In a German Pension Part 16

"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 s.e.x 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 lavis.h.i.+ng," 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 s.e.x," 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 s.h.i.+ning 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, n.o.ble 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 grat.i.tude.

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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 b.u.mped 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 pa.s.sed 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.

12. THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM.