“You know,” said the professor, as they paraded round the split-wood fence, “I have one hobby, and that is houses. My brother has the same. I have a house in Gottingen and a house in Maulberg and a house on the Starnbergersee. Now I am going to have my little Vow-Wow. And I shall have it here.”
They walked through a tuft of snow to a spot on the brow of the slope.
“Here!” said Alfred. “What do you think?”
Gilbert stood and looked out at the snow peaks that bounded the far horizon, one looking over the other’s shoulder in the remote sky. And as he looked he seemed rooted to the spot.
“Yes,” he said. “Build it here.”
“You know,” said Alfred, “it is a model I saw at the exhibition — a little model wooden house. I have signed the contract, and everything will be complete by June, and it will cost ten thousand Marks. It is not cheap, but not so very dear. Hein? And it will be my little Vow-Wow.”
“But what will you do with it?” asked Gilbert.
“What shall I do with it? I shall use it for a summer-house for myself, and the children will stay with me, and my wife — and it will be very nice. What? Don’t you think? Eh?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “I do.”
“And if you like you can stay here too.”
“I wish I may.”
“You wish you may — Well, you shall. In June: in June all will be ready. I shall give you a room of your own.”
Gilbert had spied sparks of blue in the steep bank facing the sun, just below where he was standing. He went down and saw, for the first time in his life, blue gentian flowers open after the snow. They were low in the rough grass on the bank, and so blue, again his heart seemed to break one of its limits, and take a larger swing. So blue, so much more than heaven blue: blue from the whiteness of snow and the intensity of ice. He touched the perfect petals with his finger.
“The first gentian! Yes?” said Alfred, coming jerkily down and picking a few buds. “I must take them to show Marianne.”
Gilbert heard a noise. He looked up. A deer was running across the little clearing. It must have leaped from out of the fir-trees over the split-wood fence. Now it ran swifdy, on slender legs, straight to the fence on the beech side of the forest. It put its head back, and with the swift, frail feet ran along the side of the fence, seeking a way out. It started as Gilbert rose, twitching with alarm, and turning on its light haunches, ran quickly, almost without weight, back along the fence. It was puzzled finding no exit.
“Na, a Rehbock!” said Alfred. “You see, it must have jumped over the fence. There! I thought the fence was high enough. But the children will like it. Won’t they, don’t you think?”
Gilbert was watching the animal, the delicate white marking of the rump, on which the tail lay in a pattern; the flatness of the haunches, the beautiful softness of the ruddy fleece. The little stag swerved, became frightened at the continual obstacle, turned, and came running forward again.
“Shall I open the gate for him and let him out?” said Alfred, going forward.
The deer was now terrified. It laid back its head and bounded by the fence. In a sudden gust of terror it sprang like the wind at the fence, showing its whitish belly, lifting its little feet clear, and alighting with a jerk like a puff of wind in the free forest, where it galloped away through the great beech-trunks, scarcely visible over the beech-leaves patched with snow. It was gone like a bit of magic, and Gilbert felt himself possessed.
The two men went back into the village to the inn, where they sat at the bare wooden benches and ate boiled pork and sauerkraut and good black bread and mountain butter and a delicious ring of cake, and drank beer, while the peasants and farmers and foresters smoked big pipes and talked, and were festive.
After dinner they rose again.
“Now we will walk to the Starnberg lake and see my wife and my mother-in-law. Yes? Shall we do so? Can you walk so far?”
“How far?”
“Oh, about eight miles, eight miles. But in the wood there will be snow.”
So they set off. In the wood, as Alfred said, there was snow. Going between the great beech-trees, some of which lay prostrate, there were only patches of snow. But on the paths between the great, dry trunks of the firs there was deep snow still, heavy walking. The fir-woods were dark and vast, impenetrable, and frightening. Gilbert thought of the old Hercynian forest, and did not wonder at the Roman terror. For in the dark and bristly fir-trees, in their vast crowded ranks, the dimness and the subtly crackling silence, there was something as it were of anti-life, wolvish, magical.
