'And I heat the irons and keep up the fire to heat them with.'
'Yes, yes,' cried Frau Meyer, affecting the extreme pleasure of one whohas just received an eager assurance, 'so you do.'
The large girl stared. 'Cooking?' she inquired, after a slightly stonypause.
'Most of that I will do myself, also. The Herr is very particular. Ishall only need a little--quite a little assistance. And think of allthe new and excellent dishes you will learn to make.'
The girl waved this last inducement aside as unworthy of consideration.'Number of persons in the household?'
Frau Meyer coughed before she could answer. 'Oh,' said she, 'oh,well--there is my husband, and naturally myself, and then thereare--there are--are you fond of children?' she ended hastily.
The girl fixed her with a suspicious eye. 'It depends how many thereare,' she said cautiously.
Frau Meyer got up and leaned over the Fraeulein at the desk, andwhispered into her impassive ear.
The Fraeulein shook her head. 'I am afraid it is no use,' she said.
Frau Meyer whispered again. The Fraeulein looked up, and fastening hereyes on a point somewhere below the large girl's chin said, 'The wagesare good.'
'What are they?' asked the girl.
'Considering the treatment you will receive--' the girl's eyes againbecame suspicious--'they are excellent.'
'What are they?'
'Everything found, and a hundred and eighty marks a year.'
The girl turned and walked toward the door.
'Stop! Stop!' cried Frau Meyer desperately. 'I cannot see you throw awaya good place with so little preliminary reflection. Have you consideredthat there would be no trudging to market, and consequently you willonly require half the boots and stockings and skirts those poor girlshave to buy who live up in the villas that look so grand and pretend togive such high wages?'
The girl paused.
'And no steep stairs to climb, laden with heavy baskets? And hardly anywashing--hardly any washing, I tell you!' she almost shrieked in heranxiety. 'And no cooking to speak of? And every Sunday--mind, _every_Sunday evening free? And I never scold, and my husband never scolds, andwith a hundred and eighty marks a year there is nothing a clever girlcannot buy. Why, it is an ideal, a delightful place--one at which Iwould jump if I were a girl, and this lady'--indicating me--'would jump,too, would you not, Rose-Marie?'
The girl wavered. 'How many children are there?' she asked.
'Children? Children? Angels, you mean. They are perfect angels, so goodand well-behaved--are they not, Rose-Marie? Fit to go at once toheaven--_unberufen_--without a day's more training, so little would theydiffer in manner when they got there from angels who have been used toit for years. You are fond of children, Fraeulein, I am sure. Naturallyyou are. I see it in your nice face. No nice Fraeulein is not. And these,I tell you, are such unusual--'
'How many are there?'
'_Ach Gott_, there are only six, and so small still that they can hardlybe counted as six--six of the dearest--'
The girl turned on her heel. 'I cannot be fond of six,' she said; andwent out with the heavy tread of finality.
Frau Meyer looked at me. 'There now,' she said, in tones of realdespair.
'It is very tiresome,' said I, sympathizing the more acutely that I knewmy turn was coming next.
'Tiresome? It is terrible. In two days I have my Coffee, and no--andno--and no--' She burst into tears, hiding her face from thedispassionate stare of the Fraeulein at the desk in her handkerchief, andtrying to conceal her sobs by a ceaseless blowing of her nose.
'I am so sorry,' I murmured, touched by this utter melting.
An impulse seized me on which I instantly acted. 'Take Johanna,' Icried. 'Take her for that day. She will at least get you over that. Sheis excellent at a party, and knows all about Coffees. I'll send her downearly, and you keep her as late as you like. She would enjoy the outing,and we can manage quite well for one day without her.'
'Is that--is that the Johanna you had in the Rauchgasse?'
'Yes--trained by my step-mother--really good in an emergency.'
Frau Meyer flung her arms round my neck. '_Ach danke, danke, Du liebes,gutes Kind_!' she cried, embracing me with a warmth that showed me whatheaps of people she must have asked to her party.
