Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  ‘Dear Dolly,’ I murmured, ‘don’t please make my blood run cold—’

  ‘Ah, but it’s forbidden in the Prayer Book.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘What I did.’

  ‘What did you do, Dolly?’ I asked, now thoroughly uneasy; had her recklessness gone so far as to lead her to tamper with the Commandments?

  Dolly tore off currants and leaves in handfuls and flung them together into the basket. ‘I married my uncle,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I said, really astonished.

  ‘Karl — that was my second husband — was Siegfried’s — that was my first husband’s — uncle. He was Siegfried’s mother’s brother — my first mother-in-law’s brother. My second mother-in-law was my first husband’s grandmother. In Germany you can. In Germany you do. But it’s forbidden in the English Prayer Book. It’s put in the Table of Kindred and Affinity that you mustn’t. It’s number nine of the right-hand column — Husband’s Mother’s Brother. And Kitty well, you can guess what Kitty has felt about it. If it had been my own uncle, my own mother’s brother, she couldn’t have been more horrified and heartbroken. I didn’t realise. I didn’t think of the effect it might have on them at home. I just did it. They didn’t know till I had done it. I always think it saves bother to marry first and tell afterwards. I had been so many years in Germany. It seemed quite natural. I simply stayed on in the family. It was really habit.’

  She threw some currants into the basket, then faced me. ‘There,’ she said, looking me straight in the eyes, ‘I’ve told you, and if you think me impossible I’ll go.’

  ‘But—’ I began.

  Her face was definitely flushed now, and her eyes very bright.

  ‘Oh, I’d be sorry, sorry,’ she said impetuously, ‘if this ended us!’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘You and me. But I couldn’t stay here and not tell you, could I. Just because you may hate it so I had to tell you. You’ve got a dean in your family. The Prayer Book is in your blood. And if you do hate it I shall understand perfectly, and I’ll go away and take Kitty and you need never see or hear of me again, so you musn’t mind saying—’

  ‘Oh do wait a minute!’ I cried. ‘I don’t hate it. I don’t mind. I’d only hate it and mind if it was I who had to marry a German uncle. I can’t imagine why anybody should ever want to marry uncles anyhow, but if they do, and they’re not blood-uncles, and it’s the custom of the country, why not? You’ll stay here, Dolly. I won’t let you go. I don’t care if you’ve married fifty German uncles. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you on the top of the wall in your funny petticoat. Why, you don’t suppose,’ I finished, suddenly magnificently British, ‘that I’m going to let any mere German come between you and me?’

  Whereupon we kissed each other, — not once, but several times; fell, indeed, upon each other’s necks. And Antoine, coming to fetch the red currants for Lisette who had been making signs to him from the steps for some time past, stood waiting quietly till we should have done.

  When he thought we had done he stepped forward and said, ‘Pardon, mesdames’ — and stooping down deftly extracted the basket from between us.

  As he did so his eye rested an instant on the stripped and broken branches of the currant bush.

  He wasn’t surprised.

  September 7th.

  I couldn’t finish about yesterday last night. When I had got as far as Antoine and the basket I looked at the little clock on my writing-table and saw to my horror that it was nearly twelve. So I fled into bed; for what would Mrs. Barnes have said if she had seen me burning the electric light and doing what she calls trying my eyes at such an hour? It doesn’t matter that they are my eyes and my light: Mrs. Barnes has become, by virtue of her troubles, the secret standard of my behaviour. She is like the eye of God to me now, — in every place. And my desire to please her and make her happy has increased a hundredfold since Dolly and I have at last, in spite of her precautions, become real friends.

  We decided before we left the kitchen-garden yesterday that this was the important thing: to keep Mrs. Barnes from any hurt that we can avoid. She has had so many. She will have so many more. I understand now Dolly’s deep sense of all her poor Kitty has given up and endured for her sake, and I understand the shackles these sacrifices have put on Dolly. It is a terrible burden to be very much loved. If Dolly were of a less naturally serene temperament she would go under beneath the weight, she would be, after five years of it, a colourless, meek thing.

