'_Herr Gott, ja_,' says my step-mother, 'but what is to be done? I haveinvited gentlemen in past days. I have invited them to coffees, to beerevenings, to music on Sunday afternoons, to the reading aloud ofSchiller's dramas, each with his part and Rose-Marie with the heroine's;and though they came they also went away again. Nothing was changed,except the size of my beer bill. No, no, gentlemen do not care for her.In society she does not please.'
'_Armes Maedchen_' says the friend again; and the _armes Maedchen_ out inthe sun laughs profanely into her furs.
The fact is it is quite extraordinary the effect my illness has had onme. I thought it was bad, and I see it was good. Beyond words ghastly atthe time, terrible, hopeless, the aches of my body as nothing comparedwith the amazing anguish of my soul, the world turned into one vast pitof pain, impossible to think of the future, impossible to think of thepast, impossible to bear the present--after all that behold me awakeagain, and so wide awake, with eyes grown so quick to see the wonder andimportance of the little things of life, the beauty of them, the joy ofthem, that I can laugh aloud with glee at the delicious notion ofcalling me an _armes Maedchen_. Three months ago with what miserablegroanings, what infinite self-pityings, I would have agreed. Now, clearof vision, I see how many precious gifts I have--life, and freedom frompain, and time to be used and enjoyed--gifts no one can take from meexcept God. Do you know any George Herbert? He was one of the manyEnglish poets my mother's love of poetry made me read. Do you remember
I once more smell the dew, the rain, And relish versing. O, my only Light! It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night?
Well, that is how I feel: full of wonder, and an unspeakable relief. Itis so strange how bad things--things we call bad--bring forth goodthings, from the manure that brings forth roses lovely in proportion to6188its manuriness to the worst experiences that can overtake the soul. Andas far as I have been able to see (which is not very far, for I know Iam not a clever woman) it is also true that good things bring forth badones. I cannot tell you how much life surprises me. I never get used toit. I never tire of pondering, and watching, and wondering. The way inwhich eternal truths lurk along one's path, lie among the potatoes incellars (did you ever observe the conduct of potatoes in cellars? theirdesperate determination to reach up to the light? their absoluteconcentration on that one distant glimmer?), peep out at one from everyapparently dull corner, sit among the stones, hang upon the bushes, comeinto one's room in the morning with the hot water, come out at night inheaven with the stars, never leave us, touch us, press upon us, if wechoose to open our eyes and look, and our ears and listen--howextraordinary it is. Can one be bored in a world so wonderful? And thenthe keen interest there is to be got out of people, the keen joy to begot out of common affections, the delight of having a fresh day everymorning before you, a fresh, long day, bare and empty, to be filled asyou pass along it with nothing but clean and noble hours. You mustforgive this exuberance. The sun has got into my veins and has turnedeverything golden. Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXX
Jena, May 6th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--How can I help it if things look golden to me? Youalmost reproach me for it. You seem to think it selfish, and talk of thebeauty of sympathy with persons less fortunately constituted. That's agray sort of beauty; the beauty of mists, and rains, and tears. I wishyou could have been in the meadows across the river this morning andseen the dandelions. There was not much grayness about them. From thebridge to the tennis-courts--you know that is a long way, at leasttwenty minutes' walk--they are one sheet of gold. If you had been therebefore breakfast, with your feet on that divine carpet, and your head inthe nickering slight shadows of the first willow leaves, and your eyeson the shining masses of slow white clouds, and your ears filled withthe fresh sound of the river, and your nose filled with the smell ofyoung wet things, you wouldn't have wanted to think much about such graynegations as sympathizing with the gloomy. Bother the gloomy. They arean ungrateful set. If they can they will turn the whole world sour, andsap up all the happiness of the children of light without giving out anyshining in return. I am all for sun and heat and color and scent--forall things radiant and positive. If, crushing down my own nature, I setout deliberately to console those you call the less fortunatelyconstituted, do you know what would happen? They would wring me quitedry of cheerfulness, and not be one whit more cheerful for all thewringing themselves. They can't. They were not made that way. People areborn in one of three classes: children of light, children of twilight,children of night. And how can they help into which class they are born?But I do think the twilight children can by diligence, by, if you like,prayer and fasting, come out of the dusk into a greater brightness. Onlythey must come out by themselves. There must be no pulling. I don't atall agree with your notion of the efficacy of being pulled. Don't youthen know--of course you do, but you have not yet realized--that you areto seek _first_ the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all thesethings shall be added unto you? And don't you know--oh, have youforgotten?--that the Kingdom of God is within you? So what is the use oflooking to anything outside of you and separated from you for help?There is no help, except what you dig out of your own self; and if Icould make you see that I would have shown you all the secrets of life.
