In a German Pension. Katherine Mansfield
Baroness has assured me she is going into a convent,” he said. (That made the student from Bonn sit up.) “I have written these few lines last night from my window in the sweet night air—”
“Oh, your delicate chest,” commented the Frau Doktor.
He fixed a stony eye on her, and she blushed.
“I have written these lines:
“ ‘Ah, will you to a convent fly,
So young, so fresh, so fair?
Spring like a doe upon the fields
And find your beauty there.’ ”
Nine verses equally lovely commanded her to equally violent action. I am certain that had she followed his advice not even the remainder of her life in a convent would have given her time to recover her breath.
“I have presented her with a copy,” he said. “And to-day we are going to look for wild flowers in the wood.”
The student from Bonn got up and left the room. I begged the poet to repeat the verses once more. At the end of the sixth verse I saw from the window the sister of the Baroness and the scarred youth disappearing through the front gate, which enabled me to thank the poet so charmingly that he offered to write me out a copy.
But we were living at too high pressure in those days. Swinging from our humble pension to the high walls of palaces, how could we help but fall? Late one afternoon the Frau Doktor came upon me in the writing-room and took me to her bosom.
“She has been telling me all about her life,” whispered the Frau Doktor. “She came to my bedroom and offered to massage my arm. You know, I am the greatest martyr to rheumatism. And, fancy now, she has already had six proposals of marriage. Such beautiful offers that I assure you I wept—and every one of noble birth. My dear, the most beautiful was in the wood. Not that I do not think a proposal should take place in a drawing-room—it is more fitting to have four walls—but this was a private wood. He said, the young officer, she was like a young tree whose branches had never been touched by the ruthless hand of man. Such delicacy!” She sighed and turned up her eyes.
“Of course it is difficult for you English to understand when you are always exposing your legs on cricket-fields, and breeding dogs in your back gardens. The pity of it! Youth should be like a wild rose. For myself I do not understand how your women ever get married at all.”
She shook her head so violently that I shook mine too, and a gloom settled round my heart. It seemed we were really in a very bad way. Did the spirit of romance spread her rose wings only over aristocratic Germany?
I went to my room, bound a pink scarf about my hair, and took a volume of Mörike’s lyrics into the garden. A great bush of purple lilac grew behind the summer-house. There I sat down, finding a sad significance in the delicate suggestion of half mourning. I began to write a poem myself.
“They sway and languish dreamily,
And we, close pressed, are kissing there.”
It ended! “Close pressed” did not sound at all fascinating. Savoured of wardrobes. Did my wild rose then already trail in the dust? I chewed a leaf and hugged my knees. Then—magic moment—I heard voices from the summer-house, the sister of the Baroness and the student from Bonn.
Second-hand was better than nothing; I pricked up my ears.
“What small hands you have,” said the student from Bonn. “They are like white lilies lying in the pool of your black dress.” This certainly sounded the real thing. Her high-born reply was what interested me. Sympathetic murmur only.
“May I hold one?”
I heard two sighs—presumed they held—he had rifled those dark waters of a noble blossom.
“Look at my great fingers beside yours.”
“But they are beautifully kept,” said the sister of the Baroness shyly.
The minx! Was love then a question of manicure?
“How I should adore to kiss you,” murmured the student. “But you know I am suffering from severe nasal catarrh, and I dare not risk giving it to you. Sixteen times last night did I count myself sneezing. And three different handkerchiefs.”
I threw Mörike into the lilac bush, and went back to the house. A great automobile snorted at the front door. In the salon great commotion. The Baroness was paying a surprise visit to her little daughter. Clad in a yellow mackintosh she stood in the middle of the room questioning the manager. And every guest the pension contained was grouped about her, even the Frau Doktor, presumably examining a timetable, as near to the august skirts as possible.
“But where is my maid?” asked the Baroness.
“There was no maid,” replied the manager, “save for your gracious sister and daughter.”
“Sister!” she cried sharply. “Fool, I have no sister. My child travelled with the daughter of my dressmaker.”
Tableau grandissimo!
4. FRAU FISCHER
Frau Fischer was the fortunate possessor of a candle factory somewhere on the banks of the Eger, and once a year she ceased from her labours to make a “cure” in Dorschausen, arriving with a dress-basket neatly covered in a black tarpaulin and a hand-bag. The latter contained amongst her handkerchiefs, eau de Cologne, toothpicks, and a certain woollen muffler very comforting to the “magen,” samples of her skill in candle-making, to be offered up as tokens of thanksgiving when her holiday time was over.
Four of the clock one July afternoon she appeared at the Pension Müller. I was sitting in the arbour and watched her bustling up the path followed by the red-bearded porter with her dress-basket in his arms and a sunflower between his teeth. The widow and her five innocent daughters stood tastefully grouped upon the steps in appropriate attitudes of welcome; and the greetings were so long and loud that I felt a sympathetic glow.
“What a journey!” cried the Frau Fischer. “And nothing to eat in the train—nothing solid. I assure you the sides of my stomach are flapping together. But I must not spoil my appetite for dinner—just a cup of coffee in my room. Bertha,” turning to the youngest of the five, “how changed! What a bust! Frau Hartmann, I congratulate you.”
Once again the Widow seized Frau Fischer’s hands. “Kathi, too, a splendid woman; but a little pale. Perhaps the young man from Nürnberg is here again this year. How you keep them all I don’t know. Each year I come expecting to find you with an empty nest. It’s surprising.”
Frau Hartmann, in an ashamed, apologetic voice: “We are such a happy family since my dear man died.”
“But these marriages—one must have courage; and after all, give them time, they all make the happy family bigger—thank God for that. … Are there many people here just now?”
“Every room engaged.”
Followed a detailed description in the hall, murmured on the stairs, continued in six parts as they entered the large room (windows opening upon the garden) which Frau Fischer occupied each successive year. I was reading the “Miracles of Lourdes,” which a Catholic priest—fixing a gloomy eye upon my soul—had begged me to digest; but its wonders were completely routed by Frau Fischer’s arrival. Not even the white roses upon the feet of the Virgin could flourish in that atmosphere.
“… It was a simple shepherd-child who pastured her flocks upon the barren fields. …”
Voices from the room above: “The washstand has, of course, been scrubbed over with soda.”
“… Poverty-stricken,