Both men were tired by the time they came to the top of the last hill and looked down on the long, pale lake of Starnberg. They wound down past one of the royal casdes, or villas, and waited on the little landing-stage for the steamer which was to take them to their destination. The afternoon was fading towards evening, lights were beginning to twinkle by the pleasure-lake, the cafes were already lighted up, and Alfred and Gilbert were growing cold and tired by the time they had their place on the steamer. They were going only two stations down, to pay a visit to Alfred’s mother-in-law.
It was dusk by the time they arrived and rang the bell.
“Ho Marta!” cried the professor to the maid who opened to him, a handsome girl. “Is the Baroness at home? Is anybody here?”
“Yes, Herr Professor. The Frau Professor and the Herr Professor Sartorius.”
“Ach, are they also here? Ach — so! All right. All right. We will go up. Are they taking tea? So! So. We have just come right. Two more cups. Ach! Ach! We are rather tired. We have come on foot from Ommerhausen. Yes, I will take off my shoes. I will take off my shoes. Ach! Ach!” and the professor seated himself wearily and a little stiffly in a chair in the hall, while the maid, who had taken his hat and cloak and knapsack and stick, now hurried away for shoes. “Ach! If I don’t have my rheumatism tomorrow!” The professor spoke in English now, and put his hand on his hip. “I fear it! I fear it! Oh!” and he gave a twinge with his face. “Ach, Marta, my rheumatism!” he lamented as the girl came back with patent- leather shoes. So she kneeled to unfasten his thick shoes. She was a dark, lovely girl with thick black eyebrows and a plait of black hair going right round her well-shaped head. She wore a peasant-dress of mid-blue colour with sprigged roses, close fitting at the breast, full skirted, and a fine white apron, bib- less. She quickly drew off the professor’s heavy boots, hurried away with them, and came back with a pair of heelless pantoffles.
“Shoes there are no more,” she said, dangling the pantoffles. She had a rich, mantling colour under her dark skin, and that curious fecund virginity of a mountain-catholic peasant.
“Ach! Ach! Only pantoffeln! Well — what do you say?” and the professor turned boisterously to Gilbert, changing into English. “It is a choice of evils. Which do you choose? Boots or slippers with no heels? Hein? Say the word, say the word.”
For once Gilbert was embarrassed. Marta was looking at him, and dangling the Japanese slippers. She had beautiful large grey eyes, slow and steady. He was rather carried away by her. Her brightish blue dress with the rose-sprigs was so telling. He looked at the professor, who, rigged out in neat patent-leather shoes, was rather pleased with his advantage.
“Well, what do you say? Say the word! Say the word!” sang the little professor in his resonant voice, his tired pale-blue eyes looking jocular.
At that juncture they heard a door open upstairs, and looking up, saw a woman in a dull-green silk dress leaning over the rails.
“Ach, is it you, Alfred!” she said, in an odd, cultured voice, half familiar, half excited.
“Ho Louise! Ho, you are there,” sang the little professor.
“Ja! Ja! We didn’t expect you.”
“I didn’t expect myself — ha-ha. Nor did I expect you. Ludwig is also there? Yes. Ha! Well! How is everybody? Thou? The children.”
Louise was coming down the stairs, slowly. She was a very beautiful woman, with rich, pomegranate
colouring and a beautifully chiselled face. Her soft dark-brown hair hung rather loose over her ears, coiled in a simple knot behind. She wore a long, beautiful scarf, frail and full of dull glimmers of greens and black and dead white. She was one of the women who naturally have a long scarf draping the shoulders, a look of wearing a robe rather than a modern dress.
“Ja — all well. You too? Good!” and Louise reached the bottom stair. She was looking at Gilbert. He had no more eyes for Marta, now Louise had come. The beauty of the mistress, rich in colour as that of the maid, had a lovely, pure, soft-cut form,- outdazzling the more oxen charm of the peasant girl. Louise knew her power.
“Mr Noon,” said Alfred in English. “You have never met my wife. Well, she is here. Louise, you know of Mr Noon, I told you of him in my letter to Dresden.”
“How do you do?” said Louise, in slow, but very charming English, giving her hand to Gilbert, and narrowing her beautiful grey eyes in an odd way of scrutiny she had. “And so you come all the way on foot? — Oh, my English, it is very bad, but you will forgive me. — Well then, come and have some tea. And bread and butter. Yes, I know you Englishmen, you want bread and butter with your tea. Come then.”
