Three Lives

by Gertrude Stein

  Anna had great pride in the knowledge and possessions of her cherished Miss Mathilda, but she did not like her careless way of wearing always her old clothes. “You can’t go out to dinner in that dress, Miss Mathilda,” she would say, standing firmly before the outside door, “You got to go and put on your new dress you always look so nice in.” “But Anna, there isn’t time.” “Yes there is, I go up and help you fix it, please Miss Mathilda you can’t go out to dinner in that dress and next year if we live till then, I make you get a new hat, too. It’s a shame Miss Mathilda to go out like that.”

  The poor mistress sighed and had to yield. It suited her cheerful, lazy temper to be always without care but sometimes it was a burden to endure, for so often she had it all to do again unless she made a rapid dash out of the door before Anna had a chance to see.

  Life was very easy always for this large and lazy Miss Mathilda, with the good Anna to watch and care for her and all her clothes and goods. But, alas, this world of ours is after all much what it should be and cheerful Miss Mathilda had her troubles too with Anna.

  It was pleasant that everything for one was done, but annoying often that what one wanted most just then, one could not have when one had foolishly demanded and not suggested one’s desire. And then Miss Mathilda loved to go out on joyous, country tramps when, stretching free and far with cheerful comrades, over rolling hills and cornfields, glorious in the setting sun, and dogwood white and shining underneath the moon and clear stars over head, and brilliant air and tingling blood, it was hard to have to think of Anna’s anger at the late return, though Miss Mathilda had begged that there might be no hot supper cooked that night. And then when all the happy crew of Miss Mathilda and her friends, tired with fullness of good health and burning winds and glowing sunshine in the eyes, stiffened and justly worn and wholly ripe for pleasant food and gentle content, were all come together to the little house—it was hard for all that tired crew who loved the good things Anna made to eat, to come to the closed door and wonder there if it was Anna’s evening in or out, and then the others must wait shivering on their tired feet, while Miss Mathilda softened Anna’s heart, or if Anna was well out, boldly ordered youthful Sallie to feed all the hungry lot.

  Such things were sometimes hard to bear and often grievously did Miss Mathilda feel herself a rebel with the cheerful Lizzies, the melancholy Mollies, the rough old Katies and the stupid Sallies.

  Miss Mathilda had other troubles too, with the good Anna. Miss Mathilda had to save her Anna from the many friends, who in the kindly fashion of the poor, used up her savings and then gave her promises in place of payments.

  The good Anna had many curious friends that she had found in the twenty years that she had lived in Bridgepoint, and Miss Mathilda would often have to save her from them all.

  PART II

  THE LIFE OF THE GOOD ANNA

  ANNA FEDERNER, this good Anna, was of solid lower middle-class south german stock.

  When she was seventeen years old she went to service in a bourgeois family, in the large city near her native town, but she did not stay there long. One day her mistress offered her maid—that was Anna—to a friend, to see her home. Anna felt herself to be a servant, not a maid, and so she promptly left the place.

  Anna had always a firm old world sense of what was the right way for a girl to do.

  No argument could bring her to sit an evening in the empty parlour, although the smell of paint when they were fixing up the kitchen made her very sick, and tired as she always was, she never would sit down during the long talks she held with Miss Mathilda. A girl was a girl and should act always like a girl, both as to giving all respect and as to what she had to eat.

  A little time after she left this service, Anna and her mother made the voyage to America. They came second-class, but it was for them a long and dreary journey. The mother was already ill with consumption.

  They landed in a pleasant town in the far South and there the mother slowly died.

  Anna was now alone and she made her way to Bridgepoint where an older half brother was already settled. This brother was a heavy, lumbering, good natured german man, full of the infirmity that comes of excess of body.

  He was a baker and married and fairly well to do.

  Anna liked her brother well enough but was never in any way dependent on him.

  When she arrived in Bridgepoint, she took service with Miss Mary Wadsmith.

