Papa gazed at my step-mother with admiring astonishment while she elaborated this image. He had hold of Tante Else's hand and was stroking it. His bright eyes were fixed on his wife, and I could see by their expression that he was trying to recall the occasions on which his own creases had been ironed out.
With the correctness with which one guesses most of a person's thoughts after you have lived with him ten years, my step-mother guessed what he was thinking. 'I said public men,' she remarked, 'and I said successes.'
'I heard, I heard, meine Liebste,' Papa assured her, 'and I also completely understand.'
He made her a little bow across the table. 'Do not heed him, Else, my dear,' he added, turning to my aunt. 'Do not heed thy Heinrich—he is but a barbarian.'
'Ferdinand!' exclaimed my step-mother.
'Oh no,' sighed Tante Else, 'it is I who am impatient and foolish.'
'I tell thee he is a barbarian. He always was. In the nursery he was, when, yet unable to walk, he crawled to that spot on the carpet where stood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy with the playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into them made holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she saw them, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalking the flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistened finger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure of his prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent over his desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue's sleeve or trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while the victim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasing uneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolonged absence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comrades who served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not here repeat. And as a husband—yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has not lost it—he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.'
'Oh, no, no,' sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearful interest.
'Ferdinand,' said my step-mother angrily, 'your tongue is doing what it invariably does, it is running away with you.'
'Why are married people always angry with each other?' asked Lieschen, the unmarried daughter, in a whisper.
'How can I tell, since I am not married?' I answered in another whisper.
'They are not,' whispered Elschen with all the authority of the lately married. 'It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. We kiss.'
'That is true,' said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not without a touch of envy. 'I have repeatedly seen you doing it.'
'Yes,' said Elschen placidly.
'Is there no alternative?' I inquired.
'No what?'
'Alternative.'
'I do not know what you mean by alternative, Rose-Marie,' said Elschen, trying to twist her wedding-ring round on her finger, but it couldn't twist because it was too deeply embedded. 'Where do you get your long words from?'
'Must one either quarrel or kiss?' I asked. 'Is there no serene valley between the thunderous heights on the one hand and the swampy enervations on the other?'
To this Elschen merely replied, while she stared at me, 'Grosser Gott.'
'You are a queer cousin,' said Lieschen, giggling again, the giggle this time containing a touch of contempt, her giggles never being wholly unadulterated. 'I suppose it is because Onkel Ferdinand is so poor.'
'I expect it is,' said I.
'He has hardly any money, has he?'
'I believe he has positively none.'
'But how do you live at all?'
'I can't think. It must be a habit.'
'You don't look very fat.'
'How can I, when I'm not?'
'You must come and see my baby,' said Elschen, apparently irrelevantly, but I don't think it really was; she thought a glimpse of that, I am sure, refreshing baby would cure most heartsicknesses.
'Yes, yes, it is a splendid baby,' said Lieschen, brightening, 'and its wardrobe is trimmed throughout with the best Swiss embroidery threaded with beautiful blue ribbons. It cost many hundred marks, I assure you. There is nothing that is not both durable and excellent. Elschen's mother-in-law is a very rich lady. She gave it all. She keeps two servants, and they wear washing dresses and big white aprons, just like English servants. Elschen's mother-in-law says it is a great expense because of the laundry bills, but that she doesn't mind. If you were going to stay longer, and had got the necessary costumes, we might have taken you to see her, and she might perhaps have asked you to stay to coffee.'
'Really?' said I, in a voice of concern.
'Yes. It is a pity for you. You would then see how elegant Berlin people are. I expect this—' she waved her hand—'is quite different from Jena, and seems strange to you, but it is nothing, I assure you nothing at all, compared to Elschen's mother-in-law's furniture and food.'
'Really?' said I, again with concern.
I did a dreadful thing next morning at breakfast: I broke a jug. Never shall I forget the dismay and shame of that moment. Really I am rather a deft person, used to jugs, and not, as a rule, of hasty or unconsidered movements. It was, I think, the electric current streaming out of Onkel Heinrich that had at last reached me too and galvanized me into a nervous and twitching behavior. He came in last, and the moment he appeared words froze, smiles vanished, eyes fell, and Papa's piping alone continued to be heard in the cheerless air. I don't know what had passed between him and Tante Else since last we had seen him, but his opaque black eyes were crosser and blacker than ever. Perhaps it was only that he had smoked more than was good for him, and the whole family was punished for that over-indulgence. I could not help reflecting how lucky it was that we were his relations and not hers; what must happen to hers if they ever come to see her I dare not think. It was while I was reflecting on their probable scorched and shrivelled condition, and at the same time was eagerly passing him some butter that I don't think he wanted but that I was frantically afraid he might want, that my zealous arm swept the milk-jug off the table, and it fell on the varnished floor, and with a hideous clatter of what seemed like malicious satisfaction smashed itself to atoms.
'There now,' cried my step-mother casting up her hands, 'Rose-Marie all over.'
'I am very sorry,' I stammered, pushing back my chair and gathering up the pieces and mopping up the milk with my handkerchief.
'Dear niece, it is of no consequence,' faltered Tante Else, her eyes anxiously on her husband.
'No consequence?' cried he—and his words sounded the more terrific from their being the first, beyond a curt good morning, that he had uttered. 'No consequence?'
And when my shameful head reappeared above the table and I got on to my feet and carried the ruins to a sideboard, murmuring hysterical apologies as I went, he pointed with a lean finger to what had once been a jug and said with an owlish solemnity and weightiness of utterance I have never heard equalled, 'It was very expensive.' I can't tell you how glad, how thankful I was to get home.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
LV
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I shall send this to Jermyn Street, as it can no longer catch you in Italy. Jena is not on the way from London to Berlin, and I don't know what map persuaded you that it was. It is very faithful and devoted of you to want so much to see Professor Martens again, but you know he is a busy man, and for five minutes with him as he rushes from a lecture to a private lesson it hardly seems worth while to make such a tremendous détour. Why, you would be hours pottering about on branch lines and at junctions, and would never, I am certain, see your luggage again. Still, it is not for me to refuse your visit to Professor Martens on his behalf who as yet knows nothing about it. I merely advise; and you know I do not easily miss an opportunity of doing that.