Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  The Bishop had just enough self-control not to snatch his hand away, but to let Herr Dremmel continue to hold and press it. His mind began to leap about. How to get the Duchess away; how to get Herr Dremmel turned, noiselessly, out of the house; how to prevent Ingeborg’s coming at any moment along the path behind them with Lady Pamela....

  “We have every reason, sir,” said Herr Dremmel, holding the Bishop’s hand in a firm pressure, “to congratulate each other, I you, on the possession of such a daughter, you me—”

  “Isn’t she a lovely girl,” said the Duchess, for whom only Judith existed in that family. “Would rape cake and the other thing help my flowers at all, or is it only for the mangels?”

  “Mangels!” thought the Bishop, “Rape cake!” And swiftly glanced behind him down the path.

  “Sir,” said Herr Dremmel, desiring to be very pleasant to the Bishop and slightly waving the Duchess aside, “permit me also to congratulate you—”

  “Have you had any tea?” inquired the Bishop desperately of the Duchess, turning to her and getting his hand away.

  “Thank you, yes. Well, Mr. Dremmel? Don’t interrupt him, Bishop, he’s most interesting.”

  “ — on the results,” continued Herr Dremmel to the Bishop, “of your autumnal activities. This blaze of flowers is sufficient witness to the devotion, the assiduity—”

  “You don’t suppose he did it himself, do you?” said the Duchess.

  “And your costume, sir,” said Herr Dremmel, concentrated on the Bishop and earnestly desiring to please, “suggests a quite particular and familiar interest in what this lady rightly calls the things really worth knowing.”

  “But he can’t help wearing that,” said the Duchess.

  Again Herr Dremmel, and with some impatience, waved her aside.

  “It is a costume most appropriate in a garden,” he continued. “Even the gaiters are horticultural, and the apron is pleasantly reminiscent of the innocence of our first parents. So Adam might have dressed—”

  “Oh, but you must come to Coops!” cried the Duchess. “Bishop, he’s to come back with me.”

  “Sir,” said Herr Dremmel with something of severity, for he was beginning to consider the Duchess forward, “is this lady Mrs. Bishop?”

  “Oh, oh!” screamed the Duchess, while Herr Dremmel watched her disapprovingly and the Bishop struggled not to seize him by the throat.

  “My dear Bishop,” said the Duchess, wiping her eyes, “I never had such a compliment paid me. The best-looking bishop on the bench-”

  “Do come indoors,” he implored. “I can’t really let you stand about like this—”

  “Thank you, I’m not in the least tired. Go on, Mr. Dremmel.”

  “Sir, can I see you alone?” said Herr Dremmel, now without any doubt as to the Duchess’s forwardness. “On such an occasion as this, before we begin together openly to rejoice it seems fitting we should first by ourselves, unless this lady is your daughter’s mother—”

  “Oh, oh!” again screamed the Duchess.

  The Bishop turned on him in a kind of blaze, quite uncontrollable. “Yes, sir, you can,” he said. “Come into my study—”

  “What? Are you going to take him away from me?” cried the Duchess.

  “My dear Duchess, if he has business with me—” said the Bishop. “I’ll take you indoors first,” he said, offering her his arm. “This gentleman” — he glared at him sideways, and Herr Dremmel, all unused as he was to noticing hostility, yet was a little surprised at the expression of his face— “will wait here. No, no, he won’t, he’ll come, too” — for approaching round the bushes behind which grew the pear-tree the Bishop had caught sight of skirts. “Come on, sir—”

  “But—” said the Duchess, as the Bishop drew her hand hastily through his arm and began to walk her off more quickly than she had been walked off for years.

  “Come on, sir—” the Bishop flung back, almost hissed back, at Herr Dremmel.

  “One moment,” said Herr Dremmel holding up his hand, his gaze fixed on what was emerging from the bushes.

  “Come on, sir!” cried the Bishop, “I can only see you alone if you come at once—”

  But Herr Dremmel did not heed him. He was watching the bushes.