  We agreed that Mrs. Barnes musn’t know that I know about Dolly’s marriages. Dolly said roundly that it would kill her. Mrs. Barnes regards her misguided sister as having committed a crime. It is forbidden in the Prayer Book. She brushes aside the possible Prayer Books of other countries. Therefore the word German shall never I hope again escape me while she is here, nor will I talk of husbands, and perhaps it will be as well to avoid mentioning uncles. Dear me, how very watchful I shall have to be. For the first time in his life the Dean has become unmentionable.

  I am writing this before breakfast. I haven’t seen Dolly alone again since the kitchen-garden. I don’t know how she contrived to appease Mrs. Barnes and explain her long absence, but that she did contrive it was evident from the harmonious picture I beheld when, half an hour later, I too went back to the house. They were sitting together in the sun just outside the front door knitting. Mrs. Barnes’s face was quite contented. Dolly looked specially radiant. I believe she is made up entirely of love and laughter — dangerous, endearing ingredients! We just looked at each other as I came out of the house. It is the most comforting, the warmest thing, this unexpected finding of a completely understanding friend.

  September 10th.

  Once you have achieved complete understanding with anybody it isn’t necessary, I know, to talk much. I have been told this by the wise. They have said mere knowledge that the understanding is there is enough. They have said that perfect understanding needs no expression, that the perfect intercourse is without words. That may be; but I want to talk. Not excessively, but sometimes. Speech does add grace and satisfaction to friendship. It may not be necessary, but it is very agreeable.

  As far as I can see I am never, except by the rarest chance, going to get an opportunity of talking to Dolly alone. And there are so many things I want to ask her. Were her experiences all pleasant? Or is it her gay, indomitable spirit that has left her, after them, so entirely unmarked? Anyhow the last five years can’t possibly have been pleasant, and yet they’ve not left the shadow of a stain on her serenity. I feel that she would think very sanely about anything her bright mind touched. There is something disinfecting about Dolly. I believe she would disinfect me of the last dregs of morbidness I still may have lurking inside me.

  She and Mrs. Barnes are utterly poor. When the war began Dolly was in Germany, she told me that morning in the kitchen-garden, and had been a widow nearly a year. Not Siegfried’s widow: Juchs’s. I find her widowhoods confusing.

  ‘Didn’t you ever have a child, Dolly?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Then how is it you twitched the handkerchief off your sister’s sleeping face that first day and said Peep bo to her so professionally?’

  ‘I used to do that to Siegfried. We were both quite young to begin with, and played silly games.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  Juchs had left her some money; just enough to live on. Siegfried hadn’t ever had any, except what he earned as a clerk in a bank, but Juchs had had some. She hadn’t married Juchs for any reason, I gathered, except to please him. It did please him very much, she said, and I can quite imagine it. Siegfried too had been pleased in his day. ‘I seem to have a gift for pleasing Germans,’ she remarked, smiling. ‘They were both very kind to me. I ended by being very fond of them both. I believe I’d be fond of anyone who was kind. There’s a good deal of the dog about me.’

  Directly the war began she packed up and came to Switzerland; she didn’t
wish, under such circumstances, to risk pleasing any more Germans. Since her marriage to Juchs all her English relations except Kitty had cast her off, so that only a neutral country was open to her, and Kitty instantly gave up everybody and everything to come and be with her. At first her little income was sent to her by her German bank, but after the first few months it sent no more, and she became entirely dependent on Kitty. All that Kitty had was what she got from selling her house. The Germans, Dolly said, would send no money out of the country. Though the war was over she could get nothing out of them unless she went back. She would never go back. It would kill Kitty; and she too, she thought, would very likely die. Her career of pleasing Germans does seem to be definitely over.

  ‘So you see,’ she said smiling, ‘how wonderful it is for us to have found you.’

  ‘What I can’t get over,’ I said, ’is having found you.’

  But I wish, having found her, I might sometimes talk to her.

  September 12th.

  We live here in an atmosphere of combats de générosité. It is tremendous. Mrs. Barnes and I are always doing things we don’t want to do because we suppose it is what is going to make the other one happy. The tyranny of unselfishness! I can hardly breathe.

