Katherine Mansfield
In a German Pension

1. GERMANS AT MEAT

Bread soup was placed upon the table.

“Ah,” said the Herr Rat, leaning upon the table as he peered into the tureen, “that is what I need. My ‘magen’ has not been in order for several days. Bread soup, and just the right consistency. I am a good cook myself”—he turned to me.

“How interesting,” I said, attempting to infuse just the right amount of enthusiasm into my voice.

“Oh yes—when one is not married it is necessary. As for me, I have had all I wanted from women without marriage.” He tucked his napkin into his collar and blew upon his soup as he spoke. “Now at nine o’clock I make myself an English breakfast, but not much. Four slices of bread, two eggs, two slices of cold ham, one plate of soup, two cups of tea—that is nothing to you.”

He asserted the fact so vehemently that I had not the courage to refute it.

All eyes were suddenly turned upon me. I felt I was bearing the burden of the nation’s preposterous breakfast—I who drank a cup of coffee while buttoning my blouse in the morning.

“Nothing at all,” cried Herr Hoffmann from Berlin. “Ach, when I was in England in the morning I used to eat.”

He turned up his eyes and his moustache, wiping the soup drippings from his coat and waistcoat.

“Do they really eat so much?” asked Fräulein Stiegelauer. “Soup and baker’s bread and pig’s flesh, and tea and coffee and stewed fruit, and honey and eggs, and cold fish and kidneys, and hot fish and liver? All the ladies eat, too, especially the ladies.”

“Certainly. I myself have noticed it, when I was living in a hotel in Leicester Square,” cried the Herr Rat. “It was a good hotel, but they could not make tea—now—”

“Ah, that’s one thing I can do,” said I, laughing brightly. “I can make very good tea. The great secret is to warm the teapot.”

“Warm the teapot,” interrupted the Herr Rat, pushing away his soup plate. “What do you warm the teapot for? Ha! ha! that’s very good! One does not eat the teapot, I suppose?”

He fixed his cold blue eyes upon me with an expression which suggested a thousand premeditated invasions.

“So that is the great secret of your English tea? All you do is to warm the teapot.”

I wanted to say that was only the preliminary canter, but could not translate it, and so was silent.

The servant brought in veal, with “sauerkraut” and potatoes.

“I eat sauerkraut with great pleasure,” said the Traveller from North Germany, “but now I have eaten so much of it that I cannot retain it. I am immediately forced to—”

“A beautiful day,” I cried, turning to Fräulein Stiegelauer. “Did you get up early?”

“At five o’clock I walked for ten minutes in the wet grass. Again in bed. At half-past five I fell asleep, and woke at seven, when I made an ‘overbody’ washing! Again in bed. At eight o’clock I had a cold-water poultice, and at half past eight I drank a cup of mint tea. At nine I drank some malt coffee, and began my ‘cure.’ Pass me the sauerkraut, please. You do not eat it?”

“No, thank you. I still find it a little strong.”

“Is it true,” asked the Widow, picking her teeth with a hairpin as she spoke, “that you are a vegetarian?”

“Why, yes; I have not eaten meat for three years.”

“Im—possible! Have you any family?”

“No.”

“There now, you see, that’s what you’re coming to! Who ever heard of having children upon vegetables? It is not possible. But you never have large families in England now; I suppose you are too busy with your suffragetting. Now I have had nine children, and they are all alive, thank God. Fine, healthy babies—though after the first one was born I had to—”

“How wonderful!” I cried.

“Wonderful,” said the Widow contemptuously, replacing the hairpin in the knob which was balanced on the top of her head. “Not at all! A friend of mine had four at the same time. Her husband was so pleased he gave a supper-party and had them placed on the table. Of course she was very proud.”

“Germany,” boomed the Traveller, biting round a potato which he had speared with his knife, “is the home of the Family.”

Followed an appreciative silence.

The dishes were changed for beef, red currants and spinach. They wiped their forks upon black bread and started again.

“How long are you remaining here?” asked the Herr Rat.

“I do not know exactly. I must be back in London in September.”

“Of course you will visit München?”

“I am afraid I shall not have time. You see, it is important not to break into my ‘cure.’”

