannot believe--I +wish I could--that a child will dislike a parent without cause; the +cause may be small things, a series of trifles each of little moment, +snubs too often repeated, chills too often applied, stern looks, short +words, sarcasms,--and these, as you and I both know, are quite ordinary +dulnesses, often daily ingredients of family life; but they sit with a +strange and upsetting grace on the poet of Paradise, and I would give +anything never to have heard of them. + +And then you know I loved FitzGerald. He had one of my best altars. You +remember you read _Omar Khayyam_ twice aloud to me--once in the spring +(it was the third of April, a sudden hot day, blue and joyous, slipped +in to show God had not forgotten us between weeks of hopeless skies and +icy winds) and once last September, that afternoon we drifted down the +river past the town, away from houses and people and work and lessons, +out to where the partridges scuttled across the stubble and all the +world was golden. (That was the eleventh of September; I am rather good, +you see, at dates.) Well, now I call him Fitz, and laugh at the +description of him going about Suffolk lanes in a battered tall hat tied +on in windy weather by a handkerchief, and trailing behind him, instead +of clouds of glory, a shawl of green and black plaid. It isn't, of +course, in any way a bad thing to trail shawls after you on country +walks; there is nothing about it or him that shocks or grieves; he is +very lovable. But I don't want to laugh. I don't want to call him Fitz. +He is one of the gods in my temple, a place from which I rigorously +exclude the sense of humor. I don't like gods who are amusing. I cannot +worship and laugh simultaneously. I know that laughter is good, and I +know that even derision in small quantities is as wholesome as salt; but +I like to laugh and deride outside holy places, and not be forced to do +it while I am on my knees. + +Now don't say What on earth does the woman want? because it seems to me +so plain. What the woman wants is that present and future poets should +wrap themselves sternly in an impenetrable veil of anonymity. They +won't, but she can go on praying that they will. They won't, because of +the power of the passing moment, because of the pleasantness of praise, +of recognition, of personal influence, and, I suppose, but I'm not sure, +of money. Do you remember that merry rhymer Prior, how he sang + + 'Tis long ago + Since gods came down incognito? + +Well, I wish with all my heart they had gone on doing it a little +longer. He wasn't, I think, deploring what I deplore, the absence of a +sense for the anonymous in gods, of a sense of the dignity of +separation, of retirement, of mystery, wherever there is even one spark +of the Divine; I think he thought they had all been, and that neither +incognito nor in any other form would they appear again. He implied, and +so joined himself across the centuries to the Walrus and the Carpenter, +that there were no gods to come. Well, he has been dead over a hundred +and eighty years, and they have simply flocked since then. I'd like to +write the great names on this page, the names of the poets, first and +greatest of the gods, to raise it to dignity and confound the ghost of +Prior, but I won't out of consideration for you. + +Does not my enthusiasm, my mountain energy, make you groan with the +deadly fatigue of him who has to listen and cannot share? I'll leave +off. My letter is growing unbecomingly fat. The air up here is so +bracing that my very unhappinesses seem after all full of zest, very +vocal, healthy griefs, really almost enjoying themselves. I'll go back +to my pots. I'm busy today, though you mightn't think it, making apple +jelly out of our very own apples. I'll go back to my pots and +forget--no, I won't make a feeble joke I was just going to make, because +of what I know your face would look like when you read it. After all, I +believe I'm more than a little bit frightened of you. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLVII + +Galgenberg, Sept. 30th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--How nice of you to be so kind, to write so +consolingly, to be so patient in explaining where I am thinking wrong. I +burned the book in the kitchen fire, and felt great satisfaction in +clearing the house of its presence. You are right; I have no concern +with the body of a poet--all my concern is with his soul, and the two +shall be severely separated. I am glad you agree with me that poets +should be anonymous, but you seem to have even less hope that they ever +will be than I have. At least I pray that they may; you apparently take +no steps whatever to bring it about. You say that experience teaches +that we must not expect too much of gods; that the possible pangs of +posterity often leave them cold; that they are blind to the merits of +bushels, and discern neither honor nor profit in the use of those +vessels of extinguishment; you fear that they will not change, and you +exhort me to see to it that their weakness shall not be an occasion for +my stumbling. That is very sensible advice. But before your kind letter +came a few fresh autumn mornings had cleared a good deal of my first +dejection away. If the gods won't hide themselves I can after all shut +my eyes. If I may not rejoice in the divine in them with undistracted +attention I will try at least to get all the warmth I can from its +burning. And I can imitate my own dainty and diligent bees, and take +care to be absorbed only in their honey. You make me ashamed of my folly +in thinking I could never read Burns again now that I know about his +sins. I did secretly think so. I was sure of it. I felt quite sick to +see him tumbled from his altar into the mud. Your letter shows me that +once again I have been foolish. Why, it has verged on idiocy. I myself +have laughed at people in Jena, strictly pious people, who will not read +Goethe, who have a personally vindictive feeling against him because of +his different love-affairs, and I have listened astonished to the fury +with which the proposal of a few universal-minded persons to give Heine +a statue was opposed, and to the tone almost of hatred with which one +man whenever his name is mentioned calls out _Schmutzfink_. About our +poets I have been from the beginning quite sane. But yours were somehow +more sacred to me; sacred, I suppose, because they were more mysterious, +more distant,--glorious angel-trumpets through which God sent His +messages. I was so glad, I whose tendency is, I am afraid, to laugh and +criticise, to possess one thing at which I could not laugh, to have a +whole tract of beauty in which I could walk seriously, with downcast +eyes; and I thought I was never going to be able to be serious there +again. It was a passing fit, a violent revulsion. If I like carefully to +separate my own soul and body, why should I not do the same with those +of other sinners? It has always seemed to me so quaint the way we admit, +the good nature with which we reiterate, that we are all wretched +sinners. We do it with such an immense complacency. We agree so +heartily, with such comfortable, regretful sighs, when anybody tells us +so; but with only one wretched sinner are we of a real patience. With +him, indeed, our patience is boundless. I know this, I have always known +it, and I will not now, at an age when it is my hope to grow every year +a little better, forget it and be as insolently intolerant as the man +who shudders at the name of Heine, will not read a line of him and calls +him _Schmutzfink_. That writer's books you tell me about, the books the +virtuous in England will not read because his private life was +disgraceful, beautiful books, you say, into which went his best, in +which his spirit showed how bright it was, how he had kept it apart and +clean, I shall get them all and read them all. No sinner, cursed with a +body at variance with his soul and able in spite of it to hear the music +of heaven and give it exquisite expression, shall ever again be +identified by me with what at such great pains he has kept white. I know +at least three German writers to whom the same thing happened, men who +live badly and write nobly. My heart goes out to them. I think of them +lame and handicapped, leading their Muse by the hand with anxious care +so that her shining feet, set among the grass and daisies along the +roadside, shall not be dimmed by the foulness through which they +themselves are splashing. They are caked with impurities, but with the +tenderest watchfulness they keep her clean. She is their gift to the +world, the gift of their best, of their angel, of their share of +divinity. And the respectable, afraid for their respectability, turn +their backs in horror and go and read without blinking ugly things +written by other respectables. Why, no priest at the altar, however +unworthy, can hinder the worshipper from taking away with him as great a +load of blessings as he will carry. And a rose is not less lovely +because its roots are in corruption. And God Himself was found once in a +manger. Thank you, and good-by. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLVIII + +Galgenberg, Oct. 8th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--We are very happy here just now because Papa's new +book, at which he has been working two years, is finished. I am copying +it out, and until that is done we shall indulge in the pleasantest +day-dreams. It is our time, this interval between the finishing of a +book of his and its offer to a publisher, for being riotously happy. We +build the most outrageous castles in the air. Nothing is certain, and +everything is possible. The pains of composition are over, and the pains +of rejection are not begun. Each time we suppose they never will, and +that at last ears will be found respectfully ready to absorb his views. +Few and far between have the ears been till now. His books have fallen +as flat as books can fall. Nobody wanted to hear all, or even half, that +he could tell them about Goethe. Jena shrugged its shoulders, the larger +world was blank. The books have brought us no fame, no money, some +tragic hours, but much interest and amusement. Always tragic hours have +come when Papa clutched at his hair and raved rude things about the +German public; and when the money didn't appear there have been +uncomfortable moments. But these pass; Papa leaves his hair alone; and +the balance remains on the side of nice things. We don't really want any +more money, and Papa is kept busy and happy, and just to see him so +eager, so full of his work, seems to warm the house with pleasant +sunshine. Once, for one book, a check did come; and when we all rushed +to look we found it was for two marks and thirty pfennings--' being the +amount due,' said the accompanying stony letter, 'on royalties for the +first year of publication.' Papa thought this much worse than no check +at all, and took it round to the publisher in the molten frame of mind +of one who has been insulted. The publisher put his thumbs in the +armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, gazed with +refreshing coolness at Papa who was very hot, and said that as trade +went it was quite a good check and that he had sent one that very +morning to another author--a Jena celebrity who employs his leisure +writing books about the Universe--for ninety pfennings. + +Papa came home beaming with the delicious feeling that money was flowing +in and that he was having a boom. The universe man was a contemptuous +acquaintance who had been heard to speak lightly of Papa's books. Papa +felt all the sweetness of success, of triumph over a disagreeable rival; +and since then we have looked upon that special book as his _opus +magnum_. + +While I copy he comes in and out to ask me where I have got to and if I +like it. I assure him that I think it delightful, and so honestly I do +in a way, but I don't think it will be the public's way. It begins by +telling the reader, presumably a person in search of information about +Goethe, that Jena is a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom +nineteen thousand are apparently professors. The town certainly does +give you that impression as you walk about its little streets and at +every corner meet the same battered-looking persons in black you met at +the corner before, but what has that to do with Goethe? And the pages +that follow have nothing to do with him either that I can see, being a +disquisition on the origin and evolution of the felt hats the professors +wear--dingy, slouchy things--winding up with an explanation of their +symbolism and inevitableness, based on a carefully drawn parallel +between them and the kind of brains they have to cover. From this point, +the point of the head-wear of the learned in our present year, he has to +work back all the way to Goethe in Jena a century ago. It takes him +several chapters to get back, for he doesn't go straight, being +constitutionally unable to resist turning aside down the green lanes of +moralizing that branch so seductively off the main road and lead him at +last very far afield; and when he does arrive he is rather breathless, +and flutters for some time round the impassive giant waiting to be +described, jerking out little anecdotes, very pleasant little anecdotes, +but quite unconnected with his patient subject, before he has got his +wind and can begin. + +He is rosy with hope about this book. 'All Jena will read it,' he says, +'because they will like to hear about themselves'--I wonder if they +will--'and all Germany will read it because it will like to hear about +Goethe.' + +'It has heard a good deal about him already, you know Papachen,' I say, +trying gently to suggest certain possibilities. + +'England might like to have it. There has been nothing since that man +Lewes, and never anything really thorough. A good translation, +Rose-Marie--what do you think of that as an agreeable task for you +during the approaching winter evenings? It is a matter worthy of +consideration. You will like a share in the work, a finger in the +literary pie, will you not?' + +'Of course I would. But let me copy now, darling. I'm not half through.' + +He says that if those blind and prejudiced persons, publishers, won't +risk bringing it out he'll bring it out at his own expense sooner than +prevent the world's rightly knowing what Goethe said and did in Jena; so +there's a serious eventuality ahead of us! We really will have to live +on lettuces, and in grimmest earnest this time. I hope he won't want to +keep race-horses next. Well, one thing has happened that will go a +little way toward meeting new expenses,--I go down every day now and +read English with Vicki, at the desire of her mother, for two hours, her +mother having come to the conclusion that it is better to legalize, as +it were, my relations with Vicki who flatly refused to keep away from +us. So I am a bread-winner, and can do something to help Papa. It is +true I can't help much, for what I earn is fifty pfennings each time, +and as the reading of English on Sundays is not considered nice I can +only altogether make three marks a week. But it is something, and it is +easily earned, and last Sunday, which was the end of my first week, I +bought the whole of the Sunday food with it, dinner and supper for us, +and beer for Johanna's lover, who says he cannot love her unless the +beer is a particular sort and has been kept for a fortnight properly +cold in the coal-hole. + +Since I have read with Vicki Frau von Lindeberg is quite different. She +is courteous with the careful courtesy decent people show their +dependents; kindly, even gracious at times. She is present at the +reading, darning socks and ancient sheets with her carefully kept +fingers, and she treats me absolutely as though I were attached to her +household as governess. She is no longer afraid we will want to be +equals. She asks me quite often after the health of him she calls my +good father. And when a cousin of hers came last week to stay a night, a +female Dammerlitz on her way to a place where you drink waters and get +rid of yourself, she presented me to her with pleasant condescension as +the _kleine Englaenderin_ engaged as her daughter's companion. '_Eine +recht Hebe Hausgenossin,'_ she was pleased to add, gently nodding her +head at each word; and the cousin went away convinced I was a resident +official and that the tales she had heard about the Lindeberg's poverty +couldn't be true. + +'It's not scriptural,' I complained to Vicki, stirred to honest +indignation. + +'You mean, to say things not quite--not quite?' said Vicki. + +'Such big ones,' I fumed. 'I'm not little. I'm not English. I'm not a +_Hausgenossin_. Why such unnecessary ones?' + +'Now, Rose-Marie, you do know why Mamma said "little."' + +'It's a term of condescension?' + +'And _Englaenderins_ are rather grand things to have in the house, you +know--expensive, I mean. Always dearer than natives. Mamma only wants +Cousin Mienchen to suppose we are well off.' + +'Oh,' said I. + +'You don't mind?' said Vicki, rather timidly taking my hand. + +'It doesn't hurt me,' said I, putting a little stress on the me, a +stress implying infinite possible hurt to Frau von Lindeberg's soul. + +'It is horrid,' murmured Vicki, her head drooping over her book. 'I wish +we didn't always pretend we're not poor. We are. Poor as mice. And it +makes us so sensitive about it, so afraid of anything's being noticed. +We spend our lives on tenterhooks--not nice things at all to spend one's +life on.' + +'Wriggly, uncomfortable things,' I agreed. + +'I believe Cousin Mienchen isn't in the least taken in, for all our +pains.' + +'I don't believe people ever are,' said I; and we drifted into a +consideration of the probable height of our temperatures and color of +our ears if we could know how much the world we pose to really knows +about us, if we could hear with what thoroughness those of our doings +and even of our thoughts that we believed so secret are discussed. + +Frau von Lindeberg wasn't there, being too busy arranging comforts for +her cousin's journey to preside, and so it was that we drifted +unhindered from Milton into the foggier regions of private wisdom. We +are neither of us wise, but it is surprising how talking to a friend, +even to a friend as unwise as yourself, clears up your brains and lets +in new light. That is one of the reasons why I like writing to you and +getting your letters; only you mustn't be offended at my bracketing you, +you splendid young man, with poor Vicki and poor myself in the class +Unwise. Heaven knows I mean nothing to do with book-learning, in which, +I am aware, you most beautifully excel. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +XLIX + +Galgenberg, Oct. 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I am very sorry indeed to hear that your +engagement is broken off. I feared something of the sort was going to +happen because of all the things you nearly said and didn't in your +letters lately. Are you very much troubled and worried? Please let me +turn into the elder sister for a little again and give you the small +relief of having an attentive listener. It seems to have been rather an +unsatisfactory time for you all along. I don't really quite know what to +say. I am anyhow most sincerely sorry, but I find it extraordinarily +difficult to talk about Miss Cheriton. It is of course lamentable that +our writing to each other should have been, as you say it was, so often +the cause of quarrels. You never told me so, or I would at once have +stopped. You fill several pages with surprise that a girl of twenty-two +can be so different from what she appears, that so soft and tender an +outside can have beneath it such unfathomable depths of hardness. I +think you have probably gone to the other extreme now, and because you +admired so much are all the more violently critical. It is probable that +Miss Cheriton is all that you first thought her, unusually charming and +sympathetic and lovable, and your characters simply didn't suit each +other. Don't think too unkindly in your first anger. I am so very sorry; +sorry for you, who must feel as if your life had been convulsed by an +earthquake, and all its familiar features disarranged; sorry for your +father's disappointment; sorry for Miss Cheriton, who must have been +wretched. But how infinitely wiser to draw back in time and not, for +want of courage, drift on into that supreme catastrophe, marriage. You +mustn't suppose me cynical in calling it a catastrophe--perhaps I mean +it only in its harmless sense of _denouement_; and if I don't I can't +see that it is cynical to recognize a spade when you see it as certainly +a spade. But do not let yourself go to bitterness, and so turn into a +cynic yourself. You say Miss Cheriton apparently prefers a duke, and are +very angry. But why if, as you declare, you have not really loved her +for months past, are you angry? Why should she not prefer a duke? +Perhaps he is quite a nice one, and you may be certain she felt at once, +the very instant, when you left off caring for her. About such things it +is as difficult for a woman to be mistaken as it is for a barometer to +be hoodwinked in matters meteorologic. It was that, and never the duke, +that first influenced her. I am as sure of it as if I could see into her +heart. Of course she loved you. But no girl with a spark of decency +would cling on to a reluctant lover. What an exceedingly poor thing in +girls she would be who did. I can't tell you how much ashamed I am of +that sort of girl, the girl who clings, who follows, who laments,--as if +the world, the splendid, amazing world, were empty of everything but one +single man, and there were no sun shining, no birds singing, no winds +blowing, no hills to climb, no trees to sit under, no books to read, no +friends to be with, no work to do, no heaven to go to. I feel now for +the first time that I would like to know Miss Cheriton. But it is really +almost impossibly difficult to write this letter; each thing I say seems +something I had better not have said. Write to me about your troubles as +often as you feel it helps you, and believe that I do most heartily +sympathize with you both, but don't mind, and forgive me, if my answers +are not satisfactory. I am unpracticed and ill at ease, clumsy, limited, +in this matter of frank writing about feelings, a matter in which you so +far surpass me. But I am always most sincerely your friend, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +L + +Galgenberg, Oct. 15th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It's not much use for the absent to send bland +advice, to exhort to peace and putting aside of anger, when they have +only general principles to go on. You know more about Miss Cheriton than +I do, and I am obliged to believe you when you tell me you have every +reason to be bitter. But I can make few comments. My mouth is +practically shut. Only, as you told me you long ago left off caring for +her, the smart you are feeling now must be, it seems to me, simply the +smart of wounded vanity, and for that I'm afraid I have no soothing +lotion ready. Also I am bound to say that I think she was quite right to +give you up once she was sure you no longer loved her. I am all for +giving up, for getting rid of things grown rotten before it is too late, +and the one less bright spot I see on her otherwise correct conduct is +that she did not do it sooner. Don't think me hard, dear friend. If I +were your mother I would blindly yearn over my boy. As it is, you must +forgive my unfortunate trick of seeing plainly. I wish things would look +more adorned to me, less palpably obvious and ungarnished. These +tiresome eyes of mine have often made me angry. I would so much like to +sympathize wholly with you now, to be able to be indignant with Miss +Cheriton, call her a minx, say she is heartless, be ready with all sorts +of healing balms and syrups for you, poor boy in the clutches of a cruel +annoyance. But I can't. If you could love her again and make it up, that +indeed would be a happy thing. As it is--and your letter sets all hopes +of the sort aside once and for ever--you have had an escape; for if she +had not given you up I don't suppose you would have given her up--I +don't suppose that is a thing one often does. You would have married +her, and then heaven knows what would have become of your unfortunate +soul. + +After all, you need not have told me you had left off loving her. I knew +it. I knew it at the time, I knew it within a week of when it happened. +And I have always hoped--I cannot tell you how sincerely--that it was +only a mood, and that you would go back to her again and be happy. