In my turn I stared. 'Suppose you go on with the story,' I said, remembering the hopelessness of ever following the train of Joey's thoughts.
Well, there appears to have been a gloom after that over the festivities. You are to understand that it all took place round the Christmas tree in the best parlor, Frau von Lindeberg in her black silk and lace high-festival dress, Herr von Lindeberg also in black with his orders, Vicki in white with blue ribbons, the son, come down for the occasion, in the glories of his dragoon uniform with clinking spurs and sword, and the servant starched and soaped in a big embroidered apron.
In the middle of these decently arrayed rejoicers, the candles on the tree lighting up every inch of him, stood Joey in a Norfolk jacket, gaiters, and green check tie. 'I was goin' to dress afterward for dinner,' he explained plaintively, 'but how could a man guess they'd all have got into their best togs at four in the afternoon? I felt an awful fool, I can tell you.'
'I expect you looked one too,' said I with cheerful conviction.
There appears, then, to have descended a gloom after the necklace incident on the party, and a gloom of a slightly frosty nature. Vicki, it is true, was rather melting than frosty, her eyes full of tears, her handkerchief often at her nose, but Papa Lindeberg was steeped in gloom, and Frau von Lindeberg was sad with the impressive Christian sadness that does not yet exclude an occasional wan smile. As for the son, he twirled his already much twirled mustache and stared very hard at Joey.
When the presents had been given, and Joey found himself staggering beneath a waistcoat Vicki had knitted him, and a pair of pink bed-socks Frau von Lindeberg had knitted him, and an empty photograph frame from Papa Lindeberg, and an empty purse from the son, and a plate piled miscellaneously with apples and nuts and brown cakes with pictures gummed on to them, he observed Frau von Lindeberg take her husband aside into the remotest corner of the room and there whisper with him earnestly and long. While she was doing this the son, who knew no English, talked with an air of one who proposed to stand no nonsense to Joey, who knew no German, and Vicki, visibly depressed, slunk round the Christmas tree blowing her nose.
Papa Lindeberg, says Joey, came out of the corner far more gloomy than he went in; he seemed like a man urged on unwillingly from behind, a man reluctant to advance, and yet afraid or unable to go back. 'I beg to speak with you,' he said to Joey, with much military stiffness about his back and heels.
'Now wasn't I right?' I interrupted triumphantly.
'Poor old beggar,' said Joey, 'he looked frightfully sick.'
'And didn't you?'
'No,' said Joey grinning.
'Most young men would have.'
'But not this one. This one went off with him trippin' on the points of his toes, he felt so fit.'
'Well, what happened then?'
'Oh, I don't know. He said a lot of things. I couldn't understand 'em, and I don't think he could either, but he was very game and stuck to it once he'd begun, and went on makin' my head spin and I daresay his own too. Long and short of it was that in this precious Fatherland of yours the Vickis don't accept valuables except from those about to become their husbands.'
'I should say that the Vickis in your own or any other respectable Fatherland didn't either,' said I.
'Well, I'm not arguin', am I?'
'Well, go on.'
'Well, it seemed pretty queer to think I was about to become a husband, but there was nothin' for it--the little girl, you see, couldn't be done out of her necklace just because of that.'
'I see,' said I, trying to.
'On Christmas Day too--day of rejoicin' and that, eh?'
'Quite so,' said I.
'So I said I was his man.'
'And did he understand?'
'No. He kept on sayin' 'What?' and evidently cursin' the English language in German. Then I suggested that Vicki should be called in to interpret. He understood that, for I waved my arms about till he did, but he said her mother interpreted better, and he would call her instead. I understood that, and said 'Get out.' He didn't understand that, and while he was tryin' to I went and told his wife that he'd sent for Vicki. Vicki came, and we got on first rate. First thing I did was to pull out the necklace and put it round her neck. 'Pretty as paint, ain't she?' I said to the old man. He didn't understand that either, but Vicki did and laughed. 'You give her to me and I give the necklace to her, see?' I said, shoutin', for I felt if I shouted loud enough he wouldn't be able to help understandin', however naturally German he was.
'Tell him how simple it is,' I said to Vicki. Vicki was very red but awfully cheerful, and laughed all the time. She explained, I suppose, for he went out to call his wife. Vicki and I stayed behind, and--'
'Well?'
'Oh well, we waited.'
'And what did Frau von Lindeberg say?'
