Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  The girl came back with the key. She looked as though she had a personalprejudice against me. She opened the door just wide enough for a leanperson to squeeze through, and bade me, with manifest reluctance, comein. The hall had a brick floor and an umbrella stand. In the umbrellastand stood an umbrella, and as the girl, who walked in front of me,passed it, she snatched out the umbrella and carried it with her, firmlypressed to her bosom. I did not at once grasp the significance of thisaction. She put me into an icy shut-up room and left me to myself. Itwas the _gute Stube_--good room--room used only on occasions of frigidsplendor. Its floor was shiny with yellow paint, and to meet thedifficulty of the paint being spoiled if people walked on it and thatother difficulty of a floor being the only place you can walk on, stripsof cocoanut matting were laid across it from one important point toanother. There was a strip from the door to the window; a strip from thedoor to another door; a strip from the door to the sofa; and a stripfrom the sofa on which the caller sits to the chair on which sits thecallee. A baby of apparently brand newness was crying in an adjoiningroom. I waited, listening to it for what seemed an interminable time,not daring to sit down because it is not expected in Germany that youshall sit in any house but your own until specially requested to do so.I stood staring at the puddles my clothes and umbrella were forming onthe strip of matting, vainly trying to rub them out with my feet. Thewail of the unfortunate in the next room was of an uninterrupted andhaunting melancholy. The rain beat on the windows forlornly. As minuteafter minute passed and no one came I grew very restless. My fingersbegan to twitch, and my feet to tap. And I was cooling down after myquick walk with a rapidity that meant a cough and a sore throat. Therewas no bell, or I would have rung it and begged to be allowed to goaway. I did turn round to open the door and try to attract the servant'snotice and tell her I could wait no longer, but I found to myastonishment that the door was locked. After that the whole of myreflections were resolved into one chaotic Dear me, from which I did notemerge till the parson appeared through the other door, bringing withhim a gust of wailing from the unhappy baby within and of thecharacteristic smell of infant garments drying at a stove.

  He was cold, suspicious, inquisitive. Evidently unused to being askedfor permission to go into his church, and equally evidently unused topersons passing through a village which was, for most persons, on theway to nowhere, he endeavored with some skill to discover what I wasdoing there. With equal skill I evaded answering his questions. Theyincluded inquiries as to my name, my age, my address, my father'sprofession, the existence or not of a husband, the number of my brothersand sisters, and distinct probings into the size of our income. Itstruck me that he had a great deal of time and very few visitors, exceptthieves. Delicately I conveyed this impression to him, leaving out onlythe thieves, by means of implications of a vaguely flattering nature. Heshrugged his shoulders, and said it was too wet for funerals, which werethe only things doing at this time of the year.

  'What, don't they die when it is wet?' I asked, surprised.

  'Certainly, if it is necessary,' said he.

  'Oh,' said I, pondering. 'But if some one does he has to be buried?'

  'We put it off,' said he.

  'Put it off?'

  'We put it off,' he repeated firmly.

  'But--' I began, in a tone of protest.

  'There's always a fine day if one waits long enough,' said he.

  'That's true,' said I, struck by a truth I had not till then consciouslyobserved.

  He did not ask me to sit down, a careful eye, I suppose, having gaugedthe probable effect of my wet clothes on his dry chairs, so we stoodfacing each other on the strip of matting throwing questions and answersbackward and forward like a ball. And I think I played quite skilfully,for at the end of the game he knew little more than when we began.

  And so at last he gave me the key, and having with a great rattling ofits handle concealed that he was unlocking the door, and further cloakedthis process by a pleasant comment on the way doors stick in wetweather, which I met with the cold information that ours didn't, hewhistled off the dogs, and I left him still with an inquiry in his eye.