“But you must go to München. You have not seen Germany if you have not been to München. All the Exhibitions, all the Art and Soul life of Germany are in München. There is the Wagner Festival in August, and Mozart and a Japanese collection of pictures—and there is the beer! You do not know what good beer is until you have been to München. Why, I see fine ladies every afternoon, but fine ladies, I tell you, drinking glasses so high.” He measured a good washstand pitcher in height, and I smiled.

“If I drink a great deal of München beer I sweat so,” said Herr Hoffmann. “When I am here, in the fields or before my baths, I sweat, but I enjoy it; but in the town it is not at all the same thing.”

Prompted by the thought, he wiped his neck and face with his dinner napkin and carefully cleaned his ears.

A glass dish of stewed apricots was placed upon the table.

“Ah, fruit!” said Fräulein Stiegelauer, “that is so necessary to health. The doctor told me this morning that the more fruit I could eat the better.”

She very obviously followed the advice.

Said the Traveller: “I suppose you are frightened of an invasion, too, eh? Oh, that’s good. I’ve been reading all about your English play in a newspaper. Did you see it?”

“Yes.” I sat upright. “I assure you we are not afraid.”

“Well, then, you ought to be,” said the Herr Rat. “You have got no army at all—a few little boys with their veins full of nicotine poisoning.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Herr Hoffmann said. “We don’t want England. If we did we would have had her long ago. We really do not want you.”

He waved his spoon airily, looking across at me as though I were a little child whom he would keep or dismiss as he pleased.

“We certainly do not want Germany,” I said.

“This morning I took a half bath. Then this afternoon I must take a knee bath and an arm bath,” volunteered the Herr Rat; “then I do my exercises for an hour, and my work is over. A glass of wine and a couple of rolls with some sardines—”

They were handed cherry cake with whipped cream.

“What is your husband’s favourite meat?” asked the Widow.

“I really do not know,” I answered.

“You really do not know? How long have you been married?”

“Three years.”

“But you cannot be in earnest! You would not have kept house as his wife for a week without knowing that fact.”

“I really never asked him; he is not at all particular about his food.”

A pause. They all looked at me, shaking their heads, their mouths full of cherry stones.

“No wonder there is a repetition in England of that dreadful state of things in Paris,” said the Widow, folding her dinner napkin. “How can a woman expect to keep her husband if she does not know his favourite food after three years?”

“Mahlzeit!”

“Mahlzeit!”

I closed the door after me.

2. THE BARON

“Who is he?” I said. “And why does he sit always alone, with his back to us, too?”

“Ah!” whispered the Frau Oberregierungsrat, “he is a Baron.”

She looked at me very solemnly, and yet with the slightest possible contempt—a “fancy-not-recognising-that-at-the-first-glance” expression.

“But, poor soul, he cannot help it,” I said. “Surely that unfortunate fact ought not to debar him from the pleasures of intellectual intercourse.”

If it had not been for her fork I think she would have crossed herself.

“Surely you cannot understand. He is one of the First Barons.”

More than a little unnerved, she turned and spoke to the Frau Doktor on her left.

“My omelette is empty—empty,” she protested, “and this is the third I have tried!”

I looked at the First of the Barons. He was eating salad—taking a whole lettuce leaf on his fork and absorbing it slowly, rabbit-wise—a fascinating process to watch.

Small and slight, with scanty black hair and beard and yellow-toned complexion, he invariably wore black serge clothes, a rough linen shirt, black sandals, and the largest black-rimmed spectacles that I had ever seen.

The Herr Oberlehrer, who sat opposite me, smiled benignantly.

“It must be very interesting for you, gnädige Frau, to be able to watch… of course this is a very fine house. There was a lady from the Spanish Court here in the summer; she had a liver. We often spoke together.”

I looked gratified and humble.

“Now, in England, in your ‘boarding ’ouse’, one does not find the First Class, as in Germany.”

“No, indeed,” I replied, still hypnotised by the Baron, who looked like a little yellow silkworm.

“The Baron comes every year,” went on the Herr Oberlehrer, “for his nerves. He has never spoken to any of the guests—yet.” A smile crossed his face. I seemed to see his visions of some splendid upheaval of that silence—a dazzling exchange of courtesies in a dim future, a splendid sacrifice of a newspaper to this Exalted One, a “danke schön” to be handed down to future generations.

