'You are twenty-six--I know your age because poor Emilie'--Emilie was my
step-mother--'was married ten years, and when she married you were
sixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I had
already had four children. What do you think of that?'
I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to the
waiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean,
honest--'
'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyer
with a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the first
coffee-party of the season--'
'What, in summer?'
'It is not summer in September. If the weather chooses to pretend it is
I cannot help it. It is autumn, and I will no longer endure the want of
social gatherings. Invariably I find the time between the last Coffee of
spring and the first of autumn almost unendurable. What do you do,
Rose-Marie, up there on that horrible mountain of yours, to pass the
time?'
Pass the time? I who am so much afraid of Time's passing me that I try
to catch at him as he goes, pull him back, make him creep slowly while I
squeeze the full preciousness out of every minute? I gazed at her
abstractedly, haunted by the recollection of flying days, days gone so
quickly, vanished before I well knew how happy I was being. 'I really
couldn't tell you,' I said.
'Hard-working, clean, honest,--' read out the Fräulein, reminding me
that I was busy.
'Moral,' I dictated, 'able to wash--'
'You will never find one,' interrupted Frau Meyer again. 'At least,
never one who is both moral and able to wash. Two good things don't go
together with these girls, I find. The trouble I am in for want of one!
They are as scarce and as expensive as roses in December. Since April I
have had three, and all had to leave by the merest accident--nothing at
all to do with the place or me; but the ones in there seem to know there
have been three in the time, and make the most extravagant demands. I
have been here the whole morning, and am in despair.'
She stopped to fan herself with her handkerchief.
'Able to wash,' I resumed, 'iron, cook, mend--have you any one suitable,
Fräulein?'
'Many,' was the laconic answer.
'I'm afraid we cannot give more than a hundred and sixty marks,' said I.
'Pooh,' said Frau Meyer; and there was a pause in the scratching of the
pen.
'But there are no children,' I continued.
The pen went on more glibly. Frau Meyer fanned herself harder.
'And only two _Herrschaften_.'
The pen skimmed over the paper.
'We live up--we live up on the Galgenberg.'
The pen stopped dead.
'You will never find one who will go up there,' cried Frau Meyer
triumphantly. 'I need not fear your taking a good one away from me. They
will not leave the town.'
The Fräulein rang a bell and called out a name. 'It is another one for
you, Frau Doctor,' she said; and a large young lady came in from the
other room. 'The general servant Fräulein Ottilie Krummacher--Frau
Doctor Meyer,' introduced the Fräulein. 'I think you may suit each
other.'
'It is time you showed me some one who will,' groaned Frau Meyer. 'Six
have I already interviewed, and the demands of all are enough to make my
mother, who was Frau Gutsbesitzer Grosskopf of the Grosskopfs of
Grosskopfsecke, born Knoblauch, and a lady of the most exact knowledge
in household matters, turn in her grave.'
'Town?' asked the large girl quickly, hardly allowing Frau Meyer to get
to a full stop, and obviously callous as to the Grosskopfs of
Grosskopfsecke.
'Yes, yes--here, overlooking the market-place and the interesting statue
of the electoral founder of the University. No way to go, therefore, to
market. Enlivening scenes constantly visible from the windows--'
'Which floor?'
'Second. Shallow steps, and a nice balustrade. Really hardly higher than
the first floor, or even than an ordinary ground floor, the rooms being
very low.'
'Washing?'
'Done out of the house. Except the smallest, fewest trifles such
as--such as--ahem. The ironing, dear Fräulein, I will do mostly myself.
There are the shirts, you know--husbands are particular--'
'How many?'
'How many?' echoed Frau Meyer. 'How many what?'
'Husbands.'
'_Aber_, Fräulein,' expostulated the secretary.
'She said husbands,' said the large girl. 'Shirts, then--how many? It's
all the same.'
'All the same?' cried Frau Meyer, who adored her husband.
'In the work it makes.'
'But, dear Fräulein, the shirts are not washed at home.'
'But ironed.'
'I iron them.'
'And I heat the irons and keep up the fire to heat them with.'
'Yes, yes,' cried Frau Meyer, affecting the extreme pleasure of one who
has just received an eager assurance, 'so you do.'
The large girl stared. 'Cooking?' she inquired, after a slightly stony
pause.
'Most of that I will do myself, also. The Herr is very particular. I
shall only need a little--quite a little assistance. And think of all
the new and excellent dishes you will learn to make.'
The girl waved this last inducement aside as unworthy of consideration.
'Number of persons in the household?'
Frau Meyer coughed before she could answer. 'Oh,' said she, 'oh,
well--there is my husband, and naturally myself, and then there
are--there are--are you fond of children?' she ended hastily.
