The Pastor's Wife

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

"Completely dry. For Frau Pastor. Impossible to leave her unnursed. There will be bandages. There must be punctuality and care"—he looked at Frau Dosch—"cleanliness, efficiency"—at each word he looked at Frau Dosch. "I will come out to-morrow. Perfectly normal, perfectly normal," he said, as he got into the carriage while Herr Dremmel stood ruefully on the doorstep.

The illness went its perfectly normal course. A nurse came out from the principal Königsberg hospital and the disordered house at once became perfectly normal, too. Ilse returned to her kitchen, the baby was appeased by its scientific diet, Ingeborg's bed grew smooth and spotless, her room was quiet, nobody knocked any more against the foot of the bed in passing or shook the floor and herself by heavy treading; she was no longer tended with the same vigour that made the kitchen floor spotless and the pig happy; bandages, unguents, and disinfectants stood neatly in rows, clean white cloths covered the tables, the windows were wide open day and night, and lamps left off burning exactly where they shone into her eyes. Everything was normal, including the behaviour of the abscess, which went its calm way, unhurried and undisturbed by anything the doctor tried to do to it, ripening, reaching its perfection, declining, in an order and obedience to causation that was beautiful for those capable of appreciating it. Everything was normal except the inside of Ingeborg's mind.

There, in a black recess, crouched fear. She suspected life. She had lost, on that awful night and day and night again of birth, confidence in it. She knew it now. It was all death. Death and cruelty. Death and nameless horror. Death pretending, death waiting, waiting to be cruel again, to get her again, and get her altogether next time. What was this talk of life? It was only just death. The others didn't know. She knew. She had seen it and been with it. She had been down into the valley of the shadow of it uncomforted. Her eyes had been wide open while she went. Each step of the way was cut into her memory. They had let her miss nothing. She knew. Out there in the garden the rustling leaves looked gay, and the sun looked cheerful, and the flowers she had so confidently loved looked beautiful and kind. They were death dressed up. Oh, she was not to be taken in any more. She knew the very sound of him. Often, while she was in that fever, she had heard him coming across the yard, up the steps, along the passage, pausing just outside the door, going back each time, but only for a little while. He would come again. The horror of it. The horror of living with that waiting. The horror of knowing that love ended in this, that new life was only more death. Fearfully she lay staring at the realities that she alone in that house could see. And she could hear her heart beating—if only she needn't have to hear her heart beating—it beat in little irregular beats, little flutters, and then a pause—and then a sudden ping—oh, the weak, weak helplessness—nothing to hold on to anywhere in all the world—even the bed hadn't an underneath—she was always dropping downwards, downwards, through it, away....

Sometimes the nurse came and stood beside her, and with a big wholesome hand smoothed back the hair from her absorbed and frowning forehead. "What are you thinking about?" she would ask, bending down and smiling.

But Ingeborg never told.

To Herr Dremmel the nurse counselled patience.

He said he had been having it for ten months.

"You must have some more," said the nurse, "and it will come right."

And so it gradually did. Slowly Ingeborg began to creep up the curve of life again. It was a long and hesitating creeping, but there did come a time when there were definite and widening gaps in her vision of the realities. The first day she had meat for dinner she lost sight of them for several hours. The next day she had meat she shut her mouth. The day after, a feeling of shame for her black thoughts crept into her mind and stayed there. The day after that, when she not only had meat but began a new tonic, she asked for Robertlet and put her arms round him all by herself.

Then the nurse slipped out and called Herr Dremmel; and he, hurrying in and finding her propped on pillows, holding his baby and smiling down at him just as he had pictured she would, went down once more on his knees beside the bed and took the whole group, mother, baby, and pillows, into his arms, and quite frankly and openly cried for joy.