She turned to Marta, and saw the straw slippers.
“Aber — ! But what are you doing with the pantoffles, Marta?” she laughed mockingly.
“The gentleman will change his boots,” said the grave- eyed peasant girl.
“Ah — yes! Yes!” said Louise, looking at Gilbert’s wet and muddy boots.
“I’m not fit to come up either way,” said Gilbert.
“Not fit? Oh yes. Take the pantoffles. Oh, what does it matter? Yes, take them. We are simple people here. — Yes Marta,” she added in German — ”take the gentleman’s boots.”
And Marta kneeled beautifully at Gilbert’s feet. He blushed to his ears, and Louise saw it.
“No — no,” he said in his German. “I will do it.”
“Oh let her! let her!” cried Louise. “What does it matter? She is used.”
And so Gilbert sat confused whilst the beautiful, still peasant girl unfastened his thick boots and pulled them off. He pushed his feet into the straw slippers.
“And now come,” said Louise. “More cups, Marta, and some bread-and-butter — do you know?”
Gilbert paddled up in the heelless sandals, and felt a rare fool. He found himself in a long, yellow-amber-coloured room. A handsome white-haired lady with an arched nose rose from her chair and looked at Gilbert under her white, raised eyebrows, whilst she addressed Alfred in German, in a rather high voice.
“Oh yea, Alfred, and hast thou come all the way on foot, thou young fellow, thou! Hast thou no respect for thy white moustaches and little beard? Ach, the man, he runs across the land like a ferret.”
With which she turned to Gilbert. She was rather stout and handsome, in a black silk dress with a jabot of Venetian point, flaky, old lace.
“How do you do,” she sang, in slow, high-pitched English, on a note of lament. “And must we speak English? No — it is too difficolt — I can it no more. You will speak Gairman. — Come, my son-in-law has brought you through the country in the weather. Oh yea! Sit down please.”
But there was a third occupant of the room — Professor Ludwig Sartorius, from Bonn. He was a middle-aged man with a dark-brown beard streaked with grey, a bald forehead, and little, nervous, irascible dark eyes. He was well dressed in the English manner, in grey, carefully tailored and booted: and he wore a handsome tie of an orange colour. Evidendy something of a gallant: but of the irascible sort. He shook hands with Gilbert, and seated himself abruptly, only getting out the usual “How do you do,” pronounced very German.
The party now settled themselves. The Baroness was at the tea-table, lighting the spirit under the silver kettle. Professor Sartorius sprang up to do it for her, as if a gun had gone off, and fumbled wildly in his well-flattened pockets for matches.
“Oh sit still, sit still, Professor Sartorius,” said the Baroness, striking her matches calmly. “I am old enough to light my own tea-kettle, at my age — ” And she peered with shrewd, rather screwed-up blue eyes at the spirit-flame. It was evident there was no love lost between her and the gallant professor. He sat down looking crosser than ever, whilst poor little Alfred, with his pink face and white hair, shone like a daisy.
“Ah, Ludwig,” said the Frau Professor, “tell Alfred about Wendolf.”
The younger professor turned and began in German in a rather snarling voice. The Frau Professor — we will call her Louise, because she is Alfred’s wife, and it is shorter — settled her skirts and turned her low chair towards Gilbert. The softened light fell from behind her, and threw a shadow from her soft dark hair and her long dark lashes, upon her cheek. Marta came in with a tray, and Gilbert again turned fascinated to the full, dark, motionless face of the girl, with its unspeaking closed lips and meeting dark brows, as she stooped with the tray full under the rim of the lamp which stood on the tea- table. Mediaeval, remote, and impressive her face seemed, banded above with the black plait of hair.
Louise, sunk in her low chair, her dark-green dress with its pale, metallic lustre falling rather full round her feet, shaded her brow with her hand and watched Gilbert’s face. It looked to her young, and alert, and self-possessed, with its narrow, fine brows, and full dark-blue eyes, and pouting mouth. She watched him closely.
“You look at the maid,” she said in a mocking voice. “Is she not beautiful?”
