Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

  'But you are,' I say with a fine show of confidence. 'Come, let us walkfaster. 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. Ipetted her for a whole day; sat with my arms round her; had her head onmy shoulder; whispered every consolation I could think of; butunfortunately the only person who has ever petted her was the faithlessone, and it made her think of him with renewed agony, and openedpositive sluices of despair. I've tried scolding her--the 'My dearVicki, really for a woman grown' tone, but she gets so much of that fromher mother, and besides she isn't a woman grown, but only a poor,unhappy, cheated little child. But how dull, how dry, how profitless arethe comfortings of one woman for another. I feel it in every nerve thewhole time I am applying them. One kiss from the wretched man himselfand the world blazes into radiance. A thousand of the most beautiful andeminent verities enunciated by myself only collect into a kind of frozenpall that hangs about her miserable little head and does nothing moreuseful than suffocate her. She has been inclined to feel bad ever sincethe fatal letter about the soup, but there were intervals in which withinfinite haulings I did get her up on to the rocks again, those rocksshe finds so barren, but from whose tops she can at least see clearlyand be kept dry. Now that this terrible weather has come upon us, andevery day is wetter and sadder than the last, she has collapsedentirely. If I could write as well as Papa I would like to write anessay on the connection between a wet November and the renewed buddingsof love. Frau von Lindeberg is dreadfully angry, and came up, andactually 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 shouldso far forget myself as to want to sit upon it too, and asked me whatnonsense 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 saidso many things before.'

  She stared in amazement. 'What,' she cried, 'you actually--youdared--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 thetable and by my chair, the outlines of my views on ideals and conduct. Imade the most of the hour. The outlines were very thick. No fidgeting orattempts to stop me were considered. She had come to scold; she shouldstay to learn.

  'Well, well,' she said, when I, tired of talking, got up and removed theimpeding table with something of the brisk politeness of a dentistunhooking the patient's bib and screwing down his chair after he hasdone 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 thepoint clearer--' And I prepared to push back the table upon her andbegan 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 iswell. Good morning.'

  But influence as I may Vicki has given up wearing those starched shirtswith the high linen collars and neat ties in which she first dazzled me,and has gone into nondescript woollen clothes something like mine. Shesays it is because, of the washing bills, but I know it to be but afurther symbol of her despair. The one remnant of her first trimness isher beautifully brushed hair. Stooping over her to see that her Englishexercises are correct I like to lay my cheek a moment on it, so lightlythat she does not notice, for it is wonderful stuff,--soft, wavy,shining, and ought alone without the little ear and curve of the youngcheek, without the silly pretty mouth and kind straightforward eyes, tohave immeshed that stupid man beyond all possibility of disentanglinghimself. She was not made for Milton and the Muses. Nature, carving herout, moulding her body and her mind, putting in a dimple here and givingan eyelash an extra curl there, had a pleasant eye on a firelit futurefor Vicki, a cosy, sheltered future with a fender for her feet, a babyfor each arm, and an adored husband coming in at the end of the day tobe fed and kissed. But this man has outwitted nature. He weighed, withtrue German caution, Vicki and her dimples against the tiny portionwhich was all he could extract from her parents, and found them notheavy 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 theland of Never Will Be's. She will not find some one else to take hisplace. She has a story attached to her: a fatal thing here for a girl.Unlike your Miss Cheriton, who gently waves you aside and engagesherself without the least difficulty to a duke, Vicki is a markedperson, and will be avoided by our careful and calculating young men.She is doomed never to spoil and tease those babies, never to spoil andworship that husband. Instead she will, for a year, continue to rangethe hills here with me, trying to listen politely to my admonishmentswhile inwardly she shudders at the loneliness and vastness of theforests and of life, and then her parents' lease will be up, and theyand she will drift down into some little town in the Harz where retiredofficers finish lives grown vegetable, and the years will pounce uponher and strip her one by one of her little stock of graces. Don'tsuppose I blame the man, because I don't; I only resent that he shouldhave so much the best of it. There is no law obliging a man to marrybecause some lovesick girl wants him to--if I were a man I would nevermarry--but I do deplore the exceeding number of the girls who want himto. If each girl would say her prayers and go her own way, go about herbusiness, her parents having seen to it that she should have a businessto go about, what a cheerful, tearless place the world would be. And youmust forgive my vociferousness, but really I have had a woeful morningwith Vicki, who cried so bitterly into the pages of my Milton that thebest part of _Samson Agonistes_ is stuck together, and all the red hascome off the edges.

