It is quite absurd, madly absurd, the anguish I feel when that happens. My one wish, my only wish, as I creep back again down the passage to my work, is that I could go to sleep, and sleep and sleep and forget that I have ever hoped for anything; sleep for years, and wake up quiet and old, with all these passionate, tearing feelings gone from me for ever.
XV
Jena, Nov. 28th.
Last night I got your letter written on Sunday at Clinches, a place from which letters do not seem to depart easily. My knowledge of England’s geography is limited, so how could I guess that it was so easy to go up to London from there for the exam, and back again the same day? As you had no time, you say, to go to Jermyn Street, I suppose the two letters I sent there will be forwarded to you. If they are not it does not matter. They were only a string of little trivial things that would look really quite too little and trivial to be worth reading in the magnificence of Clinches. I am glad you are well; glad you are happy; glad you feel you did not do badly on Saturday. It is a good thing to be well and happy and satisfied, and a pleasant thing to have found a friend who takes so much interest in you, and to whom you can tell your most sacred thoughts: doubly pleasant, of course, when the friend chances to be a woman, and she is pretty, and young, and rich, and everything else that is suitable and desirable. The world is an amusing place. My step-mother talked of you this morning at breakfast. She was, it seems, in a prophetic mood. She shook her head after the manner of the more gloomy of the prophets, and hoped you would steer clear of entanglements.
‘And why should he not, meine Liebste?’ inquired Papa.
‘Not for nothing has he got that mouth, Ferdinand,’ answered she.
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XVI
Jena, Nov. 29th.
My darling, forgive me. If I could only get it back! I who hate unreasonableness, who hate bitterness, who hate exacting women, petty women, jealous women, to write a thing so angry. How horrible this letter-writing is. If I had said all that to you in a sudden flare of wrath I would have been sorry so immediately, and at once have made everything fair and sweet again with a kiss. And I never would have got beyond the first words, never have reached my step-mother’s silly and rude remarks, never have dreamed of repeating the unkind, unjust things. Now, Roger, listen to me: my faith in you is perfect, my love for you is perfect, but I am so undisciplined, so new to love, that you must be patient, you must be ready to forgive easily for a little while, till I have had time to grow wise. Just think, when you feel irritated, of the circumstances of my life. Everything has come so easily, so naturally to you. But I have been always poor, always second-rate — oh, it’s true — shut out from the best things and people, lonely because the society I could have was too little worth having, and the society I would have liked didn’t want me. How could it? It never came our way, never even knew we were there. I have had a shabby, restricted, incomplete life; I mean the last ten years of it, since my father married again. Before that, if the shabbiness was there I did not see it; there seemed to be sunshine every day, and room to breathe, and laughter enough; but then I was a child, and saw sunshine everywhere. Is there not much excuse for some one who has found a treasure, some one till then very needy, if his anxiety lest he should be robbed makes him — irritable? You see, I put it mildly. I know very well that irritable isn’t the right word. I know very well what are the right words, and how horrid they are, and how much ashamed I am of their bitter truth. Pity me. A person so unbalanced, so stripped of all self-control that she writes things she knows must hurt to the being she loves so utterly, does deserve pity from better, serener natures. I do not understand you yet. I do not understand the ways yet of people who live as you do. I am socially inferior, and therefore sensitive and suspicious. I am groping about, and am so blind that only sometimes can I dimly feel how dark it really is. I have built up a set of ideals about love and lovers, absurd crude things, clumsy fabrics suited to the conditions of Rauchgasse, and the first time you do not exactly fit them I am desperately certain that the world is coming to an end. But how hopeless it is, this trying to explain, this trying to undo. How shall I live till you write that you do still love me?
Your wretched
ROSE-MARIE.
XVII
Jena, Nov. 30th.
I counted up my money this morning to see if there would be enough to take me to England, supposing some day I should wake up and find myself no longer able to bear the silence. I know I should be mad if I went, but sometimes one is mad. There was not nearly enough. The cheapest route would cost more than comes in my way during a year. I have a ring of my mother’s with a diamond in it, my only treasure, that I might sell. I never wear it; my red hands are not pretty enough for rings, so it is only sentiment that makes it precious. And if it would take me to you and give me just one half-hour’s talk with you and sweep away the icy fog that seems to be settling down on my soul and shutting out everything that is wholesome and sweet, I am sure my darling mother, whose one thought was always to make me happy, would say, ‘Child, go and sell it, and buy peace.’
XVIII
Jena, Dec. 1st.
Last night I dreamed I did go to England, and I found you in a room with a crowd of people, and you nodded not unkindly, and went on talking to the others, and I waited in my corner till they should have gone, waited for the moment when we would run into each other’s arms; and with the last group you too went out talking and laughing, and did not come back again. It was not that you wanted to avoid me; you had simply forgotten that I was there. And I crept out into the street, and it was raining, and through the rain I made my way back across Europe to my home, to the one place where they would not shut me out, and when I opened the door all the empty future years were waiting for me there, gray, vacant, listless.
XIX
Jena, Dec. 2d.