  “Will you come?” said the Bishop, pausing and stamping his foot, while he held the Duchess tight in the grip of his arm.

  “Why,” said Herr Dremmel without heeding him, “why — yes — why it is — why, here at last appears the Little Sugar Lamb!”

  “The little what?” said the Duchess, resolutely pulling out her hand from the Bishop’s arm and putting up her eyeglass. “Heavens above us, he can’t mean Pamela?”

  But nobody answered her; and indeed it was not necessary, for Herr Dremmel, gone down the path with a swiftness amazing in one of his appearance, was already, in the sight of all Redchester and most of the county, enfolding Ingeborg in his arms.

  “Of course,” was the Duchess’s comment to the Bishop as she watched the scene with her eyeglass up and the placidity of relief, “of course they will conquer us.”

  CHAPTER XI

  And so it came to pass that Herr Dremmel, armed only with simplicity, set aside the resistances of princes, potentates, and powers, and was married to Ingeborg by her father the Bishop in his own cathedral. And it was done as quickly as the law allowed, not only because Herr Dremmel was determined it should be, but because the enduring of his daily arrival for courting purposes from Coops, where he was staying, became rapidly impossible for the Bishop. Also there was the Master of Ananias, spurred to a frenzy of activity by Herr Dremmel’s success in getting things hurried on, insisting that he had been engaged long enough and demanding to be married on the same day.

  In the end he was, and Ingeborg’s wedding, being Judith’s as well, was unavoidably splendid. All along the line the Bishop’s hand was forced. The very wedding-dress had to be as beautiful for the one as for the other of his daughters; and, absurdly and wickedly, he was obliged to spend as much on her trousseau who was going into pauperdom and obscurity for the rest of her days as on hers who would no doubt be soon, though of course only in God’s good time, the most magnificent of widows. He never afterwards was able to feel quite the same to the Duchess. Without knowing anything of the circumstances, of the secret disgrace of the affair, of the blank undesirability in any case of such a son-in-law, of the extraordinary inconvenience and pecuniary loss of Ingeborg’s marrying at all, she had taken up Herr Dremmel to an extent that was positively near making her ridiculous, supposing that, humanly speaking, were possible, and had rammed him down the county’s throat till at last it believed that of the two husbands Ingeborg had secured the better. And this gossip filtered through into the Palace, and Judith, who never did speak, spoke less than ever, but edging away more and more decidedly from the blandishments of the Master, who had not been invited to Coops, spent most of her time in her own room engaged in not looking at her trousseau; and the Palace became such an uncomfortable place what with one thing and another, and the strain of remaining calm and becoming in conduct to the ducally protected Herr Dremmel was so great, that at last the Bishop was as eager as any one to get the wedding over and feverishly furthered any scheme that would, by hastening it, deliver him.

  To Ingeborg he never spoke, but turned away with the same cold horror that came over the rest of the family when from windows he or it beheld her being courted with what seemed a terrible German thoroughness in places like the middle of the lawn. He could no longer walk round his own garden without meeting an interlaced couple; and though he suggested to Herr Dremmel with what he felt was really admirable self-restraint that these public endearments might give rise to comment, Herr Dremmel merely replied that as Ingeborg was his Braut it ought to give rise to much more comment, even to justifiable complaints, if his manner to her were less warm.

  “In England we do not—” began the Bishop; but broke off for fear of losing his self-restraint. And Herr Dremmel and Inge
borg continuing to perambulate the garden slowly, with a frequent readjusting of their steps to each other’s — for it is a difficult method, the interlaced one, of getting along a path — the Bishop and Mrs. Bullivant retreated for refreshment and comfort to the delicacy of Judith, to her lovely withdrawals. That the Master should blandish was natural, because a man is natural; but they knew that a woman, if she is to approach any ideal of true womanhood, cannot be too carefully unnatural, and should she be persuaded or betrayed into some expression of affection for her lover, some answering caress, at least she must not like it. And there was Ingeborg progressing round the garden as described, or in the middle of the lawn openly having her hand held, and looking pleased.