  Miss Mary Wadsmith was a large, fair, helpless woman, burdened with the care of two young children. They had been left her by her brother and his wife who had died within a few months of each other.

  Anna soon had the household altogether in her charge.

  Anna found her place with large, abundant women, for such were always lazy, careless or all helpless, and so the burden of their lives could fall on Anna, and give her just content. Anna’s superiors must be always these large helpless women, or be men, for none others could give themselves to be made so comfortable and free.

  Anna had no strong natural feeling to love children, as she had to love cats and dogs, and a large mistress. She never became deeply fond of Edgar and Jane Wadsmith. She naturally preferred the boy, for boys love always better to be done for and made comfortable and full of eating, while in the little girl she had to meet the feminine, the subtle opposition, showing so early always in a young girl’s nature.

  For the summer, the Wadsmiths had a pleasant house out in the country, and the winter months they spent in hotel apartments in the city.

  Gradually it came to Anna to take the whole direction of their movements, to make all the decisions as to their journeyings to and fro, and for the arranging of the places where they were to live.

  Anna had been with Miss Mary for three years, when little Jane began to raise her strength in opposition. Jane was a neat, pleasant little girl, pretty and sweet with a young girl’s charm, and with two blonde braids carefully plaited down her back.

  Miss Mary, like her Anna, had no strong natural feeling to love children, but she was fond of these two young ones of her blood, and yielded docilely to the stronger power in the really pleasing little girl. Anna always preferred the rougher handling of the boy, while Miss Mary found the gentle force and the sweet domination of the girl to please her better.

  In a spring when all the preparations for the moving had been made, Miss Mary and Jane went together to the country home, and Anna, after finishing up the city matters was to follow them in a few days with Edgar, whose vacation had not yet begun.

  Many times during the preparations for this summer, Jane had met Anna with sharp resistance, in opposition to her ways. It was simple for little Jane to give unpleasant orders, not from herself but from Miss Mary, large, docile, helpless Miss Mary Wadsmith who could never think out any orders to give Anna from herself.

  Anna’s eyes grew slowly sharper, harder, and her lower teeth thrust a little forward and pressing strongly up, framed always more slowly the “Yes, Miss Jane,” to the quick, “Oh Anna! Miss Mary says she wants you to do it so!”

  On the day of their migration, Miss Mary had been already put into the carriage. “Oh, Anna!” cried little Jane running back into the house, “Miss Mary says that you are to bring along the blue dressings out of her room and mine.” Anna’s body stiffened, “We never use them in the summer, Miss Jane,” she said thickly. “Yes Anna, but Miss Mary thinks it would be nice, and she told me to tell you not to forget, good-by!” and the little girl skipped lightly down the steps into the carriage and they drove away.

  Anna stood still on the steps, her eyes hard and sharp and shining, and her body and her face stiff with resentment. And then she went into the house, giving the door a shattering slam.

  Anna was very hard to live with in those next three days. Even Baby, the new puppy, the pride of Anna’s heart, a present from her friend the widow, Mrs. Lehntman—even this pretty little black and tan felt the heat of Anna’s scorching flame. And Edgar, who had looked forward to these days,
to be for him filled full of freedom and of things to eat—he could not rest a moment in Anna’s bitter sight.

  On the third day, Anna and Edgar went to the Wadsmith country home. The blue dressings out of the two rooms remained behind.

  All the way, Edgar sat in front with the colored man and drove. It was an early spring day in the South. The fields and woods were heavy from the soaking rains. The horses dragged the carriage slowly over the long road, sticky with brown clay and rough with masses of stones thrown here and there to be broken and trodden into place by passing teams. Over and through the soaking earth was the feathery new spring growth of little flowers, of young leaves and of ferns. The tree tops were all bright with reds and yellows, with brilliant gleaming whites and gorgeous greens. All the lower air was full of the damp haze rising from heavy soaking water on the earth, mingled with a warm and pleasant smell from the blue smoke of the spring fires in all the open fields. And above all this was the clear, upper air, and the songs of birds and the joy of sunshine and of lengthening days.

