'What, you do not desire to be reasonable?'
'I don't choose to argue with you.'
'Have I done anything?'
'You are not logical enough for me,' said I, anxious to be beforehandwith the inevitable remark.
'Come, come,' said he, his face crinkling into smiles.
'It's true,' said I.
'Come back and prove it.'
'Useless.'
'You cannot.'
'I will not.'
'It is the same thing.'
I went on up the hill.
'Fraeulein Rose-Marie!'
'Well?'
'Come back.'
'No.'
'Come back, and tell me why you think I ought to give up my work and sitfor the rest of my days with hanging hands.'
I turned and looked down at him. 'Because,' I said, 'are you not fifty?And is not that high time to begin and get something out of life?'
He adjusted his spectacles, and stared up at me attentively. 'Continue,'he said.
'I look at your life, at all those fifty years of it, and I see itinsufferably monotonous.'
'Continue.'
'Dull.'
'Continue.'
'Dusty.'
'Continue.'
'Dreary.'
'Continue.' He nodded his head gently at each adjective and counted themoff on his fingers.
'I see it full of ink-spots, dog-eared grammars, and little boys.'
'Continue.'
'It is a constant going over the same ground--in itself a maddeningprocess. No sooner do the boys reach a certain age and proficiency andbecome slightly more interesting than they go on to somebody else, andyou begin again at the beginning with another batch. You teach in abare-walled room with enormous glaring windows, and the ring of theelectric tram-bell in the street below makes the commas in yoursentences. You have been doing this every day for thirty years. The boysyou taught at first are fathers of families now. The trees in theplayground have grown from striplings into big shady things. Everythinghas gone on, and so have you--but you have only gone on getting drierand more bored.'
'Continue,' said he, smiling.
'Your intelligence,' said I, coming down a little nearer, 'restless atfirst, and for ever trying to push green shoots through the thick rindof routine--'
'Good. Quite good. Continue.'
'--through to a wider space, a more generous light--'
'Poetic. Quite poetic. My compliments.'
'Thank you. Your intelligence, then, for ever--for ever--you'veinterrupted me, and I don't know where I'd got to.'
'You have got to my intelligence having green shoots.'
'Oh, yes. Well, they're not green now. That's the point I've beenstumbling toward. They ought to be, if you had taken bigger handfuls ofleisure and had not wholly wasted your time drudging. But now they oughtto be more than shoots--great trees, in whose shade we all would sitgratefully, and you enjoying free days, with the pleasant memory of freeyears behind you and the cheerful hope of roomy years to come. Andduring all that time of your imprisonment in a class-room the worldoutside went on its splendid way, the seasons filled it with beautywhich you were not there to see, the sun shone and warmed other people,the winds blew and made other people's flesh tingle and their blooddance--you, of course, were cramped up with cold feet and aheadache--the birds sang to other people tunes of heaven, while in yourears buzzed only the false quantities of reluctant little boys, thedelicious rain--'
'Stop, stop. You forget I had to earn a living.'
'Of course you had. But you know you earned your _living_ long ago. Whatyou are earning now is much more like your dying--the dying, the atrophyof your soul. What does it matter if your wife has one bonnet less ayear, and no silk dress--'
'Do not let her hear you,' he said, glancing round.
'--or if you keep no servant, and have less to eat on Sundays than yourneighbors, give no parties, and don't cumber yourselves up withacquaintances who care nothing for you? If you gave up these things youcould also give up drudging. You are too old to drudge. You have beentoo old these twenty years. A man of your brains--' he pretended to lookgrateful--'who cannot earn enough between twenty and thirty to keep himfrom the necessity of slaving for the rest of his days is not--is not--'
'Worthy of the name of man?'
'I don't know that that's a great thing,' said I doubtfully.
'Let it pass. It is an accepted ending to a sentence beginning as yoursdid. And now, my dear young lady, you have preached me a sermon--'
'Not a sermon.'
