'No, no,' said Tante Else, still more impatiently. '_Ach Gott_, where doall the words get to?'
'Is it something very particular for which you are searching?' asked mystep-mother, with the sympathetic interest you show in the searchings ofthe related rich.
'Something not worth the search, we may be sure,' remarked OnkelHeinrich.
'_Ach Gott_,' said Tante Else, not heeding him, 'where do they--' Sheclasped and unclasped her fingers; she gazed round the room and up atthe ceiling. We all sat silent, feeling that here there was no help, andwatched while she chased the elusive word round and round her brain.Only Onkel Heinrich continued to eat herring salad with insultingemphasis.
'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 havewindows 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 atus with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so muchabout something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping.
'_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich.
'My dear,' protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice thesecomments.
'I say it is _quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemencestartling 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 myown 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 hischair.
He waddled to a cupboard--of course he doesn't get much exercise in hiscage, 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 leavethe 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 tomy weak places. I fear thine eye, measuring their deficiencies. I fearthy intelligence, known to be great--'
'Worth exactly,' said Onkel Heinrich suddenly facing us, the cigarboxunder 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 awemingled with my admiration, Heinrich,--awe, respect, terror. Go, thouman of brains and marketableness, thou man of worth and recognition, goand leave me here with these lesser intellects. I fear thee, and I willnot watch thee smoke.'
And he got up and raised Tante Else's hand to his lips with greatgallantry and wished her, after our pleasant fashion at the end ofmeals, a good digestion.
But Tante Else, though she tried to smile and return his wishes, couldnot get back again into her _role_ of serene and conversational_Hausfrau._ My uncle waddled away, shooting a sniff of scorn over hisshoulder as he went, and my aunt endeavored to conceal the fact that shewas wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both atonce. My step-mother cleared her throat, and remarked that successfulpublic men often had to pay for their successes by being the victims athome of nerves, and that their wives, whose duty it is always to beloving, might be compared to the warm and soothing iron passed over ashirt newly washed, and deftly, by its smooth insistence, flatteningaway each crease.
Papa gazed at my step-mother with admiring astonishment while sheelaborated this image. He had hold of Tante Else's hand and was strokingit. His bright eyes were fixed on his wife, and I could see by theirexpression that he was trying to recall the occasions on which his owncreases had been ironed out.
With the correctness with which one guesses most of a person's thoughtsafter you have lived with him ten years, my step-mother guessed what hewas thinking. 'I said public men,' she remarked, 'and I said successes.'
'I heard, I heard, _meine Liebste_,' Papa assured her, 'and I alsocompletely understand.'
He made her a little bow across the table. 'Do not heed him, Else, mydear,' he added, turning to my aunt. 'Do not heed thy Heinrich--he isbut 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 wherestood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy withthe playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into themmade holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she sawthem, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalkingthe flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistenedfinger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure ofhis prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent overhis desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue's sleeveor trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while thevictim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasinguneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolongedabsence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comradeswho served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not hererepeat. And as a husband--yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has notlost it--he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.'
'Oh, no, no,' sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearfulinterest.
'Ferdinand,' said my step-mother angrily, 'your tongue is doing what itinvariably 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 latelymarried. 'It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. Wekiss.'
'That is true,' said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not withouta 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'ttwist because it was too deeply embedded. 'Where do you get your longwords from?'
'Must one either quarrel or kiss?' I asked. 'Is there no serene valleybetween the thunderous heights on the one hand and the swampyenervations on the other?'
To this Elschen merely replied, while she stared at me, '_GrosserGott_.'
'You are a queer cousin,' said Lieschen, giggling again, the giggle thistime containing a touch of contempt, her giggles never being whollyunadulterated. '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 amsure, refreshing baby would cure most heartsicknesses.
'Yes, yes, it is a splendid baby,' said Lieschen, brightening, 'and itswardrobe is trimmed
throughout with the best Swiss embroidery threadedwith beautiful blue ribbons. It cost many hundred marks, I assure you.There is nothing that is not both durable and excellent. Elschen'smother-in-law is a very rich lady. She gave it all. She keeps twoservants, and they wear washing dresses and big white aprons, just likeEnglish servants. Elschen's mother-in-law says it is a great expensebecause of the laundry bills, but that she doesn't mind. If you weregoing to stay longer, and had got the necessary costumes, we might havetaken you to see her, and she might perhaps have asked you to stay tocoffee.'
'Really?' said I, in a voice of concern.
'Yes. It is a pity for you. You would then see how elegant Berlin peopleare. 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 atall, 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. Nevershall I forget the dismay and shame of that moment. Really I am rather adeft person, used to jugs, and not, as a rule, of hasty or unconsideredmovements. It was, I think, the electric current streaming out of OnkelHeinrich that had at last reached me too and galvanized me into anervous and twitching behavior. He came in last, and the moment heappeared words froze, smiles vanished, eyes fell, and Papa's pipingalone continued to be heard in the cheerless air. I don't know what hadpassed between him and Tante Else since last we had seen him, but hisopaque black eyes were crosser and blacker than ever. Perhaps it wasonly that he had smoked more than was good for him, and the whole familywas punished for that over-indulgence. I could not help reflecting howlucky it was that we were his relations and not hers; what must happento hers if they ever come to see her I dare not think. It was while Iwas reflecting on their probable scorched and shrivelled condition, andat the same time was eagerly passing him some butter that I don't thinkhe wanted but that I was frantically afraid he might want, that myzealous arm swept the milk-jug off the table, and it fell on thevarnished floor, and with a hideous clatter of what seemed likemalicious satisfaction smashed itself to atoms.
'There now,' cried my step-mother casting up her hands, 'Rose-Marie allover.'
'I am very sorry,' I stammered, pushing back my chair and gathering upthe pieces and mopping up the milk with my handkerchief.
