"Do you think we might ask her to come with us," said Fraulein Elsa,
retying her pink sash ribbon before my mirror. "You know, although she is
so intellectual, I cannot help feeling convinced that she has some secret
sorrow. And Lisa told me this morning, as she was turning out my room,
that she remains hours and hours by herself, writing; in fact Lisa says she
is writing a book! I suppose that is why she never cares to mingle with
us, and has so little time for her husband and the child."
"Well, YOU ask her," said I. "I have never spoken to the lady."
Elsa blushed faintly. "I have only spoken to her once," she confessed. "I
took her a bunch of wild flowers, to her room, and she came to the door in
a white gown, with her hair loose. Never shall I forget that moment. She
just took the flowers, and I heard her--because the door was not quite
properly shut--I heard her, as I walked down the passage, saying 'Purity,
fragrance, the fragrance of purity and the purity of fragrance!' It was
wonderful!"
At that moment Frau Kellermann knocked at the door.
"Are you ready?" she said, coming into the room and nodding to us very
genially. "The gentlemen are waiting on the steps, and I have asked the
Advanced Lady to come with us."
"Na, how extraordinary!" cried Elsa. "But this moment the gnadige Frau and
I were debating whether--"
"Yes, I met her coming out of her room and she said she was charmed with
the idea. Like all of us, she has never been to Schlingen. She is
downstairs now, talking to Herr Erchardt. I think we shall have a
delightful afternoon."
"Is Fritzi waiting too?" asked Elsa.
"Of course he is, dear child--as impatient as a hungry man listening for
the dinner bell. Run along!"
Elsa ran, and Frau Kellermann smiled at me significantly. In the past she
and I had seldom spoken to each other, owing to the fact that her "one
remaining joy"--her charming little Karl--had never succeeded in kindling
into flame those sparks of maternity which are supposed to glow in great
numbers upon the altar of every respectable female heart; but, in view of a
premeditated journey together, we became delightfully cordial.
"For us," she said, "there will be a double joy. We shall be able to watch
the happiness of these two dear children, Elsa and Fritz. They only
received the letters of blessing from their parents yesterday morning. It
is a very strange thing, but whenever I am in the company of newly-engaged
couples I blossom. Newly-engaged couples, mothers with first babies, and
normal deathbeds have precisely the same effect on me. Shall we join the
others?"
I was longing to ask her why normal deathbeds should cause anyone to burst
into flower, and said, "Yes, do let us."
We were greeted by the little party of "cure guests" on the pension steps,
with those cries of joy and excitement which herald so pleasantly the
mildest German excursion. Herr Erchardt and I had not met before that day,
so, in accordance with strict pension custom, we asked each other how long
we had slept during the night, had we dreamed agreeably, what time we had
got up, was the coffee fresh when we had appeared at breakfast, and how had
we passed the morning. Having toiled up these stairs of almost national
politeness we landed, triumphant and smiling, and paused to recover breath.
"And now," said Herr Erchardt, "I have a pleasure in store for you. The
Frau Professor is going to be one of us for the afternoon. Yes," nodding
graciously to the Advanced Lady. "Allow me to introduce you to each
other."
We bowed very formally, and looked each other over with that eye which is
known as "eagle" but is far more the property of the female than that most
unoffending of birds. "I think you are English?" she said. I acknowledged
the fact. "I am reading a great many English books just now--rather, I am
studying them."
"Nu," cried Herr Erchardt. "Fancy that! What a bond already! I have made
up my mind to know Shakespeare in his mother tongue before I die, but that
you, Frau Professor, should be already immersed in those wells of English
thought!"
"From what I have read," she said, "I do not think they are very deep
wells."
He nodded sympathetically.
"No," he answered, "so I have heard...But do not let us embitter our
excursion for our little English friend. We will speak of this another
time."
"Nu, are we ready?" cried Fritz, who stood, supporting Elsa's elbow in his
hand, at the foot of the steps. It was immediately discovered that Karl
was lost.
"Ka--rl, Karl--chen!" we cried. No response.
