Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

III

Dear Roger,—I can't leave you alone, you see. I must write. But though I must write you need not read. Last night I was seized with misgivings —awful things for a hitherto placid Fräulein to be seized with—and I wrestled with them all night, and they won. So now, in the calm frostiness of the early morning atmosphere, I wish to inquire very seriously, very soberly, whether you have not made a mistake. In one sense, 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 not mistaken your own feelings, been hurled into the engagement by impulsiveness, by, if you choose, some spell I may unconsciously have put upon you? If you have even quite a faint misgiving about what you really feel for me, tell me—oh tell me straight and plainly, and we will both rub out that one weak hour with a sponge well soaked in common sense. It would not hurt so much, I think, now as it might later on. Up to last night, since you left, I've been walking on air. It is a most pleasant form of exercise, as perhaps you know. You not only walk on air, but you walk in what seems to be an arrested sunset, a bath of liquid gold, breathing it, touching it, wrapped in it. It really is most pleasant. 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 the painted 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 feet and spoiling their little bit of happiness. Quite unconsciously she blew on that glow of sunset in which I was flying, and it went out with the promptness and completeness of a tallow candle, and down came Rose-Marie with a thud. Yes, I did come down with a thud. You will never be able to pretend, however much you try, that I'm one of your fairy little women that can be lifted about, and dandled, and sugared with dainty diminutives, will you? Facts are things that are best faced. I stand five 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 the last plate away, and we were sitting alone—my father is not back yet from Weimar—she on one side of the table, I on the other, the lamp in the middle, your chair gaping empty, she, poor herself, knitting wool into warmth for the yet poorer at Christmas, I mending the towels you helped to wear out, while my spirit soared and made a joyful noise somewhere far away, up among angels and arch-angels and other happy beings,—said my step-mother, 'Why do you look so pleased?'

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

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

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

'Yes, you are blessed with a contented nature, that is true,' said my step-mother with a sigh, knitting faster. You remember her sighs, don't you? They are always to me very unaccountable. They come in such odd places. Why should she sigh because I have a contented nature? Ought she not rather to rejoice? But the extremely religious people I have known have 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 going on 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 being happy, and I don't believe really happy people are ever in the least aware that the sun is not shining. 'Oh well,' I hurried on, 'perhaps not an Italian blue sky, but still mild, and very sweet, and November always smells of violets, and that's another thing to be pleased about.'

'Violets?' echoed my step-mother, who dislikes all talk about things one can neither eat nor warm oneself with nor read about in the Bible. 'Do you not miss Mr. Anstruther,' she asked, getting off such flabbinesses as 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, so good-looking, and so well-connected may rise to anything. Martens tells me he has the most brilliant prospects. He will be a great ornament to the English diplomatic service. Martens says his father's hopes are all centred on this only son. And as he has very little money and much will be required, Roger,'—she said it indeed—'is to marry as soon as possible, some one who will help him in every way, some one as wealthy as she is well-born.'

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

'No one could help liking Roger,' she went on—Roger, do you like being Rogered?—' and my only fear is, and Martens fears it too, that he will entangle himself with some undesirable girl. Then he is ruined. There would 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, he has steered safely through a year often dangerous to young men. It is true 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 thoughts replace the foolish sentimentalness of earlier years,'—oh Roger, I'm twenty-five, and not a single one of my foolish sentimentalnesses has been replaced by anything at all. Do you think there is hope for me? Do you think it is very bad to feel exactly the same, just exactly as calf-like now as I did at fifteen?—'so that under my roof,' went on my step-mother, 'he has been perfectly safe. It would have been truly deplorable if his year in Germany had saddled him with a German wife from a circle beneath his own, a girl who had caught his passing fancy by youth and prettiness, and who would have spent the rest of her life dragging him down, an ever-present punishment with a faded face.'

She is eloquent, isn't she? Eloquent with the directness that instinctively 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 felt as though I would hide it for ever in stacks of mending, in tubs of soup, in everything domestic and drudging and appropriate. But some of the words you rained down on me on Tuesday night between all those kisses came throbbing through my head, throbbing with great throbs through my whole body—Roger, did I hear wrong, or were they not 'Lovely—lovely—lovely'? And always kisses between, and always again that 'Lovely—lovely—lovely'? Where am I getting to? Perhaps I had better stop.

R.-M.