Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  'I don't know,' said I; and I didn't even after I had secretly looked inthe dictionary, for it was empty of any explanation of the word funk.Yours, deeply interested in life and lovers,

  ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.

  LXV

  Galgenberg, Dec. 31st.

  Dear Mr. Anstruther,--My heartiest good wishes for the New Year. May itbe fruitful to you in every pleasant way; bring you interesting work,agreeable companions, bright days; and may it, above all things confirmand strengthen our friendship. There now; was ever young man morethoroughly fitted out with invoked blessings? And each one wished fromthe inmost sincerity of my heart.

  But we can't come to Berlin as you suggest we should, and allowourselves to be shown round by you. Must I say thank you? No, I don'tthink I will. I will not pretend conventionality with you, and I do notthank you, for I don't like to have to believe that you really thought Iwould come. And then your threat, though it amused me, vexed me too. Yousay if I don't come you will be forced to suppose that I'm afraid ofmeeting you. Kindly suppose anything you like. After that of course Iwill not come. What a boy you are. And what an odd, spoilt boy. Whyshould I be afraid of meeting you? Is it, you think, because once--see,I am at least not afraid of speaking of it--you passed across my lifeconvulsively? I don't know that any man could stir me up now to even thesemblance of an earthquake. My quaking days are done; and after that onethunderous upheaval I am fascinated by the charm of quiet weather, andof a placid basking in a sunshine I have made with my very own hands. Itis useless for you to tell me, as I know you will, that it is only animitation of the real thing and has no heat in it. I don't want to beany hotter. In this tempestuous world where everybody is so eager, hereis at least one woman who likes to be cool and slow. How strange it isthe way you try to alter me, to make me quite different. There seems tobe a perpetual battering going on at the bulwarks of my character. Youwant to pull them down and erect new fabrics in their place, fabrics sofrothy and unreal that they are hardly more than fancies and would haveto be built up afresh every day. Yet I know you like me, and want to bemy friend. You make me think of those quite numerous husbands who fallin love with their wives because they are just what they are, and aftermarriage expend their energies training them into something absolutelydifferent. There was one in Jena while we were there who felldesperately in love with a little girl of eighteen, when he was aboutyour age, and he adored her utterly because she was so divinely silly,ignorant, soft and babyish. She knew nothing undesirable, and he adoredher for that. She knew nothing desirable either, and he adored her forthat too. He adored her to such an extent that all Jena, not givenovermuch to merriment, was distorted with mirth at the spectacle. He wasa clever man, a very promising professor, yet he found nothing moreprofitable than to spend every moment he could spare adoring. And hismanner of adoring was to sit earnestly discovering, by means of repeatedexperiment, which of his fingers fitted best into her dimples when shelaughed, and twisting the tendrils of her hair round his thumbs in anendless enjoyment of the way, when he suddenly let them go, theybeautifully curled. He did this quite openly, before us all, seeing Isuppose no reason why he should dissemble his interest in his futurewife's dimples and curls. But alas for the dimples and curls once shewas married! _Oh weh,_ how quickly he grew blind to them. And as for thedivine silliness, ignorance, softness and babyishness that had so deeplyfascinated him, just those were what got most on to his nerves. He triedto do away with them, to replace them by wit and learning combined withbrilliant achievements among saucepans and shirts, and the result wasdisastrous. His little wife was scared. Her dimples disappeared fromwant of practice. Her pretty colors seemed suddenly wiped out, as thoughsome one had passed over them roughly with a damp cloth. Her very hairleft off curling, and was as limp and depressed as the rest of her. Letthis, Mr. Anstruther, be an awful warning to you, not only when youmarry but now at once in regard to your friends. Do not attempt to alterthose long-suffering persons. It is true you would have some difficultyin altering a person like myself, long ago petrified into her presenthorrid condition, but even the petrified can and do get tired of hearingthe unceasing knocking of the reforming mallet on their skulls. Leave mealone, dear young man. Like me for anything you find that can be liked,express proper indignation at the rest of me, and go your way praisingGod Who made us all. Really it would be a refreshment if you left offfor a space imploring me to change into something else. There is a ringabout your imploring as if you thought it was mere wilfulness holding meback from being and doing all you wish. Believe me I am not wilful; I amonly petrified. I can't change. I have settled down, very comfortably Imust say, to the preliminary petrifaction of middle age, and middle age,I begin to perceive, is a blessed period in which we walk alongmellowly, down pleasant slopes, with nothing gusty and fierce able topierce our incrustation, no inward volcanoes able to upset thesurrounding rockiness, nothing to distract our attention from the mildserenity of the landscape, the little flowers by the way, the beauty ofthe reddening leaves, the calm and sunlit sky. You will say it is absurdat twenty-six to talk of middle age, but I feel it in my bones, Mr.Anstruther, I feel it in my bones. It is after all simply a question ofbones. Yours are twenty years younger than mine; and did I not alwaystell you I was old?

