Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther Read online

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  FRAeULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER

  BY THE AUTHOR OF

  "ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN," AND

  "THE PRINCESS PRISCILLA'S FORTNIGHT"

  NEW YORK

  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  1907

  FRAeULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER

  I

  Jena, Nov. 6th.

  Dear Roger,--This is only to tell you that I love you, supposing youshould have forgotten it by the time you get to London. The letter willfollow you by the train after the one you left by, and you will have itwith your breakfast the day after to-morrow. Then you will be eating themarmalade Jena could not produce, and you'll say, 'What a veryindiscreet young woman to write first.' But look at the Dear Roger, andyou'll see I'm not so indiscreet after all. What could be more sober?And you've no idea of all the nice things I could have put instead ofthat, only I wouldn't. It is a most extraordinary thing that this timeyesterday we were on the polite-conversation footing, you, in yourbeautiful new German, carefully calling me _gnaediges Fraeulein_ at everysecond breath, and I making appropriate answers to the Mr. Anstrutherwho in one bewildering hour turned for me into Dear Roger. Did youalways like me so much?--I mean, love me so much? My spirit is ratherunbendable as yet to the softnesses of these strange words, stiff forwant of use, so forgive a tendency to go round them. Don't you think itis very wonderful that you should have been here a whole year, livingwith us, seeing me every day, practising your German on me--oh, wasn't Ipatient?--and never have shown the least sign, that I could see, ofthinking of me or of caring for me at all except as a dim sort of younglady who assisted her step-mother in the work of properly mending andfeeding you? And then an hour ago, just one hour by that absurdcuckoo-clock here in this room where we said good-by, you suddenlyturned into something marvellous, splendid, soul-thrilling--well, intoDear Roger. It is so funny that I've been laughing, and so sweet thatI've been crying. I'm so happy that I can't help writing, though I dothink it rather gushing--loathsome word--to write first. But then youstrictly charged me not to tell a soul yet, and how can I keepaltogether quiet? You, then, my poor Roger, must be the one to listen.Do you know what Jena looks like to-night? It is the most dazzling placein the world, radiant with promise, shining and dancing with all sortsof little lovely lights that I know are only the lamps being lit inpeople's rooms down the street, but that look to me extraordinarily likestars of hope come out, in defiance of nature and fog, to give me aglorious welcome. You see, I'm new, and they know it. I'm not theRose-Marie they've twinkled down on from the day I was born tillto-night. She was a dull person: a mere ordinary, dull person, climbingdoggedly up the rows of hours each day set before her, doggedly doingcertain things she was told were her daily duties, equally doggedlycircumventing certain others, and actually supposing she was happy.Happy? She was not. She was most wretched. She was blind and deaf. Shewas asleep. She was only half a woman. What is the good or the beauty ofanything, alive or dead, in the world, that has not fulfilled itsdestiny? And I never saw that before. I never saw a great many thingsbefore. I am amazed at the suddenness of my awaking. Love passed throughthis house today, this house that other people think is just the samedull place it was yesterday, and behold--well, I won't grow magnificent,and it is what you do if you begin a sentence with Behold. But reallythere's a splendor--oh well. And as for this room where you--whereI--where we--well, I won't grow sentimental either, though now I know, Iwho always scoffed at it, how fatally easy a thing it is to be. That is,supposing one has had great provocation; and haven't I? Oh, haven't I?

  I had got as far as that when your beloved Professor Martens came in,very much agitated because he had missed you at the station, where hehad been to give you a send-off. And what do you think he said? He said,why did I sit in this dreary hole without a lamp, and why didn't I drawthe curtains, and shut out the fog and drizzle. Fog and drizzle? Itreally seemed too funny. Why, the whole sky is shining. And as for thedreary hole--gracious heavens, is it possible that just being old madehim not able to feel how the air of the room was still quivering withall you said to me, with all the sweet, wonderful, precious things yousaid to me? The place was full of you. And there was your darlingcoffee-cup still where you had put it down, and the very rug we stood onstill all ruffled up.

  'I think it's a glorious hole,' I couldn't help saying.

  '_De gustibus_' said he indulgently; and he stretched himself in theeasy-chair--the one you used to sit in--and said he should miss youngAnstruther.

