Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

  I wish it were not quite so steep. If I'm not on the upper side of oneof the apple-trees with my back firmly pressed against its trunk I don'tyet see how I am to garden. It must be disturbing, and a great waste oftime, to have to hold on to something with one hand while you gardenwith the other. And suppose the thing gives way, and you roll down on tothe broken fence? And if that, too, gave way, there would be nothing buta few probably inadequate apple trunks between me and the roof of thehouse with the blue shutters. I should think it extremely likely thatuntil I've got the mountain-side equivalent for what are known as one'ssea-legs I shall very often be on that roof. I hope it is strong andnew. Perhaps there are kind people inside who will not mind. Soonthey'll get so much used to it that when they hear the preliminary rushamong their apple-trees and the cracking of the branches followed by thethud over their heads, they won't even look up from their books, butjust 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; butI'm in a silly mood today, and you must take me as you find me. At anytime when I have grown too unendurable you can stop my writing to yousimply by not writing to me. Then I shall know you have at last hadenough of me, of my moods, of my odious fits of bombastic eloquence, ofmy still more odious facetiousness, of my scoldings of you and of mycomplacency about myself. It is true you actually seem to like myscoldings. That is very abject of you. What you apparently resent arethe 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 veryodd of you. And I sometimes wonder if it is possible for two persons tocontinue friends who have a different taste in what, for want of a nicerword, I must call jokes. My taste in them is so elementary that anapple-pie bed makes me laugh tears, and when I go to the play I love tosee chairs pulled away just as people are going to sit down. You, ofcourse, shudder at these things. They fill you with so great adreariness that it amounts to pain. I am at least sensible enough tounderstand 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 seenyou sit unalterably grave while Papa was piping out the nicest littlethings, and I know you never liked even your adored Professor Martenswhen he began to bubble. Well, either I laugh too easily or you don'tlaugh enough. I can only repeat that if I set your teeth on edge theremedy is in your own hands.

  We are going to be vegetarians this summer. Papa, who hasn't tried ityet, is perfectly willing, and if we live chiefly on nuts and lettuceswe shall hardly want any money at all. I read Shelley's _Vindication ofNatural 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 theFree Library and dug out all the books he could find about muscles andbrains and their surprising dependence on the kind of stuff you haveeaten, and brought them home for me to study. I do love Papa. He fallsin so sweetly with one's little plans, and lets me do what I wantwithout 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 isstill alive--my step-mother insisted on this, the flavor, she said,being so infinitely superior that way--can know with what a relief, whata feeling of personal purification and turning of the back on evil, oneflings a cabbage into a pot of fair water or lets one's fingers lingerlovingly 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, andwe had our dinner today of them: lentil soup, and cabbage withbread-and-butter--what could be purer? And for Johanna, who has not readShelley, there was the last of the Rauchgasse sausage for the soothingof 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 theman it belongs to was so glad to find somebody who would live in it andkeep it warm that he lets us have it for hardly any rent at all. Iexpect what the impoverished want--and only the impoverished would livein a thing so small--is a garden flat enough to grow potatoes in, and tohave fowls walking about it, and a pig in a nice level sty. You can'thave them here. At least, you couldn't have a sty on such a slope. Thepoor pig would spend his days either anxiously hanging on with all hisclaws--or is it paws? I forget what pigs have; anyhow, with all hismight--to the hillside, or huddled dismally down against the endplanks, and never be of that sublime detachment of spirit necessary tohim if he would end satisfactorily in really fat bacon. And the fowls, Isuppose, would have to lay their eggs flying--they certainly couldn't doit 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 thesky under an umbrella? I asked the landlord about the potatoes, and hesaid I must grow them as the last tenant did, a widow who lived and diedhere, in a strip against the north side of the house where there is alevel space about two yards running from one end of the house to theother, representing a path and keeping the hill from tumbling in at ourwindows. 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 notools but a spade and a watering-pot; but it will do away with our onlypath, 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? Perhapsone can, and that too may be a superfluity to those who face lifesquarely. I am convinced that there must be potatoes, but I am notconvinced, on reflection, that there need be a path. Have you ever feltthe joy of getting rid of things? It is so great that it is almostferocious. After each divestment, each casting off and away, there issuch a gasp of relief, such a bounding upward, the satisfied soul, proudfor once of its body, saying to it smilingly, 'This, too, then, you havediscovered you can do without and yet be happy.' And I, just whilewriting these words to you, have discovered that I can and will dowithout 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-pasttwo,' 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 myattention did not continually wander.'

  'Wander? Whereto?'

  'Rose-Marie, there is a constant gnawing going on within me that willnot 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 criedwith a singular impatience.

  'Grass?' I echoed, still more amazed.

  'Books of an enduring nature, works of any monumentalness, cannot, neverwere, and shall not be raised on a foundation of grass,' said Papa, hisface 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 himthat 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 themountain goat, and probably only appropriate to him because he canprocure nothing better.'

  'Why, you had a lentil soup--proved scientifically to contain all thatis needed--'

  'I congratulate the lentil soup. I envy it. I wish I too contained allthat 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 mountainousregion 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 toeat 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 agreethat 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 latelydined.'

  'You know he says that if the populace of Paris at the time of theRevolution had drunk at the pure source of the Seine--'

  'There is no pure source of the Seine within reach of the populace ofParis. There would only be cats. Dead cats. And cats interspersed, nodoubt, with a variety of objects of the nature of portions of crockeryand empty tins.'

  'But he says pure source.'

  'Then he says pure nonsense.'

  'He says if they had done that and satisfied their hunger at theever-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 proscriptionlist 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 byunnatural 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 onlyyou 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 risingfrom 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 stomachis empty.'

  'I don't think that's very pretty, Papachen.'

