I went with her to the door. The boy was still there, cap in hand, very polite, very patient. ‘And my fifty pfennings?’ he asked pleasantly.
I cannot explain what we did next. I pulled out my purse and paid him, which was surprising enough, but Vicki, to whom fifty pfennings are also precious, pulled out hers too and gave him fifty on her own account. I am quite unable to explain either her action or mine. The boy made us each the politest bow, his cap sweeping the snow. ‘She,’ he said to Vicki, jerking his head my way, ‘may think she is the prettiest, but you are certainly the best.’
And he left us to settle it between us, and walked away shrilly whistling.
And I am so tired that my very pen has begun to ache, so good-by.
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
Oh, I must tell you that Papa refused to have Joey sleep in his room with a flatness that put a stop to my arguments before they were even begun. ‘Nay,’ he cried, ‘I will not.’ And when I opened my mouth to produce the arguments—’ ‘Nay,’ he cried again, ‘I will not.’ He drowned my speech. He would not listen. He would not reason. Parrot-like through the house resounded his cry— ‘Nay, I will not.’ I was in despair. But everything has arranged itself. Joey is to have the Assessor’s room on the ground floor of our neighbor’s house, and will come up here for lessons and meals. He is only to sleep down there, and will be all day here. We telegraphed to Weimar to ask about it, and the ever kind owner immediately agreed. Frau von Lindeberg is displeased, for she says no Dammerlitz has ever yet been known to live in a house where there was a lodger, — a common lodger she said first, but corrected herself, and covered up the common with a cough.
LX
Galgenberg, Dec. 12th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — I must write to-night, though it is late, to tell you of my speechless surprise when I came in an hour ago and found you had been here. I knew you had the moment I came in. At once I recognized the smell of the cigarettes you smoke. I went upstairs and called Johanna, for I was not sure that you were not still here, in the parlor, and frankly I was not going down if you were, for I do not choose to have my fastnesses stormed. She told me of your visit; how you had come up on foot soon after Vicki and Joey and I had started off for an afternoon’s tobogganing on the hills, how you had stayed talking to Papa, and talking and talking, till you had to hurry down to catch the last train. ‘And he bade me greet you for him,’ finished Johanna. ‘Indeed?’ said I.
Do you like winter excursions into the country? Is Berlin boring you already? I shook my head in grave disapproval as Johanna proceeded with her tale. I am all for a young man’s attending to his business and not making sudden wild journeys that take him away for a whole day and most of a night. Papa was delighted, I must say, to have had at last, as he told me with disconcerting warmth, at last after all these months an intelligent conversation, but with his delight the success of your visit ends, for when I heard of it I was not delighted at all. Why did you go into the kitchen? Johanna says you would go, and then that you went out hatless at the back door and down to the bottom of the garden and that you stood there leaning against the fence as though it were summer. ‘Still without a hat,’ said Johanna, in her turn shaking her head, ‘bei dieser Kälte.’
Bei dieser Kälte, indeed. Yes; what made you do it? I am glad I was out, for I do not care to look on while the usually reasonable behave unaccountably. I don’t think I can be friends with you for a little after this. I think I really must quarrel, for it isn’t very decent to drop unexpectedly upon a person who from time to time has told you with the frankness that is her most marked feature that she doesn’t want to be dropped upon. No doubt you wished to see Papa as well, and, on your way through Jena, Professor Martens; but I will not pretend to suppose your call was not chiefly intended for me, for it is to me and not to either of those wiser ones that you have written every day for months past. You are a strange young man. Heaven knows what you have accustomed yourself to imagining me to be. I almost wish now that you had seen me when I came in from our violent exercise, a touzled, short-skirted, heated person. It might have cured you. I forgot to look in the glass, but of course my hair and eyelashes were as white with hoar-frost as Vicki’s and Joey’s, and from beneath them and from above my turned-up collar must have emerged just such another glowing nose. Even Papa was struck by my appearance — after having gazed, I suppose, for hours on your composed correctness — and remarked that living in the country did not necessarily mean a complete return to savage nature.