  Papa Lindeberg came in at the end of the lesson to offer me his umbrellato go home with. 'It is a wet day, Fraeulein Hebe,' said he, lookinground.

  'It is,' said I, gazing ruefully at my poor Milton.

  'Even the daughters of the gods,' said he--thus mildly do we continue tojoke together--'must sometimes use umbrellas.'

  'Yes,' said I, smiling at this pleasant old man, this old man I thoughtat first so disagreeable; and he went with me to the door, and asked mein an anxious whisper what I thought of Vicki. 'It lasts long--it lastslong,' said he, helplessly.

  'Yes,' said I, standing under the umbrella in the rain, while he in theporch 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 umbrellashook 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 whatis 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 animpatient 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, itis reflected so limpidly in your face--'

  'How nice,' said I, interrupting in my turn, for my feet were gettinggrievously wet; and you note, I hope, with what industriousness Ipreserve and record anything of a flattering nature that any one eversays to me.

  But you shall hear the other side too; for I turned away, and he turnedaway, and before I had gone a yard my shoelace came undone and I had togo back to the shelter of the porch
to tie it up, and while I had myfoot on the scraper and was bending down tying a bow and a knot thatshould last me till I got home I heard Frau von Lindeberg from theparlor off the passage make him the following speech:

  'I am constantly surprised, Ludwig, at the amount of time andconversation I see you bestow on Fraeulein Schmidt. I can hardly call itimpertinence, but there is something indescribable about hermanners,--an unbecoming freedom, an almost immodest frankness, an almostnaked naturalness, that is perilously near impertinence. People of thatclass do not understand people of ours; and she will, if you are kinderthan is absolutely necessary, certainly take advantage of it. Let me begyou 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. Itis now journeying round Leipzig to the remaining publishers. The firsttime it came back we felt the blow and drooped; the second time we feltit but did not droop; the third time we felt nothing; the fourth time welaughed. 'Foolish men,' chuckled Papa, tickled by such blindness totheir own interests, 'if none will have it we will translate it and sendit 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 knowthe street you are in; it is facing the Thiergarten, isn't it, and looksnorth? Quite close to the Brandenburg Thor? I remember it because wetrudged, among other places, also about the Thiergarten on our memorablevisit, and Papa's eye caught the name of your street and he stood forten minutes in the rain giving us a spirited sketch of the man's lifeand claims to have a street called after him. My step-mother waited witha grim patience, her skirts firmly clutched in each hand. She had cometo sight-see and to have things explained to her, so that it would bewaste of a railway fare not to look and listen. Papa was in greatsplendor that day, so obviously superior, in the universatility of hisknowledge, to either of us damp womenfolk. You won't get much sun thereunless your rooms are at the back, but on the other hand it isundoubtedly a street for the exclusive and well-to-do, as even I couldsee 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 palacewhere the sun never came; but then, as you know, my tendencies areincurably kennelwards.

  Today I am humble and hanging my head, for I have discovered to my painand horror that Papa and I are living well beyond our income. I expectwe have bought too many books, and spent too much in stamps to be usedby publishers; but it is certain that we've already consumed overseventy pounds of our yearly hundred, and that we only took five monthsto do it in. What do you think of that? We have been squandering moneyright and left somehow. There were no clothes to buy, for what we havewill last us at least two years, and where it has all gone to I can'timagine. Indeed I am a useless person if I cannot even manage a tinyhouse like this and make such sufficient means do. Papa has written toProfessor Martens to tell him he is willing to take in a young managain. Willing? He is eager, hungry for a young man, for he sees thatwithout one things will go badly with us. And I, remembering the wealthwe enjoyed while Mr. Collins was with us, have written to him to ask ifhe cares to come back and finish learning German. I don't know if hestill wants to, or rather if his father still wants him to, for Germanto Joey was as the fly in the apothecary's ointment, in its extremeoffensiveness, nor have I told Papa that I wrote, because of thepeculiar horror with which he regards Joey; but I couldn't resist when Iknow that six months of Joey would deliver us for two whole years fromall 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 eminentdesirability of this particular young man.