'Permitted me, then, to be present at a lecture--'
'Not a lecture.'
'Anyhow held forth on the unworthily puny outer conditions of myexistence. Tell me, now, one thing. I concede the ink-spots, the littleboys, the monotony, the tram-bells, the regrettable number of years;they are all there, and you with your vivid imagination see them all.But tell me one thing: has it never occurred to you that they are themerest shell, the merest husk and envelopment, and that it is possiblethat in spite of them--' his voice grew serious--'my life may be veryrich within?'
And you, my friend, tell me another thing. Am I not desperately,hopelessly horrid? Short-sighted? Impertinent? The readiest jumper atconclusions? The most arrogant critic of other people? Rich within. Ofcourse. Hidden with God. That is what I have never seen when I havelooked on superciliously from the height of my own idleness at thesedrudging lives. And see how amazing has been my foolishness, for wouldnot my own life judged from outside, this life here alone with Papa,this restricted, poor, solitary life, my first youth gone, my futurewithout prospects, no distractions, few friends, Papa's affectiongrowing vaguer as he grows older, would it not, looked at as I have beenlooking at my neighbor's, seem entirely blank and desolate? Yet howsincerely can I echo what he said--My life is very rich within. Yourssincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XLIV
Galgenberg, Sept. 16th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is kind of you to want to contradict what Isaid in my last letter about the outward appearance of my life, butreally you know I _am_ past my first youth. At twenty-six I cannotpretend to be what is known as a young girl, and I don't want to. Notfor anything would I be seventeen or eighteen again. I like to be awoman grown, to have entered into the full possession of whateverfaculties I am to have, to know what I want, to look at things in theirtrue proportions. I don't know that eighteen has anything thatcompensates for that. It is such a rudderless sort of age. It may bemore charming to the beholder, but it is not half so nice to the personherself. What is the good of loving chocolate to distraction when itonly ends by making you sick? And the joy of a new frock or hat isdashed at once when you meet the superior gorgeousness of some othergirl's frock or hat. And parties are often disappointing things. Andstudents, though they are deeply interesting, easily lead to tiresomecomplications if they admire you, and if they don't that isn't very niceeither. Why, even the young man in the cake-shop who used so gallantlyto serve us with lemonade and had such wonderful curly eyelashes was notmuch good really, for he couldn't be invited to tea, and whenever wewanted to look at his eyelashes we had to buy a cake, and cakes aredreadfully expensive for persons who have no money. Yes, it is a silly,tittering, calf-like age, and I am glad it can't come back again. Pleasedo not think that I need comforting because it is gone, or because ofany of the other items in the list I gave you. The future looks quitepleasant to me,--quite bright and sunny. It is only empty of what peoplecall prospects, by which I take them to mean husbands, but I shall fillit with pigs instead. I have great plans. I see what can be done witheven one pig from my neighbor's example, who has dug out a sort ofterrace and put a sty on it: simply wonders. And how much more could bedone with two. I mean to be a very happy old maid. I shall fix myattention in the mornings on remunerative objects like pigs, and spendbeautiful afternoons, quite idle physically but with my soul busy upamong the poets. Later on in distant years, when Papa doesn't want meany more, I shall
try to find a little house somewhere where it is flat,so that I can have other creatures about me besides bees, which are theonly live stock I can keep here. And you mustn't think I shall not behappy, because I shall. _So happy_. I am happy now, and I mean to behappy then; and when I am very old and have to die I shall be happyabout that too. I shall 'lay me down with a will,' as the bravest ofyour countrymen sang.
Do my plans seem to you selfish? I expect they do. People so easily callthose selfish who stand a little aside and look on at life. We have apoet of whom we are proud, but whose fame has not, I think, reachedacross to England, a rugged, robust poet, not very far below Goethe, apainter on large canvasses, best at mighty scenes, perhaps least good insmall things, in lyrics, in the things in which Heine was so exquisite;and he for my encouragement has said,
Bei sich selber fangt man an, Da man nicht Allen helfen kann.