These scraps of letters are not worth the postman’s trouble, are not worth the stamps; but if I did not talk to you a little every day I do not think I could live. Yesterday you got my angry letter. If you were not at Clinches I could have had an answer to-morrow; as it is, I must wait till Wednesday. Roger, I am really a cheerful person. You mustn’t suppose that it is my habit to be so dreary. I don’t know what has come over me. Every day I send you another shred of gloom, and deepen the wrong impression you must be getting of me. I know very well that nobody likes to listen to sighs, and that no man can possibly go on for long loving a dreary woman. Yet I cannot stop. A dreary man is bad enough, but he would be endured because we endure every variety of man with so amazing a patience; but a dreary woman is unforgivable, hideous. Now am I not luminously reasonable? But only in theory. My practice lies right down on the ground, wet through by that icy fog that is freezing me into something I do not recognize. You do remember I was cheerful once? During the whole of your year with us I defy you to recollect a single day, a single hour of gloom. Well, that is really how I always am, and I can only suppose that I am going to be ill. There is no other way of accounting for the cold terror of life that sits crouching on my heart.
XX
Dec. 3d.
Dearest, — You will be pleased to hear that I feel gayer to-night, so that I cannot, after all, be sickening for anything horrid. It is an ungrateful practice, letting oneself go to vague fears of the future when there is nothing wrong with the present. All these days during which I have been steeped in gloom and have been taking pains to put some of it into envelopes and send it to you were good days in themselves. Life went on here quite placidly. The weather was sweet with that touching, forlorn sweetness of beautiful worn-out things, of late autumn when winter is waiting round the corner, of leaves dropping slowly down through clear light, of the smell of oozy earth sending up faint whiffs of corruption. From my window I saw the hills every day at sunset, how wonderfully they dressed themselves in pink; and in the afternoons, in the free hour when dinner was done and coffee not yet thought of, I went down into the Paradies valley and sat on the
coarse gray grass by the river, and watched the water slipping by beneath the osiers, the one hurried thing in an infinite tranquillity. I ought to have had a volume of Goethe under my arm and been happy. I ought to have read nice bits out of Faust, or about those extraordinary people in the Elective Affinities, and rejoiced in Goethe, and in the fine days, and in my good fortune in being alive, and in having you to love. Well, it is over now, I hope, — I mean the gloom. These things must take their course, I suppose, and while they are doing it one must grope about as best one can by the flickering lantern-light of one’s own affrighted spirit. My step-mother looked at me at least once on each of these miserable days, and said: ‘Rose-Marie, you look very odd. I hope you are not going to have anything expensive. Measles are in Jena, and also the whooping-cough.’
‘Which of them is the cheapest?’ I inquired.
‘Both are beyond our means,’ said my step-mother severely.
And today at dinner she was quite relieved because I ate some dicker Reis after having turned from it with abhorrence for at least a week. Good-by, dearest.
Your almost cured
ROSE-MARIE.
XXI
Jena, Dec. 4th.
Your letter has come. You must do what you know is best. I agree to everything. You must do what your father has set his heart on, since quite clearly your heart is set on the same thing. All the careful words in the world cannot hide that from me. And they shall not. Do you think I dare not look death in the face? I am just a girl you kissed once behind a door, giving way before a passing gust of temptation. You cannot, shall not marry me as the price of that slight episode. You say you will if I insist. Insist? My dear Roger, with both hands I give you back any part of your freedom I may have had in my keeping. Reason, expediency, all the prudences are on your side. You depend entirely on your father; you cannot marry against his wishes; he has told you to marry Miss Cheriton; she is the daughter of his oldest friend; she is extremely rich; every good gift is hers; and I cannot compete. Compete? Do you suppose I would put out a finger to compete? I give it up. I bow myself out.
But let us be honest. Apart from anything to do with your father’s commands, you have fallen into her toils as completely as you did into mine. My step-mother was right about your softness. Any woman who chose and had enough opportunity could make you think you loved her, make you kiss her. Luckily this one is absolutely suitable. You say, in the course of the longest letter you have written me — it must have been a tiresome letter to have to write — that father or no father you will not be hurried, you will not marry for a long time, that the wound is too fresh, &c., &c. What is this talk of wounds? Nobody knows about me. I shall not be in your way. You need observe no period of mourning for a corpse people don’t know is there. True, Miss Cheriton herself knows. Well, she will not tell; and if she does not mind, why should you? I am so sorry I have written you so many letters full of so many follies. Will you burn them? I would rather not have them back. But I enclose yours, as you may prefer to burn them yourself. I am so very sorry about everything. At least it has been short, and not dragged on growing thinner and thinner till it died of starvation. Once I wrote and begged you to tell me if you thought you had made a mistake about me, because I felt I could bear to know better then than later. And you wrote back and swore all sorts of things by heaven and earth, all sorts of convictions and unshakable things. Well, now you have another set of convictions, that’s all. I am not going to beat the big drum of sentiment and make a wailful noise. Nothing is so dead as a dead infatuation. The more a person was infatuated the more he resents an attempt to galvanize the dull dead thing into life. I am wise, you see, to the end. And reasonable too, I hope. And brave. And brave, I tell you. Do you think I will be a coward, and cry out? I make you a present of everything; of the love and happy thoughts, of the pleasant dreams and plans, of the little prayers sent up, and the blessings called down — there were a great many every day — of the kisses, and all the dear sweetness. Take it all. I want nothing from you in return. Remember it as a pleasant interlude, or fling it into a corner of your mind where used-up things grow dim with cobwebs. But do you suppose that having given you all this I am going to give you my soul as well? To moan my life away, my beautiful life? You are not worth it. You are not worth anything, hardly. You are quite invertebrate. My life shall be splendid in spite of you. You shall not cheat me of one single chance of heaven. Now good-by. Please burn this last one, too. I suppose no one who heard it would quite believe this story, would quite believe it possible for a man to go such lengths of — shall we call it unkindness? to a girl in a single month; but you and I know it is true.