  There are, however, certain difficulties in the way. Our house has twobedrooms, two sitting-rooms, an attic, a kitchen, and a coal-hole.Johanna inhabits the attic. One sitting-room is sacred to Papa and hiswork. The other is a scrap room in which we have our meals and receiveFrau von Lindeberg when she calls, and I write letters and read booksand darn stockings. Where, then, will Joey sleep? The answer is as clearas daylight and very startling: Joey must sleep with Papa. Now that thistruth has dawned upon me I spend hours lost in thoughts of things likescreens and dividing curtains, besides preparing elaborate speeches forthe bringing of Papa to reason. He himself was the first to declare wemust positively take in a young man again, and he surely will see, whenit is pointed out to him, that any one we have must sleep at theintervals appointed by nature. I'm afraid he'll see it in the case ofevery one except the fruitful Joey. It is most unfortunate that Joeyshould be so foolish about Goethe, for we really do want somebody whodoesn't mind about money, and I remember several poor boys in the pastwho were so very poor that on the days when my step-mother demandedpayment I used to have to go out early and wander among the hills tillevening, unable to endure the sound of the thalers being wrung out ofthem. Oh, money is the most horrid of all necessities. I am ashamed tothink of the many bright hours of life soiled by anxieties about it, bymeannesses about it. Wherever even a question of it arises Love and theGraces fly affrighted, followed closely, by the entire troop of equallyterrified Muses, out of the nearest window. I detest it. I do not wantit. But with all my defiance of it I am crushed beneath the yoke of thepenny as completely as everybody else. Well do I know that penny, andhow much it is when there's one over, and what worlds away when there'sone 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 hisheart at this unfortunate juncture on a new biography of Goethe thatmust needs come out just now, a big thing in two volumes costing aterrible number of marks, very well done, full of the result of originaldigging among archives; but he dare not buy it, he says, in the presentstate of our affairs. 'Dost thou not think, Rose-Marie,' he said, hisface in grievous puckers at the prospect, 'that a renewed and carefulcourse 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 aknell-like sound about it that I do not like. When we have reached thyUltimately I shall no longer be in a state to desire or appreciateBielschowsky'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 leastvery nice and refreshing, and extraordinarily like a verse of thePsalms.'

  And for two days he has held out undaunted, and here comes our lentilsoup 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 strangehush that had fallen on our house, set so near to a sighing, restlessforest; and I looked out of the window and it was the first snow. Allnight it must have snowed, for there was the most beautiful smooth bankof 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 fairytree, its laden branches one white sparkle. The clouds were gone, and bythe time I had done breakfast there was a brilliant blue sky, and thehills round Jena stood out so sharply against it that they looked as ifsomebody had been at them with a hatchet. Never was there such a sereneand silent world as the one I stepped out into, shovel in hand. I hadcome to clear a pathway from the kitchen
to the pump; instead I stood assilent as everything else, the shovel beneath my arm, gazing about meand drinking in the purity in a speechless ecstasy. Oh the air, Mr.Anstruther, the air! Unhappy young man, who did not breathe it. It waslike nothing you've got in Berlin, of that you may be very certain. Itwas absolutely calm; not a breath stirring. It was icy, yet crisp and_frappe du soleil_. And then how wonderful the world looked after thesodden picture of yesterday still in my mind. Each twig of the orchardtrees had its white rim on the one side, exact and smooth, drawn alongit by the finger of the north wind. The steps down from the back doorhad vanished beneath the loveliest, sleekest white covering. The pump,till the day before and ever since I have known it, a bleakly impressiveobject silhouetted in all its lankness and gauntness against abackground of sky and mountain, was grown grotesque, bulky, almostplayful, its top and long iron handle heaped with an incredible pile ofsnow, its spout hung about with a beard of icicles. Frau von Lindeberg'skitchen smoke went up straight and pearly into the golden light. Theroofs of Jena were in blue shadow. Our neighbor's roof flashed with amillion diamonds in the sun. Two rooks cawed to each other from the pinetree nearest our door; and Rose-Marie Schmidt said her morning prayersthen and there, still clinging to her shovel. Then she pulled off hercoat, hung her hat on the door-handle, and began in a sort of highrapture to make a pathway to the pump. What are the joys of summer tothese? There is nothing like it, nothing, nothing in the world. I knowno mood of Nature's that I do not love--or think I do when it isover--but for keenness of feeling, for stinging pleasure, foroverflowing life, give me a winter's day with the first snow, a clearsky, and the thermometer ten degrees Reaumur below zero.