Gende reader, gentille lecteuse, gentilissima lettrice, don’t you agree with me that Magdalen had only one fall, and that was when she fell to feet-washing. What a pity, what a thousand pities! However, it can’t be helped. Fall she did, and spilt her spikenard. No use crying over spilt spikenard either. But let me help you up, dear Magdalen, and let everybody wash his own feet. That’s sound logic, I believe.
The poor Hauptmann Rudolf von Daumling, however, was crying. He was crying for a dummy, and to have his not- particularly-beautiful feet washed with spikenard and long hair. Poor Johanna — how we throw that little adjective of condolence from side to side: poor Johanna had gone to the wrong shop with her wares. The above-mentioned substantial proof only proved a larger thorn in the flesh of the poetic captain, a thorn which had ceased to rankle, and now rankled again. Therefore his poetry, like pus, flowed from the wound. We are sorry to be distasteful, but so it strikes us. Fortunately the war came in time, and allowed him to fling his dross of flesh disdainfully down the winds of death, so that now he probably flies in all kinds of comforted glory. I hope really he’s not flying in our common air, for I shouldn’t like to breathe him. That is really my greatest trouble with disembodied spirits. I am so afraid of breathing them in, mixed up with air, and getting bronchitis from them.
Well, my dear Johanna has so far showed no spark of nobility, and if I can help it, she never shall. Therefore, oh sterner sex, bend your agitated brows away from this page, and suck your dummy of sympathy in peace. Far be it from me to disturb you. I am only too thankful if you’ll keep the indiarubber gag between your quivering, innocent lips. So, darling, don’t look at the nasty book any more: don’t you then: there, there, don’t cry, my pretty.
No one really takes more trouble soothing and patting his critics on the back than I do. But alas, all my critics are troubled with wind.
Now Mr Noon had a new suit on, grey with a brown thread in it: and a new grey hat: and he looked quite laa-di-dah.
Johanna eyed him with approval. This is still in Detsch station, with a porter standing holding the bag.
“Where am I going to put up?” asked Gilbert.
“Will you go to the Wolkenhof? They know us there. We always put friends up there. It’s a sort of family hotel place, not expensive.”
“It had better not be,” said Gilbert; “for I’ve got just a hundred and twenty Marks — just six pounds sterling.”
“In the world?” said Johanna.
“In the universe, till my father dies — and probably even then.”
“Well,” said Johanna, “I can give you some. Everard sent me a hundred dollars.”
“Wait a bit,” said Gilbert.
They drove to the Wolkenhof, a big, dull, brown place. Gilbert had a big attic under the roof, and looked down on streets and soldiers and drill-yards.
“I shan’t have to know you very well,” said Johanna. “You’re only just an acquaintance — or a friend, but not very intimate, you know.”
“All right,” said Gilbert.
Whereupon she left him.
He wandered about the old town. It was full of soldiers and officers: an endless parade of blue, waspy officers with swords and cloaks, who put his back up. They seemed to have favorite restaurants, and our Gilbert was always wonderstruck, when by accident he found himself in one of these restaurants and sat eating his asparagus — very good asparagus — and heard the clash of spurs in the doorway, saw the martial and supercilious salute. It did not occur to his north-country innocence that they were despising him and being in some way offensive. But he felt uncomfortable, and rather angry with everything. Up and down his spine went a creepy uncomfortableness and unease. But still, to him the brilliant blue officers were only wonder-figures, he had no human connection with them. Their heel-clicking, their super-martial salutes, their silver sword-points and their flowing cloaks — all this was a sort of spectacle to him, upon which he looked with curious wondering detachment. If they eyed him down their noses, from under the brim of their super-martial caps, well, he thought, this is only correct military deportment. He was himself so remote and civilian that the officers might have put fingers to their noses at him, with both hands, and he would only have found it some novel correctness in military deportment. If they had flourished naked swords before his blinking eyes, he would have smiled and bowed, thinking it all an essential part of the military mystery. Those were days of unblemished civilian innocence.