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LI + +Galgenberg, Oct. 22d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--This is a world, it seems to me, where everybody +spends their time falling out of love and making their relations +uncomfortable. I have only two friends, the rest of my friends being +acquaintances, and both have done it or had it done to them. Is it then +to be wondered at that I should argue that if it happens to both my +friends in a set where there are only two, the entire world must be +divided into those who give up and those who are given up, with a Greek +chorus of lamenting and explanatory relatives as a finish? Really one +might think that love, and its caprices, and its tantrums--you see I'm +in my shrewish mood--makes up the whole of life. Here's Vicki groaning +in the throes of a relapse because some one has written that she met her +late lover at a party and that he ate only soup,--here she is overcome +by this picture which she translates as a hankering in spite of +everything after her, and wanting to write to him, and ready to console +him and crying her eyes all red again, and no longer taking the remotest +interest in _Comus_ or in those frequent addresses of mine to her on +Homely Subjects to which up to yesterday she listened with such +flattering respect; and here are you writing me the most melancholy +letters, longer and drearier than any letters ever were before, filled +with yearnings after something that certainly is not Miss Cheriton--but +beyond that certainty I can make out nothing. It is a strange and +wonderful world. I stand bewildered, with you on one side and Vicki on +the other, and fling exhortations at you in turn. I try scolding, to +brace you, but neither of you will be braced. I try sympathy, to soothe +you, but neither of you will be soothed. What am I to do? May I laugh? +Will that give too deep offence? I'm afraid I did laugh over your +father's cable from America when the news of your broken engagement +reached him. You ask me what I think of a father who just cables 'Fool' +to his son at a moment when his son is being horribly worried. Well, you +must consider that cabling is expensive, and he didn't care to put more +than one word, and if there had been two it might have made you still +angrier. But seriously, I do see that it must have annoyed you, and I +soon left off being so unkind as to laugh. It is odd how much older I +feel than either of you lamenters; quite old, and quite settled, and so +objective somehow. I hope being objective doesn't make one +unsympathetic, but I expect it really rather tends that way; and yet if +it were so, and I were as hard and husky as I sometimes dimly fear I may +be growing, would you and Vicki want to tell me your sorrows? And other +people do too. Think of it, Papa Lindeberg, hitherto a long narrow +person buttoned up silently in black, mysterious simply because he held +his tongue, a reader of rabid Conservative papers through black-rimmed +glasses, and as numb in the fingers as Wordsworth when he shakes my +respectful hand, has begun to unbend, to unfold, to expand like those +Japanese dried flowers you fling into water; and having started with +good mornings and weather comments and politics, and from them proceeded +to the satisfactorily confused state of the British army, has gone on +imperceptibly but surely to confidential criticisms of the mistakes made +here at headquarters in invariably shelving the best officers at the +very moment when they have arrived at what he describes as their prime, +and has now reached the stage when he comes up through the orchard every +morning at the hour I am due for my lesson to help me over the fence. He +comes up with much stateliness and deliberation, but he does come up; +and we walk down together, and every day the volume of his confidences +increases and he more and more minutely describes his grievances. I +listen and nod my head, which is easy and apparently all he wants. His +wife stops him at once, if he begins to her, by telling him with as much +roundness as is consistent with being born a Dammerlitz that the +calamities that have overtaken them are entirely his fault. Why was he +not as clever as those subordinates who were put over his head? she asks +with dangerous tranquillity; and nobody can answer a question like that. + +'It makes me twenty years younger,' he said yesterday as he handed me +over the fence with the same politeness I have seen in the manner of old +men handing large dowagers to their places in a set of quadrilles, 'to +see your cheerful morning face.' + +'If you had said shining morning face you'd have been quoting +Shakespeare,' said I. + +'Ah yes. I fear my Shakespeare days are done. I am now at the time of +life when serious and practical considerations take up the entire +attention of a man. Shakespeare is more suitable now for my daughter +than for me.' + +'But clever men do read him.' + +'Ah yes.' + +'Quite grown-up ones do.' + +'Ah yes.' + +'With beards.' + +'Ah yes.' + +'Real men.' + +'Ah yes, yes. Professors. Theatre people. People of no family. People +who have no serious responsibilities on their shoulders. People of the +pen, not men of the sword. But officers--and who in our country of the +well-born is not, was not, or will not be an officer?--have no time for +general literature. Of course,' he added with a slight bow, for he +regards me as personally responsible for everybody and everything +English--'we have all heard of him.' + +'Indeed?' said I. + +'When I was a boy,' he said this morning, 'I read at school of a young +woman--a mythological person--called Hebe.' + +'She was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce,' said I. + +'It may be,' he said. 'The parentages of the mythological period are +curiously intricate. But why is it, dear Fraeulein Schmidt, that though I +can recollect nothing of her but her name, whenever I see you you remind +me of her?' + +Now was not that very pleasant? Hebe, the restorer of youth to gods and +men; Hebe, the vigorous and wholesome. Thoreau says she was probably the +only thoroughly sound-conditioned and robust young lady that ever walked +the globe, and that whenever she came it was spring. No wonder I was +pleased. + +'Perhaps it's because I'm healthy,' said I. + +'Is that it?' he said, obviously fumbling about in his brain for the +reason. And when he got to the house he displayed the results of his +fumbling by saying, 'But many people are healthy.' + +'Yes,' said I; and left him to think it out alone. + +So now there are two nice young women I've been compared to--you once +said I was like Nausicaa, and here a year later, a year in which various +rather salt and stinging waves have gone over my head, is somebody +comparing me to Hebe. Evidently the waves did me no harm. It is true on +the other hand that Papa Lindeberg is short-sighted. It is also true +that last night I found a beautiful shining silvery hair insolently +flaunting in the very front of my head. 'Yes, yes, my dear,' said +Papa--my Papa--when I showed it him, 'we are growing old.' + +'And settled. And objective,' said I, carefully pulling it out before +the glass. 'And yet, Papachen, inside me I feel quite young.' + +Papa chuckled. 'Insides are no safe criterion, my dear,' he said. 'It is +the outside that tells.' + +'Tells what?' + +'A woman's age.' + +Evidently I have not yet reminded my own Papa of Hebe. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LII + +Galgenberg, Oct. 28th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Well, yes, I do think you must get over it without +much help from me. You have a great deal of my sympathy, I assure you; +far more than you think. I don't put it into my letters because there's +so much of it that it would make them overweight. Also it would want a +great deal of explaining. You see it's a different sort from what you +expect, and given for other reasons than those you have in your mind; +and it is quite impossible to account for in any way you are likely to +understand. But do consider what, as regards the broken-off engagement, +you must look like from my point of view. Candidly, are you a fit object +for my compassion? I see you wandering now through Italy in its golden +autumn looking at all your dear Luinis and Bellinis and Botticellis and +other delights of your first growing up, and from my bleak hill-top I +watch you hungrily as you go. November is nearly upon us, and we shiver +under leaden clouds and driving rain. The windows are loose, and all of +them rattle. The wind screams through their chinks as though somebody +had caught it by the toes and was pinching it. We can't see out for the +raindrops on the panes. When I go to the door to get a breath of +something fresher than house air I see only mists, and wreaths of +clouds, and mists again, where a fortnight ago lay a little golden town +in a cup of golden hills. Do you think that a person with this cheerless +prospect can pity you down there in the sun? I trace your bright line of +march on the map and merely feel envy. I am haunted by visions of the +many beautiful places and climates there are in the world that I shall +never see. The thought that there are people at this moment sitting +under palm-trees or in the shadow of pyramids fanning themselves with +their handkerchiefs while I am in my clammy room--the house gets clammy, +I find, in persistent wet weather--not liking to light a lamp because it +is only three o'clock, and yet hardly able to see because of the +streaming panes and driving mist, the thought of these happy people +makes me restive. I too want to be up and off, to run through the wet +pall hanging over this terrible gray North down into places where +sunshine would dry the fog out of my hair, and brown my face, and loosen +my joints, and warm my poor frozen spirit. I would change places with +you this minute if I could. Gladly would I take the burden of your +worries on to my shoulders, and, carrying them like a knapsack, lay them +at the feet of the first Bellini Madonna I met and leave them there for +good. It would give me no trouble to lay them down, those worries +produced by other people. One little shake, and they'd tumble off. +Always things and places have been more to me than people. Perhaps it is +often so with persons who live lonely lives. Anyhow don't at once cry +out that I'm unnatural and inhuman, for things are after all only +filtered out people,--their ideas crystallized into tangibleness, their +spirit taking visible form; either they are that, or they are, I +suppose, God's ideas--after all the same thing put into shapes we can +see and touch. So that it's not so dreadful of me to like them best, to +prefer their company, their silent teaching, although you will I know +lecture me and perhaps tell me I am petrifying into a mere thing myself. +Well, it is only fair that you should lecture me, who so often lecture +you. + +Yours quite meekly, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LIII + +Galgenberg, Nov. 1st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I won't talk about it any more. Let us have done +with it. Let us think of something else. I shall get tired of the duke +if you are not careful, so please save me from an attitude so +unbecoming. This is All Saints' Day: the feast of white chrysanthemums +and dear memories. My mother used to keep it as a day apart, and made me +feel something of its mysticalness. She had a table in her bedroom, the +nearest approach that was possible to an altar, with one of those +pictures hung above it of Christ on the Cross that always make me think +of Swinburne's + + God of this grievous people, wrought + After the likeness of their race-- + +do you remember?--and candles, and jars of flowers, and many little +books; and she used on her knees to read in the little books, kneeling +before the picture. She explained to me that the Lutheran whitewash +starved her soul, and that she wanted, however clumsily, to keep some +reminder with her of the manner of prayer in England. Did I ever tell +you how pretty she was? She was so very pretty, and so adorably nimble +of tongue. Quick, glancing, vivid, she twinkled in the heavy Jena +firmament like some strange little star. She led Papa and me by the +nose, and we loved it. I can see her now expounding her rebellious +theories, sitting limply--for she was long and thin--in a low chair, but +with nothing limp about her flower-like face and eyes shining with +interest in what she was talking about. She was great on the necessity, +a necessity she thought quite good for everybody but absolutely +essential for a woman, of being stirred up thoroughly once a week at the +very least to an enthusiasm for religion and the life of the world to +come. She said there was nothing so good for one as being stirred up, +that only the well stirred ever achieve great things, that stagnation +never yet produced a soul that had shot up out of reach of fogs on to +the clear heights from which alone you can call out directions for the +guidance of those below. The cold, empty Lutheran churches were +abhorrent to her. 'They are populated on Sundays,' she said, 'solely by +stagnant women,--women so stagnant that you can almost see the duckweed +growing on them.' + +She could not endure, and I, taught to see through her eyes, cannot +endure either, the chilly blend of whitewash and painted deal pews in +the midst of which you are required here once a week to magnify the +Lord. Our churches--all those I have seen--are either like vaults or +barns, the vault variety being slightly better and also more scarce. +Their aggressive ugliness, and cold, repellent service keeping the +congealed sinner at arm's length, nearly drove my mother into the Roman +Church, a place no previous Watson had ever wanted to go to. The +churches in Jena made her think with the tenderest regard of the old +picturesque pre-Lutheran days, of the light and color and emotions of +the Catholic services, and each time she was forced into one she said +she made a bigger stride toward Rome. 'Luther was a most mischievous +person,' she would say, glancing half defiantly through long eyelashes +at Papa. But he only chuckled. He doesn't mind about Luther. Yet in case +he did, in case some national susceptibility should have been hurt, she +would get up lazily--her movements were as lazy as her tongue was +quick--and take him by the ears and kiss him. + +She died when she was thirty-five: sweet and wonderful to the last. Nor +did her beauty suffer in the least in the sudden illness that killed +her. 'A lily in a linen-clout She looked when they had laid her out,' as +your Meredith says; and on this day every year, this day of saints so +dear to us, my spirit is all the time in those long ago happy years with +her. I have no private altar in my room, no picture of a 'piteous +Christ'--Papa took that--and no white flowers in this drenched autumnal +place to show that I remember; nor do I read in the little books, except +with gentle wonderment that she should have found nourishment in them, +she who fed so constantly on the great poets. But I have gone each All +Saints' Day for ten years past to church in Jena in memory of her, and +tried by shutting my eyes to imagine I was in a beautiful place without +whitewash, or hideous, almost brutal, stained glass. + +This morning, knowing that if I went down into the town I would arrive +spattered with mud up to my ears and so bedraggled that the pew-opener +might conceivably refuse me admission on the ground that I would spoil +her pews, I set out for the nearest village across the hills, hoping +that a country congregation would be more used to mud. I found the +church shut, and nobody with the least desire to have it opened. The +rain beat dismally down on my umbrella as I stood before the blank +locked door. A neglected fence divided the graves from the parson's +front yard, protecting them, I suppose, as much as in it lay, from the +depredations of wandering cows. On the other side of it was the parson's +manure heap, on which stood wet fowls mournfully investigating its +contents. His windows, shut and impenetrable, looked out on to the +manure heap, the fowls, the churchyard, and myself. It is a very ancient +church, picturesque, and with beautiful lancet windows with delicate +traceries carefully bricked up. Not choosing to have walked five miles +for nothing, and not wishing to break a habit ten years old of praying +in a church for my darling mother's soul on this day of souls and +darling saints, I gathered up my skirts and splashed across the parson's +pools and knocked modestly at his door for the key. The instant I did it +two dogs from nowhere, two infamous little dogs of that unpleasant breed +from which I suppose Pomerania takes its name, rushed at me furiously +barking. The noise was enough to wake the dead; and since nobody stirred +in the house or showed other signs of being wakened it became plain to +my deductive intelligence that its inmates couldn't be dead. So I +knocked again. The dogs yelled again. I stood looking at them in deep +disgust, quite ashamed of the way in which the dripping stillness was +being rent because of me. A soothing umbrella shaken at them only +increased their fury. They seemed, like myself, to grow more and more +indignant the longer the door was kept shut. At last a servant opened it +a few inches, eyed me with astonishment, and when she heard my innocent +request eyed me with suspicion. She hesitated, half shut the door, +hesitated again, and then saying she would go and see what the Herr +Pastor had to say, shut the door quite. I do not remember ever having +felt less respectable. The girl clearly thought I was not; the dogs +clearly were sure I was not. Properly incensed by the shutting of the +door and the expression on the girl's face I decided that the only +dignified course was to go away; but I couldn't because of the dogs. + +The girl came back with the key. She looked as though she had a personal +prejudice against me. She opened the door just wide enough for a lean +person to squeeze through, and bade me, with manifest reluctance, come +in. The hall had a brick floor and an umbrella stand. In the umbrella +stand stood an umbrella, and as the girl, who walked in front of me, +passed it, she snatched out the umbrella and carried it with her, firmly +pressed to her bosom. I did not at once grasp the significance of this +action. She put me into an icy shut-up room and left me to myself. It +was the _gute Stube_--good room--room used only on occasions of frigid +splendor. Its floor was shiny with yellow paint, and to meet the +difficulty of the paint being spoiled if people walked on it and that +other difficulty of a floor being the only place you can walk on, strips +of cocoanut matting were laid across it from one important point to +another. There was a strip from the door to the window; a strip from the +door to another door; a strip from the door to the sofa; and a strip +from the sofa on which the caller sits to the chair on which sits the +callee. A baby of apparently brand newness was crying in an adjoining +room. I waited, listening to it for what seemed an interminable time, +not daring to sit down because it is not expected in Germany that you +shall sit in any house but your own until specially requested to do so. +I stood staring at the puddles my clothes and umbrella were forming on +the strip of matting, vainly trying to rub them out with my feet. The +wail of the unfortunate in the next room was of an uninterrupted and +haunting melancholy. The rain beat on the windows forlornly. As minute +after minute passed and no one came I grew very restless. My fingers +began to twitch, and my feet to tap. And I was cooling down after my +quick walk with a rapidity that meant a cough and a sore throat. There +was no bell, or I would have rung it and begged to be allowed to go +away. I did turn round to open the door and try to attract the servant's +notice and tell her I could wait no longer, but I found to my +astonishment that the door was locked. After that the whole of my +reflections were resolved into one chaotic Dear me, from which I did not +emerge till the parson appeared through the other door, bringing with +him a gust of wailing from the unhappy baby within and of the +characteristic smell of infant garments drying at a stove. + +He was cold, suspicious, inquisitive. Evidently unused to being asked +for permission to go into his church, and equally evidently unused to +persons passing through a village which was, for most persons, on the +way to nowhere, he endeavored with some skill to discover what I was +doing there. With equal skill I evaded answering his questions. They +included inquiries as to my name, my age, my address, my father's +profession, the existence or not of a husband, the number of my brothers +and sisters, and distinct probings into the size of our income. It +struck me that he had a great deal of time and very few visitors, except +thieves. Delicately I conveyed this impression to him, leaving out only +the thieves, by means of implications of a vaguely flattering nature. He +shrugged his shoulders, and said it was too wet for funerals, which were +the only things doing at this time of the year. + +'What, don't they die when it is wet?' I asked, surprised. + +'Certainly, if it is necessary,' said he. + +'Oh,' said I, pondering. 