Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  ‘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 of my intelligence.

  ‘No, no,’ said Tante Else, still more impatiently. ‘Ach Gott, where do all the words get to?’

  ‘Is it something very particular for which you are searching?’ asked my step-mother, with the sympathetic interest you show in the searchings of the related rich.

  ‘Something not worth the search, we may be sure,’ remarked Onkel Heinrich.

  ‘Ach Gott,’ said Tante Else, not heeding him, ‘where do they—’ She clasped and unclasped her fingers; she gazed round the room and up at the ceiling. We all sat silent, feeling that here there was no help, and watched while she chased the elusive word round and round her brain. Only Onkel Heinrich continued to eat herring salad with insulting emphasis.

  ‘I have it,’ she cried at last triumphantly.

  We at once revived into a brisk attention.

  ‘A door is a characteristic—’

  ‘A most excellent word,’ said Papa encouragingly. ‘Continue, my dear.’

  ‘It is a characteristic of buildings that are massive and that have windows and chimneys like other buildings.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Papa. ‘Definitions are never easy.’

  ‘And — and tents don’t have them,’ finished Tante Else, looking round at us with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so much about something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping.

  ‘Quatsch,’ said Onkel Heinrich.

  ‘My dear,’ protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice these comments.

  ‘I say it is quatsch,’ said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemence startling in one so trim.

  ‘Really, my dear,’ said Tante Else.

  ‘I repeat it,’ said Onkel Heinrich.

  ‘Do not think, my dear—’

  ‘I do not think, I know. Am I to sit silent, to have no opinion, in my own house? At my own table?’

  ‘My dear—’

  ‘If you do not like to hear the truth, refrain from talking nonsense.’

  ‘My dear Heinrich — will you not try — in the presence of — of relations, and of — of our children—’ Her voice shook a little, and she stopped, and began with great haste and exactness to fold up her table-napkin.

  ‘Ach — quatsch’ said Onkel Heinrich again, irritably pushing back his chair.

  He waddled to a cupboard — of course he doesn’t get much exercise in his cage, so he can only waddle — and took out a box of cigars. ‘Come, Ferdinand,’ he said, ‘let us go and smoke together in my room and leave the dear women to the undisturbed enjoyment of their wits.’

  ‘I do not smoke,’ said Papa briefly.

  ‘Come then while I smoke,’ said Onkel Heinrich.

  ‘Nay, I fear thee, Heinrich,’ said Papa. ‘I fear thy tongue applied to my weak places. I fear thine eye, measuring their deficiencies. I fear thy intelligence, known to be great—’

  ‘Worth exactly,’ said Onkel Heinrich suddenly facing us, the cigarbox under his arm, his cross owl’s eyes rounder than ever, ‘worth exactly, on the Berlin brain market, eight thousand marks a year.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ cried Papa, ‘and I admire — I admire. But there is awe mingled with my admiration, Heinrich, — awe, respect, terror. Go, thou man of brains and marketableness, thou man of worth and recognition, go and leave me here with these lesser intellects. I fear thee, and I will not watch thee smoke.’

  And he got up and raised Tante Else’s hand to his lips with great gallantry and wished her, after our pleasant fashion at the end of meals, a good digestion.

  But Tante Else, though she tried to smile and return his wishes, could not get back again into her rôle of serene and conversational Hausfrau. My uncle waddled away, shooting a sniff of scorn over his shoulder as he went, and my aunt endeavored to conceal the fact that she was wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both at once. My step-mother cleared her throat, and remarked that successful public men often had to pay for their successes by being the victims at home of nerves, and that their wives, whose duty it is always to be loving, might be compared to the warm and soothing iron passed over a shirt newly washed, and deftly, by its smooth insistence, flattening away each crease.

  Papa gazed at my step-mother with admiring astonishment while she elaborated this image. He had hold of Tante Else’s hand and was stroking it. His bright eyes were fixed on his wife, and I could see by their expression that he was trying to recall the occasions on which his own creases had been ironed out.

