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 comments changes. Over the top of it is written, ‘Some one has said there is a vein of dry humour 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. 7.
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 behaviour 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 stepmother, 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 stepmother 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 endeavour 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 stepmother punctuated his words with nods of approval.
‘What, as a doorkeeper, eh, thou cistern filled with wisdom?’ cried Papa, lifting his glass and drinking gaily 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 stepmother, 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 stepmother. ‘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 stepmother 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 stepmother 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 stepmother, 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 neighbours 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 you 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 cigar-box 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 endeavoured to conceal the fact that she was wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both at once. My stepmother 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 stepmother 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 stepmother 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 stepmother.
‘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 stepmother, 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 heart-sicknesses.
‘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 behaviour. 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.
Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther Page 19