'But if some one does he has to be buried?' + +'We put it off,' said he. + +'Put it off?' + +'We put it off,' he repeated firmly. + +'But--' I began, in a tone of protest. + +'There's always a fine day if one waits long enough,' said he. + +'That's true,' said I, struck by a truth I had not till then consciously +observed. + +He did not ask me to sit down, a careful eye, I suppose, having gauged +the probable effect of my wet clothes on his dry chairs, so we stood +facing each other on the strip of matting throwing questions and answers +backward and forward like a ball. And I think I played quite skilfully, +for at the end of the game he knew little more than when we began. + +And so at last he gave me the key, and having with a great rattling of +its handle concealed that he was unlocking the door, and further cloaked +this process by a pleasant comment on the way doors stick in wet +weather, which I met with the cold information that ours didn't, he +whistled off the dogs, and I left him still with an inquiry in his eye. + +The church is very ancient and dates from the thirteenth century. You +would like its outside--I wonder if in your walks you ever came +here--but its inside has been spoilt by the zealous Lutherans and turned +into the usual barn. In its first state of beauty in those far-off +Catholic days what a haven it must have been for all the women and most +of the men of that lonely turnip-growing village; the one beauty spot, +the one place of mystery and enthusiasm. No one, I thought, staring +about me, could possibly have their depths stirred in the middle of so +much whitewash. The inhabitants of these bald agricultural parishes are +not sufficiently spiritual for the Lutheran faith. Black gowns and +bareness may be enough for those whose piety is so exalted that +ceremonies are only a hindrance to the purity of their devotions; but +the ignorant and the dull, if they are to be stirred, and especially the +women who have entered upon that long series of gray years that begins, +for those worked gaunt and shapeless in the fields, somewhere about +twenty-five and never leaves off again, if they are to be helped to be +less forlorn need many ceremonies, many symbols, much show, and mystery, +and awfulness. You will say that it is improbable that the female +inhabitants of such a poor parish should know what it is to feel +forlorn; but I know better. You will, turning some of my own words +against me, tell me that one does not feel forlorn if one is worked hard +enough; but I know better about that too,--and I said it only in +reference to young men like yourself. It is true the tragedy of the +faded face combined with the uncomfortably young heart, which is the +tragedy that every woman who has had an easy life has to endure for +quite a number of years, finds no place in the existence of a drudge; it +is true too that I never yet saw, and I am sure you didn't, a woman of +the laboring classes make efforts to appear younger than she is; and it +is also true that I have seldom seen, and I am sure you haven't, women +of the class that has little to do leave off making them. Ceaseless hard +work and the care of many children do away very quickly with the youth +both of face and heart of the poor man's wife, and with the youth of +heart go the yearnings that rend her whose heart, whatever her face may +be doing, is still without a wrinkle. But drudgery and a lost youth do +not make your life less, but more dreary. These poor women have not, +like their husbands, the solace of the public-house _Schnapps_. They go +through the bitterness of the years wholly without anaesthetics. Really I +don't think I can let you go on persisting that they feel nothing. Why, +we shall soon have you believing that only you in this groaning and +travailing creation suffer. Please divest yourself of these illusions. +Read, my young friend, read the British poet Crabbe. Read him much; +ponder him more. He knew all about peasants. He was a plain man, with a +knack for rhyme and rhythm that sets your brain a-jingling for weeks, +who saw peasants as they are. They must have been the very ones we have +here. In his pages no honeysuckle clambers picturesquely about their +path, no simple virtues shine in their faces. Their hearth is not snowy, +their wife not neat and nimble. They do not gather round bright fires +and tell artless tales on winter evenings. Their cheer is certainly +homely, but that doesn't make them like it, and they never call down +blessings upon it with moist uplifted eyes. Grandsires with venerable +hair are rather at a discount; the young men's way of trudging cannot be +described as elastic; and their talk, when there is any, does not +consist of praise of the local landowner. Do you think they do not know +that they are cold and underfed? And do not know they have grown old +before their time through working in every sort of weather? And do not +know where their rheumatism and fevers come from? + +I walked back through the soaking, sighing woods thinking of these +things and of how unfairly the goods of life are distributed and of the +odd tendency misfortunes have to collect themselves together in one +place in a heap. Old thoughts, you'll say,--old thoughts as stale as +life, thoughts that have drifted through countless heads, and after a +while drifted out of them again, leaving no profit behind them. But one +can't help thinking them and greatly marvelling. Make the most, you +fortunate young man, of freedom, and Italy, and sunshine, and your six +and twenty years. If I could only persuade you to let yourself go quite +simply to being happy! Our friendship, in spite of its sincerity, has up +to now been of so little use to you; and a friendship which is not +helpful might just as well not exist. I wish I knew what words of mine +would help you most. How gladly would I write them. How gladly would I +see you in untroubled waters, forging straight ahead toward a full and +fruitful life. But I am a foolish, ineffectual woman, and write you +waspish letters when I might, if I had more insight, have found out what +those words are that would set you tingling with the joy of life. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +I've been reading some of the very beautiful prayers in my mother's +English Prayer Book to make up for not having prayed in church today. +Its margins are thickly covered with pencilled comments. In parts like +the Psalms and Canticles they overflow into the spaces between the +verses. They are chiefly notes on the beauties of thought and language, +and comparisons with similar passages in the Bible. Here and there +between the pages are gummed little pictures of Madonnas and 'piteous +Christs.' But when the Athanasian Creed is reached the tone of the +comment changes. Over the top of it is written 'Some one has said there +is a vein of dry humor running through this Creed that is very +remarkable.' And at the end of each of those involved clauses that try +quite vainly, yet with an air of defying criticism, to describe the +undescribable, my mother has written with admirable caution 'Perhaps.' + + + +LIV + +Galgenberg, Nov. 7th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--So you are coming to Berlin next month. I thought +you told me in one of your letters that Washington was probably going to +be your first diplomatic post. Evidently you are glad it is not; but if +I were going to be an _attache_ I'd much rather be it at Washington than +Berlin, the reason being that I've not been to Washington and I have +been to Berlin. Why are you so pleased--forgive me, I meant so much +pleased, but it is strange how little instinct has to do with +grammar--about Berlin? You didn't like it when you were here and went +for two days to look at it. You said it was a hard white place, full of +broad streets with nobody in them. You said it was barren, soulless, +arid, pretentious, police-ridden; that everybody was an official, and +that all the officials were rude. You were furious with a policeman who +stared at you without answering when you asked him the way. You were +scandalized by the behavior of the men in the local trains who sat and +smoked in the faces of the standing women, and by those men who walked +with their female relations in the streets and caused their parcels to +be carried by them. You came home to us saying that Jena was best, and +you were thankful to be with us again. I went to Berlin once, a little +while before you came to Germany, and didn't like it either. But I +didn't like it because it was so full, because those streets that seemed +to you so empty were bewildering to me in their tumultuous traffic,--so +you see how a place is what your own eye makes it, your Jena or your +London eye; and I didn't like it besides because we spent a sulphuric +night and morning with relations. The noise of the streets all day and +the sulphur of the relations at night spoilt it for me. We went there +for a jaunt, to look at the museums and things, and stay the night with +Papa's brother who lives there. He is Papa's younger brother, and spends +his days in a bank, handing out and raking in money through a hole in a +kind of cage. He has a pen behind his ear--I know, because we were taken +to gaze upon him between two museums--and wears a black coat on weekdays +as well as on Sundays, which greatly dazzled my step-mother, who was +with us. I believe he is eminently respectable, and the bank values him +as an old and reliable servant, and has made him rich. His salary is +eight thousand marks a year--four hundred pounds, sir; four times as +much as what we have--and my step-mother used often and fervently to +wish that Papa had been more like him. I thought him a terrifying old +uncle, a parched, machine-like person, whose soul seemed withdrawn into +unexplorable vague distances, reduced to a mere far-off flicker by the +mechanical nature of his work. He is ten years younger than Papa, but +infinitely more faded. He never laughs. He never even smiles. He is rude +to his wife. He is withering to his daughters. He made me think of owls +as he sat at supper that night in his prim clothes, with round gloomy +eyes fixed on Papa, whom he was lecturing. Papa didn't mind. He had had +a happy day, ending with two very glorious hours in the Royal Library, +and Tante Else's herring salad was much to his taste. 'Hast thou no +respect, Heinrich,' he cried at last when my uncle, warmed by beer, let +his lecture slide over the line that had till then divided it from a +rating, 'hast thou then no respect for the elder brother, and his white +and reverend hairs?' + +But Onkel Heinrich, aware that he is the success and example of the +family, and as intolerant as successes and examples are of laxer and +poorer relations, waved Papa's banter aside with contempt, and proposed +that instead of wasting any more of an already appallingly wasted life +in idle dabblings in so-called literature he too should endeavor to get +a post, however humble, in a bank in Berlin, and mend his ways, and earn +an income of his own, and cease from living on an income acquired by +marriages. + +My step-mother punctuated his words with nods of approval. + +'What, as a doorkeeper, eh, thou cistern filled with wisdom?' cried +Papa, lifting his glass and drinking gayly to Tante Else, who glanced +uneasily at her husband, he not yet having been, to her recollection, +called a cistern. + +'It is better,' said my step-mother, to whom a man so punctual, so +methodical, and so well-salaried as Onkel Heinrich seemed wholly ideal, +'it is better to be a doorkeeper in--in-' + +She was seized with doubt as to the applicability of the text, and +hesitated. + +'A bank?' suggested Papa pleasantly. + +'Yes, Ferdinand, even in a bank rather than dwell in the tents of +wickedness.' + +'That,' explained Papa to Tante Else, leaning back in his chair and +crossing his hands comfortably over what, you being English, I will call +his chest, 'is my dear wife's poetic way--' + +'Scriptural way, Ferdinand,' interrupted my step-mother. 'I know no +poetic ways.' + +'It is the same thing, _meine Liebste_. The Scriptures are drenched in +poetry. Poetic way, I say, of referring to Jena.' + +'_Ach so_,' said Tante Else, vague because she doesn't know her Bible +any better than the rest of us Germans; it is only you English who have +it at your fingers' ends; and, of course, my step-mother had it at hers. + +'Tents,' continued Tante Else, feeling that as _Hausfrau_ it was her +duty to make herself conversationally conspicuous, and anxious to hide +that she was privately at sea, 'tents are unwholesome as permanent +dwellings. I should say a situation somewhere as doorkeeper in a healthy +building was much to be preferred to living in nasty draughty things +like tents.' + +'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich, with sudden and explosive bitterness; +you remember of course that _quatsch_ is German for silly, or nonsense, +and that it is far more expressive, and also more rude, than either. + +My step-mother opened her mouth to speak, but Tante Else, urged by her +sense of duty, flowed on. 'You cannot,' she said, addressing Papa, 'be a +doorkeeper unless there is a door to keep.' + +'Let no one,' cried Papa, beating approving hands together, 'say again +that ladies are not logicians.' + +'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'And a door is commonly a--a-' She cast about for the word. + +'A necessity?' suggested Papa, all bright and pleased attention. + +'A convenience?' suggested my cousin Lieschen, the rather pretty +unmarried daughter, a girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump +red hands. + +'An ornament?' suggested my cousin Elschen, the rather pretty married +daughter, another girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump red +hands. + +'A thing you go in at?' I suggested. + +'No, no,' said Tante Else impatiently, determined to run down her word. + +'A thing you go out at, then?' said I, proud of the resourcefulness of +my intelligence. + +'No, no,' said Tante Else, still more impatiently. '_Ach Gott_, where do +all the words get to?' + +'Is it something very particular for which you are searching?' asked my +step-mother, with the sympathetic interest you show in the searchings of +the related rich. + +'Something not worth the search, we may be sure,' remarked Onkel +Heinrich. + +'_Ach Gott_,' said Tante Else, not heeding him, 'where do they--' She +clasped and unclasped her fingers; she gazed round the room and up at +the ceiling. We all sat silent, feeling that here there was no help, and +watched while she chased the elusive word round and round her brain. +Only Onkel Heinrich continued to eat herring salad with insulting +emphasis. + +'I have it,' she cried at last triumphantly. + +We at once revived into a brisk attention. + +'A door is a characteristic--' + +'A most excellent word,' said Papa encouragingly. 'Continue, my dear.' + +'It is a characteristic of buildings that are massive and that have +windows and chimneys like other buildings.' + +'Excellent, excellent,' said Papa. 'Definitions are never easy.' + +'And--and tents don't have them,' finished Tante Else, looking round at +us with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so much +about something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping. + +'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'My dear,' protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice these +comments. + +'I say it is _quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemence +startling in one so trim. + +'Really, my dear,' said Tante Else. + +'I repeat it,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'Do not think, my dear--' + +'I do not think, I know. Am I to sit silent, to have no opinion, in my +own house? At my own table?' + +'My dear--' + +'If you do not like to hear the truth, refrain from talking nonsense.' + +'My dear Heinrich--will you not try--in the presence of--of relations, +and of--of our children--' Her voice shook a little, and she stopped, +and began with great haste and exactness to fold up her table-napkin. + +'_Ach--quatsch_' said Onkel Heinrich again, irritably pushing back his +chair. + +He waddled to a cupboard--of course he doesn't get much exercise in his +cage, so he can only waddle--and took out a box of cigars. 'Come, +Ferdinand,' he said, 'let us go and smoke together in my room and leave +the dear women to the undisturbed enjoyment of their wits.' + +'I do not smoke,' said Papa briefly. + +'Come then while I smoke,' said Onkel Heinrich. + +'Nay, I fear thee, Heinrich,' said Papa. 'I fear thy tongue applied to +my weak places. I fear thine eye, measuring their deficiencies. I fear +thy intelligence, known to be great--' + +'Worth exactly,' said Onkel Heinrich suddenly facing us, the cigarbox +under his arm, his cross owl's eyes rounder than ever, 'worth exactly, +on the Berlin brain market, eight thousand marks a year.' + +'I know, I know,' cried Papa, 'and I admire--I admire. But there is awe +mingled with my admiration, Heinrich,--awe, respect, terror. Go, thou +man of brains and marketableness, thou man of worth and recognition, go +and leave me here with these lesser intellects. I fear thee, and I will +not watch thee smoke.' + +And he got up and raised Tante Else's hand to his lips with great +gallantry and wished her, after our pleasant fashion at the end of +meals, a good digestion. + +But Tante Else, though she tried to smile and return his wishes, could +not get back again into her _role_ of serene and conversational +_Hausfrau._ My uncle waddled away, shooting a sniff of scorn over his +shoulder as he went, and my aunt endeavored to conceal the fact that she +was wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both at +once. My step-mother cleared her throat, and remarked that successful +public men often had to pay for their successes by being the victims at +home of nerves, and that their wives, whose duty it is always to be +loving, might be compared to the warm and soothing iron passed over a +shirt newly washed, and deftly, by its smooth insistence, flattening +away each crease. + +Papa gazed at my step-mother with admiring astonishment while she +elaborated this image. He had hold of Tante Else's hand and was stroking +it. His bright eyes were fixed on his wife, and I could see by their +expression that he was trying to recall the occasions on which his own +creases had been ironed out. + +With the correctness with which one guesses most of a person's thoughts +after you have lived with him ten years, my step-mother guessed what he +was thinking. 'I said public men,' she remarked, 'and I said successes.' + +'I heard, I heard, _meine Liebste_,' Papa assured her, 'and I also +completely understand.' + +He made her a little bow across the table. 'Do not heed him, Else, my +dear,' he added, turning to my aunt. 'Do not heed thy Heinrich--he is +but a barbarian.' + +'Ferdinand!' exclaimed my step-mother. + +'Oh no,' sighed Tante Else, 'it is I who am impatient and foolish.' + +'I tell thee he is a barbarian. He always was. In the nursery he was, +when, yet unable to walk, he crawled to that spot on the carpet where +stood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy with +the playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into them +made holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she saw +them, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalking +the flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistened +finger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure of +his prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent over +his desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue's sleeve +or trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while the +victim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasing +uneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolonged +absence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comrades +who served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not here +repeat. And as a husband--yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has not +lost it--he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.' + +'Oh, no, no,' sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearful +interest. + +'Ferdinand,' said my step-mother angrily, 'your tongue is doing what it +invariably does, it is running away with you.' + +'Why are married people always angry with each other?' asked Lieschen, +the unmarried daughter, in a whisper. + +'How can I tell, since I am not married?' I answered in another whisper. + +'They are not,' whispered Elschen with all the authority of the lately +married. 'It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. We +kiss.' + +'That is true,' said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not without +a touch of envy. 'I have repeatedly seen you doing it.' + +'Yes,' said Elschen placidly. + +'Is there no alternative?' I inquired. + +'No what?' + +'Alternative.' + +'I do not know what you mean by alternative, Rose-Marie,' said Elschen, +trying to twist her wedding-ring round on her finger, but it couldn't +twist because it was too deeply embedded. 'Where do you get your long +words from?' + +'Must one either quarrel or kiss?' I asked. 'Is there no serene valley +between the thunderous heights on the one hand and the swampy +enervations on the other?' + +To this Elschen merely replied, while she stared at me, '_Grosser +Gott_.' + +'You are a queer cousin,' said Lieschen, giggling again, the giggle this +time containing a touch of contempt, her giggles never being wholly +unadulterated. 'I suppose it is because Onkel Ferdinand is so poor.' + +'I expect it is,' said I. + +'He has hardly any money, has he?' + +'I believe he has positively none.' + +'But how do you live at all?' + +'I can't think. It must be a habit.' + +'You don't look very fat.' + +'How can I, when I'm not?' + +'You must come and see my baby,' said Elschen, apparently irrelevantly, +but I don't think it really was; she thought a glimpse of that, I am +sure, refreshing baby would cure most heartsicknesses. + +'Yes, yes, it is a splendid baby,' said Lieschen, brightening, 'and its +wardrobe is trimmed throughout with the best Swiss embroidery threaded +with beautiful blue ribbons. It cost many hundred marks, I assure you. +There is nothing that is not both durable and excellent. Elschen's +mother-in-law is a very rich lady. She gave it all. She keeps two +servants, and they wear washing dresses and big white aprons, just like +English servants. Elschen's mother-in-law says it is a great expense +because of the laundry bills, but that she doesn't mind. If you were +going to stay longer, and had got the necessary costumes, we might have +taken you to see her, and she might perhaps have asked you to stay to +coffee.' + +'Really?' said I, in a voice of concern. + +'Yes. It is a pity for you. You would then see how elegant Berlin people +are. I expect this--' she waved her hand--'is quite different from Jena, +and seems strange to you, but it is nothing, I assure you nothing at +all, compared to Elschen's mother-in-law's furniture and food.' + +'Really?' said I, again with concern. + +I did a dreadful thing next morning at breakfast: I broke a jug. Never +shall I forget the dismay and shame of that moment. Really I am rather a +deft person, used to jugs, and not, as a rule, of hasty or unconsidered +movements. It was, I think, the electric current streaming out of Onkel +Heinrich that had at last reached me too and galvanized me into a +nervous and twitching behavior. He came in last, and the moment he +appeared words froze, smiles vanished, eyes fell, and Papa's piping +alone continued to be heard in the cheerless air. I don't know what had +passed between him and Tante Else since last we had seen him, but his +opaque black eyes were crosser and blacker than ever. Perhaps it was +only that he had smoked more than was good for him, and the whole family +was punished for that over-indulgence. I could not help reflecting how +lucky it was that we were his relations and not hers; what must happen +to hers if they ever come to see her I dare not think. It was while I +was reflecting on their probable scorched and shrivelled condition, and +at the same time was eagerly passing him some butter that I don't think +he wanted but that I was frantically afraid he might want, that my +zealous arm swept the milk-jug off the table, and it fell on the +varnished floor, and with a hideous clatter of what seemed like +malicious satisfaction smashed itself to atoms. + +'There now,' cried my step-mother casting up her hands, 'Rose-Marie all +over.' + +'I am very sorry,' I stammered, pushing back my chair and gathering up +the pieces and mopping up the milk with my handkerchief. + +'Dear niece, it is of no consequence,' faltered Tante Else, her eyes +anxiously on her husband. + +'No consequence?' cried he--and his words sounded the more terrific from +their being the first, beyond a curt good morning, that he had uttered. +'No consequence?' + +And when my shameful head reappeared above the table and I got on to my +feet and carried the ruins to a sideboard, murmuring hysterical +apologies as I went, he pointed with a lean finger to what had once been +a jug and said with an owlish solemnity and weightiness of utterance I +have never heard equalled, 'It was very expensive.' I can't tell you how +glad, how thankful I was to get home. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LV + +Galgenberg, Nov. 15th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I shall send this to Jermyn Street, as it can no +longer catch you in Italy. Jena is not on the way from London to Berlin, +and I don't know what map persuaded you that it was. It is very faithful +and devoted of you to want so much to see Professor Martens again, but +you know he is a busy man, and for five minutes with him as he rushes +from a lecture to a private lesson it hardly seems worth while to make +such a tremendous _detour_. Why, you would be hours pottering about on +branch lines and at junctions, and would never, I am certain, see your +luggage again. Still, it is not for me to refuse your visit to Professor +Martens on his behalf who as yet knows nothing about it. I merely +advise; and you know I do not easily miss an opportunity of doing that. + +What another odd idea of yours to want to call on our Berlin relations. +Has Italy put these various warm genialities into your head? I did not +think I had made the Heinrich Schmidts attractive. I was shivering while +I wrote with renewed horror, as the remembrance of that evening with +them and of that morning rose up again before me. That the result should +be a thirst on your part for their address fills me with astonishment. +Do you want to go and do them good? Soften Onkel Heinrich, and teach him +to cherish kind Tante Else with the meek blue eyes and claret-colored +silk dress? You cannot seriously intend to set up regular social +intercourse with them. It is certain you will never meet them at any +party you go to,--no, not even Elschen's mother-in-law. The classes are +with us divided so rigorously that the needle's eye was child's play to +the camel compared to this other entering. You will, very properly, +remembering my cloistered life, inquire what I know about it; but it +seems to me, only please don't laugh, that I have seen and known quite a +good deal. When Experience leaves gaps, quick Imagination fills them up. +The straws I have noticed have been enough to show me which way the wind +was blowing; and women, pray remember, are artists at putting two and +two together. Therefore I prophesy that if you are at the English +Embassy in Berlin fifty years and meet fresh people every day of them, +among those people will never be Onkel Heinrich and Tante Else. What, +then, is the use of giving you their address? I will, if you really +seriously wish it, but I must warn you that they would be intensely +surprised by a call from you, and it would in no way add to their +comfort. The connecting thread is altogether too slender. Papa is not a +relation whose introductions they value, and to come from him is a +handicap rather than a recommendation. Do you know the only possible +conclusion they would come to?--and come to it they certainly +would--that somehow, somewhere, in a train, or a shop, or walking, you +had seen Lieschen, and had fallen in love with her. And before you knew +where you were you would be married to Lieschen. + +How sad to have to come away from the flaming Spanish chestnuts of +Italy, and turn your face toward London fogs. You don't seem to mind. +You never do seem to mind the things that would fill my heart with +leaden despair, and over other things that should not matter you cry +out. Indeed, far from minding you seem eager to be off. Yet London can't +be nice in November, and Berlin, where you so soon will be, is simply +horrid. It was in November that we were there, and we splashed about in +a raw, wet cold,--rain on the verge of sleet and snow, a bitter wind at +the corners, the omnibuses all full (we could not afford the dearer and +more respectable tram), and everybody we met had an unkind strange face +that stared at us, in spite of hurry and umbrellas, with a thoroughness +and comprehensiveness that must be peculiar to Berlin. Papa's galoshes +didn't fit and kept coming off, and they always did it at the most +difficult moment, generally when we were crossing a street, and there +they would lie, scattered beneath hoofs and wheels, till I had rescued +them again. Also his umbrella, being old and never having been very +strong, turned inside out at extra gusty corners, and we, who had come +to look and wonder, found that the Berlin people thought we had come to +be looked and wondered at. But do not let me damp your ardor with these +gloomy tales. It is such an excellent thing that you should be ardent at +all after this long while of dissatisfaction with life that I ought to +cheer you on and not talk dreary. Besides, your umbrella won't mind +corners, and you do not wear galoshes. I wish you joy, then, of your new +post, and hope you will be very happy in it. Papa was most interested to +hear you were coming so near us, and sends you many messages whose +upshot is that you are to be a good boy and do him credit. He doesn't +know about the unfortunate ending to your engagement, and I shall not +tell him, for he would be sorry; and more and more as the days and +months melt away into a dream I am anxious that he should not be made +sorry. Do you not think that old people should never be made sorry? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +I hope you will waste no precious time coming to Jena to see Professor +Martens. I heard a rumor that he was ill, or away or something, so that +you would have your long and _extremely_ tiresome journey positively for +nothing. + + + +LVI + +Galgenberg, Nov. 23d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Was it so short? I don't remember. This one shall +be longer, then. Tell me, do you think there is any use in trying to +cure a person of being in love? I have come to the conclusion that it's +hopeless. Such cures must be made from the inside outward, and not from +the outside inward. I thought I was going to stir Vicki to a noble +independence, and you should have heard the speeches I made her. +Sometimes I had to laugh at them myself, they were such extraordinarily +heroic and glowing things for one dripping Fraeulein with none too brave +a heart to hurl at another dripping Fraeulein with no brave heart at all, +as they trotted along with shortened skirts and umbrellas through +wind-racked, howling forests. Vicki has gone all to pieces again, and +her eyes are redder than ever. I don't know whether it is these November +mists that have done it, but certainly after all my hauling of her up +the rocks of proud self-sufficiency she has flopped back again deeper +than before into the morass in which I found her. It's a perfect bog of +sentiment she's sunk in now. I make her go for ten-mile walks, and aim +at doing them in two hours, thus hoping to bring out her love-sickness +in the form of healthy perspiration, but it's no good. 'Oh,' gasps +Vicki, when we start off up the sombre aisles of pines, and see them +stretching away before us into a gray infinity, and mark their reeking +trunks, black with damp, hoar with lichen, and hear their sighings and +their creakings through the patter of rain on our umbrellas, and feel +their wet breath on our cheeks, 'oh what an empty, frightening world it +is.' + +Then I tell her, with what enthusiasm I may, that it's not, that it's +beautiful, that we are young and strong, that our life can be made just +exactly as glorious as we are energetic enough to make it. And she +doesn't believe a word; she simply shakes her head, and moans that she +isn't energetic. + +'But you are,' I say with a fine show of confidence. 'Come, let us walk +faster. Who would dare say you were not who saw you now?' + +'Oh,' wails Vicki; and trots along blowing her nose. + +Poor little soul. I've tried kissing her, and it did no good either. I +petted her for a whole day; sat with my arms round her; had her head on +my shoulder; whispered every consolation I could think of; but +unfortunately the only person who has ever petted her was the faithless +one, and it made her think of him with renewed agony, and opened +positive sluices of despair. I've tried scolding her--the 'My dear +Vicki, really for a woman grown' tone, but she gets so much of that from +her mother, and besides she isn't a woman grown, but only a poor, +unhappy, cheated little child. But how dull, how dry, how profitless are +the comfortings of one woman for another. I feel it in every nerve the +whole time I am applying them. One kiss from the wretched man himself +and the world blazes into radiance. A thousand of the most beautiful and +eminent verities enunciated by myself only collect into a kind of frozen +pall that hangs about her miserable little head and does nothing more +useful than suffocate her. She has been inclined to feel bad ever since +the fatal letter about the soup, but there were intervals in which with +infinite haulings I did get her up on to the rocks again, those rocks +she finds so barren, but from whose tops she can at least see clearly +and be kept dry. Now that this terrible weather has come upon us, and +every day is wetter and sadder than the last, she has collapsed +entirely. If I could write as well as Papa I would like to write an +essay on the connection between a wet November and the renewed buddings +of love. Frau von Lindeberg is dreadfully angry, and came up, and +actually came in, a thing she has not done yet, and sat on the sofa, +carefully enthroned in its middle and well spread out in case I should +so far forget myself as to want to sit upon it too, and asked me what +nonsense I had been putting into the child's head. + +'Nonsense?' I exclaimed, remembering my noble talk. + +'She was getting over it. You must have said something.' + +'Said something? Yes, indeed I said something. Never has one person said +so many things before.' + +She stared in amazement. 'What,' she cried, 'you actually--you +dared--you have the effrontery--' + +'Shall I tell you what I said?' + +And for an hour I gave the astonished lady, hemmed in on the sofa by the +table and by my chair, the outlines of my views on ideals and conduct. I +made the most of the hour. The outlines were very thick. No fidgeting or +attempts to stop me were considered. She had come to scold; she should +stay to learn. + +'Well, well,' she said, when I, tired of talking, got up and removed the +impeding table with something of the brisk politeness of a dentist +unhooking the patient's bib and screwing down his chair after he has +done his worst, 'you seem to be a good sort of girl. You have, I see, +meant no harm.' + +'Meant no harm? I neither meant it nor did I do it. Allow me to make the +point clearer--' And I prepared to push back the table upon her and +began again. + +'No, no--it is quite clear, thank you. Kindly go on endeavoring, then, +to influence my unhappy child for good. I trust your excellent father is +well. Good morning.' + +But influence as I may Vicki has given up wearing those starched shirts +with the high linen collars and neat ties in which she first dazzled me, +and has gone into nondescript woollen clothes something like mine. She +says it is because, of the washing bills, but I know it to be but a +further symbol of her despair. The one remnant of her first trimness is +her beautifully brushed hair. Stooping over her to see that her English +exercises are correct I like to lay my cheek a moment on it, so lightly +that she does not notice, for it is wonderful stuff,--soft, wavy, +shining, and ought alone without the little ear and curve of the young +cheek, without the silly pretty mouth and kind straightforward eyes, to +have immeshed that stupid man beyond all possibility of disentangling +himself. She was not made for Milton and the Muses. Nature, carving her +out, moulding her body and her mind, putting in a dimple here and giving +an eyelash an extra curl there, had a pleasant eye on a firelit future +for Vicki, a cosy, sheltered future with a fender for her feet, a baby +for each arm, and an adored husband coming in at the end of the day to +be fed and kissed. But this man has outwitted nature. He weighed, with +true German caution, Vicki and her dimples against the tiny portion +which was all he could extract from her parents, and found them not +heavy enough to make up for the alarming emptiness of that other scale. +Now Vicki's fender and babies and busy happy life have vanished into the +land of Never Will Be's. She will not find some one else to take his +place. She has a story attached to her: a fatal thing here for a girl. +Unlike your Miss Cheriton, who gently waves you aside and engages +herself without the least difficulty to a duke, Vicki is a marked +person, and will be avoided by our careful and calculating young men. +She is doomed never to spoil and tease those babies, never to spoil and +worship that husband. Instead she will, for a year, continue to range +the hills here with me, trying to listen politely to my admonishments +while inwardly she shudders at the loneliness and vastness of the +forests and of life, and then her parents' lease will be up, and they +and she will drift down into some little town in the Harz where retired +officers finish lives grown vegetable, and the years will pounce upon +her and strip her one by one of her little stock of graces. Don't +suppose I blame the man, because I don't; I only resent that he should +have so much the best of it. There is no law obliging a man to marry +because some lovesick girl wants him to--if I were a man I would never +marry--but I do deplore the exceeding number of the girls who want him +to. If each girl would say her prayers and go her own way, go about her +business, her parents having seen to it that she should have a business +to go about, what a cheerful, tearless place the world would be. And you +must forgive my vociferousness, but really I have had a woeful morning +with Vicki, who cried so bitterly into the pages of my Milton that the +best part of _Samson Agonistes_ is stuck together, and all the red has +come off the edges. + +Papa Lindeberg came in at the end of the lesson to offer me his umbrella +to go home with. 'It is a wet day, Fraeulein Hebe,' said he, looking +round. + +'It is,' said I, gazing ruefully at my poor Milton. + +'Even the daughters of the gods,' said he--thus mildly do we continue to +joke together--'must sometimes use umbrellas.' + +'Yes,' said I, smiling at this pleasant old man, this old man I thought +at first so disagreeable; and he went with me to the door, and asked me +in an anxious whisper what I thought of Vicki. 'It lasts long--it lasts +long,' said he, helplessly. + +'Yes,' said I, standing under the umbrella in the rain, while he in the +porch rubbed one hand mechanically over the other and stared at me. + +'You are a very fortunate young lady,' he said wistfully. + +'I?' + +'Our poor Vicki--if she were more like you--' + +'Like me?' + +'It is so clear that you have never known this terrible malady of love. +You have the face of a joyful _Backfisch_.' + +'Oh,'--I began to laugh; and laughed, and laughed till the umbrella +shook showers of raindrops off each of its points. + +He stood watching me thoughtfully. 'It is true,' he said. + +'Oh,' was all I could ejaculate; for indeed the idea made me very merry. + +'No member of our sex,' said he, 'has ever even for a moment caught what +is still a bright and untouched maiden fancy.' + +'There was a young man once,' I began, 'in the Jena cake-shop--' + +'_Ach_' he interrupted, waving the young man and his cakes away with an +impatient movement of the hand. + +'I didn't know,' said I, 'that you could read people's past.' + +'Yours is easy enough to read. It is shining so clearly in your eyes, it +is reflected so limpidly in your face--' + +'How nice,' said I, interrupting in my turn, for my feet were getting +grievously wet; and you note, I hope, with what industriousness I +preserve and record anything of a flattering nature that any one ever +says to me. + +But you shall hear the other side too; for I turned away, and he turned +away, and before I had gone a yard my shoelace came undone and I had to +go back to the shelter of the porch to tie it up, and while I had my +foot on the scraper and was bending down tying a bow and a knot that +should last me till I got home I heard Frau von Lindeberg from the +parlor off the passage make him the following speech: + +'I am constantly surprised, Ludwig, at the amount of time and +conversation I see you bestow on Fraeulein Schmidt. I can hardly call it +impertinence, but there is something indescribable about her +manners,--an unbecoming freedom, an almost immodest frankness, an almost +naked naturalness, that is perilously near impertinence. People of that +class do not understand people of ours; and she will, if you are kinder +than is absolutely necessary, certainly take advantage of it. Let me beg +you to be careful.' + +And Ludwig, beginning then and there, never answered a word. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +What do you think? Papa's book has been refused by the Jena publisher, +by three Berlin publishers, by two in Stuttgart, and one in Leipzig. It +is now journeying round Leipzig to the remaining publishers. The first +time it came back we felt the blow and drooped; the second time we felt +it but did not droop; the third time we felt nothing; the fourth time we +laughed. 'Foolish men,' chuckled Papa, tickled by such blindness to +their own interests, 'if none will have it we will translate it and send +it to England, what?' + +'Who is we, darling?' I asked anxiously. + +'We is you, Rose-Marie,' said Papa, pulling my ear. + +'Oh,' said I. + +Scene closes. + + + +LVII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 1st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is strange to address this letter to Berlin, +and to know that by the time it gets there you will be there too. Well, +let it welcome you very heartily back to the Fatherland. I think I know +the street you are in; it is facing the Thiergarten, isn't it, and looks +north? Quite close to the Brandenburg Thor? I remember it because we +trudged, among other places, also about the Thiergarten on our memorable +visit, and Papa's eye caught the name of your street and he stood for +ten minutes in the rain giving us a spirited sketch of the man's life +and claims to have a street called after him. My step-mother waited with +a grim patience, her skirts firmly clutched in each hand. She had come +to sight-see and to have things explained to her, so that it would be +waste of a railway fare not to look and listen. Papa was in great +splendor that day, so obviously superior, in the universatility of his +knowledge, to either of us damp womenfolk. You won't get much sun there +unless your rooms are at the back, but on the other hand it is +undoubtedly a street for the exclusive and well-to-do, as even I could +see to whom marble steps and wrought-iron gates convey the usual lesson. +I, however, would sooner live in a kennel facing south than in a palace +where the sun never came; but then, as you know, my tendencies are +incurably kennelwards. + +Today I am humble and hanging my head, for I have discovered to my pain +and horror that Papa and I are living well beyond our income. I expect +we have bought too many books, and spent too much in stamps to be used +by publishers; but it is certain that we've already consumed over +seventy pounds of our yearly hundred, and that we only took five months +to do it in. What do you think of that? We have been squandering money +right and left somehow. There were no clothes to buy, for what we have +will last us at least two years, and where it has all gone to I can't +imagine. Indeed I am a useless person if I cannot even manage a tiny +house like this and make such sufficient means do. Papa has written to +Professor Martens to tell him he is willing to take in a young man +again. Willing? He is eager, hungry for a young man, for he sees that +without one things will go badly with us. And I, remembering the wealth +we enjoyed while Mr. Collins was with us, have written to him to ask if +he cares to come back and finish learning German. I don't know if he +still wants to, or rather if his father still wants him to, for German +to Joey was as the fly in the apothecary's ointment, in its extreme +offensiveness, nor have I told Papa that I wrote, because of the +peculiar horror with which he regards Joey; but I couldn't resist when I +know that six months of Joey would deliver us for two whole years from +all young men whatever, and I hope when the time comes, if it ever does, +and Joey with it, to persuade Papa by judicious argument of the eminent +desirability of this particular young man. + +There are, however, certain difficulties in the way. Our house has two +bedrooms, two sitting-rooms, an attic, a kitchen, and a coal-hole. +Johanna inhabits the attic. One sitting-room is sacred to Papa and his +work. The other is a scrap room in which we have our meals and receive +Frau von Lindeberg when she calls, and I write letters and read books +and darn stockings. Where, then, will Joey sleep? The answer is as clear +as daylight and very startling: Joey must sleep with Papa. Now that this +truth has dawned upon me I spend hours lost in thoughts of things like +screens and dividing curtains, besides preparing elaborate speeches for +the bringing of Papa to reason. He himself was the first to declare we +must positively take in a young man again, and he surely will see, when +it is pointed out to him, that any one we have must sleep at the +intervals appointed by nature. I'm afraid he'll see it in the case of +every one except the fruitful Joey. It is most unfortunate that Joey +should be so foolish about Goethe, for we really do want somebody who +doesn't mind about money, and I remember several poor boys in the past +who were so very poor that on the days when my step-mother demanded +payment I used to have to go out early and wander among the hills till +evening, unable to endure the sound of the thalers being wrung out of +them. Oh, money is the most horrid of all necessities. I am ashamed to +think of the many bright hours of life soiled by anxieties about it, by +meannesses about it. Wherever even a question of it arises Love and the +Graces fly affrighted, followed closely, by the entire troop of equally +terrified Muses, out of the nearest window. I detest it. I do not want +it. But with all my defiance of it I am crushed beneath the yoke of the +penny as completely as everybody else. Well do I know that penny, and +how much it is when there's one over, and what worlds away when there's +one too few. + +Here comes Johanna to lay the dinner. We are rankly vegetarian again, +Papa leading the way with immense determination, for he has set his +heart at this unfortunate juncture on a new biography of Goethe that +must needs come out just now, a big thing in two volumes costing a +terrible number of marks, very well done, full of the result of original +digging among archives; but he dare not buy it, he says, in the present +state of our affairs. 