  'Shall you?' said I.

  'Fraeulein Rose-Marie,' said he solemnly, 'he was a most intelligentyoung man. Quite the most intelligent young man I have ever had here.'

  'Really?' said I, smiling all over my silly face.

  And so of course you were, or how would you ever have found out thatI--well, that I'm not wholly unlovable?

  Yours quite, quite truly,

  R.-M.

  II

  Jena, Nov. 7th.

  Dear Roger,--You left on Tuesday night--that's yesterday--and you'll getto London on Thursday morning--that's to-morrow--and first you'll wantto wash yourself, and have breakfast--please notice my extremereasonableness--and it will be about eleven before you are able to beginto write to me. I shan't get the letter till Saturday, and today is onlyWednesday, so how can I stop myself from writing to you again, I shouldlike to know? I simply can't. Besides, I want to tell you all the heapsof important things I would have told you yesterday, if there had beentime when you asked me in that amazing sudden way if I'd marry you.

  Do you know I'm poor? Of course you do. You couldn't have lived with usa year and not seen by the very sort of puddings we have that we arepoor. Do you think that anybody who can help it would have _dicker Reis_three times a week? And then if we were not, my step-mother would neverbother to take in English young men who want to study German; she woulddo quite different sorts of things, and we should have different sortsof puddings,--proud ones, with _Schlagsahne_ on their tops--and twoservants instead of one, and I would never have met you. Well, you knowthen that we are poor; but I don't believe you know _how_ poor. Whengirls here marry, their parents give them, as a matter-of-course,house-linen enough to last them all their lives, furniture enough tofurnish all their house, clothes enough for several generations, and somuch a year besides. Then, greatly impoverished, they spend the eveningsof their days doing without things and congratulating themselves onhaving married off their daughter. The man need give only himself.

  You've heard that my own mother, who died ten years ago, was English?Yes, I remember I told you that, when you were so much surprised at whatyou called, in politest German, my colossally good English. From her Iknow that people in England do not buy their son-in-law's carpets andsaucepans, but confine their helpfulness to suggesting Maple. It is thehusband, they think, who should, like the storks of the Fatherland,prepare and beautify the nest for the wife. If the girl has money, somuch the better; but if she has not, said my mother, it doesn't put anabsolute stop to her marrying.

  Here, it does; and I belong here. My mother had some money, or my fatherwould never have let himself fall in love with her--I believe you cannip these things in the bud if you see the bud in time--and you know myfather is not a mercenary man; he only, like the rest of us, could notget away altogether from his bringing-up and the points of view he hadbeen made to stare from ever since he stared at all. It was a hundred ayear (pounds, thank heaven, not marks), and it is all we have exceptwhat he gets for his books, when he does get anything, which is never,and what my step-mother has, which is an annuity of a hu
ndred and fiftypounds. So the hundred a year will be the whole sum of my riches, for Ihave no aunts. What I want you to consider is the awfulness of marryinga woman absolutely without saucepans. Not a single towel will she beable to add to your linen-room, not a single pot to your kitchen. AllJena when it hears of it will say, 'Poor, infatuated young man,' and ifI had sisters all England would refuse in future to send its sons to mystep-mother. Why, if you were making a decently suitable marriage do yousuppose your _Braut_ would have to leave off writing to you at thispoint, in the very middle of luminous prophecy, and hurry into thekitchen and immerse herself in the preparation of potato soup? Yet thatis exactly what your _Braut,_ who has caught sight of the clock, isabout to do. So good-by.

  Your poor, but infinitely honest,

  R.-M.

  See how wise and practical I am today. I believe my letter last nightwas rather aflame. Now comes morning with its pails of cold water, anddrenches me back into discretion. Thank God, say I, for mornings.

  III

  Jena, Nov. 8th.