  With the correctness with which one guesses most of a person’s thoughts after you have lived with him ten years, my step-mother guessed what he was thinking. ‘I said public men,’ she remarked, ‘and I said successes.’

  ‘I heard, I heard, meine Liebste,’ Papa assured her, ‘and I also completely understand.’

  He made her a little bow across the table. ‘Do not heed him, Else, my dear,’ he added, turning to my aunt. ‘Do not heed thy Heinrich — he is but a barbarian.’

  ‘Ferdinand!’ exclaimed my step-mother.

  ‘Oh no,’ sighed Tante Else, ‘it is I who am impatient and foolish.’

  ‘I tell thee he is a barbarian. He always was. In the nursery he was, when, yet unable to walk, he crawled to that spot on the carpet where stood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy with the playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into them made holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she saw them, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalking the flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistened finger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure of his prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent over his desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue’s sleeve or trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while the victim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasing uneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolonged absence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comrades who served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not here repeat. And as a husband — yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has not lost it — he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearful interest.

  ‘Ferdinand,’ said my step-mother angrily, ‘your tongue is doing what it invariably does, it is running away with you.’

  ‘Why are married people always angry with each other?’ asked Lieschen, the unmarried daughter, in a whisper.

  ‘How can I tell, since I am not married?’ I answered in another whisper.

  ‘They are not,’ whispered Elschen with all the authority of the lately married. ‘It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. We kiss.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not without a touch of envy. ‘I have repeatedly seen you doing it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elschen placidly.

  ‘Is there no alternative?’ I inquired.

  ‘No what?’

  ‘Alternative.’

  ‘I do not know what you mean by alternative, Rose-Marie,’ said Elschen, trying to twist her wedding-ring round on her finger, but it couldn’t twist because it was too deeply embedded. ‘Where do you get your long words from?’

  ‘Must one either quarrel or kiss?’ I asked. ‘Is there no serene valley between the thunderous heights on the one hand and the swampy enervations on the other?’

  To this Elschen merely replied, while she stared at me, ‘Grosser Gott.’

  ‘You are a queer cousin,’ said Lieschen, giggling again, the giggle this time containing a touch of contempt, her giggles never being wholly unadulterated. ‘I suppose it is because Onkel Ferdinand is so poor.’

  ‘I
expect it is,’ said I.

  ‘He has hardly any money, has he?’

  ‘I believe he has positively none.’

  ‘But how do you live at all?’

  ‘I can’t think. It must be a habit.’

  ‘You don’t look very fat.’

  ‘How can I, when I’m not?’

  ‘You must come and see my baby,’ said Elschen, apparently irrelevantly, but I don’t think it really was; she thought a glimpse of that, I am sure, refreshing baby would cure most heartsicknesses.

  ‘Yes, yes, it is a splendid baby,’ said Lieschen, brightening, ‘and its wardrobe is trimmed throughout with the best Swiss embroidery threaded with beautiful blue ribbons. It cost many hundred marks, I assure you. There is nothing that is not both durable and excellent. Elschen’s mother-in-law is a very rich lady. She gave it all. She keeps two servants, and they wear washing dresses and big white aprons, just like English servants. Elschen’s mother-in-law says it is a great expense because of the laundry bills, but that she doesn’t mind. If you were going to stay longer, and had got the necessary costumes, we might have taken you to see her, and she might perhaps have asked you to stay to coffee.’

  ‘Really?’ said I, in a voice of concern.

  ‘Yes. It is a pity for you. You would then see how elegant Berlin people are. I expect this—’ she waved her hand— ’is quite different from Jena, and seems strange to you, but it is nothing, I assure you nothing at all, compared to Elschen’s mother-in-law’s furniture and food.’

  ‘Really?’ said I, again with concern.

