GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Essays & Memoirs. Gertrude Stein
for like all who had to do with the good Anna, Mrs. Lehntman dreaded her firm character, her vigorous judgments and the bitter fervour of her tongue.
It had been plain to see in the six years these women were together, how Anna gradually had come to lead. Not really lead, of course, for Mrs. Lehntman never could be led, she was so very devious in her ways; but Anna had come to have direction whenever she could learn what Mrs. Lehntman meant to do before the deed was done. Now it was hard to tell which would win out. Mrs. Lehntman had her unhearing mind and her happy way of giving a pleasant well diffused attention, and then she had it on her side that, after all, this thing was already done.
Anna was, as usual, determined for the right. She was stiff and pale with her anger and her fear, and nervous, and all a tremble as was her usual way when a bitter fight was near.
Mrs. Lehntman was easy and pleasant as she came into the room. Anna was stiff and silent and very white.
“We haven’t seen you for a long time, Anna,” Mrs. Lehntman cordially began. “I was just gettin’ worried thinking you was sick. My! but it’s a hot day to-day. Come into the sittin’-room, Anna, and Julia will make us some ice tea.”
Anna followed Mrs. Lehntman into the other room in a stiff silence, and when there she did not, as invited, take a chair.
As always with Anna when a thing had to come it came very short and sharp. She found it hard to breathe just now, and every word came with a jerk.
“Mrs. Lehntman, it ain’t true what Julia said about your taking that Lily’s boy to keep. I told Julia when she told me she was crazy to talk so.”
Anna’s real excitements stopped her breath, and made her words come sharp and with a jerk. Mrs. Lehntman’s feelings spread her breath, and made her words come slow, but more pleasant and more easy even than before.
“Why Anna,” she began, “don’t you see Lily couldn’t keep her boy for she is working at the Bishops’ now, and he is such a cute dear little chap, and you know how fond I am of little fellers, and I thought it would be nice for Julia and for Willie to have a little brother. You know Julia always loves to play with babies, and I have to be away so much, and Willie he is running in the streets every minute all the time, and you see a baby would be sort of nice company for Julia, and you know you are always saying Anna, Julia should not be on the streets so much and the baby will be so good to keep her in.”
Anna was every minute paler with indignation and with heat.
“Mrs. Lehntman, I don’t see what business it is for you to take another baby for your own, when you can’t do what’s right by Julia and Willie you got here already. There’s Julia, nobody tells her a thing when I ain’t here, and who is going to tell her now how to do things for that baby? She ain’t got no sense what’s the right way to do with children, and you out all the time, and you ain’t got no time for your own neither, and now you want to be takin’ up with strangers. I know you was careless, Mrs. Lehntman, but I didn’t think that you could do this so. No, Mrs. Lehntman, it ain’t your duty to take up with no others, when you got two children of your own, that got to get along just any way they can, and you know you ain’t got any too much money all the time, and you are all so careless here and spend it all the time, and Julia and Willie growin’ big. It ain’t right, Mrs. Lehntman, to do so.”
This was as bad as it could be. Anna had never spoken her mind so to her friend before. Now it was too harsh for Mrs. Lehntman to allow herself to really hear. If she really took the meaning in these words she could never ask Anna to come into her house again, and she liked Anna very well, and was used to depend on her savings and her strength. And then too Mrs. Lehntman could not really take in harsh ideas. She was too well diffused to catch the feel of any sharp firm edge.
Now she managed to understand all this in a way that made it easy for her to say, “Why, Anna, I think you feel too bad about seeing what the children are doing every minute in the day. Julia and Willie are real good, and they play with all the nicest children in the square. If you had some, all your own, Anna, you’d see it don’t do no harm to let them do a little as they like, and Julia likes this baby so, and sweet dear little boy, it would be so kind of bad to send him to a ‘sylum now, you know it would Anna, when you like children so yourself, and are so good to my Willie all the time. No indeed Anna, it’s easy enough to say I should send this poor, cute little boy to a ‘sylum when I could keep him here so nice, but you know Anna, you wouldn’t like to do it yourself, now you really know you wouldn’t, Anna, though you talk to me so hard. — My, it’s hot to-day, what you doin’ with that ice tea in there Julia, when Miss Annie is waiting all this time for her drink?”
Julia brought in the ice tea. She was so excited with the talk she had been hearing from the kitchen, that she slopped it on the plate out of the glasses a good deal. But she was safe, for Anna felt this trouble so deep down that she did not even see those awkward, bony hands, adorned today with a new ring, those stupid, foolish hands that always did things the wrong way.
“Here Miss Annie,” Julia said, “Here, Miss Annie, is your glass of tea, I know you like it good and strong.”
“No, Julia, I don’t want no ice tea here. Your mamma ain’t able to afford now using her money upon ice tea for her friends. It ain’t right she should now any more. I go out now to see Mrs. Drehten. She does all she can, and she is sick now working so hard taking care of her own children. I go there now. Good by Mrs. Lehntman, I hope you don’t get no bad luck doin’ what it ain’t right for you to do.”
“My, Miss Annie is real mad now,” Julia said, as the house shook, as the good Anna shut the outside door with a concentrated shattering slam.
It was some months now that Anna had been intimate with Mrs. Drehten.
Mrs. Drehten had had a tumor and had come to Dr. Shonjen to be treated. During the course of her visits there, she and Anna had learned to like each other very well. There was no fever in this friendship, it was just the interchange of two hard working, worrying women, the one large and motherly, with the pleasant, patient, soft, worn, tolerant face, that comes with a german husband to obey, and seven solid girls and boys to bear and rear, and the other was our good Anna with her spinster body, her firm jaw, her humorous, light, clean eyes and her lined, worn, thin, pale yellow face.
Mrs. Drehten lived a patient, homely, hard-working life. Her husband an honest, decent man enough, was a brewer, and somewhat given to over drinking, and so he was often surly and stingy and unpleasant.
The family of seven children was made up of four stalwart, cheery, filial sons, and three hard working obedient simple daughters.
It was a family life the good Anna very much approved and also she was much liked by them all. With a german woman’s feeling for the masterhood in men, she was docile to the surly father and rarely rubbed him the wrong way. To the large, worn, patient, sickly mother she was a sympathetic listener, wise in council and most efficient in her help. The young ones too, liked her very well. The sons teased her all the time and roared with boisterous pleasure when she gave them back sharp hits. The girls were all so good that her scoldings here were only in the shape of good advice, sweetened with new trimmings for their hats, and ribbons, and sometimes on their birthdays, bits of jewels.
It was here that Anna came for comfort after her grievous stroke at her friend the widow, Mrs. Lehntman. Not that Anna would tell Mrs. Drehten of this trouble. She could never lay bare the wound that came to her through this idealised affection. Her affair with Mrs. Lehntman was too sacred and too grievous ever to be told. But here in this large household, in busy movement and variety in strife, she could silence the uneasiness and pain of her own wound.
The Drehtens lived out in the country in one of the wooden, ugly houses that lie in groups outside of our large cities.
The father and the sons all had their work here making beer, and the mother and her girls scoured and sewed and cooked.
On Sundays they were all washed very clean, and smelling of kitchen soap. The sons, in their Sunday clothes, loafed around the house or in the village, and on special days went on picnics with their girls. The daughters in their