  I am so busy that you must be extra pleased, please, to get a lettertoday. The translation of Papa's book has ended by interesting me tosuch an extent that I can't leave off working at it. I do it officiallyin his presence for an hour daily, he as full of mistrust of my Englishas ever, trying to check it with a dictionary, and using picturesquelanguage to convey his disgust to me that he should be so imperfectlyacquainted with a tongue so useful. He has forgotten the little helearned from my mother in the long years since her death, and he has thenatural conviction of authors in the presence of their translators thatthe translator is a grossly uncultured person who will leave out all the_nuances_. For an hour I plod along obediently, then I pretend I must goand cook. What I really do is to run up to my bedroom, lock myself in,and work away feverishly for the rest of the morning at my version ofthe book. It is, I suppose, what would be called a free translation, butI protest I never met anything quite so free. Papa's book is charming,and the charm can only be reproduced by going repeatedly wholly off thelines. Accordingly I go, and find the process exhilarating and amusing.The thing amuses and interests me; I wonder if it would amuse andinterest other people? I fear it would not, for when I try to imagine itbeing read by my various acquaintances my heart sinks with the weight ofthe certainty that it couldn't possibly. I imagine it in the hands ofJoey, of Frau von Lindeberg, of different people in Jena, and theexpression my inner eye sees on their faces makes me unable for a longwhile to go on with it. Then I get over that and begin working again atmy salad. It really is a salad, with Papa as the groundwork of lettuce,very crisp and fresh, and myself as the dressing and bits of garnishingbeetroot and hard-boiled egg. I work at it half the night sometimes, soeager am I to get it done and sent off. Yes, my young friend, I haveinherited Papa's boldness in the matter of sending off, and the mostimpressive of London publishers is shortly to hold it in his sacredhands. And if his sacred hands forget themselves so far as to hurl itrudely back at me they yet can never take away the fun I have hadwriting it.

  Yours sincerely,

  ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.

  Joey's father is expected to-morrow, and the whole Galgenberg is foggywith the fumes of cooking. Once his consent is given the engagement willbe put in the papers and life will grow busy and brilliant for Frau vonLindeberg. She talks of removing immediately to Berlin, there to give aseries of crushingly well-done parties to those of her friends who aresupposed to have laughed when Vicki was thrown over by her first lover.I don't believe they did laugh; I refuse to believe in such barbarians;but Frau von Lindeberg, grown frank about that disastrous story now thatit has been so handsomely wiped off Vicki's little slate, assures methat they did. She doesn't seem angry any longer about it, being muchtoo happy to have room in her heart fo
r wrath, but she is bent on thisone form of revenge. Well, it is a form that will gratify everybody,revenger and revengee equally I should think.

  LXVI

  Galgenberg, Jan. 7th.

  Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I couldn't write before, I've been too busy. Themanuscript went this morning after real hard work day and night, and nowI feel like a squeezed lemon that yet is cheerful, if you can conceivesuch a thing. Joey's father has been and gone. He arrived late onenight, inspected the Lindebergs, gave his consent, and was offtwenty-four hours later. The Lindebergs were much disconcerted by thesequick methods, they who like to move slowly, think slowly, and sit hoursover each meal; and they had not said half they wanted to say and he hadnot eaten half he was intended to eat before he was gone. Also hedisconcerted them,--indeed it was more than that, he upset them utterly,by not looking like what they had made up their minds he would looklike. The Galgenbergs expected to see some one who should be blatantlyrich, and blatant riches, it dimly felt, would be expressed by muchflesh and a thick watch chain. Instead the man had a head like JuliusCaesar, lean, thoughtful, shrewd, and a spare body that made PapaLindeberg's seem strangely pulpy and as if it were held together only bythe buttons of his clothes. We were staggered. Frau von Lindebergcouldn't understand why a man so rich should also be so thin,--' He isin a position to have the costliest cooking,' she said several times,looking at me with amazed eyebrows; nor could she understand why a manwithout ancestors should yet make her husband, whose past bristles withthem, be the one to look as if he hadn't got any. She mused much, andaloud. While Vicki was being run breathlessly over the mountains by hernimble future father-in-law, with Joey, devoured by pride in them both,in attendance, I went down to ask if I could help in the cooking, andfound her going about her kitchen like one in a dream. She let me tuckup my sleeves and help her, and while I did it she gave vent to manymusings about England and its curious children. 'Strange, strangepeople,' she kept on saying helplessly.

  But she is the happiest woman in Germany at this moment, happier farthan Vicki, for she sees with her older eyes the immense advantages thatare to be Vicki's who sees at present nothing at all but Joey. And thenthe deliciousness of being able to write to all those relations grown oflate so supercilious, to Cousin Mienchen who came and played the rich,and tell them the glorious news. Vicki basks in the sunshine of amother's love again, and never hears a cross word. Good things areshowered down on her, presents, pettings, admiration, all those charmingthings that every girl should enjoy once before her pretty girlhood hasgone. It is the most delightful experience to see a family in the veryact of receiving a stroke of luck. Strokes of luck, especially of thesedimensions, are so very rare. It is like being present at a pantomimethat doesn't leave off, and watching the good fairy touching one graydull unhappy thing after another into radiance and smiles. But I lose myfriends, for they go to Berlin almost immediately, and from there toManchester on a visit to Mr. Collins, a visit during which the businesspart of the marriage is to be settled. Also, and naturally, we loseJoey. This is rather a blow, just as we had begun so pleasantly to rollin his money, but where Vicki goes he goes too, and so Papa and I willsoon be left again alone on our mountain, face to face with vegetarianeconomies.

  Well, it has been a pleasant interlude, and I who first saw Vickisteeped in despair, red-eyed, piteous, slighted, talked about, shall seeher at last departing down the hill arrayed in glory as with a garment.Then I shall turn back, when the last whisk of her shining skirts hasgleamed round the bend of the road, to my own business, to the sobertrudging along the row of days allotted me, to the making of economies,the reading of good books, the practice of abstract excellences, thepruning of my soul. My soul, I must say, has had some vigorous prunings.It ought by now to be of an admirable sturdiness. You yourself oncelopped off a most luxuriant growth that was, I agree, best away, and nowthese buds of friendship, of easier circumstances, are going to benipped off too, and when they are gone what will be left, I wonder, butthe uncompromising and the rugged? Is it possible I am so base as to beenvious? In spite of my real pleasure I can't shut out a certainwistfulness, a certain little pang, and exactly what kind of wistfulnessit is and exactly what kind of pang I don't well know unless it is envy.Vicki's lot is the last one I would choose, yet it makes me wistful. Itincludes Joey, yet I feel a little pang. This is very odd; for Joey as ahusband, a person from whom you cannot get away, would be rather morethan I could suffer with any show of gladness. How then can I beenvious? Of course if Joey knew what I am writing he would thrust anincredulous tongue in his cheek, wink a sceptical eye, and mutter someeternal truth about grapes; but I, on the other hand, would watch himdoing it with the perfect calm of him who sticks unshakably to hispoint. What would his cheek, his tongue, and his winking eye be to me?They would leave me wholly unmoved, not a hair's breadth moved from myoriginal point, which is that Joey is not a person you can marry. Butcertainly it is a good and delightful thing that Vicki thinks he is andthinks it with such conviction. I tell you the top of our mountain is ina perpetual rosy glow nowadays, as though the sun never left it; and theentire phenomenon is due solely to these two joyful young persons.

  Yours sincerely,

  ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.

