He flung up his hands, and the darkness engulfed him.
'It's raining,' I tried to cry after his hatless figure.
I thought I heard him call back something about Pilsner--'It's thePilsner,' I thought I heard him say; but the noise coming from thekitchen was too violent for me to be sure.
His father was in the passage, walking up and down it, his hands in hispockets, his shoulders up to his ears as though he were shrinking fromblows. He told me what his unhappy son had done. Not able to endure thetrumpet when it was being blown up at our house earlier in the evening,not able to endure it even softened, chastened, subdued by distance andthe intervening walls, he had directed his mother to go up and invitethe player down to her kitchen, where he was to be cajoled into eatingand drinking, because, as the son explained, full of glee at hissagacity, no man who is eating and drinking can at the same time beblowing a trumpet. 'Thus,' said his father, in jerks coincident with thebreath-takings of the trumpeter, 'did he hope to obtain peace.'
'But he didn't,' said I.
'No. For a period there was extreme, delicious quiet. Mother'--so heinvariably describes his wife--' sacrificed her best sausage, for howshall we permit our son to be tortured? The bread was spread with butterthree centimeters deep. The trumpeter and his _Schatz_ sat quietly inthe kitchen eating it. We sat quietly on the veranda discussing greatthemes. Then that good beer my son so often praises, that excellent,barrel-kept, cellar-lodged Pilsner beer, bright as amber, clear as ice,cool as--cool as--'
'A cucumber,' I assisted.
'Good. Very good. As a cucumber--as a salad of cucumbers.'
'No, no--there's pepper in a salad. You'd better just keep to plaincucumber,' I interrupted, always rather nice in the matter of images.
'Cool, then, as plain cucumber--this usually admirable stuff instead of,as we had expected, sending him gradually and pleasantly to sleep--Imean, of course, making him gradually and pleasantly so sleepy thatthoughts of his bed, growing in affection with every glass, would causehim to arise and depart to his barracks,--woke him up. And, my dearFraeulein, you yourself heard--you are hearing now--how completely it didit.'
'Is he--is he--?' I inquired nervously.
The neighbor nodded. 'He is,' he said; 'he has consumed fourteenglasses.'
And indeed he was; and I should say from the tumult, from theformlessness of it, the tunelessness, the rollicksomeness, that neverwas anybody more so.
'I fear my son will leave us for some quieter spot before his holiday isover,' said the neighbor, looking distressed.
And perhaps it will convince you more than anything else I have said ofthe extreme value of our Johannas, when I tell you that, goaded by thenoise and by his disappointed face to rash promises, I declared I woulddismiss the girl unless she broke off such an engagement, and he staredat me for a moment in astonishment and then resignedly shook his headand said with the weary conviction of a householder of thirty years'standing, '_Das geht doch nicht._'
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XLIII
Galgenberg, Sept. 9th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--But it is true. Our servants do not get more thanfrom 100 to 250 marks a year, and indeed I think it is a great deal andcannot see why, because you spend as much (you say you do, so I mustbelieve it) in a month on gloves and ties, it should make you hateyourself. Do not hate yourself. Your doing so doesn't make us pay ourservants more. Why, how do you suppose we could get all we need out ofour hundred pounds a year--I translate our marks into your pounds foryour greater convenience--if we had to give a servant more than eight ofthem and for our house more than fifteen? Papa and I do not like to bekept hungry in the matter of books, and we shall probably spend everypenny of our income; but I know a number of families with children wholive decently and have occasional coffee-parties and put by for theirdaughters' _trousseaux_ on the same sum. As for the servants themselves,have I not described Johanna's splendid appearance on her Sundays, herwhite dress and gloves, and the pink ribbons round her waist? She findsher wages will buy these things and still leave enough for thesavings-bank. She is quite content. Only I don't know if she wouldremain so if you were to come and lament over her and tell her what alittle way you make the same money go. You see, she would probably notgrasp the true significance of the admission, which is, I take it, notthat she has too little but that you spend too much. Yet how can I frommy Galgenberg judge what is necessary in gloves and ties for a splendidyoung man like yourself? The sum seems to me terrific. There must bestacks of gloves and ties constantly growing higher about your path.You, then, spend on these two things alone almost exactly what we threespend in a year on everything. But my astonishment is only the measureof my ignorance. Do not hate yourself. Either spend the money withoutcompunction, or, if you have compunction, don't spend it. A sinnershould always, I think, sin gayly or not at all. I don't mean that youin this are a sinner; I only mean that as a general principlehalf-hearted sinners are contemptible. It is a poor creature who whilehe sins is sorry. If he must sin, let him at least do it with all hisheart, and having done it waste no time in whimpers but try to turn hisback on it and his face toward the good. Please do not hate yourself. Iam sure you have to have the things. Your letter is more than usuallydepressed. Please do not hate yourself. It does no good and lowers yourvitality. It is as bad as sorrow, which surely is very bad. I thinknothing great was done by any one who wasted time peering about amonghis faults; but if ever you meet the pastor who prepared me forconfirmation don't tell him I said so. I don't know how it is with yoursin England, but here the pastors seem altogether unable to bearlistening to descriptions of plain facts. When they come to doctor mysoul, why may I not tell them its symptoms as badly as I tell my body'ssymptoms to the physician who would heal it? He is not shocked or angrywhen I show him my sore places; he recommends a plaster or a dose,encourages, and goes away. But your spiritual doctor takes yourspiritual sore places as a kind of personal affront; at least, hismanner often shows indignation in proportion as you are frank. Insteadof being patient, he hardly lets you speak; instead of prescribing, hedenounces; instead of helping, he passionately scolds; and so you do notgo to him again, but fight through your later miseries alone. Just atthe time of my preparation for confirmation my mother died. My heart,blank with sorrow, was very fit for religious impressions andconsolations. The preparation lasts two years, and three times everyweek during that time I went to classes. For two years I was not allowedto dance or to go to even the mildest parties. For two years, fromsixteen to eighteen, I was earnest, prayerful, humbly seeking afterrighteousness. Then one day, when questionings had come upon me that myconscience could not approve, I went to the pastor who had prepared meas confidently as I would go with a toothache to a dentist, and bared mysensitive conscience to him and begged to have my thoughts arranged andmy doubts and questionings settled. To my amazement and extreme fright Ibeheld him shocked, angry, hardly able to endure hearing me tell all Ihad been wondering. It seemed very strange. I sat at last with downcasteyes, silent, ashamed, my heart shrunk back into reserve and frost. Iwas not being helped; I was being scolded, and bitterly scolded. At lastat the door some special word of blame stung me to heat, and I cried,'Herr Pastor, when my tongue is bad and I show it to a doctor, he givesme a pill. Are you not the doctor of my spirit? Why, then, when I cometo you to be healed, do you, instead of giving me medicine, so cruellyrate me?'
And he, staring at me a moment aghast, struck his hands together abovehis head. 'Thy father!' he cried, 'Thy father! It is he who speaks--itis he speaking in thee. Such words come not unaided from the mouth ofeighteen, from the mouth of one confirmed by these very hands. _Ach_,miserable maiden, it is not with such as thee that Paradise is peopled.The taint of thy parentage is heavy upon thee. Thou art not, thou canstnot be, thou hast never been, a child of God.'
And that was all I got for my pains.
Tell me, what mood were you in when you wrote? Was it not, apart fromits dejection, one ra
ther inclined to peevishness? You ask, forinstance, why I write so much about a tipsy trumpeter when I know youare anxious to hear about the other things I never tell you. I can'timagine what they are. You must let me write how and what I like--bearwith me while I discourse of roses and nasturtium-beds, of rain andsunshine, clouds and wind, cats, birds, servants, even trumpeters. Mylife holds nothing greater than these. If you want to hear from me youmust hear also of them. And why have you taken so bitter a dislike toour gifted young neighbor down the hill, calling him contemptuously afiddler? He is certainly a fiddler, if to fiddle in one's hours of easeproduces one, and perhaps you would be twice as happy as you are if youcould fiddle half so wonderfully as he does. He is gone. His holidayeither came to an end or was put to an end by Johanna's _fiance._ Now,in these early September days, this season of mists and mellowfruitfulness, of cloudy mornings and calm evenings and goldenafternoons, he has turned his back on the hills and forests, on thereddening creepers and sweetening grapes, on the splash of water amongferns and rocks, on all those fresh, quiet things that make life worthhaving, and is sitting at a desk somewhere in Berlin doggedly bent onbecoming, by means of a great outlay of days and years, a _Landrath_, a_Regierungsrath,_ a _Geheimrath_, and a _Wirklicher Geheimrath mit demPraedikat Excellenz_. When he has done that he will take down his hat andgo forth at last to enjoy life, and will find to his surprise that itisn't there, that it is all behind him, a heap of dusty days piled inthe corners of offices, and that his knees shake as he goes aboutlooking for it, and that he can no longer even tune his fiddle byhimself but has to have it done for him by the footman.