  I did a dreadful thing next morning at breakfast: I broke a jug. Never shall I forget the dismay and shame of that moment. Really I am rather a deft person, used to jugs, and not, as a rule, of hasty or unconsidered movements. It was, I think, the electric current streaming out of Onkel Heinrich that had at last reached me too and galvanized me into a nervous and twitching behavior. He came in last, and the moment he appeared words froze, smiles vanished, eyes fell, and Papa’s piping alone continued to be heard in the cheerless air. I don’t know what had passed between him and Tante Else since last we had seen him, but his opaque black eyes were crosser and blacker than ever. Perhaps it was only that he had smoked more than was good for him, and the whole family was punished for that over-indulgence. I could not help reflecting how lucky it was that we were his relations and not hers; what must happen to hers if they ever come to see her I dare not think. It was while I was reflecting on their probable scorched and shrivelled condition, and at the same time was eagerly passing him some butter that I don’t think he wanted but that I was frantically afraid he might want, that my zealous arm swept the milk-jug off the table, and it fell on the varnished floor, and with a hideous clatter of what seemed like malicious satisfaction smashed itself to atoms.

  ‘There now,’ cried my step-mother casting up her hands, ‘Rose-Marie all over.’

  ‘I am very sorry,’ I stammered, pushing back my chair and gathering up the pieces and mopping up the milk with my handkerchief.

  ‘Dear niece, it is of no consequence,’ faltered Tante Else, her eyes anxiously on her husband.

  ‘No consequence?’ cried he — and his words sounded the more terrific from their being the first, beyond a curt good morning, that he had uttered. ‘No consequence?’

  And when my shameful head reappeared above the table and I got on to my feet and carried the ruins to a sideboard, murmuring hysterical apologies as I went, he pointed with a lean finger to what had once been a jug and said with an owlish solemnity and weightiness of utterance I have never heard equalled, ‘It was very expensive.’ I can’t tell you how glad, how thankful I was to get home.

  Yours sincerely,

  ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.

  LV

  Galgenberg, Nov. 15th.

  Dear Mr. Anstruther, — I shall send this to Jermyn Street, as it can no longer catch you in Italy. Jena is not on the way from London to Berlin, and I don’t know what map persuaded you that it was. It is very faithful and devoted of you to want so much to see Professor Martens again, but you know he is a busy man, and for five minutes with him as he rushes from a lecture to a private lesson it hardly seems worth while to make such a tremendous détour. Why, you would be hours pottering about on branch lines and at junctions, and would never, I am certain, see your luggage again. Still, it is not for me to refuse your visit to Professor Martens on his behalf who as yet knows nothing about it. I merely advise; and you know I do not easily miss an opportunity of doing that.

  What another odd idea of yours to want to call on our Berlin relations. Has Italy put these various warm genialities into your head? I did not think I had made the Heinrich Schmidts attractive. I was shivering while I wrote with renewed horror, as the remembrance of that evening with them and of that morning rose up again before me. That the result should be a thirst on your part for their address fills me with astonishment. Do you want to go and do them good? Soften Onkel Heinrich, and teach him to cherish kind Tante Else with the meek blue eyes and claret-colored silk dress? You cannot seriously intend to set up regular social intercourse with them. It is certain you will never meet them at any party you go to, — no, not even Elschen’s mother-in-law. The classes are with us divided so rigorously that the needle’s eye was child’s play to the camel compared to this other entering. You will, very properly, remembering my cloistered life, inquire what I know about it; but it seems to me, only please don’t laugh, that I have seen and known quite a good deal. When Experience leaves gaps, quick Imagination fills them up. The straws I have noticed have been enough to show me which way the wind was blowing; and women, pray remember, are artists at putting two and two together. Therefore I prophesy that if you are at the English Embassy in Berlin fifty years and meet fresh people every day of them, among those people will never be Onkel Heinrich and Tante Else. What, then, is the use of giving you their address? I will, if you really seriously wish it, but I must warn you that they would be intensely surprised by a call from you, and it would in no way add to their comfort. The connecting thread is altogether too slender. Papa is not a relation whose introductions they value, and to come from him is a handicap rather than a recommendation. Do you know the only possible conclusion they would come to? — and come to it they certainly would — that somehow, somewhere, in a train, or a shop, or walking, you had seen Lieschen, and had fallen in love with her. And before you knew where you were you would be married to Lieschen.

