January 1st. — The service on New Year’s Eve is the only one in the whole year that in the least impresses me in our little church, and then the very bareness and ugliness of the place and the ceremonial produce an effect that a snug service in a well-lit church never would. Last night we took Irais and Minora, and drove the three lonely miles in a sleigh. It was pitch-dark, and blowing great guns. We sat wrapped up to our eyes in furs, and as mute as a funeral procession.
“We are going to the burial of our last year’s sins,” said Irais, as we started; and there certainly was a funereal sort of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder than the organ, and threatening to blow out the agitated lights together. The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded by a framework of dusty carved angels, took on an awful appearance of menacing Authority as he raised his voice to make himself heard above the clatter. Sitting there in the dark, I felt very small, and solitary, and defenceless, alone in a great, big, black world. The church was as cold as a tomb; some of the candles guttered and went out; the parson in his black robe spoke of death and judgment; I thought I heard a child’s voice screaming, and could hardly believe it was only the wind, and felt uneasy and full of forebodings; all my faith and philosophy deserted me, and I had a horrid feeling that I should probably be well punished, though for what I had no precise idea. If it had not been so dark, and if the wind had not howled so despairingly, I should have paid little attention to the threats issuing from the pulpit; but, as it was, I fell to making good resolutions. This is always a bad sign, — only those who break them make them; and if you simply do as a matter of course that which is right as it comes, any preparatory resolving to do so becomes completely superfluous. I have for some years past left off making them on New Year’s Eve, and only the gale happening as it did reduced me to doing so last night; for I have long since discovered that, though the year and the resolutions may be new, I myself am not, and it is worse than useless putting new wine into old bottles.
“But I am not an old bottle,” said Irais indignantly, when I held forth to her to the above effect a few hours later in the library, restored to all my philosophy by the warmth and light, “and I find my resolutions carry me very nicely into the spring. I revise them at the end of each month, and strike out the unnecessary ones. By the end of April they have been so severely revised that there are none left.”
“There, you see I am right; if you were not an old bottle your new contents would gradually arrange themselves amiably as a part of you, and the practice of your resolutions would lose its bitterness by becoming a habit.”
She shook her head. “Such things never lose their bitterness,” she said, “and that is why I don’t let them cling to me right into the summer. When May comes, I give myself up to jollity with all the rest of the world, and am too busy being happy to bother about anything I may have resolved when the days were cold and dark.”
“And that is just why I love you,” I thought. She often says what I feel.
“I wonder,” she went on after a pause, “whether men ever make resolutions?”
“I don’t think they do. Only women indulge in such luxuries. It is a nice sort of feeling, when you have nothing else to do, giving way to endless grief and penitence, and steeping yourself to the eyes in contrition; but it is silly. Why cry over things that are done? Why do naughty things at all, if you are going to repent afterward? Nobody is naughty unless they like being naughty; and nobody ever really repents unless they are afraid they are going to be found out.”
“By ‘nobody’ of course you mean women, said Irais.
“Naturally; the terms are synonymous. Besides, men generally have the courage of their opinions.”
“I hope you are listening, Miss Minora,” said Irais in the amiably polite tone she assumes whenever she speaks to that young person.
It was getting on towards midnight, and we were sitting round the fire, waiting for the New Year, and sipping Glubwein, prepared at a small table by the Man of Wrath. It was hot, and sweet, and rather nasty, but it is proper to drink it on this one night, so of course we did.
Minora does not like either Irais or myself. We very soon discovered that, and laugh about it when we are alone together. I can understand her disliking Irais, but she must be a perverse creature not to like me. Irais has poked fun at her, and I have been, I hope, very kind; yet we are bracketed together in her black books. It is also apparent that she looks upon the Man of Wrath as an interesting example of an ill-used and misunderstood husband, and she is disposed to take him under her wing, and defend him on all occasions against us. He never speaks to her; he is at all times a man of few words, but, as far as Minora is concerned, he might have no tongue at all, and sits sphinx-like and impenetrable while she takes us to task about some remark of a profane nature that we may have addressed to him. One night, some days after her arrival, she developed a skittishness of manner which has since disappeared, and tried to be playful with him; but you might as well try to be playful with a graven image. The wife of one of the servants had just produced a boy, the first after a series of five daughters, and at dinner we drank the health of all parties concerned, the Man of Wrath making the happy father drink a glass off at one gulp, his heels well together in military fashion. Minora thought the incident typical of German manners, and not only made notes about it, but joined heartily in the health-drinking, and afterward grew skittish.
She proposed, first of all, to teach us a dance called, I think, the Washington Post, and which was, she said, much danced in England; and, to induce us to learn, she played the tune to us on the piano. We remained untouched by its beauties, each buried in an easy-chair toasting our toes at the fire. Amongst those toes were those of the Man of Wrath, who sat peaceably reading a book and smoking. Minora volunteered to show us the steps, and as we still did not move, danced solitary behind our chairs. Irais did not even turn her head to look, and I was the only one amiable or polite enough to do so. Do I deserve to be placed in Minora’s list of disagreeable people side by side with Irais? Certainly not. Yet I most surely am.