  September 19th.

  I think it isn’t good for women to be shut up too long alone together without a man. They seem to fester. Even the noblest. Taking our intentions all round they really are quite noble. We do only want to develope in ideal directions, and remove what we think are the obstacles to this development in each other’s paths; and yet we fester. Not Dolly. Nothing ever smudges her equable, clear wholesomeness; but there are moments when I feel as if Mrs. Barnes and I got much mixed up together in a sort of sticky mass. Faint struggles from time to time, brief efforts at extrication, show there is still a life in me that is not flawlessly benevolent, but I repent of them as soon as made because of the pain and surprise that instantly appear in Mrs. Barnes’s tired, pathetic eyes, and hastily I engulf myself once more in goodness.

  That’s why I haven’t written lately, not for a whole week. It is glutinous, the prevailing goodness. I have stuck. I have felt as though my mind were steeped in treacle. Then to-day I remembered my old age, and the old lady waiting at the end of the years who will want to be amused, so I’ve begun again. I have an idea that what will really most amuse that old lady, that wrinkled philosophical old thing, will be all the times when I was being uncomfortable. She will be so very comfortable herself, so done with everything, so entirely an impartial looker-on, that the rebellions and contortions and woes of the creature who used to be herself will only make her laugh. She will be blithe in her security. Besides, she will know the sequel, she will know what came next, and will see, I daresay, how vain the expense of trouble and emotions was. So that naturally she will laugh. ‘You silly little thing!’ I can imagine her exclaiming, ‘If only you had known how it all wasn’t going to matter!’ And she will laugh very heartily; for I am sure she will be a gay old lady.

  But what we really want here now is an occasional breath of brutality, — the passage, infrequent and not too much prolonged, of a man. If he came to tea once in a way it would do. He would be a blast of fresh air. He would be like opening a window. We have minced about among solicitudes and delicacies so very long. I want to smell the rankness of a pipe, and see the cushions thrown anyhow. I want to see somebody who doesn’t knit. I want to hear Mrs. Barnes being contradicted. Especially do I want to hear Mrs. Barnes being contradicted ... oh, I’m afraid I’m still not very good!

  September 20th.

  The grapes are ripe down in the vineyards along the edge of the valley, and this morning I proposed that we should start off early and spend the day among them doing a grape-cure.

  Mrs. Barnes liked the idea very much, and sandwiches were ordered, for we were not to come back till evening; then at the last moment she thought it would be too hot in the valley, and that her head, which has been aching lately, might get worse. The sandwiches were ready on the hall table. Dolly and I were ready too, boots on and sticks in hand. To our great surprise Mrs. Barnes, contemplating the sandwiches, said that as they had been cut they mustn’t be wasted, and therefore we had better go without her.

  We were astonished. We were like children being given a holiday. She kissed us affectionately when we said goodbye, as though, to mark her trust in us, — in Dolly that she wouldn’t tell me the dreadful truth about herself, in me that I wouldn’t encourage her in undesirable points of view. How safe we were, how deserving of trust, Mrs. Barnes naturally didn’t know. Nothing that either of us could say could possibly upset the other.

  ‘If Mrs. Barnes knew the worst, knew I knew everything, wouldn’t she be happier?’ I asked Dolly as we went briskly down the mountain. ‘Wouldn’t at least part of her daily anxiety be got rid of, her daily fear lest I should get to know?’

  ‘It would kill her,’ said Dolly firmly.

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘You mustn’t forget that she thinks what I did was a crime.’

  ‘You mean the uncle.’

  ‘Oh, she wouldn’t very much mind your knowing about Siegfried. She would do her utmost to prevent it, because of her horror of Germans and of the horror she assumes you have of Germans. But once you did know she would be resigned. The other—’ Dolly shook her head. ‘It would kill her,’ she said again.