Isn't it a nice jingle? The man's name is Hebbel, and he lived roundabout the forties, and perhaps you know more of him than I do, and Ihave been arrogant again; but it is a jingle that has often cheered mewhen I was afraid I ought to be teaching somebody something, or makingclothes for somebody, or paying somebody domiciliary visits and talkingfluently of the _lieber Gott_. I shrink from these things; and ashrinking visitor, shy and uncertain, cannot be so nice as no visitor atall. Is it very wrong of me? When my conscience says it is--it does notsay so often--I try to make up by going into the kitchen and askingJohanna kind questions about her mother. I must say she is rather oddwhen I do. She not only doesn't meet me half-way, she doesn't come evenpart of the way. She clatters her saucepans with an energy very likefury, and grows wholly monosyllabic. Yet it is not her step-mother; itis her very own mother, and it ought to be the best way of touchingresponsive chords in her heart and making her feel I am not merely amistress but a friend. Once, struck by the way the lids of the saucepanswere falling about, I tried her with her father, but the din instantlybecame so terrific that I was kept silent quite a long time, and when itleft off felt instinctively that I had better say something about theweather. I don't think I told you that after that trumpeting Sunday,moved to real compassion by the sufferings of him you call the fiddlerman, I took my courage in both hands and told Johanna with thepleasantest of smiles--I daresay it was really a rather ghastlyone--that her trumpeter must not again bring his instrument with himwhen he called. 'It can so very well stay at home,' I explained suavely.
She immediately said she would leave on the first of October.
'But, Johanna!' I cried.
She repeated the formula.
'But, Johanna! How can a clever girl like you be so unreasonable? He isto visit you as often as before. All we beg is that it shall be donewithout music.'
She repeated the formula.
'But, Johanna!' I expostulated again,--eloquent exclamation, expressingthe most varied sentiments.
She once again repeated the formula; and next day I was forced todescend into Jena, shaking an extremely rueful fist at the neighbor'shouse on the way, and set about searching in the obscurity of a registryoffice for the pearl we are trying all our lives to find.
This office consists of two rooms, the first filled with servantslooking for mistresses, and the second with mistresses looking forservants. A Fraeulein of vague age but determined bearing sits at a deskin the second room, and notes in a ledger the requirements of bothparties. They are always the same: the would-be mistress, full of ahopefulness that crops up again and again to the end of her days,causing attributes like _fleissig, treu, ehrlich, anstaendig,arbeitslieb, kinderlieb_, to be written down together with her demandsin cooking, starching, and ironing, and often adding the informationthat though the wages may appear small they are not really so, owing tothe unusually superior quality of the treatment; and the would-be maid,briefer because without illusions, dictates her firm resolve to gonowhere where there is cooking, washing, or a baby.
'_Gott, diese Maedchen_,' exclaimed a waiting lady to me as I arrived,hot and ruffled after my long tramp in the sun. I dropped into a chairbeside her; and hot and ruffled as I was, she, who had been sittingthere hours, was still more so. In her agitation she had cried out tothe first human being at hand, the Fraeulein at the desk having somethingtoo distinctly inhuman about her--strange as a result of her long andintimate intercourse with human beings--to be lightly applied to forsympathy. Then looking at me again she cried, 'Why, it is the goodRose-Marie!' And I saw she was an old friend of my step-mother's, FrauMeyer, the wife of one of the doctors at the Lunatic Asylum, who used tocome in often while you were with us, and whenever she came in you wentout.
'Not married yet?' she asked as we shook hands, smiling as though thejoke were good.
I smiled with an equal conviction of its goodness, and said I was not.
'Not even engaged?'
'Not even engaged,' said I, smiling more broadly, as if infinitelytickled.
'You must be quick,' said she.
I admitted the necessity by a nod.
'You are twenty-six--I know your age because poor Emilie'--Emilie was mystep-mother--'was married ten years, and when she married you weresixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I hadalready had four children. What do you think of that?'