'Oh, she was all right. Asked me a lot about the governor. Said Vicki's ancestors had fought with the snake in the Garden of Eden, or somebody far back like that--ancient lineage, you know--son-in-law must be impressed. I told her I didn't think my old man would make any serious objection to that. 'To what?' she called out, looking quite scared--they seem frightfully anxious to please the governor. 'He don't like ancestors,' said I. 'Ain't got any himself and don't hold with 'em.' She pretended she was smilin', and said she supposed my father was an original. 'Well,' said I, goin' strong for once in the wit line, 'anyhow he's not an aboriginal like Vicki's lot seem to have been.' Pretty good that, eh? Seemed to stun 'em. Then the son came in and shook both my hands for about half an hour and talked a terrific lot of German and was more pleased about it than any one else, as far as I could see. And then--well, that's about all. So I pulled off my little game rather neatly, what?'
'Yes, if it was your little game,' said I, with a faint stress on the your.
'Whose else should it be?' he asked, looking at me open-mouthed.
'Vicki is a little darling,' was my prudent reply, 'and I congratulate you with all my heart. Really I am more delighted about this than I can remember ever being about anything--more purely delighted, without the least shadow on my honest pleasure.'
And all Joey vouchsafed as a reward for my ebullition of real feeling was the information that he considered me quite a decent sort.
So you see we are very happy up on the Galgenberg just now; the lovers like a pair of beaming babies, Frau von Lindeberg, sobered by the shock of her good fortune into the gentle kindliness that so often follows in the wake of a sudden great happiness, Papa Lindeberg warmed out of his tortoise-in-the-sun condition into much busy letter-writing, and Vicki's brother so uproariously pleased that I can only conclude him to be the possessor of many debts which he proposes to cause Joey to pay. Life is very thrilling when Love beats his wings so near. There has been a great writing to Joey's father, and Papa too has written, at my dictation, a letter rosy with the glow of Vicki's praises. Joey thinks his father will shortly appear to inspect the Lindebergs. He seems to have no fears of parental objections. 'He's all right, my old man is,' he says confidently when I probe him on the point; adding just now to this invariable reply, 'And look here, Miss Schmidt, Vicki's all right too, you see, so what's the funk about?'
'I don't know,' said I; and I didn't even after I had secretly looked in the dictionary, for it was empty of any explanation of the word funk.
Yours, deeply interested in life and lovers,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
LXV
Galgenberg, Dec. 31st.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--My heartiest good wishes for the New Year. May it be fruitful to you in every pleasant way; bring you interesting work, agreeable companions, bright days; and may it, above all things confirm and strengthen our friendship. There now; was ever young man more thoroughly fitted out with invoked blessings? And each one wished from the inmost sincerity of my heart.
But we can't come to Berlin as you suggest we should, and allow ourselves to be shown round by you. Must I say thank you? No, I don't think I will. I will not pretend conventionality with you, and I do not thank you, for I don't like to have to believe that you really thought I would come. And then your threat, though it amused me, vexed me too. You say if I don't come you will be forced to suppose that I'm afraid of meeting you. Kindly suppose anything you like. After that of course I will not come. What a boy you are. And what an odd, spoilt boy. Why should I be afraid of meeting you? Is it, you think, because once--see, I am at least not afraid of speaking of it--you passed across my life convulsively? I don't know that any man could stir me up now to even the semblance of an earthquake. My quaking days are done; and after that one thunderous upheaval I am fascinated by the charm of quiet weather, and of a placid basking in a sunshine I have made with my very own hands. It is useless for you to tell me, as I know you will, that it is only an imitation of the real thing and has no heat in it. I don't want to be any hotter. In this tempestuous world where everybody is so eager, here is at least one woman who likes to be cool and slow. How strange it is the way you try to alter me, to make me quite different. There seems to be a perpetual battering going on at the bulwarks of my character. You want to pull them down and erect new fabrics in their place, fabrics so frothy and unreal that they are hardly more than fancies and would have to be built up afresh every day. Yet I know you like me, and want to be my friend. You make me think of those quite numerous husbands who fall in love with their wives because they are just what they are, and after marriage expend their energies training them into something absolutely different. There was one in Jena while we were there who fell desperately in love with a little girl of eighteen, when he was about your age, and he adored her utterly because she was so divinely silly, ignorant, soft and babyish. She knew nothing undesirable, and he adored her for that. She knew nothing desirable either, and he adored her for that too. He adored her to such an extent that all Jena, not given overmuch to merriment, was distorted with mirth at the spectacle. He was a clever man, a very promising professor, yet he found nothing more profitable than to spend every moment he could spare adoring. And his manner of adoring was to sit earnestly discovering, by means of repeated experiment, which of his fingers fitted best into her dimples when she laughed, and twisting