Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther, Page 2

  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, ofJena?

  Roger, pale but brave: The daughter of old Schmidt, in whose house Iboarded. 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 itcan 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. Thereis nothing to recommend me to him. He'll know I'm poor. He'll doubt ifI'm respectable. He won't even think me pretty. You might tell him thatI can cook, darn, manage as well as the thriftiest of _Hausfraus_, and Ibelieve it would leave him cold. You might dwell on my riper age as anadvantage, say I have lived down the first fevers of youth--I never hadthem--say, if he objects to it, that Eve was as old as Adam when theystarted life in their happy garden, and yet they got on very well, saythat I'm beautiful as an angel, or so plain that I am of necessitysensible, 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, andit took rather ages. Why do you say you feel like screaming when youthink of me wrestling with Johanna? I tell you I'm so happy that nothingany Johanna can do or leave undone in the least affects me. I go aboutthe house on tiptoe; I am superstitious, and have an idea that all sortsof little envious Furies are lying about in dusty corners asleep, put tosleep by you, and that if I don't move very delicately I shall wakethem--

  O Freude, habe Acht, Sprich leise, dass nicht der Schmerz erwacht....

  That's not Goethe. By the way, _poor_ Goethe. What an unforeseen resultof a year in the City of the Muses, half an hour's journey from the IlmAthens itself, that you should pronounce his poetry coarse, obvious, andcommonplace. What would Papa say if he knew? Probably that youngAnstruther is not the intelligent young man he took him for. But thenPapa is soaked in Goethe, and the longer he soaks the more he adoreshim. In this faith, in this Goethe-worship, I have been brought up, andcannot, I'm afraid, get rid of it all at once. It is even possible thatI never shall, in spite of London and you. Will you love me less if Idon't? Always I have thought Goethe uninspired. The Muse never seizedand shook him till divinenesses dropped off his pen without his knowinghow or whence, divinenesses like those you find sometimes in the pagesof lesser men, lesser all-round men, stamped with the unmistakable stampof heavenly birth. Goethe knew very well, very exactly, where each ofhis sentences had come from. But I don't see that his poetry is eitherof the three things you say. I'm _afraid_ it is not the last two, forthe world would grow very interesting if thinking and writing as he didwere so obvious that we all did it. As to its being coarse, I'mincurably 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 whois afraid it isn't. Perhaps, dear Roger, you won't, as Papa says, quiteapprehend my meaning; if you cannot, please console yourself with thereflection that probably I haven't got one.

  What you say about the money you'll have dazzles me. Why, it's afortune. We shall be richer than our _Buergermeister_. You never told meyou 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 quitecomfortable, now haven't we? But think of our glory when my hundredpounds 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 youlovely food; and Papa says that lovely food is the one thing that everreally makes a man give himself the trouble to rise up and call his wifeblessed.

  It is so late. Good-night.

  R.-M.

  Don't take my Goethe-love from me. I know simply masses of him, andcan't let him go. My mind is decked out with him as a garden is deckedwith flowers. Now isn't that pretty? Or is it only silly? Anyhow it'sdreadfully late. Good-night.

  V

  Jena, Nov. 13th.

  No letter from you today. I am afraid you are being worried, and becauseof me. Here am I, quiet and cheerful, nobody bothering me, and your dearimage in my heart to warm every minute of life; there are you, beingforced to think things out, to make plans for the future, decide oncourses of action, besides having to pass exams, and circumvent a parentwhom I gather you regard as refractory. How lucky I am in my dearfather. If I could have chosen, I would have chosen him. Never has hebeen any trouble. Never does he bore me. Never am I forced tocriticisms. He knows that I have no brains, and has forgiven me. I knowhe hasn't much common-sense, and have forgiven him. We spend our timespoiling and petting and loving each other--do you remember how yousometimes laughed?