At that moment the postman, looking like a German army officer, came in with the mail. He threw my letters into my milk pudding, and then turned to a waitress and whispered. She retired hastily. The manager of the pension came in with a little tray. A picture post card was deposited on it, and reverently bowing his head, the manager of the pension carried it to the Baron.

Myself, I felt disappointed that there was not a salute of twenty-five guns.

At the end of the meal we were served with coffee. I noticed the Baron took three lumps of sugar, putting two in his cup and wrapping up the third in a corner of his pocket-handkerchief. He was always the first to enter the dining-room and the last to leave; and in a vacant chair beside him he placed a little black leather bag.

In the afternoon, leaning from my window, I saw him pass down the street, walking tremulously and carrying the bag. Each time he passed a lamp-post he shrank a little, as though expecting it to strike him, or maybe the sense of plebeian contamination....

I wondered where he was going, and why he carried the bag. Never had I seen him at the Casino or the Bath Establishment. He looked forlorn, his feet slipped in his sandals. I found myself pitying the Baron.

That evening a party of us were gathered in the salon discussing the day’s “kur” with feverish animation. The Frau Oberregierungsrat sat by me knitting a shawl for her youngest of nine daughters, who was in that very interesting, frail condition.... “But it is bound to be quite satisfactory,” she said to me. “The dear married a banker—the desire of her life.”

There must have been eight or ten of us gathered together, we who were married exchanging confidences as to the underclothing and peculiar characteristics of our husbands, the unmarried discussing the over-clothing and peculiar fascinations of Possible Ones.

“I knit them myself,” I heard the Frau Lehrer cry, “of thick grey wool. He wears one a month, with two soft collars.”

“And then,” whispered Fräulein Lisa, “he said to me, ‘Indeed you please me. I shall, perhaps, write to your mother.’”

Small wonder that we were a little violently excited, a little expostulatory.

Suddenly the door opened and admitted the Baron.

Followed a complete and deathlike silence.

He came in slowly, hesitated, took up a toothpick from a dish on the top of the piano, and went out again.

When the door was closed we raised a triumphant cry! It was the first time he had ever been known to enter the salon. Who could tell what the Future held?

Days lengthened into weeks. Still we were together, and still the solitary little figure, head bowed as though under the weight of the spectacles, haunted me. He entered with the black bag, he retired with the black bag—and that was all.

At last the manager of the pension told us the Baron was leaving the next day.

“Oh,” I thought, “surely he cannot drift into obscurity—be lost without one word! Surely he will honour the Frau Oberregierungsrat or the Frau Feldleutnantswitwe once before he goes.”

In the evening of that day it rained heavily. I went to the post office, and as I stood on the steps, umbrellaless, hesitating before plunging into the slushy road, a little, hesitating voice seemed to come from under my elbow.

I looked down. It was the First of the Barons with the black bag and an umbrella. Was I mad? Was I sane? He was asking me to share the latter. But I was exceedingly nice, a trifle diffident, appropriately reverential. Together we walked through the mud and slush.

Now, there is something peculiarly intimate in sharing an umbrella.

It is apt to put one on the same footing as brushing a man’s coat for him—a little daring, naïve.

I longed to know why he sat alone, why he carried the bag, what he did all day. But he himself volunteered some information.

“I fear,” he said, “that my luggage will be damp. I invariably carry it with me in this bag—one requires so little—for servants are untrustworthy.”

“A wise idea,” I answered. And then: “Why have you denied us the pleasure—”

“I sit alone that I may eat more,” said the Baron, peering into the dusk; “my stomach requires a great deal of food. I order double portions, and eat them in peace.”

Which sounded finely Baronial.

“And what do you do all day?”

“I imbibe nourishment in my room,” he replied, in a voice that closed the conversation and almost repented of the umbrella.

When we arrived at the pension there was very nearly an open riot.

I ran half way up the stairs, and thanked the Baron audibly from the landing.

He distinctly replied: “Not at all!”

It was very friendly of the Herr Oberlehrer to have sent me a bouquet that evening, and the Frau Oberregierungsrat asked me for my pattern of a baby’s bonnet!

Next day the Baron was gone.

Sic transit gloria German mundi.