How wisely I talk. It is the wisdom of the ever-recurring grass, thegood green grass, the grass starred with living beauty, that has gotinto me; the wisdom of a May morning filled with present joy, of the joyof the moment, without any weakening waste of looking beyond. So don'tmock. I can't help it.
Do you, then, want to be pitied? I will pity you if you like, in so manycarefully chosen words; but they will not be words from the heart butonly, as the charming little child in the flat below us, the child withthe flaunting yellow hair and audacious eyes, said of some speech thatdidn't ring true to her quick ears, 'from the tip of the nose.' I cannotreally pity you, you know. You are too healthy, too young, too fortunatefor that. You ought to be quite jubilant with cheerfullest gratitude;and, since you are not, you very perfectly illustrate the truth of _letrop_ being _l'ennemi du bien_, or, if you prefer your clumsier mothertongue, of the half being better than the whole. How is it that I,bereft of everything you think worth having, am so offensively cheerful?Your friends would call it a sordid existence, if they considered itwith anything more lengthy than just a sniff. No excitements, noclothes, acquaintances so shabby that they seem almost moth-eaten, thedays filled with the same dull round, a home in a little town where weall get into one groove and having got into it stay in it, to which onlyfaint echoes come of what is going on in the world outside, a placewhere one is amused and entertained by second-rate things, second-rateconcerts, second-rate plays, and feels oneself grow cultured byattendance at second-rate debating-society meetings. Would you not thinkI must starve in such a place? But I don't. My soul doesn't dream ofstarving; in fact I am quite anxious about it, it has lately grown sofat. There is so little outside it--for the concerts, plays, debates,social gatherings, are dust and ashes near which I do not go--that iteagerly turns to what is inside it, and finds itself full of magicforces of heat and light, forces hot and burning enough to set everycommon bush afire with God. That is Elizabeth Barrett Browning; I meanabout the common bushes. A slightly mutilated Elizabeth BarrettBrowning, but still a quotation; and if you do not happen to know it Iwon't have you go about thinking it pure Schmidt. Ought I if I quote towarn you of the fact by the pointing fingers of inverted commas? I don'tcare to, somehow. They make such a show of importance. I prefer tosuppose you cultured. Oh, I can see you shiver at that impertinence, forI know down in your heart, though you always take pains to explain howignorant you are, you consider yourself an extremely cultured young man.And so you are; cultured, I should say, out of all reason; so muchcultured that there's hardly anything left that you are able to like.Indeed, it is surprising that you should care to write to a rough,unscraped sort of person like myself. Do not my crudities set your t
eethon edge as acutely as the juice of a very green apple? You who love halftones, subtleties, suggestions, who, lifting the merest fringe ofthings, approach them nearer only by infinite implications, what haveyou to do with the downrightness of an east wind or a green apple? Why,I wonder that just the recollection of my red hands, knobbly and spreadwith work, does not make you wince into aloofness. And my clothes? Whatabout my clothes? Do you not like exquisite women? Perfectly got-upwomen? Fresh and dainty, constantly renewed women? It is two years sinceI had a new hat; and as for the dress that sees me through my days Ireally cannot count the time since it started in my company a Sunday anda fete-day garment. If you were once, only once, to see me in the middleof your friends over there, you would be cured for ever of wanting towrite to me. I belong to your Jena days; days of hard living, andworking, and thinking; days when, by dint of being forced to do withoutcertain bodily comforts, the accommodating spirit made up for it by itsown increased comfort and warmth. Probably your spirit will never againattain to quite so bright a shining as it did that year. How can it,unless it is amazingly strong--and I know it well not to be that--shinethrough the suffocating masses of upholstery your present life pilesabout it? Poor spirit. At least see to it that its flicker doesn't quitego out. To urge you to strip your life of all this embroidery and let itget the draught of air it needs would be, I know, mere waste of ink.