  Dear Roger,--I can't leave you alone, you see. I must write. But thoughI must write you need not read. Last night I was seized with misgivings--awful things for a hitherto placid Fraeulein to be seized with--and Iwrestled with them all night, and they won. So now, in the calmfrostiness of the early morning atmosphere, I wish to inquire veryseriously, very soberly, whether you have not made a mistake. In onesense, of course, you have. It is absurd, from a wordly point of view,for you to marry me. But I mean more than that: I mean, have you notmistaken your own feelings, been hurled into the engagement byimpulsiveness, by, if you choose, some spell I may unconsciously haveput upon you? If you have even quite a faint misgiving about what youreally feel for me, tell me--oh tell me straight and plainly, and wewill both rub out that one weak hour with a sponge well soaked in commonsense. It would not hurt so much, I think, now as it might later on. Upto last night, since you left, I've been walking on air. It is a mostpleasant form of exercise, as perhaps you know. You not only walk onair, but you walk in what seems to be an arrested sunset, a bath ofliquid gold, breathing it, touching it, wrapped in it. It really is mostpleasant. Well, I did that till last night; then came my step-mother,and catching at my flying feet pulled them down till they got to thepainted deal floors of Rauchgasse 5, Jena, and once having got there,stuck there. Observe, I speak in images. My step-mother, so respectable,so solidly Christian, would not dream of catching hold of anybody's feetand spoiling their little bit of happiness. Quite unconsciously she blewon that glow of sunset in which I was flying, and it went out with thepromptness and completeness of a tallow candle, and down came Rose-Mariewith a thud. Yes, I did come down with a thud. You will never be able topretend, however much you try, that I'm one of your fairy little womenthat can be lifted about, and dandled, and sugared with daintydiminutives, will you? Facts are things that are best faced. I standfive feet ten without my heels, and when I fall I do it with a thud.Said my step-mother, then, after supper, when Johanna had cleared thelast plate away, and we were sitting alone--my father is not back yetfrom Weimar--she on one side of the table, I on the other, the lamp inthe middle, your chair gaping empty, she, poor herself, knitting woolinto warmth for the yet poorer at Christmas, I mending the towels youhelped to wear out, while my spirit soared and made a joyful noisesomewhere far away, up among angels and arch-angels and other happybeings,--said my step-mother, 'Why do you look so pleased?'

  Slightly startled, I explained that I looked pleased because I waspleased.

  'But nothing has happened,' said my step-mother, examining me over herspectacles. 'You have been nowhere today, and not seen any one, and thedinner was not at all good.'

  'For all that I'm pleased. I don't need to go somewhere or see some oneto be pleased. I can be it quite by myself.'

  'Yes, you are blessed with a contented nature, that is true,' said mystep-mother with a sigh, knitting faster. You remember her sighs, don'tyou? They are always to me very unaccountable. They come in such oddplaces. Why should she sigh because I have a contented nature? Ought shenot rather to rejoice? But the extremely religious people I have knownhave all sighed an immense deal. Well, I won't probe into that now,though I rather long to.

  'I suppose it's because it has been a fine day,' I said, foolishly goingon explaining to a person already satisfied.

  My step-mother looked up sharply. 'But it has not been fine at all,Rose-Marie,' she said. 'The sun has not appeared once all day.'

  'What?' said I, for a moment genuinely surprised. I couldn't help beinghappy, and I don't believe really happy people are ever in the leastaware that the sun is not shining. 'Oh well,' I hurried on, 'perhaps notan Italian blue sky, but still mild, and very sweet, and November alwayssmells of violets, and that's another thing to be pleased about.'

  'Violets?' echoed my step-mother, who dislikes all talk about things onecan neither eat nor warm oneself with nor read about in the Bible. 'Doyou not miss Mr. Anstruther,' she asked, getting off such flabbinessesas quickly as she could, 'with whom you were so constantly talking?'

  Of course I jumped. But I said 'yes,' quite naturally, I think.

  It was then that she pulled me down by the feet to earth.

  'He has a great future before him,' she said. 'A young man so clever, sogood-looking, and so well-connected may rise to anything. Martens tellsme he has the most brilliant prospects. He will be a great ornament tothe English diplomatic service. Martens says his father's hopes are allcentred on this only son. And as he has very little money and much willbe required, Roger,'--she said it indeed--'is to marry as soon aspossible, some one who will help him in every way, some one as wealthyas she is well-born.'

  I murmured something suitable; I think a commendation of the plan asprudent.

  'No one could help liking Roger,' she went on--Roger, do you like beingRogered?--' and my only fear is, and Martens fears it too, that he willentangle himself with some undesirable girl. Then he is ruined. Therewould be no hope for him.'