3. THE SISTER OF THE BARONESS

“There are two new guests arriving this afternoon,” said the manager of the pension, placing a chair for me at the breakfast-table. “I have only received the letter acquainting me with the fact this morning. The Baroness von Gall is sending her little daughter—the poor child is dumb—to make the ‘cure.’ She is to stay with us a month, and then the Baroness herself is coming.”

“Baroness von Gall,” cried the Frau Doktor, coming into the room and positively scenting the name. “Coming here? There was a picture of her only last week in Sport and Salon. She is a friend of the Court: I have heard that the Kaiserin says ‘du’ to her. But this is delightful! I shall take my doctor’s advice and spend an extra six weeks here. There is nothing like young society.”

“But the child is dumb,” ventured the manager apologetically.

“Bah! What does that matter? Afflicted children have such pretty ways.”

Each guest who came into the breakfast-room was bombarded with the wonderful news. “The Baroness von Gall is sending her little daughter here; the Baroness herself is coming in a month’s time.” Coffee and rolls took on the nature of an orgy. We positively scintillated. Anecdotes of the High Born were poured out, sweetened and sipped: we gorged on scandals of High Birth generously buttered.

“They are to have the room next to yours,” said the manager, addressing me. “I was wondering if you would permit me to take down the portrait of the Kaiserin Elizabeth from above your bed to hang over their sofa.”

“Yes, indeed, something homelike”—the Frau Oberregierungsrat patted my hand—“and of no possible significance to you.”

I felt a little crushed. Not at the prospect of losing that vision of diamonds and blue velvet bust, but at the tone—placing me outside the pale—branding me as a foreigner.

We dissipated the day in valid speculations. Decided it was too warm to walk in the afternoon, so lay down on our beds, mustering in great force for afternoon coffee. And a carriage drew up at the door. A tall young girl got out, leading a child by the hand. They entered the hall, were greeted and shown to their room. Ten minutes later she came down with the child to sign the visitors’ book. She wore a black, closely fitting dress, touched at throat and wrists with white frilling. Her brown hair, braided, was tied with a black bow—unusually pale, with a small mole on her left cheek.

“I am the Baroness von Gall’s sister,” she said, trying the pen on a piece of blotting-paper, and smiling at us deprecatingly. Even for the most jaded of us life holds its thrilling moments. Two Baronesses in two months! The manager immediately left the room to find a new nib.

To my plebeian eyes that afflicted child was singularly unattractive. She had the air of having been perpetually washed with a blue bag, and hair like grey wool—dressed, too, in a pinafore so stiffly starched that she could only peer at us over the frill of it—a social barrier of a pinafore—and perhaps it was too much to expect a noble aunt to attend to the menial consideration of her niece’s ears. But a dumb niece with unwashed ears struck me as a most depressing object.

They were given places at the head of the table. For a moment we all looked at one another with an eena-deena-dina-do expression. Then the Frau Oberregierungsrat:

“I hope you are not tired after your journey.”

“No,” said the sister of the Baroness, smiling into her cup.

“I hope the dear child is not tired,” said the Frau Doktor.

“Not at all.”

“I expect, I hope you will sleep well to-night,” the Herr Oberlehrer said reverently.

“Yes.”

The poet from Munich never took his eyes off the pair. He allowed his tie to absorb most of his coffee while he gazed at them exceedingly soulfully.

Unyoking Pegasus, thought I. Death spasms of his Odes to Solitude! There were possibilities in that young woman for an inspiration, not to mention a dedication, and from that moment his suffering temperament took up its bed and walked.

They retired after the meal, leaving us to discuss them at leisure.

“There is a likeness,” mused the Frau Doktor. “Quite. What a manner she has. Such reserve, such a tender way with the child.”

“Pity she has the child to attend to,” exclaimed the student from Bonn. He had hitherto relied upon three scars and a ribbon to produce an effect, but the sister of a Baroness demanded more than these.

Absorbing days followed. Had she been one whit less beautifully born we could not have endured the continual conversation about her, the songs in her praise, the detailed account of her movements. But she graciously suffered our worship and we were more than content.

The poet she took into her confidence. He carried her books when we went walking, he jumped the afflicted one on his knee—poetic licence, this—and one morning brought his notebook into the salon and read to us.

“The sister of the 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, her limbs with tattered rags half covered…”

“Every stick of the furniture has been sunning in the garden for three days. And the carpet we made ourselves out of old clothes. There is a piece of that beautiful flannel petticoat you left us last summer.”