Isn't that what happens to all you wise men, so prudently determined tomake your way in the world? You must be very sure of another life, orhow could you bear to squander this? The things you are missing--oh, thethings you are missing!--while you so carefully add little gain tolittle gain, or what I would rather call little loss to little loss. Isee no point in slaving day after day through one's best years. Supposeyou do not, in the end, have a footman to open your door--the footmanis merely a symbol, conveniently expressing the multitude ofsuperfluities that gather about the declining years of the person whohas got on, things bought with the sacrifice of his life, and none ofthem giving him back the lost power, gone with youth, to enjoythem--suppose, then, you do not end gloriously with a footman, what ofthat? I must be blind, for I never can see the desirability of thesetrappings. Yet they surely are of an immense desirability, sinceeverybody, really everybody, is willing to give so much in payment forthem. Our elder neighbor down the hill has actually given his eyes andhis back; he peers at life through spectacles, and walks about likeWordsworth's leech-gatherer, bent double through poking about for yearsin the muddy pools of little boys' badly written exercises; and here heis at fifty still not satisfied with what he has earned, still going ondrudging the whole year round, except for his six short weeks in summer.His wife is thrifty; they have only the one son; they live frugally;long ago they must have put by enough to keep them warm and fed andclothed without his doing another stroke of work.
I was interrupted there by a message from him asking if I would comedown and help him gather up the windfalls in his orchard, his wife beingbusy pickling beans. I went, my head full of what I had just beenwriting to you, and I gathered up together with the apples a littlelesson in the foolishness of officious and hasty criticism. It was thisway:
Our baskets being full, and our backs rested, he groaned and said thatin another week he must leave for Weimar.
'But you like your work,' said I.
'I detest my work,' he said peevishly. 'I detest teaching. I detestlittle boys.'
'Then why--' I began, but stopped.
'Why? Why? Because I detest it is no reason why I should not do it.'
'Yes, it is.'
'What, and at my age begin another?'
'No, no.'
'You would not have me idle?'
'Yes, I would.'
He stared at me gravely through his spectacles. 'This is unprincipled,'he said.
I laughed. It is years since I have observed that the principled groan agood deal and make discontented criticisms of life, and I don't think Icare to be one of them.
'It is,' he persisted, seeing that I only laughed.
'Is it?' said I.
'It is man's lot to work,' said he.
'Is it?' said I.
'Certainly,' said he.
'All day?'
'If he cannot get it done in less time, certainly.'
'_Every_ day?'
'Certainly.'
'All through the years of his life?'
'All through the years of his strength, certainly.'
'What for?'
'My dear young lady, have you been living again on vegetables lately?'
'Why?'
'Your words sound as though your thoughts were watery.'
A nettled silence fell upon me, and while I was arranging how best toconvince him of their substance he was shaking his head and saying thatit was strange how the most intelligent women are unable really tothink. 'Water,' he continued, 'is indispensable in its proper place andgood in many others where, strictly, it might be done without. I havenothing to say against watery emotions, watery sentiments, even wateryaffections, especially in ladies, who would be less charming inproportion as they were more rigid. Ebb and flow, uncertainty,instability, unaccountableness, are becoming to your sex. But in theregion of thought, of the intellect, of pure reason, everything shouldbe very dry. The one place, my dear young lady, in which I will endureno water is on the brain.'
I had no answer ready. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to gohome. I did go a few steps up the orchard, reflecting on the way menhave of telling you you cannot think, or are not logical, at the verymoment when you appear to yourself to be most unanswerable--aregrettable habit that at once puts a stop to interestingconversation,--and presently, as I was nearing our fence, he calledafter me. 'Fraeulein Rose-Marie,' he called pleasantly.
'Well?' said I, looking down at him over a displeased shoulder.
'Come back.'
'No.'
'Come back and dine with us.'
'No.'
'There is mutton for dinner, and before that a soup full of theconcentrated strength of beasts. Up there I know you will eat carrotsand stewed apples, and I shall never be able to make you see what Isee.'
'Heaven forbid that I ever should.'