Yet he was uncomfortable in Detsch. The German language seemed to strangle in his throat. He couldn’t get it out. And he seemed not to be in his own skin. Which is a nasty feeling.
Johanna met him in the cathedral square and took him to the Wilhelmgarten, where her mother was waiting. The Baroness von Hebenitz was pleasant and curious about him. She kept glancing at him, as women of fifty-five will glance. She knew he was Johanna’s latest gallant, and wondered what to make of him. She summoned all her English, and asked him to take coffee there in the gardens.
The Wilhelmgarten was lovely with masses of lilac and laburnum in full bloom. The cathedral with its many spines, like a hedgehog pricking its ears, was in the background. Away down on the left wound the river, through the ancient houses of the old town. It was sunny and lovely and four- o’clock. But Gilbert was somewhat bewildered. He ate apple- cake and rich cream, and drank his cafe au lait there with the two women in the open air, whilst a military band played not far off, and elegant waspy officers paraded with super-elegant ladies in enormous Paris hats and glove-fitting dresses of lace or silk.
It was all so strange — the sunshine was so strong, the lilacs were like wonderful cathedrals of blossom, so full and massively in flower, the officers glittered and clicked in their pale blue and silver and scarlet. The Baroness talked in English and German, catching her breath oddly between the words. Johanna, in a dress of dull, smoke-coloured gauze stuff, with a delicate black hat, looked somehow strange to him. She was so shining, so assured, so super. There was no getting away from that curious German exaggeration.
Gilbert had noticed, at the entrance to the gardens, a board which said that it was forbidden to speak French in the Wilhelmgarten. There was a strange sense of unreality: intense, marvellous sunshine, massive, amazing flowers, and people all gleaming and assertive as if they sent out little flashes. It was uncomfortable and intensified, as if everything were focussed here under a burning-glass. The German language seemed to sparkle and crackle like fireworks going off. The women — it was so near to France — all looked so French and yet not French, so curiously definite. Everything was assertive — so assertive that Gilbert, with his sensitive musician’s tissue, felt often that he could not breathe.
He let the Baroness pay for the tea, and wondered afterwards if that was wrong. Johanna seemed assertive and self- brilliant like everybody else. She left him, saying she would call at the Wolkenhof next morning at ten.
So he roamed round the old, debated town, which all the time glittered with the military as with pale-blue glass. He was at a hopeless loose end, and not himself, not in his own skin. At nine o’clock he was thankful to climb upstairs to his big attic. And then he stood for a long time at the window, looking down at the strange, tiny marionette threading of people in the street below, far below, the lights glittering, and listening to the bugles and strange sounds from the barracks opposite.
The next day was Sunday. He would not see Johanna till after lunch. So he watched the amazing military parade of pale-blue officers and dazzling women, hard-souled, strange, either inhuman, or super-human men, not like men at all — all showing themselves off like splinters of bright-coloured opaque glass, there in the open place before the ancient, dark-grey cathedral. It was after mass, so Gilbert went in and looked at the shadowy, incense-perfumed interior — tall and gothic, tall like a forest of stupendously tall trees, from the low-stranded floor. It was all rather too much for him.
Johanna met him, and they walked into the country: flat, fortified,
depressing country. They walked along a canal, and saw squadron after squadron of blue infantry thresh heavily, with that awful German rhythm of march, along the white road coming in from the country.
Johanna was important with news. She had a cable from Everard. “Believe you have gone with Berry. Wire ganz richtig or nicht wahr.”
Gilbert looked a little pale. To be sure he wasn’t Berry, but he feared that Noon would smell no sweeter.
“Have you answered?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Why should I hurry!”
“Shall you wire ganz richtig?”
“How can I?”
Now ganz richtig means quite right, and nicht wahr means not true. Poor Everard was not quite right.
Gilbert asked about Berry: and Johanna told him all about the American: a fair, pleasant young business man, in the same matrimonial situation and of the same age as Rudolf, but of the mercurial rather than the despondent form of idealism.