'Dear niece, it is of no consequence,' faltered Tante Else, her eyesanxiously on her husband.
'No consequence?' cried he--and his words sounded the more terrific fromtheir 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 myfeet and carried the ruins to a sideboard, murmuring hystericalapologies as I went, he pointed with a lean finger to what had once beena jug and said with an owlish solemnity and weightiness of utterance Ihave never heard equalled, 'It was very expensive.' I can't tell you howglad, 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 nolonger 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 faithfuland devoted of you to want so much to see Professor Martens again, butyou know he is a busy man, and for five minutes with him as he rushesfrom a lecture to a private lesson it hardly seems worth while to makesuch a tremendous _detour_. Why, you would be hours pottering about onbranch lines and at junctions, and would never, I am certain, see yourluggage again. Still, it is not for me to refuse your visit to ProfessorMartens on his behalf who as yet knows nothing about it. I merelyadvise; 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 notthink I had made the Heinrich Schmidts attractive. I was shivering whileI wrote with renewed horror, as the remembrance of that evening withthem and of that morning rose up again before me. That the result shouldbe 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 himto cherish kind Tante Else with the meek blue eyes and claret-coloredsilk dress? You cannot seriously intend to set up regular socialintercourse with them. It is certain you will never meet them at anyparty you go to,--no, not even Elschen's mother-in-law. The classes arewith us divided so rigorously that the needle's eye was child's play tothe camel compared to this other entering. You will, very properly,remembering my cloistered life, inquire what I know about it; but itseems to me, only please don't laugh, that I have seen and known quite agood deal. When Experience leaves gaps, quick Imagination fills them up.The straws I have noticed have been enough to show me which way the windwas blowing; and women, pray remember, are artists at putting two andtwo together. Therefore I prophesy that if you are at the EnglishEmbassy 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 reallyseriously wish it, but I must warn you that they would be intenselysurprised by a call from you, and it would in no way add to theircomfort. The connecting thread is altogether too slender. Papa is not arelation whose introductions they value, and to come from him is ahandicap rather than a recommendation. Do you know the only possibleconclusion they would come to?--and come to it they certainlywould--that somehow, somewhere, in a train, or a shop, or walking, youhad seen Lieschen, and had fallen in love with her. And before you knewwhere you were you would be married to Lieschen.
How sad to have to come away from the flaming Spanish chestnuts ofItaly, 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 withleaden despair, and over other things that should not matter you cryout. Indeed, far from minding you seem eager to be off. Yet London can'tbe nice in November, and Berlin, where you so soon will be, is simplyhorrid. It was in November that we were there, and we splashed about ina raw, wet cold,--rain on the verge of sleet and snow, a bitter wind atthe corners, the omnibuses all full (we could not afford the dearer andmore respectable tram), and everybody we met had an unkind strange facethat stared at us, in spite of hurry and umbrellas, with a thoroughnessand comprehensiveness that must be peculiar to Berlin. Papa's galoshesdidn't fit and kept coming off, and they always did it at the mostdifficult moment, generally when we were crossing a street, and therethey would lie, scattered beneath hoofs and wheels, till I had rescuedthem again. Also his umbrella, being old and never having been verystrong, turned inside out at extra gusty corners, and we, who had cometo look and wonder, found that the Berlin people thought we had come tobe looked and wondered at. But do not let me damp your ardor with thesegloomy tales. It is such an excellent thing that you should be ardent atall after this long while of dissatisfaction with life that I ought tocheer you on and not talk dreary. Besides, your umbrella won't mindcorners, and you do not wear galoshes. I wish you joy, then, of your newpost, and hope you will be very happy in it. Papa was most interested tohear you were coming so near us, and sends you many messages whoseupshot is that you are to be a good boy and do him credit. He doesn'tknow about the unfortunate ending to your engagement, and I shall nottell him, for he would be sorry; and more and more as the days andmonths melt away into a dream I am anxious that he should not be madesorry. 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 ProfessorMartens. I heard a rumor that he was ill, or away or something, so thatyou would have your long and _extremely_ tiresome journey positively fornothing.
LVI
Galgenberg, Nov. 23d.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Was it so short? I don't remember. This one shallbe longer, then. Tell me, do you
think there is any use in trying tocure a person of being in love? I have come to the conclusion that it'shopeless. Such cures must be made from the inside outward, and not fromthe outside inward. I thought I was going to stir Vicki to a nobleindependence, and you should have heard the speeches I made her.Sometimes I had to laugh at them myself, they were such extraordinarilyheroic and glowing things for one dripping Fraeulein with none too bravea heart to hurl at another dripping Fraeulein with no brave heart at all,as they trotted along with shortened skirts and umbrellas throughwind-racked, howling forests. Vicki has gone all to pieces again, andher eyes are redder than ever. I don't know whether it is these Novembermists that have done it, but certainly after all my hauling of her upthe rocks of proud self-sufficiency she has flopped back again deeperthan before into the morass in which I found her. It's a perfect bog ofsentiment she's sunk in now. I make her go for ten-mile walks, and aimat doing them in two hours, thus hoping to bring out her love-sicknessin the form of healthy perspiration, but it's no good. 'Oh,' gaspsVicki, when we start off up the sombre aisles of pines, and see themstretching away before us into a gray infinity, and mark their reekingtrunks, black with damp, hoar with lichen, and hear their sighings andtheir creakings through the patter of rain on our umbrellas, and feeltheir wet breath on our cheeks, 'oh what an empty, frightening world itis.'
Then I tell her, with what enthusiasm I may, that it's not, that it'sbeautiful, that we are young and strong, that our life can be made justexactly as glorious as we are energetic enough to make it. And shedoesn't believe a word; she simply shakes her head, and moans that sheisn't energetic.