  The languor and the stir, the warmth and weight and the strong feel of life from the deep centres of the earth that comes always with the early, soaking spring, when it is not answered with an active fervent joy, gives always anger, irritation and unrest.

  To Anna alone there in the carriage, drawing always nearer to the struggle with her mistress, the warmth, the slowness, the jolting over stones, the steaming from the horses, the cries of men and animals and birds, and the new life all round about were simply maddening. “Baby! if you don’t lie still, I think I kill you. I can’t stand it any more like this.”

  At this time Anna, about twenty-seven years of age, was not yet all thin and worn. The sharp bony edges and corners of her head and face were still rounded out with flesh, but already the temper and the humor showed sharply in her clean blue eyes, and the thinning was begun about the lower jaw, that was so often strained with the upward pressure of resolve.

  To-day, alone there in the carriage, she was all stiff and yet all trembling with the sore effort of decision and revolt.

  As the carriage turned into the Wadsmith gate, little Jane ran out to see. She just looked at Anna’s face; she did not say a word about blue dressings.

  Anna got down from the carriage with little Baby in her arms. She took out all the goods that she had brought and the carriage drove away. Anna left everything on the porch, and went in to where Miss Mary Wadsmith was sitting by the fire.

  Miss Mary was sitting in a large armchair by the fire. All the nooks and crannies of the chair were filled full of her soft and spreading body. She was dressed in a black satin morning gown, the sleeves, great monster things, were heavy with the mass of her soft flesh. She sat there always, large, helpless, gentle. She had a fair, soft, regular, good-looking face, with pleasant, empty, grey-blue eyes, and heavy sleepy lids.

  Behind Miss Mary was the little Jane, nervous and jerky with excitement as she saw Anna come into the room.

  “Miss Mary,” Anna began. She had stopped just within the door, her body and her face stiff with repression, her teeth closed hard and the white lights flashing sharply in the pale, clean blue of her eyes. Her bearing was full of the strange coquetry of anger and of fear, the stiffness, the bridling, the suggestive movement underneath the rigidness of forced control, all the queer ways the passions have to show themselves all one.

  “Miss Mary,” the words came slowly with thick utterance and with jerks, but always firm and strong. “Miss Mary, I can’t stand it any more like this. When you tell me anything to do, I do it. I do everything I can and you know I work myself sick for you. The blue dressings in your room makes too much work to have for summer. Miss Jane don’t know what work is. If you want to do things like that I go away.”

  Anna stopped still. Her words had not the strength of meaning they were meant to have, but the power in the mood of Anna’s soul frightened and awed Miss Mary through and through.

  Like in all large and helpless women, Miss Mary’s heart beat weakly in the soft and helpless mass it had to govern. Little Jane’s excitements had already tried her strength. Now she grew abale and fainted quite away.

  “Miss Mary!” cried Anna running to her mistress and supporting all her helpless weight back in the chair. Little Jane, distracted, flew about as Anna ordered, bringing smelling salts and brandy and vinegar and water and chafing poor Miss Mary’s wrists.

  Miss Mary slowly opened her mild eyes. Anna sent the weeping little Jane out of the room. She herself managed to get Miss Mary quiet on the couch.

  There was never a word more said about blue dressings.

  Anna had conquered, and a few days later little Jane gave her a green parrot to make peace.

  For six more years little Jane and Anna lived in the same house. They were careful and respectful to each other to the end.

  Anna liked the parrot very well. She was fond of cats too and of horses, but best of all animals she loved the dog and best of all dogs, little Baby, the first gift from her friend, the widow Mrs. Lehntman.

  The widow Mrs. Lehntman was the romance in Anna’s life.

  Anna met her first at the house of her half brother, the baker, who had known the late Mr. Lehntman, a small grocer, very well.