  But I wish you were not worried. It is all because I'm so ineligible. IfI could come to you with a pot of money in each hand, turned by anappreciative ruler into Baroness von Schmidt, with a Papa in my trainweighed down by Orders, and the road behind me black with cartscontaining clothes, your father would be merciful unto us and bless us.As things are, you are already being punished, you have already begun topay the penalty for that one little hour's happiness; and it won't bequite paid ever, not so long as we both shall live. Do you, who think somuch, ever think of the almost indecent haste with which punishmentshurry in the wake of joys? They really seem to tumble over one anotherin 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? Sowrong to let oneself go to happiness for those few moments that oneshould immediately be punished? My father will not let me believeanything. He says--when my step-mother is not listening; when she is hedoesn't--that belief is not faith, and you can't believe if you do notknow. But he cannot stop my silently believing that the Power in whoseclutches we are is an amazing disciplinarian, a relentless grudger ofjoys. And what pitiful small joys they are, after all. Pitiful littleattempts of souls doomed to eternal solitude to put out feelers in thedark, to get close to each other, to touch each other, to try to makeeach other warm. Now I am growing lugubrious; I who thought never to belugubrious again. And at ten o'clock on a fine November morning, of alltimes in the world.

  Papa comes back from Weimar today. There has been a prolonged meetingthere of local lights about the damage done by some Goth to theShakespeare statue in the park; and though Papa is not a light, still hedid burn with indignation over that, and has been making impassionedspeeches, and suggesting punishments for the Goth when they shall havecaught him. I think I shall go over by the two o'clock train and meethim and bring him home, and look in at Goethe's sponge on the way. Youknow how the little black thing lies in his bedroom there, next to abasin not much bigger than a breakfast-cup. With this he washed and wassatisfied. And whenever I feel depressed, out of countenance with myselfand life, I go and look at it and come home cheered and strengthened. Iwonder 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 itonly remained a sponge, far too small for the really cleanly, instead ofwhat it has up to now been, the starting-point for a train of thrilling,enthusiastic thoughts. I'm an unbalanced creature. Do you divide yourtime too, I wonder, between knocking your head against the stars and, insome freezing depth of blackness, listening to your heart, how it willhardly beat for fear? Of course you don't. You are much too clever. Andthen you have been educated, trained, taught to keep your thoughtswithin bounds, and not let them start off every minute on fresh andaim
less wanderings. Yet the star-knocking is so wonderful that I believeI would rather freeze the whole year round for one hour of it than goback again to the changeless calm, the winter-afternoon sunshine, inwhich I used to sit before I knew you. All this only means that you havenot 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, yourprospects, your probable hideous fate if you were not prudent, yourglorious career if you were. I felt guilty, wounded, triumphant, vain,all at once. Papa, of course, was chiefly the listener. He agreed; or atmost he temporized. I tell you, Roger, I am amazed at the power a womanhas over her husband if she is in _every_ way inferior to him. It is notonly that, as we say, _der Kluegere giebt nach_, it is the daily completevictory of the coarser over the finer, the rough over the gentle, theignorant over the wise. My step-mother is an uneducated person, shrewdabout all the things that do not matter, unaware of the very existenceof the things that do, ready to be charitable, helpful, where thecalamity is big enough, wholly unsympathetic, even antagonistic, towardall those many small calamities that make up one's years; the sort ofwoman parsons praise, and who get tombstones put over them at lastpeppered with frigid adjectives like virtuous and just. Did you everchance to live with a just person? They are very chilling, and not sorare as one might suppose. And Papa, laxest, most tolerant of men, solax that nothing seems to him altogether bad, so tolerant that nobody,however hard he tries, can pass, he thinks, beyond the reach offorgiveness and love, so humorous that he has to fight continually tosuppress it, for humor lands one in odd morasses of dislike andmisconception here, married her a year after my mother died, and did itwholly for my sake. Imagine it. She was to make me happy. Imagine thattoo. I was not any longer to be a solitary _Backfisch_, with holes inher stockings and riotous hair. There came a painful time when Papabegan to suspect that the roughness of my hair might conceivably be asymbol of the dishevelment of my soul. Neighboring matrons pointed outthe possibility to him. He took to peering anxiously at unimportantparts 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 happenedthat the dear ways and pretty looks of my darling mother had come backfor a moment with extra vividness. He decided that I was both dirty andwretched, and argued, I am sure during sleepless nights, that I wouldprobably go on being dirty and wretched for ever. And so he put on hisbest 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 makingdoughnuts, for it was the afternoon of New Year's Eve. She had justtaken them out of the oven, and they were obviously successful. Papaloves 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 smellof them was grateful; and they were very hot.