  'But it is a great truth. Remember it if you should marry. Shape yourconduct by its light. Three times every day, Rose-Marie,--that is,before breakfast, before dinner, and before supper,--no husband lovesany wife. She may be as beautiful as the stars, as wise asPallas-Athene, as cultured as Goethe, as entertaining as a circus, asaffectionate as you please--he cares nothing for her. She exists not.Go, my child, and prepare the coffee, and let the bread-and-butter becut thick.'

  Well, since then I have been cutting bread-and-butter and pouring outcups of coffee. I thought Papa would never leave off. If that is theeffect of a vegetarian dinner I don't think it can really be lessexpensive than meat. Papa ate half a pound of butter, which is sixtypfennings, and for sixty pfennings I could have bought him a_Kalbsschnitzel_ so big that it would have lasted, under treatment, twodays. 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 feeldistressed? I am not certain that I do not resent it. Put baldly (youwill say brutally), you have no right to be distressed, uneasy, anxious,and all the other things you say you are, about the private concerns ofpersons who are nothing to you. Even a lamb might conceivably feelnettled by persistent pity when it knows it has everything in the worldit wants. Come now, if it is a question of pity, we will have it in theright place, and I will pity you. There is always, you know, a secretsatisfaction in the soul of him who pities. He does hug himself, andwhether he does it consciously or unconsciously depends on his aptitudefor clear self-criticism. Compared with yours I deliberately consider mylife glorious. And when will you see that there are kinds ofgloriousness that cannot be measured in money or position? It is plainto me--and it would be so to you if you thought it over--that the lessone has the more one enjoys. We want space, time, concentration, forgetting at the true sweet root of life. And I think--and you probably donot--that the true sweet root of life is in any one thing, no matterwhat thing, on which your whole undisturbed attention is fixed. Once Iread a little French story, years ago, with my mother, when I was achild, and I don't know now who wrote it or what it was called. It wasthe story of a prisoner who found a plant growing between the flags ofthe 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 afterthe other in that gray and stony place, stretched out little hands oflife and hope and interest to the man who had come there a lost soul. Itwas the one thing he had. It ended by being his passion. With nothingelse to distract him, he could study all its wonders. From that singleplant he learned more than the hurried passer-on, free of the treasuresof the universe, learns in a life. It saved him from despair. It broughthim back to the eager interest in the marvellous world that soul feelswhich is unencumbered by too heavy a weight of trappings. Why, I stillhave too much; and here are you pitying me because I have not more whenI am distracted by all the claims on my attention. I can look at wholebeds of wallflowers every spring, and pass on with nothing but a vagueadmiration for their massed beauty of scent and color. I get nothing outof 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 oneof them in a pot, and I too would get out of it the measure of theheight and the depth and the wonder of life.

  And then you exhort me not to live on vegetables. Is it because you liveon meat? I don't think I mind your eating meat, so why should you mindmy eating vegetables? I have done it for a week now quite steadily, andmean to give it at least a fair trial. If what the books we have gotabout it say is true, health and sanity lie that way. And how delightfulto have a pure kitchen into which ghastly dead things never come. I willnot be a partaker of the nature of beasts. I will not become three partspig, or goose, or foolish sheep. I turn with aversion from the reddenedhorror called gravy. I consider it a monstrous ugly thing to haveparticles of pig rioting up and down my veins, turning into brains,coloring my thoughts, becoming a very part of my body. Surely a body isa wonderful thing? So wonderful that it cannot be treated with too muchcare and respect? So wonderful that it cannot be too carefully guardedfrom corruption? And have you ever studied the appearance and habits ofpigs?

  But I do admit that being a vegetarian is bewildering. None of the bookssay a word about the odd feeling one has of not having had anything toeat. What Papa felt that first day I have felt every day since. I amperpetually hungry; and it is the unpleasant hunger that expressesitself in a dislike for food, in listlessness, inability to work,flabbiness, even faintness. At eight in the morning I begin with breadand plums. My entire being cries out while I am eating them for coffeewith milk in it and butter on my bread. But coffee is a stimulant, andthe books say that butter contains no nourishment whatever,
and sincewhat I most yearn for is to be nourished I will waste no time eatingstuff that doesn't do it. Instead, I eat heaps of bread and stacks ofplums, not because I want to but because I'm afraid the gnawing feelingwill follow sooner than ever if I don't. Papa sits opposite me,breakfasting pleasantly on eggs, for he explains he is doing thingsgradually and is using the eggs to build wise bridges across the gulfbetween the end of meat and the beginning of what he persists indescribing as herbage. At nine I feel as if I had had no breakfast. Allthe pains I took to get through the bread were of no real use. Istruggle against this for as long as possible, because the books say youmustn't have things between meals, and then I go and eat more plums. Iam amazed when I remember that once I liked plums. No words can expressmy abhorrence of them now. But what is to be done? They are the onlyfruit we can get. Cherries are over. Apples have not begun. We buy theplums from the neighbor down the hill. To add to my horror of them Ihave discovered that hardly one is without a wriggly live thing insideit. I wonder how many of them I have eaten. Can they be brought into thecategory vegetarian? Papa says yes, because they have lived and movedand had their being in an atmosphere of pure plum. They _are_ plum, saysPapa, consoling me,--bits of plum that have acquired the power to walkabout. But according to that beef must be vegetarian too,--so much grassgrown able to walk about. It is very bewildering. One day theneighbor--he is a nice neighbor, interested in our experiment--sent ussome raspberries, a basket of them, all glowing, and downy, anddelicious 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 sothe end of the raspberries was that most of them went out into thekitchen, and Johanna, who has no prejudices, stewed them into compoteand ate them, including the inhabitants, for her supper.