  The church is very ancient and dates from the thirteenth century. Youwould like its outside--I wonder if in your walks you ever camehere--but its inside has been spoilt by the zealous Lutherans and turnedinto the usual barn. In its first state of beauty in those far-offCatholic days what a haven it must have been for all the women and mostof the men of that lonely turnip-growing village; the one beauty spot,the one place of mystery and enthusiasm. No one, I thought, staringabout me, could possibly have their depths stirred in the middle of somuch whitewash. The inhabitants of these bald agricultural parishes arenot sufficiently spiritual for the Lutheran faith. Black gowns andbareness may be enough for those whose piety is so exalted thatceremonies are only a hindrance to the purity of their devotions; butthe ignorant and the dull, if they are to be stirred, and especially thewomen who have entered upon that long series of gray years that begins,for those worked gaunt and shapeless in the fields, somewhere abouttwenty-five and never leaves off again, if they are to be helped to beless forlorn need many ceremonies, many symbols, much show, and mystery,and awfulness. You will say that it is improbable that the femaleinhabitants of such a poor parish should know what it is to feelforlorn; but I know better. You will, turning some of my own wordsagainst me, tell me that one does not feel forlorn if one is worked hardenough; but I know better about that too,--and I said it only inreference to young men like yourself. It is true the tragedy of thefaded face combined with the uncomfortably young heart, which is thetragedy that every woman who has had an easy life has to endure forquite a number of years, finds no place in the existence of a drudge; itis true too that I never yet saw, and I am sure you didn't, a woman ofthe laboring classes make efforts to appear younger than she is; and itis also true that I have seldom seen, and I am sure you haven't, womenof the class that has little to do leave off making them. Ceaseless hardwork and the care of many children do away very quickly with the youthboth of face and heart of the poor man's wife, and with the youth ofheart go the yearnings that rend her whose heart, whatever her face maybe doing, is still without a wrinkle. But drudgery and a lost youth donot make your life less, but more dreary. These poor women have not,like their husbands, the solace of the public-house _Schnapps_. They gothrough the bitterness of the years wholly without anaesthetics. Really Idon't think I can let you go on persisting that they feel nothing. Why,we shall soon have you believing that only you in this groaning andtravailing creation suffer. Please divest yourself of these illusions.Read, my young friend, read the British poet Crabbe. Read him much;ponder him more. He knew all about peasants. He was a plain man, with aknack for rhyme and rhythm that sets your brain a-jingling for weeks,who saw peasants as they are. They must have been the very ones we havehere. In his pages no honeysuckle clambers picturesquely about theirpath, no simple virtues shine in their faces. Their hearth is not snowy,their wife not neat and nimble. They do not gather round bright firesand tell artless tales on winter evenings. Their cheer is certainlyhomely, but that doesn't make them like it, and they never call downblessings upon it with moist uplifted eyes. Grandsires with venerablehair are rather at a discount; the young men's way of trudging cannot bedescribed as elastic; and their talk, when there is any, does notconsist of praise of the local landowner. Do you think they do not knowthat they are cold and underfed? And do not know they have grown oldbefore their time through working in every sort of weather? And do notknow where their rheumatism and fevers come from?

  I walked back through the soaking, sighing woods thinking of thesethings and of how unfairly the goods of life are distributed and of theodd tendency misfortunes have to collect themselves together in oneplace in a heap. Old thoughts, you'll say,--old thoughts as stale aslife, thoughts that have drifted through countless heads, and after awhile drifted out of them again, leaving no profit behind them. But onecan't help thinking them and greatly marvelling. Make the
most, youfortunate young man, of freedom, and Italy, and sunshine, and your sixand twenty years. If I could only persuade you to let yourself go quitesimply to being happy! Our friendship, in spite of its sincerity, has upto now been of so little use to you; and a friendship which is nothelpful might just as well not exist. I wish I knew what words of minewould help you most. How gladly would I write them. How gladly would Isee you in untroubled waters, forging straight ahead toward a full andfruitful life. But I am a foolish, ineffectual woman, and write youwaspish letters when I might, if I had more insight, have found out whatthose words are that would set you tingling with the joy of life.

  Yours sincerely,

  ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.

  I've been reading some of the very beautiful prayers in my mother'sEnglish Prayer Book to make up for not having prayed in church today.Its margins are thickly covered with pencilled comments. In parts likethe Psalms and Canticles they overflow into the spaces between theverses. They are chiefly notes on the beauties of thought and language,and comparisons with similar passages in the Bible. Here and therebetween the pages are gummed little pictures of Madonnas and 'piteousChrists.' But when the Athanasian Creed is reached the tone of thecomment changes. Over the top of it is written 'Some one has said thereis a vein of dry humor running through this Creed that is veryremarkable.' And at the end of each of those involved clauses that tryquite vainly, yet with an air of defying criticism, to describe theundescribable, my mother has written with admirable caution 'Perhaps.'

  LIV

  Galgenberg, Nov. 7th.