I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to thewaiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean,honest--'
'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyerwith a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the firstcoffee-party of the season--'
'What, in summer?'
'It is not summer in September. If the weather chooses to pretend it isI cannot help it. It is autumn, and I will no longer endure the want ofsocial gatherings. Invariably I find the time between the last Coffee ofspring and the first of autumn almost unendurable. What do you do,Rose-Marie, up there on that horrible mountain of yours, to pass thetime?'
Pass the time? I who am so much afraid of Time's passing me that I tryto catch at him as he goes, pull him back, make him creep slowly while Isqueeze the full preciousness out of every minute? I gazed at herabstractedly, haunted by the recollection of flying days, days gone soquickly, vanished before I well knew how happy I was being. 'I reallycouldn't tell you,' I said.
'Hard-working, clean, honest,--' read out the Fraeulein, reminding methat I was busy.
'Moral,' I dictated, 'able to wash--'
'You will never find one,' interrupted Frau Meyer again. 'At least,never one who is both moral and able to wash. Two good things don't gotogether with these girls, I find. The trouble I am in for want of one!They are as scarce and as expensive as roses in December. Since April Ihave had three, and all had to leave by the merest accident--nothing atall to do with the place or me; but the ones in there seem to know therehave been three in the time, and make the most extravagant demands. Ihave been here the whole morning, and am in despair.'
She stopped to fan herself with her handkerchief.
'Able to wash,' I resumed, 'iron, cook, mend--have you any one suitable,Fraeulein?'
'Many,' was the laconic answer.
'I'm afraid we cannot give more than a hundred and sixty marks,' said I.
'Pooh,' said Frau Meyer; and there was a pause in the scratching of thepen.
'But there are no children,' I continued.
The pen went on more glibly. Frau Meyer fanned herself harder.
'And only two _Herrschaften_.'
The pen skimmed over the paper.
'We live up--we live up on the Galgenberg.'
The pen stopped dead.
'You will never find one who will go up there,' cried Frau Meyertriumphantly. 'I need not fear your taking a good one away from me. Theywill not leave the town.'
The Fraeulein rang a bell and called out a name. 'It is another one foryou, Frau Doctor,' she said; and a large young lady came in from theother room. 'The general servant Fraeulein Ottilie Krummacher--FrauDoctor Meyer,' introduced the Fraeulein. 'I think you ma
y suit eachother.'
'It is time you showed me some one who will,' groaned Frau Meyer. 'Sixhave I already interviewed, and the demands of all are enough to make mymother, who was Frau Gutsbesitzer Grosskopf of the Grosskopfs ofGrosskopfsecke, born Knoblauch, and a lady of the most exact knowledgein household matters, turn in her grave.'
'Town?' asked the large girl quickly, hardly allowing Frau Meyer to getto a full stop, and obviously callous as to the Grosskopfs ofGrosskopfsecke.
'Yes, yes--here, overlooking the market-place and the interesting statueof the electoral founder of the University. No way to go, therefore, tomarket. Enlivening scenes constantly visible from the windows--'
'Which floor?'
'Second. Shallow steps, and a nice balustrade. Really hardly higher thanthe first floor, or even than an ordinary ground floor, the rooms beingvery low.'
'Washing?'
'Done out of the house. Except the smallest, fewest trifles suchas--such as--ahem. The ironing, dear Fraeulein, I will do mostly myself.There are the shirts, you know--husbands are particular--'
'How many?'
'How many?' echoed Frau Meyer. 'How many what?'
'Husbands.'
'_Aber_, Fraeulein,' expostulated the secretary.
'She said husbands,' said the large girl. 'Shirts, then--how many? It'sall the same.'
'All the same?' cried Frau Meyer, who adored her husband.
'In the work it makes.'
'But, dear Fraeulein, the shirts are not washed at home.'
'But ironed.'
'I iron them.'