But Onkel Heinrich, aware that he is the success and example of the family, and as intolerant as successes and examples are of laxer and poorer relations, waved Papa's banter aside with contempt, and proposed that instead of wasting any more of an already appallingly wasted life in idle dabblings in so-called literature he too should endeavor to get a post, however humble, in a bank in Berlin, and mend his ways, and earn an income of his own, and cease from living on an income acquired by marriages.
My step-mother punctuated his words with nods of approval.
'What, as a doorkeeper, eh, thou cistern filled with wisdom?' cried Papa, lifting his glass and drinking gayly to Tante Else, who glanced uneasily at her husband, he not yet having been, to her recollection, called a cistern.
'It is better,' said my step-mother, to whom a man so punctual, so methodical, and so well-salaried as Onkel Heinrich seemed wholly ideal, 'it is better to be a doorkeeper in—in-'
She was seized with doubt as to the applicability of the text, and hesitated.
'A bank?' suggested Papa pleasantly.
'Yes, Ferdinand, even in a bank rather than dwell in the tents of wickedness.'
'That,' explained Papa to Tante Else, leaning back in his chair and crossing his hands comfortably over what, you being English, I will call his chest, 'is my dear wife's poetic way—'
'Scriptural way, Ferdinand,' interrupted my step-mother. 'I know no poetic ways.'
'It is the same thing, meine Liebste. The Scriptures are drenched in poetry. Poetic way, I say, of referring to Jena.'
'Ach so,' said Tante Else, vague because she doesn't know her Bible any better than the rest of us Germans; it is only you English who have it at your fingers' ends; and, of course, my step-mother had it at hers.
'Tents,' continued Tante Else, feeling that as Hausfrau it was her duty to make herself conversationally conspicuous, and anxious to hide that she was privately at sea, 'tents are unwholesome as permanent dwellings. I should say a situation somewhere as doorkeeper in a healthy building was much to be preferred to living in nasty draughty things like tents.'
'Quatsch,' said Onkel Heinrich, with sudden and explosive bitterness; you remember of course that quatsch is German for silly, or nonsense, and that it is far more expressive, and also more rude, than either.
My step-mother opened her mouth to speak, but Tante Else, urged by her sense of duty, flowed on. 'You cannot,' she said, addressing Papa, 'be a doorkeeper unless there is a door to keep.'
'Let no one,' cried Papa, beating approving hands together, 'say again that ladies are not logicians.'
'Quatsch,' said Onkel Heinrich.
'And a door is commonly a—a-' She cast about for the word.
'A necessity?' suggested Papa, all bright and pleased attention.
'A convenience?' suggested my cousin Lieschen, the rather pretty unmarried daughter, a girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump red hands.
'An ornament?' suggested my cousin Elschen, the rather pretty married daughter, another girl with a neat head, an untidy body, and plump red hands.
'A thing you go in at?' I suggested.
'No, no,' said Tante Else impatiently, determined to run down her word.
'A thing you go out at, then?' said I, proud of the resourcefulness of my intelligence.
'No, no,' said Tante Else, still more impatiently. 'Ach Gott, where do all the words get to?'
'Is it something very particular for which you are searching?' asked my step-mother, with the sympathetic interest you show in the searchings of the related rich.
'Something not worth the search, we may be sure,' remarked Onkel Heinrich.
'Ach Gott,' said Tante Else, not heeding him, 'where do they—' She clasped and unclasped her fingers; she gazed round the room and up at the ceiling. We all sat silent, feeling that here there was no help, and watched while she chased the elusive word round and round her brain. Only Onkel Heinrich continued to eat herring salad with insulting emphasis.
'I have it,' she cried at last triumphantly.
We at once revived into a brisk attention.
'A door is a characteristic—'
'A most excellent word,' said Papa encouragingly. 'Continue, my dear.'
'It is a characteristic of buildings that are massive and that have windows and chimneys like other buildings.'
'Excellent, excellent,' said Papa. 'Definitions are never easy.'
'And—and tents don't have them,' finished Tante Else, looking round at us with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so much about something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping.
'Quatsch,' said Onkel Heinrich.
'My dear,' protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice these comments.
'I say it is quatsch,' said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemence startling in one so trim.
'Really, my dear,' said Tante Else.
'I repeat it,' said Onkel Heinrich.
'Do not think, my dear—'
'I do not think, I know. Am I to sit silent, to have no opinion, in my own house? At my own table?'
'My dear—'
'If you do not like to hear the truth, refrain from talking nonsense.'
'My dear Heinrich—will you not try—in the presence of—of relations, and of—of our children—' Her voice shook a little, and she stopped, and began with great haste and exactness to fold up her table-napkin.
'Ach—quatsch' said Onkel Heinrich again, irritably pushing back his chair.
He waddled to a cupboard—of course he doesn't get much exercise in his cage, so he can only waddle—and took out a box of cigars. 'Come, Ferdinand,' he said, 'let us go and smoke together in my room and leave the dear women to the undisturbed enjoyment of their wits.'
'I do not smoke,' said Papa briefly.
'Come then while I smoke,' said Onkel Heinrich.
'Nay, I fear thee, Heinrich,' said Papa. 'I fear thy tongue applied to my weak places. I fear thine eye, measuring their deficiencies. I fear thy intelligence, known to be great—'
'Worth exactly,' said Onkel Heinrich suddenly facing us, the cigarbox under his arm, his cross owl's eyes rounder than ever, 'worth exactly, on the Berlin brain market, eight thousand marks a year.'
'I know, I know,' cried Papa, 'and I admire—I admire. But there is awe mingled with my admiration, Heinrich,—awe, respect, terror. Go, thou man of brains and marketableness, thou man of worth and recognition, go and leave me here with these lesser intellects. I fear thee, and I will not watch thee smoke.'
And he got up and raised Tante Else's hand to his lips with great gallantry and wished her, after our pleasant fashion at the end of meals, a good digestion.
But Tante Else, though she tried to smile and return his wishes, could not get back again into her rôle of serene and conversational Hausfrau. My uncle waddled away, shooting a sniff of scorn over his shoulder as he went, and my aunt endeavored to conceal the fact that she was wiping her eyes. Lieschen and Elschen began to talk to me both at once. My step-mother cleared her throat, and remarked that successful public men often had to pay for their successes by being the victims at home of nerves, and that their wives, whose duty it is always to be loving, might be compared to the warm and soothing iron passed over a shirt newly washed, and deftly, by its smooth insistence, flattening away each crease.