My people send you every good wish.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXXI
Jena, May 14th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Of course I am full of contradictions. Did youexpect me to be full of anything else? And I have no doubt whatever thatin every letter I say exactly the opposite from what I said in the lastone. But you must not mind this and make it an occasion for reproof. Ido not pretend to think quite the same even two days running; if I did Iwould be stagnant, and the very essence of life is to be fluid, to passperpetually on. So please do not hold me responsible for convictionsthat I have changed by the time they get to you, and above all thingsdon't bring them up against me and ask me to prove them. I don't want toprove them. I don't want to prove anything. My attitude toward life isone of open-mouthed wonder and delight, and the open-mouthed cannottalk. You write, too, plaintively, that some of the things I say hurtyou. I am sorry. Sorry, I mean, that you should be so soft. Can you not,then, bear anything? But I will smooth my tongue if you prefer itsmooth, and send you envelopes filled with only sugar; talk to you aboutthe parks, the London season, the Foreign Office--all things of which Iknow nothing--and, patting you at short intervals on the back, tell youyou are admirable. You say there is a bitter flavor about some of myremarks. I have not felt bitter. Perhaps a little shrewish; a littlelike, not a mild exhorting elder sister, but an irritated aunt. You seeI am interested enough in you to be fidgety when I hear you groan. What,I ask myself uneasily, can be the matter with this apparently healthy,well-cared-for young man? And then, forced to the conclusion byunmistakable symptoms that there is nothing the matter except a surfeitof good things, I have perhaps pounced upon you with something of thezeal of an aunt moved to anger, and given you a spiritual slapping. Yousighed for a sister--you are always sighing for something--and asked meto be one; well, I have apparently gone beyond the sister in decisionand authority, and developed something of the acerbity of an aunt.
So you are down at Clinches. How beautiful it must be there this month.I think of it as a harmony in gray and amethyst, remembering yourdescription of it the first time you went there; a harmony in a minorkey, that captured you wholly by its tender subtleties. When I think ofyou inheriting such a place later on through your wife I do from myheart feel that your engagement is an excellent thing. She must indeedbe happy in the knowledge that she can give you so much that isabsolutely worth having. It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of thevery most beautiful things in life. I quarrel with my poverty onlybecause I can give so little, so seldom, and then never more thanridiculous small trumperies. To make up for them I try to give as muchof myself as possible, gifts of sympathy, helpfulness, kindness. Don'tlaugh, but I am practicing on my step-mother. It is easy to pour outlove on Papa; so easy, so effortless, that I do not feel as if it couldbe worth much; but I have made up my mind, not without something of agrim determination that seems to have little enough to do with love, togive my step-mother as much of me, my affections, my services, as shecan do with. Perhaps she won't be able to do with much. Anyhow all shewants she shall have. You know I have often wished I had been a man,able to pull on my boots and go out into the wide world without let orhindrance; but for one thing I am glad to be a woman, and that one thingis that the woman gives. It is so far less wonderful to take. The man isalways taking, the woman always giving; and giving so wonderfully, inthe face sometimes of dreadful disaster, of shipwreck, of death--whichexplains perhaps her longer persistence in clinging to the skirts of aworn-out passion; for is not the tenderer feeling on the side of the onewho gave and blessed? Always, always on that side? Mixing into what wassensual some of the dear divineness of the mother-love? I think I couldnever grow wholly indifferent to a person to whom I had given much. Heor she would not, could not, be the same to me as other people. Timewould pass, and the growing number of the days blunt the first sharpedge of feeling; but the memory of what I had given would bind ustogether in a friendship for ever unlike any other.