  It was rank.

  Ingeborg, in fact, was pleased. She was more, she was extremely happy. Here she was suddenly no longer a disgraced and boycotted and wicked girl, but that strangely encouraging object, that odd restorer of faith in oneself, a Little Sugar Lamb. The cosiness of being a Sugar Lamb! She had been so very miserable. She had dragged through such cold, anæmic days. She had had such a horrible holiday, forced upon her on the very scene of her activities, and had had it brought home to her so freezingly, so blightingly, that she had done too dreadful a thing to be allowed apparently ever again to associate with the decent. And Robert — she quickly began calling him that to herself under the influence of her family’s methods of reclaiming her — had not written a single letter.

  “But he came,” said Herr Dremmel, for whose enlightenment she was picturing the week she had had.

  And her father would not speak to her at all, would not look at her.

  “Old sheep,” said Herr Dremmel good-naturedly.

  And Judith had seemed entirely horrified, and used to blush if she tried to speak to her.

  “Foolish turkey,” said Herr Dremmel placidly.

  But now somehow it did seem as if she needn’t have been quite so miserable, and might have had more faith.

  “What ought the Little One to have had more of?” asked Herr Dremmel; for his thoughts had not much time to spare, and he profitably employed them while she talked in working out the probable results of, say, the treatment of three acres of sugar-beet with sulphate of potash, sulphate of ammonia, and nitrate of soda respectively, all of them receiving 400 lbs. of basic slag as well — would not sulphate of ammonia be more effective as a nitrogenous manure than nitrate of soda in the case of sugar-beets, whose roots grew smaller and nearer the surface than mangels? “That is what little women should constantly have more of,” he said, breaking away from sugar-beets to a zestful embracing; for on this occasion they were under the pear-tree, a place she seldom went to because she had not yet acquired, in spite of his assurances that she undoubtedly would, any real enthusiasm for embracings, keeping by preference to the only immune place in the garden, which was the middle of the lawn.

  “I wonder,” she thought while it was being done, “if this will really grow on me....”

  And, while it was still being done, “Mother must have been kissed, too, and she’s still alive....”

  And presently, while it was still being done, “But mother isn’t much alive — there’s the sofa — perhaps that’s why....”

  Well, he loved her, somehow; she did not now care how. Whether it was a spiritual affection or one that would go on requiring at frequent intervals to enfold her capaciously did not matter any more, for it was a warm thing, a warm human thing, he was offering her, and she had been half-dead with cold. What did it matter if she herself was not in love? It was the dream of a schoolgirl to want to be in love. Life was not like that. Life was a thing full of friendliness and happy affection; and love, anyhow on the woman’s side, was not a bit necessary. The Bishop would have been surprised if he had known how nearly she approached his ideal of womanhood. She was going to be so good, she said to herself and to Herr Dremmel, too, her heart full of gratitude and glad relief — oh, so good! She was never going to be dejected or beaten out of hope and courage again. She would work over there, work hard at all sorts of happy things in the parish, and among the poor and sick, and she would help Robert in his work if he would let her, and if he wouldn’t then she’d help him when he had done — help him to play and rest. They would laugh together and talk together and walk together, and he would explain his experiments to her and teach her to understand. And the first thing she would do would be to learn German very thoroughly, so as to be able to write all his letters for him, and even his sermons if needs be, and save his precious time.

  “Those,” said Herr Dremmel, who in the lush meadows of dalliance had forgotten that what had first attracted him to her had been a certain bright baldness of brain, “would be pretty little nonsense sermons the small snail would produce.”

  “You’ll see,” said Ingeborg confidently; and she suddenly flung out her arms and turned her face up to the sun and the blue through the little leaves and all the light and promise of the world, and stretched herself in an immense contentment. “Oh,” she sighed, “isn’t it all good — isn’t it all good—”

  “It is,” agreed Herr Dremmel. “But it is nothing to how good it will be presently, when we are surrounded by our dear children.”

