GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Essays & Memoirs. Gertrude Stein
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up Mrs. Lehntman, and soon she was busier than before making Julia do things right for little Johnny.
And now new schemes were working strong in Mrs. Lehntman’s head, and Anna must listen to her plans and help her make them work.
Mrs. Lehntman always loved best in her work to deliver young girls who were in trouble. She would keep these in her house until they could go to their homes or to their work, and slowly pay her back the money for their care.
Anna had always helped her friend to do this thing, for like all the good women of the decent poor, she felt it hard that girls should not be helped, not girls that were really bad of course, these she condemned and hated in her heart and with her tongue, but honest, decent, good, hard working, foolish girls who were in trouble.
For such as these Anna always liked to give her money and her strength.
Now Mrs. Lehntman thought that it would pay to take a big house for herself to take in girls and to do everything in a big way.
Anna did not like this plan.
Anna was never daring in her ways. Save and you will have the money you have saved, was all that she could know.
Not that the good Anna had it so.
She saved and saved and always saved, and then here and there, to this friend and to that, to one in her trouble and to the other in her joy, in sickness, death, and weddings, or to make young people happy, it always went, the hard earned money she had saved.
Anna could not clearly see how Mrs. Lehntman could make a big house pay. In the small house where she had these girls, it did not pay, and in a big house there was so much more that she would spend.
Such things were hard for the good Anna to very clearly see. One day she came into the Lehntman house. “Anna,” Mrs. Lehntman said, “you know that nice big house on the next corner that we saw to rent. I took it for a year just yesterday. I paid a little down you know so I could have it sure all right and now you fix it up just like you want. I let you do just what you like with it.”
Anna knew that it was now too late. However, “But Mrs. Lehntman you said you would not take another house, you said so just last week. Oh, Mrs. Lehntman I didn’t think that you would do this so!”
Anna knew so well it was too late.
“I know, Anna, but it was such a good house, just right you know and someone else was there to see, and you know you said it suited very well, and if I didn’t take it the others said they would, and I wanted to ask you only there wasn’t time, and really Anna, I don’t need much help, it will go so well I know. I just need a little to begin and to fix up with and that’s all Anna that I need, and I know it will go awful well. You wait Anna and you’ll see, and I let you fix it up just like you want, and you will make it look so nice, you got such sense in all these things. It will be a good place. You see Anna if I ain’t right in what I say.”
Of course Anna gave the money for this thing though she could not believe that it was best. No, it was very bad. Mrs. Lehntman could never make it pay and it would cost so much to keep. But what could our poor Anna do? Remember Mrs. Lehntman was the only romance Anna ever knew.
Anna’s strength in her control of what was done in Mrs. Lehntman’s house, was not now what it had been before that Lily’s little Johnny came. That thing had been for Anna a defeat. There had been no fighting to a finish but Mrs. Lehntman had very surely won.
Mrs. Lehntman needed Anna just as much as Anna needed Mrs. Lehntman, but Mrs. Lehntman was more ready to risk Anna’s loss, and so the good Anna grew always weaker in her power to control.
In friendship, power always has its downward curve. One’s strength to manage rises always higher until there comes a time one does not win, and though one may not really lose, still from the time that victory is not sure, one’s power slowly ceases to be strong. It is only in a close tie such as marriage, that influence can mount and grow always stronger with the years and never meet with a decline. It can only happen so when there is no way to escape.
Friendship goes by favour. There is always danger of a break or of a stronger power coming in between. Influence can only be a steady march when one can surely never break away.
Anna wanted Mrs. Lehntman very much and Mrs. Lehntman needed Anna, but there were always other ways to do and if Anna had once given up she might do so again, so why should Mrs. Lehntman have real fear?
No, while the good Anna did not come to open fight she had been stronger. Now Mrs. Lehntman could always hold out longer. She knew too, that Anna had a feeling heart. Anna could never stop doing all she could for any one that really needed help. Poor Anna had no power to say no.
And then, too, Mrs. Lehntman was the only romance Anna ever knew. Romance is the ideal in one’s life and it is very lonely living with it lost.
So the good Anna gave all her savings for this place, although she knew that this was not the right way for her friend to do.
For some time now they were all very busy fixing up the house. It swallowed all Anna’s savings fixing up this house, for when Anna once began to make it nice, she could not leave it be until it was as good as for the purpose it should be.
Somehow it was Anna now that really took the interest in the house. Mrs. Lehntman, now the thing was done seemed very lifeless, without interest in the house, uneasy in her mind and restless in her ways, and more diffuse even than before in her attention. She was good and kind to all the people in her house, and let them do whatever they thought best.
Anna did not fail to see that Mrs. Lehntman had something on her mind that was all new. What was it that disturbed Mrs. Lehntman so? She kept on saying it was all in Anna’s head. She had no trouble now at all. Everybody was so good and it was all so nice in the new house. But surely there was something here that was all wrong.
Anna heard a good deal of all this from her half brother’s wife, the hard speaking Mrs. Federner.
Through the fog of dust and work and furnishing in the new house, and through the disturbed mind of Mrs. Lehntman, and with the dark hints of Mrs. Federner, there loomed up to Anna’s sight a man, a new doctor that Mrs. Lehntman knew.
Anna had never met the man but she heard of him very often now. Not from her friend, the widow Mrs. Lehntman. Anna knew that Mrs. Lehntman made of him a mystery that Anna had not the strength just then to vigorously break down.
Mrs. Federner gave always dark suggestions and unpleasant hints. Even good Mrs. Drehten talked of it.
Mrs. Lehntman never spoke of the new doctor more than she could help. This was most mysterious and unpleasant and very hard for our good Anna to endure.
Anna’s troubles came all of them at once.
Here in Mrs. Lehntman’s house loomed up dismal and forbidding, a mysterious, perhaps an evil man. In Dr. Shonjen’s house were beginning signs of interest in the doctor in a woman.
This, too, Mrs. Federner often told to the poor Anna. The doctor surely would be married soon, he liked so much now to go to Mr. Weingartner’s house where there was a daughter who loved Doctor, everybody knew.
In these days the living room in her half brother’s house was Anna’s torture chamber. And worst of all there was so much reason for her half sister’s words. The Doctor certainly did look like marriage and Mrs. Lehntman acted very queer.
Poor Anna. Dark were these days and much she had to suffer.
The Doctor’s trouble came to a head the first. It was true Doctor was engaged and to be married soon. He told Anna so himself.
What was the good Anna now to do? Dr. Shonjen wanted her of course to stay. Anna was so sad with all these troubles. She knew here in the Doctor’s house it would be bad when he was married, but she had not the strength now to be firm and go away. She said at last that she would try and stay.
Doctor got married now very soon. Anna made the house all beautiful and clean and she really hoped that she might stay. But this was not