'Dost thou not think, Rose-Marie,' he said, his +face in grievous puckers at the prospect, 'that a renewed and careful +course of herbage may quickly-set the matter right?' + +'Not quickly,' said I, shaking my head, and pondering privately what, +exactly, he meant by the word renewed. + +He looked crestfallen. + +'But ultimately,' I said, wishing to cheer him. + +'Ultimately--ultimately,' he echoed peevishly. 'The word has a +knell-like sound about it that I do not like. When we have reached thy +Ultimately I shall no longer be in a state to desire or appreciate +Bielschowsky's _Goethe_. My brain, by then, will be clothed with grass, +and my veins be streams of running water.' + +'Well, darling,' said I, putting my arm through his, 'you'll be at least +very nice and refreshing, and extraordinarily like a verse of the +Psalms.' + +And for two days he has held out undaunted, and here comes our lentil +soup and roast apples, so good-by. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LVIII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 4th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--This morning I woke up and wondered at the strange +hush that had fallen on our house, set so near to a sighing, restless +forest; and I looked out of the window and it was the first snow. All +night it must have snowed, for there was the most beautiful smooth bank +of it without a knob anywhere to show where lately I had been digging, +from beneath my window up into the forest. Each pine tree was a fairy +tree, its laden branches one white sparkle. The clouds were gone, and by +the time I had done breakfast there was a brilliant blue sky, and the +hills round Jena stood out so sharply against it that they looked as if +somebody had been at them with a hatchet. Never was there such a serene +and silent world as the one I stepped out into, shovel in hand. I had +come to clear a pathway from the kitchen to the pump; instead I stood as +silent as everything else, the shovel beneath my arm, gazing about me +and drinking in the purity in a speechless ecstasy. Oh the air, Mr. +Anstruther, the air! Unhappy young man, who did not breathe it. It was +like nothing you've got in Berlin, of that you may be very certain. It +was absolutely calm; not a breath stirring. It was icy, yet crisp and +_frappe du soleil_. And then how wonderful the world looked after the +sodden picture of yesterday still in my mind. Each twig of the orchard +trees had its white rim on the one side, exact and smooth, drawn along +it by the finger of the north wind. The steps down from the back door +had vanished beneath the loveliest, sleekest white covering. The pump, +till the day before and ever since I have known it, a bleakly impressive +object silhouetted in all its lankness and gauntness against a +background of sky and mountain, was grown grotesque, bulky, almost +playful, its top and long iron handle heaped with an incredible pile of +snow, its spout hung about with a beard of icicles. Frau von Lindeberg's +kitchen smoke went up straight and pearly into the golden light. The +roofs of Jena were in blue shadow. Our neighbor's roof flashed with a +million diamonds in the sun. Two rooks cawed to each other from the pine +tree nearest our door; and Rose-Marie Schmidt said her morning prayers +then and there, still clinging to her shovel. Then she pulled off her +coat, hung her hat on the door-handle, and began in a sort of high +rapture to make a pathway to the pump. What are the joys of summer to +these? There is nothing like it, nothing, nothing in the world. I know +no mood of Nature's that I do not love--or think I do when it is +over--but for keenness of feeling, for stinging pleasure, for +overflowing life, give me a winter's day with the first snow, a clear +sky, and the thermometer ten degrees Reaumur below zero. + +Vicki called out from her doorway--you could hear the least call this +morning at an extraordinary distance--to ask if I were snowed up too +much to come down as usual. + +'I'm coming down, and I'm making the path to do it with,' I called back, +shovelling with an energy that set my hair dancing about my ears. + +She shouted back--her very shout was cheerful, and I did not need to see +her face to know that today there would be no tears--that she too would +make a path up to meet mine; and presently I heard the sounds of another +joyful shovel. + +Underneath, the ground was hard with frost; it had frozen violently for +several hours before the snow came up on the huge purple wings of the +north wind. The muddy roads, the soaked forest, the plaintive patter of +the rain, were wiped out of existence between a sleeping and a waking. +This was no world in which to lament. This was no place in which sighs +were possible. The thought that a man's marrying one or not could make +so much as the faintest smudge across the bright hopefulness of life +made me laugh aloud with healthiest derision. Oh, how my shovel rang +against the frozen stones! The feathery snow was scattered broadcast at +each stroke. My body glowed and tingled. My hair grew damp about my +forehead. The sun smiled broadly down upon my back. Papa flung up his +window to cheer me on, but shut it again with a slam before he had well +got out his words. Johanna came for an instant to the door, peeped out, +gasped that it was cold--_unheimlich kalt_ was her strange expression: +_unheimlich=dismal_, uncanny; think of it!--and shut the door as +hurriedly as Papa had shut the window. An hour later two hot and smiling +young women met together on the path they had shovelled, and +straightened themselves up, and looked proudly at the results of their +work, and laughed at each other's scarlet faces and at the way their +noses and chins were covered with tiny beads. 'As if it were August and +we'd been reaping,' said Vicki; and the big girl laughed at this, and +the small girl laughed at this, with an excessiveness that would have +convinced a passer-by that somebody was being very droll. + +But there was no passer-by. You don't pass by if snow lies on the roads +three feet deep. We are cut off entirely from Jena and shops. This +letter won't start for I haven't an idea how long. Milk cannot come to +us, and we cannot go to where there is a cow. I have flour enough to +bake bread with for about ten days unless the Lindebergs should have +none, in which case it will last less than five. The coal-hole is stored +with cabbages and carrots, buried, with cunning circumvention of decay, +in sand. Potatoes abound in earth-covered heaps out of doors. Apples +abound in Johanna's attic. We vegetarians come off well on occasions +like this, for the absence of milk and butter does not afflict the +already sorely afflicted, and of course the absence of meat leaves us +completely cold. + +Vicki and I have been mending a boy's sled we found in the lumber room +of their house, I suppose the sled used in his happier days by the +_Assessor_ now chained to a desk in Berlin, and with this we are going +out after coffee this afternoon when the sky turns pale green and stars +come out and blink at us, to the top of the road where it joins the +forest, dragging the sled up as best we can over the frozen snow, and +then, tightly clutching each other, and I expect not altogether in +silence, we intend to career down again as far as the thing will career, +flashing, we hope, past her mother's gate at a speed that will prevent +all interference. Perhaps we shall not be able to stop, and will be +landed at last in the middle of the market-place in Jena. I'll take this +letter with me in case that happens, because then I can post it. +Good-by. It's going to be glorious. Don't you wish you had a sled and a +mountain too? + +Yours in a great hurry, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LIX + +Galgenberg, Dec. 9th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--We are still in sunshine and frost up here, and +are all very happy, we three Schmidts--Johanna is the third--because +Joey arrives to-morrow and we shall once more roll in money. I hasten to +tell you this, for there were signs in your last two letters that you +were taking our position to heart. It is wonderfully kind, I think, the +way you are interested in our different little pains and pleasures. I am +often more touched than I care to tell you by the sincerity of your +sympathy with all we do, and feel very grateful for so true a friend. I +was so glad you gave up coming to Jena on your way to Berlin, for it +showed that you try to be reasonable, and then you know Professor +Martens goes to Berlin himself every now and then to take sweet counsel +with men like Harnack, so you will be sure to see him sooner or later, +and see him comfortably, without a rush to catch a train. You say you +did not come because I urged you not to, and that in all things you want +to please me. Well, I would prefer to suppose you a follower of that +plain-faced but excellent guide Common Sense. Still, being human, the +less lofty and conscientious side of me does like to know there is some +one who wishes to please me. I feel deliciously flattered--when I let +myself think of it; nearly always I take care to think of something +else--that a young man of your undoubted temporal and spiritual +advantages should be desirous of pleasing an obscure person like me. +What would Frau von Lindeberg say? Do you remember Shelley's wife's +sister, the Miss Westbrook who brushed her hair so much, with her +constant 'Gracious Heavens, what would Miss Warne say?' I feel inclined +to exclaim the same thing about Frau von Lindeberg, but with an opposite +meaning. And it is really very surprising that you should be so kind, +for I have been a shrew to you often, and have been absorbed in my own +affairs, and have not erred on the side of over-sympathy about yours. +Some day, when we are both very old, perhaps you will get a few hours' +leave from the dowager duchess you'll marry when you are forty, and will +come and look at my pigs and my garden and sit with me before the fire +and talk over our long friendship and all the long days of our life. And +I, when I hear you are coming, shall be in a flutter, and will get out +my best dress, and will fuss over things like asparagus and a salad, and +tell the heated and awe-stricken maid that His Britannic Majesty's +Ambassador at the Best Place to be an Ambassador in in the World is +coming to supper; and we shall feel how sweet it is to be old dear +friends. + +Meanwhile we are both very busy with the days we have got to now. Today, +for instance, has been so violently active that every bone I possess is +aching. I'll tell you what happened, since you so earnestly assure me +that all we do interests you. The snow is frozen so hard that far from +being cut off as I had feared from shops and food there is the most +glorious sledding road down to Jena; and at once on hearing of Joey's +imminence Vicki and I coasted down on the sled and I bought the book +Papa has been wanting and a gigantic piece of beef. Then we persuaded a +small but strong boy, a boy of open countenance and superior manners +whom we met in the market-place, to drag the sled with the beef and the +book up the hill again for us; and so we set out homeward, walking gayly +one on each side of him, encouraging him with loud admiration of his +prowess. 'See,' said I, when I knew a specially steep bit was coming, +'see what a great thing it is to be able to draw so much so easily.' + +A smirk and renewed efforts were the result of this speech at first; but +the smirk grew smaller as the hill grew steeper, and the efforts +dwindled to vanishing point with the higher windings of the road. At +last there was no smirk at all, and at my sixth repetition of the +encouragement he stopped dead. 'If it is such a great thing,' he said, +wiping his youthful forehead with a patched sleeve, and looking at me +with a precociousness I had not till then observed in his eyes, 'why do +you not do it yourself?' + +Vicki and I stared at each other in silent wonder. + +'Because,' I said, turning a reproachful gaze on him, 'because, my dear +little boy, I desire you to have the chance of earning the fifty +pfennings we have promised to give you when we get to the top.' + +He began to pull again, but no longer with any pride in his performance. +Vicki and I walked in silence behind, and at the next steep bit, instead +of repeating a form of words I felt had grown vain, I skilfully unhooked +the parcel of meat hanging on the right-hand runner and carried it, and +Vicki, always quick to follow my example, unhooked the biography of +Goethe from the left-hand runner and carried that. The sled leaped +forward, and for a space the boy climbed with greater vigor. Then came +another long steep bit, and he flagged again. + +'Come, come,' said I, 'it is quite easy.' + +He at once stopped and wiped his forehead. 'If it is easy,' he asked, +'why do you not do it yourself?' + +'Because, my dear little boy,' said I, trying to be patient, but meat is +heavy, and I knew it to be raw, and I feared every moment to feel a +dreadful dampness oozing through the paper, and I was out of breath, and +no longer completely calm, 'you engaged to pull it up for us, and having +engaged to do it it is your duty to do it. I will not come between a boy +and his duty.' + +The boy looked at Vicki. 'How she talks,' he said. + +Vicki and I again stared at each other in silent wonder, and while we +were staring he pulled the sled sideways across the road and sat down. + +'Come, come,' said I, striving after a brisk severity. + +'I am tired,' he said, leaning his chin on his hand and studying first +my face and then Vicki's with a detached, impartial scrutiny. + +'We too are tired,' said I, 'and see, yet we carry the heavy parcels for +you. The sled, empty, is quite light.' + +'Then why do you not pull it yourself?' he asked again. + +'Anyhow,' said Vicki, 'while he sits there we needn't hold these great +things.' And she put the volumes on the sled, and I let the meat drop on +it, which it did with a horrible, soft, heavy thud. + +The boy sat motionless. + +'Let him get his wind,' said Vicki, turning away to look over the edge +of the road at the view. + +'I'm afraid he's a bad little boy,' said I, following her and gazing too +at the sparkling hills across the valley. 'A bad little boy, encased in +an outer semblance of innocence.' + +'He only wants his wind,' said Vicki. + +'He shows no symptoms of not having got it,' said I; for the boy was +very calm, and his mouth was shut sweetly in a placid curve. + +We waited, looking at the view, humanely patient as became two highly +civilized persons. The boy got up after a few minutes and shook himself. +'I am rested,' he announced with a sudden return to the politeness that +had charmed us in Jena. + +'It certainly was rather a long pull up,' said I kindly, softened by his +manner. + +'Yes,' said he, 'but I will not keep the ladies waiting longer.' + +And he did not, for he whisked the sled round, sat himself upon it, and +before we had in the least understood what was happening he and it and +the books for Papa and the beef for Joey were darting down the hill, +skimming along the track with the delicious swiftness none knew and +appreciated better than we did. At the bend of the road he gave a joyful +whoop and waved his cap. Then he disappeared. + +Vicki and I stared at each other once more in silent wonder. 'What an +abandoned little boy,' she gasped at last--he must have been almost in +Jena by the time we were able to speak. + +'The poor beef,' said I very ruefully, for it was a big piece and had +cost vast sums. + +'Yes, and the books,' said Vicki. + +'Yes, and the _Assessor's_ sled,' said I. + +There was nothing for it but to hurry down after him and seek out the +authorities and set them in pursuit; and so we hurried as much as can be +hurried over such a road, tired, silent, and hungry, and both secretly +nettled to the point of madness at having been so easily circumvented by +one small boy. + +'Little boys are more pestilential than almost anything I know,' said +Vicki, after a period of speechless crunching over the snow. + +'Far more than anything I know,' said I. + +'I'm thankful I did not marry,' said she. + +'So am I,' said I. + +'The world's much too full of them as it is,' said she. + +'Much,' said I. + +'Oh,' she cried suddenly, stamping her foot, 'if I could only get hold +of him--wicked, wicked little wretch!' + +'What would you do?' I asked, curious to see if her plans were at all +like mine. + +'Gr--r--r--r--r,' said Vicki, clenching all those parts of her, such as +teeth and fists, that would clench. + +'Oh so would I!' I cried. + +We were almost at the bottom; the road was making its final bend; and, +as we turned the corner, behold the boy, his cap off, his head bent, his +shoulders straining at the rope, pulling the sled laboriously up again. +And there was the beef hung on one runner, and there were the books hung +on the other. We both stopped dead, arrested by this spectacle. He was +almost upon us before he saw us, so intent was he on his business, his +eyes on the ground, the sun shining on his yellow hair, the drops of +labor rolling down his crimson cheeks. + +'What?' he panted, pausing when he saw our four boots in a row in his +path, and had looked up and recognized the rest of us, 'what, am I there +already?' + +'No,' I cried in the voice of justified anger, 'you are not there--you +are here, at the very beginning of the mountain. Now what have you to +say for yourself?' + +'Nothing,' said he, grinning and wiping his face with his sleeve. 'But +it was a good ride.' + +'You have only just escaped the police and prison,' I said, still +louder. 'We were on our way to hand you over to them.' + +'If I had been there to hand,' said he, winking at Vicki, to whom he had +apparently taken a fancy that was in no way encouraged. + +'You had stolen our sled and our parcels,' I continued, glaring down on +him. + +'Here they are. They are all here. What more do you want?' said he. 'How +she talks,' he added, turning to Vicki and thrusting out his underlip +with an expression that could only mean disgust. + +'You are a very naughty little boy,' said Vicki. 'Give me the rope and +be off.' + +'Give me my fifty pfennings.' + +'Your fifty pfennings?' we exclaimed with one voice. + +'You promised me fifty pfennings.' + +'To pull the sled up to the top.' + +'I am ready to do it.' + +'Thank you. We have had enough. Let the rope go--' + +'And get home to your mother--' + +'And ask her to give you a thorough--' + +'A bargain is a bargain,' said the boy, planting himself squarely in +front of me, while I adjusted the rope over my shoulders and prepared to +pull. + +'Now run away, you very naughty little boy,' said I, pulling sideways to +pass him by. + +He stepped aside too, and faced me again. 'You promised me fifty +pfennings,' he said. + +'To pull the sled up.' + +'I am willing to do it.' + +'Yes, and coast down again as soon as you have got to the top. Be off +with you. We are not playing games.' + +'A promise is a promise,' said the boy. + +'Vicki, remove him from my path,' said I. + +Vicki took him by the arm and gingerly drew him on one side, and I +started up the hill, surprised to find what hard work it was. + +'I am coming too,' said the boy. + +'Are you?' said Vicki. + +'Yes. To fetch my fifty pfennings.' + +We said no more. I couldn't, because I was so breathlessly pulling, and +Vicki marched by my side in indignant silence, with a jealous eye +divided between the parcels and the boy. He, unencumbered, thrust his +hands into his pockets and beguiled the way by shrilly whistling. + +At each winding of the road when Vicki and I changed places he renewed +his offer to fulfil his first bargain; but we, more and more angry as we +grew hotter and hotter, refused with an ever increasing wrath. + +'Come, come,' said he, when a very steep bit had forced me to pause and +struggle for breath. + +'Come, come--' and he imitated my earlier manner--'it is quite easy.' + +I looked at him with what of majesty I could, and answered not a word. + +At Vicki's gate he was still with us. 'I will see you safely home,' +Vicki said to me when we got there. + +'This where you live?' inquired the boy, peeping through the bars of the +gate with cheerful interest. 'Nice little house.' + +We were silent. + +'I will see her home,' he said to Vicki, 'if you don't want to. But she +can surely take care of herself, a great girl like that?' + +We were silent. + +At my gate he was still with us. 'This where she lives?' he asked Vicki, +again peeping through the bars with cheerful interest. 'Funny little +house.' + +We were silent. In silence we opened the gate and dragged the sled in. +He came too. + +'You cannot come in here,' said Vicki. 'This is private property.' + +'I only wish to fetch my fifty pfennings,' said he. 'It will save you +trouble if I come to the door.' + +We went in in silence, and together carried the sled inside, a thing we +had not yet done, and took it with immense exertions into the parlor, +and put it under the table, and tied it by each of its four corners to +each of the table's four legs. + +'There,' said Vicki, scrambling to her feet again and looking at her +knots with satisfaction, 'that's safe if anything is.' + +I went with her to the door. The boy was still there, cap in hand, very +polite, very patient. 'And my fifty pfennings?' he asked pleasantly. + +I cannot explain what we did next. I pulled out my purse and paid him, +which was surprising enough, but Vicki, to whom fifty pfennings are also +precious, pulled out hers too and gave him fifty on her own account. I +am quite unable to explain either her action or mine. The boy made us +each the politest bow, his cap sweeping the snow. 'She,' he said to +Vicki, jerking his head my way, 'may think she is the prettiest, but you +are certainly the best.' + +And he left us to settle it between us, and walked away shrilly +whistling. + +And I am so tired that my very pen has begun to ache, so good-by. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Oh, I must tell you that Papa refused to have Joey sleep in his room +with a flatness that put a stop to my arguments before they were even +begun. 'Nay,' he cried, 'I will not.' And when I opened my mouth to +produce the arguments--' 'Nay,' he cried again, 'I will not.' He drowned +my speech. He would not listen. He would not reason. Parrot-like through +the house resounded his cry--'Nay, I will not.' I was in despair. But +everything has arranged itself. Joey is to have the _Assessor's_ room on +the ground floor of our neighbor's house, and will come up here for +lessons and meals. He is only to sleep down there, and will be all day +here. We telegraphed to Weimar to ask about it, and the ever kind owner +immediately agreed. Frau von Lindeberg is displeased, for she says no +Dammerlitz has ever yet been known to live in a house where there was a +lodger,--a common lodger she said first, but corrected herself, and +covered up the common with a cough. + + + +LX + +Galgenberg, Dec. 12th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I must write to-night, though it is late, to tell +you of my speechless surprise when I came in an hour ago and found you +had been here. I knew you had the moment I came in. At once I recognized +the smell of the cigarettes you smoke. I went upstairs and called +Johanna, for I was not sure that you were not still here, in the parlor, +and frankly I was not going down if you were, for I do not choose to +have my fastnesses stormed. She told me of your visit; how you had come +up on foot soon after Vicki and Joey and I had started off for an +afternoon's tobogganing on the hills, how you had stayed talking to +Papa, and talking and talking, till you had to hurry down to catch the +last train. 