"But he was here one moment ago," said Herr Langen, a tired, pale youth,
who was recovering from a nervous breakdown due to much philosophy and
little nourishment. "He was sitting here, picking out the works of his
watch with a hairpin!"
Frau Kellermann rounded on him. "Do you mean to say, my dear Herr Langen,
you did not stop the child!"
"No," said Herr Langen; "I've tried stopping him before now."
"Da, that child has such energy; never is his brain at peace. If he is not
doing one thing, he is doing another!"
"Perhaps he has started on the dining-room clock now," suggested Herr
Langen, abominably hopeful.
The Advanced Lady suggested that we should go without him. "I never take
my little daughter for walks," she said. "I have accustomed her to sitting
quietly in my bedroom from the time I go out until I return!"
"There he is--there he is," piped Elsa, and Karl was observed slithering
down a chestnut-tree, very much the worse for twigs.
"I've been listening to what you said about me, mumma," he confessed while
Frau Kellermann brushed him down. "It was not true about the watch. I was
only looking at it, and the little girl never stays in the bedroom. She
told me herself she always goes down to the kitchen, and--"
"Da, that's enough!" said Frau Kellermann.
We marched en masse along the station road. It was a very warm afternoon,
and continuous parties of "cure guests", who were giving their digestions a
quiet airing in pension gardens, called after us, asked if we were going
for a walk, and cried "Herr Gott--happy journey" with immense ill-concealed
relish when we mentioned Schlingen.
"But that is eight kilometres," shouted one old man with a white beard, who
leaned against a fence, fanning himself with a yellow handkerchief.
"Seven and a half," answered Herr Erchardt shortly.
"Eight," bellowed the sage.
"Seven and a half!"
"Eight!"
"The man is mad," said Herr Erchardt.
"Well, please let him be mad in peace," said I, putting my hands over my
ears.
"Such ignorance must not be allowed to go uncontradicted," said he, and
turning his back on us, too exhausted to cry out any longer, he held up
seven and a half fingers.
"Eight!" thundered the greybeard, with pristine freshness.
We felt very sobered, and did not recover until we reached a white signpost
which entreated us to leave the road and walk through the field path--
without trampling down more of the grass than was necessary. Being
interpreted, it meant "single file", which was distressing for Elsa and
Fritz. Karl, like a happy child, gambolled ahead, and cut down as many
flowers as possible with the stick of his mother's parasol--followed the
three others--then myself--and the lovers in the rear. And above the
conversation of the advance party I had the privilege of hearing these
delicious whispers.
Fritz: "Do you love me?" Elsa: "Nu--yes." Fritz passionately: "But how
much?" To which Elsa never replied--except with "How much do YOU love ME?"
Fritz escaped that truly Christian trap by saying, "I asked you first."
It grew so confusing that I slipped in front of Frau Kellermann--and walked
in the peaceful knowledge that she was blossoming and I was under no
obligation to inform even my nearest and dearest as to the precise capacity
of my affections. "What right have they to ask each other such questions
the day after letters of blessing have been received?" I reflected. "What
right have they even to question each other? Love which becomes engaged
and married is a purely affirmative affair--they are usurping the
privileges of their betters and wisers!"
The edges of the field frilled over into an immense pine forest--very
pleasant and cool it looked. Another signpost begged us to keep to the
broad path for Schlingen and deposit waste paper and fruit peelings in wire
receptacles attached to the benches for the purpose. We sat down on the
first bench, and Karl with great curiosity explored the wire receptacle.
"I love woods," said the Advanced Lady, smiling pitifully into the air.
"In a wood my hair already seems to stir and remember something of its
savage origin."
"But speaking literally," said Frau Kellermann, after an appreciative
pause, "there is really nothing better than the air of pine-trees for the
scalp."
"Oh, Frau Kellermann, please don't break the spell," said Elsa.
The Advanced Lady looked at her very sympathetically. "Have you, too,
found the magic heart of Nature?" she said.