And I, after the first flush of doing a good deed was over and coolreflection had resumed its sway, which it did by the time I was toilingup the hill on the way home after having been unanimously rejected asmistress by the assembled maidens, I repented; for was not Johanna nowmy only hope? 'Frau Meyer,' whispered Reflection in my despondent ear,'will engage her to go to her permanently on the 1st, and she will gobecause of the twenty marks more salary. You have been silly. Of courseshe would have stayed with you with a little persuasion rather than haveto look for another place and spend her money at a registry-office. Itis not likely, however, that she will refuse a situation costing hernothing.'
But see how true it sometimes is that virtue is rewarded. Johanna wentdown as I had promised, and worked all day for Frau Meyer. She was givena thaler as a present, as much cake and coffee as she could consume, andreceived the offer of a permanent engagement when she should leave us.This she told me standing by my bedside late that night, the candle inher hand lighting up her heated, shining face, and hair dishevelled byexertion. 'But,' said she, 'Fraeulein Rose-Marie, not for the world wouldI take the place. Such a restless lady, such a nervous gentleman, suchnumbers of spoilt and sprawling children. If I had not been there todayand beheld it from the inside I would have engaged myself to go. Butafter this--' she waved the candle--'never.'
'What are you going to do, then, Johanna?' I asked, thinking wistfullyof the four years we had passed together.
'Stay here,' she announced defiantly.
I put my arms round her neck and kissed her.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XLV
Galgenberg, Sept. 23d.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Today I went down to Jena with the girl from nextdoor who wanted to do such mild shopping as Jena is prepared for, mildshopping suited to mild purses, and there I drifted into the bookshop inthe market-place where I so often used to drift, and there I found abook dealing with English poetry from Chaucer onward, with pictures ofthe poets who had written it. But before I go on about that--and you'llbe surprised at the amount I have to say--I must explain the girl nextdoor. I don't think I ever told you that there is one. The neighbor lethis house just before he left, and let it unexpectedly well, the peopletaking the upper part of it for a whole year, and this is theirdaughter. The neighbor went off jubilant to his little inky boys. 'See,'said he at parting, 'my life actually threatens to become rich withoutas well as within.'
'Don't,' I murmured, turning as hot as people do when they are remindedof past foolishness.
The new neighbors have been here ten days, and I made friends at oncewith the girl over the fence. She saw me gathering together into onemiserable haycock the September grass Johanna and I had been hacking atin turns with a sickle for the last week, and stood watching me with soevident an interest that at last I couldn't help smiling at her. 'Thisis our crop for the winter,' I said, pointing to the haycock; I protestI have seen many a molehill bigger.
'It isn't much,' said the girl.
'No,' I agreed, raking busily.
'Have you a cow?' she asked.
'No.'
'A pig?'
'No.'
'No animals?'
'Bees.'
The girl was silent; then she said bees were not animals.
'But they're live-stock,' I said. 'They're the one link that connects uswith farming.'
'What do you make hay for, then?'
'Only to keep the grass short, and then we try to imagine it's a lawn.'
Raking, I came a little nearer; and so I saw she had been, quiterecently, crying.
I looked at her more attentively. She was pretty, with the prettiness oftwenty; roun
d and soft, fair and smooth. She had on an elaboratelymasculine shirt and high stiff collar and tie and pin and belt; and fromunder the edge of the hard straw hat tilted up at the back by masses ofburnished coils of hair I saw a pulpy red mouth, the tip of anindeterminate nose, and two unhappy eyes, tired with crying.
'How early to begin,' I said.
'Begin what?'
'It's not nine yet. Do you always get your crying done by breakfasttime?'
She flushed all over her face.
'Forgive me,' I said, industriously raking. 'I'm a rude person.'
The girl was silent for a few moments; considering, I suppose, whethershe should turn her back on the impertinent stranger once and for all,or forgive the indiscretion and make friends.
Well, she made friends. She and I, alone up on the hill, the onlycreatures of anything like the same age, sure to see each othercontinually in the forests, on the road, over the fence, certainly wewere bound either to a tiresome system of pretending to be unaware ofeach other's existence or to be friends. We are friends. It is thewisest thing to be at all times. In ten days we have become fastfriends, and after the first six she left off crying.