'And he bade me greet you for him,' finished Johanna. +'Indeed?' said I. + +Do you like winter excursions into the country? Is Berlin boring you +already? I shook my head in grave disapproval as Johanna proceeded with +her tale. I am all for a young man's attending to his business and not +making sudden wild journeys that take him away for a whole day and most +of a night. Papa was delighted, I must say, to have had at last, as he +told me with disconcerting warmth, at last after all these months an +intelligent conversation, but with his delight the success of your visit +ends, for when I heard of it I was not delighted at all. Why did you go +into the kitchen? Johanna says you would go, and then that you went out +hatless at the back door and down to the bottom of the garden and that +you stood there leaning against the fence as though it were summer. +'Still without a hat,' said Johanna, in her turn shaking her head, '_bei +dieser Kaelte_.' + +_Bei dieser Kaelte_, indeed. Yes; what made you do it? I am glad I was +out, for I do not care to look on while the usually reasonable behave +unaccountably. I don't think I can be friends with you for a little +after this. I think I really must quarrel, for it isn't very decent to +drop unexpectedly upon a person who from time to time has told you with +the frankness that is her most marked feature that she doesn't want to +be dropped upon. No doubt you wished to see Papa as well, and, on your +way through Jena, Professor Martens; but I will not pretend to suppose +your call was not chiefly intended for me, for it is to me and not to +either of those wiser ones that you have written every day for months +past. You are a strange young man. Heaven knows what you have accustomed +yourself to imagining me to be. I almost wish now that you had seen me +when I came in from our violent exercise, a touzled, short-skirted, +heated person. It might have cured you. I forgot to look in the glass, +but of course my hair and eyelashes were as white with hoar-frost as +Vicki's and Joey's, and from beneath them and from above my turned-up +collar must have emerged just such another glowing nose. Even Papa was +struck by my appearance--after having gazed, I suppose, for hours on +your composed correctness--and remarked that living in the country did +not necessarily mean a complete return to savage nature. + +The house feels very odd to-night. So do I. It feels haunted. So do I. I +want to scold you, and yet I cannot. I have the strangest desire to cry. +It is the thought that you came this long way, toiled up this long hill, +waited those long hours, all to see some one who is glad to have missed +you, that makes me want to. The night is so black outside my window, and +somewhere through that blackness you are travelling at this moment, +disappointed, across the endless frozen fields and forests that you must +go through inch by inch before you reach Berlin. Why did you do a thing +so comfortless? And here have I actually begun to cry,--I think because +it is so dark, and you are not yet home. + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXI + +Galgenberg, Dec. 16th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I don't quite understand. Purely motherly, I +should say. Perhaps our notions of the exact meaning of the word friend +are different. I include in it a motherly and sisterly interest in +bodily well-being, in dry socks, warm feet, regular meals. I do not like +my friend to be out on a bitter night, to take a tiring journey, to be +disappointed. My friend's mother would have, I imagine, precisely the +same feeling. My friend should not, then, mistake mere motherliness for +other and less comfortable sentiments. But I am busy today, and have no +time to puzzle out your letter. It must have been the outcome of a +rather strange mood. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Tell me more about your daily life in Berlin, the people you see, the +houses you go to, the attitude, kind or otherwise, of your chief. Tell +me these things, instead of swamping me with subtleties of sentiment. I +don't understand subtleties, and I fear and despise sentiment as a +certain spoiler of plain bread-and-butter happiness. There should be no +sentiment between friends. The moment there is they leave off being just +friends; and is not that what we both most want to be? + + + +LXII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 19th. + +Oh, I can do nothing with you. You are bent, I'm afraid, on losing your +friend. Don't write me such letters--don't, don't, don't! My heart sinks +when I see you deliberately setting about strangling our friendship. Am +I to lose it then, that too? Your last letters are like bad dreams, so +strange and unreasonable, so without the least order or self-control. I +read them with my fingers in my ears,--an instinctive foolish movement +of protection against words I do not want to hear. Dear friend, do not +take your friendship from me. Give yourself a shake; come out from those +vain imaginings your soul has gone to dwell among. What shall I talk to +you about this bright winter's morning? Yes, I will write you longer +letters; you needn't beg so hard, as though the stars couldn't get along +in their courses if I didn't. See, I am willing to do anything to keep +my friend. You are my only one, the only person in the world to whom I +tell the silly thoughts that come into my head and so get rid of them. +You listen, and you are the only person in the world who does. You help +me, and I in my turn want to be allowed to go on helping you. Do not put +an end to what is precious,--believe me it will grow more and more +precious with years. Do not, in the heat and impatience of youth, kill +the poor goose who, if left alone, will lay the most beautiful golden +eggs. What shall I talk to you about to turn your attention somewhere +else, somewhere far removed from that unhappy bird? Shall I tell you +about Papa's book, finally refused by every single publisher, come back +battered and draggled to be galvanized by me into fresh life in an +English translation? Shall I tell you how I sit for three hours daily +doing it, pen in hand, ink on fingers, hair pushed back from an anxious +brow, Papa hovering behind with a dictionary in which, full of distrust, +he searches as I write to see if it contains the words I have used? +Shall I tell you about Joey, whose first disgust at finding himself once +more with us has given place by degrees that grow visibly wider to a +rollicking enjoyment. Less and less does he come up here. More and more +does he stay down there. He hurries through his lessons with a speed +that leaves Papa speechless, and is off and hauling the sled up past our +gate with Vicki walking demurely beside him and is whizzing down again +past our gate with Vicki sitting demurely in front of him before Papa is +well through the list of adjectives he applies to him once at least +every day. I never see the sled now nearer than in the distance. Vicki +wears her stiff shirts again, and her neat ties again, and the sporting +belt that makes her waist look so very trim and tiny. If anything she is +more aggressively starched and boyish than before. Her collars seem to +grow higher and cleaner each time I see her. Her hat is tilted further +forward. Her short skirts show the neatest little boots. She is +extraordinarily demure. She never cries. Joey reads _Samson Agonistes_ +with us, and points out the jokes to Vicki. Vicki says why did I never +tell her it was so funny? I stare first at one and then at the other, +and feel a hundred years old. + +'I say,' said Joey, coming into the kitchen just now. + +'Well, what?' said I. + +'I'm going to Berlin for a day.' + +'Are you indeed?' + +'Tell the old man, will you?' + +'Tell the who?' + +'The old man. I shan't be here for the lesson to-morrow, thank the Lord. +I'm off by the first train.' + +'Indeed,' said I. + +There was a silence, during which Joey fidgeted about among the culinary +objects scattered around him. I went on peeling apples. When he had +fidgeted as much as he wanted to be lit a cigarette. + +'No,' said I. 'Not in kitchens. A highly improper thing to do.' + +He threw it into the dustbin. 'I say,' he said again. + +'Well, what?' said I again. + +'What do you think--what do you think--' He paused. I waited. As he +didn't go on I thought he had done. 'What do I think?' I said. 'You'd be +staggered if I told you, it's such a lot, and it's so terrific.' + +'What do you think,' repeated Joey, taking no heed of me, but, with his +hands in his pockets, kicking a fallen apple aimlessly about on the +floor, 'what do you think the little girl'd like for Christmas and that, +don't you know?' + +I stopped peeling and gazed at him, knife and apple suspended in +mid-air. 'The little girl?' I inquired. 'Do you mean Johanna?' + +Joey stared. Then he grinned at me monstrously. 'You bet,' was his +cryptic reply. + +'What am I to bet?' I asked patiently. + +Joey gave the fallen apple a kick. Looking down I observed that it was +the biggest and the best, and stooped to rescue it. 'It's not pretty,' +said I, rebuking him, 'to kick even an apple when it's down.' + +'Oh, I say,' said Joey impatiently, 'do be sensible. There never was any +gettin' much sense out of you I remember. And you're only pretendin'. +You know I mean Vicki.' + +'Vicki?' + +He had the grace to blush. 'Well, Fraeulein What's her name. You can't +expect any one decent to get the hang of these names of yours. They +ain't got any hang, so how's one to get it? What'd she like for +Christmas? Don't you all kick up a mighty fuss here over Christmas? +Trees, and presents, and that? Plummier plum-puddings than we have, and +mincier mince-pies, what?' + +'If you think you will get even one plum-pudding or mince-pie,' said I, +thoughtfully peeling, 'you are gravely mistaken. The national dish is +carp boiled in beer.' + +Joey looked really revolted. 'What?' he cried, not liking to credit his +senses. + +'Carp boiled in beer,' I repeated distinctly. 'It is what I'm going to +give you on Christmas Day.' + +'No you're not,' he said hastily. + +'Yes I am,' I insisted. 'And before it and after it you will be +required, in accordance with German custom, to sing chorales.' + +'I'd like to see myself doin' it. You'll have to sing 'em alone. I'm +invited to feed down there.' + +And he jerked his head toward that portion of the kitchen wall beyond +which, if you passed through it and the intervening coal-hole and garden +and orchard, you would come to the dwelling of the Lindebergs. + +'Oh,' said I; and looked at him thoughtfully. + +'Yes,' said he, trying to meet my look with an equal calm, but +conspicuously failing. 'That bein' so,' he went on hurriedly, 'and my +droppin', so to speak, into the middle of somebody's Christmas tree and +that, it seems to me only decent to give the little girl somethin'. What +shall I get her? Somethin' to put on, I suppose. A brooch, or a pin, +what?' + +'Or a ring,' said I, thoughtfully peeling. + +'A ring? What, can one--oh I say, don't let's waste time rottin'--' + +And glancing up through cautious eyelashes I saw he was very red. + +'It'd be easy enough if it was you,' he said revengefully. + +'What would?' + +'Hittin' on what you'd like.' + +'Would it?' + +'All you'd want to do the trick would be a dictionary.' + +'Now Mr. Collins that's unkind,' said I, laying down my knife. + +He began to grin again. 'It's true,' he insisted. + +'It suggests such an immeasurable stuffiness,' I complained. + +'It isn't my fault,' said he grinning. + +'But perhaps I deserve it because I mentioned a ring. Let me tell you, +as man to man, that you must buy no brooches for Vicki.' + +'A pin, then?' + +'No pins.' + +'A necklace, then?' + +'Nothing of the sort. What would her parents say? Give her chocolates, a +bunch of roses, perhaps a book--but nothing more. If you do you'll get +into a nice scrape.' + +Joey looked at me. 'What sort of scrape?' he asked curiously. + +'Gracious heavens, don't you see? Are you such a supreme goose? My poor +young man, the parents would immediately ask you your intentions.' + +'Oh would they,' said Joey, in his turn becoming thoughtful; and after a +moment he said again, 'Oh would they.' + +'It's as certain as anything I know,' said I. + +'Oh is it,' said Joey, still thoughtful. + +'It's a catastrophe young men very properly dread,' said I. + +'Oh do they,' said Joey, sunk in thought. + +'Well, if you're not listening--' And I shrugged my shoulders, and went +on with my peeling. + +He pulled his cap out of the pocket into which it had been stuffed, and +began to put it on, tugging it first over one ear and then over the +other in a deep abstraction. + +'You're in my kitchen,' I observed. + +'Sorry,' he said, snatching it off. 'I forgot. You always make me feel +as if I were out of doors.' + +'How very odd,' said I, interested and slightly flattered. + +'Ain't it. East wind, you know--decidedly breezy, not to say nippin'. +Well, I must be goin'.' + +'I think so too,' said I coldly. + +'Don't be dull while I'm away,' said Joey; and departed with a nod. + +But he put in his head again the next moment. 'I say, Miss Schmidt--' + +'Well, what?' + +'You think I ought to stick to chocolates, then?' 'If you don't there'll +be extraordinary complications,' said I. + +'You're sure of that?' + +'Positive.' + +'You'd swear it?' + +I threw down my knife and apple. 'Now what's the matter with the boy!' I +exclaimed impatiently. 'Do I ever swear?' + +'But if you did you would?' + +'Swear what?' + +'That a bit of jewelry would bring the complications about?' + +'Oh--dense, dense, dense! Of course it would. You'd be surprised at the +number and size of them. You can't be too careful. Give her a hymn-book. + +Joey gave a loud whoop. + +'Well, it's safe,' said I severely, 'and it appeals to parents.' + +'You bet,' said Joey, screwing his face into a limitlessly audacious +wink. + +'I wish,' said I, very plaintively, 'that I knew exactly what it is I am +to bet. You constantly tell me to do so, but never add the necessary +directions.' + +'Oh, I'm goin',' was Joey's irrelevant reply; and his head popped out as +suddenly as it had popped in. + +Or shall I tell you--I am anxious to make this letter long enough to +please you--about Frau von Lindeberg, who spent two days elaborately +cutting Joey, the two first days of his appearance in their house as +lodger, persuaded, I suppose, that no one even remotely and by business +connected with the Schmidts could be anything but undesirable, and how, +meeting him in the passage, or on his way through the garden to us, the +iciest stare was all she felt justified in giving him in return for his +friendly grin, and how on the third day she suddenly melted, and stopped +and spoke pleasantly to the poor solitary, commiserating with his +situation as a stranger in a foreign country, and suggesting the +alleviation to his loneliness of frequent visits to them? No one knows +the first cause of this melting. I think she must have heard through her +servant of the number and texture of those pink and blue silk +handkerchiefs, of his amazing piles of new and costly shirts, of the +obvious solidity of the silver on everything of his that has a back or a +stopper or a handle or a knob. Anyhow on that third morning she came up +and called on us, asking particularly for Papa. 'I particularly wished,' +she said to me, spreading herself out as she did the last time on the +sofa, 'to see your good father on a matter of some importance.' + +'I'll go and call him,' said I, concealing my conviction that though I +might call he would not come. + +And he would not. 'What, interrupt my work?' he cried. 'Is the woman +mad?' + +I went back and made excuses. They were very lame ones, and Frau von +Lindeberg instantly brushed them aside. 'I will go to him,' she said, +getting up. 'Your excellent father will not refuse me, I am sure.' + +Papa was sitting in his slippers before the stove, doing nothing, so far +as I could see, except very comfortably read the new book about Goethe. + +'I am sorry to disturb so busy a man,' said Frau von Lindeberg, bearing +down with smiles on this picture of peace. + +Papa sprang up, and seeing there was no escape pretended to be quite +pleased to see her. He offered her his chair, he prayed for indulgence +toward his slippers, and sitting down facing her inquired in what way he +could be of service. + +'I want to know something about the young Englishman who occupies a room +in our house,' said Frau von Lindeberg, without losing time. 'You +understand that it is not only natural but incumbent on a parent to wish +for information in regard to a person dwelling under the same roof.' + +'I can give every information,' said Papa readily. 'His name in English +is Collins. In German it is _Esel_.' + +'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg, taken aback. + +'It is, madam,' said Papa, looking very pleasant, as became a man in his +own house confronted by a female visitor. 'We have re-christened him. +And no array of words with which I am acquainted will express the +exactness of his resemblance to that useful but unintelligent beast.' + +'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg, not yet recovered. + +'The ass, madam, is conspicuous for the narrowness of its understanding. +So is Mr. Collins. The ass is exasperating to persons of normal brains. +So is Mr. Collins. The ass is lazy in regard to work, and obstinate. So +is Mr. Collins. The ass is totally indifferent to study. So is Mr. +Collins. The ass has never heard of Goethe. Neither has Mr. Collins. The +ass is useful to the poor. So is Mr. Collins. The ass, indeed, is the +poor man's most precious possession. So, emphatically, is Mr. Collins.' + +'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg again. + +'Is there anything more you wish to know?' Papa inquired politely, for +she seemed unable immediately to go on. + +She cleared her throat. 'In what way--in what way is he useful?' she +asked. + +'Madam, he pays.' + +'Yes--of course, of course. You cannot--' she smiled--'be expected to +teach him German for nothing.' + +'Far from doing that I teach him German for a great deal.' + +'Is he--do you know anything about his relations? You understand,' she +added, 'that it is not altogether pleasant for a private family like +ours to have a strange young man living under the same roof.' + +'Understand?' cried Papa. 'I understand it so thoroughly that I most +positively refused to have him under this one.' + +'Ah--yes,' said Frau von Lindeberg, a Dammerlitz expression coming into +her face. 'The cases are not--are not quite--pray tell me, who and what +is his father?' + +'A respectable man, madam, I should judge.' + +'Respectable? And besides respectable?' + +'Eminently worthy, I should say from his letters.' + +'Ah yes. And--and anything else?' + +'Honorable too, I fancy. Indeed, I have not a doubt.' + +'Is he of any family?' + +'He is of his own family, madam.' + +'Ah yes. And did you--did you say he was well off?' + +'He is apparently revoltingly rich.' + +An electric shock seemed to make Frau von Lindeberg catch her breath. +'Oh really,' she then said evenly. 'Did he inherit his wealth?' + +'Made it, madam. He is an ironmonger.' + +Another electric shock made Frau von Lindeberg catch her breath again. +Then she again said, 'Oh really.' + +There was a pause. + +'England,' she said after a moment, 'is different from Germany.' + +'I believe it is,' admitted Papa. + +'And ironmongers there may be different from ironmongers here.' + +'It is at least conceivable.' + +'Tell me, what status has an ironmonger in England?' + +'What status?' + +'In society.' + +'Ah, that I know not. I went over there seven and twenty years ago for +the purpose of marrying, and I met no ironmongers. Not consciously, that +is.' + +'Would they--would they be above the set in which you then found +yourself, or would they--' she tried to conceal a shiver--'be below it.' + +'I know not. I know nothing of society either there or here. But I do +know that money, there as here, is very mighty. It is, I should say, +merely a question of having enough.' + +'And has he enough?' + +'The man, madam, is I believe perilously near becoming that miserable +and isolated creature a millionaire. God help the unfortunate Joey.' + +'But why? Why should God help him? Why is he unfortunate? Does not he +get any share?' + +'Any share? He gets it all. He is the only child. Now I put it to you, +what chance is there for an unhappy youth with no brains-' + +'Oh, I must really go. I have taken up an unwarrantable amount of your +time. Thank you so very much, dear Herr Schmidt--no, no, do not disturb +yourself I beg--your daughter will show me the way--' + +'But,' cried Papa, vainly trying to detain this determinedly retreating +figure, 'about his character, his morals--we have not yet touched--' + +'Ah yes--so kind--I will not keep you now. Another time perhaps--' + +And Frau von Lindeberg got herself out of the room and out of the house. +Scarcely did she say good-by to me, in so great and sudden a fever was +she to be gone; but she did turn on the doorstep and give me a curiously +intense look. It began at my eyes, travelled upward to my hair, down +across my face, and from there over my whole body to my toes. It was a +very odd look. It was the most burningly critical look that has ever +shrivelled my flesh. + +Now what do you think of this enormous long letter? It has made me quite +cheerful just writing it, and I was not very cheerful when I began. I +hope the reading of it will do you as much good. Good-by. Write and tell +me you are happy. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Do, do try to be happy! + + + +LXIII + +Galgenberg, Dec. 22d. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--The house is quite good enough for me, I assure +you--the 'setting' I think you call it, suggesting with pleasant +flattery that there is something precious to be set. It only has the +bruised sort of color you noticed when its background is white with +snow. In summer against the green it looks as white as you please; but a +thing must be white indeed to look so in the midst of our present +spotlessness. And it is not damp if there are fires enough. And the +rooms are not too small for me--poky was the adjective you applied to +the dear little things. And I am never lonely. And Joey is very nice, +even though he doesn't quite talk in blank verse. I feel a sort of shame +when you make so much of me, when you persist in telling me that the +outer conditions of my life are unworthy. It makes me feel so base, such +a poor thing. Sometimes I half believe you must be poking fun. Anyhow I +don't know what you would be at; do you wish me to turn up my nose at my +surroundings? And do you see any good that it would do? And the details +you go into! That coffee-pot you saw and are so plaintive about came to +grief only the day before your visit, and will, in due season, be +replaced by another. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt coffee to be poured out +of a broken spout, and it doesn't hurt us to drink it after it has +passed through this humiliation. On the contrary, we receive it +thankfully into cups, and remain perfectly unruffled. You say, and +really you say it in a kind of agony, that the broken spout, you are +sure, is symbolic of much that is invisible in my life. You say--in +effect, though your words are choicer--that if you had your way my life +would be set about with no spouts that were not whole. If you had your +way? Mr. Anstruther, it is a mercy that in this one matter you have not +got it. What an extremely discontented creature I would become if I +spent my days embedded in the luxury you, by a curious perverseness, +think should be piled around me. I would gasp ill-natured epigrams from +morning till night. I would wring my hands, and rend the air with cries +of _cui bono_. The broken spout is a brisk reminder of the +transitoriness of coffee-pots and of life. It sets me hurrying about my +business, which is first to replace it, and then by every possible +ingenuity to make the most of the passing moment. The passing moment is +what you should keep your eye on, my young friend. It is a slippery, +flighty thing; but, properly pounced upon, lends itself fruitfully to +squeezing. The upshot of your last letter is, I gather, that for some +strange reason, some extremity of perverseness, you would have me walk +in silk attire, and do it in halls made of marble. It suffocates me only +to think of it. I love my freedom and forest trampings, my short skirts +and swinging arms. I want the wind to blow on me, and the sun to burn +me, and the mud to spatter me. Away with caskets, and settings, and +frames! I am not a picture, or a jewel, whatever your poetic eye, misled +by a sly and tricky Muse, persists in seeing. It would be quite a good +plan, and of distinctly tonic properties, for you to write to Frau von +Lindeberg and beg her to describe me. She, it is certain, would do it +very accurately, untroubled by the deceptions of any Muse. + +How kind of you to ask me what I would like for Christmas, and how funny +of you to ask if you might not give me a trinket. I laughed over that, +for did I not write to you three days ago and give you an account of my +conversation with Joey on the subject of trinkets at Christmas? Is it +possible you do not read my letters? Is it possible that, having read +them, you forget them so immediately? Is it possible that proverbs lie, +and the sauce appropriate to the goose is not also appropriate to the +gander? Give me a book. There is no present I care about but that. And +if it happened to be a volume in the dark blue binding edition of +Stevenson to add to my row of him I would be both pleased and grateful. +Joey asked me what I wanted, so he is getting me the _Travels with a +Donkey_. Will you give me _Virginibus Puerisque_? + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +If you'd rather, you may give me a new coffee-pot instead. + +Later. + +But only an earthenware one, like the one that so much upset you. + + + +LXIV + +Galgenberg, Dec. 26th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--We had a most cheerful Christmas, and I hope you +did too. I sent you my blessing lurking in the pages of Frenssen's new +and very wonderful book which ought to have reached you in time to put +under your tree. I hope you did have a tree, and were properly festive? +The Stevenson arrived, and I found it among my other presents, tied up +by Johanna with a bit of scarlet tape. Everything here at Christmas is +tied up with scarlet, or blue, or pink tape, and your Stevenson lent +itself admirably to the treatment. Thank you very much for it, and also +for the little coffee set. I don't know whether I ought to keep that, it +is so very pretty and dainty and beyond my deserts, but--it would break +if I packed it and sent it back again, wouldn't it? so I will keep it, +and drink your health out of the little cup with its garlands of tiny +flower-like shepherdesses. + +The audacious Joey did give Vicki jewelry, and a necklace if you please, +the prettiest and obviously the costliest thing you can imagine. What +happened then was in exact fulfilment of my prophecy; Vicki gasped with +joy and admiration, he tells me, and before she had well done her gasp +Frau von Lindeberg, with, as I gather, a sort of stately regret, took +the case out of her hands, shut it with a snap, and returned it to Joey. +'No,' said Frau von Lindeberg. + +'What's wrong with it?' Joey says he asked. + +'Too grand for my little girl,' said Frau von Lindeberg. 'We are but +humble folk.' And she tossed her head, said Joey. + +'Ah--Dammerlitz,' I muttered, nodding with a complete comprehension. + +'What?' exclaimed Joey, starting and looking greatly astonished. + +'Go on,' said I. + +'But I say,' said Joey, in tones of shocked protest. + +'What do you say?' I asked. + +'Why, how you must hate her,' said Joey, quite awestruck, and staring at +me as though he saw me for the first time. + +'Hate her?' I asked, surprised, 'Why do you think I hate her?' + +He whistled, still staring at me. + +'Why do you think I hate her?' I asked again, patient as I always try to +be with him. + +He murmured something about as soon expecting it of a bishop. + +In my turn I stared. 'Suppose you go on with the story,' I said, +remembering the hopelessness of ever following the train of Joey's +thoughts. + +Well, there appears to have been a gloom after that over the +festivities. You are to understand that it all took place round the +Christmas tree in the best parlor, Frau von Lindeberg in her black silk +and lace high-festival dress, Herr von Lindeberg also in black with his +orders, Vicki in white with blue ribbons, the son, come down for the +occasion, in the glories of his dragoon uniform with clinking spurs and +sword, and the servant starched and soaped in a big embroidered apron. +In the middle of these decently arrayed rejoicers, the candles on the +tree lighting up every inch of him, stood Joey in a Norfolk jacket, +gaiters, and green check tie. 'I was goin' to dress afterward for +dinner,' he explained plaintively, 'but how could a man guess they'd all +have got into their best togs at four in the afternoon? I felt an awful +fool, I can tell you.' + +'I expect you looked one too,' said I with cheerful conviction. + +There appears, then, to have descended a gloom after the necklace +incident on the party, and a gloom of a slightly frosty nature. Vicki, +it is true, was rather melting than frosty, her eyes full of tears, her +handkerchief often at her nose, but Papa Lindeberg was steeped in gloom, +and Frau von Lindeberg was sad with the impressive Christian sadness +that does not yet exclude an occasional wan smile. As for the son, he +twirled his already much twirled mustache and stared very hard at Joey. + +When the presents had been given, and Joey found himself staggering +beneath a waistcoat Vicki had knitted him, and a pair of pink bed-socks +Frau von Lindeberg had knitted him, and an empty photograph frame from +Papa Lindeberg, and an empty purse from the son, and a plate piled +miscellaneously with apples and nuts and brown cakes with pictures +gummed on to them, he observed Frau von Lindeberg take her husband aside +into the remotest corner of the room and there whisper with him +earnestly and long. While she was doing this the son, who knew no +English, talked with an air of one who proposed to stand no nonsense to +Joey, who knew no German, and Vicki, visibly depressed, slunk round the +Christmas tree blowing her nose. + +Papa Lindeberg, says Joey, came out of the corner far more gloomy than +he went in; he seemed like a man urged on unwillingly from behind, a man +reluctant to advance, and yet afraid or unable to go back. 'I beg to +speak with you,' he said to Joey, with much military stiffness about his +back and heels. + +'Now wasn't I right?' I interrupted triumphantly. + +'Poor old beggar,' said Joey, 'he looked frightfully sick.' + +'And didn't you?' + +'No,' said Joey grinning. + +'Most young men would have.' + +'But not this one. This one went off with him trippin' on the points of +his toes, he felt so fit.' + +'Well, what happened then?' + +'Oh, I don't know. He said a lot of things. I couldn't understand 'em, +and I don't think he could either, but he was very game and stuck to it +once he'd begun, and went on makin' my head spin and I daresay his own +too. Long and short of it was that in this precious Fatherland of yours +the Vickis don't accept valuables except from those about to become +their husbands.' + +'I should say that the Vickis in your own or any other respectable +Fatherland didn't either,' said I. + +'Well, I'm not arguin', am I?' + +'Well, go on.' + +'Well, it seemed pretty queer to think I was about to become a husband, +but there was nothin' for it--the little girl, you see, couldn't be done +out of her necklace just because of that.' + +'I see,' said I, trying to. + +'On Christmas Day too--day of rejoicin' and that, eh?' + +'Quite so,' said I. + +'So I said I was his man.' + +'And did he understand?' + +'No. He kept on sayin' 'What?' and evidently cursin' the English +language in German. Then I suggested that Vicki should be called in to +interpret. He understood that, for I waved my arms about till he did, +but he said her mother interpreted better, and he would call her +instead. I understood that, and said 'Get out.' He didn't understand +that, and while he was tryin' to I went and told his wife that he'd sent +for Vicki. Vicki came, and we got on first rate. First thing I did was +to pull out the necklace and put it round her neck. 'Pretty as paint, +ain't she?' I said to the old man. He didn't understand that either, but +Vicki did and laughed. 'You give her to me and I give the necklace to +her, see?' I said, shoutin', for I felt if I shouted loud enough he +wouldn't be able to help understandin', however naturally German he was. +'Tell him how simple it is,' I said to Vicki. Vicki was very red but +awfully cheerful, and laughed all the time. She explained, I suppose, +for he went out to call his wife. Vicki and I stayed behind, and--' + +'Well?' + +'Oh well, we waited.' + +'And what did Frau von Lindeberg say?' + +'Oh, she was all right. Asked me a lot about the governor. Said Vicki's +ancestors had fought with the snake in the Garden of Eden, or somebody +far back like that--ancient lineage, you know--son-in-law must be +impressed. I told her I didn't think my old man would make any serious +objection to that. 'To what?' she called out, looking quite scared--they +seem frightfully anxious to please the governor. 'He don't like +ancestors,' said I. 'Ain't got any himself and don't hold with 'em.' She +pretended she was smilin', and said she supposed my father was an +original. 'Well,' said I, goin' strong for once in the wit line, 'anyhow +he's not an aboriginal like Vicki's lot seem to have been.' Pretty good +that, eh? Seemed to stun 'em. Then the son came in and shook both my +hands for about half an hour and talked a terrific lot of German and was +more pleased about it than any one else, as far as I could see. And +then--well, that's about all. So I pulled off my little game rather +neatly, what?' + +'Yes, if it was your little game,' said I, with a faint stress on the +your. + +'Whose else should it be?' he asked, looking at me open-mouthed. + +'Vicki is a little darling,' was my prudent reply, 'and I congratulate +you with all my heart. Really I am more delighted about this than I can +remember ever being about anything--more purely delighted, without the +least shadow on my honest pleasure.' + +And all Joey vouchsafed as a reward for my ebullition of real feeling +was the information that he considered me quite a decent sort. + +So you see we are very happy up on the Galgenberg just now; the lovers +like a pair of beaming babies, Frau von Lindeberg, sobered by the shock +of her good fortune into the gentle kindliness that so often follows in +the wake of a sudden great happiness, Papa Lindeberg warmed out of his +tortoise-in-the-sun condition into much busy letter-writing, and Vicki's +brother so uproariously pleased that I can only conclude him to be the +possessor of many debts which he proposes to cause Joey to pay. Life is +very thrilling when Love beats his wings so near. There has been a great +writing to Joey's father, and Papa too has written, at my dictation, a +letter rosy with the glow of Vicki's praises. Joey thinks his father +will shortly appear to inspect the Lindebergs. He seems to have no fears +of parental objections. 'He's all right, my old man is,' he says +confidently when I probe him on the point; adding just now to this +invariable reply, 'And look here, Miss Schmidt, Vicki's all right too, +you see, so what's the funk about?' + +'I don't know,' said I; and I didn't even after I had secretly looked in +the dictionary, for it was empty of any explanation of the word funk. +Yours, deeply interested in life and lovers, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXV + +Galgenberg, Dec. 31st. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--My heartiest good wishes for the New Year. May it +be fruitful to you in every pleasant way; bring you interesting work, +agreeable companions, bright days; and may it, above all things confirm +and strengthen our friendship. There now; was ever young man more +thoroughly fitted out with invoked blessings? And each one wished from +the inmost sincerity of my heart. + +But we can't come to Berlin as you suggest we should, and allow +ourselves to be shown round by you. Must I say thank you? No, I don't +think I will. I will not pretend conventionality with you, and I do not +thank you, for I don't like to have to believe that you really thought I +would come. And then your threat, though it amused me, vexed me too. You +say if I don't come you will be forced to suppose that I'm afraid of +meeting you. Kindly suppose anything you like. After that of course I +will not come. What a boy you are. And what an odd, spoilt boy. Why +should I be afraid of meeting you? Is it, you think, because once--see, +I am at least not afraid of speaking of it--you passed across my life +convulsively? I don't know that any man could stir me up now to even the +semblance of an earthquake. My quaking days are done; and after that one +thunderous upheaval I am fascinated by the charm of quiet weather, and +of a placid basking in a sunshine I have made with my very own hands. It +is useless for you to tell me, as I know you will, that it is only an +imitation of the real thing and has no heat in it. I don't want to be +any hotter. In this tempestuous world where everybody is so eager, here +is at least one woman who likes to be cool and slow. How strange it is +the way you try to alter me, to make me quite different. There seems to +be a perpetual battering going on at the bulwarks of my character. You +want to pull them down and erect new fabrics in their place, fabrics so +frothy and unreal that they are hardly more than fancies and would have +to be built up afresh every day. Yet I know you like me, and want to be +my friend. You make me think of those quite numerous husbands who fall +in love with their wives because they are just what they are, and after +marriage expend their energies training them into something absolutely +different. There was one in Jena while we were there who fell +desperately in love with a little girl of eighteen, when he was about +your age, and he adored her utterly because she was so divinely silly, +ignorant, soft and babyish. She knew nothing undesirable, and he adored +her for that. She knew nothing desirable either, and he adored her for +that too. He adored her to such an extent that all Jena, not given +overmuch to merriment, was distorted with mirth at the spectacle. He was +a clever man, a very promising professor, yet he found nothing more +profitable than to spend every moment he could spare adoring. And his +manner of adoring was to sit earnestly discovering, by means of repeated +experiment, which of his fingers fitted best into her dimples when she +laughed, and twisting the tendrils of her hair round his thumbs in an +endless enjoyment of the way, when he suddenly let them go, they +beautifully curled. He did this quite openly, before us all, seeing I +suppose no reason why he should dissemble his interest in his future +wife's dimples and curls. But alas for the dimples and curls once she +was married! _Oh weh,_ how quickly he grew blind to them. And as for the +divine silliness, ignorance, softness and babyishness that had so deeply +fascinated him, just those were what got most on to his nerves. He tried +to do away with them, to replace them by wit and learning combined with +brilliant achievements among saucepans and shirts, and the result was +disastrous. His little wife was scared. Her dimples disappeared from +want of practice. Her pretty colors seemed suddenly wiped out, as though +some one had passed over them roughly with a damp cloth. Her very hair +left off curling, and was as limp and depressed as the rest of her. Let +this, Mr. Anstruther, be an awful warning to you, not only when you +marry but now at once in regard to your friends. Do not attempt to alter +those long-suffering persons. It is true you would have some difficulty +in altering a person like myself, long ago petrified into her present +horrid condition, but even the petrified can and do get tired of hearing +the unceasing knocking of the reforming mallet on their skulls. Leave me +alone, dear young man. Like me for anything you find that can be liked, +express proper indignation at the rest of me, and go your way praising +God Who made us all. Really it would be a refreshment if you left off +for a space imploring me to change into something else. There is a ring +about your imploring as if you thought it was mere wilfulness holding me +back from being and doing all you wish. Believe me I am not wilful; I am +only petrified. I can't change. I have settled down, very comfortably I +must say, to the preliminary petrifaction of middle age, and middle age, +I begin to perceive, is a blessed period in which we walk along +mellowly, down pleasant slopes, with nothing gusty and fierce able to +pierce our incrustation, no inward volcanoes able to upset the +surrounding rockiness, nothing to distract our attention from the mild +serenity of the landscape, the little flowers by the way, the beauty of +the reddening leaves, the calm and sunlit sky. You will say it is absurd +at twenty-six to talk of middle age, but I feel it in my bones, Mr. +Anstruther, I feel it in my bones. It is after all simply a question of +bones. Yours are twenty years younger than mine; and did I not always +tell you I was old? + +I am so busy that you must be extra pleased, please, to get a letter +today. The translation of Papa's book has ended by interesting me to +such an extent that I can't leave off working at it. I do it officially +in his presence for an hour daily, he as full of mistrust of my English +as ever, trying to check it with a dictionary, and using picturesque +language to convey his disgust to me that he should be so imperfectly +acquainted with a tongue so useful. He has forgotten the little he +learned from my mother in the long years since her death, and he has the +natural conviction of authors in the presence of their translators that +the translator is a grossly uncultured person who will leave out all the +_nuances_. For an hour I plod along obediently, then I pretend I must go +and cook. What I really do is to run up to my bedroom, lock myself in, +and work away feverishly for the rest of the morning at my version of +the book. It is, I suppose, what would be called a free translation, but +I protest I never met anything quite so free. Papa's book is charming, +and the charm can only be reproduced by going repeatedly wholly off the +lines. Accordingly I go, and find the process exhilarating and amusing. +The thing amuses and interests me; I wonder if it would amuse and +interest other people? I fear it would not, for when I try to imagine it +being read by my various acquaintances my heart sinks with the weight of +the certainty that it couldn't possibly. I imagine it in the hands of +Joey, of Frau von Lindeberg, of different people in Jena, and the +expression my inner eye sees on their faces makes me unable for a long +while to go on with it. Then I get over that and begin working again at +my salad. It really is a salad, with Papa as the groundwork of lettuce, +very crisp and fresh, and myself as the dressing and bits of garnishing +beetroot and hard-boiled egg. I work at it half the night sometimes, so +eager am I to get it done and sent off. Yes, my young friend, I have +inherited Papa's boldness in the matter of sending off, and the most +impressive of London publishers is shortly to hold it in his sacred +hands. And if his sacred hands forget themselves so far as to hurl it +rudely back at me they yet can never take away the fun I have had +writing it. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +Joey's father is expected to-morrow, and the whole Galgenberg is foggy +with the fumes of cooking. Once his consent is given the engagement will +be put in the papers and life will grow busy and brilliant for Frau von +Lindeberg. She talks of removing immediately to Berlin, there to give a +series of crushingly well-done parties to those of her friends who are +supposed to have laughed when Vicki was thrown over by her first lover. +I don't believe they did laugh; I refuse to believe in such barbarians; +but Frau von Lindeberg, grown frank about that disastrous story now that +it has been so handsomely wiped off Vicki's little slate, assures me +that they did. She doesn't seem angry any longer about it, being much +too happy to have room in her heart for wrath, but she is bent on this +one form of revenge. Well, it is a form that will gratify everybody, +revenger and revengee equally I should think. + + + +LXVI + +Galgenberg, Jan. 7th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I couldn't write before, I've been too busy. The +manuscript went this morning after real hard work day and night, and now +I feel like a squeezed lemon that yet is cheerful, if you can conceive +such a thing. Joey's father has been and gone. He arrived late one +night, inspected the Lindebergs, gave his consent, and was off +twenty-four hours later. The Lindebergs were much disconcerted by these +quick methods, they who like to move slowly, think slowly, and sit hours +over each meal; and they had not said half they wanted to say and he had +not eaten half he was intended to eat before he was gone. Also he +disconcerted them,--indeed it was more than that, he upset them utterly, +by not looking like what they had made up their minds he would look +like. The Galgenbergs expected to see some one who should be blatantly +rich, and blatant riches, it dimly felt, would be expressed by much +flesh and a thick watch chain. Instead the man had a head like Julius +Caesar, lean, thoughtful, shrewd, and a spare body that made Papa +Lindeberg's seem strangely pulpy and as if it were held together only by +the buttons of his clothes. We were staggered. Frau von Lindeberg +couldn't understand why a man so rich should also be so thin,--' He is +in a position to have the costliest cooking,' she said several times, +looking at me with amazed eyebrows; nor could she understand why a man +without ancestors should yet make her husband, whose past bristles with +them, be the one to look as if he hadn't got any. She mused much, and +aloud. While Vicki was being run breathlessly over the mountains by her +nimble future father-in-law, with Joey, devoured by pride in them both, +in attendance, I went down to ask if I could help in the cooking, and +found her going about her kitchen like one in a dream. She let me tuck +up my sleeves and help her, and while I did it she gave vent to many +musings about England and its curious children. 