“We were always motoring away into the country — but he’s the kind of irresponsible, all-above-board man people don’t talk about. He’s awfully nice, really. I hope you’ll meet him one day. We did awfully nice things. One day, deep in the forest, I took all my things off and ran naked through the trees. He said I was Daphne. I believe he loved it. But I was too much for him, really: though he laved me as a friend, he loved me quite wildly as a friend. But I was too much for him otherwise.”
“So you’ve not come away with Berry!”
“No I haven’t, have I,” she laughed.
“Why don’t you wire — Nicht Beere aber Mittag? — Not Berry but Noon?”
“Yes. It would be all up,” she said.
“Let it be all up. Don’t you want to?”
“I’m not so sure,” she said.
“Cable halb richtig — half right,” he said.
“Oh, I can’t,” she said.
She decided she would not cable till the morrow. Louise, her school-sister, was coming from Munich, arriving that evening: and Lotte, Johanna’s own sister, was arriving from Vienna next day.
Gilbert was now becoming rather depressed. He could see it was impossible for Johanna to go back to Boston: and it seemed to him inevitable that she should stay with him. And it depressed him — the tangle and nastiness of it all. He felt in a shabby and questionable position, hanging on there unacknowledged in that unnatural military town. And whether he would or not, he suffered from the peculiar assertive German callousness, he felt he was always being bumped. He rather blankly hung on, being of the bulldog breed.
The next morning Johanna came to his room at the Wolkenhof at ten in the morning. He heard a tap — opened — and there she was, radiant on the doorstep. They felt remote in that high attic. He locked the door.
Later on, talking almost to herself as she tidied her hair before his mirror, she said:
“Do you know, I was rather frightened that you weren’t a good lover. But it isn’t every man who can love a woman three times in a quarter of an hour — so well — is it — ?” and she looked round at him with a radiant and triumphant face, holding his comb in one hand. He almost blushed.
“How should I know?” he muttered, turning aside.
“I assure you it isn’t,” she said.
Vaguely through his mind went the thought — That’s the price she takes me at. Which thought was followed by a second: Yes, and I’d rather.
And yes, gentle reader — I hope to heaven the sterner sex has left off reading before now, so that I may address you alone — Yes, gentle reader, and at what better price can a woman take a man for good? A woman may have the most marvellous pure esteem for a man: but is that any reason why she should sleep with him? She may feel her soul carried away to mid-heaven by him: but does it therefore follow that she should unfasten her garters? They may behold in each other all sorts of spiritual, aesthetic, ethical, and intellectual miracles: but will this undo one single unrelenting button? It won’t. Then why on earth urge people to marry in Tolstoyan spiritual rapture, when as far as marriage goes, spirits, like angels, n ‘ont pas de quoi.
I can see absolutely no sounder ground for a permanent marriage than Johanna’s — three times in a quarter of an hour, and so well. Then you know what you’re in for. Then you’re down at the bed-rock of marriage. And why, gentle reader, the sterner sex — I won’t accuse you yourself; — why the sterner sex should have such a craving for the wings the wings of a dove, far away, far away from the bed-rock of marriage to fly, I really don’t know. Why he wants to soar in mid-heaven with a dummy in his enraptured lips, I cannot tell. It is one of the many mysteries.
“Bing — bang — bump goes the hammer on the anvil.”
Well, and life is a thing which is hammered out between the hammer and the anvil, it isn’t a feather wafted downwards from the flight of some soothing, sanctified dove. Man is a smith, and it behoves him to smite while the iron is hot, if ever he is to get any shape into life, or any sharpness on his plough-share.
Johanna and Gilbert went downstairs a little timorously. The Wolkenhof, where Baron von Hebenitz put all his guests, was quite famous as a semi-religious kind of family hotel — a tiny touch of the Y.M.C.A. about it. Johanna did not want to meet on the stairs the old Countess Kippenkegel, a chronic family friend and bygone lady-in-waiting of the Saxon court.
However, she met no one worse than the rather severe Swiss manageress, whom she greeted in her most innocent, naive, disarming fashion.