Now I'll tell you why we have done it so quickly. It is not, as perhapsyou know, my practice to fall easily on the stranger's neck. I am toolumbering, too slow, too acutely conscious of my shortcomings for that;really too dull and too awkward for anything but a life almost entirelysolitary. But this girl has lately been in love. It is the common fate.It happens to us all. That in itself would not stir me to friendship.The man, however, in defiance of German custom, so strong on this pointthat the breaking of it makes a terrific noise, after being publiclyengaged to her, after letting things go so far that the new flat wasfurnished, and the wedding-guests bidden, said he was afraid he didn'tlove her enough and gave her up.
When she told me that my heart went out to her with a rush. I shall notstop to explain why, but it did rush, and from that moment I felt that Imust put my arms round her, I, the elder and quieter, take her by thehand, help her to dry her poor silly eyes, pet her and make her happyagain. And really after six days there was no more crying, and for thelast three she has been looking at life with something of the criticalindifference that lifts one over so many tiresome bits of the road.Unfortunately her mother doesn't like me. Don't you think it's dreadfulof her not to? She fears I am emancipated, and knows that I am Schmidt.If I were a Wedel, or an Alvensleben, or a Schulenburg, or of any otherancient noble family, even an obscure member of its remotest branch, shewould consider my way of living and talking merely as a thing to besmiled at with kind indulgence. But she knows that I am Schmidt. NothingI can say or do, however sweet and sane, can hide that horrid fact. Andshe knows that my father is a careless child of nature, lamentablyunimpressible by birth and office; that my mother was an Englishwomanwith a name inspiring little confidence; and that we let ourselves go toan indecent indifference to appearances, not even trying to conceal thatwe are poor. How useless it is to be pleasant and pretty--I really havebeen very pleasant to her, and the daughter kindly tells me I ampretty--if you are both Schmidt and poor. Though I speak with thetongues of angels and have no family it avails me nothing. If I hadfamily and no charity I would get on much better in the world, indefiance of St. Paul. Frau von Lindeberg would take me to her heart,think me distinguished where now she thinks me odd, think me witty wherenow she thinks me bold, listen to my speeches, laugh at my sallies, beinterested in my gardening and in my efforts to live without meat; buthere I am, burning, I hope, with charity, with love for my neighbors,with ready sympathy, eager friendliness, desire to be of use, and it allavails me nothing because my name is Schmidt.
It is the first time I have been brought into daily contact with ournobility. In Jena there were very few: rare bright spots here and thereon the sober background of academic middle-class; little stars whoseshining even from a distance made us blink. Now I see them every day,and find them very chilly and not in the least dazzling. I no longerblink. Perhaps Frau von Lindeberg feels that I do not, and cannotforgive an unblinking Schmidt. But really, now, these pretensions arevery absurd. The free blood of the Watsons surges within me at the sightof them. I think of things like Albion's daughters, and Britannia rulingwaves, and I feel somehow that it is a proud thing to be partly Watsonand to have had progenitors who lived in a house called The Acacias in astreet called Plantagenet Road, which is what the Watsons did. Whatclaims have these Lindebergs to the breathless, nay, sprawling respectthey apparently demand? Here is a retired Colonel who was an officer allhis life, and, not clever enough to go on to the higher militarypositions, was obliged to retire at fifty. He belongs to a good family,and married some one of slightly better birth than his own. She was aFreiin--Free Lady--von Dammerlitz, a family, says Papa, large,unpleasant, and mortgaged. It has given Germany no great warriors orstatesmen. Its sons have all been officers who did not turn that cornerround which the higher honors lie, and its daughters either did notmarry at all, being portionless, or married impossible persons, saidPapa, such as--
'Such as?' I inquired, expecting to hear they married postmen.
'Pastors, my dear,' said Papa smiling.