'Strange, strange +people,' she kept on saying helplessly. + +But she is the happiest woman in Germany at this moment, happier far +than Vicki, for she sees with her older eyes the immense advantages that +are to be Vicki's who sees at present nothing at all but Joey. And then +the deliciousness of being able to write to all those relations grown of +late so supercilious, to Cousin Mienchen who came and played the rich, +and tell them the glorious news. Vicki basks in the sunshine of a +mother's love again, and never hears a cross word. Good things are +showered down on her, presents, pettings, admiration, all those charming +things that every girl should enjoy once before her pretty girlhood has +gone. It is the most delightful experience to see a family in the very +act of receiving a stroke of luck. Strokes of luck, especially of these +dimensions, are so very rare. It is like being present at a pantomime +that doesn't leave off, and watching the good fairy touching one gray +dull unhappy thing after another into radiance and smiles. But I lose my +friends, for they go to Berlin almost immediately, and from there to +Manchester on a visit to Mr. Collins, a visit during which the business +part of the marriage is to be settled. Also, and naturally, we lose +Joey. This is rather a blow, just as we had begun so pleasantly to roll +in his money, but where Vicki goes he goes too, and so Papa and I will +soon be left again alone on our mountain, face to face with vegetarian +economies. + +Well, it has been a pleasant interlude, and I who first saw Vicki +steeped in despair, red-eyed, piteous, slighted, talked about, shall see +her at last departing down the hill arrayed in glory as with a garment. +Then I shall turn back, when the last whisk of her shining skirts has +gleamed round the bend of the road, to my own business, to the sober +trudging along the row of days allotted me, to the making of economies, +the reading of good books, the practice of abstract excellences, the +pruning of my soul. My soul, I must say, has had some vigorous prunings. +It ought by now to be of an admirable sturdiness. You yourself once +lopped off a most luxuriant growth that was, I agree, best away, and now +these buds of friendship, of easier circumstances, are going to be +nipped off too, and when they are gone what will be left, I wonder, but +the uncompromising and the rugged? Is it possible I am so base as to be +envious? In spite of my real pleasure I can't shut out a certain +wistfulness, a certain little pang, and exactly what kind of wistfulness +it is and exactly what kind of pang I don't well know unless it is envy. +Vicki's lot is the last one I would choose, yet it makes me wistful. It +includes Joey, yet I feel a little pang. This is very odd; for Joey as a +husband, a person from whom you cannot get away, would be rather more +than I could suffer with any show of gladness. How then can I be +envious? Of course if Joey knew what I am writing he would thrust an +incredulous tongue in his cheek, wink a sceptical eye, and mutter some +eternal truth about grapes; but I, on the other hand, would watch him +doing it with the perfect calm of him who sticks unshakably to his +point. What would his cheek, his tongue, and his winking eye be to me? +They would leave me wholly unmoved, not a hair's breadth moved from my +original point, which is that Joey is not a person you can marry. But +certainly it is a good and delightful thing that Vicki thinks he is and +thinks it with such conviction. I tell you the top of our mountain is in +a perpetual rosy glow nowadays, as though the sun never left it; and the +entire phenomenon is due solely to these two joyful young persons. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXVII + +Galgenberg, Jan. 12th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I did a silly thing today: I went and mourned in +an empty house. I don't think I'm generally morbid, but today I indulged +in a perfect orgy of morbidness. Write and scold me. It is your turn to +scold, and by doing it thoroughly you will bring me back to my ordinary +cheerful state. The Lindebergs are gone, and I am feeling it absurdly. I +didn't realize how much I loved that little dear Vicki, nor in the least +the interest Frau von Lindeberg's presence and doings gave life. The +last three weeks have been so thrilling, there was so much warmth and +brightness going about that it reached even onlookers like myself and +warmed and lighted them; and now in the twinkling of an eye it is +gone,--gone, wiped out, snuffed out, and Papa and I are alone again, and +there is a northeast wind. These are the times when philosophy is so +useful; but do explain why it is that one is only a philosopher so long +as one is happy. When I am contented, and everything is just as I like +it, I can philosophize beautifully, and do it with a hearty sincerity +that convinces both myself and the person listening to me; but when the +bad days come, the empty days, the disappointing, chilly days, behold +Philosophy, that serene and dignified companion so long as the weather +was fine, clutching her academic skirts hastily together and indulging +in the form of rapid retreat known to the vulgar and the graphic as +skedaddling. 'Do not all charms fly,' your Keats inquires, 'at the mere +touch of cold Philosophy?' But I have found that nothing flies quite so +fast as cold Philosophy herself; she would win in any race when the race +is who shall run away quickest; she is of no use whatever--it is my +deliberate conclusion--except to sit with in the sun on the south side +of a sheltering wall on those calm afternoons of life when you've only +got to open your mouth and ripe peaches drop into it. I used to think if +I could love her enough she would, in her gratitude, chloroform me +safely over all the less pleasant portions of life, see to it that I was +unconscious during the passage, never let me be aware of anything but +the beautiful and the good; but either she has no gratitude or I have +little love, and the years have brought me the one conviction that she +is an artist at leaving you in the lurch. The world is strewn with +persons she has left in it, and out of the three inhabitants of a +mountain to leave one there is surely an enormous percentage. Now what +is your opinion of a woman with a healthy body, a warm room, and a +sufficient dinner, who feels as though the soul within her were an +echoing cavern, empty, cold, and dark? It is what I feel at this moment, +and it is shameful. Isn't it shameful that the sight of leaden +clouds--but they really are dreadful clouds, inky, ragged, +harassed--scudding across the sky, and of furious brown beech-leaves on +the little trees in front of the Lindebergs' deserted house being lashed +and maddened by the wind, should make me suddenly catch my breath for +pain? It is pain, quite sharp, unmistakable pain, and it is because I am +alone, and my friends gone, and the dusk is falling. This afternoon I +leaned against their gate and really suffered. Regret for the past, fear +for the future,--vague, rather terrifying fears, not wholly unconnected +with you--hurt so much that they positively succeeded in wringing a tear +out of me. It was a very reluctant tear, and only came out after a world +of wringing, and I had stood there a most morbid long time before it +appeared; but it did appear, and the vicious wind screamed round the +Lindebergs' blank house, rattled its staring naked windows, banged in +wild gusts about the road where the puddles of half melted snow +reflected the blackness of the sky, tore at my hair and dress, stung my +cheeks, shook the gate I held on to, thundered over the hills. Dear +young man, I don't want to afflict you with these tales of woe and +weakness, but I must tell you what I did next. I went up and got the key +from Johanna, in whose keeping Frau von Lindeberg had left it, and came +down again, and unlocked the door of the house lately so full of light +and life, and crept fearfully about the echoing rooms and up the dismal +stairs, and let myself go, as I tell you, to a very orgy of morbidness. +It was like a nightmare. Memories took the form of ghosts, and clutched +at me through the balusters and from behind doors with thin cold +fingers; and the happiest memories were those that clutched the coldest. +I fled at last in a sudden panic, flying out of reach of them, slamming +the door to, running for my life up the road and in at our gate. Johanna +did not let me in at once, and I banged with my fists in a frenzy to get +away from the black sky and the threatening thunder of the +storm-stricken pines. '_Herr Gott_' said Johanna when she saw me; so +that I must have looked rather wild. + +Well, I am weak, you see, just as weak and silly as the very weakest and +silliest in spite of my big words and brave face. I am writing now as +near the stove as possible in Papa's room, glad to be with him, glad to +be warm, grateful to sit with somebody alive after that hour with the +ghosts; and the result of deep considering has been to force me to face +the fact that there is much meanness in my nature. There is. Don't +bother to contradict; there is. All my forlornness since yesterday is +simply the outcome of a mixture of envy and self-pity. I do miss dear +Vicki whom I greatly loved, I do miss the cheery Joey, I miss Papa +Lindeberg who likened me to Hebe, I miss his wife who kept me in my +proper place--it is quite true that I miss these people, but that would +never of itself be a feeling strong enough to sweep me off my feet into +black pools of misery as I was swept this afternoon, and never, never +would make me, who have so fine a contempt for easy tears, cry. No, Mr. +Anstruther, bitter truths once seen have to be stared at squarely, and I +am simply comparing my lot with Vicki's and being sorry for myself. It +is amazing that it should be so, for have I not everything a reasonable +being needs, and am I not, then, a reasonable being? And the meanness of +it; for it does imply a grudging, an uneasiness in the presence of +somebody else's happiness. Well, I'm thoroughly ashamed, and that at +least is a good thing; and now that you know how badly I too need +lecturing and how I am torn by particularly ungenerous emotions perhaps +you'll see what a worthless person I am and will take me down from the +absurd high pinnacle on which you persist in keeping me and on which I +have felt so desperately uncomfortable for months past. It is infinitely +humiliating, I do assure you, to be--shall we say venerated? for +excellences one would like to possess but is most keenly aware one does +not. Persons with any tendency to be honest about themselves and with +even the smallest grain of a sense of humor should never be chosen as +idols and set up aloft in giddy places. They make shockingly bad idols. +They are divided by a desire to laugh and an immense pity for the +venerator. + +I add these observations, dear friend, to the description of my real +nature that has gone before because your letters are turning more and +more into the sort of letters that ends a placid friendship. I want to +be placid. I love being placid. I insist on being placid. And the +thought of your letters with so little placidness about them, was with +me this afternoon in that terrible house, and it added to the fear of +the future that seized me by the throat and would not let me go. Is it, +then, so impossible to be friends, just friends with a man, in the same +dear frank way one is with another woman, or a man is with a man? I +hoped you and I were going to prove the possibility triumphantly. I +even, so keenly do I desire it, prayed that we were. But perhaps there +is little use in such praying. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +You may scold me as much as you like, but you are not to comfort me. Do +not make the mistake, I earnestly beg you, of supposing that I want to +be comforted. + + + +LXVIII + +Galgenberg, Jan. 13th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Just a line to tell you that I have recovered, and +you are not to take my letter yesterday too seriously. I woke up this +morning perfectly normal, and able to look out on the day before me with +the usual interest. Then something very nice happened: my translation of +Papa's book didn't come back, but instead arrived an urbane letter +expressing a kind of reluctant willingness, if you can imagine the +mixture, to publish it. What do you think of that? The letter, it is +true, goes on to suggest, still with urbanity, that no doubt no one will +ever buy it, but promises if ever any one does to send us a certain just +portion of what was paid for it. 'Observe, Rose-Marie,' said Papa when +his first delight had calmed, 'the unerring instinct with which the +English, very properly called a nation of shopkeepers, instantly +recognize the value of a good thing when they see it. Consider the long +years during which I have vainly beaten at the doors of the German +public, and compare its deafness with the quick response of our alert +and admirable cousins across the Channel. Well do I know which was the +part that specially appealed to this man's business instinct--' + +And he mentioned, while my guilty ears burned crimson, a chapter of +statistics, the whole of which I had left out. + +Yours sincerely, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + + + +LXIX + +Galgenberg, Jan. 14th. + +Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I see no use whatever in a friend if one cannot +tell him about one's times of gloom without his immediately proposing to +do the very thing one doesn't want him to do, which is to pay one a +call. Your telegram has upset me, you see, into a reckless use of the +word one, a word I spend hours sometimes endeavoring to circumvent, and +which I do circumvent if I am in good bodily and spiritual health, but +the moment my vitality is lowered, as it is now by your telegram, I +cease to be either strong enough or artful enough to dodge it. There are +four of it in that sentence: I fling them to you in a handful, only +remarking that they are your fault, not mine. + +Now listen to me--I will drop this playfulness, which I don't in the +least feel, and be serious:--why do you want to come and, as you +telegraph, talk things over? I don't want to talk things over; it is a +fatal thing to do. May I not tell you frankly of my moods, of my downs +as well as of my ups, without at once setting you off in the direction +of too much kindness? After I had written that letter I was afraid; and +I opened it again to tell you it was not your comfortings and pityings +that I wanted, but the sterner remedy of a good scolding; yet your +answer is a telegram to ask if you may come. Of course I telegraphed +back that I should not be here. It is quite true: I should not if you +came. I will not see you. Nothing can be gained by it, and everything +might be lost,--oh everything, everything might be lost. I would see to +it that you did not find me. The forests are big, and I can walk if +needs be for hours. You will think me quite savagely unkind, but I can't +help that. Perhaps if your letters lately had been different I would not +so obstinately refuse to see you, but I have a wretched feeling that my +poor soul is going to be pruned again, pruned of its last, most pleasant +growth, and you are on the road to saying and doing things we shall both +be for ever sorry for. I have tried my best to stop you, to pull you up, +and I hope with all my heart that I may not be going to get a letter +that will spoil things irreparably. Have not my hints been big enough? +Let me beg you not to write foolishnesses that cannot, once sent, be got +back again and burned. But at least when you sit down to write you can +consider your words, and those that have come out too impulsively can go +into the fire; while if you came here what would you do with your +tongue, I wonder? There is no means of stopping that once it is well +started, and the smallest things sets it off in terrible directions. Am +I not your friend? Will you not spare me? Must I be forced to speak with +a plainness that will, by comparison, make all my previous plainness +seem the very essence of polite artificialness? Of all the wise counsel +any one could offer you at this moment there is none half so wise, none +that, taken, would be half so precious to us both, as the counsel to +leave well alone. I offer it you earnestly; oh, more than +earnestly--with a passionate anxiety lest you should refuse it. + +Your sincere friend, + +ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. + +I suppose it is true what I have often suspected, that I am a person +doomed to lose, one by one, the things that have been most dear to me. + + +LXX + +Jan. 16th. + +Well, there is no help, then. You will do it. You will put an end to it. +You have written me a love-letter, the thing I have been trying so hard +for so long to stop your doing, and there is nothing to be done but to +drop into silence. + + + +LXXI + +Jan. 17th. + +But what is there possible except silence? I will not marry you. I +cannot after this keep you my friend. + + + +LXXII + +Jan. 19th. + +Oh, I have tried, I have hoped to keep you. It has been so sweet to me. +It has made everything so different. For the second time you have wiped +the brightness out of my life. + + + +LXXIII + +Jan. 21 st. + +Leave me alone. Don't torment me with wild letters. I do not love you. I +will not marry you. I cared for you sincerely as a friend, but what a +gulf there is between that and the abandonment of worship last year in +Jena. Only just that, just that breathless passion, would make me marry, +and I would never feel it for a man I am forced to pity. Is not worship +a looking up? a rapture of faith? I cannot look up to you. I have no +faith in you. Leave me alone. + + + +LXXIV + +Jan. 22d. + +Let us consider the thing calmly. Let us try to say good-by without too +great a clamor. What is the use, after all, of being so vocal? We have +each given the other many hours of pleasure, and shall we not be +grateful rather than tragic? Here we are, got at last to the point where +we face the inevitable, and we may as well do it decently. See, here is +a woman who does not love you: would you have her marry you when she had +rather not? And you mustn't be angry with me because I don't love you, +for how can I help it? So far am I from the least approach to it that it +makes me tired just to think of a thing so strenuous, of the bother of +it, of the perpetual screwed-up condition of mind and body to a pitch +above the normal. The normal is what I want. My heart is set upon it. I +don't want ecstasies. I don't want excitement. I don't want alternations +of bliss and terror. I want to be that peaceful individual a maiden +lady,--a maiden lady looking after her aged father, tending her flowers, +fondling her bees--no, I don't think she could fondle bees,--fondling a +cat, then, which I haven't yet got. Oh, I know I have moods of a more +tempestuous nature, such as the one I was foolish enough to write to you +about the other day, stirring you up to a still more violent +tempestuousness yourself, but they roll away again when they have +growled themselves out, and the mood that succeeds them is like clear +shining after rain. I intend this clear shining as I grow older to be +more and more my surrounding atmosphere. I make the bravest resolutions; +will you not make some too? Dear late friend and sometime lover, do not +want me to give you what I have not got. We are both suffering just now; +but what about Time, that kindest soother, softener, healer, that final +tidier up of ragged edges, and sweeper away of the broken fragments of +the past? + + + +LXXV + +Jan. 23d. + +I tell you you have taken away what I held precious for the second time, +and there shall be no third. You showed me once that you could not be a +faithful lover, you have shown me now you cannot be a faithful friend. I +am not an easy woman, who can be made much of and dropped in an unending +see-saw. Even if I loved you we would be most wretched married, you with +the feeling that I did not fit into your set, I with the knowledge that +you felt so, besides the deadly fear of you, of your changes and fits of +hot and cold. But I do not love you. This is what you seem unable to +realize. Yet it is true, and it settles everything for ever. + + + +LXXVI + +Jan. 25th. + +Must there be so much explaining? It was because I thought I was making +amends that way for having, though unconsciously, led you to fancy you +cared for me last year. I wanted to be of some use to you, and I saw how +much you liked to get them. By gradual degrees, as we both grew wiser, I +meant my letters to be a help to you who have no sister, no mother, and +a father you don't speak to. I was going to be the person to whom you +could tell everything, on whose devotion and sincerity you could always +count. It was to have been a thing so honest, so frank, so clear, so +affectionate. And I've not even had time really to begin, for at first +there was my own struggling to get out of the deep waters where I was +drowning, and afterward it seemed to be nothing but a staving off, a +writing about other things, a determined telling of little anecdotes, of +talk about our neighbors, about people you don't know, about anything +rather than your soul and my soul. Each time I talked of those, in +moments of greater stress when the longing for a real friend to whom I +could write openly was stronger than I could resist, there came a letter +back that made my heart stand still. I had lost my lover, and it seemed +as if I must lose my friend. At first I believed that you would settle +down. I thought it could only be a question of patience. But you could +not wait, you could not believe you were not going to be given what you +wanted in exactly the way you wanted it, and you have killed the poor +goose after all, the goose I have watched so anxiously, who was going to +lay us such beautiful golden eggs. I am very sorry for you. I know the +horrors of loving somebody who doesn't love you. And it is terrible for +us both that you should not understand me to the point, as you say, of +not being able to believe me. I have not always understood myself, but +here everything seems so plain. Love is not a thing you can pick up and +throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a +person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of +thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying +my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love +me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did +get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in that sordid place. +Oh, call me hard, wickedly revengeful, unbelievably cruel if it makes +you feel less miserable--but will you listen to a last prophecy? You +will get over this as surely as you have got over your other similar +vexations, and you will live to say, 'Thank God that German girl--what +was her name? wasn't it Schmidt? good heavens, yes--thank God she was so +foolish as not to take advantage of an unaccountable but strictly +temporary madness.' + +And if I am bitter, forgive me. + + + +LXXVII + +Jan. 27th. + +It would be useless. + + + +LXXVIII + +Jan. 29th. + +I would not see you. + + + +LXXIX + +Jan. 31st. + +I do not love you. + + + +LXXX + +Feb. 2d. + +I will never marry you. + + + +LXXXI + +Feb. 4th. + +I shall not write again. + + +[THE END] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fraeulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther, by +Elizabeth von Arnim + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRAeULEIN SCHMIDT *** + +***** This file should be named 35282.txt or 35282.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/2/8/35282/ + +Produced by Laura McDonald (http://www.girlebooks.com> & +Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org> at + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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