That was Herr Langen's cue. "Nature has no heart," said he, very bitterly
and readily, as people do who are over-philosophised and underfed. "She
creates that she may destroy. She eats that she may spew up and she spews
up that she may eat. That is why we, who are forced to eke out an
existence at her trampling feet, consider the world mad, and realise the
deadly vulgarity of production."
"Young man," interrupted Herr Erchardt, "you have never lived and you have
never suffered!"
"Oh, excuse me--how can you know?"
"I know because you have told me, and there's an end of it. Come back to
this bench in ten years' time and repeat those words to me," said Frau
Kellermann, with an eye upon Fritz, who was engaged in counting Elsa's
fingers with passionate fervour--"and bring with you your young wife, Herr
Langen, and watch, perhaps, your little child playing with--" She turned
towards Karl, who had rooted an old illustrated paper out of the receptacle
and was spelling over an advertisement for the enlargement of Beautiful
Breasts.
The sentence remained unfinished. We decided to move on. As we plunged
more deeply into the wood our spirits rose--reaching a point where they
burst into song--on the part of the three men--"O Welt, wie bist du
wunderbar!"--the lower part of which was piercingly sustained by Herr
Langen, who attempted quite unsuccessfully to infuse satire into it in
accordance with his--"world outlook". They strode ahead and left us to
trail after them--hot and happy.
"Now is the opportunity," said Frau Kellermann. "Dear Frau Professor, do
tell us a little about your book."
"Ach, how did you know I was writing one?" she cried playfully.
"Elsa, here, had it from Lisa. And never before have I personally known a
woman who was writing a book. How do you manage to find enough to write
down?"
"That is never the trouble," said the Advanced Lady--she took Elsa's arm
and leaned on it gently. "The trouble is to know where to stop. My brain
has been a hive for years, and about three months ago the pent-up waters
burst over my soul, and since then I am writing all day until late into the
night, still ever finding fresh inspirations and thoughts which beat
impatient wings about my heart."
"Is it a novel?" asked Elsa shyly.
"Of course it is a novel," said I.
"How can you be so positive?" said Frau Kellermann, eyeing me severely.
"Because nothing but a novel could produce an effect like that."
"Ach, don't quarrel," said the Advanced Lady sweetly. "Yes, it is a novel
--upon the Modern Woman. For this seems to me the woman's hour. It is
mysterious and almost prophetic, it is the symbol of the true advanced
woman: not one of those violent creatures who deny their sex and smother
their frail wings under...under--"
"The English tailor-made?" from Frau Kellermann.
"I was not going to put it like that. Rather, under the lying garb of
false masculinity!"
"Such a subtle distinction!" I murmured.
"Whom then," asked Fraulein Elsa, looking adoringly at the Advanced Lady--
"whom then do you consider the true woman?"
"She is the incarnation of comprehending Love!"
"But my dear Frau Professor," protested Frau Kellermann, "you must remember
that one has so few opportunities for exhibiting Love within the family
circle nowadays. One's husband is at business all day, and naturally
desires to sleep when he returns home--one's children are out of the lap
and in at the university before one can lavish anything at all upon them!"
"But Love is not a question of lavishing," said the Advanced Lady. "It is
the lamp carried in the bosom touching with serene rays all the heights and
depths of--"
"Darkest Africa," I murmured flippantly.
She did not hear.
"The mistake we have made in the past--as a sex," said she, "is in not
realising that our gifts of giving are for the whole world--we are the glad
sacrifice of ourselves!"
"Oh!" cried Elsa rapturously, and almost bursting into gifts as she
breathed--"how I know that! You know ever since Fritz and I have been
engaged, I share the desire to give to everybody, to share everything!"
"How extremely dangerous," said I.
"It is only the beauty of danger, or the danger of beauty" said the
Advanced Lady--"and there you have the ideal of my book--that woman is
nothing but a gift."
I smiled at her very sweetly. "Do you know," I said, "I, too, would like
to write a book, on the advisability of caring for daughters, and taking
them for airings and keeping them out of kitchens!"