  Papa came home engaged. 'I am not as a rule in favor of secondmarriages, Rose-Marie,' he began, breaking the news to me with elaborateart.

  'Oh, horrid things,' I remarked, my arm round his neck, my face againsthis, for even then I was as tall as he. You know how he begins abruptlyabout anything that happens to cross his mind, so I was not surprised.

  He rubbed his nose violently. 'I never knew anybody with such hair asyours for tickling a person,' he said, trying to push it back behind myears. Of course it would not go. 'Would it do that,' he addedsuspiciously, '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 armaway quickly, but put it back again just as quickly and pressed my facestill closer: it was better we should not see each other's eyes while hetold me.

  'I am not, as a rule, in favor of them,' he repeated, when he hadcoughed 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 noticelapses from convention, from social customs? If no one is there to tellher how to dress and how to behave? And she is growing up, and yetremains a barbarian, and the day is not far distant when she must goout, 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 onlyfemale 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 thanusual 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 keephouse 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 tomarket three times a week, and taste all the butter? Didn't she help todo the rooms? And in the evenings weren't they happy together, withnobody to worry them? And then, when he missed his darling wife, didn'tthe 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 cannotshow them that,' he said.

  'But they do dress and behave.'

  'Rose-Marie, unmended stockings are not dressing. And to talk to alearned stranger well advanced in years with the freedom of his equal inage 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 himin despair. Despair, too, was in his own face. He had had time to forgetthe doughnuts, and how cold he had been, and how hungry. So shaken was Ithat I actually suggested the engagement of a finishing governess tofinish 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 headded the amazing statement that a wife was cheaper.

  Well, I suppose she has been cheap: that is she has made one of Papa'smarks go as far as two of other people's; but oh how expensive she hasbeen in other ways! She has ruined us in such things as freedom, andsweetness, and light. You know the sort of talk here at meals. I wishyou could have heard it before her time. She has such a strongpersonality that somehow we have always followed her lead; and Papa, whoused to bubble out streams of gayety when he and I sat untidily oneither side of a tureen of horrible bad soup, who talked of all thingsunder heaven, and with undaunted audacity of many things in it, and whosomehow put a snap and a sparkle into whatever he said, sits like aschoolboy invited to a meal at his master's, eager to agree, anxious togive satisfaction. The wax cloth on the table is clean and shiny; thespoons are bright; a cruet with clear oil and nice-looking vinegarstands in the midst; the food, though simple, is hot and decent; we arequite comfortable; and any of the other Jena _Hausfraus_ coming induring a meal would certainly cry out _Wie gemuethlich_. But of what useis it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers andtidy shutters, when inside one's soul wanders through empty roo
ms,mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings itfood, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired andthere's not a chair to sit on?

  Why I write all this I can't think; except that I feel as if I weretalking to you. You must tell me if I bore you. When I begin a letter toyou the great difficulty is to leave off again. Oh how warm it makes onefeel to know that there is one person in the world to whom one iseverything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvellouspossession. No wonder people like having them. And I used to think thatso silly. Heavens, what an absurd person I have been. Why, love is theone thing worth having. Everything else, talents, work, arts, religion,learning, the whole _tremblement,_ are so many drugs with which thestarved, the loverless, try to dull their pangs, to put themselves tosleep. Good-night, and God bless you a thousand times. R.-M.

  VII

  Jena, Nov. 15th, 11 p.m.