  Dear Mr. Anstruther,--So you are coming to Berlin next month. I thoughtyou told me in one of your letters that Washington was probably going tobe your first diplomatic post. Evidently you are glad it is not; but ifI were going to be an _attache_ I'd much rather be it at Washington thanBerlin, the reason being that I've not been to Washington and I havebeen to Berlin. Why are you so pleased--forgive me, I meant so muchpleased, but it is strange how little instinct has to do withgrammar--about Berlin? You didn't like it when you were here and wentfor two days to look at it. You said it was a hard white place, full ofbroad streets with nobody in them. You said it was barren, soulless,arid, pretentious, police-ridden; that everybody was an official, andthat all the officials were rude. You were furious with a policeman whostared at you without answering when you asked him the way. You werescandalized by the behavior of the men in the local trains who sat andsmoked in the faces of the standing women, and by those men who walkedwith their female relations in the streets and caused their parcels tobe carried by them. You came home to us saying that Jena was best, andyou were thankful to be with us again. I went to Berlin once, a littlewhile before you came to Germany, and didn't like it either. But Ididn't like it because it was so full, because those streets that seemedto you so empty were bewildering to me in their tumultuous traffic,--soyou see how a place is what your own eye makes it, your Jena or yourLondon eye; and I didn't like it besides because we spent a sulphuricnight and morning with relations. The noise of the streets all day andthe sulphur of the relations at night spoilt it for me. We went therefor a jaunt, to look at the museums and things, and stay the night withPapa's brother who lives there. He is Papa's younger brother, and spendshis days in a bank, handing out and raking in money through a hole in akind of cage. He has a pen behind his ear--I know, because we were takento gaze upon him between two museums--and wears a black coat on weekdaysas well as on Sundays, which greatly dazzled my step-mother, who waswith us. I believe he is eminently respectable, and the bank values himas an old and reliable servant, and has made him rich. His salary iseight thousand marks a year--four hundred pounds, sir; four times asmuch as what we have--and my step-mother used often and fervently towish that Papa had been more like him. I thought him a terrifying olduncle, a parched, machine-like person, whose soul seemed withdrawn intounexplorable vague distances, reduced to a mere far-off flicker by themechanical nature of his work. He is ten years younger than Papa, butinfinitely more faded. He never laughs. He never even smiles. He is rudeto his wife. He is withering to his daughters. He made me think of owlsas he sat at supper that night in his prim clothes, with round gloomyeyes fixed on Papa, whom he was lecturing. Papa didn't mind. He had hada happy day, ending with two very glorious hours in the Royal Library,and Tante Else's herring salad was much to his taste. 'Hast thou norespect, Heinrich,' he cried at last when my uncle, warmed by beer, lethis lecture slide over the line that had till then divided it from arating, 'hast thou then no respect for the elder brother, and his whiteand reverend hairs?'

  But Onkel Heinrich, aware that he is the success and example of thefamily, and as intolerant as successes and examples are of laxer andpoorer relations, waved Papa's banter aside with contempt, and proposedthat instead of wasting any more of an already appallingly wasted lifein idle dabblings in so-called literature he too should endeavor to geta post, however humble, in a bank in Berlin, and mend his ways, and earnan income of his own, and cease from living on an income acquired bymarriages.

  My step-mother punctuated his words with nods of approval.

  'What, as a doorkeeper, eh, thou cistern filled with wisdom?' criedPapa, lifting his glass and drinking gayly to Tante Else, who glanceduneasily at her husband, he not yet having been, to her recollection,called a cistern.

  'It is better,' said my step-mother, to whom a man so punctual, somethodical, and so well-salaried as Onkel Heinrich seemed wholly ideal,'it is better to be a doorkeeper in--in-'

  She was seized with doubt as to the applicability of the text, andhesitated.

  'A bank?' suggested Papa pleasantly.

  'Yes, Ferdinand, even in a bank rather than dwell in the tents ofwickedness.'

  'That,' explained Papa to Tante Else, leaning back in his chair andcrossing his hands comfortably over what, you being English, I will callhis chest, 'is my dear wife's poetic way--'

  'Scriptural way, Ferdinand,' interrupted my step-mother. 'I know nopoetic ways.'

  'It is the same thing, _meine Liebste_. The Scriptures are drenched inpoetry. Poetic way, I say, of referring to Jena.'

  '_Ach so_,' said Tante Else, vague because she doesn't know her Bibleany better than the rest of us Germans; it is only you English who haveit at your fingers' ends; and, of course, my step-mother had it at hers.

  'Tents,' continued Tante Else, feeling that as _Hausfrau_ it was herduty to make herself conversationally conspicuous, and anxious to hidethat she was privately at sea, 'tents are unwholesome as permanentdwellings. I should say a situation somewhere as doorkeeper in a healthybuilding was much to be preferred to living in nasty draughty thingslike tents.'

  '_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich, with sudden and explosive bitterness;you remember of course that _quatsch_ is German for silly, or nonsense,and that it is far more expressive, and also more rude, than either.

  My step-mother opened her mouth to speak, but Tante Else, urged by hersense of duty, flowed on. 'You cannot,' she said, addressing Papa, 'be adoorkeeper unless there is a door to keep.'

  'Let no one,' cried Papa, beating approving hands together, 'say againthat ladies are not logicians.'

  '_Quatsch_,' said Onkel Heinrich.

  'And a door is commonly a--a-' She cast about for the word.

  'A necessity?' suggested Papa, all bright and pleased attention.

  'A convenience?' suggested my cousin Lieschen, the rather prettyunmarried daughter, a girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plumpred hands.

  'An ornament?' suggested my cousin Elschen, the rather pretty marrieddaughter, another girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump redhands.

  'A thing you go in at?' I suggested.

  'No, no,' said Tante Else impatiently, determined to run down her word.

  'A thing you go out at, then?' said I, proud of the resourcefulness ofmy intelligence.