  How sad to have to come away from the flaming Spanish chestnuts of Italy, and turn your face toward London fogs. You don’t seem to mind. You never do seem to mind the things that would fill my heart with leaden despair, and over other things that should not matter you cry out. Indeed, far from minding you seem eager to be off. Yet London can’t be nice in November, and Berlin, where you so soon will be, is simply horrid. It was in November that we were there, and we splashed about in a raw, wet cold, — rain on the verge of sleet and snow, a bitter wind at the corners, the omnibuses all full (we could not afford the dearer and more respectable tram), and everybody we met had an unkind strange face that stared at us, in spite of hurry and umbrellas, with a thoroughness and comprehensiveness that must be peculiar to Berlin. Papa’s galoshes didn’t fit and kept coming off, and they always did it at the most difficult moment, generally when we were crossing a street, and there they would lie, scattered beneath hoofs and wheels, till I had rescued them again. Also his umbrella, being old and never having been very strong, turned inside out at extra gusty corners, and we, who had come to look and wonder, found that the Berlin people thought we had come to be looked and wondered at. But do not let me damp your ardor with these gloomy tales. It is such an excellent thing that you should be ardent at all after this long while of dissatisfaction with life that I ought to cheer you on and not talk dreary. Besides, your umbrella won’t mind corners, and you do not wear galoshes. I wish you joy, then, of your new post, and hope you will be very happy in it. Papa was most interested to h
ear you were coming so near us, and sends you many messages whose upshot is that you are to be a good boy and do him credit. He doesn’t know about the unfortunate ending to your engagement, and I shall not tell him, for he would be sorry; and more and more as the days and months melt away into a dream I am anxious that he should not be made sorry. Do you not think that old people should never be made sorry?

  Yours sincerely,

  ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.

  I hope you will waste no precious time coming to Jena to see Professor Martens. I heard a rumor that he was ill, or away or something, so that you would have your long and extremely tiresome journey positively for nothing.

  LVI

  Galgenberg, Nov. 23d.

  Dear Mr. Anstruther, — Was it so short? I don’t remember. This one shall be longer, then. Tell me, do you think there is any use in trying to cure a person of being in love? I have come to the conclusion that it’s hopeless. Such cures must be made from the inside outward, and not from the outside inward. I thought I was going to stir Vicki to a noble independence, and you should have heard the speeches I made her. Sometimes I had to laugh at them myself, they were such extraordinarily heroic and glowing things for one dripping Fräulein with none too brave a heart to hurl at another dripping Fräulein with no brave heart at all, as they trotted along with shortened skirts and umbrellas through wind-racked, howling forests. Vicki has gone all to pieces again, and her eyes are redder than ever. I don’t know whether it is these November mists that have done it, but certainly after all my hauling of her up the rocks of proud self-sufficiency she has flopped back again deeper than before into the morass in which I found her. It’s a perfect bog of sentiment she’s sunk in now. I make her go for ten-mile walks, and aim at doing them in two hours, thus hoping to bring out her love-sickness in the form of healthy perspiration, but it’s no good. ‘Oh,’ gasps Vicki, when we start off up the sombre aisles of pines, and see them stretching away before us into a gray infinity, and mark their reeking trunks, black with damp, hoar with lichen, and hear their sighings and their creakings through the patter of rain on our umbrellas, and feel their wet breath on our cheeks, ‘oh what an empty, frightening world it is.’