Johanna had agreed to meet Louise at the cathedral. The three were to talk-it-over.
Louise in the sunshine of the cathedral square, wearing a dress of fine, pale-purple cloth, was evidently about to rob Athena to pay Aphrodite.
“How do you do?” she smiled to Mr Noon. “I had not expected to meet you here in soch circumstances! Yes?”
Her manner was decidedly ironic.
“Hardly,” said Gilbert.
“Hardly, you say!” laughed Louise, knitting her brows in a cogitating way she had. “That is very nice. I like your hardly! Now, where shall we go to have a quiet talk. Shall we have chocolate at Beltrand’s — yes?”
“Nein,” said Johanna. “Kein chocolat, Louise.”
“No! Oh very well. Then let us go into the French park.”
So they went into the old, deserted, rather depressing park, and Louise took matters into her own hands. That is, first she took from her bag the cablegram.
“Now then,” she said, “we must settle this difficolty. — Believe you have gone with Berry. Wire ganz richtig or nicht wahr. — Well — ”
And she looked up at Gilbert and smiled her odd, wicked, sisterly smile.
“Well — ” she repeated, with all the irony of Athena cum Aphrodite — ”I think you are not this Berry — this black berry, whoever he may be — ”
“Nein Louise — er war nicht schwarz,” said Johanna. “He wasn’t black. He was beautiful like ripe wheat.”
“Ach, you simple soul, you! Ach, ripe wheat! What next! Ach — this cran-berry. — But we are very wicked, to joke over this serious business. Ach — poor Everard. I am sure it is very dreadful for him.”
She knew Everard well: he and she detested one another. They understood one another too well. They had worked together at Heidelberg.
Louise smoothed the telegram once more on her knee, with her well-gloved hand.
“Ganz richtig oder nicht wahr,” she repeated musingly. “But it is certainly not true: you are not this Berry. Ach, best cable not true. Best cable not true. Think of the life that is coming. Think of Johanna’s children. Ach, all the years which are before you. Best cable nicht wahr — much better — much better.”
“No,” said Gilbert. “She can’t go back. There’d be a catastrophe.”
“But why! But why! Why should there? Ach, he does not want to be told anything except nicht wahr. He does not want the truth. He wants only to be — to be assured, made sure. And for this he does not want the truth — not all the truth — only just the li
ttle bit which is komfortable — ha — !” and she laughed an odd, half bitter, half pathetic laugh. “You are so young, Mr Noon. When you are older you will not ask for the wolf’s head. You will not wish it — ha! You will want only three little hairs from his tail, to prove to you that he is a dead wolf. — Ja, Johanna, das ist wirklich so — ” and again she laughed her brief, hot, tired, cynical little laugh.
“Yes, I believe it,” said Johanna. “He wants to be told the comforting lie. But what about me?”
“Eben!’ cried Louise. “He wants the comfortable lie — and with that you are caught.”
“Wire,” said Gilbert, “wire not quite true, name wrong — ”
“Yes,” laughed Louise. “That is very nice. Wrong name — wrong Berry — not bil-berry but cran-berry. That is very nice — ”
She mused to a moment’s silence, then resumed:
“But we must not joke. It is not a laughing matter. Ach, you poor Johanna, how can I think of your years in front. Ach, it is so difficolt. There are the children — there is money — there is everything.”
“Oh,” cried Johanna, “there is quite as much on the other side.”
But there was a dismal silence in the park, whilst Gilbert looked at a massive horse-chestnut tree in full flower. What was life but a complication of artificial difficulties.
“I think,” said Louise, “it is best to cable nicht wahr, and wait for a time. Later — later — ”
“Yes perhaps — ” said Johanna.
“Don’t you think, Mr Noon?” said Louise.
“No,” said Gilbert. “It’s not a bit of good going on that way any further. Best make a clean cut. Best wire ganz richtig — it will save a calamity. There will only be a calamity later on.”
“Yes — yes — you think — ” mused Louise.
“But it isn’t quite right” said Johanna. “There isn’t any Berry.”
“There is me,” said Gilbert.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 284