I have not thanked you for the book you sent me. It was very kind indeedof you to wish me to share the pleasure you have had in reading it. Butsee how unfortunately contrary I am: I don't care about it. And just thepassages you marked are the ones I care about least. I do not hold withmarkings in books. Whenever I have come across mine after a lapse ofyears I have marvelled at the distance travelled since I marked, andshut up the book and murmured, 'Little fool.' I can't imagine why youthought I should like this book. It has given me rather a surprisedshock that you should know me so little, and that I should know you solittle as to think you knew me better. Really all the explanations andpointings in the world will not show a person the exact position of hisneighbor's soul. It is astonishing enough that the book was printed, buthow infinitely more astonishing that people like you should admire it.What is the matter with me that I cannot admire it? Why am I missingthings that ought to give me pleasure? You do not, then, see that it isdull? I do. I see it and feel it in every bone, and it makes them ache.It is dull and bad because it is so dreary, so hopelessly dreary. Lifeis not like that. Life is only like that to cowards who are temporarilyindisposed. I do not care to look at it through a sick creature'sjaundiced eyes and shudder with him at what he sees. If he cannot seebetter why not keep quiet, and let us braver folk march along with ourheads in the air, held so high that we cannot bother to look at everyslimy creepiness that crawls across our path? And did you not notice howhe keeps on telling his friends in his letters not to mind when he isdead? Unnecessary advice, one would suppose; I can more easily imaginethe friends gasping with an infinite relief. Persons who areeverlastingly claiming pity, sympathy, condolences, are very wearing.Surely all talk about one's death is selfish and bad? That is why,though there is so much that is lovely in them, the faint breath ofcorruption hanging about Christina Rossetti's poetry makes me turn myhead the other way. What a constant cry it is that she wants to die,that she hopes to die, that she's going to die, shall die, can die, mustdie, and that nobody is to weep for her but that there are to beelaborate and moving arrangements of lilies and roses andwinding-sheets. And at least in one place she gives directions as to theproper use of green grass and wet dewdrops upon her grave--implying thatdewdrops are sometimes dry. I think the only decent attitude towardone's death is to be silent. Talk about it puts other people in such anawkward position. What is one to say to persons who sigh and tell usthat they will no doubt soon be in heaven? One's instinct is politely tomurmur, 'Oh no,' and then they are angry. 'Surely not,' also has itspitfalls. Cheery words, of the order in speech that a slap on theshoulder is in the sphere of physica
l expression, only seem to deepenthe determined gloom. And if it is some one you love who thinks he willsoon be dead and tells you so, the cruelty is very great. When deathreally comes, is not what the ordinary decent dier wants quiet, that hemay leave himself utterly in the hands of God? There should be nomassing of temporarily broken-hearted onlookers about his bed, noleave-takings and eager gatherings-up of last words, no revellings ofrelatives in the voluptuousness of woe, no futile exhortations, using upthe last poor breaths, not to weep to persons who would consider ithighly improper to leave off doing it, and no administration of tardyblessings. Any blessings the dier has to invoke should have been invokedand done with long ago. In this last hour, at least, can one not be leftalone? Do you remember Pater's strange feeling about death? Perhaps youdo not, for you told me once you did not care about him. Well, it runsthrough his books, through all their serenity and sunlight, throughexquisite descriptions of summer, of beautiful places, of heat and lifeand youth and all things lovely, like a musty black riband, very poor,very mean, very rotten, that yet must bind these gracious flowers oflight at last together, bruising them into one piteous mass ofcorruption. It is all very morbid: the fair outward surface of dailylife, the gay, flower-starred crust of earth, and just underneathhorrible tainted things, things forlorn and pitiful, things which we whostill walk on the wholesome grass must soon join, changing our life inthe roomy sunshine into something infinitely dependent and helpless,something that can only dimly live if those strong friends of ours inthe bright world will spare us a thought, a remembrance, a few minutesfrom their plenty for sitting beside us, room in their hearts for yet alittle love and sorrow. 'Dead cheek by dead cheek, and the rain soakingdown upon one from above....' Does not that sound hopeless? Afterreading these things, sweet with the tainted sweetness of decay, of,ruin, of the past, the gone, it is like having fresh spring water dashedover one on a languid afternoon to remember Walt Whitman's braveattitude toward 'delicate death,' 'the sacred knowledge of death,''lovely, soothing death,' 'cool, enfolding death,' 'strong deliveress,''vast and well-veiled death,' 'the body gratefully nestling close todeath,' 'sane and sacred death.' That is the spirit that makes one braveand fearless, that makes one live beautifully and well, that sends onemarching straight ahead with limbs that do not tremble and head heldhigh. Is it not natural to love such writers best? Writers who fill onewith glad courage and make one proud of the path one has chosen to walkin?