“It wants the music, of course,” observed Minora breathlessly, darting in and out between the chairs, apparently addressing me, but glancing at the Man of Wrath.
No answer from anybody.
“It is such a pretty dance,” she panted again, after a few more gyrations.
No answer.
“And is all the rage at home.”
No answer.
“Do let me teach you. Won’t you try, Herr Sage?”
She went up to him and dropped him a little curtesy. It is thus she always addresses him, entirely oblivious to the fact, so patent to every one else, that he resents it.
“Oh come, put away that tiresome old book,” she went on gaily, as he did not move; “I am certain it is only some dry agricultural work that you just nod over. Dancing is much better for you.” Irais and I looked at one another quite frightened. I am sure we both turned pale when the unhappy girl actually laid hold forcibly of his book, and, with a playful little shriek, ran away with it into the next room, hugging it to her bosom and looking back roguishly over her shoulder at him as she ran. There was an awful pause. We hardly dared raise our eyes. Then the Mall of Wrath got up slowly, knocked the ashes off the end of his cigar, looked at his watch, and went out at the opposite door into his own rooms, where he stayed for the rest of the evening. She has never, I must say, been skittish since.
“I hope you are listening, Miss Minora,” said Irais, “because this sort of conversation is likely to do you good.”
“I always listen when people talk sensibly,” replied Minora, stirring her grog.
Irais glanced at her with slightly doubtful eyebrows. “Do you agree with our hostess’s description of women?” she asked after a pau
se.
“As nobodies? No, of course I do not.”
“Yet she is right. In the eye of the law we are literally nobodies in our country. Did you know that women are forbidden to go to political meetings here?” “Really?” Out came the note-book.
“The law expressly forbids the attendance at such meetings of women, children, and idiots.”
“Children and idiots — I understand that,” said Minora; “but women — and classed with children and idiots?”
“Classed with children and idiots,” repeated Irais, gravely nodding her head. “Did you know that the law forbids females of any age to ride on the top of omnibuses or tramcars?”
“Not really?”
“Do you know why?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Because in going up and down the stairs those inside might perhaps catch a glimpse of the stocking covering their ankles.”
“But what—”
“Did you know that the morals of the German public are in such a shaky condition that a glimpse of that sort would be fatal to them?”
“But I don’t see how a stocking—”
“With stripes round it,” said Irais.
“And darns in it,” I added, “ — could possibly be pernicious?”
“‘The Pernicious Stocking; or, Thoughts on the Ethics of Petticoats,’” said Irais. “Put that down as the name of your next book on Germany.”
“I never know,” complained Minora, letting her note-book fall, “whether you are in earnest or not.”
“Don’t you?” said Irais sweetly.
“Is it true,” appealed Minora to the Man of Wrath, busy with his lemons in the background, “that your law classes women with children and idiots?”
“Certainly,” he answered promptly, “and a very proper classification, too.”
We all looked blank. “That’s rude,” said I at last.
“Truth is always rude, my dear,” he replied complacently. Then he added, “If I were commissioned to draw up a new legal code, and had previously enjoyed the privilege, as I have been doing lately, of listening to the conversation of you three young ladies, I should make precisely the same classification.”
Even Minora was incensed at this.
“You are telling us in the most unvarnished manner that we are idiots,” said Irais.
“Idiots? No, no, by no means. But children, — nice little agreeable children. I very much like to hear you talk together. It is all so young and fresh what you think and what you believe, and not of the least consequence to any one.
“Not of the least consequence?” cried Minora. “What we believe is of very great consequence indeed to us.”
“Are you jeering at our beliefs?” inquired Irais sternly.
“Not for worlds. I would not on any account disturb or change your pretty little beliefs. It is your chief charm that you always believe every-thing. How desperate would our case be if young ladies only believed facts, and never accepted another person’s assurance, but preferred the evidence of their own eyes! They would have no illusions, and a woman without illusions is the dreariest and most difficult thing to manage possible.”
“Thing?” protested Irais.
The Man of Wrath, usually so silent, makes up for it from time to time by holding forth at unnecessary length. He took up his stand now with his back to the fire, and a glass of Glubwein in his hand. Minora had hardly heard his voice before, so quiet had he been since she came, and sat with her pencil raised, ready to fix for ever the wisdom that should flow from his lips.
“What would become of poetry if women became so sensible that they turned a deaf ear to the poetic platitudes of love? That love does indulge in platitudes I suppose you will admit.” He looked at Irais.
“Yes, they all say exactly the same thing,” she acknowledged.
“Who could murmur pretty speeches on the beauty of a common sacrifice, if the listener’s want of imagination was such as to enable her only to distinguish one victim in the picture, and that one herself?”
Minora took that down word for word, — much good may it do her.