The house feels very odd to-night. So do I. It feels haunted. So do I. I want to scold you, and yet I cannot. I have the strangest desire to cry. It is the thought that you came this long way, toiled up this long hill, waited those long hours, all to see some one who is glad to have missed you, that makes me want to. The night is so black outside my window, and somewhere through that blackness you are travelling at this moment, disappointed, across the endless frozen fields and forests that you must go through inch by inch before you reach Berlin. Why did you do a thing so comfortless? And here have I actually begun to cry, — I think because it is so dark, and you are not yet home.
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
LXI
Galgenberg, Dec. 16th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther, — I don’t quite understand. Purely motherly, I should say. Perhaps our notions of the exact meaning of the word friend are different. I include in it a motherly and sisterly interest in bodily well-being, in dry socks, warm feet, regular meals. I do not like my friend to be out on a bitter night, to take a tiring journey, to be disappointed. My friend’s mother would have, I imagine, precisely the same feeling. My friend should not, then, mistake mere motherliness for other and less comfortable sentiments. But I am busy today, and have no time to puzzle out your letter. It must have been the outcome of a rather strange mood.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
Tell me more about your daily life in Berlin, the people you see, the houses you go to, the attitude, kind or otherwise, of your chief. Tell me these things, instead of swamping me with subtleties of sentiment. I don’t understand subtleties, and I fear and despise sentiment as a certain spoiler of plain bread-and-butter happiness. There should be no sentiment between friends. The moment there is they leave off being just friends; and is not that what we both most want to be?
LXII
Galgenberg, Dec. 19th.
Oh, I can do nothing with you. You are bent, I’m afraid, on losing your friend. Don’t write me such letters — don’t, don’t, don’t! My heart sinks when I see you deliberately setting about strangling our friendship. Am I to lose it then, that too? Your last letters are like bad dreams, so strange and unreasonable, so without the least order or self-control. I read them with my fingers in my ears, — an instinctive foolish movement of protection against words I do not want to hear. Dear friend, do not take your friendship from me. Give yourself a shake; come out from those vain imaginings your soul has gone to dwell among. What shall I talk to you about this bright winter’s morning? Yes, I will write you longer letters; you needn’t beg so hard, as though the stars couldn’t get along in their courses if I didn’t. See, I am willing to do anything to keep my friend. You are my only one, the only person in the world to whom I tell the silly thoughts that come into my head and so get rid of them. You listen, and you are the only person in the world who does. You help me, and I in my turn want to be allowed to go on helping you. Do not put an end to what is precious, — believe me it will grow more and more precious with years. Do not, in the heat and impatience of youth, kill the poor goose who, if left alone, will lay the most beautiful golden eggs. What shall I talk to you about to turn your attention somewhere else, somewhere far removed from that unhappy bird? Shall I tell you about Papa’s book, finally refused by every single publisher, come back battered and draggled to be galvanized by me into fresh life in an English translation? Shall I tell you how I sit for three hours daily doing it, pen in hand, ink on fingers, hair
pushed back from an anxious brow, Papa hovering behind with a dictionary in which, full of distrust, he searches as I write to see if it contains the words I have used? Shall I tell you about Joey, whose first disgust at finding himself once more with us has given place by degrees that grow visibly wider to a rollicking enjoyment. Less and less does he come up here. More and more does he stay down there. He hurries through his lessons with a speed that leaves Papa speechless, and is off and hauling the sled up past our gate with Vicki walking demurely beside him and is whizzing down again past our gate with Vicki sitting demurely in front of him before Papa is well through the list of adjectives he applies to him once at least every day. I never see the sled now nearer than in the distance. Vicki wears her stiff shirts again, and her neat ties again, and the sporting belt that makes her waist look so very trim and tiny. If anything she is more aggressively starched and boyish than before. Her collars seem to grow higher and cleaner each time I see her. Her hat is tilted further forward. Her short skirts show the neatest little boots. She is extraordinarily demure. She never cries. Joey reads Samson Agonistes with us, and points out the jokes to Vicki. Vicki says why did I never tell her it was so funny? I stare first at one and then at the other, and feel a hundred years old.