I think the masculine element must have felt these angry vibrations: they
ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see
Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining
in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr
Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with
fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most friendly place,
with tables in a rose-garden where hens and chickens ran riot--even
flopping upon the disused tables and pecking at the red checks on the
cloths. We broke the bread into the bowls, added the cream, and stirred it
round with flat wooden spoons, the landlord and his wife standing by.
"Splendid weather!" said Herr Erchardt, waving his spoon at the landlord,
who shrugged his shoulders.
"What! you don't call it splendid!"
"As you please," said the landlord, obviously scorning us.
"Such a beautiful walk," said Fraulein Elsa, making a free gift of her most
charming smile to the landlady.
"I never walk," said the landlady; "when I go to Mindelbau my man drives
me--I've more important things to do with my legs than walk them through
the dust!"
"I like these people," confessed Herr Langen to me. "I like them very,
very much. I think I shall take a room here for the whole summer."
"Why?"
"Oh, because they live close to the earth, and therefore despise it."
He pushed away his bowl of sour milk and lit a cigarette. We ate, solidly
and seriously, until those seven and a half kilometres to Mindelbau
stretched before us like an eternity. Even Karl's activity became so full
fed that he lay on the ground and removed his leather waistbelt. Elsa
suddenly leaned over to Fritz and whispered, who on hearing her to the end
and asking her if she loved him, got up and made a little speech.
"We--we wish to celebrate our betrothal by--by--asking you all to drive
back with us in the landlord's cart--if--it will hold us!"
"Oh, what a beautiful, noble idea!" said Frau Kellermann, heaving a sigh of
relief that audibly burst two hooks.
"It is my little gift," said Elsa to the Advanced Lady, who by virtue of
three portions almost wept tears of gratitude.
Squeezed into the peasant cart and driven by the landlord, who showed his
contempt for mother earth by spitting savagely every now and again, we
jolted home again, and the nearer we came to Mindelbau the more we loved it
and one another.
"We must have many excursions like this," said Herr Erchardt to me, "for
one surely gets to know a person in the simple surroundings of the open
air--one SHARES the same joys--one feels friendship. What is it your
Shakespeare says? One moment, I have it. The friends thou hast, and their
adoption tried--grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel!"
"But," said I, feeling very friendly towards him, "the bother about my soul
is that it refuses to grapple anybody at all--and I am sure that the dead
weight of a friend whose adoption it had tried would kill it immediately.
Never yet has it shown the slightest sign of a hoop!"
He bumped against my knees and excused himself and the cart.
"My dear little lady, you must not take the quotation literally.
Naturally, one is not physically conscious of the hoops; but hoops there
are in the soul of him or her who loves his fellow-men...Take this
afternoon, for instance. How did we start out? As strangers you might
almost say, and yet--all of us--how have we come home?"
"In a cart," said the only remaining joy, who sat upon his mother's lap and
felt sick.
We skirted the field that we had passed through, going round by the
cemetery. Herr Langen leaned over the edge of the seat and greeted the
graves. He was sitting next to the Advanced Lady--inside the shelter of
her shoulder. I heard her murmur: "You look like a little boy with your
hair blowing about in the wind." Herr Langen, slightly less bitter--
watched the last graves disappear. And I heard her murmur: "Why are you
so sad? I too am very sad sometimes--but--you look young enough for me to
dare to say this--I--too--know of much joy!"
"What do you know?" said he.
I leaned over and touched the Advanced Lady's hand. "Hasn't it been a nice
afternoon?" I said questioningly. "But you know, that theory of yours
about women and Love--it's as old as the hills--oh, older!"
From the road a sudden shout of triumph. Yes, there he was again--white
beard, silk handkerchief and undaunted enthusiasm.
"What did I say? Eight kilometres--it is!"
"Seven and a half!" shrieked Herr Erchardt.
"Why, then, do you return in carts? Eight kilometres it must be."
Herr Erchardt made a cup of his hands and stood up in the jolting cart
while Frau Kellermann clung to his knees. "Seven and a half!"
"Ignorance must not go uncontradicted!" I said to the Advanced Lady.
Read next: Chapter 12 - The Swing of the Pendulum
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