'Pastors?' I said, surprised, pastors having seemed to me, who view themfrom their own level, eminently respectable and desirable as husbands.
'But not from the Dammerlitz point of view, my dear,' said Papa.
'Oh,' said I, trying to imagine how pastors would look seen from that.
Well, here are these people freezing us into what they consider ourproper place whenever we come across them, taking no pains to hide whatundesirable beings we are in their sight, staring at Papa's hat ineloquent silence when it is more than usually tilted over one ear,running eyes that chill my blood over my fustian clothes--I'm not surewhat fustian is, but I'm quite sure my clothes are made of it--oddlydeaf when we say anything, oddly blind when we meet anywhere unless weactually run into them, here they are, doing all these things every daywith a repeated gusto, and with no reason whatever that I can see tosupport their pretensions. Is it so wonderful to be a _von_? For that isall, look as I will, that I can see they have to go on. They are poor,as the retired officer invariably is, and they spend much timepretending they are not. They know nothing; he has spent his best yearspreoccupied with the routine of his calling, which leaves no room foranything approaching study or interest in other things, she in bringingup her son, also an officer, and in taking her daughter to those partiesin Berlin that so closely resemble, I gather from the girl Vicki's talk,the parties in Jena--a little wider, a little more varied, with morecups and glasses, and with, of course, the chance we do not have in Jenaof seeing some one quite new, but on the whole the same. He is a solemnelderly person in a black-rimmed _pince-nez_, dressed in clothes thatgive one the impression of always being black. He vegetates ascompletely as any one I have ever seen or dreamed of. Prolonged coffeein the morning, prolonged newspaper-reading, and a tortoise-like turn inthe garden kill his mornings. Dinner, says Vicki, kills another hour anda half; then there is what we call the Dinner Sleep on the sofa in hisdarkened room, and that brings him to coffee time. They sit over thecups till Vicki wants to scream, at least she wants to since she hasknown me, she says; up to then, after her miserable affair, she sat assluggishly as the others, but huddled while they were straight, andred-eyed, which they were not. After coffee the parents walk up the roadto a certain point, and walk back again. Then comes the evening paper,which he reads till supper-time, and after supper he smokes till he goesto bed.
'Why, he's hardly alive at all,' I said to Vicki, when she describedthis existence.
She shrugged her shoulders. 'It's what they all do,' she said, 'all theretired. I've seen it a hundred times in Berlin. They're old, and theynever can start anything fresh.'
'We won't be like that when we're old, will we?' I said, gazing at herwide-eyed, struck as by a vision.
She gazed back into my eyes, misgiving creeping, into hers. 'Sleep, andeat, and read the
paper?' she murmured.
'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper?' I echoed.
And we stared at each other in silence, and the far-away dim yearsseemed to catch up what we had said, and mournfully droned back, 'Sleep,and eat, and read the paper....'
But what is to be done with girls of good family who do not marry, andhave no money? They can't go governessing, and indeed it is a drearytrade. Vicki has learned nothing except a little cooking and otherdomestic drudgery, only of use if you have a house to drudge in and ahusband to drudge for; of those pursuits that bring in money and makeyou independent and cause you to flourish and keep green and lusty sheknows nothing. If I had a daughter I would bring her up with an eyefixed entirely on a husbandless future. She should be taught some tradeas carefully as any boy. Her head should be filled with as much learningas it would conveniently hold side by side with a proper interest inribbons. I would spend my days impressing her with the gloriousness ofindependence, of having her time entirely at her own disposal, her lifefree and clear, the world open before her, as open as it was to Adam andEve when they turned their backs once and for all on the cloyingsweetness of Paradise, and far more interesting that it was to them, forit would be full of inhabitants eager to give her the hearty welcomealways awaiting those rare persons, the cheery and the brave.
'Oh,' sighed Vicki, when with great eloquence and considerableelaboration I unfolded these views, 'how beautiful!'
Papa was nearer the open window under which we were sitting than I hadthought, for he suddenly popped out his head. 'It is a merciful thing,Rose-Marie,' he said, 'that you have no daughter.'