‘I say,’ said Joey, coming into the kitchen just now.
‘Well, what?’ said I.
‘I’m going to Berlin for a day.’
‘Are you indeed?’
‘Tell the old man, will you?’
‘Tell the who?’
‘The old man. I shan’t be here for the lesson to-morrow, thank the Lord. I’m off by the first train.’
‘Indeed,’ said I.
There was a silence, during which Joey fidgeted about among the culinary objects scattered around him. I went on peeling apples. When he had fidgeted as much as he wanted to be lit a cigarette.
‘No,’ said I. ‘Not in kitchens. A highly improper thing to do.’
He threw it into the dustbin. ‘I say,’ he said again.
‘Well, what?’ said I again.
‘What do you think — what do you think—’ He paused. I waited. As he didn’t go on I thought he had done. ‘What do I think?’ I said. ‘You’d be staggered if I told you, it’s such a lot, and it’s so terrific.’
‘What do you think,’ repeated Joey, taking no heed of me, but, with his hands in his pockets, kicking a fallen apple aimlessly about on the floor, ‘what do you think the little girl’d like for Christmas and that, don’t you know?’
I stopped peeling and gazed at him, knife and apple suspended in mid-air. ‘The little girl?’ I inquired. ‘Do you mean Johanna?’
Joey stared. Then he grinned at me monstrously. ‘You bet,’ was his cryptic reply.
‘What am I to bet?’ I asked patiently.
Joey gave the fallen apple a kick. Looking down I observed that it was the biggest and the best, and stooped to rescue it. ‘It’s not pretty,’ said I, rebuking him, ‘to kick even an apple when it’s down.’
‘Oh, I say,’ said Joey impatiently, ‘do be sensible. There never was any gettin’ much sense out of you I remember. And you’re only pretendin’. You know I mean Vicki.’
‘Vicki?’
He had the grace to blush. ‘Well, Fräulein What’s her name. You can’t expect any one decent to get the hang of these names of yours. They ain’t got any hang, so how’s one to get it? What’d she like for Christmas? Don’t you all kick up a mighty fuss here over Christmas? Trees, and presents, and that? Plummier plum-puddings than we have, and mincier mince-pies, what?’
‘If you think you will get even one plum-pudding or mince-pie,’ said I, thoughtfully peeling, ‘you are gravely mistaken. The national dish is carp boiled in beer.’
Joey looked really revolted. ‘What?’ he cried, not liking to credit his senses.
‘Carp boiled in beer,’ I repeated distinctly. ‘It is what I’m going to give you on Christmas Day.’
‘No you’re not,’ he said hastily.
‘Yes I am,’ I insisted. ‘And before it and after it you will be required, in accordance with German custom, to sing chorales.’
‘I’d like to see myself doin’ it. You’ll have to sing ’em alone. I’m invited to feed down there.’
And he jerked his head toward that portion of the kitchen wall beyond which, if you passed through it and the intervening coal-hole and garden and orchard, you would come to the dwelling of the Lindebergs.
‘Oh,’ said I; and looked at him thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ said he, trying to meet my look with an equal calm, but conspicuously failing. ‘That bein’ so,’ he went on hurriedly, ‘and my droppin’, so to speak, into the middle of somebody’s Christmas tree and that, it seems to me only decent to give the little girl somethin’. What shall I get her? Somethin’ to put on, I suppose. A brooch, or a pin, what?’
‘Or a ring,’ said I, thoughtfully peeling.
‘A ring? What, can one — oh I say, don’t let’s waste time rottin’—’
And glancing up through cautious eyelashes I saw he was very red.
‘It’d be easy enough if it was you,’ he said revengefully.
‘What would?’
‘Hittin’ on what you’d like.’
‘Would it?’
‘All you’d want to do the trick would be a dictionary.’
‘Now Mr. Collins that’s unkind,’ said I, laying down my knife.
He began to grin again. ‘It’s true,’ he insisted.
