'Then he engages a good nurse.'
'Or his children run wild.'
'Then he gets a severe aunt to live with him.'
'Or they grow up.'
'Then they take care of themselves.'
'Or he is an old man left with, say, one daughter.'
'Then she would take care of him.'
'And who would take care of her, Rose-Marie?'
'He would.'
'And if he is an incapable? An old person totally unable to notice lapses from convention, from social customs? If no one is there to tell her how to dress and how to behave? And she is growing up, and yet remains a barbarian, and the day is not far distant when she must go out, and he knows that when she does go out Jena will be astounded.'
'Does the barbarian live in Jena?'
'My dear, she is universal. Wherever there is a widower with an only female child, there she is.'
'But if she had been happy?'
'But she had not been happy. She used to cry.'
'Oh, of course she used to cry sometimes, when she thought more than usual of her sweet—of her sweet—But for all that she had been happy, and so had he. Why, you know he had. Didn't she look after him, and keep house for him? Didn't she cook for him? Not very beautifully, perhaps, but still she did cook, and there was dinner every day. Didn't she go to market three times a week, and taste all the butter? Didn't she help to do the rooms? And in the evenings weren't they happy together, with nobody to worry them? And then, when he missed his darling wife, didn't the barbarian always know he was doing it, and come and sit on his knee, and kiss him, and make up for it? Didn't she? Now didn't she?'
Papa unwound himself, and walked up and down with a desperate face.
'Girls of sixteen must learn how to dress and to behave. A father cannot show them that,' he said.
'But they do dress and behave.'
'Rose-Marie, unmended stockings are not dressing. And to talk to a learned stranger well advanced in years with the freedom of his equal in age and knowledge, as I saw one doing lately, is not behaving.'
'Oh, Papa, she wouldn't do that again, I'm certain.'
'She wouldn't have done it that once if she had had a mother.'
'But the poor wretch hadn't got a mother.'
'Exactly. A mother, therefore, must be provided.'
Here, I remember, there was a long pause. Papa walked, and I watched him in despair. Despair, too, was in his own face. He had had time to forget the doughnuts, and how cold he had been, and how hungry. So shaken was I that I actually suggested the engagement of a finishing governess to finish that which had never been begun, pointing out that she, at least, having finished would go; and he said he could not afford one; and he added the amazing statement that a wife was cheaper.
Well, I suppose she has been cheap: that is she has made one of Papa's marks go as far as two of other people's; but oh how expensive she has been in other ways! She has ruined us in such things as freedom, and sweetness, and light. You know the sort of talk here at meals. I wish you could have heard it before her time. She has such a strong personality that somehow we have always followed her lead; and Papa, who used to bubble out streams of gayety when he and I sat untidily on either side of a tureen of horrible bad soup, who talked of all things under heaven, and with undaunted audacity of many things in it, and who somehow put a snap and a sparkle into whatever he said, sits like a schoolboy invited to a meal at his master's, eager to agree, anxious to give satisfaction. The wax cloth on the table is clean and shiny; the spoons are bright; a cruet with clear oil and nice-looking vinegar stands in the midst; the food, though simple, is hot and decent; we are quite comfortable; and any of the other Jena Hausfraus coming in during a meal would certainly cry out Wie gemüthlich. But of what use is it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers and tidy shutters, when inside one's soul wanders through empty rooms, mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings it food, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired and there's not a chair to sit on?
Why I write all this I can't think; except that I feel as if I were talking to you. You must tell me if I bore you. When I begin a letter to you the great difficulty is to leave off again. Oh how warm it makes one feel to know that there is one person in the world to whom one is everything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvellous possession. No wonder people like having them. And I used to think that so silly. Heavens, what an absurd person I have been. Why, love is the one thing worth having. Everything else, talents, work, arts, religion, learning, the whole tremblement, are so many drugs with which the starved, the loverless, try to dull their pangs, to put themselves to sleep. Good-night, and God bless you a thousand times. R.-M.
VII
Dearest,—Your letter came this afternoon. How glad I was to get it. And I do think it a good idea to go down into the country to those Americans before your exam. Who knows but they may, by giving you peace at the right moment, be the means of making you pass extra brilliantly? That you should not pass at all is absolutely out of the question. Why have the gods showered gifts on you if not for the proper passing of exams? For I suppose in this as in everything else there are different ways, ways of excellence and mediocrity. I know which way yours will be. If only the presence of my spirit by your side on Saturday could be of use. But that's the worst of spirits: they never seem to be the least good unless they take their bodies with them. Yet mine burns so hotly when I am thinking of you—and when am I not thinking of you?—that I feel as if you actually must feel the glow of it as it follows you about. How strange and dreadful love is. Till you know it, you are so sure the world is very good and pleasant up in those serene, frost-bitten regions where you stand alone, breathing the thin air of family affection, shone upon gently by the mild and misty sun of general esteem. Then comes love, and pulls you down. For isn't it a descent? Isn't it? Somehow, though it is so great a glory, it's a coming-down as well—down from the pride of absolute independence of body and soul, down from the high-mightiness of indifference, to something fierce, and hot, and consuming. Oh, I daren't tell you how little of serenity I have left. At first, just at first, I didn't feel like this. I think I was stunned. My soul seemed to stand still. Surely it was extraordinary, that tempestuous crossing from the calm of careless friendship to the place where love dashes madly against the rocks? Don't laugh at my images. I'm in deadly earnest to-night. I do feel that love hurts. I do feel as if I'd been thrown on to rocks, left by myself on them to come slowly to my senses and find I am lying alone in a new and burning sun. It's an exquisite sort of pain, but it's very nearly unbearable. You see, you are so far away. And I, I'm learning for the first time in my life what it means, that saying about eating out one's heart.
R.-M.
VIII
Really, my dear Roger, nicest of all Bräutigams, pleasantest, best, and certainly most charming, I don't think I'll write to you again in the evenings. One of those hard clear hours that lie round breakfast-time will be the most seemly for consecration to you. Moods are such queer things, each one so distinct and real, so seemingly eternal, and I am influenced by them to an extraordinary degree. The weather, the time of day, the light in the room—yes, actually the light in the room, sunlight, cloudlight, lamplight—the scent of certain flowers, the sound of certain voices—the instant my senses become aware of either of these things I find myself flung into the middle of a fresh mood. And the worst part of it is the blind enthusiasm with which I am sure that as I think and feel at that moment so will I think and feel for ever. Nothing cures me. No taking of myself aside, no weight of private admonishment, no bringing of my spirit within the white glare of pure reason. Oh, women are fools; and of all fools the most complete is myself. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to say that I had to go to a Kaffee-Klatsch yesterday at four, which is why I put off answering your letter of the 13th till the evening. My dear Roger, you must take no notice of that letter. Pray think of me as a young person of sobriety; collected, discreet, cold to frostiness. Think of me like that, my dear, and in return I'll undertake to write to you only in my after-breakfast mood, quite the most respectable I possess. It is nine now. Papa, in the slippers you can't have forgotten, is in his corner by the stove, loudly disagreeing with the morning paper; he keeps on shouting Schafskopf. Johanna is carrying coals about and dropping them with a great noise. My step-mother is busy telling her how wrong it is to drop dirty coals in clean places. I am writing on a bit of the breakfast-table, surrounded by crumbs and coffee-cups. I will not clear them away till I've finished my letter, because then I am sure you'll get nothing either morbid or lovesick. Who, I'd like to know, could flame into love-talk or sink into the mud of morbidness from a starting-point of anything so sprightly as crumbs and coffee-cups?