  We came to a green slope starred thick with autumn crocuses, and sat down to look at them. These delicate, lovely things have been appearing lately on the mountain, at first one by one and then in flocks, — pale cups of light, lilac on long white stalks that snap off at a touch. Like the almond trees in the suburban gardens round London that flower when the winds are cruellest, the autumn crocuses seem too frail to face the cold nights we are having now; yet it is just when conditions are growing unkind that they come out. There they are, all over the mountain fields, flowering in greater profusion the further the month moves towards winter.

  This particular field of them was so beautiful that with one accord Dolly and I sat down to look. One doesn’t pass such beauty by. I think we sat quite half an hour drinking in those crocuses, and their sunny plateau, and the way the tops of the pine trees on the slope below stood out against the blue emptiness of the valley. We were most content. The sun was so warm, the air of such an extraordinary fresh purity. Just to breathe was happiness. I think that in my life I have been most blest in this, that so often just to breathe has been happiness.

  Dolly and I, now that we could talk as much as we wanted to, didn’t after all talk much. Suddenly I felt incurious about her Germans. I didn’t want them among the crocuses. The past, both hers and mine, seemed to matter very little, seemed a stuffy, indifferent thing, in that clear present. I don’t suppose if we hadn’t brought an empty basket with us on purpose to take back grapes to Mrs. Barnes that we would have gone on down to the vineyards at all, but rather have spent the day just where we were. The basket, however, had to be filled; it had to be brought back filled. It was to be the proof that we had done what we said we would. Kitty, said Dolly, would be fidgeted if we hadn’t carried out the original plan, and might be afraid that, if we weren’t eating grapes all day as arranged, we were probably using our idle mouths for saying things she wished left unsaid.

  ‘Does poor Kitty always fidget?’ I asked.

  ‘Always,’ said Dolly.

  ‘About every single thing that might happen?’

  ‘Every single thing,’ said Dolly. ‘She spends her life now entirely in fear — and it’s all because of me.’

  ‘But really, while she is with me she could have a holiday from fear if we told her I knew about your uncle and had accepted it with calm.’

  ‘It would kill her,’ said Dolly once more, firmly.

  We lunched in the vineyards, and our desert was grapes. We ate them for a long while with enthusiasm, and went on eating them through every degree of declining pleasure till we disliked them. For fifty centime
s each the owner gave us permission to eat grapes till we died if we wished to. For another franc we were allowed to fill the basket for Mrs. Barnes. Only conscientiousness made us fill it full, for we couldn’t believe anybody would really want to eat such things as grapes. Then we began to crawl up the mountain again, greatly burdened both inside and out.

  It took us over three hours to get home. We carried the basket in turns, half an hour at a time; but what about those other, invisible, grapes, that came with us as well? I think people who have been doing a grape-cure should sit quiet for the rest of the day, or else walk only on the level. To have to take one’s cure up five thousand feet with one is hard. Again we didn’t talk; this time because we couldn’t. All that we could do was to pant and to perspire.

  It was a brilliant afternoon, and the way led up when the vineyards left off through stunted fir trees that gave no shade, along narrow paths strewn with dry fir needles, — the slipperiest things in the world to walk on. Through these hot, shadeless trees the sun beat on our bent and burdened figures. Whenever we stopped to rest and caught sight of each other’s flushed wet faces we laughed.

  ‘Kitty needn’t have been afraid we’d say much,’ panted Dolly in one of these pauses, her eyes screwed up with laughter at my melted state.

  I knew what I must be looking like by looking at her.

  It was five o’clock by the time we reached the field with the crocuses, and we sank down on the grass where we had sat in the morning, speechless, dripping, overwhelmed by grapes. For a long while we said nothing. It was bliss to lie in the cool grass and not to have to carry anything. The sun, low in the sky, slanted almost level along the field, and shining right through the thin-petalled crocuses made of each a little star. I don’t know anything more happy than to be where it is beautiful with some one who sees and loves it as much as you do yourself. We lay stretched out on the grass, quite silent, watching the splendour grow and grow till, having reached a supreme moment of radiance, it suddenly went out. The sun dropped behind the mountains along to the west, and out went the light; with a flick; in an instant. And the crocuses, left standing in their drab field, looked like so many blown-out candles.