“… Deaf and dumb was the child; in fact, the population considered her half idiot…”

“Yes, that is a new picture of the Kaiser. We have moved the thorn-crowned one of Jesus Christ out into the passage. It was not cheerful to sleep with. Dear Frau Fischer, won’t you take your coffee out in the garden?”

“That is a very nice idea. But first I must remove my corsets and my boots. Ah, what a relief to wear sandals again. I am needing the ‘cure’ very badly this year. My nerves! I am a mass of them. During the entire journey I sat with my handkerchief over my head, even while the guard collected the tickets. Exhausted!”

She came into the arbour wearing a black and white spotted dressing-gown, and a calico cap peaked with patent leather, followed by Kathi, carrying the little blue jugs of malt coffee. We were formally introduced. Frau Fischer sat down, produced a perfectly clean pocket handkerchief and polished her cup and saucer, then lifted the lid of the coffee-pot and peered in at the contents mournfully.

“Malt coffee,” she said. “Ah, for the first few days I wonder how I can put up with it. Naturally, absent from home one must expect much discomfort and strange food. But as I used to say to my dear husband: with a clean sheet and a good cup of coffee I can find my happiness anywhere. But now, with nerves like mine, no sacrifice is too terrible for me to make. What complaint are you suffering from? You look exceedingly healthy!”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

“Ah, that is so strange about you English. You do not seem to enjoy discussing the functions of the body. As well speak of a railway train and refuse to mention the engine. How can we hope to understand anybody, knowing nothing of their stomachs? In my husband’s most severe illness—the poultices—”

She dipped a piece of sugar in her coffee and watched it dissolve.

“Yet a young friend of mine who travelled to England for the funeral of his brother told me that women wore bodices in public restaurants no waiter could help looking into as he handed the soup.”

“But only German waiters,” I said. “English ones look over the top of your head.”

“There,” she cried, “now you see your dependence on Germany. Not even an efficient waiter can you have by yourselves.”

“But I prefer them to look over your head.”

“And that proves that you must be ashamed of your bodice.”

I looked out over the garden full of wall-flowers and standard rose-trees growing stiffly like German bouquets, feeling I did not care one way or the other. I rather wanted to ask her if the young friend had gone to England in the capacity of waiter to attend the funeral baked meats, but decided it was not worth it. The weather was too hot to be malicious, and who could be uncharitable, victimised by the flapping sensations which Frau Fischer was enduring until six-thirty? As a gift from heaven for my forbearance, down the path towards us came the Herr Rat, angelically clad in a white silk suit. He and Frau Fischer were old friends. She drew the folds of her dressing-gown together, and made room for him on the little green bench.

“How cool you are looking,” she said; “and if I may make the remark—what a beautiful suit!”

“Surely I wore it last summer when you were here? I brought the silk from China—smuggled it through the Russian customs by swathing it round my body. And such a quantity: two dress lengths for my sister-in-law, three suits for myself, a cloak for the housekeeper of my flat in Munich. How I perspired! Every inch of it had to be washed afterwards.”

“Surely you have had more adventures than any man in Germany. When I think of the time that you spent in Turkey with a drunken guide who was bitten by a mad dog and fell over a precipice into a field of attar of roses, I lament that you have not written a book.”

“Time—time. I am getting a few notes together. And now that you are here we shall renew our quiet little talks after supper. Yes? It is necessary and pleasant for a man to find relaxation in the company of women occasionally.”

“Indeed I realise that. Even here your life is too strenuous—you are so sought after—so admired. It was just the same with my dear husband. He was a tall, beautiful man, and sometimes in the evening he would come down into the kitchen and say: ‘Wife, I would like to be stupid for two minutes.’ Nothing rested him so much then as for me to stroke his head.”

The Herr Rat’s bald pate glistening in the sunlight seemed symbolical of the sad absence of a wife.

I began to wonder as to the nature of these quiet little after-supper talks. How could one play Delilah to so shorn a Samson?

“Herr Hoffmann from Berlin arrived yesterday,” said the Herr Rat.

“That young man I refuse to converse with. He told me last year that he had stayed in France in an hotel where they did not have serviettes; what a place it must have been! In Austria even the cabmen have serviettes. Also I have heard that he discussed ‘free love’ with Bertha as she was sweeping his room. I am not accustomed to such company. I had suspected him for a long time.”