  'But why-' I began; then suffocated a moment behind a towel. 'But why,'I said again, gasping, 'should he?'

  'Well, let us hope he will not. I fear, though, he is soft. Still, hehas steered safely through a year often dangerous to young men. It istrue his father could not have sent him to a safer place than my house.You so sensible-' oh Roger!

  'Besides being arrived at an age when serious and practical thoughtsreplace the foolish sentimentalness of earlier years,'--oh Roger, I'mtwenty-five, and not a single one of my foolish sentimentalnesses hasbeen replaced by anything at all. Do you think there is hope for me? Doyou think it is very bad to feel exactly the same, just exactly ascalf-like now as I did at fifteen?--'so that under my roof,' went on mystep-mother, 'he has been perfectly safe. It would have been trulydeplorable if his year in Germany had saddled him with a German wifefrom a circle beneath his own, a girl who had caught his passing fancyby youth and prettiness, and who would have spent the rest of her lifedragging him down, an ever-present punishment with a faded face.'

  She is eloquent, isn't she? Eloquent with the directness thatinstinctively finds out one's weak spots and aims straight at them.'Luckily,' she concluded, 'there are no pretty faces in Jena just now.'

  Then I held a towel up before my own, before my ignominious face,excluded by a most excellent critic from the category pretty, and feltas though I would hide it for ever in stacks of mending, in tubs ofsoup, in everything domestic and drudging and appropriate. But some ofthe words you rained down on me on Tuesday night between all thosekisses came throbbing through my head, throbbing with great throbsthrough my whole body--Roger, did I hear wrong, or were they not'Lovely--lovely--lovely'? And always kisses between, and always againthat 'Lovely--lovely--lovely'? Where am I getting to? Perhaps I hadbetter stop.

  R.-M.

  IV

  Jena, Nov. 12th.

  Dearest of Living Creatures, the joy your dear, dear letters gave me!You should have seen me seize the postman. His very fingers seemedrosy-tipped as
he gave me the precious things. Two of them--twolove-letters all at once. I could hardly bear to open them, and put anend to the wonderful moment. The first one, from Frankfurt, was sosweet--oh, so unutterably sweet--that I did sit gloating over theunbroken envelope of the other for at least five minutes, luxuriating,purring. I found out exactly where your hand must have been, by thesimple process of getting a pen and pretending to write the addresswhere you had written it, and then spent another five minutes mostprofitably kissing the place. Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, butthere shall be no so-called maidenly simperings between you and me, nopretences, no affectations. If it was silly to kiss that blessedenvelope, and silly to tell you that I did, why then I was silly, andthere's an end of it.

  Do you know that my mother's maiden name was Watson? Well, it was. Ifeel bound to tell you this, for it seems to add to my ineligibleness,and my duty plainly is to take you all round that and expatiate on itfrom every point of view. What has the grandson of Lord Grasmere--younever told me of Lord G. before, by the way--to do with thegranddaughter of Watson? I don't even rightly know what Watson was. Hewas always for me an obscure and rather awful figure, shrouded inmystery. Of course Papa could tell me about him, but as he never has,and my mother rarely mentioned him, I fancy he was not anything I shouldbe proud of. Do not, then, require of me that I shall tear the veil fromWatson.

  And of course your mother was handsome. How dare you doubt it? Look inthe glass and be grateful to her. You know, though you may only havecome within the spell of what you so sweetly call my darling brown eyesduring the last few weeks, I fell a victim to your darling blue ones inthe first five minutes. And how great was my joy when I discovered thatyour soul so exactly matched your outside. Your mother had blue eyes,too, and was very tall, and had an extraordinarily thoughtful face.Look, I tell you, in the glass, and you'll see she had; for I refuse tobelieve that your father, a man who talks port wine and tomatoes thewhole of the first meal he has with his only son after a year'sseparation, is the parent you are like. Heavens, how I shake when Ithink of what will happen when you tell him about me. 'Sir,' he'll say,in a voice of thunder--or don't angry English parents call their sons'sir' any more? Anyhow, they still do in books--'Sir, you are far tooyoung to marry. Young men of twenty-five do not do such things. Thelady, I conclude, will provide the income?