“Who would be brave enough to affirm that if refused he will die, if his assurances merely elicit a recommendation to diet himself, and take plenty of outdoor exercise? Women are responsible for such lies, because they believe them. Their amazing vanity makes them swallow flattery so gross that it is an insult, and men will always be ready to tell the precise number of lies that a woman is ready to listen to. Who indulges more recklessly in glowing exaggerations than the lover who hopes, and has not yet obtained? He will, like the nightingale, sing with unceasing modulations, display all his talent, untiringly repeat his sweetest notes, until he has what he wants, when his song, like the nightingale’s, immediately ceases, never again to be heard.”
“Take that down,” murmured Irais aside to Minora — unnecessary advice, for her pencil was scribbling as fast as it could.
“A woman’s vanity is so immeasurable that, after having had ninety-nine object-lessons in the difference between promise and performance and the emptiness of pretty speeches, the beginning of the hundredth will find her lending the same willing and enchanted ear to the eloquence of flattery as she did on the occasion of the first. What can the exhortations of the strong-minded sister, who has never had these experiences, do for such a woman? It is useless to tell her she is man’s victim, that she is his plaything, that she is cheated, down-trodden, kept under, laughed at, shabbily treated in every way — that is not a true statement of the case. She is simply the victim of her own vanity, and against that, against the belief in her own fascinations, against the very part of herself that gives all the colour to her life, who shall expect a woman to take up arms?”
“Are you so vain, Elizabeth?” inquired Irais with a shocked face, “and had you lent a willing ear to the blandishments of ninety-nine before you reached your final destiny?”
“I am one of the sensible ones, I suppose,” I replied, “for nobody ever wanted me to listen to blandishments.”
Minora sighed.
“I like to hear you talk together about the position of women,” he went on, “and wonder when you will realise that they hold exactly the position they are fitted for. As soon as they are fit to occupy a better, no power on earth will be able to keep them out of it. Meanwhile, let me warn you that, as things now are, only strong-minded women wish to see you the equals of men, and the strong-minded are invariably plain. The pretty ones would rather see men their slaves than their equals.”
“You know,” said Irais, frowning, “that I consider myself strong-minded.”
“And never rise till lunch-time?”
Irais blushed. Although I don’t approve of such conduct, it is very convenient in more ways than one; I get through my housekeeping undisturbed, and whenever she is disposed to lecture me, I begin about this habit of hers. Her conscience must be terribly stricken on the point, for she is by no means as a rule given to meekness.
“A woman without vanity would be unattackable,” resumed the Man of Wrath. “When a girl enters that downward path that leads to ruin, she is led solely by her own vanity; for in these days of policemen no young woman can be forced against her will from the path of virtue, and the cries of the injured are never heard until the destroyer begins to express his penitence for having destroyed. If his passion could remain at white-heat and he could continue to feed her ear with the protestations she loves, no principles of piety or virtue would disturb the happiness of his companion; for a mournful experience teaches that piety begins only where passion ends, and that principles are strongest where temptations are most rare.”
“But what has all this to do with us?” I inquired severely.
“You were displeased at our law classing you as it does, and I merely wish to justify it,” he answered. “Creatures who habitually say yes to everything a man proposes, when no one can oblige them to say it, and when it is so often fatal, are plainly not responsible beings.”<
br />
“I shall never say it to you again, my dear man,” I said.
“And not only that fatal weakness,” he continued, “but what is there, candidly, to distinguish you from children? You are older, but not wiser, — really not so wise, for with years you lose the common sense you had as children. Have you ever heard a group of women talking reasonably together?”
“Yes — we do!” Irais and I cried in a breath.
“It has interested me,” went on the Man of Wrath, “in my idle moments, to listen to their talk. It amused me to hear the malicious little stories they told of their best friends who were absent, to note the spiteful little digs they gave their best friends who were present, to watch the utter incredulity with which they listened to the tale of some other woman’s conquests, the radiant good faith they displayed in connection with their own, the instant collapse into boredom, if some topic of so-called general interest, by some extraordinary chance, were introduced.” “You must have belonged to a particularly nice set,” remarked Irais.
“And as for politics,” he said, “I have never heard them mentioned among women.”
“Children and idiots are not interested in such things,” I said.
“And we are much too frightened of being put in prison,” said Irais.
“In prison?” echoed Minora.
“Don’t you know,” said Irais, turning to her “that if you talk about such things here you run a great risk of being imprisoned?”
“But why?”
“But why? Because, though you yourself may have meant nothing but what was innocent, your words may have suggested something less innocent to the evil minds of your hearers; and then the law steps in, and calls it dolus eventualis, and everybody says how dreadful, and off you go to prison and are punished as you deserve to be.”
Minora looked mystified.
“That is not, however, your real reason for not discussing them,” said the Man of Wrath; “they simply do not interest you. Or it may be, that you do not consider your female friends’ opinions worth listening to, for you certainly display an astonishing thirst for information when male politicians are present. I have seen a pretty young woman, hardly in her twenties, sitting a whole evening drinking in the doubtful wisdom of an elderly political star, with every appearance of eager interest. He was a bimetallic star, and was giving her whole pamphletsful of information.”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 11
