LIV

Galgenberg, Nov. 7th.

Dear Mr. Anstruther,--So you are coming to Berlin next month. I thought

you told me in one of your letters that Washington was probably going to

be your first diplomatic post. Evidently you are glad it is not; but if

I were going to be an _attaché_ I'd much rather be it at Washington than

Berlin, the reason being that I've not been to Washington and I have

been to Berlin. Why are you so pleased--forgive me, I meant so much

pleased, but it is strange how little instinct has to do with

grammar--about Berlin? You didn't like it when you were here and went

for two days to look at it. You said it was a hard white place, full of

broad streets with nobody in them. You said it was barren, soulless,

arid, pretentious, police-ridden; that everybody was an official, and

that all the officials were rude. You were furious with a policeman who

stared at you without answering when you asked him the way. You were

scandalized by the behavior of the men in the local trains who sat and

smoked in the faces of the standing women, and by those men who walked

with their female relations in the streets and caused their parcels to

be carried by them. You came home to us saying that Jena was best, and

you were thankful to be with us again. I went to Berlin once, a little

while before you came to Germany, and didn't like it either. But I

didn't like it because it was so full, because those streets that seemed

to you so empty were bewildering to me in their tumultuous traffic,--so

you see how a place is what your own eye makes it, your Jena or your

London eye; and I didn't like it besides because we spent a sulphuric

night and morning with relations. The noise of the streets all day and

the sulphur of the relations at night spoilt it for me. We went there

for a jaunt, to look at the museums and things, and stay the night with

Papa's brother who lives there. He is Papa's younger brother, and spends

his days in a bank, handing out and raking in money through a hole in a

kind of cage. He has a pen behind his ear--I know, because we were taken

to gaze upon him between two museums--and wears a black coat on weekdays

as well as on Sundays, which greatly dazzled my step-mother, who was

with us. I believe he is eminently respectable, and the bank values him

as an old and reliable servant, and has made him rich. His salary is

eight thousand marks a year--four hundred pounds, sir; four times as

much as what we have--and my step-mother used often and fervently to

wish that Papa had been more like him. I thought him a terrifying old

uncle, a parched, machine-like person, whose soul seemed withdrawn into

unexplorable vague distances, reduced to a mere far-off flicker by the

mechanical nature of his work. He is ten years younger than Papa, but

infinitely more faded. He never laughs. He never even smiles. He is rude

to his wife. He is withering to his daughters. He made me think of owls

as he sat at supper that night in his prim clothes, with round gloomy

eyes fixed on Papa, whom he was lecturing. Papa didn't mind. He had had

a happy day, ending with two very glorious hours in the Royal Library,

and Tante Else's herring salad was much to his taste. 'Hast thou no

respect, Heinrich,' he cried at last when my uncle, warmed by beer, let

his lecture slide over the line that had till then divided it from a

rating, 'hast thou then no respect for the elder brother, and his white

and reverend hairs?'

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.

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,