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXII
Jena, March 5th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — It was extremely kind of you to remember my birthday and to find time in the middle of all your work to send me your good wishes. I hope you are getting on well, and that you like what you are doing. Professor Martens seems to tell you all the Jena news. Yes, I was ill; but we had such a long winter that it was rather lucky to be out of it, tucked away comfortably in bed. There is still snow in the ditches and on the shady side of things. I escaped the bad weather as thoroughly as those persons do who go with infinite trouble during these months to Egypt.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
My father and step-mother beg to be remembered to you.
XXIII
Jena, March 18th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — It is very kind indeed of you to want to know how I am and what was the matter with me. It wasn’t anything very pleasant, but quite inoffensive æsthetically. I don’t care to think about it much. I caught cold, and it got on to my lungs and stayed on them. Now it is over, and I may walk up and down the sunny side of the street for half an hour on fine days.
We all hope you are well, and that you like your work.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXIV
Jena, March 25th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — You ask me to tell you more about my illness, but I am afraid I must refuse. I see no use in thinking of painful past things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as cheerful as possible — like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply to be alive with nothing in my body hurting. To be alive with a great many things in one’s body hurting is a poor sort of amusement. It is not at all a game worth playing. People talk of sick persons clinging to life however sick they are, say they invariably do it, that they prefer it on any terms to dying; well, I was a sick person who did not cling at all. I did not want it. I was most willing to be done with it. But Death, though he used often to come up and look at me, and once at least sat beside me for quite a long while, went away again, and after a time left off bothering about me altogether; and here I am walking out in the sun every day, and listening with immense pleasure to the chaffinches.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXV.
Jena, March 31st.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — Yes, of course I will be friends. And if I can be of any use in the way of admonishment, which seems to be my strong point, pray, as people say in books, command me. Naturally we are all much interested in you, and shall watch your career, I hope, with pleasure. I am sorry the Foreign Office bores you so much. Do you really have to spend your days gumming up envelopes? Not for that did you win all those scholarships and things at Eton and Oxford, and study Goethe and the minor German prophets so diligently here. You say it will go on for a year. Well, if that is your fate and you cannot escape it, gum away gayly, since gum you must. Later on when you are an ambassador and everybody is talking to you at once, you will look back on the envelope time as a blessed period when at least you were left alone. B
ut I hope you have a nice wet sponge to do it with, and are not so lost to what is expedient as to be like a little girl I sat next to yesterday at a coffee party, who had smudged most of the cream that ought to have gone inside her outside her, and when I suggested a handkerchief said she didn’t hold with handkerchiefs and never had one. ‘But what does one do, then,’ I asked, looking at her disgraceful little mouth, ‘in a case like this? You can’t borrow somebody else’s — it wouldn’t be being select.’ ‘Oh,’ she said airily, ‘don’t you know? You take your tongue.’ And in a twinkling the thing was done. But please do not you do that with the envelopes. My father and step-mother send you many kind messages. Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXVI
Jena, April 9th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — No, I do not in the least mind your writing to me. Do, whenever you feel you want to talk to a friend. It is pleasant to be told that my letters remind you of so many nice things. I expect your year in Jena seems much more agreeable, now that you have had time to forget the uncomfortable parts of it, than it really was. But I don’t think you would have been able to endure it if you had not been working so hard. I am sorry you do not like your father. You say so straight out, so I see no reason for round-aboutness. I expect he will be calmer when you are married. Why do you not gratify him, and have a short engagement? Yes, I do understand what you feel about the mercifulness of being often left alone, though I have never been worried in quite the same way as you seem to be; when I am driven it is to places like the kitchen, and your complaint is that you are driven to what most people would call enjoying yourself. Really I think my sort of driving is best. There is so much satisfaction about work, about any work. But just to amuse oneself, and to be, besides, in a perpetual hurry over it because there is so much of it and the day can’t be made to stretch, must be a sorry business. I wonder why you do it. You say your father insists on your going everywhere with the Cheritons, and the Cheritons will not miss a thing; but, after all isn’t it rather weak to let yourself be led round by the nose if your nose doesn’t like it? It is as though instead of a dog wagging its tail the tail should wag the dog. And all Nature surely would stand aghast before such an improper spectacle.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 89