The girl fixed her with a suspicious eye. 'It depends how many there
are,' she said cautiously.
Frau Meyer got up and leaned over the Fräulein at the desk, and
whispered into her impassive ear.
The Fräulein shook her head. 'I am afraid it is no use,' she said.
Frau Meyer whispered again. The Fräulein looked up, and fastening her
eyes on a point somewhere below the large girl's chin said, 'The wages
are good.'
'What are they?' asked the girl.
'Considering the treatment you will receive--' the girl's eyes again
became suspicious--'they are excellent.'
'What are they?'
'Everything found, and a hundred and eighty marks a year.'
The girl turned and walked toward the door.
'Stop! Stop!' cried Frau Meyer desperately. 'I cannot see you throw away
a good place with so little preliminary reflection. Have you considered
that there would be no trudging to market, and consequently you will
only require half the boots and stockings and skirts those poor girls
have to buy who live up in the villas that look so grand and pretend to
give such high wages?'
The girl paused.
'And no steep stairs to climb, laden with heavy baskets? And hardly any
washing--hardly any washing, I tell you!' she almost shrieked in her
anxiety. 'And no cooking to speak of? And every Sunday--mind, _every_
Sunday evening free? And I never scold, and my husband never scolds, and
with a hundred and eighty marks a year there is nothing a clever girl
cannot buy. Why, it is an ideal, a delightful place--one at which I
would jump if I were a girl, and this lady'--indicating me--'would jump,
too, would you not, Rose-Marie?'
The girl wavered. 'How many children are there?' she asked.
'Children? Children? Angels, you mean. They are perfect angels, so good
and well-behaved--are they not, Rose-Marie? Fit to go at once to
heaven--_unberufen_--without a day's more training, so little would they
differ in manner when they got there from angels who have been used to
it for years. You are fond of children, Fräulein, I am sure. Naturally
you are. I see it in your nice face. No nice Fräulein is not. And these,
I tell you, are such unusual--'
'How many are there?'
'_Ach Gott_, there are only six, and so small still that they can hardly
be counted as six--six of the dearest--'
The girl turned on her heel. 'I cannot be fond of six,' she said; and
went out with the heavy tread of finality.
Frau Meyer looked at me. 'There now,' she said, in tones of real
despair.
'It is very tiresome,' said I, sympathizing the more acutely that I knew
my turn was coming next.
'Tiresome? It is terrible. In two days I have my Coffee, and no--and
no--and no--' She burst into tears, hiding her face from the
dispassionate stare of the Fräulein at the desk in her handkerchief, and
trying to conceal her sobs by a ceaseless blowing of her nose.
'I am so sorry,' I murmured, touched by this utter melting.
An impulse seized me on which I instantly acted. 'Take Johanna,' I
cried. 'Take her for that day. She will at least get you over that. She
is excellent at a party, and knows all about Coffees. I'll send her down
early, and you keep her as late as you like. She would enjoy the outing,
and we can manage quite well for one day without her.'
'Is that--is that the Johanna you had in the Rauchgasse?'
'Yes--trained by my step-mother--really good in an emergency.'
Frau Meyer flung her arms round my neck. '_Ach danke, danke, Du liebes,
gutes Kind_!' she cried, embracing me with a warmth that showed me what
heaps of people she must have asked to her party.
And I, after the first flush of doing a good deed was over and cool
reflection had resumed its sway, which it did by the time I was toiling
up the hill on the way home after having been unanimously rejected as
mistress by the assembled maidens, I repented; for was not Johanna now
my only hope? 'Frau Meyer,' whispered Reflection in my despondent ear,
'will engage her to go to her permanently on the 1st, and she will go
because of the twenty marks more salary. You have been silly. Of course
she would have stayed with you with a little persuasion rather than have
to look for another place and spend her money at a registry-office. It
is not likely, however, that she will refuse a situation costing her
nothing.'
But see how true it sometimes is that virtue is rewarded. Johanna went
down as I had promised, and worked all day for Frau Meyer. She was given
a thaler as a present, as much cake and coffee as she could consume, and
received the offer of a permanent engagement when she should leave us.
This she told me standing by my bedside late that night, the candle in
her hand lighting up her heated, shining face, and hair dishevelled by
exertion. 'But,' said she, 'Fräulein Rose-Marie, not for the world would
I take the place. Such a restless lady, such a nervous gentleman, such
numbers of spoilt and sprawling children. If I had not been there today
and beheld it from the inside I would have engaged myself to go. But
after this--' she waved the candle--'never.'
'What are you going to do, then, Johanna?' I asked, thinking wistfully
of the four years we had passed together.
'Stay here,' she announced defiantly.