  LXVII

  Galgenberg, Jan. 12th.

  Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I did a silly thing today: I went and mourned inan empty house. I don't think I'm generally morbid, but today I indulgedin a perfect orgy of morbidness. Write and scold me. It is your turn toscold, and by doing it thoroughly you will bring me back to my ordinarycheerful state. The Lindebergs are gone, and I am feeling it absurdly. Ididn't realize how much I loved that little dear Vicki, nor in the leastthe interest Frau von Lindeberg's presence and doings gave life. Thelast three weeks have been so thrilling, there was so much warmth andbrightness going about that it reached even onlookers like myself andwarmed and lighted them; and now in the twinkling of an eye it isgone,--gone, wiped out, snuffed out, and Papa and I are alone again, andthere is a northeast wind. These are the times when philosophy is souseful; but do explain why it is that one is only a philosopher so longas one is happy. When I am contented, and everything is just as I likeit, I can philosophize beautifully, and do it with a hearty sinceritythat convinces both myself and the person listening to me; but when thebad days come, the empty days, the disappointing, chilly days, beholdPhilosophy, that serene and dignified companion so long as the weatherwas fine, clutching her academic skirts hastily together and indulgingin the form of rapid retreat known to the vulgar and the graphic asskedaddling. 'Do not all charms fly,' your Keats inquires, 'at the meretouch of cold Philosophy?' But I have found that nothing flies quite sofast as cold Philosophy herself; she would win in any race when the raceis who shall run away quickest; she is of no use whatever--it is mydeliberate conclusion--except to sit with in the sun on the south sideof a sheltering wall on those calm afternoons of life when you've onlygot to open your mouth and ripe peaches drop into it. I used to think ifI could love her enough she would, in her gratitude, chloroform mesafely over all the less pleasant portions of life, see to it that I wasunconscious during the passage, never let me be aware of anything butthe beautiful and the good; but either she has no gratitude or I havelittle love, and the years have brought me the one conviction that sheis an artist at leaving you in the lurch. The world is strewn withpersons she has left in it, and out of the three inhabitants of amountain to leave one there is surely an enormous percentage. Now whatis your opinion of a woman with a healthy body, a warm room, and asufficient dinner, who feels as though the soul within her were anechoing cavern, empty, cold, and dark? It is what I feel at this moment,and it is shameful. Isn't it shameful that the sight of leadenclouds--but they really are dreadful clouds, inky, ragged,harassed--scudding across the sky, and of furious brown beech-leaves onthe little trees in front of the Lindebergs' deserted house being lashedand maddened by the wind, should make me suddenly catch my breath forpain? It is pain, quite sharp, unmistakable pain, and it is because I am
alone, and my friends gone, and the dusk is falling. This afternoon Ileaned against their gate and really suffered. Regret for the past, fearfor the future,--vague, rather terrifying fears, not wholly unconnectedwith you--hurt so much that they positively succeeded in wringing a tearout of me. It was a very reluctant tear, and only came out after a worldof wringing, and I had stood there a most morbid long time before itappeared; but it did appear, and the vicious wind screamed round theLindebergs' blank house, rattled its staring naked windows, banged inwild gusts about the road where the puddles of half melted snowreflected the blackness of the sky, tore at my hair and dress, stung mycheeks, shook the gate I held on to, thundered over the hills. Dearyoung man, I don't want to afflict you with these tales of woe andweakness, but I must tell you what I did next. I went up and got the keyfrom Johanna, in whose keeping Frau von Lindeberg had left it, and camedown again, and unlocked the door of the house lately so full of lightand life, and crept fearfully about the echoing rooms and up the dismalstairs, and let myself go, as I tell you, to a very orgy of morbidness.It was like a nightmare. Memories took the form of ghosts, and clutchedat me through the balusters and from behind doors with thin coldfingers; and the happiest memories were those that clutched the coldest.I fled at last in a sudden panic, flying out of reach of them, slammingthe door to, running for my life up the road and in at our gate. Johannadid not let me in at once, and I banged with my fists in a frenzy to getaway from the black sky and the threatening thunder of thestorm-stricken pines. '_Herr Gott_' said Johanna when she saw me; sothat I must have looked rather wild.