  Mrs. Lehntman had been for many years a midwife. Since her husband’s death she had herself and two young children to support.

  Mrs. Lehntman was a good looking woman. She had a plump well rounded body, clear olive skin, bright dark eyes and crisp black curling hair. She was pleasant, magnetic, efficient and good. She was very attractive, very generous and very amiable.

  She was a few years older than our good Anna, who was soon entirely subdued by her magnetic, sympathetic charm.

  Mrs. Lehntman in her work loved best to deliver young girls who were in trouble. She would take these into her own house and care for them in secret, till they could guiltlessly go home or back to work, and then slowly pay her the money for their care. And so through this new friend Anna led a wider and more entertaining life, and often she used up her savings in helping Mrs. Lehntman through those times when she was giving very much more than she got.

  It was through Mrs. Lehntman that Anna met Dr. Shonjen who employed her when at last it had to be that she must go away from her Miss Mary Wadsmith.

  During the last years with her Miss Mary, Anna’s health was very bad, as indeed it always was from that time on until the end of her strong life.

  Anna was a medium sized, thin, hard working, worrying woman.

  She had always had bad headaches and now they came more often and more wearing.

  Her face grew thin, more bony and more worn, her skin stained itself pale yellow, as it does with working sickly women, and the clear blue of her eyes went pale.

  Her back troubled her a good deal, too. She was always tired at her work and her temper grew more difficult and fretful.

  Miss Mary Wadsmith often tried to make Anna see a little to herself, and get a doctor, and the little Jane, now blossoming into a pretty, sweet young woman, did her best to make Anna do things for her good. Anna was stubborn always to Miss Jane, and fearful of interference in her ways. Miss Mary Wadsmith’s mild advice she easily could always turn aside.

  Mrs. Lehntman was the only one who had any power over Anna. She induced her to let Dr. Shonjen take her in his care.

  No one but a Dr. Shonjen could have brought a good and german Anna first to stop her work and then submit herself to operation, but he knew so well how to deal with german and poor people. Cheery, jovial, hearty, full of jokes that made much fun and yet were full of simple common sense and reasoning courage, he could persuade even a good Anna to do things that were for her own good.

  Edgar had now been for some years away from home, first at a school and then at work to prepare himself to be a civil engineer. Miss Mary and Jane promised to take a trip for all the time that Anna was away and so there would be no need for Anna’s work, nor for a new girl to take Anna’s place.


  Anna’s mind was thus a little set at rest. She gave herself to Mrs. Lehntman and the doctor to do what they thought best to make her well and strong.

  Anna endured the operation very well, and was patient, almost docile, in the slow recovery of her working strength. But when she was once more at work for her Miss Mary Wadsmith, all the good effect of these several months of rest were soon worked and worried well away.

  For all the rest of her strong working life Anna was never really well. She had bad headaches all the time and she was always thin and worn.

  She worked away her appetite, her health and strength, and always for the sake of those who begged her not to work so hard. To her thinking, in her stubborn, faithful, german soul, this was the right way for a girl to do.

  Anna’s life with Miss Mary Wadsmith was now drawing to an end.

  Miss Jane, now altogether a young lady, had come out into the world. Soon she would become engaged and then be married, and then perhaps Miss Mary Wadsmith would make her home with her.

  In such a household Anna was certain that she would never take a place. Miss Jane was always careful and respectful and very good to Anna, but never could Anna be a girl in a household where Miss Jane would be the head. This much was very certain in her mind, and so these last two years with her Miss Mary were not as happy as before.

  The change came very soon.

  Miss Jane became engaged and in a few months was to marry a man from out of town, from Curden, an hour’s railway ride from Bridgepoint.

  Poor Miss Mary Wadsmith did not know the strong resolve Anna had made to live apart from her when this new household should be formed. Anna found it very hard to speak to her Miss Mary of this change.

  The preparations for the wedding went on day and night.

  Anna worked and sewed hard to make it all go well.