‘It suggests such an immeasurable stuffiness,’ I complained.
‘It isn’t my fault,’ said he grinning.
‘But perhaps I deserve it because I mentioned a ring. Let me tell you, as man to man, that you must buy no brooches for Vicki.’
‘A pin, then?’
‘No pins.’
‘A necklace, then?’
‘Nothing of the sort. What would her parents say? Give her chocolates, a bunch of roses, perhaps a book — but nothing more. If you do you’ll get into a nice scrape.’
Joey looked at me. ‘What sort of scrape?’ he asked curiously.
‘Gracious heavens, don’t you see? Are you such a supreme goose? My poor young man, the parents would immediately ask you your intentions.’
‘Oh would they,’ said Joey, in his turn becoming thoughtful; and after a moment he said again, ‘Oh would they.’
‘It’s as certain as anything I know,’ said I.
‘Oh is it,’ said Joey, still thoughtful.
‘It’s a catastrophe young men very properly dread,’ said I.
‘Oh do they,’ said Joey, sunk in thought.
‘Well, if you’re not listening—’ And I shrugged my shoulders, and went on with my peeling.
He pulled his cap out of the pocket into which it had been stuffed, and began to put it on, tugging it first over one ear and then over the other in a deep abstraction.
‘You’re in my kitchen,’ I observed.
‘Sorry,’ he said, snatching it off. ‘I forgot. You always make me feel as if I were out of doors.’
‘How very odd,’ said I, interested and slightly flattered.
‘Ain’t it. East wind, you know — decidedly breezy, not to say nippin’. Well, I must be goin’.’
‘I think so too,’ said I coldly.
‘Don’t be dull while I’m away,’ said Joey; and departed with a nod.
But he put in his head again the next moment. ‘I say, Miss Schmidt—’
‘Well, what?’
‘You think I ought to stick to chocolates, then?’ ‘If you don’t there’ll be extraordinary complications,’ said I.
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Positive.’
‘You’d swear it?’
I threw down my knife and apple. ‘Now what’s the matter with the boy!’ I exclaimed impatiently. ‘Do I ever swear?’
‘But if you did you would?’
‘Swear what?’
‘That a bit of jewelry would br
ing the complications about?’
‘Oh — dense, dense, dense! Of course it would. You’d be surprised at the number and size of them. You can’t be too careful. Give her a hymn-book.
Joey gave a loud whoop.
‘Well, it’s safe,’ said I severely, ‘and it appeals to parents.’
‘You bet,’ said Joey, screwing his face into a limitlessly audacious wink.
‘I wish,’ said I, very plaintively, ‘that I knew exactly what it is I am to bet. You constantly tell me to do so, but never add the necessary directions.’
‘Oh, I’m goin’,’ was Joey’s irrelevant reply; and his head popped out as suddenly as it had popped in.
Or shall I tell you — I am anxious to make this letter long enough to please you — about Frau von Lindeberg, who spent two days elaborately cutting Joey, the two first days of his appearance in their house as lodger, persuaded, I suppose, that no one even remotely and by business connected with the Schmidts could be anything but undesirable, and how, meeting him in the passage, or on his way through the garden to us, the iciest stare was all she felt justified in giving him in return for his friendly grin, and how on the third day she suddenly melted, and stopped and spoke pleasantly to the poor solitary, commiserating with his situation as a stranger in a foreign country, and suggesting the alleviation to his loneliness of frequent visits to them? No one knows the first cause of this melting. I think she must have heard through her servant of the number and texture of those pink and blue silk handkerchiefs, of his amazing piles of new and costly shirts, of the obvious solidity of the silver on everything of his that has a back or a stopper or a handle or a knob. Anyhow on that third morning she came up and called on us, asking particularly for Papa. ‘I particularly wished,’ she said to me, spreading herself out as she did the last time on the sofa, ‘to see your good father on a matter of some importance.’
‘I’ll go and call him,’ said I, concealing my conviction that though I might call he would not come.
And he would not. ‘What, interrupt my work?’ he cried. ‘Is the woman mad?’
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 106