  “Children?” said Ingeborg.

  She dropped her arms and looked at him. She had not thought of children.

  “Then, indeed, my little wife will not wish to write letters or compose sermons.”

  “Why?” said Ingeborg.

  “Because you will be a happy mother.”

  “But don’t happy mothers—”

  “You will be entirely engaged in adoring your children. Nothing else in the world will interest you.”

  Ingeborg stood looking at him with a surprised face. “Oh?” she said. “Shall I?” Then she added, “But I’ve never had any children.”

  “It was not to be expected,” said Herr Dremmel.

  “Then how do you know nothing else in the world will interest me?”

  “Foolish Little One,” he said, taking her in his arms, his eyes moist with tenderness, for he knew that here against his breast he held in her slender youth the mother of all the Dremmels, and the knowledge profoundly moved him. “Foolish Little One, is not throughout all nature every mother solely preoccupied by interest in her young?”

  “Is she?” said Ingeborg doubtfully, quite a number of remembered family snapshots dancing before her eyes. Still, she was very willing to believe.

  She looked at him a moment thinking. “But—” she said, gently pushing herself a little way from him, both hands on his chest.

  “But what then, small snail?”

  “Wouldn’t they be German children?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Herr Dremmel proudly.

  “All of them?”

  “All of them?” he echoed.

  “It wouldn’t be like Roman Catholics and Protestants marrying, and half the children be German and half English?”

  “Certainly not,” said Herr Dremmel emphatically.

  “But Robert—”

  “Continue, little hare.”

  “What are German children like?”

  It was now Herr Dremmel’s turn to say confidently, “You’ll see.”

  A week later they were married; and the Bishop, inscrutably watching Ingeborg from the doorstep as she was being tucked by deft hands into the rugs of the car that was to take her to the station, observing how cushions were put in the right places at her back, how a footstool was carefully inserted under her feet, how her least movement was interpreted and instantly attended to, made his farewell remark to his daughter — the last remark, as it happened, that he ever did make to her.

  “You will miss Wilson,” he said; and re-entered the Palace a slightly comforted man.

  She never saw him again.

  PART II

  CHAPTER XII

  On her honeymoon, which was only as long as it took to get from Redchester to Kökensee, except for a day in Holland where a brief and infinitely r
espectful visit, or rather waiting on, was made to the eminent De Vries, Ingeborg said to herself at frequent intervals as she had said to herself under the pear-tree in what now seemed a remote past, “Perhaps this will grow on me.” But even before they reached Kökensee on the fourth day after their marriage she was deciding, though a little reluctantly for she had always heard them praised, that probably she had no gift for honeymoons.

  Robert, luckily, was apparently liking his and was quite happy and placid and slept sonorously in the trains. The meals were invariably cheerful. From Bromberg on he woke up and became attentive to the country they were passing through; and once in his own part of the world he expanded into much talk, pointing out and explaining the distinctive features of the methods employed on the different farms along the line.

  Ingeborg drank it in eagerly. She was zealous to learn; resolute to be a helpmeet. Had he not delivered her from the immense suffocation of Redchester? She was obsequious with gratitude. It was a country of an exhilarating spaciousness; no hedges, no shutting off of one field from another, no shutting off, indeed, of the sky itself or of the blue delicious distance by little interfering hills like those they had round Redchester. It was all one great sweep, one great roll of earth up to heaven and of heaven down to earth, fresh and free and with a quality in the air of clear bright hardness she thought adorable after the wadded effect of the climate at home. And once, when the train pulled up in the open, she could hear from far away up in the blue the cry of a hawk.

  From Allenstein they went on by a light railway with toy carriages and a tiny engine through an infinity of rye-fields and seemingly uninhabited country to the nearest station to Kökensee, a place called Meuk, of some pretension to being a little town, with an enormous church rising out of its middle and containing, among other objects of interest, explained Herr Dremmel, his mother.

  “Oh?” said Ingeborg, surprised. “Have you got one?” For he somehow produced a completely motherless impression.