“Young blood,” answered the Herr Rat genially. “I have had several disputes with him—you have heard them—is it not so?” turning to me.

“A great many,” I said, smiling.

“Doubtless you too consider me behind the times. I make no secret of my age; I am sixty-nine; but you must have surely observed how impossible it was for him to speak at all when I raised my voice.”

I replied with the utmost conviction, and, catching Frau Fischer’s eye, suddenly realised I had better go back to the house and write some letters.

It was dark and cool in my room. A chestnut-tree pushed green boughs against the window. I looked down at the horsehair sofa so openly flouting the idea of curling up as immoral, pulled the red pillow on to the floor and lay down. And barely had I got comfortable when the door opened and Frau Fischer entered.

“The Herr Rat had a bathing appointment,” she said, shutting the door after her. “May I come in? Pray do not move. You look like a little Persian kitten. Now, tell me something really interesting about your life. When I meet new people I squeeze them dry like a sponge. To begin with—you are married.”

I admit the fact.

“Then, dear child, where is your husband?”

I said he was a sea-captain on a long and perilous voyage.

“What a position to leave you in—so young and so unprotected.”

She sat down on the sofa and shook her finger at me playfully.

“Admit, now, that you keep your journeys secret from him. For what man would think of allowing a woman with such a wealth of hair to go wandering in foreign countries? Now, supposing that you lost your purse at midnight in a snowbound train in North Russia?”

“But I haven’t the slightest intention—” I began.

“I don’t say that you have. But when you said good-bye to your dear man I am positive that you had no intention of coming here. My dear, I am a woman of experience, and I know the world. While he is away you have a fever in your blood. Your sad heart flies for comfort to these foreign lands. At home you cannot bear the sight of that empty bed—it is like widowhood. Since the death of my dear husband I have never known an hour’s peace.”

“I like empty beds,” I protested sleepily, thumping the pillow.

“That cannot be true because it is not natural. Every wife ought to feel that her place is by her husband’s side—sleeping or waking. It is plain to see that the strongest tie of all does not yet bind you. Wait until a little pair of hands stretches across the water—wait until he comes into harbour and sees you with the child at your breast.”

I sat up stiffly.

“But I consider child-bearing the most ignominious of all professions,” I said.

For a moment there was silence. Then Frau Fischer reached down and caught my hand.

“So young and yet to suffer so cruelly,” she murmured. “There is nothing that sours a woman so terribly as to be left alone without a man, especially if she is married, for then it is impossible for her to accept the attention of others—unless she is unfortunately a widow. Of course, I know that sea-captains are subject to terrible temptations, and they are as inflammable as tenor singers—that is why you must present a bright and energetic appearance, and try and make him proud of you when his ship reaches port.”

This husband that I had created for the benefit of Frau Fischer became in her hands so substantial a figure that I could no longer see myself sitting on a rock with seaweed in my hair, awaiting that phantom ship for which all women love to suppose they hunger. Rather, I saw myself pushing a perambulator up the gangway, and counting up the missing buttons on my husband’s uniform jacket.

“Handfuls of babies, that is what you are really in need of,” mused Frau Fischer. “Then, as the father of a family he cannot leave you. Think of his delight and excitement when he saw you!”

The plan seemed to me something of a risk. To appear suddenly with handfuls of strange babies is not generally calculated to raise enthusiasm in the heart of the average British husband. I decided to wreck my virgin conception and send him down somewhere off Cape Horn.

Then the dinner-gong sounded.

“Come up to my room afterwards,” said Frau Fischer. “There is still much that I must ask you.”

She squeezed my hand, but I did not squeeze back.

5. FRAU BRECHENMACHER ATTENDS A WEDDING

Getting ready was a terrible business. After supper Frau Brechenmacher packed four of the five babies to bed, allowing Rosa to stay with her and help to polish the buttons of Herr Brechenmacher’s uniform. Then she ran over his best shirt with a hot iron, polished his boots, and put a stitch or two into his black satin necktie.

“Rosa,” she said, “fetch my dress and hang it in front of the stove to get the creases out. Now, mind, you must look after the children and not sit up later than half-past eight, and not touch the lamp—you know what will happen if you do.”