Gilbert had been vaguely watching, not criticising, so it was in a hadn’t-thought-of-it tone he answered:
“Yes, I think she is.”
“Quite a beautiful type. She is a peasant from the mountains, and she is in love with a young forester, and she will soon marry him. She has been with me since she was almost a child, and we lo-ove her.”
Gilbert turned to Louise. She spoke the word lo-ove as if it were difficult to say, dragging it out and breaking the vowel. And she was looking up at him from under her shading hand, half-laughing, half-wistful, her grey eyes with their dark light looking soft and vulnerable. She was really very beautiful. The warmth of her colouring and the softness of her hair seemed to give her a warm, almost winsome glow. Odd, the half-laughing winsomeness, with a touch of irony and a touch of pathos. Gilbert watched her with round eyes.
“Is this your house then?” asked Gilbert.
“No, it is Mama’s. And Marta is lent. My house is at Maulberg, and my children. Today I have come to see Mama, and so I meet you. — Well — I shall be very banal, and ask you if you like Munich. Yes, you do? Oh, I am glad. Yes, I like it as much as any town in Germany, though I like Dresden almost as much. And you get on with your work? — Oh, I am glad. Yes, I am sure you will do well at Munich for a year, then I think you must go to Gottingen. Yes, Gottingen will be better for you in a year.”
“I must find some way of earning money,” said Gilbert.
“Ach, money. Do not bother, it will come.”
“What makes you know?” laughed Gilbert.
“Ah — ” and she made an odd gesture of reckless indifference — ”it always comes in these days. — And when you have your doctorate, you will write? — yes? You will write, and go to England to be a professor?”
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert. “What should I write — unless I try music?”
“Music! But music! But music is not pure mathematics, nor applied mathematics.” She laughed in a quick, girlish way, ironical too. “You will write music for England? — Well do! do! — And what will you write? An opera to begin with, I am sure.”
“No,” said Gilbert.
“Oh, you are joking! Everyone who writes music writes an opera in the first place. When he is an old man perhaps he will try to write just a song to sell to the music-hall, and so make money. Yes? Isn’t it so?”
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert.
“Perhaps you will begin with writing a song for the music- hall, out of your mathematics? Yes? Do
you think? ‘Just like the ivy on the old garden wa-all.’ So!”
“No,” laughed Gilbert. “I’ll do the opera in preference.”
“Ach yes! And then the ivy. I must sing English songs in French, and then I know they are funny. Before this I am troubled, you know. But I like the ivy —
‘Et comme le lierre Je vous grimperai — ”‘
“Ha-ha-ha!” rattled out Professor Sartorius, and he said in German: “That is a famous song, Louise, ‘Et comme le lierre je vous grimperai.’“ He tried to put some tune to it, but was tuneless. So he rattled with laughter, and added: “But where have you found it?”
“Oh, it is English. But I am so unsure, I feel I may be moved by English, so I must put it in French to be sure.”
“What is the English, what is the English?” cried Alfred, speaking up.
“Mr Noon will sing it to us, yes?”
But Gilbert shook his head.
“Then shall I sing it? You would like? — Ya, Mama, don’t look down your nose at me.
‘Jost like the ivee
On the old garden wa-all
Cling-ging so tightly
What e’er may befall — ’
Nein! Nein! I can’t sing any more.”
“What e’er may be — what?” cried Alfred.
“Be-fall!” said Louise, full-sounding.
“Yes — yes. Be-fall.”
“But finish the chorus,” said Gilbert.
“There is no je-vous-grimperai,” said Alfred, professorial.
“Ah, it is later.
‘As you grow older
I’ll be constantly true
And jost like the ivy
I’ll cling to you.’“
The professors burst into laughter.
“Nein!” said the Baroness. “No, it is too stupid. Louise, du Papagei, we are all highly-educated people here, God be praised. Mr Noon — a-nother cup of tea. Yes — Yes.”
“Aren’t German music-hall songs funny?” asked Gilbert.
“Oh yes! Oh yes! But only, you see, the funniness is different. But they are as bad. Oh yes. — You must forgive me for laughing. Only the song was told me in Dresden — ” and she began to laugh — “and I thought it was so funny — ”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 280