the tendrils of her hair round his thumbs in an endless enjoyment of the way, when he suddenly let them go, they beautifully curled. He did this quite openly, before us all, seeing I suppose no reason why he should dissemble his interest in his future wife's dimples and curls. But alas for the dimples and curls once she was married! _Oh weh,_ how quickly he grew blind to them. And as for the divine silliness, ignorance, softness and babyishness that had so deeply fascinated him, just those were what got most on to his nerves. He tried to do away with them, to replace them by wit and learning combined with brilliant achievements among saucepans and shirts, and the result was disastrous. His little wife was scared. Her dimples disappeared from want of practice. Her pretty colors seemed suddenly wiped out, as though some one had passed over them roughly with a damp cloth. Her very hair left off curling, and was as limp and depressed as the rest of her. Let this, Mr. Anstruther, be an awful warning to you, not only when you marry but now at once in regard to your friends. Do not attempt to alter those long-suffering persons. It is true you would have some difficulty in altering a person like myself, long ago petrified into her present horrid condition, but even the petrified can and do get tired of hearing the unceasing knocking of the reforming mallet on their skulls. Leave me alone, dear young man. Like me for anything you find that can be liked, express proper indignation at the rest of me, and go your way praising God Who made us all. Really it would be a refreshment if you left off for a space imploring me to change into something else. There is a ring about your imploring as if you thought it was mere wilfulness holding me back from being and doing all you wish. Believe me I am not wilful; I am only petrified. I can't change. I have settled down, very comfortably I must say, to the preliminary petrifaction of middle age, and middle age, I begin to perceive, is a blessed period in which we walk along mellowly, down pleasant slopes, with nothing gusty and fierce able to pierce our incrustation, no inward volcanoes able to upset the surrounding rockiness, nothing to distract our attention from the mild serenity of the landscape, the little flowers by the way, the beauty of the reddening leaves, the calm and sunlit sky. You will say it is absurd at twenty-six to talk of middle age, but I feel it in my bones, Mr.
Anstruther, I feel it in my bones. It is after all simply a question of bones. Yours are twenty years younger than mine; and did I not always tell you I was old?
I am so busy that you must be extra pleased, please, to get a letter today. The translation of Papa's book has ended by interesting me to such an extent that I can't leave off working at it. I do it officially in his presence for an hour daily, he as full of mistrust of my English as ever, trying to check it with a dictionary, and using picturesque language to convey his disgust to me that he should be so imperfectly acquainted with a tongue so useful. He has forgotten the little he learned from my mother in the long years since her death, and he has the natural conviction of authors in the presence of their translators that the translator is a grossly uncultured person who will leave out all the _nuances_. For an hour I plod along obediently, then I pretend I must go and cook. What I really do is to run up to my bedroom, lock myself in, and work away feverishly for the rest of the morning at my version of the book. It is, I suppose, what would be called a free translation, but I protest I never met anything quite so free. Papa's book is charming, and the charm can only be reproduced by going repeatedly wholly off the lines. Accordingly I go, and find the process exhilarating and amusing.
The thing amuses and interests me; I wonder if it would amuse and interest other people? I fear it would not, for when I try to imagine it being read by my various acquaintances my heart sinks with the weight of the certainty that it couldn't possibly. I imagine it in the hands of Joey, of Frau von Lindeberg, of different people in Jena, and the expression my inner eye sees on their faces makes me unable for a long while to go on with it. Then I get over that and begin working again at my salad. It really is a salad, with Papa as the groundwork of lettuce, very crisp and fresh, and myself as the dressing and bits of garnishing beetroot and hard-boiled egg. I work at it half the night sometimes, so eager am I to get it done and sent off. Yes, my young friend, I have inherited Papa's boldness in the matter of sending off, and the most impressive of London publishers is shortly to hold it in his sacred hands. And if his sacred hands forget themselves so far as to hurl it rudely back at me they yet can never take away the fun I have had writing it.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
Joey's father is expected to-morrow, and the whole Galgenberg is foggy with the fumes of cooking. Once his consent is given the engagement will be put in the papers and life will grow busy and brilliant for Frau von Lindeberg. She talks of removing immediately to Berlin, there to give a series of crushingly well-done parties to those of her friends who are supposed to have laughed when Vicki was thrown over by her first lover.
I don't believe they did laugh; I refuse to believe in such barbarians; but Frau von Lindeberg, grown frank about that disastrous story now that it has been so handsomely wiped off Vicki's little slate, assures me that they did. She doesn't seem angry any longer about it, being much too happy to have room in her heart for wrath, but she is bent on this one form of revenge. Well, it is a form that will gratify everybody, revenger and revengee equally I should think.
LXVI
Galgenberg, Jan. 7th.