“Yes, Mamma,” said Rosa, who was nine and felt old enough to manage a thousand lamps. “But let me stay up—the ‘Bub’ may wake and want some milk.”

“Half-past eight!” said the Frau. “I’ll make the father tell you too.”

Rosa drew down the corners of her mouth.

“But… but…”

“Here comes the father. You go into the bedroom and fetch my blue silk handkerchief. You can wear my black shawl while I’m out—there now!”

Rosa dragged it off her mother’s shoulders and wound it carefully round her own, tying the two ends in a knot at the back. After all, she reflected, if she had to go to bed at half past eight she would keep the shawl on. Which resolution comforted her absolutely.

“Now, then, where are my clothes?” cried Herr Brechenmacher, hanging his empty letter-bag behind the door and stamping the snow out of his boots. “Nothing ready, of course, and everybody at the wedding by this time. I heard the music as I passed. What are you doing? You’re not dressed. You can’t go like that.”

“Here they are—all ready for you on the table, and some warm water in the tin basin. Dip your head in. Rosa, give your father the towel. Everything ready except the trousers. I haven’t had time to shorten them. You must tuck the ends into your boots until we get there.”

“Nu,” said the Herr, “there isn’t room to turn. I want the light. You go and dress in the passage.”

Dressing in the dark was nothing to Frau Brechenmacher. She hooked her skirt and bodice, fastened her handkerchief round her neck with a beautiful brooch that had four medals to the Virgin dangling from it, and then drew on her cloak and hood.

“Here, come and fasten this buckle,” called Herr Brechenmacher. He stood in the kitchen puffing himself out, the buttons on his blue uniform shining with an enthusiasm which nothing but official buttons could possibly possess. “How do I look?”

“Wonderful,” replied the little Frau, straining at the waist buckle and giving him a little pull here, a little tug there. “Rosa, come and look at your father.”

Herr Brechenmacher strode up and down the kitchen, was helped on with his coat, then waited while the Frau lighted the lantern.

“Now, then—finished at last! Come along.”

“The lamp, Rosa,” warned the Frau, slamming the front door behind them.

Snow had not fallen all day; the frozen ground was slippery as an icepond. She had not been out of the house for weeks past, and the day had so flurried her that she felt muddled and stupid—felt that Rosa had pushed her out of the house and her man was running away from her.

“Wait, wait!” she cried.

“No. I’ll get my feet damp—you hurry.”

It was easier when they came into the village. There were fences to cling to, and leading from the railway station to the Gasthaus a little path of cinders had been strewn for the benefit of the wedding guests.

The Gasthaus was very festive. Lights shone out from every window, wreaths of fir twigs hung from the ledges. Branches decorated the front doors, which swung open, and in the hall the landlord voiced his superiority by bullying the waitresses, who ran about continually with glasses of beer, trays of cups and saucers, and bottles of wine.

“Up the stairs—up the stairs!” boomed the landlord. “Leave your coats on the landing.”

Herr Brechenmacher, completely overawed by this grand manner, so far forgot his rights as a husband as to beg his wife’s pardon for jostling her against the banisters in his efforts to get ahead of everybody else.

Herr Brechenmacher’s colleagues greeted him with acclamation as he entered the door of the Festsaal, and the Frau straightened her brooch and folded her hands, assuming the air of dignity becoming to the wife of a postman and the mother of five children. Beautiful indeed was the Festsaal. Three long tables were grouped at one end, the remainder of the floor space cleared for dancing. Oil lamps, hanging from the ceiling, shed a warm, bright light on the walls decorated with paper flowers and garlands; shed a warmer, brighter light on the red faces of the guests in their best clothes.

At the head of the centre table sat the bride and bridegroom, she in a white dress trimmed with stripes and bows of coloured ribbon, giving her the appearance of an iced cake all ready to be cut and served in neat little pieces to the bridegroom beside her, who wore a suit of white clothes much too large for him and a white silk tie that rose halfway up his collar. Grouped about them, with a fine regard for dignity and precedence, sat their parents and relations; and perched on a stool at the bride’s right hand a little girl in a crumpled muslin dress with a wreath of forget-me-nots hanging over one ear. Everybody was laughing and talking, shaking hands, clinking glasses, stamping on the floor—a stench of beer and perspiration filled the air.

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